On Moderation
by Harry Clor, Baylor University Press. 2008
Review by John L. Ng
December 2015
During an interview with the cast of Downton Abbey, the British TV series of an aristocratic household in the early 1900’s, the actors were asked what they like most of that drama's period. One chimed in that he missed its “good manners.” In our post-modern individual insistence for spontaneity and transparency, we have forgotten Jane Austen’s sense and sensibility. Our effusion for self-expression has robbed us of self-restraint. Yet ancient philosophies agree that self-discipline is far more consequential than self-expression.
In On Moderation, Harry Clor inquires this ancient virtue in contemporary consequences. Moderation's Latin etymology comes from "to measure." I suppose a moderate person is measured, temperate and balanced. That is, self-discipline is the ultimate form of moderation. In post-modern contexts, to practice moderation, in private and public, is a challenge and, ironically, should be measured. Clor engages this grand quality in three spaces: political moderation, personal moderation, and philosophical moderation. These headings are also his book’s main chapters.
Political moderation calls for balancing civics' extremes. Aristotle defines politics as the exercise of power for the common good. When cultural pluralism permeates all of contemporary life. In our disparaging moral convictions, social behaviors, religious practices and personal opinions, our tolerance for the otherness of others is sorely tested. Every political system and religious tradition has its extremes, from radical conservatism to ultra liberalism, from fundamentalism to agnosticism. Every form of extremism is immoderate. Harboring no doubts, it is intolerant of others' differences. Its worst form perpetrates deadly violence against these differences. Oliver Wendell Holmes, the great jurist, championed a kind of skepticism. Political moderation requires an incredulity of what is real and demands tolerance of others' realities.
Personal moderation calls for taming the excess. On Delphi's Apollo temple, an Aristotelian ethic reminds all who think: μηδέν άγαν – nothing in excess. Or as Clint Eastwood’s Harry Callahan quips, “A man’s got to know his limitations.” Sometimes in relationships, moderation is mistaken for mundanity. For example, a true lover does not love moderately. No real friend is loyal moderately. Platonic and erotic lovers by nature are all in or it is not in at all. And yet an immoderate lover or friend is untrustworthy simply because her/his excess is wholly unreliable. Only a temperate person has enough fortitude to make significant relationships. Cicero calls it our character's nobility. Relational moderation finds that fine nobility.
Philosophical moderation calls for tempering the mind. Our thought life is the beginning of everything in human discourse. What we say or do should be tempered by an equilibrium cognition. What makes us uniquely human is a consciousness that is self- and other-aware. Another Aristotelian moral extols γνῶθι σεαυτόν – know yourself. Self knowledge and understanding of others are pre-requisite for moderation. The Bible calls it humility. A humble person finds a fine balance between self-deprecation and self-aggrandizing. Moderation accepts who we are and are not and what we can and cannot do.
Clor's On Moderation is a moderate book of about 120 pages. Read it and find moderation.
Review by John L. Ng
December 2015
During an interview with the cast of Downton Abbey, the British TV series of an aristocratic household in the early 1900’s, the actors were asked what they like most of that drama's period. One chimed in that he missed its “good manners.” In our post-modern individual insistence for spontaneity and transparency, we have forgotten Jane Austen’s sense and sensibility. Our effusion for self-expression has robbed us of self-restraint. Yet ancient philosophies agree that self-discipline is far more consequential than self-expression.
In On Moderation, Harry Clor inquires this ancient virtue in contemporary consequences. Moderation's Latin etymology comes from "to measure." I suppose a moderate person is measured, temperate and balanced. That is, self-discipline is the ultimate form of moderation. In post-modern contexts, to practice moderation, in private and public, is a challenge and, ironically, should be measured. Clor engages this grand quality in three spaces: political moderation, personal moderation, and philosophical moderation. These headings are also his book’s main chapters.
Political moderation calls for balancing civics' extremes. Aristotle defines politics as the exercise of power for the common good. When cultural pluralism permeates all of contemporary life. In our disparaging moral convictions, social behaviors, religious practices and personal opinions, our tolerance for the otherness of others is sorely tested. Every political system and religious tradition has its extremes, from radical conservatism to ultra liberalism, from fundamentalism to agnosticism. Every form of extremism is immoderate. Harboring no doubts, it is intolerant of others' differences. Its worst form perpetrates deadly violence against these differences. Oliver Wendell Holmes, the great jurist, championed a kind of skepticism. Political moderation requires an incredulity of what is real and demands tolerance of others' realities.
