On This Day in History

On May 16, 1532 Sir Thomas More resigned as Lord Chancellor of England. This was done because he could not condone either the divorce of King Henry VIII from Catherine or the marriage of Henry to Anny Boleyn.
Thomas More (1478 - 1535) was the leading anti-Protestant in England at the time of the Reformation. More spoke vehemently against Luther and his views. He held a number of offices in English politics as he worked his way up to being Lord Chancellor.
In 1530, however, he had refused to sign a letter asking the Papacy for an annulment of the marriage of Henry to Catherine. This put a serious wedge between the monarchy and More. The decision of the monarchy to terminate the Roman Catholic Church and institute the Church of England with the king as the head did not sit well with More. Whereupon, in 1531 he refused to take an oath demonstrating loyalty to the king as the Head of the Church of England.
In 1532, following several attempts, More was finally allowed to resign when it became clear that no reunion between the King and More was going to take place. The next year when More refused to attend the coronation of Anne Boleyn as the Queen of England, Henry had More arrested on charges of accepting bribes and high treason, although no evidence existed for either crime.
In 1534 More appeared before a parliamentary commission and accepted that Parliament had the right to declare Anne the legitimate queen of England but refused to swear an oath himself to that effect. More's problem was not with the Act of Succession, but with the language in it that declared the Parliament had more right that the Pope to legislate in matters of religion.
More was imprisoned in the Tower of London. In 1535 he was brought to trial for denying the validity of the Act of Succession, which he did not do. More maintained he could not be convicted of denial of the Act if he did not actually deny the Act. He refused to answer questions related to the King's authority as Head of the Church or any of his opinions on the subject.
Nevertheless, the jury convicted him of the crime of high treason based on testimony of other witnesses. More was executed on July 6, 1535 by decapitation.
More was canonized by the Roman Catholic Church in 1886.
A fantastic film version of his life and trial exists in the adaption of A Man for All Seasons.

Wisdom from Chesterton

Many clever men like you have trusted in civilization. Many clever Babylonians, many clever Egyptians, many clever men at the end of Rome. Can you tell me, in a world that is flagrant with the failures of civilization, what there is particularly immortal about yours?
The Napoleon of Notting Hill

This Day in History

While every one else is blogging about Cinco de Mayo, I am going to write about another event that had greater ramifications but led to fewer parties and less drunkenness.
On this day, May 5, in 1640, Charles I dissolved the Short Parliament. This event has been claimed as the fuse of the English Civil War. Charles had learned from his father, James I, that kings owed their position to God. So far so good (as per Rom. 13:1-7). But James also taught his son that he was above the law and could do anything he wanted to because he owed nothing to the people. Problem! Charles repeatedly tried to rule without respect to the people of England, even though Magna Carta required certain powers be reserved for the people (represented in Parliament). When his foreign wars began costing more money than he actually had, he was forced to call Parliament into session. Only Parliament could authorize monies for war and soldier's wages.
When Parliament came into session on April 17, they refused to conduct any business until Charles recognized the authority of the people in government. After only three weeks, Charles dissolved the body and attempted to raise the money to fight his Scottish war alone. Charles was able to hold out until November of 1640 when lack of funds forced him to recall Parliament. This Parliament session lasted until 1649 and saw the outbreak of the English Civil War.
Royalists and Puritans fought each other over basic principles of government. Was the monarchy totalitarian or did it derive its power from the consent of the people? Charles fled before the Puritan Parliament and gathered his own forces. Oliver Cromwell rose as the leader of the Puritan forces and eventually Charles was captured, tried for treason against the state, and beheaded.
Issues such as religious freedom also entered the picture. Charles had appointed William Laud as Archbishop and Laud wanted to force the Anglican liturgy and form of worship on Presbyterians, Congregationalists, and others. In the period following Charles death, Parliament called together a diverse group of religious leaders, called divines, and charged them with drafting a confessional statement for the Protestant churches in England that all could assent to. The result, in 1648, was the Westminster Confession of Faith and the Larger and Shorter Catechisms.
So while I have nothing against beer and margaritas, I prefer to raise a glass in honor of the Short Parliament and the men who stood firm in their resolve against tyranny today.

