Peter L. Berger's Blog, page 491

Trump’s America

God help us, there’s some of Donald Trump in us all. He’s an American type, reflecting abiding strains in our national character. His emergence as a serious candidate for the presidency has alarmed many Americans, as well it should. But it should not have surprised us as much as it did, and it should not prevent us now from understanding, with as much empathy as judgment, the winsomeness of his appeal to a disaffected group of our fellow citizens.

The first ideal American—the first to reach mythic stature—was the woodsman. Our most famous woodsman was Daniel Boone, who had countless imitators and heirs, including the “Sons of Daniel Boone,” which later became the Boy Scouts of America. The woodsman hunted, trapped, and sometimes surveyed. We revered him for his ability to thrive in the woods, his apartness from civilization, his bravery and endurance, his similarity to and conflict with Native Americans, his eagerness to head toward what for him and his fellow whites was new country, and his earnest and seemingly uncomplicated character.The second American type is the builder. Our most famous builder was Benjamin Franklin, who in some ways invented the type. We revere builders because they work hard and honestly, accumulating wealth over time. (Franklin’s most famous writing is “The Way to Wealth.”) They are frugal. They dislike waste, even in small amounts, and avoid ostentation and self-display. They defer gratification, mistrust debt, and spend less than they earn. They prize their good reputations. Because they view themselves as stewards rather than owners of wealth, they embrace the moral imperative of conserving and giving back. Their ethic was perfectly captured by John Wesley, the founder of Methodism (what a great word, methodism, to describe this way of life!) when he urged his followers to “Gain all you can, save all you can, then give all you can.”Because this way of living hinges on thrift and hard work, it often produces wealth, and sometimes considerable wealth, for those who practice it. It has probably produced the majority of U.S. business titans, from Andrew Carnegie (who wrote “The Gospel of Wealth”) to Warren Buffett (whose license plate, before he sold it to benefit a charity, read “THRIFTY”). And, more than any other way of thinking and living, it has produced the great American middle class, which currently seems to be shrinking.Which brings us to the third American type: the magnifico.1 Our most famous magnifico today is Donald Trump. We revere magnificoes because they entertain us with their grand pretensions and larger-than-life ways. They make big deals. They gamble daringly. They are permissive. They spend freely and consume lavishly. Viewing the builder’s code of self-restraint as dour and boring, magnificoes prefer to strut and swagger, brag and charm, display and self-promote. Often enough they are criminals or at least friendly with criminals—the mobsters who invented Las Vegas in the 1930s and 1940s and extended the concept to Havana in the 1950s and Atlantic City in the 1980s are possibly the most influential magnificoes in U.S. history.The magnificoes’ most visible periods in our history are the late 19th century, the 1920s, and today. In finance, think J. P. Morgan. In publishing, think William Randolph Hearst. In crime, think Richard Canfield, the casino pioneer. Not all magnificoes are rich and not all are nationally famous. I remember my uncle from Alabama telling me stories when I was a child about “Big Jim” Folsom, the populist Alabama governor from the 1940s and 1950s, who called himself “the little man’s big friend.” He delighted in showing off his clothes to the crowds of farmers and working people who came to hear him, bragging about how much he paid for his suits, which were more expensive than any his audience would ever own or see. My uncle, who admired Folsom, said that most of his listeners appreciated the bravado and enjoyed the performance.From Franklin on, builders have looked down on the magnificoes, primarily because magnificoes violate the norms of thrift. Here is Warren Buffett speaking about Donald Trump in 1991, when Trump’s casino business was filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy for the first of what would come to be four times:

Where did Donald Trump go wrong? The big problem with Donald Trump was he never went right. He basically overpaid for properties, but he got people to lend him the money. He was terrific at borrowing money. If you look at his assets, and what he paid for them, and what he borrowed to get them, there was never any real equity there. He owes, perhaps, $3.5 billion now, and, if you had to pick a figure as to the value of the assets, it might be more like $2.5 billion. He’s a billion in the hole, which is a lot better than being $100 in the hole because if you’re $100 in the hole, they come and take the TV set. If you’re a billion in the hole, they say “hang in there, Donald.”… I would suggest that the big successes I’ve met had a fair amount of Ben Franklin in them. And Donald Trump did not.2

It’s certainly true that Donald Trump doesn’t have much Ben Franklin in him. But then again, neither does a growing segment of the U.S. population. Today the builder’s credo embodied by Buffett, and so long a part of our cultural DNA, is conspicuously absent from some of our fastest-growing social institutions. Warren Buffett’s America is clearly shrinking, and what’s taking its place, especially in blue-collar and lower-income communities, is what we might call Trump’s America.

