Over the past several days, I’ve looked for peaceful, beautiful images or videos to share on Twitter in an effort to calm people down. No doubt dozens of readers had a momentary sigh because of it. Not a long enough sigh to like the tweets. Of course not. That would be too much like making eye contact on the street.
But I have tried to share peace on Twitter, the primary social media I use, because what Thomas Kidd says about news consumption is true. “News Anxiety Is a Waste of Time.”
He recommends dialing back your daily news calories to almost nothing, giving this detail on contextual reporting. “Newspapers are generally better at telling readers what’s going on – normally with some hours or days of time to digest events – than the insta-reactions of cable tv and social media.” Add to that good magazines and podcasts, like the good people at World News Group.
A 24-hour news cycle should not be the soundtrack of our day. Let’s set it aside and take up good and praise-worthy things instead.
In today’s really important news, my article on the Lutheran Free Church for the Acton Institute’s Religion & Liberty Magazine is now available free online. You can marvel at its awesomeosity at this link.
In even better news, I HAVE FINISHED MY MARATHON SLOG THROUGH THE VIKINGS: VALHALLA SERIES.
It was particularly frustrating watching a series that covered events I’ve researched and dramatized in my own novels, observing how the producers took historical events and characters, shuffled them like cards, and dealt them out in random order. Particularly annoying was their treatment of King Magnus the Good of Norway, who is treated here as a homicidal psychopath. I mean, they called him “the Good” for a reason.
But what’s important is that I can write my article now, with an eventual eye to payment. All through my life, I’ve harkened back to a poem I read somewhere, which went like this (more or less):
There’s a little check at the end of this verse. I see it just three lines away. And it shall be mine For the good of my purse If luck is my fellow today.
(I’d credit the author, but a web search doesn’t reveal his name, and I can’t find it in the book where I thought I saw it.)
I am proud (in a suitably humble way) to announce that my first article has appeared in Religion & Liberty Magazine, published by the Acton Institute.
Its topic, a sure crowd-pleaser, is the story of Professor Georg Sverdrup, Augsburg Seminary, and the Lutheran Free Church. Readers of this blog have enjoyed my accounts of the antics of the Free Lutherans for many years (as I’m editor of the Sverdrup Journal), but now the whole wide world can marvel at the story. The passion. The pathos. The pietism.
Getting back to the real world, I’m well aware that the saga of the Free Lutherans is pretty tall grass stuff, even for people generally interested in church history. And we Norwegian Americans do love our schisms, which complicates matters. Hot dishes and schisms, that’s how you can tell Norwegian-American Lutherans.
The obscurity of my topic was brought home to me in a surprising way when I received my copy of the magazine, opened it, and found that it had been illustrated with an image, not of the Georg Sverdrup I wrote about, but of his namesake great-uncle. I can sympathize with the artist – I wrote an article about the Reformation kings of Denmark for the Sverdrup Society newsletter a while back and got my Fredericks and Christians completely mixed up. Had to print a correction in the next issue.
The R&I editor, when I pointed the lapse out to him, was very apologetic, and the artist quickly produced a corrected version, which will be used when the article goes online next month. And I appreciate that.
But these are details. The important thing is that the article serves its higher purpose – the great cause for which I labor with unwearying toil.
The cause of me getting paid.
And, of course, contributing to public knowledge of the history of the Christian faith. That too.
Summer in America means baseball, even if you aren’t a fan. The clip above is an artistic moment from a great baseball film, The Natural. I saw a clip from a Japanese game yesterday that showed a right fielder rifle the ball to the catcher at home plate, getting a runner out. The speed of that throw was thrilling–a little like the pitching portrayed above.
What else is going on this week?
Memorials: This week we honored the 80th anniversary of the invasion of Normandy. Of the 2,403 Americans killed on D-Day, 20 of them were from Bedford, Virginia, a community of 3,200. Over 40 Bedford residents were serving during the war, most in the Virginia National Guard. Their fallen were subsequently called the Bedford Boys.
