Rod Dreher's Blog, page 463

Duke, ‘Diversity,’ & Orwellian Language

Elaine Heath, author of, among other theological works, The Gospel According To ‘Twilight’: Women, Sex, and God, and dean of the Duke Divinity School, today released the following statement to the DDS community:

Friends, as you may or may not be aware, a confidential personnel matter has been made public on various social media. For privacy reasons we are not able to comment on personnel matters but can provide the following statement:

“Duke Divinity School is committed to scholarly excellence and academic freedom, which includes a commitment to diversity and inclusion. We seek to foster an environment where diversity of opinions is respected and members of the community feel free to engage in a robust exchange of ideas on a range of issues and topics. We believe that all faculty have a right to speak out as members of a civil academic community, and if all voices are to be heard, diverse perspectives must be valued and protected. As part of an ongoing effort to foster and support such a community, we will continue to offer voluntary opportunities for faculty, staff and students to participate in diversity training.”

Some diverse voices are more diverse than others, as Prof. Griffiths has learned to his dismay (click here to see the documents detailing this crisis).

Which brings us to these passages from George Orwell’s essay “Politics and the English Language”:

MEANINGLESS WORDS. In certain kinds of writing, particularly in art criticism and literary criticism, it is normal to come across long passages which are almost completely lacking in meaning(2). Words like romantic, plastic, values, human, dead, sentimental, natural, vitality,

Elaine Heath/Duke Divinity School

as used in art criticism, are strictly meaningless, in the sense that they not only do not point to any discoverable object, but are hardly ever expected to do so by the reader. When one critic writes, ‘The outstanding feature of Mr. X’s work is its living quality’, while another writes, ‘The immediately striking thing about Mr. X’s work is its peculiar deadness’, the reader accepts this as a simple difference opinion. If words like black and white were involved, instead of the jargon words dead and living, he would see at once that language was being used in an improper way. Many political words are similarly abused. The word Fascism has now no meaning except in so far as it signifies ‘something not desirable’. The words democracy, socialism, freedom, patriotic, realistic, justice have each of them several different meanings which cannot be reconciled with one another. In the case of a word like democracy, not only is there no agreed definition, but the attempt to make one is resisted from all sides. It is almost universally felt that when we call a country democratic we are praising it: consequently the defenders of every kind of regime claim that it is a democracy, and fear that they might have to stop using that word if it were tied down to any one meaning. Words of this kind are often used in a consciously dishonest way. That is, the person who uses them has his own private definition, but allows his hearer to think he means something quite different. Statements like Marshal Petain was a true patriot, The Soviet press is the freest in the world, The Catholic Church is opposed to persecution, are almost always made with intent to deceive. Other words used in variable meanings, in most cases more or less dishonestly, are: class, totalitarian, science, progressive, reactionary, bourgeois, equality.

Diversity! Don’t forget diversity. It is almost always a code word in academia for “left-wing uniformity of thought.”

More Orwell:

In our time it is broadly true that political writing is bad writing. Where it is not true, it will generally be found that the writer is some kind of rebel, expressing his private opinions and not a ‘party line’. Orthodoxy, of whatever colour, seems to demand a lifeless, imitative style. The political dialects to be found in pamphlets, leading articles, manifestos, White papers and the speeches of undersecretaries do, of course, vary from party to party, but they are all alike in that one almost never finds in them a fresh, vivid, homemade turn of speech. When one watches some tired hack on the platform mechanically repeating the familiar phrases — bestial, atrocities, iron heel, bloodstained tyranny, free peoples of the world, stand shoulder to shoulder — one often has a curious feeling that one is not watching a live human being but some kind of dummy: a feeling which suddenly becomes stronger at moments when the light catches the speaker’s spectacles and turns them into blank discs which seem to have no eyes behind them. And this is not altogether fanciful. A speaker who uses that kind of phraseology has gone some distance toward turning himself into a machine. The appropriate noises are coming out of his larynx, but his brain is not involved, as it would be if he were choosing his words for himself. If the speech he is making is one that he is accustomed to make over and over again, he may be almost unconscious of what he is saying, as one is when one utters the responses in church. And this reduced state of consciousness, if not indispensable, is at any rate favourable to political conformity.

In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defence of the indefensible.

Never more true than in contemporary academic politics, right?

I believe this is Paul Griffiths’s ‘Havel’s Greengrocer’ moment. From Vaclav Havel’s 1978 essay “The Power Of The Powerless”:

The manager of a fruit-and-vegetable shop places in his window, among the onions and carrots, the slogan: “Workers of the world, unite!” Why does he do it? What is he trying to communicate to the world? Is he genuinely enthusiastic about the idea of unity among the workers of the world? Is his enthusiasm so great that he feels an irrepressible impulse to acquaint the public with his ideals? Has he really given more than a moment’s thought to how such a unification might occur and what it would mean?

I think it can safely be assumed that the overwhelming majority of shopkeepers never think about the slogans they put in their windows, nor do they use them to express their real opinions. That poster was delivered to our greengrocer from the enterprise headquarters along with the onions and carrots. He put them all into the window simply because it has been done that way for years, because everyone does it, and because that is the way it has to be. If he were to refuse, there could be trouble. He could be reproached for not having the proper decoration in his window; someone might even accuse him of disloyalty. He does it because these things must be done if one is to get along in life. It is one of the thousands of details that guarantee him a relatively tranquil life “in harmony with society,” as they say.

Obviously the greengrocer is indifferent to the semantic content of the slogan on exhibit; he does not put the slogan in his window from any personal desire to acquaint the public with the ideal it expresses. This, of course, does not mean that his action has no motive or significance at all, or that the slogan communicates nothing to anyone. The slogan is really a sign, and as such it contains a subliminal but very definite message. Verbally, it might be expressed this way: “I, the greengrocer XY, live here and I know what I must do. I behave in the manner expected of me. I can be depended upon and am beyond reproach. I am obedient and therefore I have the right to be left in peace.” This message, of course, has an addressee: it is directed above, to the greengrocer’s superior, and at the same time it is a shield that protects the greengrocer from potential informers. The slogan’s real meaning, therefore, is rooted firmly in the greengrocer’s existence. It reflects his vital interests. But what are those vital interests?

Let us take note: if the greengrocer had been instructed to display the slogan “I am afraid and therefore unquestioningly obedient,” he would not be nearly as indifferent to its semantics, even though the statement would reflect the truth. The greengrocer would be embarrassed and ashamed to put such an unequivocal statement of his own degradation in the shop window, and quite naturally so, for he is a human being and thus has a sense of his own dignity. To overcome this complication, his expression of loyalty must take the form of a sign which, at least on its textual surface, indicates a level of disinterested conviction. It must allow the greengrocer to say, “What’s wrong with the workers of the world uniting?” Thus the sign helps the greengrocer to conceal from himself the low foundations of his obedience, at the same time concealing the low foundations of power. It hides them behind the facade of something high. And that something is ideology.

Ideology is a specious way of relating to the world. It offers human beings the illusion of an identity, of dignity, and of morality while making it easier for them to part with them. As the repository of something suprapersonal and objective, it enables people to deceive their conscience and conceal their true position and their inglorious modus vivendi, both from the world and from themselves. It is a very pragmatic but, at the same time, an apparently dignified way of legitimizing what is above, below, and on either side. It is directed toward people and toward God. It is a veil behind which human beings can hide their own fallen existence, their trivialization, and their adaptation to the status quo. It is an excuse that everyone can use, from the greengrocer, who conceals his fear of losing his job behind an alleged interest in the unification of the workers of the world, to the highest functionary, whose interest in staying in power can be cloaked in phrases about service to the working class. The primary excusatory function of ideology, therefore, is to provide people, both as victims and pillars of the post-totalitarian system, with the illusion that the system is in harmony with the human order and the order of the universe.

