The proposed rule would impose "a narrow, culturally specific understanding of family" that "privileges a dominant cultural framework over the lived realities of communities of color and global Christians."

I'm reading "Presbyterian Church faces revolt after proposing clergy must be in monogamous relationships — and critics blame white privilege" (NY Post).

The headline is miswritten. The rule doesn't require a relationship. Clergy can still be single. They just can't have more than one partner. It seems that clergy can have sequential sexual relationships — with no commitment at all — as long as they follow a one-at-a-time approach. 

The Presbyterians on both sides of this controversy are relying on progressivism. Opponents tap into racial critique — that "lived realities" discourse. 

Proponents deploy feminist critique. They're "arguing that the practice of polyamory or polygamy can create 'power imbalances, emotional harm, and spiritual confusion,' particularly for women, children, and historically marginalized persons."

It seems that no one wants to get caught invoking tradition. History is that place where persons were marginalized. It's something to be undone. 

***

I love the stock photo the Post chose to illustrate this story. It's like an ad for fabric softener:

Which one is supposed to be the Presbyterian clergyperson?

"The Vatican had long said it could not bless same-sex couples because it would undermine church doctrine that marriage is only between a man and a woman."

"The new rule was issued in a declaration by the church’s office on doctrine and introduced by its prefect, Cardinal Víctor Manuel Fernández, who said that the declaration did not amend 'the traditional doctrine of the church about marriage,' because it allowed no liturgical rite that could be confused with the sacrament of marriage."

From "Pope Francis Allows Priests to Bless Same-Sex Relationships/A church official said the blessings amounted to 'a real development' that nevertheless did not amend 'the traditional doctrine of the Church about marriage'" (NYT).

MEANWHILE: "With a Deadline Looming, the United Methodist Church Breaks Up/A quarter of the denomination’s churches have left, as the faith divides over L.G.B.T.Q. policies" (NYT)("America’s second-largest Protestant denomination is in the final stages of a slow-motion rupture that has so far seen the departure of a quarter of the nation’s roughly 30,000 United Methodist churches...").

"I waited until morning to listen to Biden's nighttime speech... I went out for my sunrise run and thought about what I'd heard. I'll tell you some more about that later."

I wrote that yesterday in a post I published at 9:58 a.m. — a post that combed through the text of the speech. It's now a day later and I haven't followed through, and I could just forget about. Would anyone remember? Is anyone thinking, yeah, what did she think about, while running and viewing the sunrise, about a speech she'd listened to but not yet read? It's highly unlikely, and "I'll tell you some more about that later" isn't even a promise.

We're having a big thunderstorm here at that moment:

 

I'm thinking of keeping my non-promise. I made notes to myself — audio notes — as I was watching the sunrise yesterday, and I've listened to the notes and can see there is something I wanted to say that I haven't said yet. Let me get something to eat and settle in and see if I can find a way to put it in writing without it seeming too... internal.

ADDED: This is a rewriting and an expansion of my audio notes to myself. 

"The median sermon examined in the first survey was thirty-seven minutes long; Catholic homilies were the shortest, with a median of fourteen minutes."

"Not even that brevity satisfies Pope Francis, who recently advised clergy members to keep their sermons short: 'A homily, generally, should not go beyond ten minutes, because after eight minutes you lose people’s attention.'... By contrast, Pew found that the sermons at historically Black churches were the longest, at more than three times that length, with a median of fifty-four minutes. These sermons had only a few hundred more words than those from within the evangelical tradition, a detail that suggests oratorical style or musical interludes might be contributing to their length. The religion scholar Albert J. Raboteau wrote about this patient style of preaching, sometimes known as the 'black folk sermon' or 'old-time country preaching,' tracing its origins back to the eighteenth century in rural, Southern prayer meetings and revivals.... Vocabulary analysis by Pew revealed how common some language is across these four major Christian traditions—words like 'know' and 'God' appeared most often, not surprisingly—but also how distinctive certain words are within each of those traditions. Evangelicals referred most often to 'eternal Hell,' 'salvation,' 'sin,' 'Heaven,' and 'the Bible'; mainline Protestants relied more on the words 'poor,' 'house,' 'Gospel,' and 'disciple'; historically Black Protestants were most likely to hear 'hallelujah,' 'neighbor,' and 'praise.'... The appearance of certain words is hardly a sophisticated metric of anything, including sermons.... And even if Pew were able to parse the language of sermons in ways that shed more light on the views of preachers, it would not be able to illuminate the most fundamental question of preaching—when, whether, and why a sermon moves a congregant to new or deeper beliefs." 

