MAESTRO:
Celebrity, Obscurity and Serge Koussevitzky

Jerry Harkins

Serge Alexandrovich Koussevitzky (1874 – 1951) was arguably the most influential classical musician of the twentieth century. Not the best, not the most popular, not the most knowledgeable, just the most influential. Born into an impoverished family of klezmer musicians in the town of Vyshny-Volochok just outside the Russian Pale, he learned to play a variety of instruments at home and then studied the double bass at the then-new Moscow Conservatory. His second wife, Natalie, was a talented daughter of the Ushkov family whose great wealth derived from a tea monopoly granted by Tsar Nicholas I in the hope of reducing vodka consumption. Her money allowed him to become an important patron of the great Russian modernists, Scriabin, Stravinsky and Prokofiev. He commissioned, published and performed some of their most important works and, for several years, he was Scriabin’s financial mainstay.

He became the conductor of the Boston Symphony Orchestra (BSO) in 1924 and immediately set about promoting the first generation of explicitly American composers—Copland, Harris, Hanson, Barber, Schuman, Piston and his most important protégé Leonard “Lenuska” Bernstein. He commissioned and premiered hundreds of important works from them and their European counterparts—Ravel, Hindemith, Bartok, Britten, Honegger, Milhaud, Messiaen and Schoenberg. The numbers are impressive. During his tenure, the BSO gave the world premiers of 149 compositions. He or his foundation commissioned nearly a thousand works and the foundation, now housed in the Library of Congress, is still at it. He imagined a summer music festival and school in 1914 and created it at Tanglewood, Massachusetts in 1940. For eight weeks each year, it is still the spiritual center of American classical music.

Koussevitzky’s contributions were widely recognized throughout his life. With Toscanini and Stokowski, he was one of the first brand name conductors on the strength of recordings he made beginning in 1925. He was a celebrity. His comings and goings were chronicled in the social pages of all the leading newspapers. He received ten honorary doctorates. Today, however, he is all but forgotten. There is no heroic bust on the banks of the Charles River as there is of Arthur Fiedler. There is no monument anywhere save for a modest stele placed near his grave by the Israel Philharmonic. Thirty-six years after his death, the Boston Symphony got around to naming the music shed at Tanglewood in his honor but it neglected to put up a sign saying so. There has been no posthumous biography.

Of course conductors tend to have short shelf lives. As fashions change, they also make tempting targets for critics, musicians and other malcontents. Koussevitzky was, by far, the wealthiest musician of his era which made him the object of more than his fair share of envy. [1] By all accounts, he was also a difficult, mercurial, overbearing autocrat, an elitist who insisted that his musicians live only to serve Art. Part of his problem was an almost pathological insecurity. He was always worried about being found out as a fraud. Enemies quickly exploited this Achilles’ heel and even friends could easily feed into it. Arthur Fiedler for one understandably feared and despised him. Fiedler was a BSO violinist as well as the conductor of the world famous Boston Pops. Koussevitzky did not approve of his musicians moonlighting, playing anything other than classical music or, worst of all sins, competing with himself even if the competition was imaginary. He made Fiedler’s life miserable with unpleasant comments and capricious decisions for nearly twenty years. [2] In the 1920’s, Koussevitzky hired Nicholas Slonimsky as his secretary. [3] He was awed by Slonimsky’s knowledge, musical memory and absolute pitch. But these talents also threatened him and their relationship ended when Koussevitzky misunderstood a comment he mistakenly attributed to Slonimsky.

If his long tenure with the Boston Symphony was not untroubled, his departure from it was even more unhappy. In essence, after 25 years, he was fired. He was exhausted after the 1948 season and wanted an assistant conductor, specifically the 30-year old Leonard Bernstein. The trustees disliked Lenny for reasons that have been speculated and gossiped about but never resolved. Maybe it was as simple as the fact he was a local boy, a prophet without honor in his hometown. For whatever reasons, the trustees refused and Koussevitzky tendered his resignation which, to his great surprise, was instantly accepted. It turned out the trustees were already well along in their negotiations with Charles Munch, so much so it may well be they had deliberately provoked Koussevitzky to get rid of him.

In spite of his troubles, Koussevitzky was generous with his students and with musicians in need. He was devoted to the composers of his time including not a few whose work he did not like and sometimes could not conduct. Even if a piece was poorly received, he would program it again and again. He said, "I will keep playing this music until you hear it." This loyalty was not always reciprocated. Some of his beneficiaries—Stravinsky and Samuel Barber among them—often spoke disparagingly about him. Stravinsky especially was vitriolic—in private, of course—for reasons that are best left to psychoanalysis. Although obviously offended by the disdain, Koussevitzky never let it influence his artistic judgment or his support for his detractors. He was once asked why Stravinsky never talked about him while he “bowed and scraped” before other conductors. Koussevitzky merely replied, “I have done so much for him that he has no words to express his gratitude.” [4]

He was often accused of poor preparation, vague direction and deficiency in technical skills. But as Erich Leinsdorf said, unlike some more gifted technicians, Koussevitzky did not merely direct traffic, he made music. On rare occasions he gave concerts that turned out disastrously and, lacking a sense of humor, he invariably blamed his musicians. On other occasions, he would decide himself that he was not sympathetic with a new piece and would pass the baton to his concertmaster Richard Burgin. Burgin was a Russian-speaking Pole who filled that position with distinction from 1920 to 1962. He was also a sensitive observer of Koussevitzky and frequently ran interference for him with the orchestra.

It may be that the basic problem was that Koussevitzky believed a score is a document requiring interpretation rather than a road map to be slavishly followed, not a view likely to endear him to composers. In a paper he wrote in connection with the honorary doctorate he received from Harvard, he claimed that such interpretation was an art in itself, on as high a plain as other forms of creativity. Moses Smith ridiculed this notion arguing, “”We do not change the architecture the better to appreciate it. We change ourselves.” Koussevitzky’s conducting scores are filled with revisions, “corrections” and annotations proving that at least the argument was well joined but also belying any notion that he did not prepare carefully. The argument itself, however, is bootless. Styles change and emotionalism in conducting did not come back into favor until the emergence of his great pupil, Leonard Bernstein.

It must be counted in his favor that he married three exceptional women who seem to have worshiped him. He divorced his first wife, Nadezhda Galat, a young ballerina, to marry the tea heiress Natalie Ushkov, who was also an accomplished sculptor. For their wedding, she gave him an orchestra that quickly became highly successful. It is thought that she made a settlement on Nadezhda who later named her first daughter Natalie. When Natalie died, he married her niece Olga, a brilliant woman, a fine writer and a talented caricaturist.