More:

We have seen that the real meaning of the greengrocer’s slogan has nothing to do with what the text of the slogan actually says. Even so, this real meaning is quite clear and generally comprehensible because the code is so familiar: the greengrocer declares his loyalty (and he can do no other if his declaration is to be accepted) in the only way the regime is capable of hearing; that is, by accepting the prescribed ritual, by accepting appearances as reality, by accepting the given rules of the game. In doing so, however, he has himself become a player in the game, thus making it possible for the game to go on, for it to exist in the first place.

If ideology was originally a bridge between the system and the individual as an individual, then the moment he steps on to this bridge it becomes at the same time a bridge between the system and the individual as a component of the system. That is, if ideology originally facilitated (by acting outwardly) the constitution of power by serving as a psychological excuse, then from the moment that excuse is accepted, it constitutes power inwardly, becoming an active component of that power. It begins to function as the principal instrument of ritual communication within the system of power.

The whole power structure (and we have already discussed its physical articulation) could not exist at all if there were not a certain metaphysical order binding all its components together, interconnecting them and subordinating them to a uniform method of accountability, supplying the combined operation of all these components with rules of the game, that is, with certain regulations, limitations, and legalities. This metaphysical order is fundamental to, and standard throughout, the entire power structure; it integrates its communication system and makes possible the internal exchange and transfer of information and instructions. It is rather like a collection of traffic signals and directional signs, giving the process shape and structure. This metaphysical order guarantees the inner coherence of the totalitarian power structure. It is the glue holding it together, its binding principle, the instrument of its discipline. Without this glue the structure as a totalitarian structure would vanish; it would disintegrate into individual atoms chaotically colliding with one another in their unregulated particular interests and inclinations. The entire pyramid of totalitarian power, deprived of the element that binds it together, would collapse in upon itself, as it were, in a kind of material implosion.

As the interpretation of reality by the power structure, ideology is always subordinated ultimately to the interests of the structure. Therefore, it has a natural tendency to disengage itself from reality, to create a world of appearances, to become ritual. In societies where there is public competition for power and therefore public control of that power, there also exists quite naturally public control of the way that power legitimates itself ideologically. Consequently, in such conditions there are always certain correctives that effectively prevent ideology from abandoning reality altogether. Under totalitarianism, however, these correctives disappear, and thus there is nothing to prevent ideology from becoming more and more removed from reality, gradually turning into what it has already become in the post-totalitarian system: a world of appearances, a mere ritual, a formalized language deprived of semantic contact with reality and transformed into a system of ritual signs that replace reality with pseudo-reality.

Yet, as we have seen, ideology becomes at the same time an increasingly important component of power, a pillar providing it with both excusatory legitimacy and an inner coherence. As this aspect grows in importance, and as it gradually loses touch with reality, it acquires a peculiar but very real strength. It becomes reality itself, albeit a reality altogether self-contained, one that on certain levels (chiefly inside the power structure) may have even greater weight than reality as such. Increasingly, the virtuosity of the ritual becomes more important than the reality hidden behind it. The significance of phenomena no longer derives from the phenomena themselves, but from their locus as concepts in the ideological context. Reality does not shape theory, but rather the reverse. Thus power gradually draws closer to ideology than it does to reality; it draws its strength from theory and becomes entirely dependent on it. This inevitably leads, of course, to a paradoxical result: rather than theory, or rather ideology, serving power, power begins to serve ideology. It is as though ideology had appropriated power from power, as though it had become dictator itself. It then appears that theory itself, ritual itself, ideology itself, makes decisions that affect people, and not the other way around.

If ideology is the principal guarantee of the inner consistency of power, it becomes at the same time an increasingly important guarantee of its continuity. Whereas succession to power in classical dictatorship is always a rather complicated affair (the pretenders having nothing to give their claims reasonable legitimacy, thereby forcing them always to resort to confrontations of naked power), in the post-totalitarian system power is passed on from person to person, from clique to clique, and from generation to generation in an essentially more regular fashion. In the selection of pretenders, a new “king-maker” takes part: it is ritual legitimation, the ability to rely on ritual, to fulfill it and use it, to allow oneself, as it were, to be borne aloft by it. Naturally, power struggles exist in the post-totalitarian system as well, and most of them are far more brutal than in an open society, for the struggle is not open, regulated by democratic rules, and subject to public control, but hidden behind the scenes. (It is difficult to recall a single instance in which the First Secretary of a ruling Communist Party has been replaced without the various military and security forces being placed at least on alert.) This struggle, however, can never (as it can in classical dictatorships) threaten the very essence of the system and its continuity. At most it will shake up the power structure, which will recover quickly precisely because the binding substance—ideology—remains undisturbed. No matter who is replaced by whom, succession is only possible against the backdrop and within the framework of a common ritual. It can never take place by denying that ritual.

Because of this dictatorship of the ritual, however, power becomes clearly anonymous. Individuals are almost dissolved in the ritual. They allow themselves to be swept along by it and frequently it seems as though ritual alone carries people from obscurity into the light of power. Is it not characteristic of the post-totalitarian system that, on all levels of the power hierarchy, individuals are increasingly being pushed aside by faceless people, puppets, those uniformed flunkeys of the rituals and routines of power?

But what if?:

Let us now imagine that one day something in our greengrocer snaps and he stops putting up the slogans merely to ingratiate himself. He stops voting in elections he knows are a farce. He begins to say what he really thinks at political meetings. And he even finds the strength in himself to express solidarity with those whom his conscience commands him to support. In this revolt the greengrocer steps out of living within the lie. He rejects the ritual and breaks the rules of the game. He discovers once more his suppressed identity and dignity. He gives his freedom a concrete significance. His revolt is an attempt to live within the truth.

The bill is not long in coming. He will be relieved of his post as manager of the shop and transferred to the warehouse. His pay will be reduced. His hopes for a holiday in Bulgaria will evaporate. His children’s access to higher education will be threatened. His superiors will harass him and his fellow workers will wonder about him. Most of those who apply these sanctions, however, will not do so from any authentic inner conviction but simply under pressure from conditions, the same conditions that once pressured the greengrocer to display the official slogans. They will persecute the greengrocer either because it is expected of them, or to demonstrate their loyalty, or simply as part of the general panorama, to which belongs an awareness that this is how situations of this sort are dealt with, that this, in fact, is how things are always done, particularly if one is not to become suspect oneself.

But the greengrocer will have struck a blow for freedom, for integrity, for truth, for the human. And this, I think, is what Prof. Paul Griffiths has accomplished, whether he intended to or not. Read the entire Havel essay. 

Dr. Rachel Pocock’s Little Way

Take ten minutes today to watch the above graduation speech delivered yesterday at Emory University’s medical school, by Dr. Rachel Pocock. When she started medical school four years ago, she says, she read The Little Way of Ruthie Leming, and remained inspired by my late sister’s example throughout her training. She tells her graduating class that all doctors ought to have the same compassionate qualities as Ruthie, who was a small-town school teacher, and that everybody should aspire to create a town like St. Francisville, where folks care for each other in good times and in bad.

My family, and the memory of our Ruthie, is so honored by Dr. Pocock’s tribute. Fortunate are those who will call her their doctor. And fortunate is her fiancé, Deep Shah, who sent me this clip, to be spending the rest of his life with such a woman.

