Becoming Mrs Lewis

Becoming Mrs Lewis: The Improbable Love Story of Joy Davidman and C.S. Lewis
© 2018 Patti Callahan
415 pages

Few books transfix me in the way that Becoming Mrs Lewis did; I suppose it helps to have a strong affection for 'Jack' to begin with.  Reading Surprised by Joy felt less like working on something and more like listening to a friend chat, and Becoming Mrs. Lewis was quite the same way.  It's the story of Joy Davidman, an American writer who took up writing letters to CS Lewis while struggling with her newfound faith and her illfound marriage.  Though no stranger to deep discussions with women over matters literary and theological, Lewis and his brother Warnie were especially taken with their 'American friend', and invited her to visit them should she ever visit England.  She did, of course, seeking refuge from her frustrated artist-turned-drunken lech of a husband, and there fell in love with England, Oxford, and  -- Jack.   

Becoming Mrs. Lewis is a curious novel; based much in fact,   and though ostensibly about a romance,  its delivery is far more serious and substantial. Throughout the book, Jack and Joy, and sometimes  his friends in England, are deep in conversation with one another about all manner of things. It's not quite random, though, because the give and take leads them to new revelations about themselves and God. It is in England,  surrounded by the beauty of Oxford, the English countryside, and the warmth of true friendship, that Joy finds the strength she needs to take a leap and leave her toxic 'husband' behind,  beginning a new life for herself and her boys in England.  From there she is free to grow into her a best self -- developing her writing,  maturing in faith, and developing a deep relationship with Lewis. That relationship is fascinating to watch grow, as they each wrestle with their inner doubts.  They each have to have an "A-ha" moment before they can embrace one another as husband and wife as well as deep and devoted friends.

Becoming Mrs Lewis is an utterly lovely novel. I read it immediately after watching Shadowlands (and many, many thanks to Hopewell's Public Library of Life for bringing that gem to my attention!) and was so primed to enjoy it.   The book was so much deeper than I expected, though, in part because the conversations are based on their letters and quotes from the pair. At least, I recognized quite a few Lewisisms, like his wryly noting that if someone thinks Christianity is the key to happiness and comfort, they'd be better off with a bottle of port.  Although I was fairly familiar with Lewis'  and Davidman's  story -- their meeting in correspondence, a friendship turned to love in England, their marriage to one another late in life, and her sudden passing when cancer loomed -- I wasn't bored for a moment here,  enjoying this like precious few other books.

Related:
Surprised by Joy, CS Lewis

Status Anxiety

Status Anxiety
© 2004 Alain de Botton
 306 pages

Who said "comparison is the thief of joy"?  If they hadn't, Alain de Botton would, as here he argues that most of our misery comes from the constant comparison of ourselves to others -- to their lives, their wealth, their accomplishments.  A book addressing that -- marshaling philosophy, art, and religion to diagnose and combat the problem -- is arrestingly relevant these days, as it's never been easier to compare ourselves with our friends, our neighbors, and the people who we went to high school with and who are doing so much more with their lives than we are.  That said, however, it's incomplete, treating  the human concern for status as something wholly new, something spawned by modern economies and the decline of religious perspectives which once reminded us again and again that we are more than the sum of our parts, that our true valuation lies in something else -- like our being created in the image of God, for instance, and possessing inherent dignity. (It should be noted that de Botton is not himself a believer in any creed; he simply appreciates the strengths of religiosity for people and societies, and is presently engaged in creating a secular substitution he calls the School of Life. It sounds a bit like one of those things participants describe, then add "But it's not a cult.")  My chief gripe here is that I believe concern for status stems not from economy, but from biology, and de Botton never goes near this.  If chimpanzees constantly wrestle for status within their tribes,  it's not a farfetched idea to me that humans do something like that as well, and that this instinct has been made a constant obsession by the factors he mentions. That said, I rather liked de Botton's prescriptions, from Stoic philosophy to an engagement with music, literature, and other art that reminds us of our common frailty.    He's still one of my favorite people to read, with a graceful pen and a thoughtful mind.

The Hiding Place

The Hiding Place
© 1971 Corrie ten Boom,  John and Elizabeth Sherrill
241 PAGES

You are my hiding place; You preserve me from trouble; You surround me with songs of deliverance.

Psalms 32

When Corrie ten Boom turned in her family radio to the Nazi officials who had taken control of her town and her country and was asked if anyone else in the home had another set, she looked him square in the face and said "No".  As she departed, she shuddered -- not from the fear of encountering an agent of tyranny, but from how easy it was to lie.    The ten Booms were a deeply religious family whose watchmaking business opened and closed it day with the reading of Scripture, and even lying for the good did not come easy to the ten Boom sisters.  But it would have to, because as the Nazi consolidation of power in the Netherlands began, and their Jewish friends fell under duress, the tiny watchmaking-shop became the hiding place for a group of resistance fighters and Jewish citizens seeking refuge from the government.    It was last until late 1944, but even when the family had been seized by the SS and imprisoned in camps, there still remained one hiding place more.  The Hiding Place is both a wartime memoir and a work of Christian testimony, declaring and demonstrating that light can shine in the darkness.

From the beginning, the hiding place was not a great secret. The hidden compartment was physically well-concealed, but  no one could miss the sheer amount of people entering and exiting the building, and the neighbors had to ask (very quietly)  if they couldn't keep the Hanukkah singing down just a little bit.  The local police also knew, but had no interest in helping their grey-uniformed bosses in persecuting the innocents.   Someone did want to help the Germans, however,  as the family was betrayed and imprisoned. (Their wards, however, escaped notice!)  Eventually Corrie herself would travel to  Ravensbrück, the notorious women's concentration camp.  But that's where the memoir comes something else altogether, as the ten Boom sisters are isolated from one another and forced to rely on nothing but their faith to keep them sane -- and not just sane, but human.  The Gospel stories kept hope alive in the face of brutality -- and kept  them from sinking into despair and deadened souls. The camps destroyed many who survived, inflicting long-lasting psychological trauma, but ten Boom emerged from the war as a more fervent Christian missionary.   Remarkably, she and her sister refused to hate those who abused and humiliated them, and killed their father; they constantly expressed thanks for whatever small mercies they can see, and even when Corrie is being interrogated by an SS official, his skull-and-crossbones staring her down,  she urges him to turn away from the darkness and look to the light.   

In their darkest hours, the ten Boom sisters shared hope for the future -- dreams of what they would do when they were released.  They wanted to turn their home into a refuge for those who had been crippled by it. This was not new to the ten Booms: even during the war they sought to shelter and teach the mentally infirm, who were left without resources by the Nazis and threatened with euthanasia.    ten Boom shared a vision of having a place where former collaborators could redeem themselves  by serving those whom they'd previously oppressed. This, she admits, did not work out well: there were too many fights between both sides, each holding the other in resentment.  Even so, her shelter was one of the few places open to homeless former collaborators.   The ten Booms' refusal to give in to hate is utterly inspiring in a day when  spite and contempt saturate every political argument, when old hatreds are constantly given new life and the bleeding sores of politics never allowed to heal.