It’s an America in which borrowing is more normative than saving, the “deal” seems more exciting than steady application, bravura overshadows modesty, belief in celebrities trumps confidence in institutions, and reliance on hope (the essentially religious belief that the good is within our reach) is replaced by hoping for luck.Economically, Trump’s America is based largely on debt. Walk down a Main Street in this America, and you’ll see lots of signs like “Payday Loans,” “Mike’s Rent to Own,” and “Check ‘n Go.” Most gas stations, bars, and convenience stores will try to sell you state-sponsored lottery tickets. You won’t see a savings bank and probably won’t see a credit union.The purest expression of Trump’s America is the casino—the very institution on which Trump’s own fortune was largely built. Until the 1990s, U.S. casinos were largely confined to Nevada and Atlantic City. Today they’re popping up across the country, sponsored by the very state governments that only yesterday had outlawed them.The casino ethic and the magnifico ethic go together like bacon and eggs. Casinos are glittery and excessive. Millions of Americans flock to them. They promise excitement, escapism, and the chance to win mega-millions!Yet the fact about casinos is they don’t produce anything. Car companies make cars. Doughnut shops make doughnuts. The only thing that happens in casinos is that people lose their money. The economic impact is similar to throwing your money on the street so that someone else can pick it up—it’s moving wealth around without creating any.And forget the images you may recall from James Bond movies of high-rollers in tuxedoes and formal dresses playing glamorous table games. Today’s casinos cater mainly to low-rollers putting money into slot machines. Most of the “players” live with a short driving distance of the casino. They are disproportionately retirees, minorities, people without four-year college degrees, and lower-wage workers.In short, Americans who regularly patronize casinos today are the same Americans who, according to pollsters, are most likely to report that they feel left behind economically and disrespected culturally, that the dreams they once had for themselves and their children are no longer within reach, and that most institutions no longer deserve their trust. Welcome to the expanding precincts of Trump’s America, where many people believe, and seem to have solid reason for believing, that the old establishment virtues of thrift, hard work, and deferred gratification are no longer working for them.Are they wrong? About Trump, yes. The chances of making America great again by voting for Donald Trump are about the same as the chances of getting rich by putting money into his slot machines. But Trump’s appeal is also diagnostic, and the bothersome thing about it is not him, but us. What’s most impressive about Trump’s America is not his success, but our collective failure.This failure is largely the result of powerful financial and political interests undermining the institutions of thrift and mutual aid that help to sustain communities and build wealth over time. The so-called “little people,” in Leona Helmsley’s famous words, had little to do with this transformation. Trump, on the other hand, epitomizes it.Trump is part of a corrupt anti-thrift system. He was able to “build” a casino empire—what a funny word, build, for an activity that consists almost entirely of extracting money from the pockets of middle and lower-income Americans—because state governments and banks opened the door and put out a welcome mat for him. (No wonder New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, currently running for President, chooses “friend” for his one-word description of Trump.) Trump regularly brags that he gives money to influential people from both political parties because that’s how things work. And that is how things work! Which means that Trump can shamelessly game our political and financial systems for his gain and to our detriment, and then portray himself as the person best qualified to make America great again.He isn’t. But he understands the world he helped to make. He knows his customers. He’s authentic and comfortable in his own skin—his only rival in that department is Bernie Sanders, the Democrats’ New Hampshire primary winner—and he’s a genuinely gifted impresario. More that most of his political rivals, he seems able to intuit some of the deepest desires, fears, and disappointments of white, left-behind Americans. And when a rich self-promoter tells millions of high-school educated, blue-collar Americans that the system isn’t working for them like it used to, or like it should, the fact that he’s a rich self-promoter doesn’t make him wrong.There have always been magnificoes among us—they’re as American as hot dogs. We’ve enjoyed and admired them and typically seen at least some of their over-the-top traits reflected in us as a people. But we’ve never really trusted them with important matters. We’ve certainly never considered letting them define who we are, or what America is, mainly because there’s never been a good reason to consider it. Now, for some of us, maybe there is.

1I’m indebted to Max Lerner, who uses the term “magnifico” to describe an American type in America as a Civilization (Simon and Shuster, 1957), 278-279.

2Three Lectures by Warren Buffett to Notre Dame Faculty, MBA Students and Undergraduate Students (Spring 1991).

The Meaning of Trump

Donald Trump’s fortunes got a major boost last night with his towering victory in New Hampshire (and, just as important, the ongoing failure of a clear “establishment” alternative to emerge from the fray). And that means that pundits are once again debating, with a renewed sense of urgency, the real source of support for the unapologetically crude populist billionaire.