It was sometimes said that Koussevitzky converted to Russian Orthodoxy and promptly forgot his Jewish heritage at the time he married into the aristocratic Ushkov family. He may have; such conversions of convenience were not uncommon in Tsarist Russia and were generally meaningless gestures. He certainly made the transition from poor Jewish boy to wealthy Russian aristocrat in record time. The Ushkovs themselves were only a generation or two removed from their own Jewish roots. But Olga didn’t believe he had been converted and had him baptized on his deathbed. Actually, Koussevitzky always thought of himself as a Jew. At the prompting of his friend, Rabbi Stephen S. Wise, he managed to bring some 200 Jewish and other endangered musicians out of Hitler’s Europe beginning in 1933. Still, his funeral service was a combination of Russian Orthodox and Episcopal rites and he was buried in the cemetery of the Congregational church in Lenox. [5]

There is a rich mythology surrounding the great man and it is difficult to discover or even guess which parts of what stories might be true. It is said, for example, that Mary Aspinwall Tappan gave or thought she gave her Tanglewood estate not to the Boston Symphony Orchestra but to Koussevitzky personally. It is believed by some that Olga transferred the deed to the Orchestra but there does not seem to be any public record of such a transaction. Scholars in Boston believe he meant to leave his papers to the Boston Public Library which has a large collection of his scores. It is rumored that the day after his death, a truck rolled up to his estate in Lenox and some 600 cartons were “removed” to the Library of Congress. When Olga died in 1978, she left all the material she still had to the Boston Library. His estranged nephew, the conductor Fabien Sevitzky, unsuccessfully challenged his will. The enmity between them became a catalyst for a great deal of speculation about his youth and his relationships with his parents and siblings. Many of the anecdotes recounted by Moses Smith in his 1946 biography, are questionable if only because Smith had no access to anyone, including Sevitzky, with first hand knowledge of events he reports as fact. [6] Some of Smith’s stories are demonstrably false.

None of this will surprise anyone familiar with the lives of great artists or conversant with the problems of interviewing people who knew them. Artists do not generally live their lives in sound bites and oral history is always at the mercy of memory and motive. Also, our culture does not always place a high value on dead artists. We make strange distinctions. There are popular songs known by millions of people who have no idea who composed them, songs that truly are part of the soundtrack of our lives like “Amazing Grace” and “White Christmas.” “Over the Rainbow” was named by the Recording Industry Association of America as the greatest popular song of the twentieth century. Millions of people associate it with Judy Garland but few remember the composer or the lyricist. Even well educated Americans would be hard pressed to name the sculptors of such iconic works as the Statue of Liberty, the Lincoln Memorial, Mount Rushmore or even the Pieta in St. Peter’s. Every American instantly identifies with the farming couple of “American Gothic” but not many can say who painted it. Who built the Brooklyn Bridge or designed the Vietnam Wall? Who wrote “A Visit From Saint Nicholas” or “Paul Revere’s Ride?” Of course, these are all simple questions simply answered with a few clicks of a computer mouse. A few more clicks will provide enough information to alleviate the curiosity of almost anyone.

But a data base is no substitute for living memory. One of the most melancholy poems in English is Thomas Gray’s “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard” with its mocking questions:
Can storied urn or animated bust
Back to its mansion call the fleeting breath?
Can Honour's voice provoke the silent dust,
Or Flattery soothe the dull cold ear of Death?

Of course not, and that is not the point of a memorial or of a biography.  Job (19:23-34) laments, “Oh, that my words were recorded, that they were written on a scroll, that they were inscribed with an iron tool on lead, or engraved in rock forever.” He is not seeking justification of self but a record of his achievement. He knows he has played a small role in our understanding of the divine plan but, only when his story is embedded in the collective memory, will it and he become part of the cultural heritage and the social contract. Like Koussevitzky, his life marked a watershed of intellectual attainment. Unlike Koussevitzky, he had a good biographer.

Notes

1. Leopold Stokowski also married well, twice. His second wife was Evangeline Johnson, a Johnson and Johnson heiress. His third wife was Gloria Vanderbilt. He probably earned considerably more than Koussevitzky from his recording and film activities but the Ushkovs were a small family with a vast fortune to which Natalie was a principal heir.

2. Interestingly, Fiedler’s public image was as a charming, debonair man about town. He was a talented musician and a marketing genius. As described, however, by his daughter, Johanna, he was also misanthropic, an alcoholic and a womanizer. He seems to have been every bit as insecure as Koussevitzky. He too felt abused by the BSO trustees and the critics. See: Johanna Fiedler, Papa, the Pops and Me, Doubleday, 1994.

3. Nicolas Slonimsky (1894 - 1995) was a musical genius. He was a composer, conductor, pianist, accompanist, historian, critic and a prolific writer and editor. He was also a bon vivant and an extraordinary raconteur. His stories about Koussevitzky are humorous, often pointed but never really unkind. The only problem is they are not always accurate. Readers can only be certain that something like what he describes happened. See his autobiography, Perfect Pitch, Oxford University Press, 1988.

4. The quote appears as the epigraph to “Chronicle of a Non-Friendship: Letters of Stravinsky and Koussevitzky” by Victor Yuzefovich, The Musical Quarterly, Winter 2002, pp. 750-885. Neither principal was a model of maturity or even sanity.  Robert Craft who knew Stranvinsky better than anyone, wrote that he was, “…a man who was extremely anal, exhibitionistic, narcissistic, hypochondriacal, compulsive, and deeply superstitious. He was also quarrelsome and vindictive, which is stated not as moral judgment but merely as description of behavior.” See: “My Life With Stravinsky,” New York Review of Books, June 10, 1982.

5. Koussevitzky was not religious but he was certainly Jewish in the cultural sense. He was not political either but he was openly sympathetic to the Zionist cause. He rarely did any guest conducting except for his work with the Israel Philharmonic.

6. I have discussed the Smith biography elsewhere and have posted my first take on it at: jerrysfollies.blogspot.com/2008/03/assassination-by-niggling-curious-case.html. A reconsideration of some of the issues written 15 years later is posted at: jerrysfollies.blogspot.com/2008/05/rethinking-moses-smith-jerry-harkins.html.

The portrait of Serge Koussevitzky was drawn by Olga Koussevitzky.

Subsequently:  In the summer of 2014, Tanglewood unveiled a bust of Leonard Bernstein as part of a new program to honor several of its early leaders.  A statue of Aaron Copland had already been erected on the grounds and it was said Koussevitzky would follow shortly.  All three were commissioned and donated by the composer-conductor John Williams and were sculpted by Penelope Jencks whose works include the remarkable Eleanor Roosevelt in Riverside Park, New York.