"It was a day for memories. A day for calling up the past. How could have guessed as we sat there -- to middle-aged spinsters and an old man -- that in place of memories we were about to be given adventure such as we had never dreamed of. Adventure and anguish, horror and heaven were just around the corner, and we did not know.
Oh Father! Betsie! If I had known would I have gone ahead? Could I have done the things I did?

p. 12

Welcome to the Orthodox Church

Welcome to the Orthodox Church

© 2015 Fredrica Mathews-Green 

384 pages

What it means to be liturgical can't be encapsulated in a creed; liturgy has to be practiced,  experienced.  In Welcome to Orthodoxy,  FMG creates a fictional Orthodox parish and guides readers through it. She begins first with a tour of the church's physical structure -- an outward and visible sign of its theology -- before guiding her readers through Vespers, the Divine Liturgy, Pascha, and -- the holiest of holies -- coffee hour.   FMG isn't playing tour guide to a fictional landscape, as every step of the way she is sharing the theology and culture of the Orthodox tradition.  Particularly interesting for me is FMG’s statement that the Orthodox regard the Crucifixion differently; for them, Christ died to conquer Death – not to sacrifice himself as atonement for forgiveness of sin.  Kin to this is the Orthodox view of sin, which is regarded as deathly not because sin is like a law that carries the death penalty, but because sin is simply spiritual disease. Anger, lust and so on disrupt the soul’s connection to God, and make people vulnerable to worsened health - -both spiritual and physical. This view is echoed in Stoicism, or at least in the writings of Marcus Aurelius -- he urged himself to return to philosophy as a patient to the doctor.   Throughout the book, FMG explains the origin of Orthodox practices that seem strange to ‘modern’ Christians who are largely divorced from history. . Icons, for instance, are viewed as windows into heaven, and when they are kissed it is not the object that is being greeted, but the person who the icon is showing.  I've read similar books (The Way, on theology, and FMG's Facing East, on a year in the Orthodox church), so there weren't many surprises.  I could see recommending this to someone who was curious about the Orthodox tradition.

Blogger having some technical hiccup, so here are links which would otherwise be in-text:

The Way:
 http://thisweekatthelibrary.blogspot.com/2015/10/the-way.html
Facing East:
 http://thisweekatthelibrary.blogspot.com/2016/02/this-week-usual-suspects.html
The Orthodox Church
http://thisweekatthelibrary.blogspot.com/2016/06/the-orthodox-church.html

My Life with the Saints

My Life with the Saints
© 2007 James Martin, SJ
414 pages

The church I grew up in consistently referred to Rome as the whore of Babylon, so needless to say I didn't learn anything about saints. I knew Biblical personalities, sure, but was completely oblivious to the hundreds of men and women throughout the Christian era who served as outstanding examples, witnesses, or reproaches to the rest of us. I encountered a few in history books, like St. Augustine,  but they were more statuesque than human. The sole exception was Joan of Arc, who began as a figure from history but became (as I read various biographies) someone I felt an odd sense of affection for.  James Martin grew up Catholic, but his saintly education seems to have been almost as paltry as mine, discovering most of them as he attended seminary and trained to be a Jesuit. In the beginning, Martin notes that Catholics approach saints as both intercessors and companions; the latter approach inspiring most of this book.

My Life with the Saints mixes biography -- his, the saints, and others -- with spiritual reflection. In each chapter, Martin recounts his encounter with each personality, sharing how they shaped and informed his own spirituality while connecting their lives to people he has worked with through the years.  St. Francis,  "the fool for Christ", is revisited in the story of another 'fool', a priest who worked with gangs in Chicago and would try to disrupt fights by walking into the middle of the fracas, dressed in a blue-jean robe.  Martin mixes Biblical, medieval, and modern personalities, and includes a fair few people (notably Thomas Merton and Dorothy Day) who aren't "official" saints.   Although I purchased this hoping to meet a lot of obscure personalities, the mix meant only a handful were  completely new to me. Even so, I found Martin's meditations  refreshing, particularly the conclusion in which he remarked on the variety of the saints -- old, young, rural, urban, intellectual, hardy, mystical, rational -- and the hope that presents  to readers, that sainthood isn't limited to a superhero type.

Related:
The Long Loneliness, Dorothy Day
The Seven Storey Mountain, Thomas Merton
The Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc, Mark Twain

Tolkien's Sanctifying Myth

Tolkien's Sanctifying Myth:  Understanding Middle-Earth
© 2002 Brad Birzer
255 pages

How better to kick off Read of England than by visiting the world of Tolkien, who has enraptured readers for decade after decade now?  Tolkien is not merely an English writer; his Middle Earth was composed of English stuff,  its  languages inspired by ancient British tongues, its heroes English yeoman with furry feet.  In Tolkien’s Sanctifying Myth, Brad Birzer uses extensive reading of the Tolkien  corpus, in addition to letters and interviews, to understand the influences and imagination which created the world of Middle Earth.  The themes that Birzer shares in  chapters on topics like heroism and evil, are knit together in an argument that Tolkien’s intention was to reinvigorate the west with the memories  of what was best in it -- to remind it, via a new mythology, of ancient truths.

Birzer begins with a biographical sketch of Tolkien, who came of age in the trenches of the Great War – witnessing first hand Europe’s virtually successful attempt to destroy itself – and who spent much of his adulthood in the mire of the 20th century, observing both its progress and its regress with dismay.  Tolkien admired the arrival of automobiles (and the city spaces destroyed to make room for parking lots) about as much as he admired the German bombers that would destroy city blocks later on. They were Nazguls and Orcs to him – noisy, inhuman, unfeeling, and malignant. Tolkien was a man of Old England,  a man of the Shire about which he wrote so lovingly – an gentle and agrarian England composed of farmers and small shopkeepers, who minded their business and got together in crowds only for a good neighborly feast.

 Tolkien’s great dismay with the west was not its embrace of new modes of transportation, however, but with what it left behind. Man once knew his place in the Cosmos; he was part of a celestial story, and if he played his part well, there could be found meaning and joy.  Such was not to be found in the modern story of man,  one of an atomized individual seeking only his own pleasure, liberated from all that had once sought to direct individual energy towards bigger things, even a thing so small but so whole as the family. That ordered Cosmos is present in the world of Middle Earth, for there - -through the Silmarillion – we find an ordered creation disrupted by a rebellious angel (Morgoth), whose servants  work to destroy the good Earth and replace it with their machines and towers of domination.   The entire lore of Middle Earth contains many stories of imperiled fellowships enduring pain and deprivation to resist the schemes of Morgoth;  Frodo’s company is only one episode in a long drama that will only end when Illuvatar, the All-Father, decides to finish the symphony of creation  with a flourish.   Tolkien, as a Catholic, believed that humans on Earth were fighting the same ‘long defeat’ that would eventually end, but until then would demand perseverance.

In explaining the core of Tolkien's mythos -- the distinction he made between Creation and subcreation, the nature of evil and grace, the role of heroism in resisting evil and giving grace tools with which to work --   Birzer throws light on the bounty of Tolkien's imagination.  A reader can only stand in awe of Tolkien's imaginative work; his genius with language, deep appreciation of history, and  integration of pagan and Christian,  characters of fancy and fact.  Although Tolkien's larger world is rooted in a monotheistic order, much of England's pagan past is hailed and 'sanctified', rather like the epic of Beowulf was by whatever Christian monk preserved it for the ages.   Tolkien believed, like Chesterton and Lewis,  that the myths of the Greeks and Norse, among others, reflected parts of the Truth without being True in themselves.   In the Tolkien legendarium, the Good of earlier traditions is united with the Good of the Christian West. For the Tolkien fan, this sort of book should be enormously appealing, even if one is not comfortable with Tolkien's worldview.  (His anti-modernity, for instance, which  is what makes him most delightful to me, personally...) Here are celebrated and made greater, characters of the LOTR lore. We see Aragorn as an Arthur, Gandalf as a wandering Odin figure,  Galadriel as a Marian type. We see the Shire,  Rivendell, and Morder serving as reflections on different relationships between man and nature -- and appreciate Frodo, Sam, Gandalf, and Aragorn as differing types of heroism, from the self-sacrificial to the prophetic and martial.   Considering the actual book is only a little over 150 pages, there's an amazing amount of content here. For good reason was this a favorite last year, and no less fascinating when I re-read it this year.

Related:
Frodo's Journey; Bilbo's Journey, Joseph Pearce

The Benedict Option

The Benedict Option
© 2017 Rob Dreher
269 pages

  Christendom has fallen; long live Christendom.   In The Benedict Option, Rob Dreher argues that the Christian church in the United States is at a crisis point and must now think seriously and act deliberately if it is to avoid the fate of European Christianity. The vestiges of America’s Christian past have evaporated away,  and what has replaced them?  A vague feel-good sentiment that is applied like lipstick on the pig that is self-worship.  One of Dreher’s earlier books, Crunchy Conservatives, introduced readers to the idea of a conservative ‘counterculture’ to resist the worst aspects of American consumerism.  With the Benedict Option, Dreher maintain that such a counterculture is no longer an option: it is a necessity if Christianity in America is to survive a culture now defined by corrosive materialism, violent and pornographic entertainment, and the disintegration of the family.

