Our Shared Liturgy: A Culture of Christ For All The Ages

(Theology/Insight)

You are what you love, love is a habit, discipleship is a rehabituation of your loves” – James K. A. Smith

You Are What You Love: The Spiritual Power of Habit

Doth My Heart Love Till Now

Hours tick by regardless of decisions made, actions taken, beliefs followed, or the time we commiserate with people. Some are time wasters, others efficient with their time. Weeks spent in the gym, years at work, and decades dedicated toward leisure. Temples built out of food, mammon, sex, guns, sports, or fishing. Rock etched by the blood of tears. Iron and Steel molted under intense heat. Days turn to months until moments become that last breath. Where one sits at the dinner table established a routine of rituals and processions. Altars surround our lives. But at what altar do you kneel? What does your heart speaketh in that final hour?

He that walketh uprightly, and worketh righteousness, and speaketh the truth in his heart. – Psalm 15:2

St. Augustine of Hippo once replied of Psalms 15:2 saying:

[I]t is possible that a man may speak with his mouth a truth which profiteth him nothing, if he hold it not in his heart, that is, if what he speaketh, himself believe not; as the heretics…

Faith requires a pure sincerity that may fade at periods of life but never will it burnout. Should that sacred fire not exist, yet a person continues forward into the Holy of Holies, a profane fire will be lite becoming a mere intellectual exercise; vain attempts of ritual without purpose or meaning. And should thou not be careful, one runs risk of Nadab and Abihu:

And Nadab and Abihu, the sons of Aaron, took either of them his censer, and put fire therein, and put incense thereon, and offered strange fire before the Lord, which he commanded them not. And there went out fire from the Lord, and devoured them, and they died before the Lord (Leviticus 10:1-2).

Not to suggest that God will bring fire down as He did to Nadab and Abihu; rather we must layout the concern that tainting holy ground has serious consequences for the Christian faith and the Universal Church i.e. of whom Christ is the Head. Worship matters and where the heart settles daily determines a proclivity that has eternal consequences.

Augustine, a great father of the faith, understood Sacred Scripture in its clarity of the human heart before an Absolute Sovereign God. Numerous times in the Old and New Testaments, the scriptures warn us that the human heart is misleading:

The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it? – Jeremiah 17:9

Keep thy heart with all diligence; for out of it are the issues of life. – Proverbs 4:23

But put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make not provision for the flesh, to fulfil the lusts thereof. – Romans 13:14

Christ, Family, & Community

For us to properly settled our minds on that which is true and good, Christ must do a divine work within us. Per salvation a work is begun in us as we seek to partake in a body, the local church. Salvation is not the end game for a true believer rather it is the beginning of a life devoted to the Lord and His Kingdom.

Kingdom building requires us to gather and worship, to be discipled and to learn, to go share the Gospel and help all in need. Christ, our bridegroom, betroths us, the body, His bride. Yet while are indeed His, Christ bestows us leaders: Pastors/Priests/Elders, Deacons, and Bishops to pasture the flock through and through. Along with other believers we are to admonish one another in the ways of the Word.

Lastly, the Church is to be the center of community; a symbol of refuge for the broken and downtrodden; and a place of growth and real prosperity for believers. Once a person is saved, Christians must build outwardly from their homes, workplaces, and events. Yes, we gather every Sunday to celebrate the Living Word and the Living God our Savior, but each day must be a day set aside for God and for others. We must not be like the pharisaical. Should a brother or sister be in need, even on a Sunday, we must rush to them. Sharing the Gospel is the essential element but it carries with it great responsibilities as it reads in Matthew 5:3–12:

⁴ Blessed are they that mourn: for they shall be comforted.

⁵ Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth.

⁶ Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled.

⁷ Blessed are the merciful: for they shall obtain mercy.

⁸ Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God.

⁹ Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God.

¹⁰ Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness’ sake: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

¹¹ Blessed are ye, when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake.

