Rod Dreher's Blog, page 569

Bomb Dropped on Evangelical SJWs

Russell Moore went to a big liberal Evangelical social justice conference the other day, and dropped some hard teaching on conferee heads. Excerpts:

During his twenty-eight minute discussion, Moore boldly laid out what it looks like to be a Gospel-centered social justice warrior. He tackled issues ranging from racial injustice, human trafficking, and refugees. But it was his mention of the sanctity of unborn life, sexual ethics, and the reality of Hell that had some in the room squirming uncomfortably in their seats.

Too often, Moore said, Christians are tempted to solely focus on the social issues that their peers or “tribe” approve. “When I’m speaking to people in my tribe of conservative confessional evangelicalism,” explained Moore, “I often have to say you are pro-life, and rightly so, but because you recognize the image of God and the humanity of God in the unborn child and in his or her mother, you must also recognize the humanity and dignity of God in people who might not be politically popular with you right now: with prisoners, with refugees, with immigrants. And that works the other way too.”

The bulk of Moore’s discussion urged his audience to recognize the dehumanizing of the unborn as equally unjust as the dehumanizing of other vulnerable groups more popular among younger Christians. “There are other justice-oriented Evangelicals who sometimes are very willing to speak out, rightly so on these issues of trafficking and racial injustice, but who are afraid to speak up on the issue of abortion…”

More:

Apart from the sanctity of life, Moore briefly touched on Christian sexual ethics. He noted some Evangelicals are “afraid to speak up on a biblical view of issues of human sexuality because they’re afraid that somehow that means they will be associated with people in polyester somewhere that they don’t want to be like. How cowardly.”

After this particular comment came an audible “wow” from somewhere on the other side of the sanctuary.  Among the chatty youth group I had been sitting among all morning, there was a moment of shocked silence. Then came snarky murmurs soon afterwards.

Undeterred by my youth group friends’ murmurs, Moore continued, “If we are silent about what the Scriptures and 2,000 years of Church history has taught us about human sexuality and what it means to be right with God and what it means for children to grow up with both a mother and a father, if we are silent at any of those points then we’re really not the justice people, we’re really not Gospel people. We’re just people who are protecting our platforms and we’re just choosing on which one to stand.”

Read the whole thing.  Mighty impressive. The SJWs didn’t see that coming.

View From Your Table

Beaune, France

The reader writes:

A 20-month aged Comté, a bleu du Jura, chèvre, a rosette of saucisson, baguette, and a bottle of Cornu-Camus. Eaten in a square in Beaune.

Radicalizing Kindergartners

A reader writes to say, “Here we go. This is state indoctrination in transgender ideology.” He’s right:

Kindergarten used to be a place for children to learn how to add, subtract, and read.  Next year, Washington school children as young as five years old will instead be learning about gender fluidity and the differences between gender and sexual identity.

The newly-minted health and physical education standards, released by the Washington Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction (OSPI), will be implemented in schools across the state for the 2017-2018 school year.

As reported by The Daily Caller, the new standards require students to learn about gender identity and expression beginning in kindergarten.

Beginning in Kindergarten, students will be taught about the many ways to express gender.  Gender expression education will include information about the manifestations of traits that are typically associated with one gender. Crossdressing is one form of gender expression.

Third graders will be introduced to the concept of gender identity.  These children will be taught that they can choose their own gender.

Fourth graders will be expected to “define sexual orientation,” which refers to whether a person identifies as heterosexual, homosexual, or bisexual; they’ll also be taught about HIV prevention.  Children in fourth grade will be told that they can choose their sexual orientation.

Fourth and fifth graders will learn about the relativity of gender roles and why such roles are social constructs that are not inherent to who we are as male or female human beings.

Seventh graders will be expected to “distinguish between biological sex, gender identity, gender expression, and sexual orientation.”

High school students will critically “evaluate how culture, media, society, and other people influence our perceptions of gender roles, sexuality, relationships, and sexual orientation.”

You can read the complete list of details on the sex and sexuality education starting on page 28 of the PDF version of the guidelines.

This is incredible. The public schools in the state of Washington will deliberately demolish family, sex, and gender norms, starting in kindergarten. And notice that they’re smuggling in a radical moral agenda under the neutral language of health and wellness.

I don’t see how orthodox Christians, Muslims, and Orthodox Jews who have the means to leave the public schools in states like Washington can justify remaining. How are Christian (et al.) teachers supposed to teach this stuff in good conscience? The state is directly attacking not only the fundamental teachings of faith, but also the fundaments of anthropology — that is, what it is to be a person.