THE FLAT EARTH SYNDROME
Jerry Harkins
Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts.
—Daniel Patrick Moynihan

As any five-year old could have told Senator Moynihan it’s a free country and you can believe any damn fool thing you want. Seriously though, who would have thought that anyone born in the Twentieth Century, in the world’s most technologically advanced society and educated at two of its top universities could purport to believe, explicitly or implicitly, that:
• The universe was created ex nihilo on Monday, October 23, 4004 BC;
• In a three-day orgy of creative activity, God made every living creature, plant and animal, exactly in the form we see today—the plants on October 25th, the fish and birds on the 27th, land animals, both wild and domesticated, and Adam on the 28th;
• Evolution is a myth—otherwise known as “only a theory”—and the so-called fossil record is a hoax put here by Satan to confuse God’s children;
• There is no such thing as global warming and, even if there were, (a) it would be too expensive to do anything about, and (b) it will probably turn out to be beneficial;
• Deficit spending is the way to fiscal health, especially if we borrow to give tax breaks to wealthy campaign contributors;
• Clear cutting is the best way to assure “healthy forests;”
• We are winning the war on terrorism.

You may think I’m exaggerating, but in fact there are many Americans who actually do subscribe to all the above ideas or something very close to them. Twenty percent of American adults believe the sun revolves around the earth. Millions upon millions are scientifically illiterate and proud of it. But only one is the President of the United States and a graduate of both Harvard and Yale. George W. Bush is a man who knows no science, does not believe what he is told about science, and does not trust scientists. When necessary, he searches high and low for charlatans who will flog his political agenda without reference to the evidence. It isn’t always easy but eventually he can come up with people willing to tell him that star wars is eminently feasible, that condoms do not prevent pregnancy or AIDS because latex is permeable, that embryonic stem cell research is tantamount to premeditated murder, and that dumping an extra 80 million tons of mercury into the air will not harm anyone or anything. Sometimes the search fails. When it came time to find someone to run FEMA, he had to settle for a horse’s ass. When he was unable to find a respected physician to put in charge of women’s health, he gave the job to a respected veterinarian. He sent a 24-year old campaign worker, one George C. Deutsch, over to NASA to help with their public affairs efforts. Not that he knew anything about science or engineering, just that he worked for the Bush campaign. So this incompetent wrote policy restricting media access to a leading climate scientist (Mr. Bush does not believe in climate science) and directed that all NASA documents use the word “theory” every time they refer to the Big Bang (Theory). Like many of his co-ignoramuses, Mr. Deutsch seems to think that “theory” is a dirty word. No matter. They had to fire him when it developed that he had lied on his resume, claiming a bachelor’s degree from Texas A and M that he didn’t have, much to that institution’s relief.

If they fired everybody in the Bush administration caught lying, we would have achieved the conservative Utopia: no government at all.

But it is the mercury story that best illustrates Mr. Bush’s overall attitude toward science. Mercury is a deadly poison. Power plants emit most of it—about 48 million tons every year. It gets into the air, then into the water, then into fish which people eat. It causes disease and death especially for children and the fetuses so beloved of Republicans. You will not find an independent scientist anywhere who has a kind word for mercury pollution. Forty-five states have issued advisories warning their citizens about dangerous levels of it in their fish. Even the feds have issued regulations requiring a 21% reduction over a five year period. Of course, the EPA’s proposal is de minimis. Two groups of state and local regulators have called it “severely flawed” and have proposed a plan they say will achieve a 95% reduction over the same period. Immediately, power industry trade groups howled like stuck pigs. The technology doesn’t work and is too expensive.  It will hurt consumers living on fixed incomes. The usual off-the-wall lies told by the folks who contributed nearly $500,000 to the Bush re-election campaign. The minimalist EPA mandates would have been cheap at twice the price. It was, however, a sure bet that the influence buyers would not be disappointed.

All this would be of little permanent import except that it gives sanction and a certain kind of respectability to ignorance, an effect I call the flat earth syndrome. Any idea exposed to the light of day will gather momentum in direct proportion to the celebrity of the people who propound it regardless of their credentials or its merit. This is merely a variation on P.T. Barnum’s Law that there’s a sucker born every minute. Thus, Tom Cruise can denounce anyone who takes prescription medication for depression and it matters not that Mr. Cruise is an ignoramus or that his theory is bonkers. Lots of Americans believe him, just as millions of Americans think that alien space ships have crashed in Roswell, New Mexico and that alligators live in the sewers of New York City. According to a recent CBS poll, 65% of Americans think creationism should be taught in the schools instead of evolution. The same people would denounce relativity, electromagnetism and continental drift if they had any idea what these theories are about or even if Mr. Cruise said they were harmful to the prosperity of thetans who seem to be people so endowed with theta that they can function without the inconvenience of a material body. Of course, without his own body, Mr. Cruise would be flipping burgers back in Glen Ridge.

By itself, ignorance rarely does much damage and, of course, error has its rights. The typical American has always been ignorant about science but that hasn’t stopped American scientists from winning Nobel Prizes, sending astronauts to the moon or developing polio vaccines. Thomas Edison survived a brief encounter with American education.   Bill Gates lasted long enough to drop out of Harvard in his junior year. Every single advance in computer technology came from an American scientific mind, educated or not. So what am I worried about?

It is not ignorance, it is ignorance at play in the arena of religio-political ideology. There are millions of African children who have died or will die because George Bush believes condoms are immoral and don’t work anyway. If he thought they did work and could save millions of lives, either he would have to rethink his moral theology or stand guilty of genocide. He is not big on changing his mind; he calls it “flip-flopping.”

Or take the matter of Plan B, the so-called “morning after” pill that prevents a woman from getting pregnant after unprotected intercourse. The manufacturer applied to the FDA for approval to market the pill over the counter—that is, without a prescription. The agency set about its usual scientific review process but while it was on-going, its senior management, political appointees all, pulled the rug out and decided to refuse the request regardless of what the scientists recommended. Their reason was that the pill was thought, incorrectly, to be tantamount to abortion and that it would encourage teenage sex both of which are ideological bug-a-boos to the administration. The Government Accountability Office reviewed FDA’s process and found it deviated from established practice in four ways, the first of which was that, “…the directors of the offices that reviewed the application, who would normally have been responsible for signing the Plan B action letter, disagreed with the decision and did not sign the not-approvable letter for Plan B. The Director of the Office of New Drugs also disagreed and did not sign the letter.” What you really need to know is that it was this bastardization of the process that led also to the resignation of Dr. Susan F. Wood as head of the agency’s Office of Women’s Health. Dr. Wood is the physician whom George Bush replaced with a veterinarian. [1] Science be damned, full speed backwards! Their God created human beings who become sexually mature nine or ten years before the geniuses in Washington think they should be allowed to enjoy it. So the Pat Robertson’s of this world are left to clean up God’s mess. And they think I’m a blasphemer! Wendy Wright, Executive Vice President of the conservative Concerned Women for America allowed as to how ignoring the science was “comforting.”[2] We can be grateful that at least some good—Wendy’s comfort—came out of a truly absurdist situation: something called the Food and Drug Administration using theology instead of science as the basis of its decision making. America is on its way to becoming a theocracy and its theology is the theology of ignorance.

