What We Learned from the Beer Summit

The Beer Summit was supposed to be a "teaching moment." Now that the last bubble has popped, what have we learned? Several things, although they're probably not what President Obama had hoped.

1. We learned that Obama's first instinct is to blame the police.

2. We learned that the president is prone to making snap judgments without having all the facts.

3. We learned that Obama is easily provoked into making unwise public statements.

4. We learned that Obama is too small a man to apologize, even when he is obviously wrong.

5. We learned that, to cover his derriere, the president is not above organizing an elaborate, money-wasting, time-consuming photo-op that accomplishes nothing. It certainly didn't advance race relations in this country.

6. We learned that Obama is not much of a negotiator. He who would charm dictators and induce terrorists to lay down their weapons was unable to get one of his friends and a police officer who teaches others about racial profiling to agree on the facts of this case. Instead, we hear bromides such as "we agreed to disagree" and "what unites us is more important than what divides us." I can't wait to see how he does in the Middle East.

7. We learned that our president's first summit was a failure, but it's the rest of us who should be crying in our beer.

An Immodest Proposal

Officials in Chicago are considering set-asides for homosexuals and the "transgendered" in the awarding of city contracts. Chicago already sets aside defined percentages of contracts for businesses owned by minorities and women, and this expensive, corruption-ridden process is one way that the city keeps the wheels turning on its ever-humming patronage machine.

(Word is that the president has put forward something similar in his Obamacare proposal; that'll really keep costs down!)

Let's see: If Chicago gives preference in city contracts to blacks, Latinos, other minorities, women, gays, and the "transgendered," who's still left out? The only group I can think of is straight white males.

Since homosexuality is well on its way to becoming a protected class via hate-crimes legislation and gay marriage, some enterprising white male business owners might simply decide to claim that they're gay in order to get a city contract. And who's going to check, after all? Talk about government intruding into the bedroom!

And under this system of preferences, is an African-American lesbian worth more points than a gay white male? And do you only get half-credit if you're bisexual? And how do you calculate the score for the underrepresented class of people who enjoy sex with farm animals?

Perhaps in a few years we pasty white guys will simply be able to claim reverse discrimination and get some set-asides for ourselves. Then Chicago can scrap the entire program and do something really progressive-just award contracts to the lowest bidders.

When Is Abortion Part of Health Care?

When it's part of the Obama health care reform. Here's a CT Politics Blog posting, and an article by Peggy Noonan. Obama's blind arrougance on this issue is breath-taking. If he keeps going left at this rate, he'll be seen as nothing more than garden-variety liberal.

Update: Here's a piece by Kathryn Jean Lopez that's well worth a look.

Hothead-in-Chief

Henry Louis Gates had three strikes against him, but Barack Obama is the one who struck out in this week's flap about race.

The first strike for the well-known Harvard professor: Gates was caught trying to break into his own house. Second, he was belligerant with the police who showed up to investigate. Isn't everyone told to say, "Yes, sir," and "No, sir," to police officers? Third, Gates flung out the apparently baseless charge of racial profiling against by all accounts a fine officer. It appears that the person who has race on the brain is Gates, not the officer.

But it is Obama who is truly out in this episode. After admitting he didn't know all the facts, our president accused the Cambridge police of acting "stupidly" and insinuated that this was racially motivated treatment of a fine man and personal friend. Now Gates may be a fine man, but it is Obama who has acted stupidly, opening his mouth when he should have kept it shut, acting like another Chicago race hustler, Jesse Jackson.

Sorry, Mr. President, but that kind of smear may work in Chicago, but it doesn't play well nationally. There's a reason Jackson, still beloved in Chicago (if warily), never got out of the Democratic primaries. If you truly want to be a uniter on race, then may I suggest you comport yourself with a bit more sagacity and, may I say it, dignity? As it is, by dragging out anti-police stereotypes on this issue you have reinforced anti-Democrat stereotypes.