This is radical stuff! 

UPDATE: Prompted by commenters, I reviewed the state document closely in light of criticism that the Daily Caller exaggerated what the document says. The critics are right. The DC writes that third graders “will be taught that they can choose their own gender.” This is what the directive says:

Explain that gender roles can vary considerably.

Understand importance of treating others with respect regarding gender identity.

I suppose it is possible that by talking about the variation in gender roles, third graders might be taught that they can choose their own gender, but to claim that the curriculum mandates that is misleading.

The DC wrote that fourth graders  “will be told that they can choose their sexual orientation.” This is what the curriculum actually says about what fourth graders will learn:

Identify how friends and family can influence ideas regarding gender roles, identity, and expression.

Demonstrate ways to show respect for all people.

Define sexual orientation.

Even if I squint, I can’t see how the DC gets the idea that kids will be taught that they can choose their sexual orientation.

I apologize for being too quick to post the DC’s claims without checking more thoroughly. The actual, verifiable aims of the curriculum are bad enough without exaggerating them.

But don’t make the mistake of assuming that because the DC exaggerated or lied in two instances, the curriculum is okay. It very much is not. From kindergarten, Washington state schoolchildren will be taught that there is no such reality as male and female, that biology has nothing to do with gender. Here, from the document, are the definitions used by the state in preparing this guidance:

Gender: A social construct based on emotional, behavioral, and cultural characteristics attached to a person’s assigned biological sex. A person’s social and/or legal status as male or female.

• Gender expression. The way someone outwardly expresses their gender, whether consciously or unconsciously.

• Gender identity. Someone’s inner sense of their gender (see Transgender).

• Gender roles. Social expectations about how people should act, think, or feel based on their assigned biological sex.

The state document suggests for further reading on the topic:

A Gender Spectrum Glossary. Montgomery, AL: Teaching Tolerance, A Project of the Southern Poverty Law Center, 2016. www.tolerance.org/LGBT-best-practices-terms

The Southern Poverty Law Center is a far-left advocacy group. If you follow that link, it presents the activist left’s vision on sex and sexuality as if it were normative. This highly contestable document from the SPLC is apparently the source of the State of Washington’s curriculum mandates for its students. Look at the “Classroom Activities” the Teaching Tolerance project suggests. It’s leftist agitprop, as is the “central texts” list the SPLC suggests for its “anti-bias” curriculum. Mind you, the Washington health guidelines don’t mandate using those specific materials, but the fact that the people who created the health teaching guidelines took SPLC’s vision of sex and sexuality as a source is important.

Here are some of the definitions that Teaching Tolerance page the State of Washington recommends to teachers trying to figure out how to implement its new guidelines:

Assigned Sex

The sex/gender one is considered to be at birth based on a cursory examination of external genitalia.

According to gender theory, your genitals are irrelevant to your sex/gender. Your gender identity was imposed upon you as a baby.

Heterosexism

The societal/cultural, institutional and individual beliefs and practices that privilege heterosexuals and subordinate and denigrate lesbians, gay men and bisexual/pansexual people. The critical element that differentiates heterosexism (or any other “ism”) from prejudice and discrimination is the use of institutional power and authority to support prejudices and enforce discriminatory behaviors in systematic ways with far-reaching outcomes and effects.

Presumably the kids in Washington state will be taught that dissenting from gender theory is a sign of bias, or

Homophobia

Literally, the fear of homosexuals and homosexuality; however, this term is generally applied to anyone who dislikes LGBTIQ people, who uses derogatory sexuality- or gender-based terms, or who feels that LGBTIQ people want “special rights” and not “equal rights.” Homophobic behavior can range from telling jokes about lesbians and gay men to verbal abuse and even acts of physical violence.

So, from kindergarten, this highly politicized vision of sex and gender will be mainlined into the minds of the state’s public schoolchildren. The Daily Caller‘s piece was misleading, and again, I apologize for not checking it more closely, and thank the readers who followed the link I provided to the state document, and corrected me.

But this is still a radical project of social engineering. They’re capturing the minds of the very young. If you are a traditionalist Christian, you may teach your children that what their school teaches them about sex and gender is false, but do you really think that’s going to be enough to protect them from what their peer group says?

