In Honor of Saint Newman

Through the years I knew and referred to him as Cardinal Newman, but in 2019 he was canonized by the Roman Catholic Church. I am posting this in honor of that outstanding churchman and scholar, who died 130 years ago in August 1890 and is now known as Saint Newman. 

Statue of John Henry Newman on the campus of Newman University in Wichita, Kansas

Newman Becomes a Catholic

John Henry Newman was born in February 1801 in London, and he was baptized in an Anglican church about six weeks after his birth. He converted to Evangelical Christianity in 1816, but soon began to question some of the teachings and emphases of Calvinism.

At the age of 16, John Henry partook of his first communion in the Church of England. About six and a half years later he was ordained as an Anglican deacon and then was ordained a priest in May 1825.

Perhaps my first very limited knowledge of Newman came from singing the hymn “Lead, Kindly Light,” for which he wrote the words in 1833 and which long was one of the most popular Christian hymns.

Here is the first verse of that hymn, which Newman penned on a boat as he was trying to get back to England after a period of sickness in Italy:

Lead, kindly light, amid the encircling gloom,
lead thou me on;
the night is dark, and I am far from home;
lead thou me on.
Keep thou my feet; I do not ask to see
the distant scene; one step enough for me.

While the hymn was written specifically about getting safely back to England, Newman felt led in his spiritual pilgrimage to find his religious home in the Roman Catholic Church. In 1845 he left the Church of England and his teaching post at Oxford University and became a Catholic.

Newman Becomes a Cardinal

One of Newman’s achievements as a Catholic was in 1851 when he became the founding Rector of the Catholic University of Ireland. He gave a series of lectures there emphasizing that knowledge should be pursued “for its own sake.”

Newman described the university as a place of “universal knowledge,” in which specialized training, while valid in itself, was subordinate to the pursuit of a broader liberal education. Those lectures were published in 1852 under the title The Idea of a University—and the book is still in print.

In 1864, Newman published his spiritual autobiography under the Latin title Apologia Pro Vita Sua. It became a bestseller, and it also remains in print today. Interestingly, Margaret Atwood’s 2019 novel The Testaments, which I enjoyed reading last year, has several references to that book by Newman.

Newman authored numerous books, and as a result of his meritorious contributions by both his scholarship and spirituality, he was elevated to the position of Cardinal in 1879.  

Newman Becomes a Saint

In spite of the odds, Pope Francis officially approved Newman’s canonization in February 2019 and the actual ceremony took place this past October.

I say, “in spite of the odds,” for Newman was long embroiled in various controversies—and he even described himself as a “controversialist.” And the popular Jesuit priest James Martin tweeted that same month, “It isn't a slur to suggest that Newman may have been gay.”

Still, Ryan J. Marr, the director of the National Institute for Newman Studies, published a worth-reading 10/19 article titled “Five reasons John Henry Newman is a saint for our times.”

I asked two good Catholic friends about Newman. Former priest Larry Guillot made this email response: “To me, his being named a saint has added little to his reputation or exquisite intelligence. It is a welcome acknowledgment of his spirituality and steadfastness amid controversies.”

And Sister Marilyn Peot wrote, “As for Newman, what I recall was some of his quotes—and his sincerity and humility.” She then shared these words of Newman: “Seeking Truth was the only reason for living,” and “To live is to change and to be perfect is to have changed often.”

Sister Marilyn also said, “When I hear ‘Newman’ I immediately think ‘Lead, Kindly Light.’” Truly, those are words we all need to sing/pray during these turbulent times.

Should Jesus Be Demoted?

“We must begin by giving Jesus a demotion. He asked for it, he deserves it, we owe him no less.” These words by Robert W. Funk are cited at the head of Chapter Seven of my book The Limits of Liberalism, which I am currently updating and slightly revising. So, what about it? Should Jesus be demoted?

The Traditional/Orthodox Position

Jesus of Nazareth has been a problematic person to many ever since he walked the shores of the Sea of Galilee and was crucified outside the city walls of Jerusalem and, according to his followers, resurrected.