There are a variety of theories, all of which tend to conform perfectly with the pre-existing political views of the people offering them. For liberal elites, Trump is generally understood as a result of the supposed racism and anti-immigrant demagoguery of at least some GOP voters. For some anti-establishment Republicans, meanwhile, Trump is a vindication of everything they have ever said is wrong with the elite Republican policy agenda—in particular, its libertarian-bent on taxes, trade, and immigration.But the exit polls out of New Hampshire complicate any effort to ascribe Trump’s soaring popularity entirely or even mostly to the substance of his policies (to the extent that he has articulated any real policies). As Ramesh Ponnuru writes in Bloomberg View:

Many people, including me, have looked at his support as a sign of dissatisfaction among Republican voters with Republican politicians. That dissatisfaction is indeed widespread, including about half the New Hampshire Republican electorate. But Trump did roughly the same among people who feel betrayed by Republican politicians and those who don’t.

Is his support instead about immigration? He certainly did markedly better among the 15 percent of Republicans who picked it — rather than the economy, terrorism or government spending — as their top issue. But he won among the people who picked each of those other issues, too. (A majority of New Hampshire voters said they favored offering legal status to illegal immigrants. Trump won 23 percent of those who favor making this offer.)

These results suggest that Trump’s support is more visceral than substantive—that voters are drawn to him more out of a desire to see a strong leader and a grand simplification at a time of crisis and drift than, as many thinkers on the right and left seem to assume, by any particular policy platform. As WRM wrote in August, Trump’s populism is rooted more in his particular anti-PC affect and freewheeling style:

Some politicians appeal to popular constituencies by advocating for their economic interests, at least apparently. This was the path of Huey “Every Man A King” Long in Louisiana. It was also the strategy President Harry Truman took in 1948 when he warned working Americans against Republican plans to destroy the trade union movement and the New Deal welfare state.

But Trump offers a different kind of “representation.” By flouting PC norms, reducing opponents and journalists to sputtering outrage as he trashes the conventions of political discourse, and dismissing his critics with airy put-downs, he is living the life that—at least some of the time—a lot of people wish they had either the courage or the resources to live. In this sense he’s not unlike Italy’s bad boy Silvio Berlusconi, who accumulated tremendous popular support by flaunting his refusal to abide by conventional rules of behavior.

None of this means that policy isn’t part of the picture, or that the GOP shouldn’t try to reach voters who, citing immigration and economic opportunity, did break disproportionately for Trump. But it’s important not to give “Trumpism” too much credit as a coherent political ideology.

Iran Forges Ahead With Its Ballistic Missiles

Iran is upgrading its military capabilities, including a ballistic missile system capable of carrying nuclear weapons, as Reuters reports:

Iran will unveil an upgrade of its Emad ballistic missiles this year, the defense minister was quoted as saying, advancing a program that has drawn criticism from the United Nations and sanctions from the United States.

The Islamic Republic would also start taking delivery of an advanced Russian S-300 surface-to-air missile defense system in the next two months, Hossein Dehghan added – a system that was blocked before a landmark nuclear deal with world powers.

Tehran agreed the deal on curbing its nuclear work in July last year and international sanctions were lifted in January. But tensions with Washington have remained high as Tehran continues to develop its military capabilities.

Iran is testing the limits of the nuclear deal and a UN resolution that proscribes Iranian ballistic missile testing. This isn’t the first time Iran has done this, and each such step puts Washington in a bind: either watch the instruments of international law that are supposed to contain Iran erode before our eyes, or react—but how?  The Obama Administration has demonstrated its reluctance to use military force, which in any case would be seen internationally in these matters as an overreaction. On the other hand, though, while Washington imposed targeted sanctions last month on the Iranian missile program, without the international sanctions regime that was previously crippling Iran’s economy, they no longer have as much sting in them.

Just as worrying are the broader strategic implications. The main justifications for Obama’s Iran deal was the idea that breaking the ice with the Iranians could lead to a thaw in relations. This is decidedly not what moderation looks like, however. Add to this the foundering of the Geneva peace talks and the advance of the Iranian-Russian-Assad forces towards Aleppo, as well as the recent refusal of Iranian hardliners to allow moderates to contest upcoming elections (even the Ayatollah Khomenei’s grandson has been barred for moderate sympathies), and you start to get the idea that engagement with Iran is maybe not working out quite the way some in the Obama Administration hoped it would.

U.S. and India Discuss Joint South China Sea Patrols

Reuters reports that India and the U.S. may conduct joint patrols in the South China Sea:

The United States and India have held talks about conducting joint naval patrols that a U.S. defense official said could include the disputed South China Sea, a move that would likely anger Beijing, which claims most of the waterway.