San Francisko: A Swedish Benedict Option

A church in Sweden (RPBaiao/Shutterstock)

You never know what’s going to turn up in e-mail. I received this week a letter from a priest-monk in the Old Catholic Church of Sweden. He has discovered The Benedict Option, and writes, in part:

What you are writing in your book is exactly what I have been writing and preaching for the last years. I’m an Old Catholic priest and Cistercian (Benedictine) monk. Within my vocation, I serve as managing and writing editor for “Gammalkatolsk idédebatt” (Old Catholic thought and debate). One of our (and my) tasks is about bringing forth knowledge about relativism, modernism and secularism. And to make awareness about how to cope with this. As human beings and as society and civilization. As I said, I just got your book and hasn’t finished it just yet, but I felt it right to write to you, just to establish a contact. I am responsible for four books myself and I wanted to say thank You and God Bless! Yours in Christ / P. Franciskus Urban OPR

Father Franciskus added that he was delighted to learn that I am from a town called St. Francisville, because he had just published a short reflection on “San Francisco: The Little Church Village. A Vision For Survival.” Here is a link to the piece, in Swedish. I put it through Google Translate, and this is what I got:

Ever since I was a young boy, from a few different horizons I have a dream of establishing a new city. Then, at the age of twelve, when I and my friend during one of our strolls in the Småland nature discovered a large meadow, half hidden in the forest, the thoughts were created to create another civilization. A new town on a seemingly unused plot of land. With its own currency. Incidentally, a separate system for the village is included to provide self-sufficient care of the surrounding community.

What did I know about the way the world would look today, almost forty years later. Now the threats hanging over us neatly worn out clouds from whose interior we have to wait tough things to handle. What was then a boy’s dream still lives, albeit with a sudden insight into some kind of necessity. Then a childish thought. Now a vision for survival.

What are we talking about today? That the unhealthy number increases; That democracy, even as a concept, is obsolete. We are talking about the demystified and rationalistic contemporary. About Christianity. That everybody owns their own image of what the truth is. Partial winnings and big-scale operations in all areas are lodestars. We are talking about the climate. A rather polarized debate on global level about what is true and false rage in whose context it was reported yesterday that the Arctic will be ice-free during the summer in just twenty years. We talk about bidden, monocultures and “peak phosphorus” as a threat to food security. We are talking about the perpetual economic growth.

And if this were not enough, an increasingly troubled and unstable world with threats of nuclear weapons efforts from North Korea back on the wallet.

Despite this, we seem to continue as if nothing has happened. Are we blind or we just cannot get it? Is it about denial or stopping all the negative into the mental compartment labeled “propaganda”? Is it “fake news” that it does not actually look so bright. That many people experience stress not only in their own soul but also in a common plan?

We can do this too, little friend. Sit still in the boat, be positive and keep calm!

What is currently updating this text is the program that was broadcast on Sweden’s television yesterday (“The Last Harvest”). It’s about one of our most important ecosystems and a prerequisite for our survival. The planet’s soils are threatened. Industrial food production impoverishes our food soil, it affects the nutritional content of our food and nutritional deficiency can be the cause of what we call welfare diseases. We empty our land account on its capital when we need it most. Without earth no life and no life no earth.

Maybe it is time to realize the boyhood dream?

And now, from my horizon as a Christian, priest and monk (and a number of years older), I understand that we must put the pneumatic (spiritual) ecological perspective. It is not only the earth and the lands that are depleted but also we who will live from it. Man is in the rational, positivistic and desacralized way of spiritual death.

The vision of the small church town

Can not we just start over? If a life-loving, warm and generous person raised ground for a full-scale attempt to resume, I would be the first to join in. I also believe there are more volunteers. No listener (thank you!) For this, I understand, about hard work. But it’s about restoring the order that holds the same order to preserve us.

The first thing I would do on this field would be to build a church. A true church. Well, for the little church town, a church has a central location. Then the village would have a soul-care and life-giving institution – and here I speak of eternal life! The next project would be the construction of a monastery, which means a hub for knowledge, healthcare and welfare. Hopefully there is a lake that can provide fish. The low ground at the sea I had not been sad. Small-scale cultivation of small-scale crops can begin immediately and then this small church town grows organically. Hop poles and a brewery. Beehives. Goats and sheep for cheese production. Greenhouse with vines?

In the village there will be a square to be built; A central meeting place next to the church, where the worldly things are dealt with. Some form of direct democracy should be applied which is practiced at this agora (square). And bigger than everyone can gather there, the village can not be, I think. Yes, what did I know as a twelve-year-old boy. Maybe I was before my time or just a dreamer. But the more I think about it, the better it is. So the question is now asked: do you want to join? Or is it you who has the ground where it will happen? And you can be completely calm because the monastery has libraries as well as WiFi. Because we live after all in the 21st century.

You might remember my blogging a while back about a lovely light novel called The Awakening Of Miss Prim, by Natalia Sanmartin Fenollera. It’s a fantasia about a little town like Father Franziskus’s village. It has Distributists, homeschooling, an abbey, good books — and believe it or not, a visit to Norcia! Here’s a short passage from the book:

“I’m surprised you’re one of them. I’d never have dreamed you were a utopian.”

Horacio took a generous gulp of brandy and regarded her affectionately.

“It would be utopian to imagine that the present-day world could go into reverse and completely reorganize itself. But there’s nothing utopian about this village, Prudencia. What we are is hugely privileged. Nowadays, to live quietly and simply you have to take refuse in a small community, a village or hamlet where the din and aggression of the overgrown cities can’t reach; a remote corner like this, where you know nevertheless that about a couple of hundred miles away, just in case” — he smiled — “a vigorous, vibrant metropolis exists.”

Pensively, Miss Prim placed her empty glass on the table.

“This does seem like a very prosperous place.”

“It is, in all senses.”

“So you’re all refugees from the city, romantic fugitives?”

“We have escaped the city, you’re right, but not all for the same reasons. Some, like old Judge Bassett and I, made the decision after having got all we possibly could out of life, because we knew that finding a quiet, cultured environment like the one that’s grown up here is a rare freedom. Others, like Herminia Treaumont, are reformers. They’ve come to believe that contemporary life wears women out, debases the family, and crushes the human capacity for thought, and they want to try something different. And there’s a third groups, to which your Man in the Wing Chair belongs, whose aim is to escape from the dragon. They want to protect their children from the influences of the world, to return to the purity of old customs, recover the splendor of an ancient culture.”

Horacio paused to pour himself another glass of brandy.

“Do you understand what I’m trying to tell you, Prudencia? You can’t build yourself a world made to measure, but you can build a village. …”

Here’s a link to buy the book. And guess who is going to be at this year’s “Idea Of A Village” conference in the shadow of Clear Creek Abbey? Natalia Sanmartin Fenollera herself! Look at the line-up — and get your tickets now for the June 10 event. If you read the Wall Street Journal piece on the Clear Creek Abbey community of Catholic agrarians (or my blog about it; the WSJ piece is still behind the paywall), this is your chance to go see for yourself what life is like there. The great homeschooling leader Andrew Pudewa is one of your hosts. And you’ll meet these folks:

Tacos Of Shame

This dog is a cultural appropriator, and deserves to be put down (Susan Schmitz/Shutterstock)

A reader writes:

I am a little obsessed with canning and preserving, and this is a blog I read regularly.

http://foodinjars.com/2017/05/instant-pot-pulled-chicken-tacos-goya-foods

A couple days ago the author had a post about Cinco de Mayo foods. Goya Foods had sent her some samples and asked her to create a meal and blog about it.

Here are some excerpts from the post, emphasis mine:

While I readily acknowledge the problematic nature of Cinco de Mayo as it is celebrated around these parts, I also admit to the reality that I am a human who is entirely steeped in U.S. culture. That means that while I am wary of stereotyping and cultural appropriation, come the beginning of May, I begin to crave tacos, spicy salsas, and fresh corn tortillas. It’s weirdly Pavlovian.

Recently, the nice folks at Goya asked me if they could sent me a box of ingredients, in the hopes that I might create my own festive Cinco de Mayo meal. Never one to turn down a challenge, I was happy to play along (though painful [sic] conscious of the opportunities to be offensive).