War Correspondents: There’s a bed-and-breakfast in Chateau Vouilly, France, 20 minutes from Omaha Beach, that once housed the reporters who wrote the stories of the Allied troops advance. In 1944, it was a good, out-of-the-way spot, not too far from the action—for at least two months.
Every night, the hostess served the press corp milk and cookies. “On the tougher days, Hamel served glasses of Calvados, the famed local spirit made from distilled apple and pear cider. Reporters called it the ‘breakfast of champions.'”
Reading: About what novel did author Robert Louis Stevenson say this, “Many find it dull: Henry James could not finish it: all I can say is, it nearly finished me.”
Our friend Dave Lull sent me a link to this article from Literary Hub. It’s about the work of Nobel Prize-winning Norwegian playwright Jon Fosse (whose Septology I reviewed for Ad Fontes). What particularly interests me about this article is that it’s written by a woman who has translated Fosse’s plays into “American” English.
I was particularly struck by the fact that Sarah Cameron Sunde, the author of the article, deals in particular with a translation issue on which I have views of my own. And her views are the opposite of mine. The difference hangs on how to translate a simple, two-letter word: “Ja.” (It means yes.) She writes:
One such word that appears again and again (over 150 times, in fact) in Natta Syng Sine Songar is “ja”—I had noticed that this repetition was missing in the British translation, and instead the translator had chosen to replace each “ja” with what he thought it meant in each given moment—which often meant “yes” and sometimes deleting it entirely, when it seemed like filler word. But the repetition felt critical to me for several reasons: 1) the everyday quality of the word as it is spoken, not written, 2) the way this “ja” could function to build tension between live performers, 3) and how it unites the characters despite the vast space between them.
In my Ad Fontes review of Septology (which was generally favorable to the translation by Damion Searls) I criticized his repeated use of the word “yes” to translate “ja” in the text. My own view is that the Norwegian “ja” serves multiple purposes in Fosse’s Nynorsk dialect. It can stand for “Well,” or “All right,” or “I don’t know,” plus a host of other expressions. For that reason, I felt it ought to be translated with several different everyday interjections. Sunde translates it “yeh” in every case, in her work. Perhaps that’s a good choice in the context of theatrical production, but I question it.
Nevertheless, Sunde’s article is an insightful and interesting one.
Uri Berliner, a senior editor of NPR business news, a 25-year veteran of America’s iconic radio network, got an article published earlier this month in The Free Press, saying the news network was far more balanced than it is today.
“It’s true NPR has always had a liberal bent, but during most of my tenure here, an open-minded, curious culture prevailed. We were nerdy, but not knee-jerk, activist, or scolding.”
Until 2016. After that watermark year in which nothing remotely remarkable happened, NPR has driven down the hill of leftist ideology and lost the faith of American listeners.
In February, our audience insights team sent an email proudly announcing that we had a higher trustworthy score than CNN or The New York Times. But the research from Harris Poll is hardly reassuring. It found that “3-in-10 audience members familiar with NPR said they associate NPR with the characteristic ‘trustworthy.’ ” Only in a world where media credibility has completely imploded would a 3-in-10 trustworthy score be something to boast about.
Today, NPR reports they suspended Berliner without pay for the last five days because he did not get approval to release an article to The Free Press. They said could be fired if he does this again.
Berliner said he had been trying to his concerned heard for a few years without success. Going public was a way to get heard.
Update: Berliner resigned today, calling NPR “a great American institution” and not for defunding it.
First of all, I’m not a fan of J. K. Rowling. This view does not rise from my having read her works and finding them wanting. I’ve never read them at all (saw one Harry Potter movie). I have been advised by some that I ought to read them simply to make myself familiar with a major creator in our (sort of) shared genre. And I admit that’s fair enough.
My problem is that the biblical prohibition against witchcraft is ingrained deeply in my… my blood, or bones, or DNA or something. I’ve always been against witches, even when I portrayed them sympathetically (as I did in Wolf Time). That’s just one of those places where I Do Not Go. Some readers tell me the HP books have Christian themes. It may be true. But I can’t bring myself to check it out.
