I’m in the middle of Carl Trueman’s 2010 book, Republocrat: Confessions of a Liberal Conservative, which sounds like a more political book than it has been so far. His chapter on the secularization of the church suggests secular British society is similar to religious American society with mainly different comfort levels with religious words.
[David Wells] argues that many churches are as secular in their ambitions and methods as any straightforwardly secular organization. The difference, we might say, is the the latter are just a whole lot more honest about what they are doing.
This reminds me of the way some ministry leaders talk of doing big things for God, maybe pulling down a miracle or dreaming a dream only God can fulfill. I don’t want to judge the motives of people I barely know, but I’m skeptical of how much glory God receives from the city’s largest and brightest Christmas display or filling a stadium for what amounts to a religiously themed civics event.
Is it really a big dream for God’s glory when the results hit all the marks for secular success?
Having at last finished Neal Price’s very long – and enjoyable – survey, Children of Ash and Elm: A History of the Viking Age, I find my feelings definitely mixed. There is much in this book that I admire and value. I learned from it. But I found what seem to me certain debilitating flaws in it.
I might mention, first of all, that (although he does not cite Viking Legacy, the great book to which I am immortally linked as translator) author Price takes the same line on the historical validity of the sagas – that they are not straight history and cannot be treated as such, but that they do contain useful information for the historian who employs them with care:
Even the most sceptical of literary researchers, those who generally reject the Old Norse texts as viable sources (however remote) for the actual Viking Age, do not always go on to confront the question this viewpoint requires: why, in that case, would medieval Icelanders have created—over several centuries—the most remarkably detailed, comprehensive, and consistent corpus of historical fiction in the world?
Author Price is an accomplished archaeologist, who has spent decades studying the Viking Age. His research is extensive, and he writes with the authority of long familiarity. His purpose in this book is more than to tell the story of the Viking Age. It is to draw on his learning and experience to try to convey to the modern reader the essence of the Vikings – how they saw the world, how they felt. I think he succeeds to a commendable degree.
Most big books on any subject try to offer a new theory or insight, and Children of Ash and Elm does this through a couple (relatively) new ideas – that the Viking Age began earlier and lingered longer than is generally assumed, and that the two Viking enterprises, the “west Viking” and “east Viking” currents, were in fact one and the same, with no real separation.
Hidebound non-specialist that I am, I must admit I’m not convinced by these arguments. Inception and terminus dates are notoriously hard to nail down, but Price points especially to a mass ship grave containing Swedish skeletons, found in Estonia and dated around 750 AD (he always uses CE dating, of course). I don’t entirely buy this argument. It’s hard to identify a “Viking raid” on the basis of a single burial, however impressive.
As for the unity of east and west, I have long held, and continue to hold, that the location and power of Denmark is a central issue in understanding the Viking Age. The simple fact that passing into or out of the Baltic required paying tolls to the king of Denmark tended to send Norwegians west and Swedes east, just to avoid his domains. The compartments weren’t watertight, but I think they existed.
I noted what seemed to me a telling omission in the book’s account of Viking slaving activities. Price makes no secret (quite rightly) of the fact that the Vikings routinely took and trafficked in slaves, and profited greatly from the trade. He speaks movingly of the suffering of those in bondage. But he seems to minimize the role of the Muslim world in it. He does mention the Arab markets, but only more or less in passing. Reading this book, you’d think most Viking slaves ended up toiling on Scandinavian farms. In fact, the great majority were headed into the insatiable maw of the Islamic slave markets.
The book was also marred, for me, also by occasional genuflections toward political correctness. Here and there, author Price finds it necessary to apply concepts like “privilege,” “intersectionality,” and “gendering” to the Vikings. I don’t think this is useful or illuminating in historical context.
Nevertheless, I found Children of Ash and Elm fascinating and informational. It’s written (and well-written) with a clear passion for the subject and a practiced critical eye. I recommend it, with cautions.
Once, in the Russian urban centre of Novgorod, where the waterlogged soil preserves such things well, I breathed in the scent of fresh pine a thousand years old, the whole site just saturated in the fragrance from all the woodworking waste lying where the Viking-Age carpenters had left it.
And so we move from confusion to confusion, with Jacobsen dipping his toe into a deep topic only to withdraw it, his attention suddenly drawn elsewhere. “Why are we so busy all the time?” he asks. Fear of death is the answer he lands on, only to back immediately away: “Regardless of whether a fear of death is behind the busy condition,” he writes, we’re busy. Then he jumps to other causes: fragmentation, consumerism, acedia. It gets worse; by the end of the chapter, he’s blaming the acedia on the fragmentation and consumerism. In Jacobsen’s narrative a primary cause is a possible cause is a consequence is an OH LOOK, A SQUIRREL.
Ever see one of those old comedy movies, set in the Middle Ages or sometime, in which the orchestra suddenly breaks into swing music and everybody starts jitterbugging? (I recently watched “A Knight’s Tale” for the first time, and they did the same sort of thing , with different pop music. I fear this will not age well.)