I looked up the Goya Company. They are the largest Hispanic-owned food company in the United States. They freely sent this lady their food and asked her to cook with it and write about it. And yet, she felt the need for disclaimers in case she offended anyone by cooking with ethnic products.

Sigh.

Some white people just flat-out weren’t born to live in Texas. Sad!

The Rich Young Rulers Vs. SJWS

Valery Sidelkykov/Shutterstock

A reader who is a college professor and a practicing Christian writes to say he just spent a year on an intensive program mentoring freshmen at his college, and observing how relentless is the progressive propaganda the school (which is public) hits them with. He writes:

Here’s the thing I learned from spending a year talking to freshmen, though: none of them care. The perfect storm of progressive groupthink that sends out waves of propaganda on college campuses seems to turn students into rocks on the sea coast. They go quiet and hunker down and let the waves beat on them. They stay away from activities in droves (every one of the all-dorm events I attended had more faculty than students), and they respond to invitations to converse with stony silence. As one student said to me, “They keep telling us to be nice. How many times do they have to tell us?” This indoctrination that seems so near and dear to the hearts of university progressives seems a bit like public lectures on Leninism from the late Soviet days: everyone promises to come and pay close attention and but all anyone wants to do is avoid notice. I’m sure a few students are inspired by this preaching, but my experience tells me that support of these dogmas is total just as long as someone is listening. Only true believers are excited by this ham-handed piety.

In Dorothy Sayers’ The Man Born to Be King, Judas is a high-minded idealist and revolutionary who betrays Christ because Christ does not share his enlightened view of history. Sayers’ Judas comes to mind when I think about people like those currently persecuting Paul Griffiths at Duke. They are the true believers who will gladly sacrifice a human on the altar of humanity. My worry with the students I encounter is not that they will become a Judas, but that they already are the Rich Young Ruler: “All these things have I kept from my youth up: what lack I yet?” The young men I spent the year with are nice fellows, but they will bow to SJWs because there’s too much to lose. They’re too complacent to radicalize, but also too rich and too connected to stand up to radicalism. I’ve yet to read The Benedict Option (mostly because my priest has my copy), so I’m sure you’ve already tackled this in that book, but it seems to me that a successful call to the young must emphasize the ascetic: SJWs are loud and obnoxious, but for every one of them, there are ten Rich Young Rulers on college campuses that need to be told, “Sell all you own, take up your cross, and follow me.”

From The Benedict Option‘s chapter on work:

In the end, it comes down to what believers are willing to suffer for the faith. Are we ready to have our social capital devalued and lose professional status, including the possibility of accumulating wealth? Are we prepared to relocate to places far from the wealth and power of the cities of the empire, in search of a more religiously free way of life? It’s going to come to that for more and more of us. The time of testing is at hand.

“A lot of Christians see no difference between being faithfully Christian and being professionally and socially ambitious,” says a religious liberty activist. “That is ending.”

True story: a couple in suburban Washington, D.C., approached their pastor asking him to help their college student daughter, who felt a calling to be an overseas missionary.

“That’s wonderful!” said the pastor.

“Oh no, you misunderstand,” said the parents. “We want you to help us talk her out of ruining her life.”

Christians like that couple won’t make it through what’s to come. Christians with sacrificial hearts like their daughter’s will. But it’s going to cost them plenty.

A young Christian who dreams of being a lawyer or doctor might have to abandon that hope and enter a career in which she makes far less money than a lawyer or doctor would. An aspiring Christian academic might have to be happy with the smaller salary and lower prestige of teaching at a classical Christian high school.

A Christian family might be forced to sell or close a business rather than submit to state dictates. The Stormans family of Washington state faced this decision after the U.S. Supreme Court upheld a state law requiring its pharmacy to sell pills the family considers abortifacient. Depending on the ultimate outcome of her legal fight, florist Barronelle Stutzman, who declined for conscience reasons to arrange flowers for a gay wedding, faces the same choice.

When that price needs to be paid, Benedict Option Christians should be ready to support one another economically—through offering jobs, patronizing businesses, professional networking, and so forth. This will not be a cure-all; the conversion of the public square into a politicized zone will be too far-reaching for orthodox Christian networks to employ or otherwise financially support all their economic refugees. But we will be able to help some.

Given how much Americans have come to rely on middle-class comfort, freedom, and stability, Christians will be sorely tempted to say or do anything asked of us to hold on to what we have. That is the way of spiritual death. When the Roman proconsul told Polycarp he would burn him at the stake if he didn’t worship the emperor, the elderly second-century bishop retorted that the proconsul threatened temporary fire, which was nothing compared with the fire of judgment that awaited the ungodly.

If Polycarp was willing to lose his life rather than deny his faith, how can we Christians today be unwilling to lose our jobs if put to the test? If Barronelle Stutzman is prepared to lose her business as the cost of Christian discipleship, how can we do anything less?

We will be able to choose courageously and correctly in the moment of trial only if we have prepared ourselves in every possible way. We can start by thinking of our work as a calling, as a vocation in the older sense: a way of life given to us by God for His own glory and for the common good. There is no reason why we can’t serve the community and our own desire for professional excellence as doctors, lawyers, teachers, or almost anything else—as long as we know in our hearts that we are the Lord’s good servants first.

What Are We Conserving?

Rusty Reno takes the measure of Western politics after France’s election. Excerpts:

[The Trump victory, Brexit, Macron victory] happened because our political establishments, left and right, have become decadent.

The decadence is not the result of bad policies. It stems from failures of the imagination. As Richard Weaver once wrote, “Every man participating in a culture has three levels of conscious reflection: his specific ideas about things, his general beliefs or convictions, and his metaphysical dream of the world.”

The American side of the story is easiest to tell. Since World War II, the metaphysical dream of the West has been one of deconsolidation. American conservatives promoted economic deregulation. Liberals endorsed cultural deregulation. All of this made a great deal of sense. Reaganism opened up an overly constrained and government-dominated economy. Our brutal system of state-sponsored racial discrimination needed to be dismantled. Rigidly patterned male and female roles were overthrown as well, and sexual morality was relaxed, perhaps with less justification. For good and ill, the momentum of deconsolidation carried things forward.

This is true. The book to read on this is Age Of Fracture, by Daniel T. Rodgers. Reno says that both the establishment left and the establishment right share a “metaphysical dream” of an open, fluid society. They think Zygmunt Bauman’s “liquid modernity” is a good thing. From a discussion of what “liquid modernity” means:

In the 1980s and 1990s, Bauman was known as a key theorist of postmodernity. While many theorists of the postmodern condition argued that it signified a radical break with modern society, Bauman contended that modernity had always been characterized by an ambivalent, “dual” nature. On the one hand, Bauman saw modern society as being largely characterized by a need for order—a need to domesticate, categorize, and rationalize the world so it would be controllable, predictable, and understandable. It is this ordering, rationalizing tendency that Max Weber saw as the characteristic force of modernization. But, on the other hand, modernity was also always characterized by radical change, by a constant overthrowing of tradition and traditional forms of economy, culture, and relationship—“all that is solid melts into air,” as Marx characterized this aspect of modern society. For Bauman, postmodernity is the result of modernity’s failure to rationalize the world and the amplification of its capacity for constant change.

In later years, Bauman felt that the term “postmodern” was problematic and started using the term liquid modernity to better describe the condition of constant mobility and change he sees in relationships, identities, and global economics within contemporary society. Instead of referring to modernity and postmodernity, Bauman writes of a transition from solid modernity to a more liquid form of social life.