Washington wants its regional allies and other Asian nations to take a more united stance against China over the South China Sea, where tensions have spiked in the wake of Beijing’s construction of seven man-made islands in the Spratly archipelago.

India and the United States have ramped up military ties in recent years, holding naval exercises in the Indian Ocean that last year involved the Japanese navy.

But the Indian navy has never carried out joint patrols with another country and a naval spokesman told Reuters there was no change in the government’s policy of only joining an international military effort under the United Nations flag.

India generally doesn’t like to swing its weight one way or the other too much—much of Delhi’s flexibility and bargaining power comes from its potential to shift the power balance in Asia. Lately, however, India has begun to look like it may pick a side in Asia’s Game of Thrones: last month, New Delhi agreed to help Vietnam spy on China, and last fall, India held joint military exercises with Australia. So, in some ways the winds do seem to be blowing towards India joining the United States’ challenge to China. But these patterns are difficult to read, and India’s history makes us uncertain about whether these talks will lead to anything.

Still, it’s an important story to watch because if Delhi did work with Washington in the South China Sea, the partnership would present a potent challenge to Beijing.

Is China Hitting Peak Oil?

China pumps more than 4 million barrels of oil a day (only Saudi Arabia, the United States, Russia, and on a good day Canada produce more), but output is expected to decline this year as the country’s oil fields mature and operations become more expensive. The WSJ reports:

China is among the world’s top five oil producers, but its fields are growing depleted and are increasingly expensive to pump. The country’s leading companies are choosing to leave more of their oil in the ground and some analysts now say Chinese oil output may have peaked. […]

As China’s production starts to decline, demand for oil from overseas should remain firm, which would be good news for prices, which have been languishing near multiyear lows amid a global supply glut and weak demand in the rest of the world. […]

This news will be welcomed by oil producers elsewhere, who will be crossing their fingers that China’s tapering output will help offset the global crude glut and help bring prices back up.

But this decline has strategic as well as market implications. As China’s domestic oil production becomes more expensive, it will be forced to produce less at home and import more from abroad. The more dependent China is on foreign oil, the less likely it is to think that war with the United States is a good idea. Without the oil that comes from overseas, across waters where the U.S. Navy is supreme, China’s economy would grind to a halt.This poses a problem that China will have a hard time solving. Coal is abundant in China, but the environmental consequences of reliance on that energy source are devastating. Renewables are part of the solution, but won’t make the kind of difference China needs. Fracking might someday unleash new supplies of oil and gas, but China’s geology and geography are unfavorable—much of its reserves are in geological formations that remain hard to tap, and many of the most promising fields are in arid areas where water-intensive fracking methods are difficult and expensive.With the Middle East mess getting worse all the time, China faces energy insecurity apart from the threat of conflict with the United States. Expect this to be a continued focus of Chinese foreign and economic policy. China’s dependence on foreign oil is one of the strongest pillars of world peace.

Eastern Orthodox Cacophony in America

On January 22-23 there took place a meeting (technically called a synaxis) of all Eastern Orthodox primates (presiding bishops or patriarchs in different parts of the world). The meeting took place at the Orthodox Center in Chambesy, near Geneva, and was presided over by Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, who (rather uncomfortably) resides in Constantinople, now called Istanbul. This is the city that was called “the new Rome” after the Emperor Constantine transferred to it the capital of the Roman Empire in 330 CE. Needless to say, Old Rome, now the seat of its bishop become the Pope, was not amused. The two patriarchs, after many years of quarrel about who was to be superior to the other in the universal Church, finally split and excommunicated each other in 1059 CE. They knew how to do things in style in those days: in the midst of the liturgy in the Cathedral of Hagia Sophia, in Constantinople, the Pope’s emissaries deposited the papal decree of excommunication on the high altar. The reciprocal excommunication followed promptly.