Our calling is strong and everlasting in nature. There is no separation between believer and the Word; we do not adopt the Platonic or Aristotelian over that of scripture—never. Only the God of the New and Old Testament—the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

Our sacred liturgy is binding to reality. When and where we gather, so the immanence of God shall be. No, that does not dissolve the sacredness of the cathedral or the holy day. What the immanence of God reminds us is that His will be done. He is not to be forgotten nor can He be defeated. God reigns forever and ever. That sacred liturgy then is the center piece of our Body and the Throne of our lives, Jesus Christ.

So when we gather at the dinner table or the Lords Table we must be sure to layout the real purpose of our joy and hope; our reason for living and being; the meaning of life and purpose.

Christ is the King! O Friends Rejoice 

1. Christ is the King! O friends, rejoice;
brothers and sisters, with one voice
let the world know he is your choice.
Hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah!

2. Oh magnify the Lord, and raise
anthems of joy and holy praise
for Christ’s brave saints of ancient days.
Hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah!

3. They with a faith forever new
followed the King, and round him drew
thousands of faithful servants true.
Hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah!

4. O Christian women, Christian men,
all the world over, seek again
the way disciples followed then.
Hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah!

5. Christ through all ages is the same:
place the same hope in his great name,
with the same faith his word proclaim.
Hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah!

6. Let love’s unconquerable might
your scattered companies unite
in service to the Lord of light.
Hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah!

7. So shall God’s will on earth be done,
new lamps be lit, new tasks begun,
and the whole church at last be one.
Hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah!

Totalitarian ‘Diversocrats’ and American Higher Education: A Review

(November Issue 2020)

By Kaleb ‘Kal’ Demerew

Mac Donald, Heather (2018). The Diversity Delusion: How Race and Gender Pandering Corrupt the University and Undermine Our Culture. New York: St. Martin’s Griffin.

The Diversity Delusion is a scathing critique of the politics, methods, and concepts that have informed contemporary diversity policy in American colleges. Mac Donald argues that diversity is fashioned into an ideology for coercing compliance, contrary to the spirit of a university education. In developing this argument, the author cites several quantitative studies and some notable case studies, centering on the identity politics of race and gender in college campuses.

Mac Donald develops her argument systematically, beginning with an assessment of diversity politics as a system that empowers pandering administrators to engage in thought policing on behalf of certain ‘preferred’ groups. This system is implemented under the guise of promoting ‘multiculturalism’, but in effect produces negative value judgments on those forms of knowledge and expression associated with non-minority categories such as males or whites. These negative value judgments are institutionalized through a group of administrators the author refers to as ‘diversocrats’. By silencing those they disagree with, the author argues, diversocrats claim to espouse postmodernism or relativism while actually imposing a form of totalitarianism (p. 20).

Mac Donald argues that totalitarian ‘diversocrats’ threaten the pursuit of humanities, truth, and science in university, promoting niche fields that provide narrow support to the ‘diversity’ project. Examples of this include the replacement, rather than supplementation, of classical curricula in classical rhetoric, oratory grammar, and literature with abstract study areas in fields like gender, race, and sexuality studies. For Mac Donald, this reflects a narcissistic turn, as these policies assume that students can only gain value by learning about things that they can relate to experientially. In the process, this approach may undermine the transmission of nuggets of knowledge considered more neutral, especially those in the humanities.

Finally, the author argues that diversity policies rely on falsehoods to pander to gender and racial identity politics. For instance, when it comes to race, diversity policies provided reduced nominal standards for less qualified minorities to access elite flagship state schools like UC-Berkeley and UCLA, through newly-adopted ‘holistic’ admissions criteria. Mac Donald identifies a number of faults with these policies, the most important being the proliferation of what she calls ‘victimology’. This concept relies on ‘mismatch theory’ and links obsessions with ‘microaggressions’ to a psychology of inadequacy created when students are admitted into colleges in which they are not equipped to excel. The real hindrance to URM achievement, according to Mac Donald, is an ideological rejection of cultural values pertaining to education, and a rejection of the meritocracy associated with bourgeois culture. Mac Donald also presents a historical case study of sexual promiscuity and the campus rape movement as another instance of diversocrat totalitarianism.