 Dreher begins with a visit to the cradle of western monasticism, the abbey of Nursia where St. Benedict began.  Benedict, too, lived in an age of decline – in the dusk of the western Roman empire, an age of corruption and decay. Born into privilege , he could have had a reasonably comfortable life, yet devoted himself instead to creating a monastery for the purposes of work and prayer.  Dreher uses the Benedictine rule – its  requirements for  being rooted in a place, living communally,  studying, praying, and physically laboring – to explore ways that people today are creating an authentic Christian counterculture; one which is vibrant  and self-contained, existing within but separately from the  mass culture. (Judaism is the stellar example, having sustained itself for thousands of years despite chronic marginalization and outright persecution –  and possibly because of that persecution, if Natan Sharansky’s case is typical:  his embrace of Judaism increased every time he was targeted because of it.)

 Up until the present day,  Christians in America have been able to combine their loyalties;  America was a place formed by Christian ideals,   from the Puritan townships of New England to the Catholic parishes of Louisiana. For most of its history it has been populated almost wholly by Christians, resulting in a culture where even non-Christians tended to conform to Christian norms of behavior by default.  The American devotion to individualism was thus moderated by some sense of religions conviction  The zeitgeist  has changed, however, and the prevailing religious attitude of most Americans (including its Christians) is what Dreher and others call “moralistic therapeutic deism”. Its  tenets are all mild and comfortable: God exists  and wants you to be happy, you should be nice, and if you  die without having murdered someone, you’ll probably go to heaven because God is nice, too.  It is the kind of religiosity that lends itself well to a consumer culture:  the idea of God is there when you need it, a quick prayer during distress, but doesn't intrude on one's life otherwise.   But this sort of vague belief is the useless security blanket that the anti-religious hold all religions to be. It  does not form the character, or steel it for real crises;  it does not compel people to work to create things good and beautiful, let alone prompt them to sacrifice themselves for someone else’s good.   The American polity is likewise bereft of virtue: the national government is marked by routine assassination, excessive surveillance, and casual coercion of the powerless.   If serious Christians wish to  preserve their faith, they  must realize that they are Christians first and foremost..   “Our citizenship is in heaven,” wrote Paul, and centuries later St. Augustine would repeat that in his City of God.  To be born into America is an accident of geography; to preserve oneself as a Christian in a materialistic,  selfish, and scorning society will require grace,  sheer will, and the support of other Christians.

To live inspired by the Benedictines, to preserve a culture amid collective chaos,  suggests a degree of asceticism.  A certain level of withdrawal is required from outside society. By no means does Dreher advocate Christians withdrawing into survival cells in the mountains,  but he does urge readers to reflect on the degree to which their characters and minds are being fragmented and disordered by popular television,  too-frequent use of wireless devices, etc.  It also means rethinking engagement with State politics, for beyond a few critical areas there is not much that can be done. Protecting basic liberties is possible within the cultural mainstream, sure, but to be most effective,  Christians should focus on local politics. A Benedictine works the soil he is given; he does not attempt to be a one-man agricultural lobby.

Education is crucial for renewing Christian civilization, for state schools are where children’s souls go to die.   A child raised in a morally-inclined home will, at school, be exposed to children who were raised in sewers – children who believe that violence and verbal abuse are normal, and that watching naked ladies on their cellphones is harmless fun.  Dreher encourages Christians to consider  the growing movement of classical Christian education, which grounds the cultivation of children in a tradition with deep roots.  Homeschooling is another option,  though it requires immense patience and more sacrifice on the part of the parents.

What we must realize, says Dreher, is that the Christian way must become part of every aspect of life:  the home and Christian school should be ordered like a monastery, towards God.    At home, Dreher recommends regular family prayer regimens, and suggests that single people living alone might do well to look for fellow Christians to live with --  relying on them not just as roommates but as spiritual brothers-in-arms who provide sources of accountability and advice for one another, as well as  opportunities for helping one another in charity.   Fellowship is crucial:  the essential horror of the modern post-west is that people are so atomized and separated from one another.  The iPhone, promising connectivity to others but in reality allowing people to live more and more inside their heads, is a fitting icon of the age.    Not only does  Christian fellowship help people grow in their faith and flourish emotionally, but if the State becomes overtly hostile towards its new minority, Christians will need to rely on networks to find employment and resources. The time to build those networks is now.  Benedictine Christians can create a counter polis,  creating anew civic structures that will attract the materially and spiritually destitute.

While the Benedict Option addresses itself to the Christian future, I do not believe the advice is merely applicable towards surviving and thriving in the future. Even learning a little of the classical tradition is edifying and eye-opening, whether one is reading the moral philosophy of the Stoics or contemplating the beauteous order in medieval architecture.  There is no shortage of books written today about the effects of television and constant computer usage on the brain -- I personally haven't watched television since 2009,  after I realized it was addictive, distracting, and idiotic.    Much of the problem with American politics today is that the polis is gone:  we feel its absence, we desire its order and meaning, but the national State is too large, too distant, too complicated to be the polis. This is why Dreher advocated localist politics, but if we created in his words a counter polis,  a membership within society,  we would be aiding contemporary life immeasurably.   Not only materially, of course, but socially.  Membership is one of the most fundamental cravings of the human soul.   Christianity has always been a social religion, an other-oriented religion: it exists, G.K. Chesterton maintained, for the purpose of people who are not its members.  To create a vibrant, stable, and humane society within the absurd chaos of modernity would establish sanctuaries for those outside Christendom, who feel the alienation and look for answers.   Thus, the Benedict option is not simply one of self-survival, but one which serves as a witness and a stronghold of charity.

Related

• Out of the Ashes, Anthony Esolen.  Similar, but not focused on spirituality to the degree of Dreher. 
• Blue Like Jazz/Through Painted Deserts. In one of these books, the author lives in a Christian commune for a while. They may have been linked with The New Monasticism, which was an Emergent Christianity movement I read into a little back in 2009 when I was reading about simple living in the Buddhist, Gandhian, and Christian traditions.  Dreher writes about New Monasticism and its possible connection to the Benedict option here. 
• Dreher's corpus of work at The American Conservative, where he's been discussing the "BenOp" with readers for at least two years now. 
• Crunchy Cons, Rob Dreher.  One of the first 'conservative' books I ever read, back when the only conservatives I knew of were Republican warhawks.  Imagine my delight to find in Dreher a man who writes about new urbanism, public transit,  locavorism, a non-imperial foreign policy, etc!  It's fun to read this review in part because I've changed over the years, and now share Dreher's "sinister" contempt for the state  and media. 

Real Music

Real Music: A Guide to the Timeless Hymns of the Church
267 pages
© 2016 Anthony Esolen

In his book Out of the Ashes: Restoring American Culture,  Anthony Esolen devoted an entire chapter solely to music. Here he does one better! To sing is to pray twice, wrote St. Augustine, and Real Music demonstrates that emphatically. There is nothing quite like the musical tradition in Christian liturgy; a newcomer to an Anglican or Catholic church may first appreciate the mere sound of the organ or harp, but when time is invested in these services -- when one attends throughout the year, for several years -- the real beauty and power of its hymns, offertories, anthems, etc. reveal themselves. These hymns are not merely pretty lyrics put to pretty music, but are themselves poetic articulations of the Church's theology and scripture. The Christian music tradition can do much more than make a listener feel "nice"; hymns can fill the soul with beauty and the mind with poetry. Esolen attempts to convey this experience not over a course of years, but into one book, devoting different chapters to distinct areas of the tradition. He here covers Eucharistic hymns, hymns of glory and penitence, hymns celebrating life and challenging death. Esolen does not merely present hymns to the reader and comment on their theology; he guides the reader through how the hymns' very meter and grammar strengthen the meaning. This book is a treasure for Christians who love traditional hymnody, or who have heard it on the wind before and yearn to know more about it.