For Bauman, the consequences of this move to a liquid modernity can most easily be seen in contemporary approaches to self-identity. In liquid modernity, constructing a durable identity that coheres over time and space becomes increasingly impossible, according to Bauman. We have moved from a period where we understood ourselves as “pilgrims” in search of deeper meaning to one where we act as “tourists” in search of multiple but fleeting social experiences.

But we cannot live like that forever. Reno concludes:

Nationalism can be dangerous, and the French may have made the safer choice. But we face many threats, and we must be wise enough to recognize which are most pressing. I can’t speak for France, but by my reckoning, the greatest danger facing the United States is social disintegration. As family instability and other social pathologies increase, large sectors of our society become atomized and vulnerable. Add the rapid and largely un-examined revision of the social contract brought about by economic deregulation, especially in its global phase, and the situation can become politically toxic. We are losing the social and economic conditions for democratic self-government.

Conservatives must always ask themselves what they seek to conserve. In 2017, our goal must be to conserve democratic self-government, which is the basis for political freedom. A generation ago, we could focus on the perils of an enlarged government (and the Soviet Union). Now the problem has changed. The greatest threat to freedom is our dissolving society. Voters sense this, which is why they’re tilting in the direction of nationalism, however inarticulately and tentatively. We need to renew solidarity, something that can’t be done by citizens of the world.

Read the whole thing.

Here’s a rewritten version of Reno’s last graf, to explain the Benedict Option:

Conservative Christians must always ask themselves what they seek to conserve. In 2017, our goal must be to conserve the conditions under which orthodox Christianity can thrive, which is the basis for the continuation in history of orthodox Christianity itself. Two generations ago, we could focus on the perils of an enlarged secular government. Now the problem has changed. The greatest threat to Christianity is liquid modernity, which dissolves any historical understanding of the Christian faith, and displaces worship of the God of the Bible with the worship of Self. And though the increasing (and increasingly militant) secularism of society is a threat to orthodox Christianity, the greater threat comes from within: most importantly, the religious illiteracy of contemporary Christians, and the failure of believers to comprehend the nature of present-day threats to the faith. Christians sense that something is deeply wrong, but they resist the radical nature of the diagnosis, which is why they either deny the seriousness of the problem, or mischaracterize the proposed solution (the Benedict Option) as a prelude to dismissing it entirely. We small-o orthodox Christians need to renew solidarity — solidarity with the Gospel, solidarity with the teachings and experience of the historical church, and solidarity with each other — and this is something that can’t be done by Christians who have allowed their metaphysical dream be dictated by the post-Christian culture of liquid modernity.

The Catholic priest Father Dwight Longenecker writes that the Benedict Option may well be the only option left for faithful Christians.  He says that today, we have entered into a world that C.S. Lewis foresaw in Perelandra, in which Reason is used not as a tool to get to the truth, but as a weapon to achieve power over one’s enemies:

I have found the same to be increasingly true in any discussion not only with progressives, but with an increasing number of ordinary folks. The discussion may concern politics, religion, sexuality, economics, or cultural matters. If there is a disagreement, there is very little logical thought or rational debate. The two weapons of emotivism and utilitarianism usually rule the day. No true debate takes place. Instead, arguments are dismissed by changing the subject, launching a personal attack or playing the victim.

A position is advocated according to sentimental feelings or practical considerations. The more intellectual, like Lewis’ demon- possessed Weston, use intellectual arguments not as a process to discover the truth, but as a weapon—and a weapon that is more like a bludgeon than a rapier. If their intellectual argument falls flat, they simply deny, lie, and shout more loudly.

In other words, the Benedict Option may be the only option because debate has ended. Our society is so worm-eaten with relativism the any idea that one might use reason, research and debate to discover truth is defunct. The idea, not only that truth can be discovered, but that once discovered one has a duty to believe and obey, is even more obsolete. Consequently, if there is no truth there can be no reasoning into truth, and if there is no reasoning then there is no reason to argue. All is relegated to a matter of opinion—and often the opinion is not even offered as being true. The person asserts it simply because they believe it and they believe it because they assert it.

More:

Thus the silence of the monks. They are silent not only in order to listen to God more acutely, but also because all the words are falling on deaf ears. If humanity is deaf there is no need for words.

The Benedict Option is therefore more about a change of heart and mind than growing a beard, getting some chickens, and building a utopian religious community in the woods. The Benedict Option means coming to the realization that the time for dialogue and debate is over and the time for quiet action has begun.

I am convinced that this is the true reason why Benedict headed for the hills in the sixth century. The dialogue was pointless. The debate was a dead-end. So Benedict did what he could with what he had where he was.

Likewise the conservative Christian option today is to step back from the endless dialogue and debate and to focus on being consistent and being Imaginative Conservatives. Within our families, our parishes, our schools and our workplace we will be committed to a way of obedience, stability and conversion of life, and our method will use the timeless tools of work, study and prayer.

Yes, this! Read the whole thing.

This is what I don’t get about my fellow believers who are still so convinced that the world cares to listen to what we have to say, if only we will figure out the right way to say it. No, it doesn’t. That doesn’t mean that we have the right to quit bearing witness to them, but it does mean that we cannot neglect the building up of the body for the sake of standing out on the streetcorner, rain or shine, shouting a message that the world does not want to hear. There is a time when you have to go back inside, nourish yourself, and build your strength for the long haul. I get the impression that there are a lot of Christians who reject the Benedict Option because they are afraid to do anything other than what they’ve been doing. An evangelism strategy that makes sense for a society that is basically Christian in its self-understanding does not make sense for one that is not Christian, or that is post-Christian (i.e., it has gone through a Christian phase, and has rejected the faith, or what it takes to be the faith).

Here’s a typical reaction — this from an Amazon reviewer:

The writer makes timely observations about the deterioration of our culture and the decline of Christianity’s influence. Yet his solution elevates just one school of Christian discipline as the solution, that of the Benedictines.

Mixed with the good there is a whole lot of man-made dross, lifting liturgy & other catholic ideas like celibacy to the level of Biblical teaching. Better stick to Scripture and continue its solution – the Great Commission of proclaiming the Gospel of Jesus Christ. But not retreat. Never, ever retreat.

Well, this second graf is just a bizarre way to interpret the book. The reader is apparently a fundamentalist or Evangelical who cannot read anything that sounds “Catholic” with anything like an open mind. The Benedict Option does talk about liturgy, but in a general way, quoting a leading Evangelical theologian discussing rediscovering its importance. And it talks about how ideas are carried through liturgies, both secular and religious. And I do not talk about “celibacy,” but about chastity — the right use of sexuality within Christian thought and practice. Plus, this guy believes that simply banging away on preaching is the “solution” to the crisis, which is wholly inadequate to the crisis we face.

But this is the only way some Christians think. And they are going to be wiped out. A very well informed conservative Evangelical friend of mine, a Millennial, e-mailed this morning to express strong doubts about the long-term viability of Evangelicalism. His general point in our conversations about this stuff is that Evangelicals are far too embedded in popular culture and its modes of thought and discourse to resist the deep currents that are eating away at the faith. This desperation to be “relevant” to a culture that has no interest in the faith delivered to the Apostles — and let’s be clear, Catholics and Orthodox suffer from this too — is deadly.

When Is It OK To Kill Whites?

Tommy Curry is an associate professor at Texas A&M. He is black, and specializes in Critical Race Theory. Prof. Curry does not limit his teaching to the classroom. He has a strong presence on YouTube.

In this brief interview, he discusses when it is appropriate to kill white people:

“In order to be equal, in order to be liberated, some white people might have to die,” he says.

In this interview with a blogcast called Context Of White Supremacy (slogan: “White People Are The Problem”), Curry argues that whites cannot be ignorant of racism (their own or anyone else’s) and that black people who assume that whites are educable on racism are fools. He puts down different black theorists, including Martin Luther King, for actually thinking that white people can be regarded as reasonable. It’s a remarkable thing: a philosophy professor who denies that a people are capable of rational thought because of their race.

