…and it’s not what you might first expect. Or not only that. In a lively interview the Atlantic’s Jennie Rosenberg Gritz spoke with Eytan Kobre, an organizer of last weekend’s event at Citi Field in New York. Though some outsiders framed that public showing as a technophobic “rally against the Internet,” it was really more of a discussion on the pros and cons of integrating digital media into a devout, communitarian way of life. As Kobre concedes, television and the Internet present real complications for a people literally “of the book”:

You’ve also argued that the Internet is damaging people’s ability to study and pray.

Yes, and these are all things Nick Carr wrote about in his Atlantic cover story, “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” He talks about how the Internet affects cognition — short-term memory and long-term memory, the ability to sit and read a book in depth, and so on.

In fact, I was looking at another piece at TheAtlantic.com, a blog post by Ross Douthat. He was addressing a comment by another writer who said that Google had been immeasurably beneficial to his research. It enabled him to have obscure volumes at his fingertips. Douthat responded, “The web is very good for certain forms of writing — the highly political and the highly personal chief among them — and very bad for others. … The Google effect makes it harder to write War and Peace, and harder to read it.”

I was struck by that, because that kind of in-depth reading constitutes a large part of what we do. When you look at Talmud study, the study of Jewish ethics and philosophy, there’s a lot of complex stuff going on there. The ability to study those works can be undermined by Google and the Internet.

[At the rally,] you’re dressing the same way your 18th century ancestors did, which implies that you’re rejecting the modern world.

There may be elements of truth to that. But the irony is that hipsters all dress a certain way, and the whole point is to dress entirely different from everyone else. Orthodox Jews actually have the courage to dress the same way as 500,000 of their brethren. They’re the ones who challenge people by asking, “Are you deep enough to look beyond my garb and relate to me as a thinking individual?”

Read the full interview over at the Atlantic site.

Tim Kelleher on ecumenism and the Eastern Catholic Church:

Gathered for their ad limina, Eastern Catholic bishops from the U.S. were addressed last week by Prefect of the Congregation for the Oriental Churches, Leonardo Cardinal Sandri. His injunction—made not about abortion, the HHS mandate, war, wealth redistribution, or gay marriage—could have a critical influence on the Christian response to all of the above.

Also today, Daniel J. Heisey on joyful evangelization:

There is an approach to the Christian life that I find particularly tiresome. It is that emphatic cheerfulness in which all must take part, that demand that you will be joyful. But Christian joy is in fact a great part of our faith. In a few years we will mark the fortieth anniversary of a relatively obscure Apostolic Exhortation by Pope Paul VI, Gaudete in Domino, “Rejoice in the Lord” (1975). In anticipation of that anniversary, let’s look at some of his insights about Christian joy.

New York-area readers take note:

NEW YORK, NY - MAY 23, 2012 - The Center for Public Conversation at the Institute for American Values will host a conversation on Tuesday, May 29th with Robert P. George, McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence and Director of the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions at Princeton. Professor George will examine what constitutes the human good while discussing some of today’s most pressing-and often divisive-issues facing our society. This public conversation will be moderated by David Blankenhorn, the founder and president of the Institute for American Values.

There is a very real and growing concern, from many quarters, regarding increased threats (real or perceived) to religious liberty here in America. From healthcare legislation and education, to same-sex marriage and judicial appointments, questions about religious liberty have taken a front seat within the public square. At the heart of these debates are also fundamental questions about the role of government, the market, and the often overlooked sphere of civil society. Professor George offers his insights about these and other topics in what promises to be an informative and far-ranging conversation.

More info here.

Writing for Religion and Politics, Alfredo Garcia chronicles the lonely movement called American atheism. For one, while they do agree on the triumph of reason and the banality of religious beliefs, they do not agree about how to go about demonstrating it to the other 90% of Americans that believe in a higher power. It has been difficult for atheists to find positive common ground on which to build community and cause. Life isn’t easy for non-believers in America:

Atheists are viewed more negatively than any other U.S. religious group, with less than half of Americans (45 percent) holding a favorable opinion of them. It can be a lonely existence…What has not changed much, though, is the image of the non-theist that O’Hair left in her wake. It’s the image of the atheist out to pick a fight, the unbeliever who is constantly seeking the next debate. As Fidalgo from CFI put it, O’Hair was an “extremely polarizing” figure who “gained visibility for American Atheists but may have been integral in forming the image of atheism in the U.S. as arrogant.” More recent non-theist leaders (like the late Hitchens) are often perceived as relishing these same antagonisms.