Jesus was a problem for the Jewish religious leaders who thought he was guilty of blasphemy. Jesus was a problem for the Roman political leaders who thought he was probably a dangerous insurrectionist.

Jesus soon became a problem for Christian thinkers as well. There were some who espoused Docetism, the view that Jesus was a divine being who only appeared to be human. That idea was explicitly branded as a heresy by Ignatius (A.D. c.35~107).

Then there was Arius (256~336), who propounded that Jesus was neither fully God nor fully human but rather a type of demigod. His view was labeled a heresy at the Council of Nicaea (325), which concluded that Jesus Christ was both “true” God and a “true” human being.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church  states clearly the orthodox view, which is also held by most traditional Protestants: “He [Jesus] became truly man while remaining truly God. Jesus Christ is true God and true man” (1994 ed., 464). 

The Liberal Position

The traditional view of Jesus has long been called into question by various Christian thinkers.

In contrast to the view of the Catholic Church as well as the Protestant Reformers and most of their followers through the centuries, according to which the primary message about Jesus is his death and resurrection which brings about the atonement of sinful humans, the liberal position emphasizes the life and work of Jesus before his death.

Liberal Christians follow Jesus not because he was “God incarnate,” but because he was and remains an exceptional and exemplary human being. And according to many liberal theologians, the human Jesus was “promoted” to divinity by the faith of the early church.

Robert W. Funk, cited at the beginning of this article, was the well-respected New Testament Scholar who founded the Jesus Seminar in 1985. Funk (1926~2005) made that striking proposal in “Jesus for a New Age,” the epilogue of his book Honest to Jesus (1996, p. 306).

Funk, and many other liberals, seem to think that a choice has to be made: either Jesus Christ must be acknowledged as an eternal divine being or as a “humble Galilean” sage who lived some 2,000 years ago.

But why does it have to be either/or?

The Paradoxical Position

Last week I happened to run across an article by Daniel P. Horan, a youngish (b. 1983) Catholic theologian. His fine piece is titled “The heresy of oversimplified Christianity.”

Horan says well what I have said and taught for decades—but maybe not so clearly. For example, he explains that heresy results from “mistaking part of the truth for the whole truth in a matter of faith or doctrine.”

He then asserts that this explanation “reveals what is so appealing about heresies and why so many Christians inevitably fall for them.” Heretical positions are usually oversimplified and reductionistic statements.

Thus, and these are my words, heresies are always appealing because they are easier to understand and to affirm than the traditional/orthodox position.

To quote Horan again, “The truth is that Christianity is not a religion for those who seek easy answers or black-and-white thinking.” He goes on to assert that “false Christianity promotes ‘either/or’ approaches to faith and morals” whereas “true Christianity has always been a ‘both/and’ tradition.

That is why in Chapter Seven I insist that we don’t have to take an either/or position with reference to Jesus Christ as Funk and many liberals do. As I say there, “Surely our minds can expand to the extent necessary to affirm and embrace a paradoxical view of Jesus Christ as both human and divine.”

Votes for Women: The Battle of August 1920

As is being widely publicized this month, women in the U.S. were given the universal right to vote 100 years ago this week, on August 18, 1920, when Tennessee became the 36^th state to ratify the 19^th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. 

June posing as a 1920 suffragist

Women’s Voting Rights before 1920

Women in most of the U.S. states did not have the right to vote in presidential elections before 1920.

For example, my paternal grandmother was born in 1881, so she turned 21, the voting age for men back then, in 1902. In the presidential election of 1904, though, she could not go to the polls with her husband George, whom she had married earlier that year.

Grandma Laura Seat was also unable to vote in the elections of 1908, 1912, or 1916. In the Declaration of Independence, the words “all men are created equal” still meant men instead of people 140 years later.

At the July 1848 Seneca Falls Convention, Elizabeth Cady Stanton adopted the motto, “All men and women are created equal,” and they demanded the right to vote. That still hadn’t happened 68 years later when Grandma Laura was not legally permitted to vote in 1916.

