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Authors, Blogs, Socials, Publishing

Freedom of the Press, Lovejoy, and Bad Arguments

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I’ve been reading from a book of American speeches from the time of our nation’s founding to the Civil War. It’s good fodder for guilt over my short attention span and how I’ve wasted my life on the Internet. It also shows the value of knowing this kind of history, because arguments made 180 years ago are still circulating today.

John Calhoun’s defense of slavery in the South in a Senate speech in February 1837 goes from reasonable though wrong to ridiculous. We’ve heard the same fearmongering over the last couple years.

In Wendell Phillips’s response to the 1837 murder of abolitionist and journalist Elijah Lovejoy in Alton, Missouri, he rebukes the characterization of the mob as patriots and bizarre criticisms of the freedom of the press. He says an Alton minister claims that no one has the right to print opinions with which his community disagrees. In fact, this minister says speaking what we think is evil.

“This clerical absurdity chooses as a check for the abuses of the press, not the law, but the dread of a mob,” Phillips states. “By doing so, it deprives not only the individual and the minority of their rights, but the majority also, since the expression of their opinion may sometimes provoke disturbance from the minority. A few men may make a mob as well as many.” No one would have a right to speak their mind, if it could provoke a mob.

Haven’t we heard similar arguments against this first freedom today?

John J. Dunphy of the Second Reading Book Shop in Alton, Missouri, reviews a new biography of Elijah Lovejoy, called “First to Fall.”

As for other links I wish to share today . . .

Publisher: Eerdmans – “We do not think it is for us as a publisher to define doctrine for the church,” but we won’t publish “false teaching.” Coming in August 2022 from Eerdmans is a transgender reading of Scripture.

Dostoevsky: “The advice every writer hears at one point or another? Write what you know. Whenever I hear those words I wonder, How do you explain murder stories?”

More important than being right: “Neither labels nor worldly ideologies require renewal or transformation. None of them require humility. And none of them bring life. They simply offer an unbalanced formula to conform to that creates a deeper divide within the church, as well as the culture at large.”

Fully human? “No true portraits of Africans by White artists existed; that White artists couldn’t see past their own ingrained stereotypes of Blackness.” The white author of this novel about two black men believes she can see past such stereotypes, but perhaps not clearly. (via Prufrock)

Photo: Main Street, Stillwater, Minnesota. 2003. John Margolies Roadside America photograph archive (1972-2008), Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division.

Fiction

What Makes a Murderer Tick?

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Evil Explored in ‘Pattern of Wounds’

In the second of three crime novels, Pattern of Wounds, J. Mark Bertrand’s homicide detective, Roland March, tries to capture the inner-work of his suspect. He lingers at the hideout, trying to get a feel for the thoughts behind the crimes. He looks forward to the interrogation, hoping to find out what makes him tick, but his superior officer offers another line of thought.

“Maybe you can’t put a label on him. Maybe it’s not enough to say he was insane or evil or a product of a bad environment. But in this case, there’s one thing you do know. He’s guilty.”

The question March wants answered is what produces a dedicated murderer. Many stories depict the wages of hatred as murder. The loving husband, who worries over his troubled marriage, discovers his wife’s infidelity and disdain for him, so in jealous rage he lashes out at her. Most people just walk out; some lose control.

“You have heard that it was said to those of old,” Jesus taught, “‘You shall not murder; and whoever murders will be liable to judgment.’ But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment; whoever insults his brother will be liable to the council…” (Matthew 5:21-22). This raises the bar very high, equating hatred with murder. Despite this warning, many of us still get angry with each other. Some of us hate certain people, even if we don’t actually kill them.

What would provoke us to murder, or are you and I immune by our natures? Bertrand gives us a few clues.

“If Only There Were Evil People”

When the murderer is gradually revealed, we get to read some of the backstory: abusive behavior, broken home, sociopathic trends, etc. We get an explanation for what drove this one person to act, but what goes untold are the many things absent from the final portrait: healthy love, constructive discipline, selflessness, respect for family and outsiders, to list a few. All of these things work together to produce the kind of disturbed person who believes murder is a good exercise.