It’s at least hard to see how one could be very enthusiastic about a movement whose highest aspiration is the demise of many others.

Read more here.

Vietnam Still Abuses Human Rights, Religious Freedom
Robert P. George, Cornell International Affairs Review

Reading, Talking, and Edwin O’Connor
Sally Thomas, Castle in the Sea

The ‘Old Testament God’: Merciful, Not Monstrous
Robin Schumacher, Christian Post

Pop Art: A Jewish Affront to WASP Decorum?
Jonathan Wilson, Tablet

Which Sins Do Americans Find Least Palatable?
Molly Ball, The Atlantic

At Prosblogion, Helen De Cruz has presented a statistical analysis on the question of whether philosophers of religion take religious arguments more seriously than other philosophers. As one would expect, they do. Cruz gave eight arguments against theism and asked participants to rate them, ranging from very strong to very weak. Her interest was whether or not religious commitments affected one’s assessment of these arguments:

At first, I thought that my survey showed mainly effects of confirmation bias (i.e., theists rate arguments for theism higher, atheists rate arguments against theism higher), but thanks to Robert’s more fine-grained analysis of individual argument I can see now that PoR does make a difference in how a lot of these arguments are assessed (the main predictor is still religious belief though, but controlling for this, PoR makes a difference). If PoRs rate the hiddenness argument stronger than the general philosophical population, does that say anything about hiddenness as a problem for theism? Or, conversely, since PoRs are not as impressed with the argument from parsimony, should the (non-PoR) atheist look for other reasons to support her beliefs (I’m saying this in particular because parsimony came out as a favorite alongside the argument from evil).

Read more here.

Unveiling a new work on the Second Vatican Council in Rome, Cardinal Walter Brandmuller, the retired president of the Pontifical Committee for Historical Sciences, announced that Vatican II’s decrees on non-Christian religions (Nostra Aetate) and Religious Freedom (Dignitatas Humanae) “do not have a binding doctrinal content, so one can dialogue about them.”

The comment–seen as a gesture to the Society of St. Pius X, now in talks with the Holy See about a possible reconciliation–naturally provoked controversy. Some traditionalists welcomed it as a sign that their criticisms about those documents have always been right, whereas Catholic Culture’s Dr. Jeff Mirus immediately cautioned: “While it is certainly true that a ‘dogmatic constitution’ is a weightier document than a ‘declaration,’ and is more likely to deal extensively with doctrinal issues, this does not mean that a declaration cannot have doctrinal content to which the faithful must assent.” He then persuasively explains why, with regard to Vatican II’s teaching on non-Christian religions and religious liberty.

In fairness to Cardinal Brandmuller, he also affirmed that all of the Conciliar documents “must be taken seriously as an expression of the living Magisterium;” and one of his co-authors, Archbishop Agostino Marchetto, added, importantly: “There must be an acceptance of the Council by those who want to be reunited with the Church. I don’t think the SSPX can say, ‘Well, we’ll set this or that document aside.’

Underscoring that point was an essay in the Osservatore Romano last December. (more…)

Russell E. Saltzman remembers Fr. Richard John Neuhaus:

There’s little doubt in my mind that compared to all the people he knew and befriended in life, I was a bit player. Yet he treated me and my children generously. I made sure they met him. I managed to haul five of my seven to New York to meet him and, sure, show them off. My second son, Richard John, is named for him. My Richard’s photograph hung in Neuhaus’ bathroom photo gallery alongside the famous.

Also today, Nicholas Myers on Russian Orthodoxy’s unreconciled dualism:

At the height of the Cold War, political scientists questioned whether the Orthodox Church had become incompatible with the modern state. Although history textbooks highlight how patriarch and emperor were integral offices to the Byzantine Empire, the West has always had a far more tangible division between pope and prince. In Russia in particular, church and state have been in elaborate entanglement for centuries, the result of which has paradoxically been widespread abandonment of the practice of the faith. And contrary to those inclined to see a triumphant tale of Christianity emerging from communism, today’s Church remains plagued by the same ills it has borne for centuries.

Here’s something different: a job posting for a “quirky and funny” guy with “an interest in death and rituals” that was sent to the American Anthropological Association:

I am a casting director with a Major Cable Network dedicated to Nature, Science and Exploration; we are currently gearing up to produce a pilot.