But the situation changed in August 1920.

The Suffs and the Antis in 1920

The U.S. Congress passed the 19^th Amendment on June 4, 1919—but it had to be ratified by 36 of the 48 states in order to become part of the Constitution. The battle for and against ratification in Tennessee, the 36^th state, was fiercely fought in August 1920.

That battle between the “Suffs” (those for women’s suffrage) and the “Antis” (those opposing suffrage, which included many women) is engagingly told in Elaine Weiss’s 2018 book The Woman’s Hour: The Great Fight to Win the Vote. And what a battle it was!

The strong women Antis emphasized several dangers the 19^th Amendment posed, including the dismantling of “white supremacy, states’ rights, and cherished southern traditions” (Weiss, p. 44).

Somehow, I had not previously realized how so much of the opposition to women’s suffrage was by southerners, still indignant over the outcome and effects of the Civil War and adamantly opposed to Black women gaining voting rights.

The Antis also included many women who were part of the conservative Christian evangelicalism of the South and linked with the fundamentalism that was growing in strength throughout the 1910s.

Among many other things, the Antis attacked the Suffs because of Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s Woman’s Bible (1895, 1898).

On the other hand, the Suffs were single-minded in their advocacy for women’s suffrage—and, regrettably, because of that single-mindedness they compromised on other matters of social justice, especially with regard to the rights of African Americans.

But, could the 19^th Amendment have been ratified otherwise? Perhaps not. Thankfully, it was ratified by Tennessee on August 18 and took effect on August 26, 1920. Surprisingly, though, most women didn’t vote in the November election that year.

What About 2016 & 2020?

It is reported that in the 2016 presidential election, 63.3% of eligible women voters went to the polls but only 59.3% of eligible men voters did.

Given the 72-year struggle (from 1848 to 1920) for voting rights, though, why would nearly 37% of women not vote in the last presidential election? Perhaps some of them still agreed with the Antis of 1920, although surely almost all women today think they should have the right to vote.

If just a small percentage of those women who didn’t go to the polls had done so, the 2016 election would likely have turned out differently, for of those women who did vote, 54% of them voted for Clinton whereas 53% of men voted for Trump.

In this centennial year of women’s suffrage, many of us are hoping that a far greater number of women will vote on November 3. “Votes for women” didn’t elect a woman president in 2016, but voting women can (and probably will!) make Senator Kamala Harris the first female vice president in U.S. history.

My Old Missouri Home

There are few people who don’t know about Stephen Foster’s “My Old Kentucky Home.” But there are not many who do know about my old Missouri home to which I moved 75 years ago this month, so let me tell you a bit about it.

Becoming a Farmboy

I was born 82 years ago today (on August 15, 1938) in the little town of Grant City, the county seat of Worth County, Missouri. My father was born on a farm in the southeast part of that county and my mother moved to Grant City with her birth family when she was a young teen. My parents graduated in the same high school class in 1933 and married two years later.

During World War II, my father and then my mother also worked in the Sunflower Ordnance Plant in western Johnson County, Kansas. In 1945 as the war was winding down, they went in with my mother’s parents to buy a 480-acre farm (for $16,000!) about six miles northeast of Grant City.

My grandparents moved into the old farmhouse, which did not have electricity or indoor plumbing, and not long after my seventh birthday I went to live with them in order to start the school year in Grant City.

Later that year, my parents moved from Kansas to the farmhouse and my grandparents moved back to their farm on the other side of town.

The next spring, we were able to have the house wired for electricity, and maybe the next year we installed indoor plumbing. It was great to no longer have to use the outdoor toilet! Year by year we improved the house, first inside and then the outside.

So, even though it was 75 years ago this month that I began living in my old Missouri home and became a farmboy, I have deep appreciation for the many blessings of having had such a childhood.

My old Missouri home in 1950; improvements were made inside first.

The Benefits of Being a Farmboy

1947 school picture
of farmboy Leroy

In the briefest fashion, these are some of the main boons I experienced from being a farmboy. 

