Wonderful meditation, this. A couple stray thoughts:
1) Without a prophet, there's no way to be certain what triggered the retribution. People's speculation will fit their priors: What sins (by Old Testament standards) has the US not committed, that might earn it wrath?
2) In the Old Testament, providentialist view of history, a harmful ruler is always a punishment--never an accident. But that's in the context of Israel being a covenanted nation, something America--despite the "Christian nation!" enthusiasts--is not, or not precisely.
3) Love the Lincoln reference, very appropriate note to conclude with. But Lincoln was rather unusual. Responding to a compliment from a friend, Lincoln wrote, "it is not immediately popular. Men are not flattered by being shown that there has been a difference of purpose between the Almighty and them. To deny it, however, in this case, is to deny that there is a God governing the world." Lincoln's manner of humble inquiry into events--rather than knee-jerk blame toward our enemies--is never popular. For a great look into how most people interpreted the war, see Harry Stout's *Upon the Altar of the Nation: A Moral History of the Civil War.* A great read.
4) A natural law view of history--where your happiness corresponds to your goodness--makes sense as an explanation of our recent history. As noted, there are too many national sins to pick from to single any out, short of prophetic insight. But can anyone deny that our desires are distorted, by a natural law standard? If so, a kind of automatic retribution makes sense. But again, absent prophecy, all we have is political categories and values to explain it.
I think there are indeed ways otherwise good Americans brought Trumpism upon themselves. So many of us (left, right, and center) became so consumed with hatred of fellow Americans that we forgot to stand for alternatives. We got used to having good things (safety, possessions, convenience, great power status) without having to sacrifice for them (national service, savings, higher taxes).
I don't believe in an active God (the deity I believe in has been inactive since it created the universe at the Big Bang), but I see and foresee something close to divine retribution on America. We're living through chaos and tyranny now, and I expect economic disaster before Trump's presidency is over. I'm not convinced America will pull through.
Call it karma, but America sure has some sins to account for. Perhaps as intense as what slavery has wrought. Yes, Trump is serving a purpose even he probably has no idea of. A lot of dross to burn off and suffering to come, but still hope for a brighter, better American on the other side of all this.
There is no divine intervention. History offers lessons.
The post-Civil War era (The Gilded Age) was characterized by a rapid industrialization and technological progress which brought about massive socioeconomic disruptions and inequalities. In the 1890s, that inequality and wealth gave rise to the idea that people were being screwed over by the rubber barons.
These grievances found a perfect expression in the charismatic William Jennings Bryan who became the “populist” candidate for presidency: 1896,
1900, and 1908. He was vilified and dehumanized by the “establishment” for attempting to “destroy democracy.” He never succeeded in being elected to the presidency, but the parallels between late 19th and early 21st are clear: every time there is a seismic economic disruption or change (as has happened over the last three decades or more) there will eventually be some attempt to restore some kind of equilibrium.
Such course correction is good in theory. In democracy people need to have some basic trust in fairness and balance, and that their dignity is not violated. Otherwise, why bother to believe that you have a voice in how things are run. In practice, however, this difficult to pull off without wrecking the system (the wrong word here is “revolution”). Smart demagogues, like Trump, can (as we see now) tap into those grievances and inequalities without having suffered from them. Bryan was closer to the agrarians and working class people, but the entrenched interests of the establishments back then were more powerful. He lost because he was the right man for the wrong time. Trump won because he is the wrong man for the right time. That’s our tragedy. But revolutionary he is not. Eventually he will fail, because he is hollow in ideas, but for sure he will leave behind a trail of destruction.
Here's our sin: Our global support of corrupt despots in the name of our own hegemony. Suharto, Mobutu, Pinochet, Marcos, the Duvaliers, Pol Pot (yes, really), Saddam Hussein (at least for a time), among others. We preached free speech and democracy at home and crushed it abroad. What did we expect?
Wonderful essay Damir, and as a Christian I delighted in your rhetorical use of scripture and theology that far outstrips the Evangelicals in accuracy or aptness. I also relished the sad irony that in your excerpt from Lincoln---still as far as I know a hero of the Republican party---he is clearly talking about a kind of reparations.
I see here an effort to dump us all into the same pot. Either we are all innocent, or we are all guilty. And certainly, none of us is entirely innocent.