From "What American Christians Hear at Church/Drawing on newly ubiquitous online services, Pew has tried to catalogue the subject matter of contemporary sermons," by Casey Cep (The New Yorker).

"In 1993, when I was living in New York and still fresh off the boat, 60 Minutes featured a segment on Finland, which opened with this description..."

"... of Helsinki pedestrians going about their business: 'This is not a state of national mourning in Finland, these are Finns in their natural state; brooding and private; grimly in touch with no one but themselves; the shyest people on earth. Depressed and proud of it'” As far as facial expressions of the Finnish people, not much has changed since then. We are still just as reserved and melancholy as before. If happiness were measured in smiles, Finnish people would be among the most miserable in the world.

From The Grim Secret of Nordic Happiness/It’s not hygge, the welfare state, or drinking. It’s reasonable expectations" a Slate article by Jukka Savolainen (reacting to a study that rated the Finns the happiest people on earth).

"Consistent with their Lutheran heritage, the Nordic countries are united in their embrace of curbed aspirations for the best possible life. This mentality is famously captured in the Law of Jante—a set of commandments believed to capture something essential about the Nordic disposition to personal success: 'You’re not to think you are anything special; you’re not to imagine yourself better than we are; you’re not to think you are good at anything,' and so on.... If I had to pick a Scandinavian word to capture the correct cultural ingredient in Nordic happiness, it would probably be the Swedish and Norwegian term lagom, which can be translated as 'just the right amount,' i.e., neither too much nor too little."

FROM THE EMAIL: Paul writes: 

I'm a German-American Lutheran, and I find this unrecognizable. Martin Luther was, famously, an irascible sort who enjoyed the beer his wife, Katie, brewed; teaching; preaching; music (he composed several famous hymns, of which "A Mighty Fortress Is our God" is the best-known); and wrote, and published, pamphlet upon pamphlet upon pamphlet, often in explicitly scatological terms. Whatever you might say about Luther—and there's plenty to be said, and has been—"curbed aspirations for the best possible life" are not among them. On a guided bus tour of New Orleans, in fact, our guide told us that when the Lutherans arrived in New Orleans, they were declared "honorary Creoles," because, unlike the Protestants of America's Second Great Awakening, they liked to drink and dance and have a good time. So whatever is going on in the Nordic countries, it doesn't have anything to do with Lutheranism.

"Methodism in the United States dates to the early 1700s, with a long history of valuing local congregations over a top-down structure. It has split many times..."

"... most notably over slavery before the Civil War. Membership is varied demographically and politically, counting as adherents everyone from Hillary Clinton to Jeff Sessions.... [C]ongregations overseas are growing rapidly, particularly in Africa; there are nearly 3 million members in Tanzania and the Democratic Republic of Congo. These groups tend to be more conservative than the typical American Methodist, which in part explains the vote in St. Louis, where more than 40 percent of delegates were from outside the United States.... Though the traditionalists won the narrow vote in 2019, it is the progressives who will remain under the banner of the United Methodist Church...."

From "United Methodist Church Announces Plan to Split Over Same-Sex Marriage/Under an agreement to be voted on in May, a new 'traditionalist Methodist' denomination would continue to ban same-sex marriage and gay and lesbian clergy" (NYT).

Bacchanalia... Saturnalia... a theme begins to form on the blog this morning.

Like the ice on the lake as the temperature drops to 6°, there's a light crystallization of a theme. I like that, themes, forming early in the morning on the surface of the blog.

I said "Bacchanalia," referring to the traditional drunken rowdiness of a University of Wisconsin football game, writing at 6:32, in the second post of the day.

Meanwhile, in the previous post — the one where Matthew Dowd testily queried Scott Walker ("You do know that trees were stolen from a pagan holiday? And Christ wasn’t actually born on December 25th? It was a day celebrated by Roman pagans and taken over by the church in the fourth century. And that many faiths put up trees that aren’t Christians") — the commenter Michael P retorted:

Does Matthew Dowd know that Saturnalia was never on December 25th? It was on the 17th, later extended to be through the 23rd. The 25th was chosen for Christmas as allowing an easy excuse that they were merely extending Saturnalia. Does Matthew Dowd know that the people who prefer "Christmas" to "holiday season" are going to [be] spectacularly unreceptive to the argument that Christianity culturally appropriated a pagan Roman holiday?