1) I was part of a close-knit unit that worked together for the wellbeing of the whole family.

2) I learned how to work and to work hard.

3) I was able to raise my own livestock and was thereby able to become relatively independent financially at an early age.

Even though it was 65 years ago that I left my old Missouri home/farm to start to college, I still have great memories and deep appreciation for the ten years that I lived there.

The New Book of a Farmboy

Yesterday I basically finished writing my newest book. There will be some more editing, proofreading, and technical work before it is published, but I have completed the writing of it.

The title of this new book is A Wonderful Life: The Story of My Life from Birth until my 82^nd Birthday (1938~2020). I have long said that I would never write an autobiography—but a couple of years ago I decided that I should write my life story for my children and especially for my grandchildren.

(I do not plan to do any marketing of this book when it is published later this year—not that I have done very well marketing the books that I did hope to sell!—but it will be available for purchase for the few people who might like to get a copy.)

As I explain on the first page, the title “A Wonderful Life” is not an evaluation I have heard from others. In fact, some may well think my life has not been particularly wonderful—and that’s all right.

The point is that I believe that I’ve had a wonderful life from the beginning up until today—and that includes, of course, the ten highly significant years I spent as a farmboy.

Naturally, not everything during the past 82 years has been wonderful. But yes, overall, I believe it’s been a wonderful life, and I am profoundly grateful. 

100 Seconds to Midnight

What are currently the greatest threats to the human race? Without a doubt, in my mind at least, there are three: covid-19 in the short term, nuclear weapons in the mid-range, and global warming in the more distant future.

It was mainly the latter two that in January of this year led the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists’ Science and Security Board to set the iconic Doomsday Clock at 100 seconds to midnight, closer to “doomsday” than at any point since its creation in 1947. (Here is the link to that announcement:  https://thebulletin.org/2020/01/press-release-it-is-now-100-seconds-to-midnight/ .) 

The Threat of Covid-19

Since the new setting of the Doomsday Clock was in January, the new coronavirus pandemic was not a part of the consideration for the new setting, which had remained at two minutes before midnight since January 2018.

However, in spite of the fact that there have been nearly 750,000 deaths worldwide caused by covid-19—and who knows how many hundreds of thousands there will be before it is brought under control—it is not likely to bring about “doomsday.”

It has, however, already brought about extreme sadness for those who have lost loved ones and it threatens to make life more precarious for tens of millions of people.

For example, the upcoming edition of Foreign Affairs journal has an article titled “The Pandemic Depression: The Global Economy Will Never Be the Same.” The authors explore the massive economic contraction caused by the covid-19 pandemic that could push as many as 60 million people into extreme poverty.

But there are bigger threats to humanity.

The Threat of Nuclear Weapons

The statement issued by the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists on January 23 declared: “Humanity continues to face two simultaneous existential dangers—nuclear war and climate change—that are compounded by a threat multiplier, cyber-enabled information warfare, that undercuts society’s ability to respond.”

In this post I am writing mostly about the former, partly because of all that has been said this past week in remembrance of the 75^th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

New energy is now being given to ratifying the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW), which was passed by the United Nations in 2017. It will become a “legally binding instrument to prohibit nuclear weapons, leading towards their total elimination” when ratified by 50 entities.”

The three that did so last week—Ireland, Nigeria, and Niue—make 43 that have now ratified the TPNW. Of course, none of the nations possessing nuclear weapons have ratified that treaty nor, inexplicably, has Japan.

The International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) is a coalition of non-governmental organizations in one hundred countries promoting adherence to and implementation of the TPNW.

(You can find more information about that important group, which was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2017 here: https://www.icanw.org/.)

An informative Aug. 4 article about ICAN hopefully states, “The world has never been so close to abolishing nuclear weapons and there’s hope this may be achieved by the end of this year.” (See here:  https://wagingnonviolence.org/2020/08/nuclear-weapons-abolition-hiroshima-nagasaki-75th-anniversary/.)

May it be so!