I must be from a different planet. While I agree that none of us is entirely innocent. the degrees of guilt are all over the place. Guilt varies very much from faction to faction. Let's get one thing straight right now: The democratic party is the party of institutional racism. It is the party that actively campaigned in Congress to keep slavery and expand it into new states. It is the democrat-controlled South that seceded from the Union rather than face the first Republican president, Abraham Lincoln, and his anti-slavery agenda. It is democrats who formed the KKK after the civil war (lynching Republicans as well as blacks). It is democrats who enacted and enforced Jim Crow laws. It is democrat elected officials only who stood against MLK and his campaign to destroy democrat segregation. And today, it is democrats who control the black inner city ghettos.
And, no, the KKK did not all flock to Nixon due to that 'southern strategy' that your democrat history teacher lied to you about. The Republican party was created specifically as an anti-slavery party. They are not an entirely innocent group of people by any means. I support neither party. But I will not sit by while democrats try to slough off their disgusting history of institutional racism onto any of the rest of us.
You are seeing Trump and his coalition not as fellow american citizens, but as an outside curse brought upon you and your tribe for your sins. You are disassociating the bien-pensant white-collar urban (who obviously are the protagonists of history, and upon whose shoulders and faith everything else turns) from america writ large, forgetting the agency of others.
Would you see non-enforcement of the border as a sin?
Or on the same note, how about the long-term non-heteronormative marriage contracts? Is that a sin? How about biological males competing in female championships?
If, as I would expect, you'd say they aren't, there you go...
If we go back to the prophet Yirmeyahu - obviously everyone amongst the prophets was already mentioning idolatry and judicial corruption. However, the prophet mentioned something else that was actually precipitating - there was an emancipation proclamation, and rich people set their servants free, but shortly thereafter reneged and reenslaved them (Jer 34:8-22). So sure, Lincoln being of Calvinistic Baptist persuasion had a fairly good reason to see civil war as the divine judgement.
"Lincoln says American slavery is an offense God first willed into existence, and then by His sovereign design willed to remove."
Just to clarify, this is wrong. God does not will evil. Ever. As a Christian, I joke that moralistic reformed thinkers like to suggest that God is glorified by bad things happening (as though God wants bad things to happen or is somehow complicit in them happening). This just isn't true.
What is true is that the "wages of sin is death" and "when we were powerless to save ourselves, Christ died to save us"
More to the point I really appreciate the humility this piece wrestles with. Job would remind us we are not God, and we cannot know His ways (though we can ascertain quite a bit about him from Jeremiah and much more importantly Jesus of Nazareth.)
Lincoln never joined a church, but he rented a pew at an Old School (ie, traditionally Calvinist) Presbyterian church in DC, New York Avenue Presbyterian Church, and also sometimes attended services at St. John’s Episcopal. His own family background was similarly Calvinistic Baptist.
The theology he was exposed to throughout his life would have stressed a distinction between God’s prescriptive will and his more general will (the terminology can vary). He certainly seemed to believe that all events were under God’s control, though that didn’t mean they were approved.
Most Christians believe something like that: Even if they don’t spell it out explicitly in their theology, they implicitly confess as much in their prayer lives. If one prays to God, for example, that Vladimir Putin will have a change of heart regarding the war, one acknowledges that in some way God is sovereign over what Putin is doing.
The general feeling is that while nothing is ever outside God’s control, he also allows history to follow certain courses set by human beings that he disapproves of. That seems close to what de Maistre was getting at, and to have been Lincoln’s belief, too.
I'm not a Lincoln scholar, so you're working with a public-school history education here.
Plain reading of the text of Matthew 18:7 (a classic protestant approach to scripture btw)
"Woe to the world because of the things that cause people to stumble! Such things must come, but woe to the person through whom they come!"
Right before this Jesus is talking about how awful it is to lead innocent children (who know him) astray. Jesus acknowledges that evil people will do this, but he condemns anyone and ultimately anything AND any part of the believer that might lead them away from believing in him.
Is slavery one of those things that need to be cut out (v8-9)? If that indeed is the reference passage, then that is how I understand Lincoln
Lincoln is flawed in asserting slavery as an outcome of providence. "If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offenses which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove... " But Lincoln is also brilliant to see damnation on all sides, both the South's embrace of slavery and the North's complicity in it, much to your point in the final paragraphs.