Personal moderation calls for taming the excess. On Delphi's Apollo temple, an Aristotelian ethic reminds all who think: μηδέν άγαν – nothing in excess. Or as Clint Eastwood’s Harry Callahan quips, “A man’s got to know his limitations.” Sometimes in relationships, moderation is mistaken for mundanity. For example, a true lover does not love moderately. No real friend is loyal moderately. Platonic and erotic lovers by nature are all in or it is not in at all. And yet an immoderate lover or friend is untrustworthy simply because her/his excess is wholly unreliable. Only a temperate person has enough fortitude to make significant relationships. Cicero calls it our character's nobility. Relational moderation finds that fine nobility.
Philosophical moderation calls for tempering the mind. Our thought life is the beginning of everything in human discourse. What we say or do should be tempered by an equilibrium cognition. What makes us uniquely human is a consciousness that is self- and other-aware. Another Aristotelian moral extols γνῶθι σεαυτόν – know yourself. Self knowledge and understanding of others are pre-requisite for moderation. The Bible calls it humility. A humble person finds a fine balance between self-deprecation and self-aggrandizing. Moderation accepts who we are and are not and what we can and cannot do.
Clor's On Moderation is a moderate book of about 120 pages. Read it and find moderation.
Unfinished Business
by Anne-Marie Slaugher, Random House. 2015
Review by John L. Ng
October 2015
After propitiating women in the workplace in the speech circuit, the chief operating office of Facebook, Sheryl Sandberg, followed with "Lean In: women, work, and the will to lead." The book caused no small buzz in both boardrooms and bedrooms. Sandberg, a wife and mother of two, encourages women to lean in - persist in their career goals and work collectively toward equality at work and at home.
This fall, Anne-Marie Slaugher, a Princeton professor and former policy-planning director for the State Department, published "Unfinished Business: women, men, work and family." Its impetus was her The Atlantic cover story "Why Women Still Can't Have It All." Like "Lean In" the article prompted speeches, lectures and dialogue tours. In it, she offered that she had left a prestigious position in government to spend more time with her teenage sons. Despite upper class privileges and an understanding husband with flexible work hours, she cogitated that it was impossible to raise a family while living a five-day week in Washington and week's ends in Princeton. Social dialogues and debates ensured. "Unfinished Business" is the digestion of these encounters as well as her refutation of Sandberg’s assumptive realities.
Confucius surmised that all disagreements are disagreements of terms. While "Lean In" pursues an equality where women ran half our world's countries and men ran half our homes, Slaughter offers that as noble as equality is, it is not easily attainable. Here she questions common assumptions that the feminist movement deposited more than half a century ago. Reality, she concludes, is what is and isn’t, not what many of us want it to be. She disputes that three commonly accepted "truths" are wholly true: if one is committed to her career, and if she marries the right person, and if she sequences career choices rightly, a woman can "rise to the top of every government and every industry." (Sandberg's words)
The whole truth is complicatedly nuanced. It is not making sequential choices that solely imparts one's career path. There are those unpredictable, and often unreliable, life circumstances that have a way of impeding our decisions. And what does it mean to marry the right person? Does it simply mean that s/he is emotively supportive and professionally flexible? There are so many variables at various stages of marriage, having a right partner does not guarantee acumen. The demands of family are revised constantly as children age, as career opportunities arise, and as spousal needs, personal and professional, are redefined. Equality in marriage seldom means 50-50. Implicitly, someone has to do more than the other to make a family work. Tension is ubiquitous when partners truly want what is worthwhile, what is important, what is right and what is being responsible. The strained tension is also between competition - our selfish drive to be first - and care-giving - our selfless impulse to put those we love first.
“Unfinished Business” posits some refreshingly noetic vocabularies to a half-century old conversation. As a Christian who seeks a Biblical worldview for family and career, I find the book realistic and honest about the limits of doing well at work and doing good at home. At the remains of each day, those who seek to honor God are compelled to ask what is God’s created order and created purpose when pursuing careers with family. Our answers to these questions, as unfinished at they might be, will be life directing and life changing.