Is the murderer crying out for a father’s love? Has he been spoiled by permissiveness, by being protected from natural consequences through family or money? Was he abused? Is he just twisted? Yes, maybe all of those things, and together they work to motivate him to choose murder.

So when someone accuses violent video games, for example, of provoking murder, he may have a good point about desensitization and training to kill, but he takes it too far when he implies the games alone bring a player the violence. It can only be one of many factors.

“The Line Dividing Good and Evil”

Detective March does not have a spotless reputation. In the first book, Back on Murder, he works in the Houston Police’s Homicide Department, but he doesn’t work on regular homicide cases. He works the standard procedure cases no one else wants. He earned that position from a long line of disappointing decisions, “letting things drop” and “cutting corners” as he would say. Because of that, his old partner believes he is completely corrupt, and his superiors don’t trust him to follow through with things.

March swears he has changed, and we see the contrast between who he is and who he could be in a Louisianan cop named Fontenot. Both are veteran cops. Both are zealous for justice. Both have been tempted to take matters into their own hands, and both have. But one of them has begun to hold back.

Continue reading What Makes a Murderer Tick? →
Writing

Can I Become a Writer Without Actually Writing?

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Rob Long has a piece on writers procrastinating by giving talks on writing.

“Writers, in general, love giving these talks, love giving advice, because it’s as close to writer-ish activity as you can get without actually having to write, which is something that all writers, or at least all honest writers, hate.” (via Prufrock)

Uncategorized

Escape from Auschwitz

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Walter Rosenberg knew that escaping from the Auschwitz Concentration Camp was a crazy idea and probably impossible, but when he turned 18, he knew he should be the one to attempt it. Others had tried and failed. Even attempting to warn someone before their deaths resulted in one’s own death for breaking the deception the Nazi’s employed to efficiently usher their prisoners into the gas chambers.

“The factory of murder that the Nazis had constructed in this accursed place depended on one cardinal principle: that the people who came to Auschwitz did not know where they were going, or for what purpose. . . . The Nazis had devised a method that would operate like a well-run slaughterhouse rather than a shooting party.”

On April 7, 1944, he and Fred Wetzler acted on all of their preparations. The UK Guardian has their story.

“Walter understood that the Nazis wanted him and every other prisoner to conclude that escape was futile, that any attempt was doomed. But Walter drew a very different lesson. The danger came not from trying to escape, but from trying and failing.”

Music

Sunday Singing: Victory Through Grace

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“Victory Through Grace” performed by the choir of Cornerstone Church

“I looked, and there was a white horse! Its rider had a bow; a crown was given to him, and he came out conquering and to conquer” (Revelation 6:2 KJV).

Franny Crosby is that familiar, Methodist Episcopal hymn writer whose hymns are lodged in my head so neatly I can’t remember which ones are hers or when I last sung one. I don’t think this hymn has come up in our church in a long time, but it could be that I just can’t remember it.

I think the theme of this hymn is out of fashion today, and believers need it as much as they ever did. The battle is not to the strong; the race will not be won by the swift. Victory will be given by the Master to his own on his own terms.

1.Conquering now and still to conquer, rideth a King in His might;
Leading the host of all the faithful into the midst of the fight;
See them with courage advancing, clad in their brilliant array,
Shouting the Name of their Leader, hear them exultingly say:

Refrain:
Not to the strong is the battle, not to the swift is the race,
Yet to the true and the faithful vict’ry is promised thro’ grace.

2. Conquering now and still to conquer, who is this wonderful King?
Whence are the armies which He leadeth, while of His glory they sing?
He is our Lord and Redeemer, Savior and Monarch divine;
They are the stars that forever bright in His kingdom shall shine.

3. Conquering now and still to conquer, Jesus, Thou Ruler of all,
Thrones and their scepters all shall perish, crowns and their splendor shall fall,
Yet shall the armies Thou leadest, faithful and true to the last,
Find in Thy mansions eternal rest, when their warfare is past.

