Category: Culture

Independence Day

On By JonathanIn Culture, HistoryLeave a comment

Throughout American history there have been those who have taken patriotism and defense of one’s home to be excuses for war, agression, corruption, and imperialism: but just as it would be wrong to pretend that America is spotless and God’s gift to the world, it would also be wrong to ignore the many people who have stood up for genuine patriotism, for honest love of their homes and families, people who never sought to rule the world or hoard massive amounts political or economic power. People who really did sacrifice everything for freedom and defence of their homes and families and neighbors. People who exemplified what is best in America’s political and cultural traditions. Here are brief descriptions of two of them, both Mississippians.

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For years my great-grandmother Stanley worked the red-dirt hills of Central Mississippi: the land of others as a sharecropper, and eventually her own land. She loved the land and she loved to work it. Years past the usual age of retirement she was still keeping massive vegetable gardens: one beside the house and another across the road down a dirt track. She would till and plant and hoe and harvest, and then cook and can and store. Not because she had to, not because anyone made her, but because she loved to do it, because she cherished her independence, she cherished the good earth and its fruits. Hers was- and is, even though she can no longer work in her gardens- the true spirit of American independence, an agrarian sense of place and identity, that does not require empire or military might to sustain itself, but only the soil and hard work. She has always been thrifty and self-reliant in the best sense.

Besides keeping vegetable gardens she has always kept flower gardens; her yard won best yard in the county for years (I suspect I get both my love of natural beauty and my tendency to OCD-like neatness from her side of the family….). From the time she was a little girl she loved animals and would nurse strays to health- a manifestation of a gentleness that has gone alongside an incredibly resiliant toughness. I have never heard express racist thoughts- not a small thing for older generation Southerners; instead she has always manifested love and kindness towards everyone, even people who could hardly be thought to deserve it. She was born into a poor family, and has never been wealthy by any measure. Her wealth has been a wealth of independence, care for the land, love of family, love of God, gentleness, toughness, kindness: the sorts of things that make for true patriotism, rooted in place, rooted in virtue.

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On January 10th, 1966 Vernon Dahmer’s house was firebombed by the KKK. Mr Dahmer was an African-American farmer, Sunday School teacher, store owner, and sawmill owner in the northern part of Forrest County, Mississippi. He had earned the ire of the Klan by his dogged work at encouraging democratic participation amongst his African-American neighbors, including the use of his store as a polling station, and his paying of poll taxes. Because of his efforts, three carloads of Klansmen arrived at his house one January night and rolled a drum of gasoline onto the porch and set it ablaze. They then retreated back from the house and took up positions to fire on anyone coming out. Upon being awakened, Mr Dahmer sent his family out the back. He stayed at the house, picked up his rifle, and fought back, firing on the Klansmen, who soon fled. While his family survived safe and sound, Mr Dahmer died from burns and smoke inhalation the next day.

Vernon Dahmer gave his life for freedom: not merely in the abstract sense that his fight was one for full democracy and human rights- all terribly important things- but in the very concrete sense that he was fighting for his family, for his home, for his land, for his neighbors. He did not go looking for a fight; he did not act in defense of his own life, but that of his family. Almost as soon as he began working for voting rights he recieved threats on his life, but he was not cowed by them. In his life he exemplified love of a particular place, working the land, supporting his community.  No one told him to do any of what he did; he was not drafted or coerced into his fight for freedom. Instead he willingly chose to stand up, in the face of threats of death, for freedom. He lived as a free man, and he died as a free man.

Islamic Agrarianism

On By JonathanIn Culture, East & West, HistoryLeave a comment

In short, Bengal’s eastern zone was not only an agrarian and political frontier, but also a cultural one, as Islam became locally understood as a civilization-building ideology, a religion of the plow. According to the Nabi-Bamsa, Saiyid Sultan’s epic poem composed in the late sixteenth century, the father of the human race, Adam, had made his earthly appearance on Sondwip Island, off Bengal’s southeastern coast. There the angel Gabriel instructed him to go to Arabia, where at Mecca he would construct the original Ka’aba. When this was accomplished, Gabriel gave Adam a plow, a yoke, two bulls, and seed, addressing him with the words, “Niranjan [God] has commanded that agriculture will be your destiny (bhal).” Adam then planted the seeds, harvested the crop, ground the grain, and made bread. Present-day Muslim cultivators attach a similar significance to Adam’s career. Cultivators of Pabna District identify the earth’s soil, from which Adam was made, as the source of Adam’s power and of his ability to cultivate the earth. In their view, farming the earth successfully is the fundamental task of all mankind, not only because they themselves have also come from (i.e., were nurtured by the fruit of) the soil, but because it was God’s command to Adam that re reduce the earth to the plow. It was by farming the earth that Adam obeyed God, thereby articulating his identity as the first man and as the first Muslim. Hence all men descended from Adam, in this view, can most fully demonstrate their obedience to God- and indeed, their humanity- by cultivating the earth.