Review by John L. Ng
October 2015
After propitiating women in the workplace in the speech circuit, the chief operating office of Facebook, Sheryl Sandberg, followed with "Lean In: women, work, and the will to lead." The book caused no small buzz in both boardrooms and bedrooms. Sandberg, a wife and mother of two, encourages women to lean in - persist in their career goals and work collectively toward equality at work and at home.
This fall, Anne-Marie Slaugher, a Princeton professor and former policy-planning director for the State Department, published "Unfinished Business: women, men, work and family." Its impetus was her The Atlantic cover story "Why Women Still Can't Have It All." Like "Lean In" the article prompted speeches, lectures and dialogue tours. In it, she offered that she had left a prestigious position in government to spend more time with her teenage sons. Despite upper class privileges and an understanding husband with flexible work hours, she cogitated that it was impossible to raise a family while living a five-day week in Washington and week's ends in Princeton. Social dialogues and debates ensured. "Unfinished Business" is the digestion of these encounters as well as her refutation of Sandberg’s assumptive realities.
Confucius surmised that all disagreements are disagreements of terms. While "Lean In" pursues an equality where women ran half our world's countries and men ran half our homes, Slaughter offers that as noble as equality is, it is not easily attainable. Here she questions common assumptions that the feminist movement deposited more than half a century ago. Reality, she concludes, is what is and isn’t, not what many of us want it to be. She disputes that three commonly accepted "truths" are wholly true: if one is committed to her career, and if she marries the right person, and if she sequences career choices rightly, a woman can "rise to the top of every government and every industry." (Sandberg's words)
The whole truth is complicatedly nuanced. It is not making sequential choices that solely imparts one's career path. There are those unpredictable, and often unreliable, life circumstances that have a way of impeding our decisions. And what does it mean to marry the right person? Does it simply mean that s/he is emotively supportive and professionally flexible? There are so many variables at various stages of marriage, having a right partner does not guarantee acumen. The demands of family are revised constantly as children age, as career opportunities arise, and as spousal needs, personal and professional, are redefined. Equality in marriage seldom means 50-50. Implicitly, someone has to do more than the other to make a family work. Tension is ubiquitous when partners truly want what is worthwhile, what is important, what is right and what is being responsible. The strained tension is also between competition - our selfish drive to be first - and care-giving - our selfless impulse to put those we love first.
“Unfinished Business” posits some refreshingly noetic vocabularies to a half-century old conversation. As a Christian who seeks a Biblical worldview for family and career, I find the book realistic and honest about the limits of doing well at work and doing good at home. At the remains of each day, those who seek to honor God are compelled to ask what is God’s created order and created purpose when pursuing careers with family. Our answers to these questions, as unfinished at they might be, will be life directing and life changing.
The Road to Character
by David Brooks, Random House. 2015
Review by John L. Ng
August 2015
In a post-modern culture of the “big me” "selfies," David Brooks, a New York Times columnist and PBS television commentator, shoves us to get over ourselves and seek, perhaps for the first time, for character formation. Guided by Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik's insights in "The Lonely Man of Faith," Brooks envisions two sides of our human ontology, “Adam I” and “Adam II” of the Genesis creation narratives. In Genesis 1.28, God told Adam I to "be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion. . . ." In Genesis 2.15, God put Adam II "in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it."
The Adam I in us seeks significance by subduing the earth with success, fame and power. Brooks calls it the resume virtue. Our resume in hand, we peddle what we have built, won and accomplished to impress the world. Then there is our Adam II. It seeks meaning inwardly by cultivating a garden of morality, nobility and self-conquest. Brooks calls it the eulogy virtue. It is what others say over our coffin, with attributes like kindness, generosity and humility. Public discourse, mass media, self-help best sellers and self-appointed pundit celebrities want us to believe that Adam I is more important than Adam II. But Ecclesiastes emphatically cautions that a good character is better than a successful career (7.1).