The show will explore death rituals around the world.  The tone of the piece will be smart, engaging and witty, akin to No Reservations for death instead of food.  We’re searching for a male-co-host and I wanted to reach out to you and see if you knew anyone who might fit the bill.

We’re looking for a guy, mid ’20s to mid ’30s, who can act as a quirky and funny sidekick to our edgy female host.  He’ll have to interact with people and be able to interact with people on the fly, so be comfortable creating conversation with a camera around.  He has to have an interest in death and rituals – whether professional or personal.  (An emerging paleontologist, archaeologist, anthropologist)

Please don’t hesitate to get in touch with any questions.

Thank you for your time!

Sincerely,
Jamie Carroll
Casting Director | NGC

I’d suggest our own Russ Saltzman, who’s written with humor (and with real insight) on both death and ritual. I recommend in particular his columns about the passing of his father and about the funnier elements of serving as a Lutheran pastor.  Russ, what do you say?

Via @daralind

What’s Left of the Left?
James Cronin, The Montreal Review

Sharia Can Support Democracy
Mahmood Delkhasteh and Hassan Rezaei, Christian Science Monitor

Zeal: The Fourth Lively Virtue
Anthony Esolen, Crisis

Death Throes of the Blue Model Church
Donald Sensing, Sense of Events

New Priests Continue Younger Trend in 2012
EWTN News

Paul Gottfried writes the magazine in response to last week’s blog post calling attention to the American Conservative article on Leo Strauss and his followers. While the latter piece was harsh by any standard, Gottfried thinks readers ought to see his original piece at The Montreal Review for a more nuanced critique of Straussianism. His evaluation (which opens fortuitously with a quote from our own Bill McClay) argues that:

Strauss and his students have identified philosophy with rationalism, which means that those who are considered to have been the best political thinkers shared the interpreter’s rationalist perspective. Tradition and religious experience are not seen as having contributed to the “philosophical” basis of political thought, although it seemed necessary for thinkers in past ages to pay homage to non-rational sources of authority. [...]

This may in fact be the most controversial side of Straussian hermeneutics, namely the claim to be able to divine what thinkers meant but were hesitant to declare. This brings us to the question of whether one is able to discover “authorial intention” in a way that most non-Straussian readers of political texts do not think can be done. And this problem is complicated by another factor, which is that Strauss and his students seem to be reading their own liberal, secularist values into those whom they praise as “philosophers.” Here one feels impelled to to ask: Were there no practitioners of secret writing who were sectarian Christians or devout Catholics living in Protestant countries or pious Protestants residing in Catholic ones? Why do all “philosophers” seem to replicate the cultural mindsets of their Straussian interpreters?

And perhaps most apropos to last week’s post, Gottfried notes in his essay that he does not disdain the man personally or even reject his intellectual tendencies entirely:

[Strauss] was a learned student of ancient languages and someone so conversant with so many political classics that one has to wonder where he found time to read as much as he did. As someone whose interests overlap, I feel deep admiration for what Strauss managed to master. Those who have refused to mention, let alone look at, my book because they think I have dishonored their cult figure would be astonished at how little their preconceived notions jibe with textual realities. Although I generally have low regard for his major disciples, my book includes praise for their master.

It’s a high-caliber piece, though Straussians will still find much in it to dispute. You can read the full article here.

The Archdiocese of New York (where I consider it a privilege to be counted a member) has recently received some criticism for its low number of priestly ordinations this year. This past Saturday, Cardinal Dolan ordained two new priests at St. Patrick’s Cathedral–one a diocesan priest and the other a priest for the Franciscan Friars of the Renewal. While this number is small and unsustainable for a diocese that serves over 2 million Catholics, there is good explanation for this year’s low number, and even greater reason for optimism for the years to come. In a January 2012 interview with Catholic New York, New York’s vocations director, Fr. Luke Sweeney, explained the low number for this year noting that “the seminary formerly had a five-year program: one year of philosophy and four of theology. In 2006 the U.S. bishops asked for two years of philosophy; inserting the extra year caused a “gap year” in which there were no candidates.”

While dissidents within the Church may try to use this year’s low numbers in New York to bolster their calls for women’s ordination and a removal of the celibacy requirement (more…)

Hans Kung denounces Benedict’s move to regularize the situation of the traditionalist Society of St. Pius X:

With such a scandalous decision, Pope Benedict would, in his overall regretted isolation,  would be even more separated from the People of God. The classical doctrine regarding schism should be a warning to him. According to it, a schism of the Church happens when it separates from the Pope, but also when the latter separates himself from the body of the Church. “Even the Pope could become a schismatic, if he will not guard the unity and communion proper to the whole body of the Church.” (Francisco Suárez, major Spanish theologian of the 16th/17th centuries).