Eastern Orthodoxy was represented in the “ecumenical movement” for Christian unity almost from the beginning and has been part of the World Council of Churches since its founding in 1948 and the sprawling bureaucracy that spread around it in and around Geneva (of course it could not replicate the splendor of the Vatican, but then it was in the soberly Protestant part of Switzerland). Rome did not join, so the Orthodox presence was very useful to the Protestant leadership of the WCC in the claim that this organization was really ecumenical/universal. The Orthodox, with their icons and their tall black hats certainly contributed a dash of exotica. The Evangelicals also mainly stayed away, so often the Orthodox were the only ones that said “no” to the politically progressive agenda pushed by the mainline Protestants in charge. Given the inanities that were frequently proposed in this agenda, “naysaying” was probably a rather useful function. But that inhibited the positive influence that Orthodoxy might otherwise have had. The same goes for the Orthodox role in America, in the National Council of Churches and other interdenominational organizations. I think that this missing voice is to be regretted.The “synaxis” of Orthodox primates recently concluded was animated by a move to end the almost bizarre structure of Orthodoxy, both internationally and in the US, mostly based on national and ethnic criteria. The meeting on the shore of Lake Geneva was to be in preparation of a more ambitious meeting later this year, a Holy and Great Council of Orthodox Churches which is to meet on July 16-27 at the Orthodox Academy of Crete, where under the wings of the Church of Greece the assembly should be protected from the contamination of un-Orthodox ideas emanating from the Protestant-dominated World Council of Churches. To make sure that the topic of Orthodox unity is not ignored, those attending the meeting on Crete will have received a document originally published in 2000 by an American organization, Orthodox Christian Laity. Its title expresses the urgent wish for unity within the U.S. context—“An Orthodox Christian Church in the United States, Unified and Self-Governing”. The purpose is to initiate, step by step, the creation of an American church body free of ethnic divisions, and granted “autocephalous” status (that is having its own primate directly recognized by Constantinople).In discussions of Christian unity there are typically two reasons given why such unity is to be sought. One reason is Scriptural: because Jesus is reported to have prayed for such unity just before he was arrested in the midst of his disciples (John 17:20-23). The other is supposedly empirical: because the Christian faith will be more plausible to non-believers if believers are united. I leave it to New Testament scholars whether it is likely that Jesus actually spoke these words just before the end of his life, and if so, why this unity was important for him at that moment.As to the empirical reason, as a generalization, I am skeptical. For example, I doubt whether Americans are turned off from Christian faith because there is this huge diversity of denominations. In the case of Orthodoxy in America, I do think that its surreal diversity of ethnically defined church bodies makes it harder for individuals without the particular ethnic backgrounds to even have access to an Orthodox congregation let alone to take its truth claims seriously. I was first aware of this problem for converts (of which there are quite a few) years ago. I was then teaching at the New School for Social Research in New York. A young man, with an American accent and a very WASP name, came up after my lecture with some questions. Since the New School had many older students who worked full-time while pursuing a graduate degree, I asked him what he did besides school. He replied: I am an Albanian priest. He smiled when he saw that I was baffled, and explained: He was a convert with an Episcopalian background and when he decided to study for the priesthood he was advised that the Albanian Orthodox Church in America had a shortage of priests and welcomed converts. I asked him whether he had to learn Albanian; he said no, he might have to eventually, but most in his parish spoke English.Let me now have a closer look at this ethnic cacophony and how it came about. Eastern Orthodox Christians are not a huge population in the U.S.— according to something called the National Orthodox Census the total in 2010 was about 1.5 million. I haven’t arrived at a conclusive count, but there are around 14 separate churches, almost all ethnically defined. The biggest is the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese. The Greek government in Athens naturally has a strong interest in this Archdiocese for any help in matters where American public opinion or government are to be influenced.The Russians are next in size but much more complicated. In the eighteenth century the Moscow Patriarchate sent missionaries to Alaska (then Russian territory) and established a diocese in Sitka. But most Orthodox Russians in America are descendants of the large immigration in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Their parishes were administered by a Metropolitan of North America and the Aleutian Islands (nice title) appointed by Moscow. After the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 refugees in the West set up the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia, but the Moscow-run parishes continued separately. In 1970 the refugee church in the U.S. became the Orthodox Church in America (OCA), shedding its Russian ethnicity and gradually conducting its liturgy in English only. Lately, with the growing intimacy between the Moscow Patriarch and the Putin government, there have been some moves to re-assert Moscow control over the OCA.There are ethnically defined churches for Ukrainians, Serbs, Bulgarians and Romanians. Albanians have an Archdiocese loosely associated with the OCA.  There are parishes affiliated with the Patriarchate of Antioch in Syria, most of whose members from the Middle East speak Arabic and whose liturgical language was traditionally Syriac, derived from the Aramaic spoken by Jesus. However, most Antiochian parishes use English, probably because they have the largest number of non-ethnic American converts (about the same number as the OCA). There is a sizable proportion among the latter who used to be Evangelical Protestants, and (perhaps not surprisingly) they now constitute a very conservative faction in American OrthodoxyAs if this were not complicated enough, there are the so-called Oriental Churches, Eastern churches that refused to recognize the doctrinal decisions of the Council of Chalcedon (451 CE). The most important of these are the Armenian and Coptic (Egyptian and Ethiopian) churches derived from the Monophysite heresy. There is also the Malakaran Indian Orthodox Church, originally resulting from the Nestorian heresy that flourished in the territory of the Patriarch of Antioch (the Monophysites came from Alexandria in Egypt). The Nestorians founded the huge Great Church of the East, which stretched from the Middle East to China; the Malakaran outfit’s “home church” is in Kerala, in southern India. While Rome and Constantinople have been making nice with each other, there is the group of so-called Uniate churches, who recognize the authority of the Pope, but who use Eastern liturgies and whose priests may marry.There is increasing rivalry between Constantinople and Moscow (whose Patriarch Kirill, encouraged by Vladimir Putin, would like to re-invent Moscow as “the Third Rome”)…[DISCLAIMER: I have tried hard to get all this right, but I may have made some big mistakes in correlating ethnic labels with heretical ones. In any case, the above may be enough to support my view that the Orthodox voice would be better heard in America if it were more united, less cacophonous. As I write this, naturally, my very rudimentary Greek comes back: The latter adjective comes from two Greek words: kakos/ugly and phone/sound.]Eastern, Greek-speaking Christianity spread from the religiously very pluralistic Asia Minor (which a Roman saying referred to as the vagina deorum/the womb of gods). But after Christianity became the religion of the Roman state, this affinity of pluralism and the new faith came to an end. Since then, Eastern Christian Orthodoxy has existed in three socio-political forms: as a state religion in Byzantium, Russia and the Balkan states emerging from the disintegrating Ottoman Empire; as a persecuted or barely tolerated community under Islamic or Communist rule; and as a diaspora community defined by ethnicity. None of these experiences have prepared Orthodoxy for modern religious pluralism, especially if combined with legally guaranteed religious freedom. In the American context, how can Orthodoxy cope with the dynamics of the denominational system—essentially a free market of religious options?  