The Gargoyle Code

The Gargoyle Code: Lenten Dispatches Between a Master Dementor and his Diabolical Trainee
© 2009 Dwight Longenecker
103  pages

The Gargoyle Code is a modern sequel-in-spirit  of C.S. Lewis’ much-lauded classic, The Screwtape Letters, in which a senior demon mentors a junior demon in the fine art of spiritual sabotage. Longenecker departs from a strict duplication of Lewis’ style by having the senior demon (Slubgrip) change apprentices halfway through, and a flurry of letters to other demons – coordinating attacks and conspiring against one another – are also included. At first I liked the evidence of demonic infighting as an example of evil will oft evil mar (Slubgrip flatters a fellow demon in one letter, then derides their character when writing to others), but the amount of demonic politicking is such that it consumes a third of the book. It became more distracting than helpful, though others have found it funny.

Still, Lewis’ marvelous subtlety is repeated here in good form. One of my favorite passages from the Screwtape Letters involved a demon using church attendance to weaken his client’s spirituality, by having him think about the moral frailties of his fellow parishioners, self-righteously fuming over their hypocrisy. Here, the senior demon uses a similar approach by having his conservative Catholic target constantly think about how awful ‘reform’ liturgy is, how the wondrous hymns of old have been replaced by happy-clappy praise music, etc. Subtle manipulation is the name of the game: it’s no good to have a target simply fall into sin, for abrupt attacks tend to backfire. The target will be so ashamed of themselves they may literally repent and start avoiding avenues of temptation. Slow and steady is the goal – erode the connections people make between their lives and what is taught, then tempt them. The best of worlds is a subject who goes to church faithfully, but has religion so compartmentalized in his mind that it only exists on Sundays; otherwise he follows his every whim, and is forever guarded against any soul-searching by the comforting notion that he goes to church, so of course he's OK.

While it doesn't eclipse The Screwtape Letters, Code was written as book to read during Lent, each letter or 'text' being spaced out among the forty days, and so is perfect for that season.

Out of the Ashes

Out of the Ashes: Rebuilding American Culture
© 2017 Anthony Esolen
256 pages

Some things, like a Roman bridge, can last for millennia through the virtue of their design, the simplicity of their use, and the inherent strength of their materials. Other things, like the Golden Gate Bridge,  or a house, require more steady attention. It isn't that they're built in an inferior fashion, but they are far more complicated and ambitious.  A culture is a thing that requires attention; it must be renewed generation to generation. In Out of the Ashes,  Anthony Esolen calls attention of Americans to the fact that western culture  is past need for attention: it has sat too long exposed to the elements without refreshing layers of paint, the termites and mice of base creation have withered away its walls and support posts, and the foundation has sunk and cracked. What is needed is rebuilding and restoration. No one can do everything, but everyone must do something, and here Esolen offers hearty arguments for resurrecting education, play, a society based on marriage, family, and the home, politics reoriented towards the local, and the veneration of beauty and virtue. In short, he bids us deny the unholy trinity of Self, Sex, and the State, and  to become participants in our own lives once more.

In interviews and lectures Esolen maintains that what  we must realize about American culture is that there isn't a culture there at all, merely memories and leftover habits. It is as we are walking through a dry creekbed; the impression of the creek is still there upon the land, even as the water itself is a far-distant trickle.  The role of culture in Esolen's sense isn't the mere transmission of music and games from generation to generation, with improvisation and growth along the way. Instead, culture is more broadly applied to civil institutions supporting a common appreciation of man and the cosmos, supporting human life -- the cultivation of man as it were, the garden in which we are watered, thrive, and  create anew the next generation.  Society formerly relied on the  subtle, consistent, and constant pressure of civil society -- of places like the home, the church, and the school. These were all institutions which people not only participated in, they were in complete control of them.   These institutions not only shared a common architectural language, in that schoolhouses, homes, and village churches might look like, but they shared a common mission in promoting human welfare.  That mission was also shared by social organization (the organization of dances to allow young people to meet one another, for instance) and ordinary habit, like allowing children to run outside and play unattended.   In 2001, Robert Putnam decried the decline of civil institutions -- churches, civic groups, bowling clubs, local political moments -- and attempted to figure out what caused their decline. Now the fall is complete:  state schools are such failures that colleges must teach remedial English (prior to their English Literature courses on Twilight and Fifty Shades, Dickens and Stoker having been dumped);   young adults raised in the hookup miasma have no socialization in creating a bonafide  soul-speaks-to-soul relationship,  and every romantic encounter must be  carefully navigated lest someone be sued because the old culture what ensured everyone knew what was appropriate and what was not is lost.

There is no use complaining; we can only rebuild, and the place to start is the family.  Esolen emphatically rejects the modern primacy of the individual, maintaining the family is the foundation of every human society. The home and family are where children are created, nurtured, and taught to become authentic members of their society, their polis.   Speaking of the polis, it too needs awakening:   the State has taken away every prerogative of local communities, leaving them a few pittances like garbage pickup. This is wrong in that it takes away from people the ability to be effective citizens of their community.  Citizenship in the national government means nothing; the individual is grist in the mill.  Yet there is little point in running for something like the school board nowadays, because the decisions have already been decided by far-distant strangers who know better than people what and how to teach their children.   Esolen thus encourages people to create alternative institutions, to  homeschool their children and work together to create private colleges in response to the past-pathetic state of university education today, a place that provides safe spaces and coloring books to its wards instead of teaching them to grapple, body and soul, with adversity and ignorance.   Yet helping to participate in the restoration of society isn't as formidable as creating new and virile sources of education like St. John's and Christendom College;   it can be as simple as learning to appreciate the poetic beauty of traditional hymns,  so much more potent than the happy-clappy praisesongs favored by megachurches -- or leaving the television behind to use one's leisure time to build something with their hands.   Fight ugliness with beauty, lies with truth, decay with work. Participation is the thing -- walking one's neighborhood and picking up litter is more effective than parading about D.C. dressed up as a vagina.

Esolen's concerns are not necessarily exclusive to Christians;  the Swedish eudaimonic philosopher Alain de Botton, for instance,  has written extensively on the role of art, literature, and architecture in human flourishing,  seeing them as important as philosophy in allowing human beings to grow to fulness.  Wendell Berry and Bill Kauffman are both emphatic voices for subsidiarity,  but rarely refer to religion.  Robert Putnam also delivered the essential book on civil culture's decline in his Bowling Alone, which was not religious in the least.  Nevertheless, Esolen is indisputably writing primarily to Christians,  because the west’s civil culture has been Christian, and he is  inspired and rooted by the Catholic social doctrine, referring to papal encyclical at times. At the end Esolen doubles down that he is writing a defense of Christian civilization.   As he urges readers to devote themselves once more to truth and beauty amid the constant babble-babble of lies coming from politicians, the news, and , the amazon of banality that is social media, he bids them to realize that truth remains treason in the empire of lies, and that  ultimately, we pursue the good and true because it is Good, not to create a heaven on Earth. That can never be, for all Christians are ultimately pilgrims on a journey to another world.

Esolen -- whom I've heard described as a "fun Jeremiah" --  is a joy to listen to and to read, a man of passion with a deep bench of literary references. In a lecture on the decline of culture, for instance,  he once used an obscure play by Ben Johnson to make his point. In an interview, someone off-handedly mentions a hymn -- "Let All Mortal Flesh Keep Silence" -- and Esolen recognizes it, seizes on it with joy, and at once begins lovingly reciting it.  He is capable of slinging barbs as his foes, but animosity is largely absent here. Instead he writes here in a mood of intense concern, driven on by hope in redemption.   For those who  look at the American landscape -- all the lonely people, the dehumanizing stretches of asphalt and smoke, the constant presence of the foul beast of Jabba the State, who forever demands attention and obedience -- this is a handbook to what went wrong, and a bracing cup to cheer to begin the work of restoring a more humane culture.