Schools In The Next America

A reader sends in this Sarah Carr article from Slate, talking about how schools are changing and will have to change to accommodate the fact that whites will be a minority in the US. It’s already the case that whites are a minority among the school-age population, she says. Excerpts:

As public school students diversify, qualities such as empathy, self-awareness, open-mindedness, and understanding are more important than ever in our teachers—just as they will be for all of us in an increasingly diverse society. Teachers will need to have the capacity to serve not just as instructors but also as cultural brokers and social leaders, aware of their own biases, empathetic when confronting difference, comfortable with change.

OK, but that is a hell of a lot to expect from a teacher, especially on the salaries we pay them. More:

There’s a second, even more complicated trial confronting America’s rapidly diversifying schools: How can we create integrated school communities at a time when many white parents, long accustomed to various forms of privilege and preference, fear their children being in the minority, and when schools already struggle to meet the needs of diverse students and learners?

Oh, here we go. For Columbia University professor Sarah Carr, the only possible reason white parents take their kids out of more “diverse” public schools is because they are racists who are sore because they’ve lost their privilege. More:

Today, countless suburbs that were once almost exclusively white offer some of the greatest hope for school desegregation as their populations diversify and schools tip to majority-minority. But that shift has led to a new round of white and middle-class flight in some communities, as families leave for whiter, wealthier suburbs or private and charter schools. “Integrated communities in the United States have a hard time staying integrated for more than 10 or 20 years,” write Myron Orfield and Thomas Luce in their 2013 report“America’s Racially Diverse Suburbs: Opportunities and Challenges.” And the resegregation of black and brown families typically leaves their communities with fewer resources, more concentrated poverty, bleaker economic prospects, and less societal support.

It’s telling that Carr sees desegregation as something so obviously good it doesn’t need to be argued for. Well, a new Department of Education report shows why at least some white parents prefer for their kids to go to less diverse schools:

Nationwide, 2.8 million students were suspended from public schools during the 2013-2014 school year, according to the Civil Rights Data Collection, which the U.S. Education Department releases every two years. That represents a drop of nearly 20 percent compared to the 2011-2012 school year.

But black students were nearly four times as likely to be suspended as white students, and nearly twice as likely to be expelled. The same pattern showed up in preschool: Black children represented 19 percent of all preschoolers but accounted for 47 percent of those who received suspensions.

“Fewer suspensions is an important sign of progress,” said Education Secretary John B. King Jr. “But I don’t think there’s any way you can look at this data and not come away with a tremendous sense of urgency about continuing to close our equity gaps.”

 

I cannot find recent statistics on how crimes committed in schools break down by race. FBI data from 2000-2004 show that whites committed 59 percent of crimes in school, while blacks committed 22 percent. But because the stats didn’t separate Hispanic from white, they are of limited use in understanding this problem.

There are two ways to read the data that the Education Department released today. One is that black kids are the victims of racism in school discipline. That is the orthodox liberal way to read the data. But why can’t one look at this data and conclude that black kids overall make schools more chaotic and unsafe? That may not be true, of course, but I fail to see why it is a less plausible conclusion to draw than the one the Education Department is drawing.

Why are fewer suspensions necessarily “a sign of progress”? If kids are committing offenses that would normally get them suspended, but school administrators are turning a blind eye to it because they don’t want to be thought of as racist, that’s not progress.

The thing we don’t want to talk about is that some cultures are better than others in terms of preparing people for certain tasks. Take race out of it. The other day, talking to some people in town for the Walker Percy Weekend about education, someone said that the moral culture in many schools is not something that parents want their kids to be thrown into. The observation is obviously true — and it had nothing to do with race.

If parents pulled their kids out of School A and moved them to School B because the moral culture within the School B population was preferable to that within School A, is that not a kind of self-segregation that makes sense? It is perfectly understandable to fret about the loss of social solidarity in our country; the social fabric really is unraveling. But why does that obligate parents to send their children to a school that is demonstrably less safe and conducive to learning, just to demonstrate that they aren’t bigots?

If you’re a white parent, and the price of not being called a bigot is to compel your kids to attend a school where they are less safe, and less likely to get a good education, then you might well decide that you don’t care what they call you, because you’re going to protect your child.