Brooks agrees. "The Road to Character" focuses on cultivating the Adam II of our nature. He portraits a diverse list of his heroes who have cultivated a better portion of their character. We catch glimpses of the likes of Augustine, George Marshall, Frances Perkins, George Eliot, Samuel Johnson and A. Philip Randolph. In each study, he meditates a noble character trait. He defines character as a moral ecology - "a set of dispositions, desires and habits that are slowly engraved during the struggle against your own weaknesses. . ." until you become more self-disciplined, more considerate of others and more refined in making choices (pp 263-64).
"Character" is not a polemics against immorality or deviant behavior, nor is it an apology to convert narcissists or atheists. Imitating Soloveitchik’s approach, Brooks is preaching to the proverbial choir who already sings his tune that something is not right about us. That there is a certain moral laziness and spiritual shallowness in our Adam I’s obsessed “selfie.” His observations are dotted with research data. For example, in 1950, 12 percent of high school students told a Gallup poll that they considered themselves important. Fifty years later, another survey showed 80 percent shared the same self-centeredness. Brooks confesses that he himself is a professional narcissistic jabberer - someone who gets paid to babble about the "big me."
Much of his acuity is agreeable with me but some of his conclusions are confusing and even contradictory. Far from being the book's weakness, I think this shows his honesty that his understanding is yet unfinished. Recent media gossips suggest that he was struggling with marital woes while writing this book. Whatever. Even if it were true, that could only add to his earnest endeavors toward character. In the end, he confesses that we are all “crooked timber” when building character and on the road to character we are but “stumblers.” I appreciate even more the ubiquity of the Judaic-Christian God on every page. As a theologian once wrote, "social morality depends upon the remembrance of God." Here Brooks remembers the God of his Jewish traditions and his resent Christian faith on the road to character.
Review by John L. Ng
August 2015
In a post-modern culture of the “big me” "selfies," David Brooks, a New York Times columnist and PBS television commentator, shoves us to get over ourselves and seek, perhaps for the first time, for character formation. Guided by Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik's insights in "The Lonely Man of Faith," Brooks envisions two sides of our human ontology, “Adam I” and “Adam II” of the Genesis creation narratives. In Genesis 1.28, God told Adam I to "be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion. . . ." In Genesis 2.15, God put Adam II "in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it."
The Adam I in us seeks significance by subduing the earth with success, fame and power. Brooks calls it the resume virtue. Our resume in hand, we peddle what we have built, won and accomplished to impress the world. Then there is our Adam II. It seeks meaning inwardly by cultivating a garden of morality, nobility and self-conquest. Brooks calls it the eulogy virtue. It is what others say over our coffin, with attributes like kindness, generosity and humility. Public discourse, mass media, self-help best sellers and self-appointed pundit celebrities want us to believe that Adam I is more important than Adam II. But Ecclesiastes emphatically cautions that a good character is better than a successful career (7.1).
Brooks agrees. "The Road to Character" focuses on cultivating the Adam II of our nature. He portraits a diverse list of his heroes who have cultivated a better portion of their character. We catch glimpses of the likes of Augustine, George Marshall, Frances Perkins, George Eliot, Samuel Johnson and A. Philip Randolph. In each study, he meditates a noble character trait. He defines character as a moral ecology - "a set of dispositions, desires and habits that are slowly engraved during the struggle against your own weaknesses. . ." until you become more self-disciplined, more considerate of others and more refined in making choices (pp 263-64).
"Character" is not a polemics against immorality or deviant behavior, nor is it an apology to convert narcissists or atheists. Imitating Soloveitchik’s approach, Brooks is preaching to the proverbial choir who already sings his tune that something is not right about us. That there is a certain moral laziness and spiritual shallowness in our Adam I’s obsessed “selfie.” His observations are dotted with research data. For example, in 1950, 12 percent of high school students told a Gallup poll that they considered themselves important. Fifty years later, another survey showed 80 percent shared the same self-centeredness. Brooks confesses that he himself is a professional narcissistic jabberer - someone who gets paid to babble about the "big me."
Much of his acuity is agreeable with me but some of his conclusions are confusing and even contradictory. Far from being the book's weakness, I think this shows his honesty that his understanding is yet unfinished. Recent media gossips suggest that he was struggling with marital woes while writing this book. Whatever. Even if it were true, that could only add to his earnest endeavors toward character. In the end, he confesses that we are all “crooked timber” when building character and on the road to character we are but “stumblers.” I appreciate even more the ubiquity of the Judaic-Christian God on every page. As a theologian once wrote, "social morality depends upon the remembrance of God." Here Brooks remembers the God of his Jewish traditions and his resent Christian faith on the road to character.