Wonderful meditation, this. A couple stray thoughts:
1) Without a prophet, there's no way to be certain what triggered the retribution. People's speculation will fit their priors: What sins (by Old Testament standards) has the US not committed, that might earn it wrath?
2) In the Old Testament, providentialist view of history, a harmful ruler is always a punishment--never an accident. But that's in the context of Israel being a covenanted nation, something America--despite the "Christian nation!" enthusiasts--is not, or not precisely.
3) Love the Lincoln reference, very appropriate note to conclude with. But Lincoln was rather unusual. Responding to a compliment from a friend, Lincoln wrote, "it is not immediately popular. Men are not flattered by being shown that there has been a difference of purpose between the Almighty and them. To deny it, however, in this case, is to deny that there is a God governing the world." Lincoln's manner of humble inquiry into events--rather than knee-jerk blame toward our enemies--is never popular. For a great look into how most people interpreted the war, see Harry Stout's *Upon the Altar of the Nation: A Moral History of the Civil War.* A great read.
4) A natural law view of history--where your happiness corresponds to your goodness--makes sense as an explanation of our recent history. As noted, there are too many national sins to pick from to single any out, short of prophetic insight. But can anyone deny that our desires are distorted, by a natural law standard? If so, a kind of automatic retribution makes sense. But again, absent prophecy, all we have is political categories and values to explain it.
I think there are indeed ways otherwise good Americans brought Trumpism upon themselves. So many of us (left, right, and center) became so consumed with hatred of fellow Americans that we forgot to stand for alternatives. We got used to having good things (safety, possessions, convenience, great power status) without having to sacrifice for them (national service, savings, higher taxes).
I don't believe in an active God (the deity I believe in has been inactive since it created the universe at the Big Bang), but I see and foresee something close to divine retribution on America. We're living through chaos and tyranny now, and I expect economic disaster before Trump's presidency is over. I'm not convinced America will pull through.
Call it karma, but America sure has some sins to account for. Perhaps as intense as what slavery has wrought. Yes, Trump is serving a purpose even he probably has no idea of. A lot of dross to burn off and suffering to come, but still hope for a brighter, better American on the other side of all this.
There is no divine intervention. History offers lessons.
The post-Civil War era (The Gilded Age) was characterized by a rapid industrialization and technological progress which brought about massive socioeconomic disruptions and inequalities. In the 1890s, that inequality and wealth gave rise to the idea that people were being screwed over by the rubber barons.
These grievances found a perfect expression in the charismatic William Jennings Bryan who became the “populist” candidate for presidency: 1896,
1900, and 1908. He was vilified and dehumanized by the “establishment” for attempting to “destroy democracy.” He never succeeded in being elected to the presidency, but the parallels between late 19th and early 21st are clear: every time there is a seismic economic disruption or change (as has happened over the last three decades or more) there will eventually be some attempt to restore some kind of equilibrium.
Such course correction is good in theory. In democracy people need to have some basic trust in fairness and balance, and that their dignity is not violated. Otherwise, why bother to believe that you have a voice in how things are run. In practice, however, this difficult to pull off without wrecking the system (the wrong word here is “revolution”). Smart demagogues, like Trump, can (as we see now) tap into those grievances and inequalities without having suffered from them. Bryan was closer to the agrarians and working class people, but the entrenched interests of the establishments back then were more powerful. He lost because he was the right man for the wrong time. Trump won because he is the wrong man for the right time. That’s our tragedy. But revolutionary he is not. Eventually he will fail, because he is hollow in ideas, but for sure he will leave behind a trail of destruction.
Here's our sin: Our global support of corrupt despots in the name of our own hegemony. Suharto, Mobutu, Pinochet, Marcos, the Duvaliers, Pol Pot (yes, really), Saddam Hussein (at least for a time), among others. We preached free speech and democracy at home and crushed it abroad. What did we expect?
Wonderful essay Damir, and as a Christian I delighted in your rhetorical use of scripture and theology that far outstrips the Evangelicals in accuracy or aptness. I also relished the sad irony that in your excerpt from Lincoln---still as far as I know a hero of the Republican party---he is clearly talking about a kind of reparations.
I see here an effort to dump us all into the same pot. Either we are all innocent, or we are all guilty. And certainly, none of us is entirely innocent.