Richard M. Eaton, The Rise of Islam and the Begal Frontier

Sufi sheiks felling jungles and propping up mud and straw mosques next to rice paddies isn’t exactly the first thing that springs to mind when one thinks of Islamic expansion. Yet this is, by and large, an apt image for the expansion of Islam in Bengal- primarily East Bengal, what is today Bangladesh. For Islam spread in the vast deltas of Bengal primarily, as Eaton notes at the beginning of the above citation, through spreading civilization, specifically, agrarian-based civilization. Much of the groundwork- literally and metaphorically!- for an Islamic, agrarian civilization was laid by a diverse collection of wandering charismatic holy men- sheiks, pirs, darvishes- acting under the auspices of both the higher, more heavily Hindu landed class, and behind them, the Mughal Empire. However, because Bengal was still covered with vast tracts of jungle wilderness well into the colonial era, the work on the ground was very localized and decentralized: the various religious figures yielded much of the local authority in organizing work crews and then farmers onto the virgin land. Mughal- and hence central government- interference was primarily limited to land grants and revenue gathering; significantly, no one in Dehli or elsewhere sought to direct a grand frontier project- people went and worked and farmed. 

As they worked at clearing the jungle and instituting intensive wet-rice agriculture, they also set up mosques, shrines, and madrassas, and through their influence saw many Bengalis gradually embrace Islam. The result was a form of Islam that was- and still is- strongly agrarian, in contrast to the more typically held view- by Muslims and non-Muslims- of Islam as an essentially urban religion. Yet in Bengal Islam principally developed on an agrarian basis, and what’s more, without coercion of non-Muslims: the only edged weapons in great use were axes for felling trees (and, no doubt, fighting off tigers). Certainly, Islamic invaders from the first Indo-Turks to the Mughals swept through the area and set up various kingdoms, but it was not under their influence that Islam primarily permeated the non-Muslim peoples of the delta. By being linked to the plow and the resultingly highly humane vision of agriculture, the expansion of Islam in Bengal was marked by a similar agrarian humaneness and rootedness: something that cannot exactly be said for other extensions of Islam (or of some expansions of Christianity for that matter). It should also be noted however that this initial vision was modified considerably in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries through the influence of various external sources of Islam, including a certain school on the Saudi Peninsula that has lately entered even the American public consciousness…

Such a frontier of deliberate, decentralized, religiously guided agrarianism wasn’t unique to Bengal, of course. All over the medieval world, Christian and Islamic, one sees examples of this sort of subaltern expansion of frontiers, whether religious, economic, or cultural, from early Christian Ireland to Northern Europe to the steppes of Central Asia. Very often monks, holy men, and various other religious- and usually quite independent- figures can be descried expanding human settlement and commerce- and with them the palpable presence of civilization. Far from ‘poisoning everything,’ the presence of religion, particularly through holy men- both in life and death- was integral in providing authority structures and methods of civilization all across the medieval world.

What I’ve Been Reading

On By JonathanIn Books, Culture, HistoryLeave a comment

With school winding down- and my BA in sight, in a few days actually, hoorah- I’ve been able to get in a decent bit of reading, of books of my own choosing and not mandated by any class. Here is a brief overview of some things I’ve worked through over the past couple weeks.

The Servile State, Hillare Belloc: nice overview of some problems in modern capitalism, and some tenative views of solutions in a broadly distributivist order. The work is rather dated, obviously, and some of his historical arguments are overly-simplified, but his observations of how a “servile state” arises in ostensibly democratic states are just as relevant for the contemporary world. Desire for “security” is an easily employed thing for those who would further centralize economic and political power, and it is particularly powerful, it seems, in the developed world where governments and corporations can seemingly guarantee a considerable degree of comfortable security. Belloc doesn’t go into great depth on how to accomplish a Distributivist-minded order, though arguably making such a detailed case for Distributivism isn’t really his object in this book.