Not too long ago, the voters of Dover, Pennsylvania threw out all the members of their school board because it insisted on telling high school students about “intelligent design” as an alternative to evolution.[3] The Reverend Robertson went on television to proclaim that they had “voted God out of your city” and they should get ready for divine retribution. The inescapable image being evoked was the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah by fire and brimstone. This is the same bozo who preached that the destruction of the World Trade Center was God’s punishment for homosexuality and feminism. “Bozo” of course is a bias word but anyone who says Tinky Winky Teletubby is a gay plot to destroy America is exposing himself to being thought of as a clown. Like George Bush, Pat Robertson had an influential father and a good education.[4] As anyone who has paid any attention to his career knows, he has said some amazingly stupid things over the years. For example, he once proclaimed on national television, “You say you're supposed to be nice to the Episcopalians and the Presbyterians and the Methodists and this, that, and the other thing. Nonsense. I don't have to be nice to the spirit of the Antichrist.” A truly moronic comment but he is simply not stupid. Why then do he and so many other people who should know better reject science and all it stands for? More importantly, why do so many Americans believe the kind of obvious claptrap being foisted off on them by Bush and Robertson? The answer, of course, is a view of religion which always trumps science, experience and common sense. It also trumps God who, in addition to the screw-up about adolescence, erred in making mouthy women and needy gays. Throughout history, one understanding of religion or another has been responsible for a dazzling array of horrific sins: the slaughter of innocents, slavery, persecution, terrorism and even mass suicide. Not all religion encourages such evils, only the most blatantly orthodox.[5] These are religionists—Jews, Christians and Muslims mainly—who profess to be holier than thou. A lot holier. If, then, these people are not inherently stupider than the rest of us, why do they take what the rest of us see as absurdist, nihilistic positions? There are, I think, three factors at work.

First, of course, they really are convinced that sacred-text-based knowledge is inherently superior to any other kind including science. In the words of the 1978 Chicago Conference of Biblical Inerrancy, they believe:

Being wholly and verbally God-given, Scripture is without error or fault in all its teaching, no less in what it states about God's acts in creation, about the events of world history, and about its own literary origins under God, than in its witness to God's saving grace in individual lives.

There is an obsessive reliance on authority and “tradition” among conservatives of every stripe. Tradition, of course, should carry high value in human affairs but it is at odds with the curiosity that has motivated people to challenge superstition and ignorance and has led them to speculative philosophy, experimental science and democratic governance. The tension between the two is one of the great themes of history. It lies at the heart of the story of Adam’s disobedience. It manifested itself in the struggle between Galileo and the Holy Inquisition. Cardinal Bellarmine was a great scholar and intellectual who suspected that Galileo might be right. He did what he could to avoid looking foolish but when Galileo remained obdurate, he opted to retreat to the comfort of biblical authority. It is hard to know his mind but, between the Bible and the scientist, it was easier and safer for him to choose the former which he believed to be the word of God. Galileo was by no means an atheist. On the contrary, he believed that God would not deceive him by putting false images in his telescope. It was a titanic clash of two very basic sets of values, a clash that remains largely unresolved.[6]

The second reason is that conservatives (and many other people) fear uncertainty which is the stock in trade of the scientist. Science rejects certainty and deals only in probabilities. As soon as Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson explained the origin of the background radiation of the universe, virtually every astronomer gave up the cherished “steady state” theory in favor of the “big bang.”[7] If American astronauts had brought back samples of green cheese from the moon instead of rocks, scientists would have gladly re-written their textbooks. Orthodox religion, on the other hand, fears and rejects uncertainty. Inerrancy is attractive specifically because it offers people an anchor—a set of eternal verities by which they can lead their lives and through which they can overcome the fear of death. As St. Paul teaches, “O death where is thy sting? O grave where is thy victory”[8]

But certainty can be a cruel mistress. King Solomon in his old age laments:
"Meaningless! Meaningless!"
says the Teacher.
“Utterly meaningless!
Everything is meaningless." [9]

Why? Because nothing ever changes. Everything is bedrock certain. Generations come and generations go, but the earth remains forever. All things are wearisome more than one can bear. What has been will be again. There is no remembrance of men of old, and even those who follow will not be remembered by those who follow.

Solomon may be the only person in history to complain that things never change and he is surely wrong that there is no remembrance of men of old. But the point he is making is valid. Uncertainty is the spice of life. It embraces change. This can be frightening. The hymn says, “Change and decay in all around I see. O thou who changest not, abide with me.” For some Christians, the existential dilemma lies in the choice between challenge and boredom.  Just possibly, though, the most potent reason some Christians react so negatively to science is their perception that scientists and other “elitists” denigrate religion and people of faith. There is, sadly, some truth in that perception. Consider the treatment meted out to William Jennings Bryan during and after the famous Scopes trial. H. L. Mencken covered the trial for the Baltimore Sun. At one point, he wrote:

…the old mountebank, Bryan, sat tight-lipped and unmoved. There is, of course, no reason why it should have shaken him. He has these hillbillies locked up in his pen and he knows it. His brand is on them. He is at home among them. Since his earliest days, indeed, his chief strength has been among the folk of remote hills and forlorn and lonely farms. Now with his political aspirations all gone to pot, he turns to them for religious consolations. They understand his peculiar imbecilities. His nonsense is their ideal of sense. When he deluges them with his theologic bilge they rejoice like pilgrims disporting in the river Jordan....

Strong stuff, that. Not a word of it gives a fair or accurate picture of either Bryan or his supporters. Take out the name-calling and there is nothing left in the paragraph. Now all of us engage in the same sort of thing occasionally. Tom Cruise, for example, is not literally an “ignoramus” even if he drives me crazy with his uninformed pontificating. But at least Cruise truly is ignorant about pharmacology and depression. I do not believe anyone should engage in the kind of invective Mencken reveled in but it is certainly true that people like me find no common ground with people we think of as willing to reject what we see as obvious. There are two things that trouble me. The first has been called the “will to believe” which means belief based mainly on the need or desire to believe. The second is what I perceive as a priori logic, the penchant to reason to conclusions from first principles or eternal truths.

I can’t argue with the will to believe except to say I don’t share it. To me it risks grasping at straws which I see as intellectually futile. A person driven to belief is, in my view, gullible. But I can understand that to others uncompromising belief offers the solace of a port, any port, in a storm, any storm.

A priori logic is more of a problem. It is, of course, the heart of every syllogism, a tool explicated primarily by Aristotle. All men are mortal. John is a man. Therefore John is mortal. This is fine just so long as one can be confident in the validity of the major premise to the effect that all men are mortal (and of course as long as the rules regarding the minor premise and conclusion are scrupulously observed). If, for example, you proceed from the premise that all pine trees speak French, you’re going to be in serious trouble.