In this talk, Curry denounces the “integrationist” model of race relations, and describes the black-white relationship as one of power. “White people don’t want to question their physical life and certainly not their own racial existence,” he says. “Because that means they would have to accept that death could come for them at any moment, the same way non-white people have to accept that. And they don’t want to question their existence, they’re not willing to give up their existence. They’ll hold on to their white life just as much as a [unclear] will hold on to a crack pipe. They are fundamentally addicted to the purity of what they see whiteness to be.”

What does any of this racist bilge mean? To prove his own human worth to Tommy Curry, a white person has to despise himself? Good luck with that, Tommy Curry.

The white nationalist spokesman Richard Spencer came to Texas A&M and gave a speech. You can watch it here. I did, but didn’t stick around for Q&A. It was far, far milder than anything Tommy Curry has said on his internet recordings. TAMU changed the rules for campus speakers in response to Spencer’s appearance there. But Tommy Curry can say anything he likes about the manifold wickedness of white people? Is that it?

I wonder what it is like to be a white student studying under Dr. Curry in his classroom?

 

View From Your Table

Pella, Lake Orta, Piedmont, Italy

James C. is on the move again. He has relocated to northern Italy, from Bari. His first VFYT from his new home is above.

Look at this one:

Sterling, Virginia

Our first black & white VFYT! The reader writes:

This is from the incredible Cajun/Korean restaurant Mokomandy in Lowe’s Island/Sterling, VA. It’s a small plate Jambalaya (OMG like one of the best Jambalaya I’ve ever had) with four powers of sauces on offer.

Duke Divinity Crisis: The Documents Are Out

A source at DDS sends me the original e-mail exchanges that have caused the current crisis. Here they are, chronologically presented:

1. On Mon, Feb 6, 2017 at 9:21 AM, Anathea Portier-Young  wrote:

Dear Faculty Colleagues,

On behalf of the Faculty Diversity and Inclusion Standing Committee, I strongly urge you to participate in the Racial Equity Institute Phase I Training planned for March 4 and 5. We have secured funding from the Provost to provide this training free to our community and we hope that this will be a first step in a longer process of working to ensure that DDS is an institution that is both equitable and anti-racist in its practices and culture. While a number of DDS faculty, staff, and students have been able to participate in REI training in recent years, we have never before hosted a training at DDS. Those who have participated in the training have described it as transformative, powerful, and life-changing. We recognize that it is a significant commitment of time; we also believe it will have great dividends for our community. Please find the registration link below. Details about room location will be announced soon.

Duke Divinity School will host a Racial Equity Institute Phase I Training on March 4 and 5, 2017, 8:30—5 pm both days. Participants should plan to attend both full days of training.

“Racism is a fierce, ever-present, challenging force, one which has structured the thinking, behavior, and actions of individuals and institutions since the beginning of U.S. history. To understand racism and effectively begin dismantling it requires an equally fierce, consistent, and committed effort” (REI). Phase I provides foundational training in understanding historical and institutional racism. It helps individuals and organizations begin to “proactively understand and address racism, both in their organization and in the community where the organization is working.” It is the first step in a longer process.

ALL Staff and Faculty are invited to register for this important event by which DDS can begin its own commitment to become an anti-racist institution.

Workshop capacity is 40 participants. Registration is FREE to DDS employees and students.

Snacks, breakfast, and light lunch will be provided. A 7:30 am liturgy will precede the Sunday training for those who wish to participate. Child care can be made available upon request.

2. From Paul Griffiths:

Sent: Monday, February 06, 2017 4:26 PM

To: Anathea Portier-Young

Cc: Divinity Regular Rank Faculty; Divinity Visiting Other Faculty

Subject: Re: Racial Equity Institute Phase I Training–March 4-5

Dear Faculty Colleagues,

I’m responding to Thea’s exhortation that we should attend the Racial Equity Institute Phase 1 Training scheduled for 4-5 March. In her message she made her ideological commitments clear. I’ll do the same, in the interests of free exchange.

I exhort you not to attend this training. Don’t lay waste your time by doing so. It’ll be, I predict with confidence, intellectually flaccid: there’ll be bromides, clichés, and amen-corner rah-rahs in plenty. When (if) it gets beyond that, its illiberal roots and totalitarian tendencies will show. Events of this sort are definitively anti-intellectual. (Re)trainings of intellectuals by bureaucrats and apparatchiks have a long and ignoble history; I hope you’ll keep that history in mind as you think about this instance.

We here at Duke Divinity have a mission. Such things as this training are at best a distraction from it and at worst inimical to it. Our mission is to thnk, read, write, and teach about the triune Lord of Christian confession. This is a hard thing. Each of us should be tense with the effort of it, thrumming like a tautly triple-woven steel thread with the work of it, consumed by the fire of it, ever eager for more of it. We have neither time nor resources to waste. This training is a waste. Please, ignore it. Keep your eyes on the prize.

Paul

——————–

Paul J. Griffiths

Warren Chair of Catholic Theology

Duke Divinity School

On the thread, a couple of DDS professors said that they were actually looking forward to the training. Then the Dean weighed in:

3. From Elaine Heath:

On Behalf Of Elaine Heath, Ph.D.

Sent: Monday, February 06, 2017 8:24 PM

To: Ray Barfield; Mary Fulkerson

Cc: Paul J. Griffiths; Anathea Portier-Young; Divinity Regular Rank Faculty; Divinity Visiting Other Faculty

Subject: Re: Racial Equity Institute Phase I Training–March 4-5

Dear Colleagues,

First, I am looking forward to participating in the REI training, and I am proud that we are hosting it at Duke Divinity School. Thea, thank you for your part in helping us to offer this important event. I am deeply committed to increasing our school’s intellectual strength, spiritual vitality, and moral authority, and this training event will help with all three.

On another matter: It is certainly appropriate to use mass emails to share announcements or information that is helpful to the larger community, such as information about the REI training opportunity. It is inappropriate and unprofessional to use mass emails to make disparaging statements–including arguments ad hominem–in order to humiliate or undermine individual colleagues or groups of colleagues with whom we disagree. The use of mass emails to express racism, sexism, and other forms of bigotry is offensive and unacceptable, especially in a Christian institution.

As St. Paul wrote to the church in Corinth, regardless of how exquisite our gifts are, if we do not exercise them with love our words are just noise.

Sincerely,

Elaine A. Heath, Ph.D.

Dean

Professor of Missional and Pastoral Theology

Divinity School

Duke University

Whoa, whoa, whoa! Do you see “racism, sexism, and other forms of bigotry” in Griffiths’s message to his colleagues? Of course not, because it is not there! Objecting to this training as a waste of time is not racist, sexist, or bigoted in any way!

The next e-mail makes this very point.

4. From Thomas Pfau:

On Behalf Of Thomas Pfau, Ph.D.

Sent: Tuesday, February 07, 2017 12:20 PM

To: Ray Barfield; Mary Fulkerson; Elaine Heath, Ph.D.

Cc: Paul J. Griffiths; Anathea Portier-Young; Divinity Regular Rank Faculty; Divinity Visiting Other Faculty

Subject: Re: Racial Equity Institute Phase I Training–March 4-5

Dear Colleagues:

Until now, I have never inserted myself into discussions internal to the DDS faculty, mainly because mine is a secondary appointment, and because my administrative obligations in Arts & Sciences are plentiful enough. Having greatly enjoyed and benefited from the opportunity to offer upper-level seminars in the Divinity School (and also advising some of the doctoral and MTS students in it), I do greatly care about the intellectual health and generosity of spirit that for much of my time here has characterized the Divinity School.