The Obama daughters attend (or attended; Malia just graduated) Sidwell Friends, the post Washington, DC, private school, where tuition runs nearly $38,000 per year. Sidwell Friends loves loves loves diversity, welcoming students of all races whose parents can pay $38,000 per year to attend (caveat: some of the kids are there on scholarship). Barack and Michelle Obama didn’t want their daughters to experience the diversity of the DC public school system, and who can blame them? But see, this is the kind of sham diversity that many liberals extol. They get to feel good about sending their kids to a “school that values diversity,” and are entitled to overlook the class component that filters out diversity from the rowdier segments of society. If Sidwell Friends looked more like the nearly all-minority public schools in DC in terms of class — or, for that matter, all-white public schools in Appalachia — it would be much less desirable for the upper middle class and wealthy parents who send their kids there. Why? Because those poorer kids from less stable family and social backgrounds would bring their culture with them into the school.

If Sidwell Friends really wanted to reflect the actual diversity of its city, as opposed to superficial diversity, it would be a very different school — and a much less desirable one for the children of the ruling class. The Obamas almost certainly send their daughters to Sidwell Friends, and not to DC public schools, because they judged that their kids would receive a better education there, and be far safer than if they went to a DC public school, which are far blacker than Sidwell friends. And they’re right!

But why can’t the same benefit of the doubt be extended to white parents who put their kids in majority-white schools? Sure, some of them probably are racist. But maybe they are doing what the Obamas did: looking at the options on the table and making a rational choice to do the best they can by their children. Why is that so unthinkable to the US Education Secretary and Sarah Carr?

 

Motorist Of The Year

Screen grab from www.theadvocate.com

Read the whole story about this fetching motorcar enthusiast.

View From Your Table

Baton Rouge, Louisiana

George’s. Under the Perkins Road Overpass. That’s Franklin Evans across the table. We’re eating shrimp po-boys — his last meal in Louisiana. As I type this, he’s on his way home to Philly. God bless painkillers, is what I’m saying.

Islam, Christianity, & Europe’s Future

A decade ago, futurist Daniel Bodanis said his “dangerous idea” is that the “hyper-Islamicist” critique of the West as a spent and declining force is true. Excerpt:

The first generation of immigrants from farm to city bring with them the attitudes of their farm world; the first generation of ‘migrants’ from blue collar city neighborhoods to upper middle class professional life bring similar attitudes of responsibility as well. We ignore what the media pours out about how we’re supposed to live. We’re responsible for parents, even when it’s not to our economic advantage; we vote against our short-term economic interests, because it’s the ‘right’ thing to do; we engage in philanthropy towards individuals of very different backgrounds from ourselves. But why? In many parts of America or Europe, the rules and habits creating those attitudes no longer exist at all.

When that finally gets cut away, will what replaces it be strong enough for us to survive?

But now, there are reports of conversions to Christianity among Muslim refugees in Europe:

A growing number of Muslim refugees in Europe are converting to Christianity, according to churches, which have conducted mass baptisms in some places.

Reliable data on conversions is not available but anecdotal evidence suggests a pattern of rising church attendance by Muslims who have fled conflict, repression and economic hardship in countries across the Middle East and central Asia.

Complex factors behind the trend include heartfelt faith in a new religion, gratitude to Christian groups offering support during perilous and frightening journeys, and an expectation that conversion may aid asylum applications.

At Trinity church in the Berlin suburb of Steglitz, the congregation has grown from 150 two years ago to almost 700, swollen by Muslim converts, according to Pastor Gottfried Martens. Earlier this year, churches in Berlin and Hamburg reportedly held mass conversions for asylum seekers at municipal swimming pools.

The Austrian Catholic church logged 300 applications for adult baptism in the first three months of 2016, with the Austrian pastoral institute estimating 70% of those converting are refugees.

An Anglican priest, once an Iranian Muslim refugee, says that yes, some are undoubtedly converting to make it easier to claim asylum. And the Anglican bishop of Bradford says:

“When we do confirmations, we work hard to make sure the person is serious. We all have mixed motives. But if someone says ‘I believe this’, who are we to make windows into people’s souls? The only thing I can do is see if people are still there a year later – and often they are.”

That was from The Guardian. This is from the Daily Beast:

The German pastor of the Evangelical-Lutheran church in Berlin calls the conversion phenomenon “a gift from God.” In his modest community a staggering 1,200 Muslims, mainly Afghans and Iranians, converted in just three years.

In Hamburg, where German ARD TV showed the Pakistanis and Afghans lining up to be baptized by the pastor of the Persian Church community, more than 600 people reportedly were received into the congregation.

There is no reliable overall figure for converts in northern Europe, but judging by reports from different media outlets, it is safe to assume the number runs into the thousands, maybe even tens of thousands who say they want the Gospel, “the good news,” offered by Jesus Christ.