How to Change a Culture

The other night my wife and I were flipping through channels in hopeless attempt to find something to watch. For one thing, we don't have cable, by design. We have decided that we already watch too much television with only the over-the-air broadcast channels we receive. For another thing, we can't justify spending the money. But the first reason is more important.
Nonetheless, we were flipping the channels and lighted upon NBC for a few moments. I could tell it was one of the incarnations of Law and Order. I have enjoyed some of these, especially the way they take a story currently in the news and twist it a little to make a fictional story. However, what I saw that night was nothing to be amused about.
The version I caught was SVU (Special Victims Unit). I rarely like these because of their attention to children and sexual crimes. I didn't like this one either, but for different reasons. I caught the story most of the way through, but I got the gist of it pretty quickly. A child had died and the evidence had led the investigators to a mother whose own child was known to play at the same public park as the victim. What happened next left me dumbfounded. The woman was arrested for murder because she had refused to vaccinate her own child and that child had spread a mild disease to the victim.
I actually didn't even finish the episode. I had seen everything I needed to see in those few moments. The characters provided the commentary that was necessary to change or establish public opinion on the issue at stake.
The people who make Law and Order and most of the other shows like it are at the forefront of culture change in our day. They are the George Eliot's of today, making it seem reasonable to think in ways that are actually quite contrary to biblical attitudes. Eliot, as I've posted here before, used the subtlety of her novel to slowly change attitudes toward aristocracy and wealth. Law and Order and the shows like them do the same thing for sexual preference, socialism, abortion, and the whole host of social actions in the news today.
The longer we watch shows like this without questioning them and their assumptions, the easier we make it to change the very foundations of our culture. The people who make these shows know this. This is the big game now. We are having our attitudes of culture and society changed around us without our even knowing it. These new thoughts are presented as matters of justice and common sense. Only really uptight and bigoted folks would reject the premises presented by the show. Only prudes would maintain sexual purity in the modern world. Only over-protective religious freaks would homeschool their children in the modern world (also seen lambasted in a Law and Order show).
This is the world we inherit if we watch carelessly and without thinking.

Antigone

Last night I had the unique opportunity to see a production of Antigone. Some friends told me they had a spare ticket and asked if I'd like to go. I met them at Bob Jones University's Performance Hall and we chatted a while before they opened the doors. When we got in we were given programs which informed us that it was not Sophocles' Antigone we were watching, but one written by Jean Anouilh.
Anouilh was a French playwright who lived from 1910 to 1987. He was largely unsuccessful as a playwright until 1942 when he wrote his version of Antigone. It was first performed on February 6, 1944, during the Nazi occupation of Paris. As the ancient work of the same title, Anouilh's Antigone addressed issues such as state control and the citizen's responsibility to obey.
To get it past the Nazi sensors, the play pictures a very different Creon from Sophocles. The message that men have the responsibility to obey God rather than men is less central. Creon appears less like a tyrant and more like a man trying to hold together a bad situation in the midst of modernity. Antigone begins with a carefully worked out righteousness that crumbles into something like whining and a simple dogged resolution that she was already right and no new information can alter her own opinion.
The play is very similar to Sophocles' original and does little damage to the well-known story line. Anouilh made some modern alterations, but managed to keep the Chorus who solemnly proclaim at one point that they know how things will end up because it is their "job to know."
I was enthralled. I watched eagerly as the events I knew took form and played themselves out on stage. I have not fully processed the message of the play and want to get my hands on the text to read it.
The production itself was fantastic and I was glad I went.

A Kingdom Divided

I've thought about Jesus' proclamation in Matt. 12:25 and Luke 11:17 several times and been troubled by it. I am not sure I get the logic of it. Perhaps I am too modern for my own good, but in the age of James Bond and Jack Bauer, it seems perfectly reasonable to me that Satan might place a double agent on Earth to influence some people by casting out a few demons.
But then I have Jesus saying that it is impossible. A kingdom divided against itself cannot stand. It is in my Bible, therefore it is true.
Which leads me to question the issue from a different perspective. The inevitable result of a divided kingdom, in this case one demon casting out other demons, is destruction. If that is true, what does it say about our world in modernity? We have used secret agents and double agents for most of modernity.
In reading Greenmantle with my Humanities class, I have been forced to reevaluate this issue again. The main character in the novel is a secret agent sent behind enemy lines to discover some secret plot to generate a jihad among Muslim Turks during the Great War. The narrative borrows much from typical British "Great Game" language and the terms and phrases are used often.
If we use agents and spies and such, are we doomed to destruction? What real benefit have they given us? Is the use of such tactics in peacetime and warfare a foray into national violations of the 9th commandment.
I still have much to consider here.