So it is with deep care and enduring concern for an institution that over the years has become something of an intellectual asylum for me that I am now writing to offer a few thoughts on the email exchange below. My principal hope is to help us avoid slipping into merely polarizing views, with the steadily diminishing analytic yield that such a development typically entails.

When I read Paul Griffiths’ email, I found myself fundamentally in agreement with his observations, and my agreement was not one of mere opinion or conjecture but very much steeped in first-hand experience as Director of Undergraduate Studies and Director of Graduate Studies in two departments and, currently, as department chair. For all these responsibilities have repeatedly brought me into direct contact with initiatives like the one about which Paul expresses such strong reservations. While other colleagues may have a less jaundiced appraisal of these efforts, it is demonstrably true that initiatives of the kind that prompted the present discussion have of late been proliferating at Duke to a degree s that one may well regard with concern and misgivings for multiple reasons. As I read Paul Griffiths’ note, I took him to demur not at the goal that the proposed training is meant to advance, viz., to ensure practices free of bias and mindful of equity. Rather, he challenges the assumption that, merely for the asking, faculty ought be to give up significant chunks of time for the purposes of undergoing “training” in these areas.

Now, given the recent change in leadership in the DDS, it might be appropriate to offer some broader institutional perspective here.

Having worked at Duke for a long time for twenty-six years now, I have witnessed first hand a dramatic increase demands made on faculty time by administration-driven initiatives fundamentally unrelated to the intellectual work for which faculty were recruited by Duke. A seemingly endless string of surveys, memos, and “training sessions” is by now a familiar reality for most faculty, and it is an altogether inescapable entailment (as I well know) of chairing a department or program, serving on a hiring committee, or chairing a review.

So if faculty members choose to say in public (as Paul Griffiths has just done) what so many are saying in private, one might at the very least want to listen to and engage their concerns, especially if one holds sharply opposed views. Any academic unit, DDS included, can only flourish if differences of opinion on any variety of subjects are respected and engaged on their intrinsic merits. Having reviewed Paul Griffiths’ note several times, I find nothing in it that could even remotely be said to “express racism, sexism, and other forms of bigotry.” To suggest anything of the sort strikes me as either gravely imperceptive or as intellectually dishonest. Instead, if a faculty member raises serious doubts about the efficacy and methods of an initiative aimed at combating racial and other kinds of bias – and about the ways in which such training manifestly encroaches on the time faculty need to pursue their primary mission of teaching and research – then this view ought as a matter of course be respected as a legitimate exercise of judgment and expression. And while Paul Griffiths casts his criticisms in harsh terms, it would be nothing less than politically coercive and intellectually irresponsible to imply that his statement amounts to an “expression of racism.”

If DDS wishes to remain a vibrant intellectual community, then all kinds of different perspectives must be engaged analytically and in good faith, as propositions and judgments warranting earnest scrutiny rather than facile condemnation. To tar communications such as the one that Paul Griffiths has shared with the faculty as politically retrograde, let alone to contemplate institutional sanctions, is to take an alarmingly illiberal approach that, ironically, will end up confirming at least some of Paul Griffiths’s criticisms regarding the proposed initiative. Those struggling to grasp the difference between honest engagement and institutional censorship ought to revisit Herbert Marcuse’s account of “repressive tolerance.”

So I hope that in the matter at hand and on similar occasions, all concerned parties, and the leadership of DDS in particular, will allow calm reflection and intellectual engagement to prevail.

Sincerely,

Thomas Pfau

Thomas Pfau

Alice Mary Baldwin Professor of English

Professor & Chair of Germanic Languages & Literatures

Member – Duke Divinity School Faculty

5. This led to Paul Griffiths’s following e-mail to his colleagues, which he authorized for wide distribution. I have taken the names of other Duke professors out of this excerpt:

Subject: intellectual freedom & institutional discipline at Duke Divinity School

Dear Faculty Colleagues,

 

Intellectual freedom – freedom to speak and write without fear of discipline and punishment – is under pressure at Duke Divinity these days. My own case illustrates this. Over the past year or so I’ve spoken and written in various public forums here, with as much clarity and energy as I can muster, about matters relevant to our life together. The matters I’ve addressed include: the vocation and purpose of our school; the importance of the intellectual virtues to our common life; the place that seeking diversity among our faculty should have in that common life; the nature of racial, ethnic, and gender identities, and whether there’s speech about certain topics forbidden to some among those identities; and the nature and purpose of theological education. I’ve reviewed these contributions, to the extent that I can (some of them are available only in memory), and I’m happy with them and stand behind them. They’re substantive; they’re trenchant; and they address matters of importance for our common life. So it seems to me. What I’ve argued in these contributions may of course be wrong; that’s a feature of the human condition.

My speech and writing about these topics has now led to two distinct (but probably causally related) disciplinary procedures against me, one instigated by Elaine Heath, our Dean, and the other instigated by Thea Portier-Young, our colleague. I give at the end of this message a bare-bones factual account of these disciplinary proceedings to date.

These disciplinary proceedings are designed not to engage and rebut the views I hold and have expressed about the matters mentioned, but rather to discipline me for having expressed them. Elaine Heath and Thea Portier-Young, when faced with disagreement, prefer discipline to argument. In doing so they act illiberally and anti-intellectually; their action shows totalitarian affinities in its preferred method, which is the veiled use of institutional power. They appeal to non- or anti-intellectual categories (‘unprofessional conduct’ in Heath’s case; ‘harassment’ in Portier-Young’s) to short-circuit disagreement. All this is shameful, and I call them out on it.

Heath and Portier-Young aren’t alone among us in showing these tendencies. The convictions that some of my colleagues hold about justice for racial, ethnic, and gender minorities have led them to attempt occupation of a place of unassailably luminous moral probity. That’s a utopia, and those who seek it place themselves outside the space of reason. Once you’ve made that move, those who disagree with you inevitably seem corrupt and dangerous, better removed than argued with, while you seem to yourself beyond criticism. What you do then is discipline your opponents. The contributions to our common life made by, inter alia, Chuck Campbell, Jay Carter, and Valerie Cooper exhibit these tendencies. I call them out too. I hope that they, together with Heath and Portier-Young, will reconsider, repent, make public apology to me and our colleagues for the damage done, and re-dedicate themselves to the life of the mind which is, because of their institutional location, their primary professional vocation. That life requires openness, transparency, and a willingness to engage. I commend all these things to them, and hope devoutly that they come to see their importance more clearly than they now do..

I’m making public the following narrative of these disciplinary proceedings under the pressure of three closely-associated thoughts. The first thought is that several more or less inaccurate versions of these events are already in circulation among us in the form of gossip; full and accurate disclosure is always better than gossip. The second thought is about responsibility. I’m happy to take full responsibility for my contributions to our common life at Duke Divinity. Those contributions have all been public, as is this message. But responsibility requires publicity. Heath’s and Portier-Young’s disciplinary proceedings are not public: they’re veiled, and accompanied by threats of reprisal if unveiled. I’d like them to take responsibility for what they’re doing, and so I’m making it public. The third thought is about the kind of confidence in speech (and writing) whose opposite is fear. Duke Divinity is now a place in which too many thoughts can’t be spoken and too many disagreements remain veiled because of fear. I commend a renunciation of fear-based discipline to those who deploy and advocate it, and its replacement with confidence in speech. That would be appropriate not only to our life together in a university-related Divinity School, but also to our life together as disciples of Jesus Christ.

the disciplinary actions

What follows, under (1) and (2), is a bare-bones factual account of the disciplinary procedures to date, together with two attachments. It may be useful to know that there’s a good deal of recent literature on the nature of university-based disciplinary proceedings like the ones I’m about to describe. I recommend, from quite different angles, Jon Krakauer’s Missoula (2015), and Laura Kipnis’s Unwanted Advances (2017). These books, with distinct agendas, agree that there are deep moral, legal, and procedural problems with university-based Title IX disciplinary procedures. These include, but aren’t limited to, their attempt to control speech and conduct by stifling expression; and their contempt for due process. It may also be useful to know that I’m not alone among Duke Divinity faculty in currently being, or having in the recent past been, subjected to discipline along these lines. I call upon those involved to share the details with us.