Related:
Bowling Alone: the Collapse and Revival of American Community, Robert Putnam

The Porch and the Cross

The Porch and the Cross: Ancient Stoic Wisdom for Modern Christian Living
© 2016 Kevin Vost
198 pages

Stoicism as a moral philosophy has had admirers through the ages, and especially during the medieval epoch. While modern snobbery tends to dismiss the medieval mind as intellectually somnolent, in truth the cathedral schools and universities of Europe were alive with discussion and engagement. Part of that engagement was with the classic tradition, which included not only the old masters but their progeny, like the Stoics.  Doctors of the church, like Ambrose and Aquinas, were especially interested in the Stoics'  understanding of how the mind could be entrapped by vice, or sin, and how people could resist such an influence.  Kevin Vost is a contemporary Christian whose faith is informed -- even formed -- at the Painted Porch. I recognized this when reading his Seven Deadly Sins, which frequently looked to the Stoics for advice, and so knew I had much to look forward to in The Porch and the Cross.  Here, he reviews the lives and principle ideas of four Stoics (Musonius Rufus, Epictetus, Seneca, and Marcus Aurelius), examines their legacies through history, and finally applies the lessons to Christian moral concerns.

The Porch and the Cross's format makes it immediately accessible to readers who have never heard of a stoic. The biographical intro chapters reveal first Stoicism's broad appeal, as the four authors spanned Roman societies, from slave to emperor.  Vost follows this with a summary or distillation of their major works, which concentrate the very best of Stoic thinking and practice for the beginning investigator.  If you have never heard of Stoicism before, here is the elevator version: the universe has a perceivable order, and the good life consists of conforming to that order, in part by recognizing that there are things within our control and things outside our control. To worry about that which cannot be controlled is self-defeating: we should instead focus on what we can do, like being prepared for what Fortune throws at us.

There are obvious points of agreement between Christianity and Stoicism:  for instance, both emphasize the preeminent importance of a soul squaring itself with the order of the cosmos -- or in Christian terms, in line with the will of God. Both view spiritual order as superior to the needs and appetites of the body, though Catholic orthodoxy cautions the faithful against holding the latter in complete contempt -- that's the sort of thing Gnostics, Manicheans, and Puritans get up to.  Vost instead looks to Stoicism as a guide for moderating the influence of  both inner turmoil and outside temptation.  Self-control is a virtue hailed by both Stoics and Christians, and Vost is especially pleased with Musonius Rufus' writings on sexual propriety.

Another common link is the Stoic conception of the cosmopolis, that all men hold within them a divine spark which makes them brethren. The well-ordered soul is not confined by tribalism, but can look beyond it -- just as the Christian life is not a nationalistic one, but one which brings together  all people ("Greek and Jew, Scythian, barbarian") into communion.   Communion is an important Stoic concept, as Marcus Aurelius often reminds himself: we are members with one another -- not units within a pile, as bureaucrats would have it, but discrete individuals with distinct jobs. We are, Aurelius said, like the fingers of a hand -- we can either work with one another, or put up with one another, but to antagonize the other is irrational and vice-laden.

At just under two hundred pages, The Porch and the Cross is a terrific little collection, bringing together the best-of  from the extant masters into one slim volume, with connecting commentary. I'd forgotten how truly bracing they could be, and must look into reading Musonius Rufus!

Related:

• The Seven Deadly Sins: A Thomistic Guide to Vanquishing Vice, Kevin Vost.  Makes frequent use of the Stoics. 
• A Guide to the Good Life: the Ancient Art of Stoic Joy, William Irvine. The definitive Stoic intro. 
• Virtual University: Marcus Aurelius, by Dr. Michael Sugrue. Four-part lecture (~30 minutes) on Aurelius and his Meditations,  Outstanding talk which I listen to every few months. It's even on my morning-walk playlist.

The Stoics themselves:

• The Meditations, Marcus Aurelius
• Discourses and the Handbook, Epictetus. The handbook has a 'modern' form, The Art of Living.
• Letters from a Stoic,  Dialogues and Essays, Seneca

The Orthodox Church

The Orthodox Church
© 1963, 1993 Kallistos (Timothy) Ware
368 pages

Who are the Orthodox? To the extent Americans have heard of them, it is through eastern European immigrant communities. Those who paid marginal attention in western civ might remember something called the Great Schism, in which the western and eastern halves of Christendom declared one another excommunicate. While the Catholic west and Orthodox east have continued to drift their separate ways throughout the centuries, they share the same core tradition. In The Orthodox Church, Kalistos Ware delivers a history of the eastern Orthodox, followed by an introduction to its liturgy and devotional practices. He ends by musing on the possibilities and obstacles to communion between the Orthodox and their closest brethren, the Catholics and Anglicans. Although the history is very much dated now, the book having been written shortly after the Soviet Union collapsed and the suppressed church started to reemerge, Ware’s account of the centuries prior is handled attractively and efficiently.

Although Rome initially persecuted the Christian church, by the third century A.D.it had attracted the attention of the emperor Constantine, who declared it legal.Constantine courted the church himself, though (famously) he would not submit to baptism until he lay on his deathbed. Christianity soon became the state religion of the Roman empire, circling the Med, but as Rome aged and withered, division ensued. Barbarian activity in the Balkans and the eruption of Islam made communication increasingly difficult, and soon a purely administrative division between the empire’s western and eastern halves became a cultural one. The western empire and its church became more enmeshed with the fate of the Franks, crowning their king as Emperor,  Frankish influence would extend to theology, as an addition to the Nicene Creed intended as a rebuttal to a local heresy found favor in the west, eventually being adopted by the pope.

That proved to be a problem, as did the pope's authority in general, for his claimed jurisdiction over not merely the Roman see, but the whole of Christendom.  The Nicene Creed was adopted by an ecumenical council at Nicea, representing the entire church; it was pounded out in collaborative labor.  One bishop by himself couldn't alter it simply at will. Ware is remarkably fair-minded about the popes, attributing their beliefs not to villainy or ambition, but to the mere fact that Rome had no western peer.  The pope was the closest thing the west had to a unitive authority, as Charlemagne left behind a mess of warring states.  Secondly, the See of Rome was the only western church with Apostolic credentials, the only one believed to be founded by one of the original followers of Christ. In the east, there were three -- Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem – and none were able to claim precedence over the other. The great schism  was thus made possible by the actual divide between the western and eastern parts of the Empire, begun in earnest by the  arguments over how far papal authority extended, and completed when the western Franks sacked Constantinople on the way to yet another crusade.  No forgiveness for this fratricide would follow.

Subsequent chapters cover the conquest of Eastern Rome by the Arabs and later the Turks. The Orthodox church muddled through, largely – it wasn’t until the rise of ISIS that Christians were wholly driven out of places like Iraq and Syria. The most grievous persecutions had a nationalist rather than religious focus – the Armenian genocide, for instance, followed Turkey’s defeat in the Great War.  Following the withering and defeat of Constantinople, Orthodoxy developed new life in eastern Europe, especially in Russia, which wanted to claim itself as the Third Rome. The Russian church would endure its own repression during the Communist years, aside from a brief detente during World War 2.   Turkish  and Russian brutality both drove Orthodox emigrants out of Europe and into the United States, where today it flourishes.

The second half of the book covers Orthodox theology and praxis, both of which more difficult to summarize than politics.   It bears comment on, though, and the Nicene creed is again an example. While the Orthodox objected to the pope single-handedly changing a creed that was created by a congress of the church,  Ware argues that the change itself  also subtly shifted and confused theology.  The change in question was to declare that the Holy Spirit proceeded from the Father and the Son,  which dilutes the role of the Father and makes things more vague. In the essential approach to worship (communal prayer, reading of scriptures, and the Eucharist) the Orthodox and Catholics are very similar,  but there are notable differences. The Orthodox, for instance, worship standing, and most do not employ musical instruments. Icons play a much larger role, being seen as literal windows into heaven ,and used to focus the mind. Mysticism has played a larger role in Orthodox development, as well, though Ware doesn't comment on the tension between it and western scholasticism.

Covering as it does two thousand years  of history and most of Eurasia, The Orthodox Church is impressively ambitious, yet fairly concise. The church's fate under Turkish and Soviet domination are dispatched in single chapters, as is the church's role in the developing civilization of Russia.  It is most helpful in the area of general religious literacy, with a lot of content wrapped up in these 300-odd pages.