The Age of Atheists
by Peter Watson, Simon & Schuster. 2014
Doubt: A History: The Great Doubters and Their Legacy of Innovation from Socrates and Jesus to Thomas Jefferson and Emily Dickerson
by Jennifer Michael Hecht, Harper San Francisco. 2003
Review by John L. Ng
June 2015
Peter Watson's "The Age of Atheists" and Jennifer Hecht's "Doubt" beg to be read together. Both address our natural bent towards skepticism. They are not polemics for or against its rise but are historical accounts of how questions of God's existence and religious beliefs shape our present world.
Watson, a British historian, focuses on how western civilization has coped since the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche's 1882 infamous madman claim that God is dead and "we have killed him - you and I. . . ." Watson's sub-title "how we have sought to live since the death of God" seeks to answer the madman's declaration. Indeed, how do we find our way with meanings in a world that has lost its existential centrality in God whose existence is no longer a priori. Never mind that Nietzsche at the end had a psychotic breakdown, stayed at mental asylums and rumored to have died from a form of syphilis. His ideology has influenced western culture widely. Philosophers, psychologists, novelists, poets, painters, dancers, sociologists, political scientists and more who rejected traditional Christianity had sought to find personal significance in a meaningless existence.
Atheism expresses itself in many forms and exhibits many functions. Once our rudimentary needs, like food and shelter are met, both artists and thinkers who rejected God struggle with existential anxiety. Many are desperate to find what John Stott (the Anglian cleric) has found in Christianity – significance, meaning and community. No one can deny that western cultures have been enriched by atheists like Claude Monet, Virginia Wolfe, Isadora Duncan, Anton Chekhov, Bertrand Russell and W. B. Yeats. Though their artistic endeavors enhance our culture, but as Augustine confessed, our hearts remain forever vacuous until we find meaning in God (my paraphrase).
Hecht, an American historian, focuses on the dialectic tensions between belief and disbelief. She traces the great doubters of history from ancient times to the present. Every culture, every religion, every philosophy, every epoch has its doubters. Every cultural renaissance, every religious reformation, every scientific revolution began when proponents and opponents of faith doubted. In her breezy muses, Hecht celebrates intellectual doubt as creative energy. The history of doubt is more than just challenges to our assumptive worldviews. Doubters, not necessarily atheists, simply question the assumed. In fact, all creeds have their doubters. Socrates to K'ung-Fu-Tzu, Saint Paul to Martin Luther, the sage of Ecclesiastes to Maimonides have doubted the ways we look at God, ourselves and the world.
Doubt is not the counterpart of faith nor synonymous with atheism. Even atheists have a vague notion of God. By necessity, there is always doubt in faith. A comical wag once quipped, certainty is being mistaken at the top of our lungs. Hecht agrees that this world is a better place because great thinkers doubted. Pascal understands doubts when he writes that "either God is or he is not. . . . Reason cannot decide this question. . . . Let us see which offers you the least interest?" That is, sometimes we need to doubt our doubts in our faith in God.
June 2015
Peter Watson's "The Age of Atheists" and Jennifer Hecht's "Doubt" beg to be read together. Both address our natural bent towards skepticism. They are not polemics for or against its rise but are historical accounts of how questions of God's existence and religious beliefs shape our present world.
Watson, a British historian, focuses on how western civilization has coped since the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche's 1882 infamous madman claim that God is dead and "we have killed him - you and I. . . ." Watson's sub-title "how we have sought to live since the death of God" seeks to answer the madman's declaration. Indeed, how do we find our way with meanings in a world that has lost its existential centrality in God whose existence is no longer a priori. Never mind that Nietzsche at the end had a psychotic breakdown, stayed at mental asylums and rumored to have died from a form of syphilis. His ideology has influenced western culture widely. Philosophers, psychologists, novelists, poets, painters, dancers, sociologists, political scientists and more who rejected traditional Christianity had sought to find personal significance in a meaningless existence.