One young Iranian woman convert told the German news magazine Stern, “I’ve been looking all my life for peace and happiness, but in Islam, I have not found them,” Another convert told Stern he had found in Christianity an element—love—that was missing from the faith he was brought up in. “In Islam, we always lived in fear,” he said. “Fear God, fear of sin, fear of punishment. But Christ is a God of love.”

Curiouser and curiouser. Who knows what God has planned for Europe. Wouldn’t it be astonishing if the revival of Christianity there came through converted Muslim refugees, who remembered the kindness Christians showed them?

Trump The Untrustworthy

Can we believe anything this guy says about, well, anything?

There is no theory to the chaos of Donald Trump’s constantly changing policy positions.

On Sunday, the volatile VIP changed his tune on yet another stance, saying he would have approved a “surgical” military operation to take out former Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi after months of stating that he would have not intervened in the North African nation.

“I didn’t mind surgical. And I said surgical. You do a surgical shot and you take them out,” Trump said on CBS’ “Face the Nation” after host John Dickerson confronted the mogul with a 2011 video of him saying he would have intervened in Libya.

“I was for doing something, but I wasn`t for what you have right now,” Trump continued. “I was never for a strong intervention. I could have seen surgical, where you take out Gadhafi and his group,” he said after further needling from Dickerson.

How does Trump think we got the chaos now in Libya?

One of Trump’s few qualities, I have felt, is his questioning the imperative for the US to exert global hegemony. If you are looking for a reason to vote for him, that’s one. But in truth, I don’t think he believes it. His foreign policy beliefs are really irritable mental gestures, and I believe that a President Trump will be so at sea on foreign policy that he will rely on the GOP foreign policy establishment. In other words, it will likely be the third George W. Bush term.

What a depressing election.

The Trans-formation Of Women’s Sports

You knew this was going to happen one day:

High school girls in Alaska are crying foul after a male sprinter took home all-state honors in girls’ track and field. According to local reports, it was the first time in Alaskan history that a male athlete competed in the girls’ state championships.

Haines senior Nattaphon Wangyot–who self-identifies as a girl–advanced to the state finals in the 100-meter and 200-meter events. He won fifth place in the 100-meter dash and third place in the 200-meter. In both events, he competed against girls as young as ninth grade

More from USA Today:

Wangyot, a Thai native who was born male and identifies as female, qualified and competed in the Class 3A girls’ sprints at the state meet, capturing third place in the 200-meter dash (27.3) and fifth in the 100 (13.36). She also played for the girls volleyball and basketball teams at Haines during her senior year.

However, Fairbanks (Alaska) Hutchinson junior Saskia Harrison, whose time of 14.11 seconds in the 100 left her outside the 16-competitor cut for the Class 1A-2A-3A field, took issue with Wangyot’s presence in the event.

“I’m glad that this person is comfortable with who they are and they’re able to be happy with who they are,” she told KTVA-TV, “but competitively I don’t think it’s completely 100 percent fair.”

Of course it’s unfair to female athletes. But this is the new world, in which we all have to pretend that a biological male whose body has been shaped by male hormones is not physically stronger than females. This is the insane result of believing that we can overcome biology by force of imagination. In this case, it has a real-world effect on young women competing against this MtF transgender.

ICYMI, the Olympics are on board the trans train too:

Transgender athletes should be allowed to compete in the Olympics and other international events without undergoing sex reassignment surgery, according to new guidelines adopted by the IOC.

International Olympic Committee medical officials said on Sunday they changed the policy to adapt to current scientific, social and legal attitudes on transgender issues.

The guidelines are designed as recommendations – not rules or regulations – for international sports federations and other bodies to follow and should apply for this year’s Olympics in Rio de Janeiro.

“I don’t think many federations have rules on defining eligibility of transgender individuals,” IOC medical director Dr Richard Budgett said. “This should give them the confidence and stimulus to put these rules in place.”

Under the previous IOC guidelines, approved in 2003, athletes who transitioned from male to female or vice versa were required to have reassignment surgery followed by at least two years of hormone therapy in order to be eligible to compete.

Now, surgery will no longer be required, with female-to-male transgender athletes eligible to take part in men’s competitions “without restriction”.

Meanwhile, male-to-female transgender athletes will need to demonstrate that their testosterone level has been below a certain cutoff point for at least one year before their first competition.

The first time a male-to-female transgender wins an Olympic medal, we will see protests, probably.

Walker Percy Weekend Wrap

A meeting of the Synod of St. Francisville

I would say that since starting St. John’s Orthodox Mission in St. Francisville, the number of crawfish-eating episodes involving Orthodox priest in the world has more than doubled.