A schismatic pope loses his position according to that same teaching of the constitution of the Church. At least, he cannot expect obedience. Pope Benedict would be therefore encouraging the already widespread  popular movement of “disobedience” against a hierarchy that is disobedient to the Gospel. He would bear sole responsibility for the grave rift and the strife created inside the Church. , he would have alone the responsibility. Instead of reconciling with the ultra-conservative, anti-democratic, and anti-Semitic SSPX, the Pope should rather care about the majority of reform-minded Catholics and reconcile with the churches of the Reformation and the entire ecumenical movement. Thus he would unite, and not divide.

George Weigel on critter prayers and transhumanism:

A former Vatican official known for his prowess with a deer rifle commented on the latter: “I have my own prayer at the death of a wild animal. It begins, ‘Bless, O Lord, and these thy gifts . . .’” Another priest, seeing this, said “There’s plenty of room for all of God’s creatures . . . next to the mashed potatoes.” To which Former Vatican Official replied, “Don’t forget the gravy.”

Also today, Joshua Gonnerman on why he calls himself a gay Christian:

“You can’t identify as gay,” many said, “because to do so is to say that the label ‘gay’ encompasses you in your totality.” I have no taste for identity politics, but the truth is that all of us do, in fact, navigate complex identities. I identify first as a Christian, secondly as an orthodox Roman Catholic. After that, we find a slew of monikers; an Augustinian, a scholar, a theologian, an American, a single person, a theatergoer, a cook, a pedestrian, and—here comes the controversy—a gay or queer person.

In a rather horrifying article in New York magazine, Michael Wolff describes the saga of his ailing mother and her losing struggle against dementia. His piece, which begins with a somewhat sympathetic consideration of the ethical and moral dilemmas facing end-of-life patients, slowly transitions into mixed messages about the value of people in vegetative states, and ultimately lands in unvarnished contempt for the life of the woman who raised him. In what becomes a quest to rid the world of his own mother, he dispenses such gems as:

Discontinuing the medication felt like both a solemn and giddy occasion. A week passed, and then the doctors began to report in a chipper way that she was doing well, all things considered. She had withstood the shock to the system. She was stable. [...]

I do not know how death panels ever got such a bad name. Perhaps they should have been called deliverance panels. What I would not do for a fair-minded body to whom I might plead for my mother’s end.

The alternative is nuts: to look forward to paying trillions and to bankrupting the nation as well as our souls as we endure the suffering of our parents and our inability to help them get where they’re going.

Perhaps that feared “culture of death” isn’t so exotic or hyperbolic, after all. Read the rest of “A Life Worth Ending” for a glimpse at how it takes root among the respectable.

Leaving Wall Street
Alexis Goldstein, n+1

Liturgical Diversity in the Third Millennium
Charles G. Mills, Homiletic & Pastoral Review

A Pair of Holy Land Discoveries
Thomas L. McDonald, God and the Machine

HHS Doesn’t Speak for Me, or Other Women
Helen Alvare, Washington Post

Religious Space for Crowded Schools: Godsend or Trouble?
Fred Mogul, Schoolbook

Why? Because there isn’t one. Although lawsuits challenging the contraception mandate are separating the wheat from the chaff to some extent, as in the case of Notre Dame, CUA, et al, the amorphous population of Catholic voters has never been so difficult to define. Weighing in on MSNBC, our own editor R. R. Reno lamented the difficulty: “Catholicism tends to be a cultural-ethnic identity…but you want to think about Catholic voters in terms of intensity of their religion.” It has usually been understood that the Catholic vote was a rather significant portion of the voting bloc:

Mark Stricherz at Catholicvote.org defines it as that which “mirrors the social teaching of the hierarchy, especially the American bishops: culturally conservative, economically populist or liberal, and moderate to liberal on foreign policy.” He wrote this a few months ago:

“Whatever their ideology (“social justice” or “social renewal”) or degree of religious observance (ex-Catholics, cafeteria Catholics, and confession-going Catholics), some Catholics vote as a bloc. You can see it in the votes of pro-life Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives and the voting patterns of regions such as southwestern Pennsylvania. What else besides Catholicism explains the pro-life votes cast by Democratic congressmen from South Boston, Rhode Island, and southwestern Chicago?”