The Man Who Was Thursday, G. K. Chesterton: second read, just as enjoyable as the first time: it had been a while so I had forgotten exactly how it worked it out in the end. Chesterton’s prose is at once accessible and beautifully crafted, which makes for wonderful leisure reading. If you have not read this small masterpiece, it is well worth a couple of afternoons. Anarchists and duels and stolen elephants- what’s not to enjoy?

‘Comrades,’ he began, as sharp as a pistol-shot, ‘our meeting tonight important, though it need not be long. This branch has always had the honour of electing Thursdays for the Central European Council. We have elected many and splendid Thursdays. We all lament the sad decease of the heroic worker who occupied the post until last week. As you know, his services to the cause were considerable. He organized the great dynamite coup of Brighton, which, under happier circumstances, ought to have killed everybody on the pier. As you know, his death was as self-denying as his life, for he died through his faith in a hygenic mixture of chalk and water as a substitute for milk, which beverage he regarded as barbaric, and as involving cruelty to the cow. Cruelty, or anything approaching to cruelty, revolted him always.’ 

Life & Times of Michael K, J. M. Coetzee: A slender novel, Coetzee presents a fairly straightforward, Kafka-esque tale of a somewhat mentally handicapped man who ends up alone in a war-racked South Africa. All of Michael’s attempts to live out his simple life are thwarted as he journeys from the city, to the countryside, to the wilderness, and in and out of various camps, until finally ending up back in the city. Coetzee’s prose carries well through most of the novel; at times he comes off as a little too polemical, and the second section of the book- an interlude delivered in the first person narrative of a doctor- sounds a little stilted. The strength of the book lies in Coetzee’s general willingness to follow the relative “simplicity” of Michael, in his perception of the world and his desires and hopes.

Yet in the same instant that he reached down to check that his shoelaces were tied, K knew that he would not crawl out and stand up and cross from darkness into firelight to announce himself. He even knew the reason why: because enough men had gone off to war saying the time for gardening was when the war was over; whereas there must be men to stay behind and keep gardening alive, or at least the idea of gardening; because once that cord was broken, the earth would grow hard and forget her children. That was why.

The Holy War Idea in Western and Islamic Traditions, James Turner Johnson: Not quite finished with this one; so far a decent overview of what holy war has meant in both Western (with the principal meaning here being Western European) and Islamic cultures. Unfortunately but not unsurprisingly no attention is paid to Eastern Christian ideas on the subject (but then if I had a nickle for every time Eastern Christendom is overlooked I would be a considerably richer man); appraisal of Roman Catholic and Protestant theories and practice is quite good however. Some interesting points on the similarities and differences: both traditions eventually have rather similar conceptions of holy war, with similar regulations concerning the conduct of war, holy and otherwise. However, in Christianity the embracing of war for any purpose takes a few centuries, and it is not until the First Crusade that anything approaching a codified idea of holy war develops. In Islam holy war is present from the beginning, and indeed forms what is, in more ways than one, part of the existential core of early Islam. Likewise prohibitions upon killing or maiming noncombatants develop differently in the two traditions. The most obvious divergence between Western and Islamic views of holy war, however, is the rejection of war in the name of religion by Western secular states (though, as the author notes, wars of state ideology- often followed with as much, if not more, furvor as any religion); Islam has by and large yet to follow a similar course.

The Faith of Shia Islam, Muhammad Rida Al-Muzaffar: a slim little tome written by a twentieth century Islamic scholar from Najaf, Iraq. A decently accessible introduction to Shia Islam and its distinctives from the perspective of a Shia scholar. Al-Muzaffar places considerable emphasis upon the importance of reason and rationality in the practice of faith, and makes several arguments on the nature of God that His attributes must be interpreted rationally: such that God cannot be supposed to command evil or desire evil, as it would contradict His revealed attributes.

Some Perspective

On By JonathanIn Culture, History, University Life, War1 Comment

Via Antiwar.com: 

‘In terms of body count, those two mass slaughters added up to more than three Virginia Techs; and, on each of those days, countless other Iraqis died, including, on the January date, at least 13 in a blast involving a motorcycle-bomb and then a suicide car-bomber at a used motorcycle market in the Iraqi capital. Needless to say, these stories passed in a flash on our TV news and, in our newspapers, were generally simply incorporated into run-of-bad-news-and-destruction summary pieces from Iraq the following day. No rites, no ceremonies, no special presidential statements, no Mustansiriya T-shirts. No attempt to psychoanalyze the probably young Sunni jihadists who carried out these mad acts, mainly against young Shi’ite students. No healing ceremonies, no offers to fly in psychological counselors for the traumatized students of Mustansiriya University or the daily traumatized inhabitants of Baghdad – those who haven’t died or fled.’