Those gents were enjoying the final night of this year’s Walker Percy Weekend — a soggy affair, given the intermittent thunderstorms this weekend, but one in which no spirits seemed dampened.

We started on Friday afternoon, with a showing of The Seer before a packed house at the screening room of the local library. I had seen this documentary about Wendell Berry before, but not on a big screen. Filmmakers Laura Dunn and Jef Sewell graciously gave us permission to show it at Walker Percy Weekend. I’m so grateful to have had the chance to see it a second time, and on a proper screen. It is a remarkable piece of work about a remarkable man. At one point, off camera, Dunn speaks to Berry about how we are supposed to live in such a fragmented world. She begins, “I’m a child of divorce –”

“We are all children of divorce today,” Berry interjects. He means that our lives do not cohere, because we are cut off from the conditions that make for true human flourishing. The only way to put things back together is to start by repairing one piece at a time. I was in the back thinking, “That’s a big part of the Benedict Option, right there.”

The opening night cocktail part in the churchyard didn’t come off as planned, on account of the rain. But Grace Episcopal Church kindly opened the church hall to us, and the caterers set up tents outside in the parking lot. The food was quite good, and folks were convivial and undeterred by the weather. I saw lots of seersucker, which gladdens my heart. This blog was well represented at the crowd. I saw commenters Bernie, Franklin Evans, Pacopond, and Isidore the Farmer, as well as a couple of others who were traveling incognito. I also met a number of this blog’s readers. That was a particular pleasure. Thank you all from the bottom of my heart for coming to our town to celebrate with us, and for your kind words to me this weekend about the blog.

Saturday morning began with two panel discussions: one on “The Moviegoer at 50″ and the other on Percy and Catholicism. I was at the Percy in Catholicism event because I introduced the speakers. I noticed something interesting in the Q&A period after the talk. There were at least two Catholic seminarians in the audience, and a number of young orthodox Catholics from Georgetown, the West Coast, and elsewhere. One of the seminarians, who looked to be in his mid-20s, asked a question about Percy and the Second Vatican Council. I don’t remember precisely what Father Patrick Samway, SJ, one of Percy’s biographers, had to say about it, but I do recall that he stated firmly his own support for it.

Later in the day, the seminarian who asked the question introduced himself to me. He had overheard Father Samway and another older, liberal-minded Catholic after the talk discussing their enthusiasm for the Council, and their frustrations over how it had not been fully implemented. The orthodox young seminarian, who described himself as of “the Benedict XVI generation,” said, “You can see right here the real difference between generations in the Church.”

It’s interesting to contemplate which of the two sides Percy would prefer were to alive today.

After that session, we had the awful drama of Franklin taking a wrong step on the staircase and breaking his leg. He had been headed out to lunch with Bernie and with David J. White, who had rolled into town from Waco that morning. By his own admission to me later, Franklin was bounding down the stairs, with his head turned back, talking, when he wrong-footed the landing. He sat at the foot of the stairs in shock. Bernie called 911, and I ran out to the curb to direct the EMTs.

During the excruciating wait, Dr. O.L. “Lee” Burnett III, an oncologist who teaches at the University of Alabama-Birmingham’s med school, attended Franklin. Dr. Lee had been in the lecture. Thank God he was there. What a caring physician he is. Alabama is lucky to have such a man.

Off went Franklin in the ambulance. Later, he would be X-rayed and go into orthopedic surgery, then overnight in the hospital. We all

Dr. Burnett, our hero

knew that was a possibility, so it made for a fretful lunch break. But mine was redeemed by having lunch with Isidore, with whom I discussed the Benedict Option, among other things. Isidore works in the economics profession, and said that it shocks and worries him to observe that 80 percent of our economy is, as he put it, “hollowed out.” He said that it’s as if the mighty oak was still standing, but it had been devoured internally by termites, and awaited only a strong wind to topple. Having seen the Wendell Berry film the day before, Isidore said the story of the destruction of small farmers depicted in the movie is also the story of his Midwestern family. He said that it’s almost mind-boggling to him to realize that he’s got a much higher income than his farmer grandfather did, but that he can’t accumulate as much working capital as the old man was able to back in the day. (That’s what led Isidore to talk about the hollowing out of the economy.)

This gave me an idea for next year’s festival: a lecture on Walker Percy, Wendell Berry, and the Idea of Place.