I had much the same feeling today as I was reading Neil Price’s generally excellent book, Children of Ash and Elm. In a chapter called “Border Crossings,” he takes a break from a mostly well-informed and insightful study of Viking Age history to impose 21st Century concepts on an alien culture.
There are clear suggestions of queer identities in the Viking Age (with a caveat for the retrospective application of contemporary vocabularies).
Give him points for self-awareness, anyway. Retrospective application is precisely what’s going on here. I speak from a position of prejudice, of course, but it saddened me to see a good study like this marred by what I consider (I could be wrong, of course) a transient intellectual fad.
In fact (except for the admittedly problematic Grave Bj. 581 in Birka, which I can’t explain, but neither can anyone else), he is able to demonstrate nothing about the Vikings themselves other than that they had an extremely “gendered” (his word), male-dominated culture, in which there is evidence of a certain amount of deviance. You could say the same about the Victorians. He admits it plainly at one point, saying, “There are no positive depictions of same-sex relationships in the textual sources.”
To put it in terms comprehensible to current academics, Price is “appropriating” Viking culture, forcing his own paradigm on them in a way that they would have found offensive.
After a couple weeks with Rodney Riesel’s light – and short – Dan Coast books, I have plunged (with some relief, actually) into a little more challenging material. I’m reading Children of Ash and Elm: A History of the Vikings, by Neil Price. It’s a long book, and it will take me a while to get to the point where I can review it. I’m finding it a good object to wrestle with – I like parts very much, and I disagree now and then. Here’s a nice passage from near the beginning:
When properly recited in appropriate surroundings, Viking-Age poetry can taste like cold iron on the tongue, its complex rhyme schemes building upon one another like layers of frost—treacherous but beautiful. We gain something old and true in this language, even if only understood in translation, and for that reason I have included a selection here.
Tolkien would have liked bit that very much. Even if you disagree with a historian, prose like this can make reading his book worth your time.
In one of several vignettes, Price imagines a younger son on the impoverished west coast of Norway, whose childhood sweetheart has a new brooch: a present from a boy who spent a successful summer raiding. What is young Orm or Gunnar going to do? Not only does he need money for the bride-price paid to her family, he needs a reputation: ‘The act of acquiring silver was as important as the silver itself.’ And if he went raiding he might in any case acquire a woman for free. DNA has shown that ‘a very large proportion – even the majority – of female settlers in Iceland were of Scottish or Irish heritage.’
Looks like the kind of book a man of my pretensions needs to read. It’s coming August 25th.
Samuel Sey is a Canadian writer who has recently taken up criticism of some of those who would speak for African-Americans today. One of those voices is Robin DiAngelo and her current bestselling book White Fragility. I’m not sure Sey and I would agree on the problems and solutions for American, if not human, racial tension and relief, but I am willing to agree that this is not the book to read about it.
In the book, DiAngelo says: “[white fragility] is rooted in the false but widespread belief that racial discrimination can only be intentional…the simplistic idea that racism is limited to individual intentional acts committed by unkind people is at the root of virtually all white defensiveness on this topic.”
That is a complete rejection of the biblical and logical definition for racism. Racism is biblically defined as a form of partiality or hatred against another person because of their skin colour. The Bible says: “show no partiality as you hold the faith in our Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord of glory…have you not then made distinctions among yourselves and become judges with evil thoughts? (James 2:1, 4)
Sey says the book is essentially racist in his definition of race and anti-racism. Have you read from this book or heard the author interviewed? What do you think?
Talent pushed us toward Softness. Genius pushed us toward Hardness. John Dewey and the first progressive educators, the apparat of men and women who put together and extended the Social Security program, were people of talent who persistently and effectively Softened the Hard America of Theodore Dreiser.
I read an interview with Michael Barone in World magazine, focused on his latest book on party politics. I’ve wanted to learn more about the shifting history of U.S. political parties. It’s commonly said that Lincoln was a Republican, and the GOP has been holding a stained but righteous banner ever since, that Democrats don’t care for civil rights unless they can make political hay out of it (Bull Connor and his ilk were the ones opposing Martin Luther King way back when).
But it’s also common to hear that the parties have shifted, so I wanted to read a solid overview about some of that history. How America’s Political Parties Change (and How They Don’t)sounds like a good bet. I have yet to read yet, however, because my library system doesn’t have it. They had another book that was not about politics but about the character of our nation, which I put on hold many long, COVID-ridden weeks ago.
Hard America, Soft America: Competition vs. Coddling and the Battle for the Nation’s Future asks how a country that expects so little from its teenagers can send young men and women who are barely older into battlefields as hardened soldiers. The troops in Iraq, he says, were impressively well-trained and equipped to handle the dangers around them. How could American schools produce people like that?
