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The Glory of Kings: A Festschrift for James B. Jordan
Fyodor Dostoevsky
(Christian Encounters Series)
Athanasius
(Foundations of Theological Exegesis and Christian Spirituality)
The Four: A Survey of the Gospels
Defending Constantine: The Twilight of an Empire and the Dawn of Christendom
From Behind the Veil: The Epistles of John
Deep Exegesis:The Mystery of Reading Scripture
1 & 2 Kings
Brazos Theological Commentary
The Promise Of His Appearing: An Exposition Of Second Peter
A Great Mystery: Fourteen Wedding Sermons
Deep Comedy: Trinity, Tragedy, And Hope In Western Literature
Miniatures & Morals: The Christian Novels of Jane Austen
The Priesthood of the Plebs: A Theology of Baptism
A Son To Me: An Exposition of 1 & 2 Samuel
From Silence to Song: The Davidic Liturgical Revolution
Ascent to Love: A Guide to Dante's Divine Comedy
Blessed Are the Hungry: Meditations on the Lord's Supper
A House For My Name: A Survey of the Old Testament
Heroes of the City of Man: A Christian Guide to Select Ancient Literature
Brightest Heaven of Invention: A Christian Guide To Six Shakespeare Plays
Wise Words: Family Stories That Bring the Proverbs to Life
The Kingdom and the Power: Rediscovering the Centrality of the Church
BBC News reports that the US has been pressuring African countries to promote the gay rights agenda: “President Barack Obama has ordered US government agencies to put gay rights at the heart of foreign policy. . . . The US has said it will use foreign aid and diplomacy to fight discrimination against gays and lesbians. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said ‘gay rights are human rights.’”
Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni is resisting the pressure: “‘Before anyone gives me a lecture about homosexuals and their rights, first talk about railways,’ Mr Museveni told delegates at a meeting in Kampala. Homosexuality is illegal in many African countries, including Uganda, where homosexual acts are punishable with up to 14 years in prison.”
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Friday, December 23, 2011 at 3:44 pm
In today’s Daily Telegraph, Fraser Nelson reviews the recent threats to Christians in the Middle East: “The Arab Spring was always going to mean danger for religious minorities, unleashing the Islamic extremists who previously were kept at bay. For all their evil, the old secular tyrants abused their victims equally, whether they wore the cross, hijab or skullcap. This year’s revolutions are marked by the utter absence of any leaders-in-waiting. History has repeatedly shown how, under such circumstances, regime change can be followed by a descent into sectarian chaos. Extremists can easily start fights along religious or ethnic lines by assassinating a leader, or blowing up a shrine. The result can be civil war (as with Bosnia and Rwanda), even leading to partition (as with India and Cyprus).”
The British government, like the US, has done little:
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Friday, December 23, 2011 at 3:39 pm
Smith argues that Hardt and Negri’s proposals for resistance to empire are insufficiently radical (FL is “libertarian freedom”):
“what the multitude desires is absolute freedom, and what the multitude opposes in Empire is its repression and restriction of freedom. But just what concept of freedom is operative in their proposal? It would seem clear, given the negative mode of formulation (freedom as a freedom from restrictions), the concept of freedom that drives both their critique and constructive vision is a most radical version of FL. But if, as I’ve tried to demonstrate above, Empire—as instantiated in the ‘world market’ and served by American foreign policy—is itself rooted in FL, then it would seem that Hardt and Negri’s alternative vision is still nourished by the same libertarian well. And for just that reason, their alternative is insufficiently radical insofar as it does not really oppose the root (radix) of Empire. If the injustices of Empire are in some significant way the fruit of FL, then it’s hard to see how further radicalizing FL will redress this situation of injustice.”
Occupy Wall Street is in secret cahoots with Wall Street.
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Thursday, December 8, 2011 at 1:26 pm
Many have commented on the lack of focus in the “Occupy X” movement that has spread throughout the world. That’s not surprising, though, if we recognize that the movement is taking its theoretical cues (such as they be) from writers like Hardt and Negri. If, as they argue, we have moved beyond the world of empires into the world of ubiquitous Empire
Necessarily, the Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Saturday, October 29, 2011 at 5:30 am
On the Weekly Standard blog, Lee Smith notes that this week’s riot in Cairo “was preceded by a smaller demonstration last week when Copts protested an attack on a church in Edfu, almost 500 miles south of the Egyptian capital, and demanded that the Muslim gangs responsible for the destruction of the church be brought to justice. The army and security forces beat Copt protesters when they marched last week, too.”