More than that, Ms. Rowling has more than once expressed opinions on various topics that I disagreed with. If she is a Christian, as the claim is, she’s a rather different kind than I am.
Nonetheless, right now she’s one of my heroes (you’re not supposed to say heroine anymore, are you?). She has done the right thing – the hard thing – at just the moment when it needs doing.
JK Rowling has challenged Scotland’s new hate crime law in a series of social media posts – inviting police to arrest her if they believe she has committed an offence.
The Harry Potter author, who lives in Edinburgh, described several transgender women as men, including convicted prisoners, trans activists and other public figures.
She said “freedom of speech and belief” was at an end if accurate description of biological sex was outlawed.
Earlier, Scotland’s first minister Humza Yousaf said the new law would deal with a “rising tide of hatred”.
The Hate Crime and Public Order (Scotland) Act 2021 creates a new crime of “stirring up hatred” relating to age, disability, religion, sexual orientation, transgender identity or being intersex.
Her own response was exemplary, and will resound to her honor in future ages:
Ms Rowling said: “I’m currently out of the country, but if what I’ve written here qualifies as an offence under the terms of the new act, I look forward to being arrested when I return to the birthplace of the Scottish Enlightenment.”
That’s precisely right.
The issue is not whether an opinion is correct or not. It’s not whether it’s sensitive or not. It’s not whether the person speaking is one you like or not.
J.K. Rowling holds opinions I disagree with. I would not have her muzzled by the law for that. I wouldn’t have the law muzzle Susan Sarandon, or Joy Behar, or Greta Thunberg or Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Shoot, I wouldn’t muzzle Ismail Haniyeh, the head of Hamas, as long as he wasn’t actually organizing violence. That’s our system. Everybody gets to talk. Even the crazies.
I read a book about Thomas Jefferson when I was a kid. It explained his conviction that if everybody gets to talk, the people will be able to pass judgment on their arguments. I thought that was pretty cool.
It may be that we haven’t got the common sense to make that kind of judgment anymore. But we won’t re-learn it by being protected from “hurtful” ideas.
My interrogator had used no methods on me other than sleeplessness, lies, and threats — all completely legal. Therefore, in the course of the “206” procedure, he didn’t have to shove at me — as did interrogators who had made a mess of things and wanted to play safe — a document on nondisclosure for me to sign: that I, the undersigned, under pain of criminal penalty, swore never to tell anyone about the methods used in conducting my interrogation. (No one knows, incidentally, what article of the Code this comes under.)
In several of the provincial administrations of the NKVD this measure was carried out in sequence: the typed statement on nondisclosure was shoved at a prisoner along with the verdict of the OSO. And later a similar document was shoved at prisoners being released from camp, whereby they guaranteed never to disclose to anyone the state of affairs in camp.
And so? Our habit of obedience, our bent (or broken) backbone, did not suffer us either to reject this gangster method of burying loose ends or even to be enraged by it.
We have lost the measure of freedom. We have no means of determining where it begins and where it ends. We are an Asiatic people. On and on and on they go, taking from us those endless pledges of nondisclosure — everyone not too lazy to ask for them.
By now we are even unsure whether we have the right to talk about the events of our own lives.
I worry we’re getting to this point of silencing ourselves without Soviet interrogation.
Ukraine: The aggressive invasion of Ukraine began two years ago this week. “. . . you have to gather all your strength and keep living — it’s easy to go mad from the onslaught of emotions and experiences. Sometimes I feel like we’ve all collectively gone mad.”
Real Men: Praise for the male lead in Helprin’s The Oceans and the Stars as the type of man we need everywhere. “As a leader, for instance, Rensselaer maintains the perfect distance from his crew. Though they know they can approach him for help and advice, he does not pretend to be their buddy. Nor is he aloof or self-absorbed. Rensselaer is all about the mission at hand, preserving the lives of those under his command, and winning in battle.”