The Blacksburg Massacre in Global Context

How It Works

On By JonathanIn Culture, PoliticsLeave a comment

If you see in a province the oppression of the poor and the violation of justice and righteousness, do not be amazed at the matter, for the high official is watched by a higher, and there are yet higher ones over them. But this is gain for a land in every way: a king committed to cultivated fields.

Ecclesiastes 5:8-9

A Passion for Excellence and Order

On By JonathanIn CultureLeave a comment

Several years ago I argued with a friend of mine that we might make money by marketing some inferior lambs. My friend thought for a minute and the he said, “I’m in the business of producing good lambs, and I’m not going to sell any other kind.” He also said that he kept the weeds out of his crops for the same reason that he washed his face. The human race has survived by that attitude. It can survive only by that attitude- though the farmers who have it have no been much acknowledged or much rewarded.

Such an attitude does not come from technique or technology. It does not come from education; in more than two decades in universities I have rarely seen it. It does not come even from principle. It comes from a passion that is culturally prepared- a passion for excellence and order that is handed down to young people by older people whom they respect and love. When we destroy the possibility of that succession, we will have gone far toward destroying ourselves.

Wendell Berry, The Unsettling of America: Culture & Agriculture

Reading Berry’s words here immediately brought to my mind one older person who probably did more than anyone to instill that “passion for excellence and order” in me, Mr. Jones Woods. A master woodcarver, originally from rural North Carolina, he taught me woodcarving for several years during my boyhood in Tennessee (granted, not that terribly long ago, all things considered), instructing me in the very basics of knife strokes, how to read the grain, how to manipulate a chisel, and so on. I can’t say that I ever became a master woodcarver, though through his oversight I worked out a few decent pieces. More importantly, while learning under him I saw his love of good craftsmanship, of hard, patient, steady work, and the resulting excellence. He invested continually in my life- I would often stay after my lessons were up to listen to his stories, watch him work on one of his ongoing pieces, watch him tie flies, or just talk about life.

He was precisely the sort of person I wanted to be around- not because he always “affirmed” me in my work or ideas, but rather, even in his criticism he was genuinely constructive, and terribly patient (he also kept bandaids in stock for the times- more than once- in which his repeated urges to “slow down” were ignored and the knife took off more than basswood). In everything he conveyed the sorts of cultural values that are so neccessary for living a truly “good life” that embrace more than instant gratification and mockingly artificial and surface pleasures and goods, a world of pre-packaged everything. And in everything Mr. Jones’s Christianity was evident: he lived and breathed his faith, whether in his love for his wife, in his craftsmanship, or his solid churchmanship- and in so doing he made manifest a Christianity that revelled in the goodness of the natural world offered back up to God in thanksgiving. He knew and loved beauty, in a rich strong masculine way, and found beauty in hard work and honest commitment. To sum up, he taught me far more than the art of turning a block of basswood into art: the intersection of his life and abiding passion for excellence and goodness with my life instilled in me all manner of virtues. I genuinely loved and respected him, and still do, though I haven’t gotten to see Mr. Woods in several years now, as he and his wife moved off to Michigan to be closer to their children. It is very much people like Mr. Jones that hold culture together. Wendell Berry is right on- internet and iPods and fancier universities will not do the job. It is real, genuinely real, people, themselves rich in passion for virtuous living, that preserve and encourage real, healthy culture.

Thoughts on the Value of History

On By JonathanIn Culture, History, PhilosophyLeave a comment

“But falsehood, in general, passes current among the multitude because they are ignorant of history and believe all that they have heard from childhood in choirs and tragedies.”

Pausanias, A Description of Greece

“For human reason is not autonomous at all. It is always living in one historical context or another. Any historical context, as we see, distorts the vision of reason; that is why reason needs the help of history in order to overcome these historical limitations.”

Pope Benedict, Truth and Tolerance

Being a history major, and intending to one day make a living of some sort via the discipline of history, the overall value and place of history as a discipline in the broader scheme of things is something I regard with some interest and thought. I came across these two quotations today and was struck by the general convergence of thought in the two quite disparate writers. Pausanias, in one of the occasional interjections of opinion or explanation he offers in his travel guide, illustrates succintly one of the problems we must deal with in considering history (and Pope Benedict brings this out further in a different vein): our notions tend to be pre-formed from often times dubious sources. In the modern age replace “choirs and tragedies” with television and movies- the impact is the same. Our surrounding culture conditions our understanding and perception of history, and it is only by beginning to step back from our era and regard other eras that we can break out, contingently and partially to be sure, from the pre-conditioning of our age.