Whether one agrees or disagrees, and there are good reasons to do both, Ramesh Ponnuru at National Review thinks we can’t deny that there is at least discernable Catholic voting behavior: Catholics are swing voters. This in contrast with Evangelicals, Jews, blacks, single women, etc. But Reno thinks this might not last much longer. If the Democratic party continues to be seen as generally hostile to persons of orthodox religious faith, there could be a significant transformation in the Catholic vote: “If there’s a shift of 10 percent in the way Catholics vote over a 10-year period,  that could be very important.”

Read more here.

Nicholas Eberstadt has an article in the latest edition of the Wilson Quarterly in which he examines what happens when a society stops sanctioning and practicing marriage as a norm and abandons childbearing. Looking at Japan’s past two and next few decades, he underlines some rather stunning statistical trends and cultural shifts:

Japan’s postwar fertility plunge has been so steep that it can be described as a virtual collapse. In 2008, barely 40 percent as many Japanese babies were born as in 1948. In fact, the country’s annual birth totals are lower today than they were a century ago—and if current projections come to pass, Japan will not have many more newborns in 2050 than it did in the 1870s.We can get a sense of the shape of things to come by comparing Japan’s current population profile with an estimate for 2040. Not even 30 years from now, more than a third of Japanese will be 65 or older. Japan is already the world’s grayest society, with a median age of almost 45 years. By 2040 its median age, to go by U.S. Census Bureau projections, will rise to an almost inconceivable 55. (By way of comparison, the median age in the retirement haven of Palm Springs, California, is currently under 52 years.) [...]

But there is more. Japan’s historically robust (if perhaps at times stifling) family relations, a pillar of society in all earlier generations, stand to be severely and perhaps decisively eroded in the coming decades. Traditional “Asian family values”—the ideals of universal marriage and parenthood—are already largely a curiosity of the past in Japan. Their decay has set in motion a variety of powerful trends which virtually ensure that the Japan of 2040 will be a country with far greater numbers of aged isolates, divorced individuals, and adults whose family lines come to an end with them.

At its heart, marriage in traditional Japan was a matter of duty, not just love.

So what, if anything, can policymakers do to reverse the decline? (more…)

These amazing photos, of 40,000 Orthodox Jewish males filling New York’s Citi Field (with another 20,000 off-site), have been making the rounds. Some writers suggested the all-male meeting was sexist and/or excessively secretive. Predictable reactions from those made anxious by such a striking visual expression of the size and vitality of a faith community often ignored by the commentariat.

The meeting focused on the perils of the internet and included a discussion of the problem of internet pornography that presumably would have been quite awkward had both men and women been present. (more…)

Two useful articles from the New York Times‘ Opinionator column: Ben Yagoda’s Fanfare for the Comma Man and its sequel The Most Comma Mistakes. The editors I assume wrote the titles and Yagoda should not be blamed for them, though I fully understand the temptation the editors faced and failed to overcome. His book The Sound on the Page: Style and Voice in Writing is quite good, as is his history of The New Yorker.

James R. Rogers on the welfare state as spiritual temptation:

As Christians think about social obligations—obligations to others—I think this distinction between the means by which the church operates and the means by which the magistrate operates matters. This doesn’t mean that the government should never transfer wealth. But it does mean that the conditions under which the government transfers wealth are different than the conditions under which the church transfers wealth.

Also today, Alma Acevedo on Steve Job’s commencement speech:

With college commencement season upon us again, it is time to revisit Steve Jobs’ famous June 12, 2005 Commencement Speech at Stanford University. In spite of Jobs’ “think different” mantra, his banner speech echoes the common inconsistencies and contradictions of popular subjectivism.

The uproar over Georgetown’s commencement ceremony has brought to the surface one especially noisome argument which those who want to engage seriously with the Church’s internal debates would do well to retire. It goes something like this: “oh, religious order x isn’t really Catholic in the usual/boring/repressive sense, they’re different and better.” This doesn’t just apply to the Jesuits, of course, though today they may be its most frequent victim; this non-sequitur has indeed been deployed countless times against other orders with precisely the same intent.