Back to town, in yet another subtropical torrent, for the afternoon sessions. Over at the recently restored Temple Sinai, a synagogue that served St. Francisville’s Jewish community a century ago, the great Ralph Wood from Baylor took the stage with his former student Jessica Hooten Wilson of John Brown University. They talked about Percy and Dostoevsky. I wasn’t at that lecture, but my friend texted me throughout saying that the room was jam-packed, and that Ralph and Jessica were dazzling — a judgment I kept hearing confirmed by others the rest of the evening.

I was over at the Courthouse introducing my friend Matt Sitman, who delivered a thought-provoking analysis of our current political situation as seen through the lens of Percy’s dystopian political novel Love In The Ruins. I was sitting in the front of the courtroom over to the side. It must have looked like I was playing on my smartphone, but in truth I was taking notes. Matt made so many good points that I couldn’t keep up. At one point, Matt, or maybe a professor in the audience (my notes don’t say), read this passage from a letter Percy wrote to his friend Shelby Foote:

I have in mind a futuristic novel dealing with the decline and fall of the U.S.; the country rent almost hopelessly between the rural Knothead right and the godless alienated left, worse than the Civil War. Of that and the goodness of God, and of the merriness of living quite anonymously in the suburbs, drinking well, cooking out, attending Mass at the usual silo-and-barn, the goodness of Brunswick bowling alleys (the good white maple and plastic balls), coming home of an evening, with the twin rubies of the TV transmitter in the evening sky, having four drinks of good sour mash and assaulting one’s wife in the armchair etc. What we Catholics call the sacramental life.

That brought laughter from the audience, but I must say that this is also an element of the Benedict Option, as I see it. Matt had said in his lecture that Love In The Ruins is a novel about the quest for real community when the whole world has gone crazy around you, and the organized Left and its counterparts on the Right are extreme and appalling. A real community, in the novel’s vision, is an imperfect one marked by love and mercy, and united by the Eucharist, or at least by the recognition that God is in our midst, and behaving as if that were true. (I’m paraphrasing Matt; my notes are sketchy).

In light of that, and of the quote from Percy’s letter, and with a phrase Matt used to sum up the moral strategy of Percy’s fiction (“Attack the fake in the name of the real”), it occurred to me that this offers a way to explain to readers the Benedict Option’s promise of happiness: through re-sacramentalizing everyday life. Real life, not just the life inside our heads. The idea is to re-orient our lives such that we can hear God’s voice, and see signs of His presence among us. It sounds distressingly simple, but as the monks will tell you, it is hard enough to pull off inside a monastery, much less living in the world. But as Percy might have said, “What else is there?”

The final panel of the day was an easygoing discussion among five folks who had known Walker Percy at some point in life, the best informed being his daughter, Mary Pratt. This is Mary Pratt’s third Percy Weekend, and she has become a beloved mainstay. She is a natural-born storyteller, and regaled the capacity courtroom crowd with tales of life with Daddy. Did you know that Walker Percy drove an AMC Pacer in the Seventies? Now you do.

One festivalgoer told me that if he had come all this way just to hear Mary Pratt alone, it would have been worth it. There was an especially poignant moment in which an audience member asked Mary Pratt about the legacy of suicide in the Percy family, and how that affected her father.

“Some people say Daddy was manic-depressive,” she said. “Mama always said that she never did see the manic.”

Everybody laughed at that, but then Mary Pratt got serious, and said that in her estimation the things that saved her father from such a dark destiny were his Roman Catholic faith and the love of her mother, Bunt.

The session ended with Mary Pratt telling a funny whiskey story, which was just perfect, as the Bourbon Stroll down Royal Street was just beginning. Walker must have been interceding for us, because the rain stopped during that event, which is the highlight of the festival for many people. Here are some festivalgoers on the front porch of Seabrook Cottage, enjoying mint juleps.

What’s so much fun about the Bourbon Stroll is it gives folks a chance to get to know each other, and to talk about all the things they’ve heard that day, with benefit of drink in hand. I got so busy talking that I only made it through three of my allotted four cocktails, which is probably a good thing. The Royal Street residents who opened their homes to visitors for this very special Southern hospitality are lovely, generous people who represent the best of our town.

On Royal Street outside Seabrook, I ran into Dr. Adam Whatley, the local orthopedist who had seen Franklin. An hour and a half earlier, Dr. Whatley had been operating on Franklin, pinning his broken bones back together. Now he was chilling out with a glass of bourbon. He’s been a sponsor of the Percy weekend since the beginning, but this is the first time it’s brought him business.