Now as it turns out, the idea that all men are mortal is as close as we can come to a certainty. The evidence is our experience that all men we know about have actually died. But even such a sure bet is based on an assumption. At this moment, John himself is among the living (John is) and the living constitute the majority of all men who have ever lived. And not a single one of them has died yet. So the idea that John is mortal is a prediction, not a fact. You don’t want to bet against that prediction but you must recognize it for what it is. It is not a fact.

Most major premises are even less certain. “The Bible is inerrant” is an example. On its face, it contradicts your experience of everything else. Nothing in this world is perfect. There is no evidence for inerrancy unless you are willing to interpret some biblical passages as evidence.[10] It could be so but it bears a heavy burden of proof before you should trust any conclusion derived from it. Why do people think homosexuality is an abomination? Why do people believe Mary was a virgin? Well, the Bible is inerrant. Mary’s virginity is contained in the Bible. Therefore Mary was a virgin. If you think the Bible must be inerrant because Pat Robertson says so…ah, well, I’ll let that go with a prayer for your salvation. But this sort of logic does have consequences. Take for example God’s statement in Genesis 2:18, "It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him." A helper. An inferior. The King James Version has it “help meet,” one fitted to be a helper or assistant.[11] James Dobson concludes from this, “…a family must have a leader whose decisions prevail in times of differing opinions. If I understand the Scriptures, that role has been assigned to the man of the house.”[12] You may agree with Dr. Dobson but please understand that he is stating a conclusion based ultimately on an unprovable premise. It is merely an opinion and I am entitled to think it is illogical and immoral. That entitlement is important especially if you think God gave me a mind. What good is such a gift without license to use it?

All kinds of people believe all sorts of things. Catholics believe that the priest turns bread and wine literally into the body and blood of Christ. The Mormons are certain Jesus left his tomb to come and preach the gospel to New World Indians. The French think they have a glorious military history and I know I am descended from the kings of Donegal. The problem with George Bush is he thinks his opinions, which I find fantastical, are uniquely true and virtuous. He has never made a mistake and has never changed his mind—at least if you believe what he says. It should go without saying that I don’t believe a word of what he says. I believe the truth is not in him.

Notes

1. The vet was Dr. Norris E Alderson. When the appointment caused a firestorm of protest, the agency denied ever having made it and the administration appointed instead Dr. Theresa A. Toigo, a respected pharmacist.

2. The New York Times, November 15, 2005, p. 1.

3. The Dover case is an interesting example of the flat earth syndrome. The Board of Education wanted to make its notification as part of the science curriculum, a decision later characterized by a federal judge as one of “breathtaking inanity.” The town itself was not happy being regarded as another Dayton, Tennessee and it voted the School Board out of office at the first opportunity. But a small minority was convinced that, as one mother told a reporter for The New York Times, “Children should not be taught that we came from monkeys when that’s flat-out not true.” This of course is the same idea that drove the people of Dayton in 1925. Indeed, the trial was and still is referred to as the Scopes Monkey Trial.

4. Marion Gordon "Pat" Robertson was the son of Absalom Willis Robertson who represented Virginia in Congress for 35 years and his wife Adelia Elmer Robertson. Pat got his B.A., magna cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa from Washington and Lee University, a Master of Divinity from New York Theological Seminary and a J.D. from, where else, Yale Law School.

5. “Orthodox” is not a perfect word but neither is any other word commonly used. “Fundamentalist” is too narrow, “Evangelical” is unfair, “conservative” is a euphemism. Like too many other writers, I use these terms imprecisely and interchangeably.

6. This is an inadequate summary of the debate between Galileo and the Inquisition which really came down to different systems of epistemology. Galileo believed that the book of nature is written in mathematical terms. Bellarmine believed mathematics was a human artifact, often useful but essentially self-contained and self-referential. In this, at least, Bellamine probably had the better argument.

7. Not all. There were dissenters most notably Sir Fred Hoyle, one of the 20th century’s most distinguished scientists. Hoyle promoted several versions of what was called the "steady state" or “continuous creation” theory. His dissent, however, is of little comfort to fundamentalists in that it claims that the universe is infinitely old and will endure infinitely. In other words, no creator was ever needed. Some contemporary inflation theory cosmologists are working toward a model which might reduce big bangs (plural) to events within an infinite number of island universes. Continuous creation might return in a somewhat different form than that imagined by Hoyle.

8. 1 Corinthians 15:55. In various translations the two subjects, death and grave, and the two predicate nominatives, victory and sting, are mixed in every possible way. This is the version familiar to hearers of Handel’s Messiah. The next verse is obscure in many translations but the New Living Translation often used by Fundamentalists is exceptionally clear: “For sin is the sting that results in death, and the law gives sin its power.” This is a recurrent theme in Saint Paul’s writings and should give pause to anyone who is overly impressed with biblical legalisms. See also Galatians 5, especially Verses 22 and 23. “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law.”

9. Ecclesiastes 1:2-11. This and other Biblical citations not otherwise attributed are from the New International Version, International Bible Society, 1973. Some of King Solomon’s science is fine, some of it not so fine. The sun, for example, does not hurry back to where it rises. Galileo was right. The sun is stationary with respect to the earth.

10. The 1974 Lausanne Covenant offers ten Biblical references in support of inerrancy. They are: II Tim. 3:16; II Pet. 1:21; John 10:35; Isa. 55:11; 1 Cor. 1:21; Rom. 1:16, Matt. 5:17,18; Jude 3; Eph. 1:17,18; 3:10,18. To my eyes, all are extremely ambiguous and I have no idea what is meant by Jude 3.

11. “Helpmate” seems to be a politically correct version of the same word.

12. “Dr. Dobson Answers Your Questions: Marriage and Sexuality,” Tyndale House (Reprint Edition) 1992.

WHATEVER HAPPENED TO TONYA HARDING?

Jerry Harkins

Just prior to the 1994 Winter Olympics in Lillehammer, I wrote a short technical note commenting on some potential sources of systematic error in the judging of figure skating. In the process, I had occasion to make sympathetic mention of Tonya Harding, the lady who ultimately finished eighth and in tears. Since I have so little time for matters outside moral theology, I naturally assumed that those who supervise such things would take my insights to heart and that reform quickly would ensue. I missed the 1998 edition in Nagano and caught up with the sport during the 2002 games in Salt Lake City. I was, needless to say, disappointed.