A video of the beating in Edfu is on YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3OAYMw25Q2U&feature=player_embedded&skipcontrinter=1), and Smith comments, “Perhaps what’s most noteworthy in this clip is that after the first few blows the officer in charge, in a red beret, seems to be trying to stop his troops from striking further. At one point the officer even hits one of the soldiers. This suggests that while Egypt’s ruling body, the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, is intent on keeping the streets quiet and free of Copt activists, it is unlikely they ordered the army to kill civilians. Rather, it seems that individual soldiers acted on their own.”
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Thursday, October 13, 2011 at 12:13 pm
On the Huffington Post, Christian Sahner provides some background for the current hostility against Christians in the Middle East. He notes, for instance that “Western nations have long showered attention upon Arab Christian communities.” As a result of their role in diplomatic relations between Europe and the Ottoman Empire, for instance, , Christians gained a “privileged relationship gave Christians unprecedented access to education, wealth, and influence.” Anti-Christian animus is thus of a piece with anti-Westernism.
Domestically, too, Christians have been used for political purposes:
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Thursday, October 13, 2011 at 9:46 am
In September of this year, Nick Turse reported on Salon.com that the Obama administration has greatly increased the US military presence in the 97 or so countries that make up what the Bush administration called the “ark of instability.”
To be specific: “The United States is now involved in wars in six arc-of-instability nations: Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Pakistan, Somalia, and Yemen. It has military personnel deployed in other arc states, including Algeria, Bahrain, Djibouti, Egypt, Israel, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Morocco, Oman, Pakistan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, and the United Arab Emirates. Of these countries, Afghanistan, Bahrain, Djibouti, Iraq, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates all host U.S. military bases, while the CIA is reportedly building a secret base somewhere in the region for use in its expanded drone wars in Yemen and Somalia. It is also using already existing facilities in Djibouti, Ethiopia, and the United Arab Emirates for the same purposes, and operating a clandestine base in Somalia where it runs indigenous agents and carries out counterterrorism training for local partners.”
In addition to involvement in wars, the US is supplying arms across the arc:
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Tuesday, October 11, 2011 at 12:18 pm
On September 11 this year, Walter Russell Mead reported on the plight of Christians on his blog at the National Interest web site. Mead bemoand the fact that one of the consequences of the US invasion of Iraq has been the rapid decline of non-Muslim residents: “Comprising at least 5% of Iraq’s population before the 2003 invasion, well over half of these Christians and others have fled their ancestral homes. As the country has stabilized in the past few years, the toll of violence against minorities and stream of refugees has continued. Even as the Shia-dominated Iraqi government has enhanced its control, it has done little to rein in the targeting of weak Christian, Mandean, and Yazidi communities.”
Of course, this is not what the US wanted. But the US has done little to address the problem. Mostly, both the Bush and Obama administrations have ignored the problem as an “inconvenience”: “Officials seemed to feel that making an issue of widespread persecution of religious minorities would be either a propaganda victory for opponents of the Iraq War or, by making the US appear to be an advocate for Iraqi Christians, confirm Muslim suspicions about an alleged anti-Islamic or “crusader” US agenda. These considerations were less pressing once George W. Bush left the White House, but under President Obama as well the US made no concerted attempt to protect Christians and other minorities; now that we are rapidly drawing down troop levels there we will have even less ability to safeguard these most vulnerable communities.”
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Monday, October 10, 2011 at 4:08 pm
In today’s Jerusalem Post, Caroline Glick ponders the strange disinteret in the rapid expulsion of Christians from the Middle East. She notes, “at the time of Lebanese independence from France in 1946 the majority of Lebanese were Christians. Today less than 30% of Lebanese are Christians. In Turkey, the Christian population has dwindled from 2 million at the end of World War I to less than 100,000 today. In Syria, at the time of independence Christians made up nearly half of the population. Today 4% of Syrians are Christian. In Jordan half a century ago 18% of the population was Christian. Today 2% of Jordanians are Christian.”
US allies in the region are among the persecutors: “Christians are prohibited from practicing Christianity in Saudi Arabia. In Pakistan, the Christian population is being systematically destroyed by regime-supported Islamic groups. Church burnings, forced conversions, rape, murder, kidnap and legal persecution of Pakistani Christians has become a daily occurrence.”
But the Obama administration cannot be bothered. ”Lebanon’s Maronite Catholic Patriarch Bechara Rai caused a storm two weeks ago. During an official visit to Paris, Rai warned French PresidentNicolas Sarkozy that the fall of the Assad regime in Syria could be a disaster for Christians in Syria and throughout the region.”