I think the Bolshevik Revolution marks an important turning point. Among the refugees from Russia, there was an extraordinarily gifted group of intellectuals who in 1925 founded the St. Serge Institute of Orthodox Theology in Paris. Of course they had been familiar with European thought while still in Russia, but in Paris they urgently grappled with the relation of this thought with their faith. In other words, they consciously faced the challenge of modern pluralism under conditions of freedom. The most famous intellectuals in this group were Nicholas Berdyaev and Sergei Bulgakov. Three of them—Georges Florovsky, Alexander Schmemann, and John Meyendorff—emigrated to America and founded a sort of mission outpost of St.Serge, the St.Vladimir’s Orthodox Theological Seminary in Crestwood, New York. The only one of the three that I came to know was Schmemann, who first impressed one as a worldly-wise, sophisticated French intellectual. He spoke excellent English with a French accent. After a while one sensed a profound piety that originated far to the east of Paris.My teacher Alfred Schutz liked to tell the joke of the society lady trapped sitting next to an insect specialist throughout a dinner party. The insect specialist never tired of telling her about the fascinating creatures he studied professionally. When, to her relief, she could finally leave the table, she said to her neighbor: “This is very interesting, if you are interested in it.” Schutz used this joke to illustrate his concept of “relevance structure”. To whom are these Orthodox curiosities relevant? Put differently, Why should anyone care? Speaking for myself, I have never been tempted “to swim in the Bosphorus” (a phrase to describe converts to Orthodoxy; to differentiate them from those who go “to swim in the Tiber”). But I have many times been strongly moved by attending the Orthodox liturgy. I recall the first time I attended the Easter liturgy during my student days in New York. It was in the Russian cathedral on East 2nd Street, which then was under the authority of the old Russian Metropolia. When the service began late on Saturday evening the cathedral was dimly lit, all the hangings and the altar cover were black in the color of Good Friday. Then the entire congregation went out into the street and marched slowly around the block. It was very cold. When we returned the cathedral was brilliantly lit and the color of everything was very bright. Easter had arrived. The choir burst out with the triumphant praise of the risen Christ, “who trampled death by death, to bring life to those in the grave” (of course I didn’t understand the words in Old Slavonic, but an English translation had been handed out). Then something quite startling happened: Very close to where I was standing, a side door opened and out came an old man wearing the dress uniform of a tsarist officer, crossed himself and stood reverently.There is the probably fictional story of how Russia became Orthodox, but one can appreciate it even if one doubts its historical accuracy. Vladimir the Great (958-1015 CE), a pagan who ruled the first Russian state from Kiev, decided to become a Christian (probably for strategic reasons). He was unsure whether to pledge allegiance to Rome or to Constantinople. He sent emissaries to both places. In the latter the emissaries attended the liturgy in Hagia Sophia, the great cathedral (now a museum, a favored tourist destination in Istanbul). The emissaries returned to Kiev and reported: “We knew not whether we were in heaven or on earth, for surely there is no such splendor or beauty anywhere upon earth.” Vladimir was impressed. But it is not just a matter of aesthetic appreciation (one can enjoy the music of Bach without becoming a Lutheran). Orthodoxy has created a very distinctive version of Christian faith, sharply different from that of the West.Paul Evdokimov (1901-1970) was one of the scholars teaching at St. Serge in Paris. He wrote several books (all in French). Michael Plekon (a sociologist on the faculty of the City University of New York, and a priest of the OCA) has lovingly translated and published some of Evdokimov’s writings. In one passage there is, I think, a very insightful comparison of Western/Latin and Eastern/Greek and Russian Christianity: In the West, the encounter between God and man takes place in a courtroom. Man is sinful, God cannot just forgive him, God’s justice demands that the penalty for sin be paid. Jesus in his suffering has taken the sin on himself and pays the penalty. By contrast, in the East the encounter takes place in a hospital. Man is sick and sin is part of the sickness. This condition has ultimately been caused by Satan, God’s adversary (not by pitiful, henpecked Adam). The risen Christ has defeated Satan and thereby initiated the process of cosmic redemption.Put differently, the West—Catholic as well as Protestant—has a piety focused on Good Friday. Eastern piety is fixated on Easter. I think it is important to understand that these are not differences that can simply be resolved by doctrinal reformulations. A WCC-sponsored commission of Western and Eastern theologians spent several years discussing one word, filioque / ”and the Son”, which a Latin medieval synod inserted into the description of the Holy Spirit in the Nicene Creed—“the Holy Spirit, who proceeds from the Father and the Son”. The East deemed this change heretical. The commission finally concluded that the contentious word was really not necessary and should be given up by Western churches for the sake of Christian unity. I am not saying that this sort of doctrinal dialogue has no value, but rather that one must ask what different core experiences and ideas underlie the doctrinal formulations.The same point was also made by a more systematic method called “motif research” by Gustav Aulen, a Swedish scholar, in his book Christus Victor (1931). The book contrasts two different understandings of the atonement. There is the “satisfaction theory” (Evdokimov’s “courtroom” transaction), first formulated by Anselm of Canterbury (1033-1109 CE) and then adopted by all Western churches, Catholic and Protestant. But then there is the Eastern idea of Christ’s victory over the adversary who originally spoiled God’s creation, and still holds man captive to suffering, sin and death. Aulen was one of a group of scholars at Lund University who developed “motif research” as a method to differentiate the core experience of a religious tradition from its more abstract theological interpretations. By the way, Aulen (who was a bishop of the Lutheran Church of Sweden in addition to being an academic) thought that Luther was closer to the Eastern approach than to Anselm’s. I rather fancy that interpretation, though I’m not at all sure that it is correct. On the other hand, there was the story that Luther threw an inkpot at the devil when the latter distracted him from the work of translating the Bible into German…