The Diversity Delusion is a bold and controversial assault on the campus ideology of diversity, but it is helpful to explore some of the weaker methodological choices in the book. While most case studies in the book focus on how diversity and identity politics play out in college campuses across the United States, these themes are also explored in the context of the corporate world and Hollywood. In other words, the book has a very broad focus. While this may help with reaching a variety of mainstream readers, there are times when it seems that the book’s central message is lost. For instance, Mac Donald devotes an entire chapter to a critique of the #MeToo movement in the context of Hollywood, and another to discussing the racial politics of policing. While it is clear that the author is trying to provide the broader societal context of diversity policy and identity politics in these chapters, logical connections to campus politics are not clearly made. The book would have thus likely benefited from the omission of these two chapters, in favor of a more singular focus on diversity ideology in American higher education. Still, there are a few instances when the college-corporate themes are connected more logically. For instance, Mac Donald projects skepticism about the notion that victimology proponents can ‘grow out’ of victim politics, since the same politics are increasingly being adopted into corporate diversity training programs (p. 22).

Along these lines, the organizational structure of the book also leaves much to be desired. Diversity Delusion is organized into four parts, the first on race, the second on gender, the third on university bureaucracies, and the fourth on the purpose of the university. A total of sixteen chapters constitute these parts. While the organization of chapters within the individual parts is logical, the book reads like a collection of essays at times and the thematic organization of the four parts is not always effective. Although the race and gender sections were likely provided first to entice mainstream readers, a more logical organizational scheme would likely move parts 3 and 4, on educational bureaucracies and educational theory, respectively, to the beginning of the book where they could provide some initial conceptual grounding. 

With all this being said, Mac Donald’s findings regarding the failings of counter-bourgeois culture, and the idiosyncrasies of diversity politics in college campuses are alarming. They present a challenge to liberal educators, who must balance any needs for inclusion with the realities of cultural difference as well as the preservation of curricula that have made American universities elite to begin with.  The most effective arguments in Diversity Delusion are those that present human stories that portray counterintuitive narratives to those espoused by diversity promoters. One particularly poignant case in this regard is that of Kashawn Campbbell, an affirmative-action admit at UC-Berkeley whose first-year GPA suffered as a lack of his academic preparation and inability to master even basic writing. While Campbell’s inflated grades in African American courses allowed him to continue into sophomore year, the experience took a mental toll, making him feel inadequate and unwelcome, although the university clearly skewed its admission standards in his favor. In the end, the cognitive dissonance resulted in Campbell’s attribution of his feelings towards racism and microaggressions, rather than his clear lack of academic preparation. This story is what pushes Mac Donald to decry, “[r]acial preferences are not just ill-advised; they are positively sadistic” (p. 61).

The driving theme in Diversity Delusion is that diversity promoters may continue to hold on to flawed ideas about minority achievement and culture, often with the best of intentions. While Mac Donald made these assessments in 2018, it is helpful to consider them today in the context of two controversial articles that have recently made similar assessments. First, Mead (2020) asserted that poverty in the United States has more to do with minority rejection of Western individualist cultures, than with systemic failures to accommodate diversity. Similarly, Wang (2020) relied on mismatch theory to argue that affirmative action discriminates against non-minority students with superior credentials, and even hurts talented minorities. Both authors cited academic data and published their findings in reputable academic journals, but both have since been decried as racists, subjected to severe academic discipline. Both authors have since retracted their articles, perhaps forcibly. The eerily similar trajectories of these two cases seem to support Mac Donald’s more concerning assertion, that diversity promoters may use totalitarian means to enforce their ideas on anyone who disagrees. At the very least, readers will likely question whether and why ‘diversocrats’ may want to promote every kind of diversity except the type that has to do with alternative viewpoints.