While I was otherwise occupied, a fellow named Ottavio Cinquanta had been sent down from Central Casting to be the head Pooh-bah of the International (Ice) Skating Union. Imperial, dictatorial, condescending, arrogant, capricious and, of course, slightly stupid, he turned out to be a perfect choice for a sport that still keeps score with a system invented by the Red Queen. On his watch, we have been beset by one scandal after another, usually involving the judges or the judging. The most recent flap was caused by one Marie-Reine Le Gougne, a French judge who allegedly conspired to trade votes with the Russians. Maybe she also conspired with her French colleagues. Maybe she was merely pressured by the French, the Russians, the Mafia or the Vatican for all I know. No matter, the Canadian pair won pure and simple. That should have been obvious to everyone. Thus, the fact that the two conspirators were joined by three other judges from China, Poland and Ukraine to give the gold to the Russians is as revealing as the cheating itself. Le Gougne says, pressure or no pressure, the Russians were better and, naturally, the Russian judge agreed. So what we had was a majority of the judges reaching an obviously wrong but preordained conclusion. This happens regularly in the Supreme Court but, at least the justices explain their opinions, however wrongheaded, in writing.

Those of you old enough to remember Tonya Maxine Harding will recall that she placed fourth in the 1992 Olympics and was the U.S. National Figure Skating Champion in 1991 and 1994. But in the run-up to the 1994 games in Lillehammer, two of her hangers-on swatted her opponent, Nancy Kerrigan, on the kneecap with what was always referred to as a “black baton.” She was allowed to compete in the Olympics anyway where a hyped-up showdown between the two ladies—class versus trash—was sure to give the TV ratings a much-needed boost. She appeared in a purple polyester costume while Nancy wore white silk. There was never any thought that the judges would let Tonya take home a medal, and they did not disappoint. She finished eighth, skating her last program with a broken shoe lace. Nancy won the silver. Ironically, she, too, was screwed by a panel of judges who, with blithe disregard for reality, awarded the gold to Oksana Baiul of Ukraine.

But the Tonya story did not die after her fifteen minutes of exposure. As I wrote at the time, prosecutors in three jurisdictions could not wait to get their redemptive hands on her, believing she was fully complicit in the assault. Ultimately, Multnomah County, Oregon won the prize but had to settle for getting her to cop a plea to hindering their investigation of the whacking incident. It is not exactly clear why she was prosecuted in Oregon for a crime committed in Detroit, although it may have had something to do with the political ambitions of the Portland DA. She was given three years supervised probation, two fines totaling $150,000, 500 hours of community service, and $10,000 court costs. On top of that, the U.S. Figure Skating Association “stripped” her of her 1994 National Championship and banned her for life. As time went on, she accumulated a further share of life’s bitter pills — a miserable marriage to a beer-swilling, blood-sucking lout, the repossession of her pick-up truck, the need to auction off one of her skating costumes on e-bay and its failure to meet the reserve, an eviction from one apartment, and the depredations of late night comedians who turned her into an icon of white trash. In February 2000, she punched her boyfriend in the face and threw some rocks at his truck. She pleaded guilty to these sins and got two years probation, two 90-day sentences which were suspended except for three days in jail and 10 days on a work crew. Given this went down in Washington State, the work crew was probably not a chain gang. Part of the probation deal was the stipulation that she was not to drive or drink the whole time. Fourteen months later, though, she crashed her pickup truck into a ditch near a town called Battle Ground and failed a breathalyzer test. The Judge in the case, one Darvin Zimmerman, came under considerable local pressure to collect Columbia County’s pound of flesh which, in this case, comes to 167 more days in jail. While all this was transpiring, Tonya may have hit bottom when the Fox Network arranged a boxing match between her and Paula Jones. Paula, you may remember, was one of the blithe spirits of Bill Clinton’s springtime, and was a last minute substitute for Amy Fisher, the Long Island Lolita, whose parole board thought the whole affair an unseemly television spectacle. At least Tonya won—by a TKO in the third round. I did not watch the event but have been assured that the judging was scrupulously fair. A second bout, this time against one Samantha Browning, was fought in February 2003 on the same card as another ex-con, Mike Tyson. She lost a split decision. I take no position on the seemliness of having ex-cons slug it out on national television.

No one ever promised Ms. Harding a rose garden. Still, things might have been different. Tonya’s story might have—and at one time certainly would have—been read as a female Horatio Alger text: poor kid from an abusive background overcomes every obstacle and through grit and hard work emerges, if not triumphant, then well enough. A bit sappy, perhaps, but a lot closer to the mark than the Tonya-as-Tramp scenario. Sadly, the media are in the business of selling advertising space, not truth. And in the process of adding sizzle to the truth, they keep digging and picking and embellishing until the image they create becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Tonya is no saint but listening to Shawn MacPhearson, the Assistant City Attorney of the great city of Camas, Washington excoriate her or Judge Zimmerman sternly threaten her, one recalls the trial of Joan of Arc and the tender mercies of an Inquisitor named Cauchon which, appropriately, means pig in French. One cannot help but wonder what Mr. McPhearson sees in his mirror each morning. Perhaps a future occupant of the oval office who saved the world from the wicked witch?

Tonya is a metaphor for life’s unfairness in a nation without effective or decent libel laws or without even a basic sense of decency. Like many athletes, she is poorly educated but by no means stupid, a distinction lost on our thought leaders. It goes without saying that she is talented, focused and not averse to hard work. In the face of adversity, she remains plucky and optimistic. It does not hurt that she looks good in a skimpy costume. But, by dint of fate, hers played out as the story of a woman abused by her parents, her husband, her state, the press and the governing body of her sport. We have created a sort of reverse Pygmalion—the other side of Eliza Doolittle—to fill a void in our tribal mythology.

Subsequent Events

Nine years after this was posted and twenty-four years after the notorious knee-capping incident, what passes for American thought leadership has revisited the Tonya Harding story and come to the conclusion that its previous judgement was perhaps too harsh and possibly even unfair.  The change of heart was brought about mainly by a well-received movie, I, Tonya, which has done well in the 2018 award season and confirmed by a lengthy and mostly sympathetic article in the New York Times of January 14, 2018 (Taffy Brodesser-Aknew, “Still Nowhere to Run").  Over the years, there have been other revisionist opinions but the combination of a feature film and the newspaper of record is likely to bring some semblance of justice to the much-maligned and very unlucky Ms. Harding.

THE CHURCH TOMORROW
Jerry Harkins

For decades, it has been clear that the Second Vatican Council which met between October 1962 and December 1965 was frustrated in its attempt to modernize church doctrine and practice. Although there are a few surviving cosmetic changes, the idea that papal Catholicism could be reconciled with the humanism of the Renaissance was never more than wishful thinking. The enmity between the church and the modern world had become overt in the aftermath of the French Revolution which had secularized Europe and reduced the church to a pathetic remnant of its former power. The Vatican’s response was disastrous. It raged against what it called “modernism” in all its forms—political, economic, social and cultural. It insisted on absurd new dogmas and proclaimed itself infallible. It rejected science and re-wrote history in the manner of the Soviets to suit its frantic attempts to preserve the civil and spiritual power of the central bureaucracy. The first Vatican Council convened by Pius IX in 1869 elevated a variety of regressive delusions to the realm of divine truth. [1] By the time Pius XII died in 1958, Roman Catholicism faced a paradox: it had never been stronger in terms of numbers and wealth, and had never been weaker intellectually and spiritually.