I must be from a different planet. While I agree that none of us is entirely innocent. the degrees of guilt are all over the place. Guilt varies very much from faction to faction. Let's get one thing straight right now: The democratic party is the party of institutional racism. It is the party that actively campaigned in Congress to keep slavery and expand it into new states. It is the democrat-controlled South that seceded from the Union rather than face the first Republican president, Abraham Lincoln, and his anti-slavery agenda. It is democrats who formed the KKK after the civil war (lynching Republicans as well as blacks). It is democrats who enacted and enforced Jim Crow laws. It is democrat elected officials only who stood against MLK and his campaign to destroy democrat segregation. And today, it is democrats who control the black inner city ghettos.
And, no, the KKK did not all flock to Nixon due to that 'southern strategy' that your democrat history teacher lied to you about. The Republican party was created specifically as an anti-slavery party. They are not an entirely innocent group of people by any means. I support neither party. But I will not sit by while democrats try to slough off their disgusting history of institutional racism onto any of the rest of us.
You are seeing Trump and his coalition not as fellow american citizens, but as an outside curse brought upon you and your tribe for your sins. You are disassociating the bien-pensant white-collar urban (who obviously are the protagonists of history, and upon whose shoulders and faith everything else turns) from america writ large, forgetting the agency of others.
Definitely not what I'm trying to communicate...!
Would you see non-enforcement of the border as a sin?
Or on the same note, how about the long-term non-heteronormative marriage contracts? Is that a sin? How about biological males competing in female championships?
If, as I would expect, you'd say they aren't, there you go...
If we go back to the prophet Yirmeyahu - obviously everyone amongst the prophets was already mentioning idolatry and judicial corruption. However, the prophet mentioned something else that was actually precipitating - there was an emancipation proclamation, and rich people set their servants free, but shortly thereafter reneged and reenslaved them (Jer 34:8-22). So sure, Lincoln being of Calvinistic Baptist persuasion had a fairly good reason to see civil war as the divine judgement.
"Lincoln says American slavery is an offense God first willed into existence, and then by His sovereign design willed to remove."
Just to clarify, this is wrong. God does not will evil. Ever. As a Christian, I joke that moralistic reformed thinkers like to suggest that God is glorified by bad things happening (as though God wants bad things to happen or is somehow complicit in them happening). This just isn't true.
What is true is that the "wages of sin is death" and "when we were powerless to save ourselves, Christ died to save us"
More to the point I really appreciate the humility this piece wrestles with. Job would remind us we are not God, and we cannot know His ways (though we can ascertain quite a bit about him from Jeremiah and much more importantly Jesus of Nazareth.)
How do you parse what Lincoln is getting at?
Lincoln never joined a church, but he rented a pew at an Old School (ie, traditionally Calvinist) Presbyterian church in DC, New York Avenue Presbyterian Church, and also sometimes attended services at St. John’s Episcopal. His own family background was similarly Calvinistic Baptist.
The theology he was exposed to throughout his life would have stressed a distinction between God’s prescriptive will and his more general will (the terminology can vary). He certainly seemed to believe that all events were under God’s control, though that didn’t mean they were approved.
Most Christians believe something like that: Even if they don’t spell it out explicitly in their theology, they implicitly confess as much in their prayer lives. If one prays to God, for example, that Vladimir Putin will have a change of heart regarding the war, one acknowledges that in some way God is sovereign over what Putin is doing.
The general feeling is that while nothing is ever outside God’s control, he also allows history to follow certain courses set by human beings that he disapproves of. That seems close to what de Maistre was getting at, and to have been Lincoln’s belief, too.
I'm not a Lincoln scholar, so you're working with a public-school history education here.
Plain reading of the text of Matthew 18:7 (a classic protestant approach to scripture btw)
"Woe to the world because of the things that cause people to stumble! Such things must come, but woe to the person through whom they come!"
Right before this Jesus is talking about how awful it is to lead innocent children (who know him) astray. Jesus acknowledges that evil people will do this, but he condemns anyone and ultimately anything AND any part of the believer that might lead them away from believing in him.
Is slavery one of those things that need to be cut out (v8-9)? If that indeed is the reference passage, then that is how I understand Lincoln
Lincoln is flawed in asserting slavery as an outcome of providence. "If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offenses which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove... " But Lincoln is also brilliant to see damnation on all sides, both the South's embrace of slavery and the North's complicity in it, much to your point in the final paragraphs.