It's sadly true that many African Americans do fear and have been mistreated by the police because of their race, but let's at least get the facts before engaging in a smear campaign on national television.

Obama, perhaps recognizing his blunder, now says he wishes "cooler heads had prevailed." Yes, and he can catch a glimpse of the hothead-in-chief by looking in the mirror.

Digging Deeper

Why is President Obama so eager to push his health care reforms through without giving them the scrutiny they-and the American people-deserve? Is he afraid he can't win if the issues are fairly debated?

I've called his foreign policy "Bush lite." I wonder if his domestic policy should be termed "Clinton lite." Like Bill, he is seeking to make the military more welcoming of gays. Like Hillary, he is trying to take over "one-sixth of the American economy" (at least that's what it was back then).

It didn't work out too well for them, and my guess is that it won't do him any political favors, either. Obama continues to fritter away his historic opportunity with his radical commitment to liberal schemes that will just dig our financial hole that much deeper.

Watson's Journey, and Ours

The rise and fall of Tom Watson at the British Open was like some sort of a Greek tragedy. Here he was, the former golden boy, coming out of a comfortable retirement to play the game of golf in such a way as to make the world forget, if only for a weekend, all about a phenom named Tiger. Watson reminded us that golf brings out the best in us, awakens in us a longing for the Elysian Fields.

Watson's remarkable romp through the Turnberry links was a journey back through time, to an era not so long ago when more than one player could be called great. But it was also an attempt to defy nature and turn back the hands of time, to recapture youth and courage and nerve.

And for 71 holes, it worked. By hook, by crook, by smooth swings, and by strategy, the wily Watson held on, nearing a prize that no one of his advanced sporting years had ever won. Then on the final hole and in the playoff debacle that followed, Watson lost his grip, and the clock snapped back to reality. Whether through loss of strength or failure of nerve, Watson fell apart.

The putts that had been impossibly true now spun away limply, the approach shots that hit the slick greens like darts in a pub now found primordial rough next to the wild Scottish sea. You could almost hear the clock tolling midnight, almost see his golf bag turning into a pumpkin.

Watching Watson finish as he did is a reminder of how hard and uncompromising sport can be. In sport, the race is usually to the swift, the trophy to the strong. You cannot cheat the stopwatch. You cannot forever hold at bay the entropy of physics. It is also a reminder of how hard life is, how much we were made for something else. Despite our courage and heroism, sometimes our best efforts in the course of life come up short.

Yet the drama that unfolded in Scotland was also a reminder of why we love sport. But don't tell Tom Watson he was an inspration, that he gave it a good try. At least not yet. Tom Watson wanted to win.

Christian Groups Eye Hate Crimes Bill

Leaders appear divided over whether the law would hinder their right to address homosexuality.

By Paige Winfield in Washington, D.C

Update: Senate passes hate-crimes provisions.

Thoughts on the NAACP Speech

Yesterday during a speech for the NAACP, President Obama noted that too many Americans continue to face "the pain of discrimination." I too have felt this pain, but, as the president's story so clearly attests, we can overcome it if we try and if we have some help along the way from people of good will.

No government law said we had to elect a black president. Changing attitudes did that, overwhelming any lingering discrimination. Obama, whatever one thinks of his policies (and I don't think much of them), is a role model for others who face discrimination, and a challenge to overcome it without resorting to government. It's time we were all judged on our character (as Dr. King said) and competence. Skin color should have nothing to do with it. A black president proves that the era of special privileges for one race or another needs to end, once and for all.

However, I wonder if all of the African Americans listening to the president's speech appreciated his linking sexual orientation to race, saying both groups have faced the pain of discrimination. Surveys have shown that many blacks have traditional views about homosexuality as a sin, and in fact the black vote kept gay marriage from being legalized in California last fall.