Bacchanalia... Saturnalia... what's the difference? Well, obviously, there's Bacchus and there's Saturn. They were originally different festivals. You can use either word figuratively. Since the 1600s, "Saturnalia" (with or without the upper-case S) has meant "A bout or period of unrestrained revelry, overindulgence, licentiousness, or the like; an orgy; an orgiastic or extravagant display or celebration of something (cf. orgy n. 3b). In early use also: †a situation or period in which conventional norms are suspended or inverted (obsolete)" (OED). "Bacchanalia" has meant "Drunken revelry; a tippling bout, an orgy" since the 1600s.

Here's the Wikipedia article, "Bacchanalia." And here's the Wikipedia article "Saturnalia":

Saturnalia was the Roman equivalent to the earlier Greek holiday of Kronia...

The Romans stole it!

It held theological importance for some Romans, who saw it as a restoration of the ancient Golden Age, when the world was ruled by Saturn. The Neoplatonist philosopher Porphyry interpreted the freedom associated with Saturnalia as symbolizing the "freeing of souls into immortality". Saturnalia may have influenced some of the customs associated with later celebrations in western Europe occurring in midwinter, particularly traditions associated with Christmas, the Feast of the Holy Innocents, and Epiphany. In particular, the historical western European Christmas custom of electing a "Lord of Misrule" may have its roots in Saturnalia celebrations.

Lord of Misrule! I click on that link:

"On the drive back, she said it would be very easy for her to convert someone to Catholicism. 'It has great appeal,' she said."

"'Not for me, of course, but I can see the appeal.' A few years after she discovered the Ghost Ranch and built her house there, the ranch (not including her property) was sold to the Presbyterian Church, which used it as a conference center. 'I gave the Presbyterians a wide berth,' she told us. 'You know about the Indian eye that passes over you without lingering, as though you didn’t exist? That was the way I looked at the Presbyterians, so they wouldn’t become too friendly.'"

She = Georgia O'Keeffe. I = Calvin Tomkins, who's writing today about an encounter that occurred in 1962.

"The Indian eye" — I don't remember seeing that before, but maybe I did and passed over it, as though it didn't exist. But it seems politically incorrect, no? Isn't it unkind to pin that on Georgia, after all these years?

I idly google "Was Georgia O'Keeffe racist?" and I get to a passage in a biography I read a long time ago (by Roxana Robinson). The word "racism" appears in the context of her comparison of sexism to racism: "I think it's pretty funny that women have always been treated like Negroes in this country and they don't even know it." That was said in the 1970s, when feminists took to idolizing her. I enjoyed this paragraph on the next page:

"When judges are not interpreting, they’re creating, and to understand judicial creation one must understand first of all the concept of 'priors.'"

Writes Judge Richard A. Posner in a WaPo column titled "The Supreme Court is a political court. Republicans’ actions are proof."

Priors are what we bring to a new question before we’ve had a chance to do research on it. They are attitudes, presuppositions derived from upbringing, from training, from personal and career experience, from religion and national origin and character and ideology and politics. They are unavoidable tools of decision-making in nontechnical fields, such as law, which is both nontechnical and analytically weak, in the sense that there are no settled principles for resolving the most difficult and consequential legal controversies. The tools I am calling priors can in principle and sometimes in practice be overridden by evidence. But often they are impervious to evidence, being deeply embedded in what we are, and that is plainly true of judging — not in every case but in cases that can’t be resolved by interpretation or some other decision-making tool that everyone understands and uses in an identical way. The priors that seem to exert the strongest influence on present-day Supreme Court justices are political ideology and attitudes toward religion....

I may seem to be criticizing the court by calling it politicized. That is not my intention....

IN THE COMMENTS: PB says: "Singling out one party over the other is idiotic, in spite of my respect for Posner."

I think Posner would admit that if the parties were reversed and the President were Republican and the Senate Democrat that the same strategies would be followed by the President and the Senate. His theory does dictate that, even though the WaPo headline writer makes this piece looks like a swipe at Republicans.