By considering history in greater depth and detail than what is offered by the mass media organs and popular opinion and knowledge, we are able to begin- again contingently and partially- viewing our own age and its systems of thought, its preconceptions and first principles, from a better perspective. History enables one to move outside of our limited perspective of the now and realize that the now is by no means absolute or unique; many “nows” have existed, with their own preconceptions and certainties, often quite divergent from ours. By recognizing and to as much of an extent as possible understanding this basic fact one is able to regard one’s own preconceptions with greater objectivity- most importantly, to recognize the preconceptions and first principles of one’s own era.

This assumes that one can, as Pope Benedict says, to a certain extent step outside of the immediate limitations of one’s historical context, that speaking and listening across “language games,” to borrow Wittgenstein’s terminology, is entirely possible. I agree, though of course with the caveat that one is always, to a certain extent, conditioned by one’s historical context, but it is not an absolute condition. Nor is it impossible to interact meaningfully with other language games; they are not mutually exclusive and impermeable. The disciple of history indeed rests upon the practice of crossing language games and stepping out of one’s immediate historical context; at the same time the ongoing practice of history more greatly enables one to consider the world more rationally and with fewer blind spots.

Anti-War Baptists and Ale For Freedom

On By JonathanIn Culture, Gospel, History, Politics, WarLeave a comment

In keeping with Pope Benedict’s Easter message today on peace, here are a couple of quotations from early 19th century British Baptists on war, that offer a valuable counterpoint to the unfortunate support of many contemporary Evangelicals for militarism and imperial adventures:

 “If I had money to purchase a commission for Peter, I could not do so conscientiously. Thinking as I do that War is one of the greatest plagues with which a righteous God scourges a wicked world, and that in perhaps nine instances out of ten, it is unlawful, also that every person who gets a commission in the Army does actually sell himself for the purpose of killing men wheresoever he may be sent for that purpose, and that his will must be wholly under the control of another, from whom he recieves orders, so that he is not in that instance a free agent; I cannot be accessory to Peter’s gaining a commission by my means as purchaser.”

Rev. William Carey, Letter to His Sisters, 1809

“Detesting war, considered as a trade or profession, and conceiving conquerors to be the enemies of the species, it appears to me that nothing is more suitable to the office of a Christian minister, than an attempt, however feeble, to take off the colours from false greatness, and to show the deformity which its delusive splendour too often conceals. This is perhaps one of the best services religion can do to society. Nor is there any more necessary. For, dominion affording a plain and palpable distinction, and every man feeling the effects of power, however incompetent he may be to judge of wisdom and goodness, the character of a hero, there is reason to fear, will always be too dazzling. The sense of his injustice will be too often lost in the admiration of his success.”

Rev. Robert Hall, Sermon On War, 1802

In a related vein, sort of, is the following item: William Wilberforce Freedom Ale, brewed by Westerham Brewery in Britain. They offer this description:

“Traditionally floor-malted Maris Otter pale ale malt, crystal malt and Kentish hops combine with Fairtrade Demerara sugar to produce deep gold ale, characterised by its mellow bitterness and long hoppy finish.

“The beer commemorates the 200th anniversary of the abolition of the slave trade. On 25th March 1807, the British Parliament voted in favour of the abolition of the slave trade. This act of legislation was one of the most humanitarian pieces of legislation ever enacted in parliament; slaves could no longer be traded in British ships.”

So it’s a little kitschy, but it’s ale, it commemorates William Wilberforce, and part of the profits go to stop human trafficking. The brewers, besides being Evangelicals and including Bible verses on their website and products, also support fair trade and local food economy, which is also pretty nifty. I suspect Rev. Carey would have approved. 

Healing in Syria

On By JonathanIn Culture, WarLeave a comment

Dr. Naim isn’t his real name. The Syrian psychiatrist says he is afraid of his Syrian state employers who refused to allow him to treat Iraqi children, even though he volunteered to do so on his own time.

In the same Christian neighborhood where Noor and her family lives is a small center run by the Sisters of the Good Shepherd.

“The nuns would come and visit us and other Iraqi families at home,” Noor’s mother, Wafaa, says. “They told us about a program for children that was going to be held at the church.”

It was there that Noor, a Christian, and the doctor, a Muslim, first met.

A Syrian’s risky choice to help young Iraqis heal