Star Trek

I have the feeling that nostalgia is going to get the best of me...again. I am planning on going to see the new Star Trek movie when it comes out. I have hopes for it, but they are mediated by similar situations in recent years. I am a little excited and very concerned to see what J.J. Abrams will do with Star Trek. I liked Alias for a little while, then it got weird and imploded. We didn't even bother watching the last season or two. I am still watching Lost, but know that it has gotten past the possibility of making sense. I want to see what he does with it, not much more.
He has a habit of beginning something on a really clever idea and then letting it roll. I get no indication that he knows where his plots need to end up. I am hoping he can do better with a simple 2 hour timeframe, but we'll see.
The other thing that concerns me is his very postmodern worldview. I have seen it writ large on both Alias and Lost, very Matrix-esque with lots of symbolism borrowed or stolen from other contexts, and am a little concerned about how it will affect something as modernist as Star Trek. I watched Quantum of Solace recently and was amazed at how postmodern Bond has become. Gone are the modernist toys of Q as well as other basic Bond standbys. It was eerie to watch it.
I half-expect the new Star Trek to be this way as well, to some extent. It is sci-fi after all, a typically modernist genre anyway.

Teaching children to speak boldly

I was in a teacher interview today and was reminded about the importance of teaching our children to speak boldly. That means, for practical example, not looking down when you speak, speaking in a strong, clear voice, and meaning what you say. This is of great importance in our schools and homeschools because we, of all people, have something to say. When we speak, we are to speak the truth. The truth should not be spoken apologetically, but loudly. We should not worry whether our speech will bring ridicule upon us, but should expect this. Since we are speaking the truth, we should be clear and bold in our proclamation.
I reapplied this immediately in family worship tonight, requiring my children to answer their catechism questions with clear, bold answers. I also required them to use their voices to praise God in song this way.
I had basically forgotten this principle until speaking with this teacher candidate who was very precise on this point in her own speaking. I have had a vague notion that I didn't like my children or students speaking like wimps, but couldn't put my finger on a principle to correct it. Now I have remembered the principle.

On iTunes recently

Morgan Doctor - Other Life (esp. Silver City)













H.U.V.A. Network - Ephemeris (esp. Something Heavens)

Socialism in Silas Marner

While reading Silas Marner with my students, I have been struck by the very subtle leanings of its author, George Eliot (aka, Mary Ann Evans). The Darwinism and anti-religious statements were expected, but somehow I missed that Evans (Eliot) had been influenced by Marx as well.
Eliot published Silas Marner in 1861, a good thirteen years after Marx and Engels hit the bookshelves with The Communist Manifesto. I had been reading various statements about class without very little recognition of what Eliot was subtly trying to suggest. Then, all of a sudden, she came out and said it.

...there's never a garden in all the parish but what there's endless waste in it for want o' somebody as could use everything up. It's what I think to myself sometimes, as there need nobody run short o' victuals if the land was made the most on, and there was never a morsel but what could find its way to a mouth. It sets one thinking o' that—gardening does.

Aaron's comment on the possibility of finding pretty much anything Eppie wants for her new garden betrays Eliot's thinking about the haves and have nots of England in the nineteenth century. If only those who have so much would give to those who have very little, there would surely be plenty to go around.
The socialism is subtle, and undeveloped, which actually makes it more dangerous. If Eliot threw it out there very obviously, the novel might be dismissed as extremist ranting. However, if Eliot simply subtly suggests the ideas and lets them develop in the mind of her reader, then eventually the fruit will come. Socialism won't look so bad once we think about how nice it would be if everyone could eat all they wanted.
No one initiating something as dangerous as Socialism goes around talking about the bad parts of the plan. That would be dumb. They use the strategy of Eliot and suggest what might be better if things were done just a little differently. Who could argue against wasted fruits and vegetables, after all?
Remember this the next time our leaders suggest Smart Meters so that everyone will have enough electricity to heat them and keep them cool.