Frodo's Journey

Frodo's Journey: The Hidden Meaning of the Lord of the Rings
© 2015 Joseph Pearce
158 pages

Noting that Tolkien’s Lord of the Ring trilogy is rich with symbolism is rather akin to observing that the Pacific Ocean is big. The description is accurate, but weightless. Frodo’s Journey examines much of its symbolism in detail, chiefly elaborating on Tolkien’s observation that it was, “of course, a deeply religious work”. The religion is present not in the trappings of a Church, as with Asimov’s Foundation series, but in the epic’s core story of grace against evil.   Pearce informs his argument by studying the details of the story in the context of Tolkien’s mythic background, drawing from the Simarillion. Although his focus is on Tolkien’s Christian symbolism, Pearce also touches lightly on Tolkien’s love for the language and lore of pre-Norman England.

In the Simarillion, Pearce writes, Tolkien establishes a celestial atmosphere not unlike the Christian one. There is one central deity, the Iluvatar, who creates the Cosmos by conducting music. One heavenly musician refuses to play in harmony, and is struck down to Middle-Earth, but is told that no matter how much discord he attempts to introduce,  the grand master will always restore harmony..  Central to the story of the Lord of the Rings is, of course, the Ring, which is far different from the ring of The Hobbit. There it was a mysterious but powerfully helpful object;  in the Ring trilogy, it dominates the minds and hearts of those who wear it, and exposes them to attack by dark forces.   The ring, writes Pearce, is Sin – not only is it burdensome, but taking it on distances the wearer from the good world which was divinely created, and makes them more visible to the Dark Lord – Sauron,  Morgoth’s chief servant.  The coup de Grace:   according to Return of the King,  the ring was destroyed on March 25, the same day that Catholic tradition maintains was the date of the historic crucifixion.  The whole story has the stamp of Providence on it, writes Pearce, for Gandalf muses that Bilbo was meant find the Ring, so that it might be destroyed.  Although Pearce’s brief work shines a light on many of Tolkien’s other little allusions – the Charlemagne-like crowning of Aragon, the linguistic fun Tolkien has with the “far-seeing” stones that dispirit Sauron’s enemies and have the same etymological structure in Elvish as Television and Fernsehen do in English and German,   the Christian connection is the most broadly developed.

This meaning is not nearly as overt as C.S. Lewis’ own Narnian chronicles,  in which the Christ-figure Aslan announced to the children that he was known by another name in their world, but it definitely registers.  Being as Tolkien was a practicing Catholic, some degree of the inspiration could have been accidental, like the Mary-like veneration of Galadriel, but the use of dates has the stamp of deliberation.  For the Fellowship to have started out on December 25 (by Tolkien’s appendix) and triumphed on the same date of the first Good Friday makes clear that Tolkien was paying homage at the very least.   While this is my first foray in reading books about the Ring trilogy, it won't be the last, and I'm eager to see if other authors share or differ from Pearce. I'm sure the trilogy has tremendous depths to plumb!

Pilgrim's Progress

Pilgrim's Progress in Today's English
© 1678 John Bunyan,   retold 1971 James Thomas
285 pages

Years ago I read Pilgrim’s Progress,  the story of one Christian’s spiritual journey made physical. The story begins when a man named Graceless, soon to be called Christian, learns from a book that his city is doomed to destruction.  Weeping, he is given hope by a passing stranger, Evangelist, who tells him there is a way out of this doom. Through the narrow wicket gate there is a road, passing by a cross, that leads to the Celestial Kingdom. If he follows it, he will find a land where joys shall never end – but the going will not be easy. There will be monsters along the way, fellow travelers who both support and distract,  misleading trails, and dens of scum and villainy.   Loaded with a burden, Christian sets forth, albeit without his unwilling wife and children.  Although there is a fantastical structure – Christian traveling from a land ruled by a princess of darkness to a kingdom of grace and love – with fight scenes, the work is largely conversation and argument.  The biblically  well-versed will notice characters quoting from or alluding to the Psalmists and the Epistles even the characters are not conscious of it.  Biblical metaphors are here made physical: Christian literally dons ‘the armor of god’, and enemies of the soul literally attack our journeyman, like the giant Despair.  

As a child I read this for the adventure, and much of the theological debate was lost on me (if even included in a kid’s version), but naturally now I’m reading more for substance.  I was astonished  by the amount of imagery I remembered from my youth. . I found Bunyan’s writing largely communicative; he made a relatively opaque passage in Romans about the Mosaic law’s relation to sin more comprehensible, for instance. It’s the work of Protestant rather than traditional theology, with a long-defeated monster called Pope appearing alongside his co-loser, Pagan. Given that the book is mostly discussion, it's obviously more attractive as a devotional rather than as a fantasy-adventure.  I suspect the 'modern' retelling is slightly abridged, but it's the only version my library has.

This week: the usual suspects

Well, dear readers, it's another month! I have a serious itch for science and science fiction at the moment, so I have no less than five potential science reads stacked up now, and three potential SF books. Among the numbers...Domesticated: Evolution in a Man-Made World, and Genome: The Autobiography of a Species in 23 Chromosomes.   What about science fiction? Well, there's some of H.G. Wells' less well known novels, and  perhaps something newer.

I recently finished The War of the Three Gods: Romans, Persians, and the Rise of Islam.   It is a brief but highly detailed history of the last Romano-Persian war, one in which the great powers of the classical world mauled each other.  Rome nearly perished here, because while the Persians were sweeping into Syria and Judea, tribes in the Balkans began raiding against Constantinople. Eventually the Persians would be stopped, and even subjected to raids in their heartland, and the statuo quo ante bellum stored.  No sooner had the armies retired, however, than came armies from Arabia...and by the time the ancients realized these weren't just the usual Bedouin raids, all of Persia was falling and the Romans were again stripped of most of their territory outside of Anatolia. The second half of the book is dedicated to Islam's early military victories, with abundant maps that showcase the solid maneuvering of commanders like Khalid.  The book is chiefly about combat, with some politics mixed in as the Persians weakened themselves through civil war.  I intend on reading a fair few more books about the 'middle world' later on.

Since I am in the area, I may as well mention a book I read a few weeks ago, Facing East by Frederica Mathewes-Green. recounts a year in the life of a small Orthodox mission, one created by six families that include the author's newly-minted priest of a husband. The M-Gs, as the author refers to her family later on, are both converts to the faith, and throughout this piece she reflects on the way her experience has changed in the last three years, as she and her husband begin to soak in the liturgy and live the Orthodox life more deeply. While this is not a formal introduction to Orthodoxy, or even a conversion testimonial, Mrs. M-G often provides exposition about the what and why of service. Like the faith itself, however, this tale is more experiential than epistemological. We encounter the sacraments -- Baptism, for instance -- not through lectures but through the lives of the congregants, communicated in the intimate and awe-filled style of the author. Short though it may be, Facing East provides a hint of how deep a well the Orthodox tradition is. The mission of Holy Cross may be small and relegated to renting a space that has to be evacuated every Sunday afternoon to make room for the weekday tenants, but in their religious life they are as firmly established as any of the grandest metropolitan seats or parishes across the world.    I'll probably have couple of more books about Eastern Orthodoxy as the year goes on.  For the moment, however...SCIENCE!

The Lost History of Christianity

The Lost History of Christianity: The Thousand Year Golden Age of the Church in the Middle East, Africa, and Asia -- And How It Died
© 2008 Philip Jenkins
315 pages

For the first millennium of the church's history, Europe was less Christendom than a dismissed backwater. The heart of the faith was its fount in the middle east, where it saturated the landscape and spread through two empires across the vast expanse of Eurasia. Within five hundred years of Christianity's millennial birthday, however, its reach had vanished, lost in political upheaval and newly arrived competition. Though advertising itself as a history of the global church,   Lost History is principally about religious transformation  in the middle east, with Christianity as its case model. 