In the end, Diversity Delusion is crucial reading, both for campus diversity promoters and for anyone with more critical viewpoints on multiculturalism. The book will have limited appeal to policy-makers in curriculum and instruction, as issues related to epistemology and preservation of classical curricula are mostly left unaddressed. There is indeed a cursory chapter near the end exploring a subscription service known as the Great Courses, but it seemed that Great Courses found profitability outside the university system. The implication in Mac Donald’s review of this case thus seems to be that there is no solution forthcoming from within the academy, where postmodernism seems destined to reign. Still, it is not clear that the politics and curricular implications of diversity and victimology in college campuses were analyzed deeply enough in this volume to reach this disconcerting conclusion.

Additional References

Mead, L.M. (2020). “Poverty and Culture.” Society https://doi.org/10.1007/s12115-020-00496-1. (retracted)

Wang, N. (2020). “Diversity, Inclusion, and Equity: Evolution of Race and Ethnicity Considerations for the Cardiology Workforce in the United States of America From 1969 to 2019.” Journal of the American Heart Association 9(7). https://doi.org/10.1161/JAHA.120.015959.  (retracted)

Thy Week, Thus Far

Wednesday September 1, 2020

A Weekly Wednesday Dose of Truth

Zeno of Elea by Carducci or Tibaldi

Articles, Podcasts, and Videos

Ricochet (Podcast) an audio network of leading conservative podcasts has several excellent conversations going this week. From The Radio Free Hillsdale Hour (One of two Hillsdale College’s podcasts that I am aware of) had an interview this week with Adam Carrington, Roger Kimball, and Kathleen O’Toole. Adam Carrington is assistant professor of politics at Hillsdale College and discusses the history of political conventions. Roger Kimball, editor and publisher of The New Criterion and president and publisher of Encounter Books, discusses his recent essays on the rule of law amid protests and riots in America. And Kathleen O’Toole, assistant provost for K-12 education at Hillsdale, talks on Covid-19 and the coming school year. First Things from First Things Magazine (which I subscribe to and suggest everyone should) produced an interview with Dr. Lawrence M. Mead III a professor at New York University and a leading thinker on welfare and poverty who now faces the wrath of cancel culture for producing a paper titled, Poverty and Culture, where Mead suggests that racism alone does not explain poverty in black and hispanic communities but rather an adopted non-western, un-individualistic norm may be their root cause for poverty. Mead’s views are accused as racist and unscholarly in nature as his paper faces retraction, for additional insight see a report by Retraction Watch. While I do not necessarily agree with Mead’s assessment I do support his right as a scholar to produce work that can be either proven or disproven in the open without retraction or threats. Finally, The Roth Effect with Carol Roth interviews model Danisha Carter on “Connecting with Gen Z on Capitalism” over the rise of Socialism taking place.

Roger Scruton Legacy Foundation It is with great honor to introduce the late Sir Roger’s Foundation that will serve future generations of conservative thinkers like myself. Please apply to their emails and be on the look out for their upcoming events, seminars, and initiatives. As part of a tribute there a two articles that caught my eye: 1) Chaos Creates Conservatives and 2) Live Notes on the Roger Scruton Legacy Foundation Webinar both by Timon Cline.

First Things (Web/Magazine) has a web exclusive section that includes an article by Iranian columnist Sohrab Ahmari, The Books Behind The Rage. Ahmari argues that leftist academia whose works include On Tyranny by Timothy Snyder has produced a false, antifascist narrative as he describes, “If someone sincerely believes that Trumpism, and analogue movements across the developed world, aren’t just conservative-nationalist or populist but fascist or Nazi-ish, then he has a right and even the duty to oppose the elected government of the United States militantly, to help strangle in the cradle the 21st century’s equivalent of the most odious tendencies of the last century. While I understand the sentiment the issue goes both ways concerning extremism and the rise of threats. Radicals of the left are being accused of being Neo-Marxist for example. President Trump is not a fascist yet several cabinet members were connected to the alt-right movement. Ultimately people must be able to make decisions freely or they face being wrought by propaganda and control though anti-conspiracy, fact checkers, and bans that claim to “know better.” Granted conspiracies arise regardless of restriction. I believe it is a deeper problem than Admari suggests but a short read worthy of consideration.