This reminds me of a passage I was just reading in the great book about the Supreme Court, "The Brethren.": "Brennan liked to tell his clerks that Harlan had been the 'only real judge' on the Court in the years of Brennan’s service, the only Justice who weighed the legal issues with sufficient dispassion."

ADDED: Posner makes much of judges' religion and elsewhere in WaPo today there's "What would a Hindu justice mean for the Supreme Court?" (by Julie Zauzmer). One of the buzzed about names is Sri Srinivasan, who is Hindu, so Zauzmer — speaking with much less depth about law than Posner — asks how Hinduism might affect "religiously charged issues like abortion and gay rights." She finds an expert on Hinduism who isn't thinking about Posner's notion of "priors" when he tells her:

“There is no such thing as a Hindu belief about, say, abortion or stem cell research right now which would influence any particular case. Any Hindu who occupies a judicial position will interpret the law as it is, rather than through his or her religious viewpoint... There is no Hindu baggage, as such, at all.”

By the way, if we're going to think about the religion that exists in the minds that will be making decisions for us, and I think it is something important to consider, we ought to remember that there are currently no Protestants on the Court. Yes, a Hindu would give us another "first," but in terms of representing the majority of Americans and the history and tradition of America, the complete absence of Protestants is dramatic. 

A graduate student talking about "white privilege" sounds like "a Calvinist explaining the T in TULIP."

In "Politically Correct Holy Rollers: The New Campus Revival," Helen Andrews writes:

Not since environmentalism has the prevailing variety of leftism more closely resembled a religion. John McWhorter calls it Antiracism — “it seriously merits capitalization at this point” — and notes that it has its own clergy in such men as Charles Blow and Ta-Nehisi Coates (friendly vicar and hellfire preacher, respectively). Casting his net more widely to include all talk of “privilege,” from male to cisgender, essayist Joseph Bottum has observed that the concept is functionally equivalent to original sin. “I have to every day wake up and acknowledge that I am so deeply embedded with racist thoughts and notions and actions in my body that I have to choose every day to do anti-racist work and think in an anti-racist way,” said a graduate student whom Bottum was able to locate, sounding for all the world like a Calvinist explaining the T in TULIP.

TULIP is an acronym for the 5 points of Calvinism. The T is:

"Total depravity," also called "total inability," asserts that as a consequence of the fall of man into sin, every person is enslaved to sin. People are not by nature inclined to love God but rather to serve their own interests and to reject the rule of God. Thus, all people by their own faculties are morally unable to choose to follow God and be saved because they are unwilling to do so out of the necessity of their own natures. (The term "total" in this context refers to sin affecting every part of a person, not that every person is as evil as they could be). This doctrine is derived from Augustine's explanation of Original Sin. While the phrases "totally depraved" and "utterly perverse" were used by Calvin, what was meant was the inability to save oneself from sin rather than being absent of goodness.

If the explanations of "white privilege" and "total depravity" sound alike, what does that mean? 1. Those who speak in these terms no longer think independently but have surrendered their minds to compulsory doctrine which they strive to incant correctly. 2. Individuals may think independently and find value in recognizing that they have a selfish interest in seeing their usual way of life as normal and appropriate and choose to rouse themselves to the challenge to take a different perspective.  If #2 is correct, why would that happen? 1. They visualize a fearsome authority commanding that the different perspective be taken. 2. They've decided on their own to search for the truth. 3. It can't happen, because it's inherent in the Calvinist doctrine that the individual is incapable of independently choosing to move outside of the depravity that is total.

When Jeb — giving a sword to Rubio — talked about a made-up Chinese character he called "Chang" — a "mystical warrior" who "has never let me down."

From a WaPo article — by Sean Sullivan, Manuel Roig-Franzia and David A. Fahrenthold — called "The 17-year story behind Marco Rubio’s cut-down of Jeb Bush":

By 2005, the two men were close enough that when Rubio gave an emotional speech after winning the race to be Florida’s House speaker... [Jeb] honored Rubio with a gift: a sword, which he said belonged to a great “conservative warrior” named Chang.

“Chang is somebody who believes in conservative principles, believes in entrepreneurial capitalism, believes in moral values that underpin a free society... Chang, this mystical warrior, has never let me down.”