Blogs, Socials, Publishing, Reading, Uncategorized

Sci-Fi Resurgence, a Publisher Drives off the Road, and Truth-telling

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I listened through Out of the Silent Planet the other day, because I’ve been reading That Hideous Strength with friends for a few months and we took a couple weeks off for multiple reasons. It’s a fun adventure that spends a good bit of time on details like the space ship and experiencing interplanetary travel with a Wells or Verne feel. It would probably make a good launchpad for discussing Lewis’s ‘scientific’ observations in contrast with current views. Science is always changing, always correcting itself or arguing over what is correct.

You could also walk away from that book with idea that submitting to God could be a very big deal. Or you could be thinking, “Words are cool.”

Here are a few, loosely related links.

Off-road: Professor Christopher Yuan notes a troubling bent in a post yesterday from theological publisher Eerdmans. Recommending reading for this month, the publisher of the theology text I used in college says, “We find ourselves at a time again where we should be willing to listen and seek to understand those in the LGBTQ+ community who are simply fighting to be seen and heard, cared for and loved.” Yuan sees this as a sign the once theology powerhouse has steered in the direction of declining mainline denominations everywhere.

Yuan’s own book on sexuality would be more insightful than any of these.

Reading Life: “[Dana] Gioia describes his ‘odd and bookish’ childhood growing up in a working-class family in Los Angeles. . . My parents never knew what to make of a kid obsessed with books.”

Interplanetary: Space opera is resurging. “Typically seen as (and often being) the least literary form of SF, space opera hasn’t gone out of style since Buck Rogers began battling galactic evils in the 1920s and ’30s . . .” (via ArtsJournal)

Children Should Know the Truth: We shouldn’t keep life realities from our children by pretending everything will be okay. “It is likely that today’s children will inherit a world more violent and more precarious in every way than the one experienced by post–Cold war generations. The belief that everything will be all right was always a recipe for fragility; now it is simply a fantasy.”

Photo: Smalley’s Jewelry Store sign, Ogden, Utah 1980. John Margolies Roadside America photograph archive (1972-2008), Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division.

Uncategorized

They Smurfed Their Research at Harvard

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Martha felt like an imposter at Harvard with so many of the super smart around her. “The importance of prestige is so overwhelming in that culture,” she said, “that people hardly look at each other, let alone their environment.”

With a few minutes before class, she visited a friend in the psych department. “My friend was in her lab, conducting an experiment that consisted of implanting wires into the brains of live rats, then making the rats swim around in a tub of reconstituted dry milk.” Why? Reasons. But the tub was a child’s swimming pool decorated in Smurfs.

Martha got to her class a couple minutes late, catching everyone’s attention as she walked in. In her book, Expecting Adam, Martha N. Beck wrote:

“Ah, Martha,” said the course instructor, “we’ve been waiting for you.”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I was upstairs in the Psych lab, watching rats swim around in a Smurf pool.”

“I see,” said the instructor, “Yes, I believe I’ve read about that.”

A professor, one of the visiting dignitaries, chimed in. “How is Smurf’s work going?” he inquired. “I understand he’s had some remarkable findings.”

“Yes,” said a graduate student. “I read his last article.”

There was a general murmur of agreement. It seems that everyone in the room was familiar with Dr. Smurf, and his groundbreaking work with swimming rats.

. . . Comprehension blossomed in my brain like a lovely flower.

“I think,” I said solemnly, “that Smurf is going to change the whole direction of linguistic epistemology.”

They all agreed, nodding, saying things like ‘Oh, yes,’ and “I wouldn’t doubt it.”

I beamed at them, struggling desperately not to laugh. It wasn’t so much that I wanted to mock these people. I was giddy with exhilaration, because after seven years at Harvard, I was just beginning to realize that I wasn’t the only one faking it.

Fiction, Reviews

Witch Wood by John Buchan

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Witch Wood by John Buchan, cover

Witch Wood, the story of a new minister in a rural parish of Scotland, is said to be author John Buchan’s favorite and his most critically praised. Buchan (1875-1940) wrote a number of novels and may be most remembered now for his 1915 spy novel, The Thirty-Nine Steps.

Witch Wood, published in 1927, is the moving account Rev. David Sempill’s arrival in Woodilee Village, Scotland, on August 15, 1644. We is warmly received and eager to minister to his flock in every duty required of him. Soon he learns of the nearby forest, named Melanudrigill or “The Black Wood” out of fear of spirits living within it. Sempill rebukes the idea as pagan superstition, but eventually discovers a weathered stone table in the midst of a forest clearing. What is written on it is “I. O. M.” — Jovi Optimo Maximo, Roman markings for an altar.

