St. Boniface House

“We take comfort…that we are citizens fo the greatest, most powerful nation in the history of the world. Doing so, we are tempted to support exercises of American might and wealth that may be unjust but are assumed to be necessary to secure our nation’s power.  To be a citizen of such a nation at least suggests our lives will not be forgotten. When the history of history is written, America, like Rome, cannot be forgotten; as Americans we will have a place in history. Is it any wonder that a people so formed believe that what is happening in this man Jesus’ life is something about our significance? Is it any wonder that we find the lean and gaunt account of the life and crucifixion of Christ so unsatisfying?”

     –Stanley Hauerwas, Cross-Shattered Christ: Meditations on the Seven Last Words, 41-42.

Here’s another home run by Douglas Jones.

Discussions about the California court decision regarding home schooling have been making the rounds for a few days now, and various other folks have already mentioned it: e.g. here, here, here, and here.

Really, we’re not surprised by this decision, but I guess my jaw dropped a little when I read this from the judge’s explanation:

“A primary purpose of the educational system is to train school children in good citizenship, patriotism and loyalty to the state and the nation as a means of protecting the public welfare.”

In the words of the teacher of my children, “At least they’re honest”.

One of the dumb people around Douglas Wilson writes an excellent post here.  It’s, well, refreshing, to see someone who rejects the Christian left’s “interfaith” pluralism and the idolatry of the Christian right.

 Also, he’s my long lost twin brother, or so they tell me up in Moscow.

“[S]ociety can best be understood as an extended argument, since living traditions presuppose rival interpretations. Good societies enable the argument to continue so that the possibilities and limits of a tradition will stop its growth and in reaction some may deny the necessity of tradition for their lives. The truthfulness of a tradition is tested in its ability to form people who are ready to put the tradition into question, or at least to recognize when it is being put into question by a rival tradition. Of course…some traditions lapse into complete incoherence and can be recovered only by revolutionary reconstitution.”

–Stanley Hauerwas, CC, 14

“Too often politics is treated solely as a matter of power, interests, or technique. We thus forget that the most basic task of any polity is to offer its people a sense of participation in an adventure. For finally what we seek is not power, or security, or equality, or even dignity, but a sense of worth gained from participation and contribution to a common adventure.”

–Hauerwas, CC, 13

“The authority necessary for leadership in the church should derive from the willingness of Christians to risk speaking the truth to and hearing the truth from those in charge. In societies that fear the truth, leadership depends on the ability to provide security rather than the ability to let the diversity of the community serve as the means to live truthfully. Only the latter form of community can afford to have their leaders’ mistakes acknowledged without their ceasing to exercise authority.”

Stanley Hauerwas, “A Story-Formed Community”, in A Community of Character: Toward a Constructive Christian Social Ethic, 11.

Pastor Helsel shares some interesting insights here.

“[I]f, as I contend, the church is a truthful polity, the most important social task of Christians is to be nothing less than a community capable of forming people with virtues sufficient to witness to God’s truth in the world. Put as directly as I can, it is not the task of the church to try to develop social theories or strategies to make America work; rather the task of the church in this country is to become a polity that has the character necessary to survive as a truthful society.”

–Stanley Hauerwas, A Community of Character, 3.

Doug Wilson recently noted in his blog that “various liberals are starting to emerge with “gotcha!” observations on the source of the disaster [Hurricane Katrina]– global warming, the U.S. backing out of the Kyoto treaty…RFK, Jr. wrote that Mississippi governor Haley Barbour has been reaping the whirlwind because of his earlier role in arguing for President Bush’s energy policy over against environmental policy” and argued that the time for such concerns are after the rescue efforts have been completed. He’s exactly right, of course. I would bet the farm, though, that the people who are making these sorts of ridiculous claims now are the same ones who saw a red mist when Jerry Falwell and others attributed the 9/11 catastrophe to God’s judgment on certain moral trends in America. In the end, then, what is apparent is that they were not objecting to the claim that “God judges wickedness” nor even “God is judging a particular kind of wickedness” but that they were objecting to that God judging that wickedness. The difference lies in devotion to a different god who has different moral concerns. But it is Yahweh, not the gods of the nations, who rides the clouds (see Deut.33:26, Isa. 19:1; Ps. 68).