This gesture was even stranger than it sounds. It appears that “Chang” was not a real person but something from a Bush family in-joke about Chinese Nationalist leader Chiang Kai-shek (“Unleash Chiang!”). Now, Jeb — whose ­father was once the U.S. envoy to Beijing — had garbled the story into something about a mystical warrior with a sword.

The sword “really meant something to Jeb,” a longtime friend and colleague of both men said. “He thought it was Marco who would continue his legacy.”

So Jeb gave Rubio a sword and later Rubio performed a (metaphorical) "cut-down." With 3 writers on that WaPo story, couldn't they at least have figured out where Jeb got the sword?

I suspect re-gifting. Somebody gave somebody in the Bush family a sword. H.W. Bush served as an envoy in China. I suppose that over the years, the Bushes have gotten many gifts they don't love or need. Stuck with a sword... until you can stick somebody else with it.

What went into the decision to give the new speaker of the Florida house a sword? Normally, the speaker wields a gavel, a symbol of calling a diverse, noisy group to order, so that the many can proceed with the business of the whole. Why supplant the gavel with a sword, a symbol of violence and divisiveness. You literally divide with a sword. But in Jeb's mind, that seemed like the right message.

Now add to that the invention of a Chinese character. Nothing Chinese was going on. It was about the Florida legislature. And Chinese culture was appropriated for the occasion... why? Some stereotype about warriors? About "mysticism"? Or is it just something internal to the Bush family, within which it's (apparently) a running joke to say "Unleash Chiang!" Did Jeb imagine that the sword ritual was initiating young Marco into the Bush family secret society?

That question made me look up Skull and Bones, the Yale secret society to which George H.W. and George W. Bush belonged. But Jeb Bush didn't go to Yale. He went to the University of Texas, and he didn't even join a fraternity. He'd met his future wife during a trip to Mexico when he was 17, and that affected his approach to college:

When his friends decided to rush fraternities, Bush stayed behind — he wasn’t interested in dates or parties, [best friend Rob] Kerr said. It took him less than three years to graduate magna cum laude with a degree in Latin American studies.

“He had a very good ability to study really intently while other people were goofing off,” Kerr said. “He was probably more studious than the rest of us.”

After a few years of constant phone calls and occasional visits, Jeb, 21, married Columba, 20, at the UT-Austin University Catholic Center in 1974.

Those 3 WaPo writers — Sean Sullivan, Manuel Roig-Franzia and David A. Fahrenthold — offered to explain the 17-year story of Jeb and Marco, but they never say anything deep about the human personality. I just want to make up a coherent story of the man who made up a fake story about the mystical Chinese warrior as he gave a sword to Marco Rubio:

The warrior Chang stands in for the elder Bush who fought in the war and went to China. The younger man, Rubio, stands in for the younger brother, George W. Bush, who, like the father, went to Yale and performed whatever those secret rituals were, while the studious older brother buried himself in books at the state university, earnestly striving to marry the girl he fell in love with when he was 17. The callow brother surged past him and acquired the mystical power over the American soul that is the presidency, and now another man is surging ahead.

The sword was passed.
CORRECTION: This post originally had George as the younger brother and Jeb as the older brother. Jeb may have seemed more mature, but he is, of course, younger.

AND: Reading this post, Meade inferred that the 3 WaPo writers got this story from Rubio, who has a motive to make Jeb sound bad. Did Jeb really "garble" the Bush family story? Was it an "in-joke" or meaningful references to Chiang Kai-shek? Did Bush, handing over the sword, really talk about an invented character named "Chang," or was he saying "Chiang"? Chiang Kai-shek was a warrior, and Chiang Kai-shek could be said to be "conservative" and even "mystical." The Wikipedia article on Chiang Kai-shek identifies him with The New Life Movement, which "was based upon Confucianism, mixed with Christianity, nationalism and authoritarianism":

Chiang Kai-shek used the Confucian and Methodist notion of self-cultivation and correct living for the Movement; to this end it prescribed proper etiquette on every aspect of daily lives. Some of its many measures included: opposition to littering and spitting on the floor; opposition to opium use; opposition to conspicuous consumption; rejection of vice entertainments in favor of artistic and athletic pursuits; promotion of courteous behavior; and promotion of flag salutes. Among its more unusual campaigns was its promotion of bathing with cold water: Chiang Kai-shek pointed out the (supposed) Japanese habit of washing their faces with cold water as a sign of their military strength, and expected the Chinese to be able to do the same if not better.