Atheism expresses itself in many forms and exhibits many functions. Once our rudimentary needs, like food and shelter are met, both artists and thinkers who rejected God struggle with existential anxiety. Many are desperate to find what John Stott (the Anglian cleric) has found in Christianity – significance, meaning and community. No one can deny that western cultures have been enriched by atheists like Claude Monet, Virginia Wolfe, Isadora Duncan, Anton Chekhov, Bertrand Russell and W. B. Yeats. Though their artistic endeavors enhance our culture, but as Augustine confessed, our hearts remain forever vacuous until we find meaning in God (my paraphrase).
Hecht, an American historian, focuses on the dialectic tensions between belief and disbelief. She traces the great doubters of history from ancient times to the present. Every culture, every religion, every philosophy, every epoch has its doubters. Every cultural renaissance, every religious reformation, every scientific revolution began when proponents and opponents of faith doubted. In her breezy muses, Hecht celebrates intellectual doubt as creative energy. The history of doubt is more than just challenges to our assumptive worldviews. Doubters, not necessarily atheists, simply question the assumed. In fact, all creeds have their doubters. Socrates to K'ung-Fu-Tzu, Saint Paul to Martin Luther, the sage of Ecclesiastes to Maimonides have doubted the ways we look at God, ourselves and the world.
Doubt is not the counterpart of faith nor synonymous with atheism. Even atheists have a vague notion of God. By necessity, there is always doubt in faith. A comical wag once quipped, certainty is being mistaken at the top of our lungs. Hecht agrees that this world is a better place because great thinkers doubted. Pascal understands doubts when he writes that "either God is or he is not. . . . Reason cannot decide this question. . . . Let us see which offers you the least interest?" That is, sometimes we need to doubt our doubts in our faith in God.
Fields Of Blood: religion and the history of violence
by Karen Armstrong, Knopf. 2014
Review by John L. Ng
April 2014
Many of us do not know the differences between Iran and Iraq. We would probably have a hard time parsing the contrasting nuances between Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Our thoughts of other world religions are far from us as Jerusalem is from our homeland. Yet we all share an inkling that terrorism is somehow connected with religion. Both the social and news media intimate this untested assumption into our subconscious. Karen Armstrong's book addresses this bias. She is well respected and well read on religious history. (I have reviewed several of her books in this column.) Her study on religion and the history of violence is worth considering.
Immediately her introduction acknowledges our Western assumption, "the idea that religion is inherently violent is now taken for granted and seems self-evident." In her more than 400-page book, she concludes in broad and concrete strokes that religion has not been the cause of all wars and violence in history. She admits that religion is difficult to define. It is different things to different people at different times. She sees religion as a coherent worldview that shapes our convictions, values, and rituals. Inherently, religion in the West is private and hermetical. In other places, religion is all encompassing of life. One needs to recognize that religion, like all historical movements, is a convergence of political, economical and theological elements. For example, the Protestant Reformation is an economic and political as well as a religious movement. Because these movements are intertwined, it is nearly impossible to argue that religion plays a sole role in the history of violence apart from its nation's economics and politics. Thus, religion plays varied roles between agrarian and industrial societies or between democratic and totalitarian states.
Regardless of religion's influence in society, Armstrong contents that violence almost always originates with the secular state that may use religious convictions as its justification. No doubt, religion has profound implications on how we see ourselves and what we do to one another. It has inspired people to generous altruism and senseless cruelty. To guide readers plowing through her well-documented arguments, here is a summary of her broader points: One, people naturally and historically integrate their religions with societal involvement, especially how they are governed and treat one another. Two, this integration with societal politics, as expected, involves religion with state polities and policies that may include war and violence. Three, most often states that perpetrate violence use religion as justification. The Middle Ages European crusades and modern day Islamic jihads are examples. Four, nationalism is a more potent incentive to terrorism than religion. Violence arises when disenfranchised peoples struggle for nationhood or political power. For example, although Hamas invokes Islam, its acts of violence are primarily politically motivated. Five, because violence is often executed with religious rationales, institutional religion faces the dilemma of defining its relationship with the state. Six, religion is not totally exempt from violence when it is threatened by external elements. Similar to the brutal practices of the Islamic State, the Protestant reformers, like Calvin, condoned the execution of more than 8,000 men and women as heretics.