This and other signs tell him members of his own congregation practice the occult in secret. Sempill won’t simply dismiss an issue like that, but no one in his presbytery is willing to believe him. Some accuse him of imagining it. Arguments against him sound too familar.

He worries about his flock. “The profession of religion was not the same thing as godliness, and he was coming to doubt whether the insistence upon minute conformities of outward conduct and the hair-splitting doctrines were not devices of Satan to entangle souls.”

To his immediate superior, who does not believe a pious elder of the church could be involved in this and would prefer to keep the kirk united against the world, Sempill asks, “In the name of God, whose purity is a flame of fire, would you let gross wickedness go unchecked because it may knock a splinter off the Kirk? I tell you it were better that the Kirk should be broken to dust and trampled underfoot than that it should be made a cloak for sin.”

An epilogue in my edition reveals the source of the story; it’s an interpretation of real events during the war between Covenanters and Scottish Royalists. Without revealing more of the story, I want to tell you I worried at a few points that the heroes would not succeed and everything would come crashing down on their heads. I guess that’s a sign Buchan had me gripped.

Definitely a book for the scotophile. The most difficult part for me was that thirty percent of the text is the Scottish dialect of Woodilee folk.

“There’s ill news frae up the water, Mr. Sempill. . . . Marion puir body, has been ill wi’ a wastin’ the past twalmonth, and now it seems she’s near her release.”

“Me! I ken nocht. Me and my man aye keepit clear o’ the Wud. . . . Woodilee has aye been keened for a queer bit, lappit in the muckle Wud, but the guilty are come by an ill end.”

I’ve gotten more used to it, but with whole conversations written in this style, I felt I couldn’t keep up without a dictionary.

Music

Sunday Singing: I Know that My Redeemer Lives

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This hymn comes to us from the Englishman Samuel Medley (1738-99), set to a tune by Englishman John Hatton (1710-93).

1 I know that my Redeemer lives!
What comfort this sweet sentence gives!
He lives, he lives, who once was dead;
he lives, my everliving head!

2 He lives triumphant from the grave;
he lives eternally to save;
he lives all-glorious in the sky;
he lives exalted there on high.

3 He lives to grant me rich supply;
he lives to guide me with his eye;
he lives to comfort me when faint;
he lives to hear my soul’s complaint.

Continue reading Sunday Singing: I Know that My Redeemer Lives →
Blogs, Socials, Religion, Uncategorized

The Christian Air We Breathe, a Memorial Day Story, and Blogroll Links

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I love discussions that delve into how the whole world has changed under the influence of Christianity. Speaking to unbelievers, Glen Scrivener writes, “You already hold particularly ‘Christian-ish’ views, and the fact that you think of these values as natural, obvious, or universal shows how profoundly the Christian revolution has shaped you.”

Scrivener has a new book, The Air We Breathe, in which he discusses how all manner of modern ideals have Christian origins, and when debating Christian speakers, atheists and other non-Christians will assume Christian positions on their way to undermining Christian principles. Black Lives Matter couldn’t exist as a popular American concept brought up in many arguments over human dignity without the foundation of God’s created image so many assume today (despite explicitly rejecting it, as some do). It’s marvelous.

Movies: The state of cinema today (via Prufrock)
“We are in the present losing more movies from the past faster than ever before. It seems like we aren’t, but the mere disappearance of physical media is already having corporations curating what we watch, faster for us,” Guillermo Del Toro said.

A Memorial Day Story: Elliot Ritzema heard from his grandpa via the marginal notes in Citizen Soldiers. “When Ambrose wrote, ‘The Ninth Tactical Air Force had a dozen airstrips in Normandy by this time,’ my grandpa added, We were one of these airstrips, 36th Fighter Group, 32nd Service Group.”

The Hobbit in Bears: Is this is a case of life imitating art?

Photo: Big Ole, Alexandria, Minnesota, 2001. John Margolies Roadside America photograph archive (1972-2008), Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division.