Donald Trump activates the anti-Seventh-Day-Adventist prejudice against Ben Carson.

Here's how he slipped in the dagger:

I love Iowa. And, look, I don't have to say it, I'm Presbyterian. Can you believe it? Nobody believes I'm Presbyterian. I'm Presbyterian. I'm Presbyterian. I'm Presbyterian. Boy, that's down the middle of the road folks, in all fairness. I mean, Seventh-day Adventist, I don't know about. I just don't know about.

Religious prejudice is wrong... we all, most of us, know that, don't we? Or do we? We know it some or most of the time, except when we need to set it aside, such as when we choose a President, and it's got to be somebody we can trust with the nuclear button and everything else. It can't be a weirdo. We'll leave you alone as you pursue you metaphysical whimsy and even treat you with care and kindness. But for a President? Trump knows what the "folks" need: right down the middle of the road.

"I'm Presbyterian. I'm Presbyterian. I'm Presbyterian. I'm Presbyterian." 4 times he had to say it. Because "Nobody believes I'm Presbyterian."

Nobody believes.

In 2007, 78.4% of Americans were Christian, in 2014, only 70.6%.

According to the Pew's new U.S. Religious Landscape Study.

The decline appears largely in the mainline Protestant and Catholic segment of Christians, evangelicals having lost only one percentage point.

Those who name no religious affiliation have grown from 16.1% to 22.8% in this 7 year period. That segment is broken down into 3 groups: atheist, agnostic, and "nothing in particular." The "nothing in particular" people dominate. 15.8% of Americans affiliate with nothing religious, up from 12.1%. Atheists have broken through to 3.1%, up from 1.6%, but they're still trailing the agnostics, who've made it to 4.0%, up from 2.4%.

It's interesting to separate "nothing in particular" from agnostic. Is "nothing in particular" even more agnostic than agnostic? They don't even want to go out on a limb and say they don't know? Or (more likely) these are the people who feel they are spiritual or they believe in God in a way that doesn't lead them to join any organizations or they used to be something — such as mainline Protestant — but they lost the sense that membership in that group meant anything. So you can't add the nothings and the agnostics.

These "nothing in particular" people, at 15.8%, now outnumber the mainline Protestants, who are down to 14.7%, from 18.1%.

It's also interesting that Mormons — who might seem like a large and growing group — are only 1.6%, down from 1.7%. And how about Muslims? You hear so much about them, but they're only 0.9% (up from 0.4%). Buddhists hold steady at 0.7%. Hindus are up to 0.7%, from 0.3%. The biggest non-Christian religion is Judaism, and it's not declining. It's up to 1.9%, from 1.7%.

Much more at the link, including issues of age, race, region, and switching religions.

Questioning the sincerity of Althouse's religion.

From the comments on my post "You know what's weird about all the pushback I'm getting on the Biblical reading I provided?," Mid-Life Lawyer said:

For many of us it is offensive when those who do not properly respect the scriptures or give them their proper authority, pull them out and use them out of context to make a political point....

I have read your site for several years, commenting occasionally, and I feel pretty confident that you don't take much stock in the whole Christianity thing.

The Godfather said:

I get the feeling that some Christian commenters don't think your citations of scripture are sincere. They think you're being a smart ass. It doesn't really bother me: You're a law prof, and my experience leads me to conclude that all law profs are smart asses.

And Jon Burack said:

As to Mid-Life Lawyer who is "offended" by people pulling Bible quotes out and not giving them the take approved by "proper authority," I think Martin Luther let that cat out of the bag a long time ago. Or maybe it was the printing press. The proper authority long ago went up in a puff of smoke.

That's all very interesting and fair, because just 2 days ago I blogged "I am pervasively skeptical that people actually believe the religion they profess to believe," linking to my own comments in an earlier thread:

Reading the Gospels, I see Jesus as challenging people about their beliefs, perceiving that they do not truly believe, and holding them to a much higher standard of what real belief is.

When I look at what purportedly religious people say and do, I question whether they are what they claim to be. Religion is used to serve human interests on earth, and all of that is pragmatic and social.

Show me the true believer. What would the true believer do and say?