There is immediate intrigue in Jenkins' history merely for the fact that his primary subjects are unrecognizable to most as Christian.  Around the Mediterranean,  Rome -- in the person of the emperor -- maintained a faith common to all.  Achieving and enforcing orthodoxy was the reason Constantine urged on the Council of Nicaea. Outside the empire, however,  Christianity grew wild, running bramble-like clear to Asia.  Aside from stray missionaries from the Latin and Greek church,  most of the Christians covered here belonged to the Nestorian church,  which retained an orthodox-like hierarchy outside the authority of  the Greco-Roman sphere, with hundreds of metropolitans and bishops. How much of "Christianity" really survives the trek to Asia is a question Jenkins does not pursue, though the mention of a "second Jesus" buried in India allows a lot of room for doubt.   The Nestrian branch found a particularly cozy home in the Persian realm, safe from Orthodux rebuke, but the African church would vanish almost overnight, save for the impressively resilient Copts. 

The rise of Islam set the stage for the middle-eastern church's downfall, but it was not strictly a matter of religious competition.  Jenkins records Islam and Christianity meshing at first; considering the  power of Arian-like sects which effectively denied the divinity of Jesus,  they shared much more common ground than not. (So much so that medieval personalities denounced Muhammad not as a false prophet, but as a schismatic!) The golden age of  Islam was built on such ground,  flourishing through  the communities of Christian Syrian scribes and researchers.As Islam grew in self-confidence, however, and especially after it began brawling with outside powers, the  Christians within its midst were viewed as suspect. When the Black Death reared its head for the first time, a wave of persecution followed --  Christians playing the part of scapegoat that was assigned to Jews in Europe. When new powers arrived on the scene, like the Mongols and Turks, they frequently inaugurated a new era of religious oppression; the Crusades were a response  to Turkish abuses, not the nigh half-century old occupation of Jerusalem by Islamic forces.  (Interestingly, the Mongols who destroyed the high water mark of golden-age Islam, Baghdad, first persecuted  Islam and then became its champions, persecuting Christians.) Political stress turned into religious persecution again and again, a theme that runs  clear to the 20th century, when an on-the-ropes Turkey decided to rid itself of minorities with suspect loyalties. The Armenian genocide was the result.  Early Christian activity in China and Japan perished after upsurges in nationalism, as well.

This history of religious transformation in the middle east is then used by Jenkins to examine the life of religions in general, their 'struggle to survive'.  Though Christianity and Islam were rivals, they wore off on one another:  the Eastern Orthodox church's iconclastic period (that ghastly preview of Puritanism) marks Islamic influence, and mosques modeled themselves on the architecture of churches. Such architectural borrowing went the other way in Spain, where rebuilding churches incorporated elements of Islamic design  into their structure.  Even after Christianity vanished from an area, it left its mark: in rural Turkey, for instance, parents continued to have their children baptized to ensure the blessing of God.  Jenkins  speculates on various reasons regions thrive or perish amid competition; he notes that the church in Egypt became part of the culture, while in other parts of Africa it merely existed as outposts, like Roman military encampments that disappeared when the Romans left. Those churches were sustained from without, rather than from within. Faiths can also hedge their bets by expanding;  when Christianity virtually perished in the middle east, it continued to flourish in Europe; even as it fades in Europe, it grows again in Africa.

All this fairly interesting, though the book has certain frustrations. Belief, for Jenkins, is a moot point;  Nestorian doctrine or what Jacobites practiced, none of this matters. All the reader is really given is politics and labels; there were people here, they called themselves Christians, and then they were killed.  Jenkins has a peculiar understanding of Christianity, announcing to the reader that understanding the early church is impossible because Christianity was driven from its home region.  Since when is Christianity like Temple Judaism or Islam, fixated on a certain patch of earth?  What is revealed is how unimaginative humans are at creating ways to persecute one another:  Just as Christians were made to wear patches identifying them as an underclass and forced to dismount at the approach of a Muslim, so in the 20th century German Jews were made to wear patches and blacks had to vacate the sidewalk at the approach of a white.  One wonders how ubiquitous these shaming behaviors are -- did the Japanese practice them in China, for instance? The Lost History of Christianity is certainly relevant, given the ongoing slaughter of innocents at the hands of ISIS. It is a fascinating history of the middle east's religious evolution,  though of limited use for truly learning about the ancient church outside of Rome and Constantinople.

The Way

The Way: What Every Protestant Needs to Know About Orthodoxy
© 2007 Clark Carlton
222 pages

  If Protestantism is a willful child of the Catholic church, what is it to the Orthodox?  What is the Orthodox faith for that matter, Catholicism with more beards and fewer popes?  The Way  begins with the  unexpected conversion story of its author from a Southern Baptist seminary to a faith thought to be the sole province of Greek and Russian immigrants  before articulating the core aspects of the ancient faith – the Trinity, the Church, and the Eucharist which brings them together – as they stand in relation to the doctrines of most American Christians. Although Protestants defined themselves against the authority of Rome, their doctrinal stands nonetheless render them separate from Orthodoxy – so separate, in fact, that Clarkson believes Protestantism constitutes a separate religion.  In The Way,  readers of all stripes will find an introduction the Orthodox  theology, and Protestants will find a particular challenge to their views on sola scripture and the role of tradition.

After easing readers into the book with his conversion story, which unfolded amid a fundamentalist takeover of a southern baptist college in the 1980s, Carlson shifts to theology.  The Trinity is a crucial concept to Orthodox theology, as it establishes God's nature as rooted in relationship.  "God is love" does not  simply mean that person called God happens to be loving; His very nature is bound up in the act of the Incarnation, just as the Church's nature is contained within the Eucharist. The Church, Clarkton writes, is not a body of people who believe the same thing, but a community which shares in the living body of Christ.   In less heady chapters, Carlton argues against sola scripture from various grounds, namely that no one interprets scripture without a tradition; Calvinists read the bible through Calvinism, Lutherans through Lutheranism, Arians Arianism, etc. The Catholic-Orthodox tradition at least has the merit of being the source of the scriptural compilation, as it took several hundred years for a definitive collection to be established by the Church.   The Eastern Orthodox church has no qualms regarding protestant rebellion of papal authority, for they too reject it;  but in Carlton's view the protestants have erred seriously in rejecting all authority. Scripture alone is insufficient; every heresy has come armed with its chosen scriptural arguments, and the massive variety of commentaries on the scriptures demonstrate how subjective readings can be.  The leadership of the Church resolves heresies not simply by finding scripture, but interpreting them in the light of the Church's nature. Arianism was a heresy not because it chose the "wrong verses", but because it effectively denies the Incarnation,  and with it the church's very life.  If the Bible were so important to Protestantism, why then did they modify it -- dropping books as desired?  Christ left a Church, not a book, writes Carlton, and  sola scriptura reduces the Bible to a rule book and Christianity an ideology, while the  Orthodox faith is a life lived in Jesus, through the Eucharist.

Carlton has a talent for making theology comprehensible, though he is an author who frequently bares his teeth, with a contempt borne of familiarity for aspects of modern Protestantism.  Sola scriptura no doubt dies hard, just as strict Constitutionalism dies hard: how easy it is to endue an object with objectivity, in the hopes of satisfying our need for something that is wholly True. But the Bible is not God; it is merely inspired by him, writes Carlton, and to worship it is to commit idolatry. In a finishing touch, Carlton scrutinizes the creeds of Protestant sects to point out what they truly worship, comparing the opening lines of the Nicene Creed ("I believe in One God") with articles of faith like the Westminister Confession, which open placing scripture at the forefront and then address God.  If nothing else, The Way does much to  demonstrate that the Eucharist was far more important to the early church than a once-a-year knocking back of grape juice does credit.