It’s an argument that, of course, lends itself to plenty of insider-churchy jokes about charisms and how God signs his letters. Fr. Neuhaus was particularly fond of sarcastically musing about actions taken “in the Jesuit tradition” both as a way of deriding the contemporary state of the Society of Jesus and questioning those who would reach for this quick, dismissive answer to objectionable behavior. But it would be a funnier line of reasoning were it not meant quite seriously by so many people.

Not that it makes much sense as a formal argument. Singling out a religious order as “Catholic plus” or, to use a more contemporary term, “evolved,” is like saying “Sue’s not an American; she’s a Pennsylvanian.” Both are true, but the latter only and wholly exists as a subset of the former.

But when taken solemnly and deployed rhetorically, this thinking gets to be pernicious, as it emphasizes divisions in the Body of Christ and serves to amplify personal taste (or worse, politics) at the expense of overarching unity. To be fully and authentically Jesuit is of course to be, in the first instance, fully and authentically Catholic. And St. Ignatius of Loyola, whose order was founded to defend the Church and the hierarchy at the height of the Reformation, would never have granted his imprimatur to those who describe the order as a severed branch of the faith. A branch it may be, but the essential character of a branch is that it remains connected to the tree in order to bear fruit (John 15:1-8).

Critics of contemporary universities and religious orders might have greater success if they began with this sometimes-inconvenient connection, reminding their opponents of the unity within the Church’s splendid diversity, rather than resignedly indulging the notion that some seeds have irretrievably become weeds.

John Adams, Religious Liberty, and Constitutional Compromise
Richard Samuelson, Liberty Law Site

Colorado “Day of Prayer” Ruled Unconstitutional
Morgan Feddes, Christianity Today

Reclaiming Citizenship & The Language of Obligation
Editors, Democracy Journal

The Contradictions of Liberals and Conservatives
Thomas Storck, The Distributist Review

Is the American Press Anti-Catholic?
George Conger, The American Catholic

Notre Dame has decided to stand up and be counted in the struggle to preserve a robust tradition of religious liberty in America.

Notre Dame President, Fr John Jenkins, announced: “Today the University of Notre Dame filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Indiana regarding a recent mandate from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).”

He points out that the issue at stake is not the morality of contraception, about which the Church is clear in its condemnation, and American society in its legality, availability, and widespread use.

“This filing,” Jenkins explains, “is about the freedom of a religious organization to live its mission, and its significance goes well beyond any debate about contraceptives. For if we concede that the Government can decide which religious organizations are sufficiently religious to be awarded the freedom to follow the principles that define their mission, then we have begun to walk down a path that ultimately leads to the undermining of those institutions. For if one Presidential Administration can override our religious purpose and use religious organizations to advance policies that undercut our values, then surely another Administration will do the same for another very different set of policies, each time invoking some concept of popular will or the public good, with the result these religious organizations become mere tools for the exercise of government power, morally subservient to the state, and not free from its infringements. If that happens, it will be the end of genuinely religious organizations in all but name.”

Quite right, and good for Notre Dame.

Dominica, the publication of the Dominican students of the St. Joseph Province, features Br. Bonaventure Chapman, O.P. weighing in on Stanley Hauerwas’ pacifism:

 Although I am not a pacifist, there are certainly compelling reasons for being one. In the first place, Jesus seems to recommend the practice on a number of occasions, as when he refuses permission to James and John to call down fire from heaven to consume the Samaritan town that rejected Jesus (Luke 9:51-56); or when he rebukes Peter in the Garden and heals the servant whose ear had been cut off (Luke 22:47-53). Most powerfully, Jesus refuses to call down angels to save him before Pilate and, instead, suffers crucifixion for the sins of the world. This act of non-violence is what saves the world from sin and death, and it is this act that Hauerwas argues should be the paradigm for all Christian practice…This emphasis on martyrdom as the Christian practice is echoed by Hauerwas: “I really believe, since I’m a Christian, that you always live in a world at risk. Indeed, what Christianity is about, is always learning how to die early for the right reasons.”

In contrast, he also cites C.S. Lewis’ short piece, “Why I am not a Pacifist,”

 “[In trying to become a pacifist,] I should find a very doubtful factual basis, an obscure train of reasoning, a weight of authority both human and Divine against me, and strong grounds for suspecting that my wishes had directed my decision . . . It may be, after all, that Pacifism is right. But it seems to me very long odds, longer odds than I would care to take with the voice of almost all humanity against me.”

Eric Cohen’s review of Hauerwas’ new book War and the American Difference: Theological Reflections on Violence and National Identity can be found in First Things’ April issue here.