Pope John XXIII understood this. In convening Vatican II, he had three overlapping goals in mind: to bring the church into the modern world (aggiornamento), to encourage the natural evolution of doctrine in concert with the surrounding evolution of knowledge generally, and to restore the church to its biblical and pastoral roots (resourcement). Most of the bishops and virtually all of the experts were in sympathy with the Pope’s goals and the sixteen final documents they produced reflected that agreement. But after everyone went home, the bureaucracy was determined to reassert its traditional power. The Curia struck a mighty blow against change in 1968 when it persuaded Pope Paul VI to issue a reactionary encyclical on birth control, Humanae Vitae.

The Council had clearly suggested that it was time to change the blanket prohibition of “artificial” birth control. Paul temporized waiting for the report of a special commission appointed by his predecessor. The commission recommended that the church’s ban be lifted and it offered a way the Pope could do so with minimum embarrassment. It was widely expected that he would gratefully follow its advice but instead he reaffirmed the traditional teaching. He thought he was responding to the prompting of the Holy Spirit but others saw him as caving in to the frightening visions of his curial colleagues. Change, they told him, would diminish his power and that of his successors. Thus, in a single document, the Pope restored the discredited philosophy and theology of Vatican I and rejected both modern biology and the relevance of modern science.

The reaction to Humanae Vitae was far greater than Rome ever thought it would be, reflecting the poverty of its understanding of sex. It expected docile obedience. What it got was disdain. Once people realized that they could ignore the preaching of the uninformed, rebellion spread to other issues. There was a mass exodus of both clergy and laity, leaving the church more conservative than it had ever been. During the long reign of Pope John Paul II, only the most conservative and loyal men were made bishops and cardinals until there were no progressive voices left in the hierarchy. Seminaries became redoubts of reaction. Pope Benedict XVI has spoken of all this shrinkage as a good thing. A smaller but more pious church in thrall to the hierarchy is now seen as the basic objective of his pontificate. This leaves him free to restore the Latin mass, renew the issuance of indulgences and ignore the efforts to heal the many rifts within the Christian world. Having lost its intellectual and spiritual credibility after Vatican II, the church now has shed countless adherents throughout the developed world. It flourishes only in Africa with a unique blend of conservative dogma, animist liturgy and a sexually active clergy that includes married bishops.

Maybe the Pope is right and all the decline and decay—or, as he would have it, the purification—is for the best. It is at least arguable that the institutional church has historically been a socially destructive force wherever and whenever it has managed to gain influence. As the English historian (and devout Catholic) Lord Acton said in reference to Pius IX’s power grab, “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” The signs of corruption are everywhere. Christendom has become fragmented into hundreds of sects split along every conceivable doctrinal fault line. The priests and bishops rant and rave about trivia such as female altar servers, the granting of indulgences and the return of the Latin mass. The Pope flies off to Africa and announces that condoms increase the transmission of HIV/AIDS. The Vatican Bank has been involved in global laundering of Mafia drug money and has been credibly accused of laundering assets of Holocaust victims. The Pope offends Muslims and Jews not deliberately but through ignorance and negligence. Unspeakable sexual perversities have been uncovered among the clergy of country after country. It is hard to imagine that any of this is what Jesus had in mind. It is however the historical reality. The issues change but the lust for power has been a constant from the beginning.

Ever since the church emerged from the catacombs after the Edict of Milan in 313, it has been ruled by a small self-perpetuating coterie of mostly Italian churchmen who acquired riches and power by threatening illiterate peasants with eternal damnation. The popes claimed temporal dominion over most of Europe by virtue of the so-called Donation of Constantine, a document forged in 752 for Pope Stephen II. They crushed the Gospel of Love and replaced it with a God of fire and brimstone, a God whose mind only they understood and a God from whom they alone held the keys to salvation. It was all a fraud, a monumental scam perpetrated on humanity’s most important idea, the existence of a personal God who acts in history. The Judeo-Christian version of that idea constitutes the wellspring of western civilization, the great foundational myth of nearly one-third of the human race. Even in its contemporary weakened state, it is the most important force holding society together and making culture possible. As Jung wrote, without myth the individual “…like one uprooted, having no true link either with the past, or with the ancestral life which continues within him, or yet with contemporary human society.” [2] The idea that any institution would attempt to hold this heritage hostage as its exclusive birthright must be counted one of history’s great crimes.

How have they gotten away with it for so long? In the first instance, they rely on Mathew’s report of a conversation in which Jesus asked the apostles what people were saying about him. They gave various answers and he then he asked what they themselves thought. Peter answered for them (Matthew 16:16-20):

Simon Peter answered, "You are the Christ, the Son of the living God." Jesus replied, "Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah, for this was not revealed to you by man, but by my Father in heaven. And I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hell will not overcome it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven; whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven." Then he warned his disciples not to tell anyone that he was the Christ. [3]

This is a breathtaking grant of absolute power. Taken literally, it makes Peter a God. Remember, God had mocked Job with the questions (Job 38:33), “Knowest thou the ordinances of heaven? Canst thou set the dominion thereof in the earth?” Peter can answer, “Yes, I can.” If Peter could pass this power to his successor Linus and so on down to Benedict XVI, then it follows that whatever any of them promulgated was bound in heaven. Whatever. Does that include all those medieval incumbents who claimed the Donation of Constantine was genuine? In a word, yes. Obviously, a land grab, however flamboyant, is not a matter of faith and morals but the church is not relying on the notion of papal infallibility. Rather, it simply asserts that it enjoys, “…the absolute fullness of this supreme power….over all and each of the Churches and over all and each of the pastors and faithful.” [4] The ellipses in that sentence are not misleading; they are meant to cut through the underbrush of Vaticanspeak which contains enough ambiguity to sound slightly more reasonable.

Matthew is the most rigid of the three synoptic gospels and is the only one that includes anything remotely like the “Peter” clause. The scholars of the Jesus Seminar reject the quotation absolutely. [5] There is no question that Peter was regarded as “first among equals” of the apostles but there is no early tradition that he ever acted as the bishop of Rome. There is not a single shred of evidence that he even knew a man named Linus or thought he could pass on his absolute power. The church cites the last sentence of Matthew (28:20), “I am with you always, even unto the end of the world.” But this is the last thing Jesus says and he says it to reassure his frightened apostles. They certainly took it to mean that the end of the world was imminent. [6]

If though you want to take Matthew 16 as the literally true word of God, I will not be able to dissuade you but I will be able to accuse you of blasphemy. To say that God would support each and every pronouncement of the Popes down through the ages is to say that God is willing to accept a very long list of sins from simony to genocide. To give a single example, consider Pope Innocent III’s Albigensian Crusade (1209-1229) and the Inquisition that followed it. Tens of thousands of Cathar “heretics” were slaughtered in the name of orthodoxy including at least 1,200 women and children who took refuge in the Cathedral of St. Nazairethe in Beziers on July 22, 1209. Anyone who thinks that the slaughter of innocents was bound in heaven or that the Christian God of Love approved or accepted this barbarity is surely saying that said God is a criminal psychopath.