The Seven Deadly Sins

The Seven Deadly Sins: A Tomistic Guide to Vanquishing Vice and Sin
© 2015 Kevin Vost
224 pages

In the first centuries of the Christian epoch, devotees retreated into the desert wastes to flee temptation. Even away from the cry of the maddening crowd, however, they found themselves struggling with the everyday vices of mankind -- tendencies toward pride, apathy, lust, envy, gluttony, anger, and sloth, and so on. In an attempt to organize a campaign against them, the monk-progenitors first had  to identify the enemy, creating a list of the chief frailties that all others stemmed from.   These seven enemies of the soul are not uniquely Christian sins;  they are universal problems of the human condition, and Vost draws on classical sources (Aristotle and the Roman Stoics --  Seneca, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius) for both insight and remedy.  The remedy is only partially philosophical, however, as Vost also counsels readers to seek help in the sacraments of  the Church, especially Confession and the Eucharist.   Written in three stages, Vost first reviews how these seven in particular were singled out,  shares patristic thought on the progression of vice from initial impulses to behavioral habit, and then offers a "Jacob's ladder"  route away from downfall.  These include practices useful against every vice, while some are sin-specific.  A few of the 'rungs' -- an examination of conscience, mental awareness of drifting into vicious habit,  and the deliberate cultivation of each vice's counter-virtue, could easily be found in a book like A Guide to the Good Life.The master here, however, is not Epictetus, but Thomas Aquinas. It is Aquinas'  study of the desert fathers that produces a list of seven sins, and not eight -- and Aquinas who offers advice for remedy, himself bringing together both the Hebrew and Greek wisdom traditions --  harnessing both mindfulness and prayer, contemplation and action, philosophical principle and sacrament.  The Seven Deadly Sins is thus true to its name in being a 'Tomistic' guide to vice and virtue, in effect offering laymen a guide into the  theological expanse of Aquinas.  Few people commit great evils,  but we all hindered by the same seemingly minor snares.  It is those small seed which can produce horror if left unchecked, however, and so this tidy little volume seems most valuable in the pursuit of spirituality, especially Christian.

Called to Serve

Called to Serve: A History of Nuns in America
© 2013 Margaret McGuinness
277 pages

Long before the suffrage and feminist movements allowed women to assume a more publicly active role within society,  women religious were taking an active role in shaping the American landscape.  Although predominately a Protestant country, the United States was never without Catholic citizens,  whether through acquiring land originally settled by France and Spain, or by developing its own through immigration from Italy, Poland, and other parts of Catholic Europe.  The American landscape was for all a great mission, a place to build civilization anew, and  nuns were there nearly from the beginning.

Though some orders restricted themselves to prayer,  more active communities bounded, providing teachers and nurses to areas just being settled, which would have otherwise gone without. The sisters provided religious instruction, naturally, but also taught reading, mathematics, and other educational fundamentals. They also trained people for work, giving the margins of society -- impoverished freedmen and immigrants. especially their women --  the resources to begin building a life for themselves. America's religious sisters were not simply Europeans transplanted to the frontier; their rules of life had to be altered to take the harshness of the wilderness into consideration, though some adaptations were perverse. In the early 19th century,  religious orders owned slaves, for instance, even orders which were filled only with African-American nuns The nuns were far more conscious of the evil nature of slavery, however, ameliorating it as best they could and agitating for abolition much earlier than society at large, or even the Church proper.

Nurturing the margins -- the least of these -- was truly the prevailing mark of American nunneries.  When contagious disease swept American communities, women religious were often the only people willing to nurse the afflicted, sometimes at the cost of their own lines.  The rapidly urbanizing eastern seaboard provided plenty of diseases to battle, and nuns were at the forefront,   managing Catholic hospitals at every level and developing new methods to prevent infection.  As waves of courageous or dispossessed people from Europe swept America, nuns provided settlement houses that welcomed newcomers and helped them find a place for themselves in a new country. Nuns were strangers themselves, often ridiculed and sometimes even attacked by nativists who feared their papish influence.  Ultimately, though, their extraordinary compassion  and proven talent won respect -- and sometimes, even converts.   Despite these accomplishments, however, as the 20th century continued the ranks and influence of religious women fell precipitously, possibly because the gap they served was filled in: religious orders were no longer the sole means of a meaningful career for women, for instance. America's rising  secularization -- both in the sense of diminished religiosity and  the growth of medical, educational, and immigrant-handling government programs -- also diminished their attraction. They continue to serve America,  but frequently have been reduced to the rule of mere social activists, instead of the very creators of civil society as they once were.

Ornament of the World

Ornament of the World: How Muslims, Jews, and Christians Created a Culture of Tolerance in Medieval Spain
© 2002 Maria Rose Menocal
315 pages

        

  Ornament of the World is the story of a unique civilization in medieval Europe, one which ultimately disintegrated but left a hopeful legacy. For hundreds of years, Europe hosted a distinctly Islamic polity: Andalusia, the last stand of the Umayyads. The inheritors of Muhammad’s empire, they were driven out by a palace coup and reestablished themselves across the Mediterranean, building a glorious realm of their own.  They brought the best of an ascendant civilization and combined it with the remnants of the classical world; theirs was a world of fusion which allowed not only Muslims, but Christians and Jews to flourish and contribute as well. Ornament covers a thousand years of Spanish history, mixing literature, art, and politics to deliver with flourish the story of a lost but golden age.  Though heavily romanticized, the author’s  lovestruck tone makes it an enticing introduction to medieval Spain.

 In subject and intent, Ornament is quite similar to A Vanished World, but much tidier. It begins, for instance,  with the rise of Islam, and from there moves forward in the time-honored chronological fashion. Following the death of Muhammad, leadership of the Islamic polity fell to a series of caliphs, one of whom – Ali – was especially consequential. Under his reign, the Umayyad caliphate,  Islam expanded in leaps and bounds. Success ever breeds resentment, however and Ali found himself murdered along with much of his family. A minor relation fled to Spain and there begins the story of Andalusia. Amid the first Muslim civil war, however, the princeling didn't come alone. He and his followers found Iberia ripe for the picking,  and in a matter of time had conquered most of the peninsula.  "Woe to the vanquished!" was not the case, however, as the resident Christian and Jewish populations found themselves officially protected by the new state- - for a small consideration, of course.  Al-andalusia and its capital of Cordoba would go so resplendent that a later successor would presume to claim himself the Caliph, the princeps of Islam..  Islamic politics would be their undoing however; another faction would rebel against the reigning Abassids and make their stronghold in Tunis, just a stone’s throw from Iberia.  When the Umayyads later sought help from the north African Muslims against the resurgent Christians, their allies found their Spanish brethren much too decadent and proceeded to wreck and take over the place, Fourth Crusade style.

The loss of unity following the Umayyads did not destroy the creative culture they established, however; instead, leading city-states competed to out-do the other to restore that glory, just as after the fall of Rome states like Venice, Genoa, and Florence competed against the other. While the Italians engaged in petty wars and magnificent frescoes, the Moors engaged in petty wars and mesmerizing poetry.  Menocal has done prior work on Arabic literature, so not surprisingly language, prose, and verse receive a lot of attention.  The emphasis on literature extends to the Christians and Jews;  Hebrew adopted elements of Arabic verse and flourished in its own right. This was a period of intercultural collaboration;  in Toledo, for instance, Arabic and Jewish scholars worked on translating Aristotelian texts, which then drifted into Europe, replete with commentaries. Just as Muslim mosques and fortresses in Iberia began with Roman bones -- so did resurgent Christian powers adopt elements of Arabic architecture, even in areas where the Umayyads and their successors never reigned.  Eventually the Castille-Aragon alliance would overwhelm the predominately Moorish south, effecting the Reconquest

Ornament compares well to its sister-rival, Vanished World;  for instance, the Muslim sack of Compostela,  which appeared rather randomly in Vanished, features here as part of the Umayyads’s  Iberian downfall.The same general who leads a military coup against them also attacked the Christian shrine. This same episode also accounts for the contrasting versions of St. James – one meek and mild, the other the Muslim-slayer.  After his shrine was desecrated and his pilgrims murdered, the peaceful James returned to have his revenge. Hell hath no fury like a saint scorned!  This covers nearly a thousand years of history in a mere three hundred pages, though, and a lot of that is taken up with swooning over literature and poetry;  this is utterly enjoyable, of course, but it does meant that the political sketch is an outline at best, so this is by no means a complete story. It is a loving tribute to the life of art and philosophy that found a home in Islamic Spain, however.