During a visit to the US, Rai was supposed to meet with sernior US officials and with the President. But after his outspoken comments in Paris, “the administration cancelled all of its scheduled meetings with him. That is, rather than consider the dangers that Rai warned about and use US influence to increase the power of Christians and Kurds and other minorities in any post- Assad Syrian government, the Obama administration decided to blackball Rai for pointing out the dangers.”
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Monday, October 10, 2011 at 2:51 pm
I offer my reflections on the 10th anniversary of 9/11 at www.firstthings.com/.
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Friday, September 9, 2011 at 5:32 am
Doug Bandow summarizes a Pew Forum report on religious persecution that concludes that persecution is increasing throughout the world: “Two years ago, Pew reported that 70 percent of humanity suffered from either government persecution of or social hostility to religion. Add more moderate restrictions of the sort which Americans would still reject and an incredible 86 percent of the world’s peoples did not enjoy genuine religious liberty. That trend is growing. According to Pew’s new study, ‘more than 2.2 billion people — about a third of the world’s population — live in countries where government restrictions or social hostilities involving religion are increasing. About 1% live in countries where government restrictions or social hostilities are decreasing.’”
Christians are most at risk: “130 countries (two-thirds of those studied) limit or harass Christians. Muslims face pressure in 117 nations, while Jews — despite their smaller numbers — are at risk in 75 states.” And Christians are under pressure among American allies like Pakistan, where blasphemy laws have been used to neutralize Christians in all sorts of disputes.
Bandow’s summary is here: http://spectator.org/archives/2011/08/30/a-world-spinning-backward#. And the Pew Forum report is available here: http://pewforum.org/Government/Rising-Restrictions-on-Religion%282%29.aspx
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Thursday, September 1, 2011 at 4:00 am
At the Financial Times web site, Gautam Malkani points to the motiveless malignancy of the London riots: “In A Clockwork Orange . . . Burgess captures his delinquent protagonists’ complete lack of political motivation, but without dismissing their actions as simple opportunism. Numbed by the dullness of their existence, Alex and his gang of ‘droogs’ revel in demonic violence to stave off the demon of boredom. The only way for them to feel alive is to be literally ‘alive and kicking.’ For Burgess there is nothing paradoxical about an apathetic rampage.
“Likewise, many rioters in London and other cities were laughing as they looted. The speed of the destruction was partly a function, then, of their sheer exuberance – the opposite of stereotypical listlessness more commonly known as ‘chillaxing.’ Like football hooliganism, the violence was recreational – a day out in a Nietzschean theme park. This was a key difference between this week and previous flashpoints in Britain’s potted history of public disorder.”
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Saturday, August 13, 2011 at 6:08 am
Ryan Lizza writes an expose of Michelle Bachmann in The New Yorker. As Joe Carter shows on firstthings.com, the story is full of distortions and misleading claims.
Doesn’t stop other journalists. The Economist summarizes Lizza’s piece as is, and so the ball starts rolling. Lizza’s article becomes instant orthodoxy, and soon everyone will think that only a few cranks like the “theocrats” at First Things object.
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Thursday, August 11, 2011 at 3:47 am
A report in the current New Yorker on the Murdoch scandal explains how reporters are in the scandal-laundering business: “Bradley Manning is a traitor, but Nick Davies, of the Guardian (who received Manning’s ‘war logs’ from WikiLeaks), is a patriot, and Julian Assange occupies some nebulous in-between zone. Prosecutors who use search warrants to pry into politicians’ personal lives and then leak their findings before filing any charges are sleazy. Journalists who publish transcripts of Eliot Spitzer’s text messages to a prostitution service are models of professionalism. Ritual sanctification is assumed to take place at the moment when questionably obtained information passes into the hands of a reporter.”
He adds, with delicious understatement, “This is a little facile.”
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Monday, July 25, 2011 at 4:31 pm
Some ruminations on Sarah Palin, politics, and celebrity at www.firstthings.com.
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Friday, July 8, 2011 at 4:02 am
I am glad Osama bin Laden is dead. He was an evil man.
And I think the surgical method used to kill him is commendable. The Bible, especially Judges, endorses assassinations: Kill the head, and the body becomes powerless . Wars slaughter thousands, or hundreds of thousands of relatively innocent young men, always on both sides. War is costly, especially in human terms. Better to destroy war-mongers who start wars.
That said, my enthusiasm for this operation is tempered by the recollection that the US made Osama bin Laden. Michael Moore is right on this point, if nowhere else: We supported bin Laden in his battle against the Soviets, as we also supported Saddam Hussein so long as he was fighting Iran. We had a hand (how direct is a matter of dispute) in creating bin Laden, creating the Taliban, creating al-Qaeda.