"Fields of Blood" does not offer a new theory on the history of violence and religion. It may not interpret some history correctly. Yet it is worth reading if we want to confute some of our confused assumptions and better understand our faith in history and among nations.
Review by John L. Ng
April 2014
Many of us do not know the differences between Iran and Iraq. We would probably have a hard time parsing the contrasting nuances between Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Our thoughts of other world religions are far from us as Jerusalem is from our homeland. Yet we all share an inkling that terrorism is somehow connected with religion. Both the social and news media intimate this untested assumption into our subconscious. Karen Armstrong's book addresses this bias. She is well respected and well read on religious history. (I have reviewed several of her books in this column.) Her study on religion and the history of violence is worth considering.
Immediately her introduction acknowledges our Western assumption, "the idea that religion is inherently violent is now taken for granted and seems self-evident." In her more than 400-page book, she concludes in broad and concrete strokes that religion has not been the cause of all wars and violence in history. She admits that religion is difficult to define. It is different things to different people at different times. She sees religion as a coherent worldview that shapes our convictions, values, and rituals. Inherently, religion in the West is private and hermetical. In other places, religion is all encompassing of life. One needs to recognize that religion, like all historical movements, is a convergence of political, economical and theological elements. For example, the Protestant Reformation is an economic and political as well as a religious movement. Because these movements are intertwined, it is nearly impossible to argue that religion plays a sole role in the history of violence apart from its nation's economics and politics. Thus, religion plays varied roles between agrarian and industrial societies or between democratic and totalitarian states.
Regardless of religion's influence in society, Armstrong contents that violence almost always originates with the secular state that may use religious convictions as its justification. No doubt, religion has profound implications on how we see ourselves and what we do to one another. It has inspired people to generous altruism and senseless cruelty. To guide readers plowing through her well-documented arguments, here is a summary of her broader points: One, people naturally and historically integrate their religions with societal involvement, especially how they are governed and treat one another. Two, this integration with societal politics, as expected, involves religion with state polities and policies that may include war and violence. Three, most often states that perpetrate violence use religion as justification. The Middle Ages European crusades and modern day Islamic jihads are examples. Four, nationalism is a more potent incentive to terrorism than religion. Violence arises when disenfranchised peoples struggle for nationhood or political power. For example, although Hamas invokes Islam, its acts of violence are primarily politically motivated. Five, because violence is often executed with religious rationales, institutional religion faces the dilemma of defining its relationship with the state. Six, religion is not totally exempt from violence when it is threatened by external elements. Similar to the brutal practices of the Islamic State, the Protestant reformers, like Calvin, condoned the execution of more than 8,000 men and women as heretics.
"Fields of Blood" does not offer a new theory on the history of violence and religion. It may not interpret some history correctly. Yet it is worth reading if we want to confute some of our confused assumptions and better understand our faith in history and among nations.
Lincoln's Bishop
by Gustav Niebuhr. HarperOne, New York 2014
Review by John L. Ng
January 2015
We all have heard of President Abraham Lincoln and the American Civil War. But I doubt if any of us have heard of the Reverend Henry Benjamin Whipple. This Episcopal Bishop spent much of his ministry among the Native Americans in the Minnesota frontiers. In 1862, after numerous broken treaties and systemic abuses, the Dakota Sioux rose against the white settlers and slaughtered hundreds of them. When the news reached across America, its outcry for retributions spread like an incendiary prairie fire.
Bishop Whipple had already dedicated his singular but persistent voice decrying the government's injustices against the Native Americans. Speaking against the perfidious Office of Indian Affairs (the present Bureau of Indian Affairs), he warned the authorities of impending tragedy. Through Salmon Chase, Lincoln's secretary of the treasury and a member of the Episcopal church, and a cousin who served as Lincoln's general-in-chief of Union forces, Whipple was able to propone his concerns directly with the President. Without excusing the Dakota Sioux's brutal revenge, he pleaded the President to intervene. Although preoccupied with the Civil War, Lincoln's better angel was moved to save 300 Dakota Sioux warriors from wrongful execution.