The Threat of Climate Change

Short of an all-out nuclear war, the biggest threat to the long-term future of humankind is global warming. That was the subject of my first blog post this year: “Climate Crisis: The Challenge of the Decade.”

With the current pandemic raging, it seems that we are not now hearing much about the ever-increasing threat of global warming. I hope that soon the focus of our attention on the urgent matters of the present can shift to a consideration of the even more urgent matters threatening the future of the human race.

After all, “100 seconds to midnight” is a dire warning that needs to be taken far more seriously than most of us have.

“The Fifth Evangelist”: In Appreciation of J.S. Bach

The covid-19 pandemic is still raging. The country is beset with racial tension and political turmoil. But we humans can’t live by bad news alone. We need breaks during which we can focus on truth, beauty, and goodness—or on the sublime music of J.S. Bach, sometimes called the fifth evangelist.

The Life of Bach

Johann Sebastian Bach was born 335 years ago, in March 1685 in Eisenach, a town in what is now Germany. Martin Luther, who was born 202 years earlier, went to school in that same small city.

Orphaned at the age of 10, Bach went to school in 1700 on a music scholarship and found employment that same year as a choral singer and instrumentalist for church services.

Throughout his lifetime, Bach was a devout Lutheran, and much of his music was composed for churches in the states that joined together to form the German Confederation in 1815.

After a series of prominent positions in several cities, he spent the last 27 years of his life in Leipzig, one of the largest cities in Germany. It wasn’t his most prestigious position, but it was where he produced his most enduring music.

For fifty years, Bach lived, worked, and excelled as few have as a musician. He died 270 years ago last week, on July 28, 1750. 

In front of St. Thomas Church in Leipzig (dedicated in 1908)

The Music of Bach

Bach was one of the greatest and most prolific musicians. He composed a wide variety of music, and there are over 1,080 extant pieces. My favorite is “Toccata and Fugue in D Minor,” his powerful organ piece that was perhaps composed in 1706 when he was 21.

Bach’s most notable musical compositions, though, are his two major oratorios, “St. John Passion” (1724) and “St. Matthew Passion” (1727).

Those marvelous works, as well as his impressive cantatas composed for church worship, led to him long being referred to as “the fifth evangelist,” following Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. (He is identified in that way, for example, on the cover of the Dec. 27, 1968, issue of Time magazine.)

The legacy of the great composer languished after his death, but nearly 80 years later, in 1829, it was resurrected by the young Felix Mendelssohn (1809~47) with his performance of Bach’s “St. Matthew Passion.”

Bach’s reputation as one of the world’s greatest composers has been firm ever since. Bach was also one of the most versatile composers—and his music has been performed in a wide variety of ways, especially in recent decades.

“The Joy of Bach” (1978), first produced for television and now available on DVD (and free for those who have Amazon Prime), is a “delightful and kaleidoscopic presentation of the great composer's music” that “includes an impressive assortment of period and contemporary performances.”

The Faith of Bach

Even though Bach composed music for the court as well as the church, he once wrote, “The aim and final end of all music should be none other than the glory of God and the refreshment of the soul.”

Accordingly, at the beginning of many of his music manuscripts Bach often penned “J.J.,” Latin for Jesu Juva (help me, Jesus). And at the end of his compositions he routinely added the initials “S.D.G.,” which stands for Soli Deo Gloria (glory to God alone).

(I encourage you to watch “Glory to God Alone: The Life of J.S. Bach,” 2006, a 43 minute film that is available, here, on YouTube.)

But since he wrote for the glory of God, his music was, and is, not only for church folks but for all people. Mark Swed, a writer for the Los Angeles Times, wrote last month (see here) how Bach’s Cantata No. 28, written in 1727, is “a lullaby for our times too.”

Swed also contends that during these last four months, “Bach has been classical music’s No. 1 comfort-giver.”

And even before the covid-19 pandemic, someone posted this comment on a YouTube video of a Bach piece: “Whenever the world leaves behind a complete mess in my head, I choose Bach and he'll always fix it.

That’s what a good evangelist does.