As an institution, the Roman Catholic church cannot and does not deserve to survive. There will always be Catholics because, as Father Greeley says, the people love the stories, the saints and the unmatched pageantry. They need the mythology whether they believe it or not. The Poles need their Black Madonna of Częstochowa and need to believe it was painted by the evangelist Luke in the home of the Holy Family. Mexicans need Our Lady of Guadalupe and need to believe that her image appeared miraculously on the back of a peasant’s cloak in 1531. Pope John Paul II needed to believe that he was protected from an assassin’s bullet through the intervention of Our Lady of Fatima. It must have made him feel very special that the mother of God thought it necessary to spare his life. In all such cases, the "belief" is defended vigorously specifically because it is fragile.

Nevertheless, the institutional church is fast becoming an empty shell, a whited sepulcher run by a little man with a big megaphone like the Wizard of Oz. Certainly that’s been the drift of things since Giovanni Montini was elected pope in 1963. When we reach the “tipping point” the collapse will be quick. Even now, the Vatican has all the trappings of a theme park and the major landmarks of European Catholicism are little more than tourist attractions.

It is hard to predict the future of Christianity except to say that the good news of the gospel will continue to play a role in the lives of many people. It seems likely that Protestant denominations will continue to divide and multiply. The Catholic church might work as a loose confederation of diverse congregations sharing a commitment to the Gospel of Love and a heritage of liturgies and stories. This is the Quaker model and would be appealing to people willing to take an active interest in theology. We might also see the emergence of non-episcopal federations whose congregations “called” their own ministers and whose members looked to leaders generally recognized by large segments of the community. This is the Jewish model, more organized than the Quakers and more likely to promote broad agreement on theology and belief. However structured, some such congregations, perhaps most, will call married priests and women to the pulpit, embrace a more liberal sexual ethic and encourage gay marriage. Such deviations will be seen as schismatic and, perhaps even heretical, by the remnants of the old church and the new movement will itself be subject to divisions similar to those that arose (and continue to arise) in Anglicanism and Lutheranism.

However it works itself out, Catholicism will become a bottom-up religion rather than the top-down one it has been for most of its existence. Ultimately, Christianity itself may become prey to a long and painful period of fading belief and cultural irrelevance. To prevent this will necessitate the development of a new theology for the twenty-first century. This is not as strange as it may sound to the ears of a Catholic raised on the immutability of truth. Indeed, there may be a good start on such a theology in the thinking of Harvey Cox. Cox has developed a Christian theology rooted in the realities of the modern world, by which he means primarily what he calls “secularization.” Over the years, his ideas have been refined but his point of departure is a celebration of modernism which he sees as the rise of urban civilization and the related collapse of traditional religion. Secularization refers to the way people understand their relationships with one another and it is not surprising that the massive dislocations brought on by urbanization have profoundly affected this understanding. As he stated it in the introduction to his first book:

What is secularization? The Dutch theologian C. A. van Peursen says it is the deliverance of man, “first from religious and then from metaphysical control over his reason and his language.” It is the loosing of the world from religious and quasi-religious understandings of itself, the dispelling of all closed worldviews, the breaking of all supernatural myths and sacred symbols. It represents “defatalization of history,” the discovery by man that he has been left with the world on his hands, that he can no longer blame fortune or the furies for what he does with it. Secularization occurs when man turns his attention away from worlds beyond and toward this world and this time (saeculum = “this present age”). It is what Dietrich Bonhoeffer in 1944 called “man’s coming of age.” [7]

It will surprise no one that this was and is not well received by conservative Christians including Catholics. It cuts too close to Nietzsche's "God is dead" philosophy which concludes that religion is no longer capable of acting as the source of morality. For Cox, though, the question is what causes the secularized person to be alienated from the traditional idea of God. “Is it the loss of the experience of God, the loss of the existence of God in Christianity, or the lack of adequate language to express God today?” He agrees with Nietzsche that religion can no longer pretend to offer “…an inclusive and commanding system of personal and cosmic values and explanations.” But he differs in proposing that modern man still encounters God in the “events of social change” which include both momentous transformations such as the civil rights movement and ordinary daily transactions with lovers, clients, co-workers and others.

A new religion might take many forms but it would certainly be based on at least three theological premises. First and most important, God is a personal, unique and transcendent experience, not a corporate rule book. Second, God is ultimately love and love relationships without exception are the only metaphors through which we can experience and relate to God. Finally, God is our destiny, the “Point Omega” toward which we and all history are somehow directed. This, however, is not a matter of faith or belief but of hope.

In any such formulation, the role of the specialist—the one called to minister—is to help each individual find his or her pathway to a satisfying relationship with the instinctive sense of the divine in the here and now. In the words of the old folk hymn, “There’s a road that leads to glory / through a valley far away. / Nobody else can walk it for you, / they can only point the way.”

Notes

1. Pius IX was highly regarded by his successors several of whom moved to have him canonized against the wishes of the Italian government. John Paul II finally beatified him in 2000. His incorrupt body is displayed in a glass tomb in the Basilica of Saint Lawrence outside the Walls in Rome.

2. Symbols of Transformation translated by R.F.C. Hull from the fourth Swiss edition of 1952. Reprinted in Violet Staub De Laszlo, (editor), The Basic Writings of C. G. Jung, The Modern Library, 1993, p. 5.

3. New International Version, 1984, International Bible Society. The word “Hell” is “Hades” in the original and in many other modern translations. I believe this is because the Greek term hades was used in the Septuagint to translate the Hebrew term sheol. But the term hades always refers to the abode of the dead in general, rather than the abode of the wicked.

4. The Dogmatic Constitution Pastor aeternus issued by Vatican I, July 18, 1870, Chapter 3, Paragraph 9.

5. Robert W. Funk and Julian V. Hills (General Editors), The Five Gospels: The Search for the Authentic Words of Jesus, Macmillan, 1993, pp. 206-207.

6. This is obvious from the Acts of the Apostles and is made explicit by Paul in 1 Crointhians 15:51: “Behold I tell you a mystery; we shall not all sleep but we shall all be changed.” In this context, “sleep” means “die.” Paul expected that Christ would return in glory within the lifetime of people then living.

7. The Secular City: Secularization and Urbanization in Theological Perspective, Revised Edition, Macmillan, 1966.