At Propinquity house, I ran into Jessica Wilson having a drink with my friend Ashley Fox-Smith:

Ashley Fox-Smith, left, and Jessica Hooten Wilson

I told Jessica that people were raving about her talk. Said Ashley, “Did you hear about Jessica and the unpublished Flannery O’Connor novel?”

Wait … there is an unpublished Flannery O’Connor novel?!

It turns out there is — and the O’Connor estate has tapped Jessica to finish it! My jaw literally dropped. Jessica explained how this came to be, and I literally had goosebumps skitter along my arm. Can you imagine that kind of honor? Jessica’s name will go down in history. And we will be able to say that we knew her when. Must book her and Ralph for next year’s Percyfest to talk about Flannery O’Connor.

We all trundled back down Ferdinand Street to the park for the crawfish boil. Here’s the View From My Table:

Turns out that Alex Ignatiev, the julep-sipper with the beard pictured above, won the raffle of the framed Christopher Harris photograph of Walker Percy. It is beautiful, just beautiful. I also ran into an old friend, a local who had been next door at Al Aqaba, our town’s Arabic restaurant, having dinner with his family.

“They have two belly dancers there tonight,” my friend said. “They’re good, too. They were showing the kids how to do it.”

Said I, “Did you ever think you would live to see the day when St. Francisville had an Arabic restaurant where you can watch belly dancers while smoking a hookah pipe?”

He grinned big and shook his head, no. Progress! I say Belly Dancer Night henceforth must be declared as the St. Francisville Ballet in performance.

Me, I was so busy talking to people at the crawfish boil that I neglected to eat much crawfish or drink adequate amounts of beer. But I made up for it later when a crew of young out-of-towners, including Matt Sitman, descended on my house bearing bottles of bourbon, for an impromptu afterparty. That was a blast, though regrettably I had to close down the celebration as we came up on 1 am, because Julie is the parish choir director, and needed rest before liturgy, and I had to be awake in four hours to take Matt to the airport for an early morning flight back to New York.

Fueled by coffee, Matt and I made it to his plane on time, somehow, motoring through the fog. It was such a pleasure to have been able to spend time with Matt, whose writing I’ve admired for years on Andrew Sullivan’s blog (he was its literary editor). I hope this is not the last we see of him down here.

Then to church later in the morning. We had several Percyfest attendees from out of town in the liturgy. One of them said to me later, “I hope you all realize what a treasure you have in Father Matthew.” We do!

I was scheduled to take Franklin, now in a cast, back to the New Orleans airport for a flight home to Philly, but for a few reasons, including feeling the need to rest before undertaking the journey, he stayed over in town an extra night. I’ll be taking him down later today. I’m glad he stayed, because it gave us a chance to visit. I took him to lunch across the street at The Francis, where he ate like a horse, and after all that, deserved to.

Franklin being Franklin, he was in good spirits, despite the crutches, the cast, and the fact that his Walker Percy Weekend had been ruined. He told me how good it felt to him to have been helped by people at every step of the way after his fall. “I was aware the whole time that at least one person was standing right next to me to take care of me,” he said. From Dr. Burnett, who waited with him and treated him until the ambulance got there, to Dr. Whatley, to the EMT crew, to festivalgoers who stood nearby and prayed for him, Franklin says he felt carried through the crisis by these folks.

“I knew what kind of people I was among before I fell,” he told me. “That was confirmed by what you all did for me after. You live in a blessed place, Rod.”

Yes, I said, I know.

He looked at me more intently.

“You live in a blessed place,” he said, with deliberate emphasis. “I wish I had this in my life.”

After I made it home from our dinner, I wrote to the committee of very hard-working people who organized and executed all the events — and who pulled off a successful festival despite the rain. Even a festival as small as ours requires an unbelievable amount of planning and work, but our crew does it as a labor of love. The speakers and panelists also came as a labor of love for Percy and the literary South. We operate on a shoestring budget, and can’t afford to do much more for our speakers than give them a hotel room and tickets to all the events. But they still come, and make our lives smarter and happier. And the good folks from Hot Tails Restaurant worked in the rain to set up the crawfish boil, which was a hard thing, but they did it anyway.

The whole weekend vindicates Franklin’s judgment, and not only that, it reminded me of why I chose to come home.

I hope we see you at next year’s Walker Percy Weekend. Mary Pratt’s coming back for sure. As she told me goodbye at the crawfish boil, “See you next year!”