Gay-rights activists are becoming increasingly strident in their demands for the right to marry, to install openly homosexual bishops in churches, to adopt children, and so on. In their calls for the right to be treated without discrimination in all these matters, they are splitting communities and churches and undermining the rights of Christians and hospitals to practice their faith and do their humanitarian work according to the dictates of conscience.

Marriage is what it is, the union under God of man and woman with a usual and primary purpose of procreation for the good of society. Homosexual "unions," whatever they are called, will not affect my marriage one whit, because by definition they are not marriage. What is being attempted here is not an expanision of who is allowed to marry, like voting rights, but a redefinition of marriage, like saying you can vote without actually casting a ballot.

I am all for living and letting live, and if homosexuals want to change the marriage laws, it looks as if they have the legal momentum and votes to eventually do so. But they will no more be able to change marriage than they will be able to stop the sun from rising in the east and setting in the west.

So let's stop talking about discrimination when it comes to gay marriage. Homosexuals have always been free to marry in this society, if they can find someone of the opposite sex to consent. But bringing together two men or two women, whatever the law says, is not marriage.

Nor is opposing it discrimination.

Axis of Niceness

North Korea and Iran, both card-carrying members of President Bush's "axis of evil," are pursuing nukes. So why is President Obama cutting American missile defense (besides the fact that during the current domestic spending orgy he has to cut somewhere)?

His current course of action certainly seems to undercut Obama's reputation as the world's smartest man. Certainly he can't be comfortable with the idea of these crazy regimes having the ability to blackmail us or blow up our cities, so there must be something more to his policy than cut defense and hope for the best. Surely he cannot believe he can charm them. Perhaps he is planning an invasion or a coup?

Why do I have the sinking feeling Obama believes that people are inherently good (except Republicans who disagree with him on health care) and can be persuaded to do the nice thing? The worldview lesson he will soon learn could be very costly for all of us.

Why You Can't Just 'Love Your Neighbor'

According to Benedict XVI's new encyclical, trying to love people without knowing the truth about them leads to mere sentiment and will do them harm.

By Francis J. Beckwith

Recovering Faith as Knowledge

A review of Dallas Willard’s Knowing Christ Today: Why We Can Trust Spiritual Knowledge.

The genius of Dallas Willard’s new book, Knowing Christ Today: Why We Can Trust Spiritual Knowledge (HarperOne, 2009), is its explanatory power for many of the ills of contemporary Western society. I only wish Willard’s proffered cure were half as potent.

Willard, a longtime philosophy professor at the University of Southern California and author of such works as The Divine Conspiracy and The Spirit of the Disciplines, says the moral confusion we see today stems from one uber-problem: “the trivialization of faith apart from knowledge and … the disastrous effects of a repositioning of faith in Jesus Christ, and of life as his students, outside the category of knowledge.”

Our problem, then, is epistemological: What do we know, and how do we know it? Too many in the academy say that traditional Judeo-Christian answers to the deepest questions of life no longer count as knowledge. Willard says that to actually claim that you possess actual but not exhaustive knowledge on a moral or religious issue (what Francis Schaeffer called “true truth”) is a scandal in the modern world.

Relativists see certainty as a tripwire for arrogance and extremism, and uncertainty as a recipe for tolerance and peace. Thus we hear the post-9/11 fulminations of New Atheists such Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens. They label all religions as potentially dangerous. Better to claim ignorance, they say—and more humble, too.

Yet knowledge need not provoke violence. Willard rightly says that sin is integral to the human condition and is not a specifically religious malady. Even atheists can behave badly, after all (the history of atheist tyranny is quite compelling in this respect). Sometimes religious knowledge even sparks humility.

So what is knowledge, and how do we acquire it, according to Willard? He says it is a matter not of opinion or strong feelings, but of correspondence to truth. “We have knowledge of something when we are representing it (thinking about it, speaking of it, treating it) as it actually is, on an appropriate basis of thought and experience.”