(1) Discipline initiated by Heath against Griffiths. In February 2017, Heath contacts Griffiths and asks for an appointment in which she’ll communicate her expectations for professional conduct at Duke Divinity. There’s back-and-forth by email about the conditions for this meeting, and agreement is reached for a four-way meeting to include Heath, Randy Maddox (Dean of Faculty, as support for Heath), Griffiths, and Thomas Pfau (as second for Griffiths). That meeting is scheduled for 3/6/17. Shortly before that date Heath cancels with no reason given, and then in short order asks for a new meeting on the same topic, this time with new criteria as to who can be present that rule out Pfau’s participation. Griffiths responds to this change in conditions by saying that he’s happy to meet, but now, given the changes, only under the condition that the meeting should be a one-on-one free exchange between himself and Heath. There’s email back-and-forth about this between Griffiths and Heath, all copied to Maddox. No agreement is reached about conditions for meeting: Griffiths and Heath each have conditions unacceptable to the other. Standoff. No meeting has occurred at the date of this writing. In a hardcopy letter (PDF attached) dated 3/10/17 [see below — RD], Heath initiates financial and administrative reprisals against Griffiths. Those reprisals ban him from faculty meetings, and, thereby, from voting in faculty affairs; and promise (contra the conditions stated in his letter of appointment) to ban him from future access to research or travel funds. Heath’s letter contains one material falsehood (item #1 in her letter; the accurate account is here, in this paragraph), together with several disputable interpretive claims. More reprisals are adumbrated, but not specified, in the letter. There that disciplinary procedure for the moment rests.

(2) Discipline initiated by Portier-Young against Griffiths, via the University’s Office for Institutional Equity (OIE). In early March, Griffiths hears by telephone from Cynthia Clinton, an officer of the OIE, that a complaint of harassment has been lodged against him by Portier-Young, the gravamen of which is the use of racist and/or sexist speech in such a way as to constitute a hostile workplace. A meeting is scheduled for 3/20/17 between Griffiths and representatives of the OIE to discuss this allegation. Griffiths requests from the OIE a written version of the allegation, together with its evidentiary support, in advance of the scheduled meeting. This request is declined by Clinton on behalf of the OIE, as appears typical for these proceedings. Griffiths then declines the 3/20/17 meeting, and sends a written statement to the OIE, which is attached [see below — RD]. The OIE will, it seems, now draw up a report and submit it to the ‘responsible persons’ in the case, which may include either or both of our Provost, Sally Kornbluth, and our Dean, Elaine Heath. (This may already have happened.) Those persons will then take whatever disciplinary actions they see fit, which may range from nothing to dismissal, with intermediate possibilities. There that disciplinary procedure for the moment rests.

​With sincere good wishes to my colleagues, and in hope of better things, fuller transparency, more exchange, an increase in love, and, as always, more light: in lumine tuo videbimus lumen —

Paul.

6. I published the No. 5 letter a couple of days ago, but I did not then have the documents to which Paul Griffiths referred. Now I do, and I publish those texts below. 

In this one, I present a photocopy of the hard copy letter that Dean Heath sent to Prof. Griffiths, but broken into two images — this, to prevent Prof. Griffiths’s home address from being shown here, on this website:

Here is the second piece of correspondence cited by Griffiths in his No. 5 letter. It is written by him, sent to the university’s Office for Institutional Equity:

Thanks for your reply. I regret that you won’t provide further details of the complaint before our meeting scheduled for the 20th.

I’ve reviewed the written record of my interactions with the complainant over the last twelve months or so, together with what I can reconstruct in memory of spoken interactions in faculty meetings and suchlike.

That review has led me to the conclusion that I’ve done nothing other than express, with as much clarity, force, consistency, and precision as I can, argued opinions about the governance, priorities, purposes, and future of Duke Divinity School. I find nothing to repent of in those interactions, and nothing that can reasonably be considered harassment according to the definition provided in your office’s document outlining policies and procedures. Much less can anything in them be considered harassment based on considerations of race or gender, which I understand from our telephone conversation to be the gravamen.

The complainant’s allegation, so far as I understand it from your brief report, is illiberal, anti-intellectual, and shameful. It is, on the face of it, an attempt to constrain speech by blunt force rather than by free exchange. I’m entirely happy to stand on the record of my exchanges with the complainant, and with other colleagues. I’m confident that any reasonable judge of those exchanges will see them for what they are. I will not, however, further defend anything I’ve said against the kind of complaint you’ve communicated to me. I therefore won’t participate further in the procedure initiated by the complainant and pursued by your office. To do so would be inappropriately to dignify a procedure that has no place in the life of a university. And so I won’t attend the meeting scheduled for the 20th.

I understand that you must do your job as you have to and as you see fit. I hope you’ll see that I’m doing mine as I have to and as I see fit. This is a matter of conscience for me, as it ought to be for anyone committed to the fundamental values of university life.

That’s where the story stands now.

As I see it, Prof. Pfau is right: there is nothing remotely racist, sexist, or bigoted about Paul Griffiths strongly criticizing the anti-racism training. He might be wrong in his judgment about the training — I don’t think he is at all, but he might be — but at real universities, a professor has the right to be wrong. To subject Prof. Griffiths to this absurd disciplinary process on such ideological premises is an outrage. It is, as he calls it, “illiberal, anti-intellectual, and shameful.”

Good on Paul Griffiths for making this public (and by the way, I have not been in contact with him; he did not send me anything.) Duke Divinity School must be held to account — and future students there should know what kind of institution it has become under its current leadership before committing themselves to it.

Zombie Reaganism Rises Again

I don’t understand health care policy, which is why I rarely write about it. But libertarian writer Peter Suderman does understand it, so when he writes this about the AHCA, I pay attention. Excerpts:

I have been a critic of Obamacare since it became law, but the Republican alternative is worse in nearly every way.

The American Health Care Act, which was narrowly passed in the House last week, would worsen Obamacare’s problems rather than fix them. Coverage would be disrupted for millions almost immediately, according to a Congressional Budget Office analysis of a previous iteration of the legislation.

The bill would end Obamacare’s individual mandate, already too weak as a policy mechanism, and impose a fee on those who go without coverage and want to re-enter the insurance market — creating an incentive for relatively healthy people to remain uncovered. As a result, the instability that already exists in Obamacare’s exchanges as insurers scale back around the country would only be increased.

It’s unclear what health policy problem this bill would solve. Even for an opponent of Obamacare, it is difficult to understand why House Republicans chose this path to revamping the nation’s health care system.

It’s difficult to understand, that is, if you think they were passing a health care bill. It makes more sense when you realize that isn’t what they were doing at all. They were passing a tax cut — one intended to pave the way for more tax cuts.

The flaws of the bill, then, can be understood as a symptom of the flaws of the Republican Party, which has for decades maintained a myopic focus on tax cuts at the expense of nearly all else. Too often, it is a party of people who seem to confuse governing with cutting taxes.

Suderman deftly explains how this works. Here’s the core principle: “Tax cuts are the one thing every Republican agrees on.” Suderman says there are good reasons to cut taxes and to reform the tax code, but tying it all in with health care policy is courting a major disaster.

Read the whole thing. 

It’s like the Republican Party can’t help itself. The prime directive of vulgar Reaganism (“Tax cuts and increased military spending are the answers to every question”) is the thing that cannot be killed.