Turkey’s Kurdish Problem—and Ours

Turkey has expressed outrage that the U.S. is working with the Syrian Kurds against ISIS, because the Syrian Kurds, Ankara says, are assisting Turkish Kurds who are fighting for independence and who Turkey considers to be part of a terrorist group. The Wall Street Journal reports:

Turkey deems the Democratic Union Party, known by its Kurdish acronym PYD, to be a terrorist group as an offshoot of the Turkey-based Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK. While the U.S., like Turkey, classifies the PKK as a terror group, it has lauded the Syrian PYD as an effective organization in countering Islamic State militants.

Tensions over that difference in views have been building for months. On Monday, State Department spokesman John Kirby said at a news briefing in Washington that the U.S. doesn’t consider the PYD to be terrorist.“We don’t, as you know, recognize the PYD as a terrorist organization. We recognize that the Turks do, and I understand that,” Mr. Kirby said.

Turkey alleges that the Turkish Kurds have received arms from the Syrian Kurds fighting ISIS and are using them to kill Turkish soldiers. But the U.S. government claims it has looked into these claims and found them to be unsubstantiated.

Strategically, what we are seeing here is the bad fruits of two decisions. When Turkey’s President, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, was Prime Minister, his work on the Kurdish peace process was one of the highlights of his career. But earlier this year, in an attempt to win an election that would give him power to rewrite the Turkish constitution, Erdogan deliberately inflamed Turkey’s Kurdish problem. Erodgan is not the only cause of the current violence in Turkey, but he certainly played a role. Decades worth of bad blood and paranoia came back to the fore, and for the foreseeable future, the internal Turkish-Kurdish question is likely intractable.Meanwhile, the Obama Administration’s strategic drift in Syria has left us increasingly dependent on whatever local actors are still viable. The Syrian Kurds—the PYD—are some of the best fighters out there, and now that the Russians and the Assad regime are encircling the moderate rebels in Aleppo, we’ll need them more than ever. But we also need the Turks, who are a NATO ally and whom the Europeans are hoping will help stop the refugee crisis.Americans by and large have a great deal of sympathy with the Kurdish people’s aspirations to self-determination; that Erdogan is seen as having started the latest round of bloodletting in Turkey, and that the Syrian Kurds have fought ISIS hard, only increases this sentiment. But the Turkish public cares much more than the American public on this issue, and will not let go lightly. As long as we continue to lead from behind in Syria, and are consequently reliant on local actors with their own agendas, expect dilemmas like this one to keep cropping up.