(Willard tends to emphasize his points through the generous use of italics, and all italics in quotations in this review are his. Often he appears to be talking down to readers, apparently believing they have succumbed to the spreading social ignorance of which he warns. “I should alert readers to the fact that this is not a devotional book and that it will require considerable mental effort to understand,” he warns in the introduction. “… I have tried to ease the pain as much as possible.” Elsewhere, discussing some of the causal arguments for God’s existence, he asks the reader, "Is your head spinning? Go slowly.” We’ll try to keep up, Professor.)

Once-hallowed religious beliefs, Willard says, have been relegated to the intellectual sidelines as a result of the post-Enlightenment struggle between what he calls “traditional knowledge” and secularism, which claims the mantle of knowledge without warrant and which rules in institutions of higher learning—even Christian ones—as the areas of human life that do not fit the “secularist story” multiply. As a result, knowledge disappears, and the vacuum is filled by others.

“In the context of modern life and thought,” Willard says, Christians “are urged to treat their central beliefs as something other than knowledge. Those beliefs are to be relegated to the categories of sincere opinion, emotion, blind commitment, or behavior traditional for their social group.” When this happens, Willard says, Christians cannot influence society for the good. Only knowledge, as opposed to mere belief, commitment, or formal adherence, conveys the right and authority “to act, to direct action, to establish and supervise policy, and to teach.”

Three examples from the brief political career of Barack Obama (not mentioned in the book) illustrate the brilliance of Willard’s diagnosis. First, at last year’s Saddleback Summit, Pastor Rick Warren asked the soon-to-be president, in the context of a discussion about abortion, when a baby is accorded human rights.

“Well, you know,” Obama, a professing Christian, answered, “I think that whether you’re looking at it from a theological perspective or a scientific perspective, answering that question with specificity, you know, is above my pay grade.”

In other words, the sanctity of human life is a mere conjecture or prejudice and not a matter of real knowledge. Thus, pro-lifers have no moral claim against President Obama’s pro-choice policies since entering the White House—including ending a conscience protection for health-care workers and forcing taxpayers to underwrite abortion with the words, “It is time we end the politicization of this issue”—as if his actions themselves are not political. Willard notes that when moral knowledge is lost, the authority to act devolves into a political power struggle, with preference given to “experts.”

Second, Obama’s assurance that he would “end the politicization” unavoidably brings to mind his parallel promise to take the “ideology” out of federal stem-cell policy by rolling back the Bush administration’s compromise position banning federal funding for research using new lines of stem cells taken from human embryos. Apparently the desire to protect nascent human life—which embryos indisputably are—is based on mere ideology, not knowledge.

A third example: This past spring Notre Dame’s decision to award the president an honorary doctorate did not sit well with many alumni and friends of the university, who rightly pointed out that Obama’s pro-choice policies contradict clear Catholic teaching. (Notre Dame is a Catholic school.) While supporters, including the university president and most students, defended the action on the basis of tolerance and diversity, visiting scholar Francis J. Beckwith pointedly noted that the real issue is epistemology:

Unless the university does not believe that the Church’s understanding of the moral law is true and knowable, it can no more in good conscience award an honorary doctorate of laws to a lawyer who rejects the humanity of the proper subjects of law than it could in good conscience award an honorary doctorate in science to a geocentric astronomer who rejects the deliverances of the discipline he claims to practice.

At some point, a Christian university must recognize that the truth it claims to know matters, even if the truth is unpopular, and even if the propagation and celebration of that truth may put one’s community at odds with those persons and centers of influence and power that dispense prestige and authority in our culture.

So what is Willard’s cure? He says, first of all, that Christians cannot hope to return religious knowledge to its rightful place in society unless they believe in it themselves. So the professor—an expert on German philosopher Edmund Husserl’s work, Logic and the Objectivity of Knowledge—attempts to convince us of what we should already know, namely, that God exists, and that miracles (including Christ’s resurrection) are possible, even likely.