Americans have a right to breathe a sigh of relief. Yet the lesson is not, as President Obama, Charles Krauthammer, and others have suggested, that “we do big.” The lesson is that we’re pretty good at creating messes, and that we’re occasionally good at the mopping-up process. When the euphoria is over, will we take the opportunity to reflect seriously on our record of cultivating the serpents we later kill?
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Tuesday, May 3, 2011 at 8:02 am
On New Year’s Eve, an Egyptian Muslim blew himself up outside a Coptic church in Alexandria, killing 25 Christians and injuring 90 others. At the end of January this year, eleven Christians were killed in a massacre in the village of Sharona. These were only two of many attacks on Coptic Christians in Egypt during the past year.
Copts make up about 10% of the Egyptian population, though that percentage has been cut in half over the last century. They are the largest Christian population in the Middle East. During the thirty years of Hosni Mubarak’s regime, they have suffered petty discrimination and overt, and increasingly intense, violence.
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Sunday, February 13, 2011 at 7:25 am
Doug Bandow wrote the following for the American Spectator Online back in January:
“Dina Guirguis of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy testified last week before the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission of the House Foreign Affairs Committee: ‘Egypt’s native Christians . . . .are the Middle East’s largest Christian minority but in the past decade have faced an alarming escalation of violence as state protection has dwindled.’ Yet when the Copts attempt to protect themselves, as in the city of Giza last November, the police do intervene — against the victims.
“Guirguis pointed to one case where a judge and his two sons, who were prosecutors, led a mob in destroying a Greek Orthodox church. ‘At least half a dozen murders of Christians by Muslims in the last four years were rendered crimes without punishment due to the refusal of the state to follow the requirements of the rule of law in prosecuting felonies,’ she added. The complicity of security forces and legal officials in violence as well as discrimination demonstrates to all Egyptians that ‘sectarian violence is a crime to be committed with impunity,’ Guirguis warned.
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Saturday, February 12, 2011 at 8:34 am
In USA Today, Jody Bottum reminds us of the suffering of Egyptian Christians: “About 10% of the Egyptian population (and declining, down more than half over the past century ), these people have suffered discrimination under 30 years of rule by the now-embattled president, Hosni Mubarak. And they’ve seen that discrimination ratcheted up into open persecution during the current unrest, which began with a car bomb in Alexandria killing 21 at a Coptic church on Jan. 1 and continued through the massacre of 11 Christians in the village of Sharona on Jan. 30.”
He adds that the US’s and Europe’s attention to persecution of Christians has been declining steadily for some time: “For a decade now, Western nations have done little to help. Up to 1.4 million of Iraq’s Christians have fled since the war began in 2003, and without some kind of aid, there will be no native Christian population—none, not a single practicing Christian community—left in the Islamic countries of the Middle East by 2050.”
International pressure can alleviate Christian suffering in Muslim countries, as recent developments in Sudan indicate: “The voting in Sudan last month overwhelmingly favored secession by the oppressed populations in the oil-rich south. Assuming all goes as planned, the Christian-majority nation of Southern Sudan will be created this July. . . . The 2011 independence of Southern Sudan is a fruit of that effort—proof that, though it might take decades, international pressure can succeed.”
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Monday, February 7, 2011 at 9:47 am
We must support our ally Egypt, the cry goes up. ”I stand ready to assist President Obama in the pursuit of a policy that defends our invaluable ally; and advances Egyptians’ inalienable, peaceful aspirations,” says an email message from Rep. Thaddeus McCotter of Michigan.
And I’m reminded of reports on Voice of the Martyrs, like this one from November 2010: “Egyptian Christians fear for their safety as false allegations, violent threats and mass demonstrations pile up against the Church in Egypt. Muslim anger was ignited last month when entirely unfounded accusations were made on Al-Jazeera TV that Egyptian Christians were aligned with Israel and stockpiling weapons in preparation for waging war against Muslims. (Egypt borders Israel as well as the Gaza Strip.) Tensions were also fueled by Islamist leaders falsely accusing Christians of kidnapping and torturing women who had converted to Islam. Egyptian Christians’ rights were subsequently threatened by the Supreme Council of Islamic Affairs, a government body, which confirmed Egypt to be an Islamic state where ‘the citizenship rights of non-Muslims were conditional to their abiding by the Islamic identity of the State.’ Thousands of Muslims with the Front of Islamic Egypt have promised Christians a ‘bloodbath’ in at least 10 mass demonstrations.”
Under pressure from the US, Mubarak has helped the Copts, but injustices large and small remain entrenched in Egypt. Do we want or need such an “invaluable ally”?
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Friday, January 28, 2011 at 4:37 pm
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