Gustav Niebuhr, a religion writer and Syracuse University Associate Professor, recounts this incredible episode in his book "Lincoln's Bishop." The history of the government's relationship with the Native Americans is a shameful one. He calls Whipple's advocacy for justice, and mercy, on the natives' behalf an exercise of a cleric's moral authority. What Whipple did was counter-cultural. Regardless of their political and religious convictions, many clerics of his day showed little interest in the Native Americans. In fact, many chose the path of passivity regarding both the government's systemic and the populace's abuses against them. Niebuhr observes that when those in opportune times do not exercise God's given moral authority, they forfeit their significant place in God's kingdom.
During the Civil War, a New York Times editorial called for the church to refrain from its self imposed silence on national affairs. Even a secular newspaper had enough moral conscious to urge the church to exercise its moral pulpit. Indeed, Whipple chastened his church and fellow pastors to speak as one voice against all injustices. But few heeded his pleads. The annals of the church record too many times how it failed to exercise its moral authority. In fact, there were clerics who participated in the immoral cruelties against the Native Americans.
In that pervasive silence, individuals like Whipple understood their time and knew what to do (I Chronicles 12.32). His persistent moral voice spoke out powerfully and meaningfully for a disenfranchised people and saved some. President Lincoln's propitious response also showed incredible personal grace toward a few even though he was in the urgent clamor of a greater war. The world will never recognize the person or the work of Henry Benjamin Wiggle. Yet in consociation with Lincoln's moral greatness, he exemplified his own moral greatness. Niebuhr concludes: "As regards actions like the one in which he (Whipple) had participated, the Talmud states that whoever saves one life, it is as if he has saved the whole world. Of how many of us can such a thing be said?"
Review by John L. Ng
January 2015
We all have heard of President Abraham Lincoln and the American Civil War. But I doubt if any of us have heard of the Reverend Henry Benjamin Whipple. This Episcopal Bishop spent much of his ministry among the Native Americans in the Minnesota frontiers. In 1862, after numerous broken treaties and systemic abuses, the Dakota Sioux rose against the white settlers and slaughtered hundreds of them. When the news reached across America, its outcry for retributions spread like an incendiary prairie fire.
Bishop Whipple had already dedicated his singular but persistent voice decrying the government's injustices against the Native Americans. Speaking against the perfidious Office of Indian Affairs (the present Bureau of Indian Affairs), he warned the authorities of impending tragedy. Through Salmon Chase, Lincoln's secretary of the treasury and a member of the Episcopal church, and a cousin who served as Lincoln's general-in-chief of Union forces, Whipple was able to propone his concerns directly with the President. Without excusing the Dakota Sioux's brutal revenge, he pleaded the President to intervene. Although preoccupied with the Civil War, Lincoln's better angel was moved to save 300 Dakota Sioux warriors from wrongful execution.
Gustav Niebuhr, a religion writer and Syracuse University Associate Professor, recounts this incredible episode in his book "Lincoln's Bishop." The history of the government's relationship with the Native Americans is a shameful one. He calls Whipple's advocacy for justice, and mercy, on the natives' behalf an exercise of a cleric's moral authority. What Whipple did was counter-cultural. Regardless of their political and religious convictions, many clerics of his day showed little interest in the Native Americans. In fact, many chose the path of passivity regarding both the government's systemic and the populace's abuses against them. Niebuhr observes that when those in opportune times do not exercise God's given moral authority, they forfeit their significant place in God's kingdom.
During the Civil War, a New York Times editorial called for the church to refrain from its self imposed silence on national affairs. Even a secular newspaper had enough moral conscious to urge the church to exercise its moral pulpit. Indeed, Whipple chastened his church and fellow pastors to speak as one voice against all injustices. But few heeded his pleads. The annals of the church record too many times how it failed to exercise its moral authority. In fact, there were clerics who participated in the immoral cruelties against the Native Americans.
In that pervasive silence, individuals like Whipple understood their time and knew what to do (I Chronicles 12.32). His persistent moral voice spoke out powerfully and meaningfully for a disenfranchised people and saved some. President Lincoln's propitious response also showed incredible personal grace toward a few even though he was in the urgent clamor of a greater war. The world will never recognize the person or the work of Henry Benjamin Wiggle. Yet in consociation with Lincoln's moral greatness, he exemplified his own moral greatness. Niebuhr concludes: "As regards actions like the one in which he (Whipple) had participated, the Talmud states that whoever saves one life, it is as if he has saved the whole world. Of how many of us can such a thing be said?"