The Galli Report: 12.18.20

How the sexual revolution got its start. Celebrity pastors. The key to evangelism. The hidden cause of pandemic failure. Battle of "The Carol of the Bells."

The Real Origins of the Sexual Revolution
Carl Trueman’s latest book, The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self, sounds like his usual fare: full on insight into our culture and the church. From a review of the book:

Drawing heavily on Charles Taylor, Philip Rieff, and Alasdair MacIntyre, and in conversation with Freud, Marx, Nietzsche, Rousseau, Marcuse, Del Noce, the English Romantic poets, and Darwin, Trueman provides not only a succinct intellectual history but a compelling account of how modern persons became consumed with their inner psychological states and, even more importantly, how sexuality turned into “that which lies at the very heart of what it means to be an authentic person.”

In the light of “psychological man” or “expressive individualism,” traditional accounts of sexual morality cannot but be judged as oppressive, marks of bigotry and phobia causing dignitary harm at the very core of people’s selfhood. Try as they might, when traditionalists appeal to nature, human flourishing, duty, divine command, or the other resources of the tradition, they appeal to a discarded image, a vision of the human being and human sexuality simply incommensurate with the modern view of the self. And not simply incommensurate—not merely a “dead” option—but one deemed harmful, even wicked.

I suspect I will especially appreciate this book because it appears that Trueman will help me digest Taylor, Reiff, and MacIntyre, each of whose major books I’ve started on numerous occasions, only to be defeated time and again by their impenetrable prose.

Who’s Becoming Like Whom?
“The Sad Irony of Celebrity Pastors: Instead of making me want to become more like them, it looks very much as if they want to become more like me” reflects on the recent revelations of the philandering of Carl Lentz, formerly until lead pastor of Hillsong Church NYC.  It’s a fair critique of something that plagues charismatic, Pentecostal, and evangelical religion.  The author of Jesus Mean and Wild could not help but appreciate the conclusion:

I am not religious, so it is not my place to dictate to Christians what they should and should not believe. Still, if someone has a faith worth following, I feel that their beliefs should make me feel uncomfortable for not doing so. If they share 90 percent of my lifestyle and values, then there is nothing especially inspiring about them. Instead of making me want to become more like them, it looks very much as if they want to become more like me.

The Key to Evangelism
Rowan Williams, former archbishop of Canterbury, argued in a recent lecture (summarized here) that apologetics will get us only so far in an unbelieving world.

Williams offered the example of Malcolm Muggeridge, a celebrated British journalist and satirist who was attracted to Communism in his youth and later converted to Christianity under the influence of St. Teresa of Calcutta.

“It was not argument, but seeing something fleshed out that did it,” Williams said, “but he wouldn’t have done it without steady engagement over the years with the arguments”.…

“There aren’t going to be scientists and philosophers queuing up at baptismal font,” Williams said, “but we can keep a foot in the door waiting for moment of grace to come.”

Our evangelistic job would be easier, of course, if more of us were like Mother Teresa! But maybe just reversing the trend noted above (“Instead of making me want to become more like them, it looks very much as if they want to become more like me”) would be a good start.

The Most Important Political Virtue?
Here’s an interesting hypothesis as to why the nations that seemed to be the most prepared to battle the pandemic have had the worst record at doing so.

I would like to propose another deeper cause of the debacle. It is a soft cause. It is a speculation. It cannot be proven empirically. It has never been measured and perhaps it is impossible to measure with any degree of exactness. That explanation is impatience.

The author references Franz Kafka at the end:

Kafka in his Diaries writes that there are two cardinal vices from which all others vices derive: impatience and laziness. But since laziness springs from impatience, he writes, there is really only one: impatience. Perhaps it is time to look at it.

Battle of the Carol of the Bells
I was about to offer simply another Pentatonix Christmas rendition, this time “The Carol of the Bells,” when I bumped into the Mormon Tabernacle Choir’s version.  Couldn’t decide. Which do you like better? 

Grace and peace,

Mark Galli
Markgalli.com