Israel and India Near $3 Billion Weapons Deal

The India–Israel friendship is about to get a $3 billion boost, according to the Times of India:

India is readying a slew of military deals with Israel worth $3 billion before Prime Minister Narendra Modi visits Tel Aviv this year.

The pacts include the acquisition of 164 laser-designation pods or ‘Litening-4’ for IAF fighters like Sukhoi-30MKIs and Jaguars as well as 250 advanced ‘Spice’ precision stand-off bombs capable of taking out fortified enemy underground command centres. “It should be cleared by the CCS within a month or so,” said an MoD source.

We’ve been watching India make friendly noises in Israel’s direction since Modi took power in 2014. For instance, in 2015, India abstained from censuring Israel in the U.N. Weapons deals have been key to the warming relations between the two countries, and this agreement would be an important step for leaders in both Jerusalem and New Delhi.

Islamism Spreads in Africa

Fundamentalist Islamist movements have been gaining ground in Africa, as the Wall Street Journal reports:

Boko Haram—the regional affiliate of Islamic State and one of the world’s deadliest terrorist groups—has accelerated its campaign of almost daily suicide bombings. Just last month, the group massacred 86 people, many of them children, in the Nigerian village of Dalori and 32 others in the Cameroonian village of Bodo.

To the west, al Qaeda’s regional franchise has been waging war on the government of Mali and expanded its reach last month to the previously peaceful country of Burkina Faso, slaying at least 30 people—many of them Westerners—in an assault on a luxury hotel. In the east, another al Qaeda affiliate, Somalia’s al-Shabaab, overran an African Union military base three weeks ago and slaughtered more than 100 Kenyan troops.

The fundamentalist forms of Islam spreading in Africa, as well as the slow-simmering religious war between Christians and Muslims on the continent, are big stories. Sub-Saharan African Muslims are traditionally Sufi, a form of Islam that emphasizes individual spirituality and incorporates traditional African culture. However, as the WSJ reports, Wahhabism, funded and promoted by the Saudis, has increasingly come to Africa. And when you mix jihadist ideology with other factors in Africa—”weak states, poorly policed frontiers, rapid population growth and large pools of underemployed young men to the mix,” as we once wrote—the situation will likely worse before it gets better.

Brussels Moves to Counter Gazprom

It looks like Brussels is finally awakening to the strategic disadvantages of its heavy reliance on Russian energy supplies—specifically, its imports of natural gas from state-owned Gazprom. Of particular concern in recent years has been Gazprom’s ability to divide and conquer the bloc by selling its gas to different countries at different prices, making these contracts into a geopolitical lever. And, of course, the EU is concerned about the precedent Gazprom set in the winters of 2006 and 2009, when it cut off supplies to Ukraine over pricing disputes—a move that had knock-on effects on Ukraine’s neighbors.

Now, as AFP reports, the European Commission is releasing a raft of proposals that would more closely integrate the energy strategies of the EU’s various member states:

The EU will unveil Feb. 9 plans to give it power to examine energy contracts that European states sign with countries outside the bloc, amid concerns about Europe’s dependence on Russian gas [. . .]

Furthermore, Brussels wants to create nine new “energy regions” within the EU, within which member states would help each other out in case of an energy crisis, [energy commissioner Miguel Arias] Canete said

It’s not yet clear how well this will go over within the bloc. Poland has long argued for closer collaboration on energy issues, but Putin hasn’t been sitting idly by while his formerly docile European customers have mooted this idea of working together to loosen his grip, and he seems to have found a partner in Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orban to help chip away at any consensus forming from within (the Czech Republic has also expressed skepticism over this plan). Not to mention that, given the way European politics seem to be shifting of late, this sort of “mandatory solidarity” is likely to incite some inflammatory political rhetoric within many EU member states.

Despite those hurdles, this ought to be a top priority for Brussels. Gazprom is already reeling from plunging oil prices (to which many of its long-term contracts are linked), and it’s facing a tougher slog ahead as Europe starts to take advantage of a well-supplied (and therefore a relatively cheaply priced) global LNG market. If the EU can better coordinate its energy strategies, it won’t just save many of its members from price gouging—it will boost the Continent’s energy security as well.