He explores this idea over 150 pages, describing conditions in twentieth century America and how leaders acted and reacted to make life harder or easier on Their people. The quote above refers to life in Chicago as depicted in Dreiser’s Sister Carrie. That was Hard America; eighteen year olds had to get a job and pay the rent or lose themselves in a gutter. There was little margin for idleness. It was arguably too hard. Men who made their fortunes building railroads and industries did so by grinding up men who had few choices. They paid their communities back with great philanthropy from which we still benefit today: medical research, libraries, and museums. “These men felt a responsibility to use a large part of their wealth to benefit their fellow citizens, but they wanted to maintain the Hardness of America, which they believed was responsible for the countries great economic growth and creativity.”
Barone describes hardening or softening of different segments in our society, the intent of these efforts, and whether they paid off. Hardening generally means accountability and potential for achievement, the hard work and risk that goes into the wheel of progress to make a great, big, beautiful tomorrow. Softness means the lack of accountability, which may be the security to enjoy simple life but could also mean low standards and few achievements.
For example, at one point, economists believed three big players could drive the U.S. economy forward indefinitely. Business would do the work, Labor would oversee the prosperity of the workers, and Government would regulate and protect the field where all of this could take place. Competition? Who needs it? When the free market eventually found paths to American consumers, the big three were shocked (and slipping into bankruptcy).
With nationwide protests taking over our news channels, you may have seen images of George Romney at a civil rights march in Detroit in 1967. Barone touches on that time in his book; he was an intern with the mayor. Romney was governor of Michigan in July 1967 when Detroit suffered a week of riots. The local police couldn’t handle it, but the mayor feared the National Guard would make things worse. Romney and everyone with him were reluctant to call President Johnson for federal troops. What can of worms would be opened by inviting the U.S. military to handle local problems? So they tried the softer approach, just one act among many at a time when Americans all over the country “no longer felt morally justified in imposing hard penalties on crime.”
“But while the civil rights movement had sought to allow blacks into Hard America, the new public policies actually confined more Americans, black and non-black, into a Soft America where poverty and crime were chronic.”
Now we have much harder responses to crime and in some ways harsh reactions. We’ve condoned the brutal treatment and killing of civilians who have been merely accused minor offenses. The other day four officers stood on the edge of a lawn next to their cars, pistols drawn, confronting a pleading young man who had rolled through a traffic light. George Floyd was killed while being arrested for using a fake 20. Breonna Taylor was killed when officers raided the wrong apartment to conduct a warranted search at 12:30 a.m. These are serious problems, but perhaps more serious is the reluctance to reform from public officials.
Barone’s book shows that time and again methods for handling problems have unintended results, sometimes saving us from bad ideas, sometimes rolling in a new wave of grief.
One of my daughters, still a teenager, has begun to write reviews of the books she reads. She has been collecting books from my and my parents’ shelves for a couple years now. Her to-read pile is intimidating (picture below). Recently she wrote these reviews.
I finally finished Lies Women Believe and The Truth That Sets Them Free by Nancy Leigh DeMoss. Now I’ve wanted to read this book for several years and was thrilled to find on McKay’s shelves sometime last year. However, this book isn’t the most compelling, which is the main reason why I finished it today.
I do like the way the chapters are written. Nancy presents a lie which flies under most radars, explains why it is a lie, and explains the gospel truth that contradicts it. Some of the most interesting lies I discovered were the lies about priorities, emotions, and circumstances. Nancy’s explanations were simple and practical.
What I did not enjoy about this book, the fantasy “diary” of Eve. Every chapter opens with a segment of Eve’s diary, recounting The Fall along with Cain and Abel’s episode. Having Eve narrated by the stereotypical twenty-first century woman was pretty annoying to read. Debates about the historical accuracy of her complaints aside, Eve’s personality was rather whiny and depressed. I get that Nancy opened her chapters like this to give us an example of the lies we were going to bust in action, however, she these diary segments would have done better written from the perspective of some distressed, fictional mother of a twenty-first century family. If that was the case, the diary would have been a bit more relatable, and Nancy could have made her characters as annoying as she liked instead of putting words in the mouths of people who actually lived.
All in all, Lies Women Believe and The Truth That Sets Them Free isn’t a terrible book. I might read it again in ten years, once I finish the three foot stack of books on my dresser.
This is not a book review, but – what shall I call it? – a book notice. You may be surprised to know that there’s a book out there about an aspect of Lutheran history in America, which mentions me.
The book is Fifty Thousand Evangelists, by Jonathan D. Anderson (whom I have met and assisted a little with a different project). I’m sure it will be a surprise to many, in view of the state of Lutheranism today, but there was a time – not so awfully long ago – when an estimated more than 65,000 young college-age Lutherans, mostly from mainline church bodies, went out to preach the inerrancy of Scripture and the importance of having a personal encounter with Jesus. At least at the beginning, and for a long time.
It was part of the wider Jesus Movement, and I was there. And so my picture and name, along with that of the group I sang with, is in Fifty Thousand Evangelists, on page 83.
I was motivated to buy the book, but I won’t be reviewing it. I’m pretty sure reading it would be painful for me. Subsequent events have poisoned all my memories of what was, in the experience, the happiest time of my life.