His philosophical and logical presentation, a stripped-down version of what we have already seen in the writings of Alvin Plantinga, William Lane Craig, N.T. Wright, and Lee Strobel, is a welcome reminder that Christian truth represents the universe as it really is—in other words, knowledge. Willard’s defense of the unique contributions of Jesus Christ to the West’s cultural heritage is faith-affirming and intellectually bracing.

I have my doubts, however, whether these chapters will convince a hardened atheist such as Hitchens (who recently told me in a public forum that the biblical picture of God represents “a horrible, unchallengeable despotism that could never be voted out or overthrown or transcended, and a parody, a horrible parody of the idea of fatherhood”). Hitchens, in his anger, is impervious to logical arguments and throws mud on the stained glass window of God’s beauty and holiness.

Perhaps sensing this weakness, Willard moves on to “Knowledge of Christ in the Spiritual Life.” His key point: “Those who do know Christ in the modern world do so by seeking and entering the kingdom of God.” This is a knowledge based upon commitment. Here Willard distinguishes between two kinds of knowledge, knowledge by description and knowledge by acquaintance and, yes, Willard does italicize them). We know Christ when we acquaint ourselves with him and with his people.

Hitchens admitted to me during the debate that there is no amount of evidence that would convince him to become a Christian. And yet he has had extensive personal contact with author and educator Douglas Wilson as they debate the existence and nature of God, so perhaps there is yet hope for him.

However, in a book seeking to lay a foundation for the recovery of Christian knowledge, Willard, author of The Great Omission, makes a curious omission himself. He has little to say about the Bible. He relegates the study of the Word of God written to a subsection of “Fellowship with other disciples, living and dead.” Willard, not surprisingly, is eager to commend spiritual disciplines such as solitude and silence in the process of sanctification (a word that does not appear in Knowing Christ Today).

Willard also invests a chapter defending his concept of “Christian pluralism,” which boils down to a kind of inclusivism (all who are saved will be saved by Christ, but they need not necessarily have ever heard of Christ). In so doing, in the opinion of this reviewer, he takes certain of his scriptural proof texts out of context and cuts the theological hamstring of active, frontier-crossing missionary work. But those are debatable points—which makes me wonder all the more why the author included them in a volume on knowledge.

I wish Willard had grappled more with the interplay between faith and knowledge, because knowledge can only take you so far in the Christian life. And while in his focus on kingdom living Willard says little about the agent of the kingdom, the church, what he does say is almost uniformly negative. (To be fair, his critique of the academy is equally blistering.) It is hard to see how the social and personal transformation that we all desire can come to pass without a revitalized and vibrant church.

Yet Willard ultimately gives the task of repairing the breach in knowledge to pastors, defined by him more broadly than as shepherds of local congregations. Pastors, Willard says, are “those who self-identify as spokespeople for Christ and who perhaps have some leadership position or role in Christian organizations.”

In some ways, these pastors, like Warren and Willard, will have to be at home in the academy, behind the pulpit, and in the world. According to Christianity Today, when Willard decided to study philosophy in the 1960s, he says God told him, “If you stay in the churches, the university will be closed to you; but if you stay in the university, the churches will be open to you.” In a sense, Willard wants more pastors like himself.

But not everyone can be like Willard. Acquiring the knowledge they will need for such an expanded role—as teachers of the nations—requires an expansion of duties and horizons that goes beyond the abilities and calling of many pastors today. But if the church can get a few more with the knowledge of Dallas Willard, that can’t be bad for the kingdom of God.

A little knowledge can still go a long way.

My Journey as an Author

Mary DeMuth interviews me on WannaBePublished.blogspot.com.

The Spiritual Uses of Unemployment

By Stan Guthrie

I never really thought it would happen to me. Unemployment always seemed to be someone else’s problem.

How Old Is the Old-Time Religion?

Scholars challenge David Bebbington in The Advent of Evangelicalism.

Reviewed by Collin Hansen