Darwin’s Sequel: Robert Shedinger has a new book about the sequel to Origin of Species, which “promised evidence for natural selection” that was not included in the original. He says Darwin just kept promising his supporters, because he would never have the material to finish the book.
Western Canon: A college attempts to replace the Great Books with those aligned with a proper ideology. “‘Attempting to read many of the works set forth as resentment’s alternative to the Canon,’ Bloom groaned, ‘I reflect that these aspirants must believe . . . that their sincere passions are already poems, requiring only a little overwriting.'” This isn’t post-modern, the writer notes. It’s as old as the iconoclasts of history.
Three items for you tonight. The video above, in case you care to view it, is my sermon last Thursday in the chapel of the Free Lutheran Bible College and Seminary in Plymouth, Minnesota. I note that it times out at 17 minutes, 57 seconds. The time frame they allotted me was 18 minutes. I did no padding or cutting on the sermon – it was the right length pretty much out of the chute. This is something I seem to have been born able to do, writing to a set time. I find it wholly inexplicable. Anybody know a politician who needs a speech writer? I work cheap. Preferably a conservative; I hate being a greater hypocrite than I already am.
Secondly, our friend Dave Lull, ever on the watch for references to the late author D. Keith Mano, for whom I cherish a fondness, sent me the link to this piece from National Review. An excerpt:
Keith was soon established within our senior ranks and was included in the periodic “off-sites,” where vexed NR policies were (endlessly) debated and (occasionally) resolved. He and I would sit together, two high-school sophomores in the back row of an algebra class, with D. Keith providing sotto voce commentary on the otherwise tedious proceedings. On one occasion I lost it and laughed out loud. NR publisher William Rusher, who on solemn occasions made himself available for hall-monitor duty, barked at us from across the room, “Perhaps Freeman and Mano would care to share that witticism with the rest of the group.” (We did not care to share it. It was about Rusher.)
Thirdly: Report from the writing front: I’m in the process of doing a paper revision on The Baldur Game. It’s well known that I’ve been almost entirely assimilated by the digital Borg; I read and write mostly electronically. Yet I retain a semi-superstitious conviction that I ought to do at least one revision per book in red pen on printed sheets. That’s what I’m doing right now.
And you know what? It does seem to be different on paper. I almost feel as if I’ve re-written the book by hand, in red ink. (Some of it’s even almost legible.)
I had thought the polishing stage was almost complete on this thing. I was surprised find so much substandard writing all of a sudden, like shining ultraviolet light on a crime scene. I’ve never noticed any difference in the reading experience between paper books and my Kindle. Yet revision, somehow, seems to be different.
Over at Gene Edward Veith’s Cranach blog (which is, lamentably, paywalled), he linked today to Anthony Sacramone’s review at acton.org of Stephen Prothero’s God, the Bestseller: How One Editor Transformed American Religion a Book at a Time. (I’ll let you order it, if you like, from the review. I came to praise Sacramone, not to pick his pocket.) I had never heard of the book’s subject, Eugene Exman:
… “who ran the religion book department at Harper & Brothers and then Harper & Rowe between 1928 and 1965,” and who published some of the most recognizable names in the world of religion (and quasi religion) of that period, from Harry Emerson Fosdick and Albert Schweitzer to Dorothy Day, Martin Luther King Jr., and Bill Wilson, co-founder of AA.
…if there’s one phrase that’s repeated mantra-like in God the Bestseller it’s “hidebound dogma” (note the modifier). The books Exman would publish at the helm of Harper and Rowe’s religion division would seek that which transcended mere doctrine, a “perennial philosophy,” as Aldous Huxley’s own bestseller would be called—a common thread that supposedly runs through all religions, tying the earthly to the heavenly, matter to the spirit.
Exman, raised a Baptist, had an intense spiritual experience, but it led him, not into the Bible or orthodoxy, but into a generalized search for spiritual truth, which he believed he could find in all faiths.
His greatest star was Rev. Harry Emerson Fosdick, a hugely influential writer in his time, almost forgotten today (a fact which gives me hope for the future). I once borrowed a book on the life of St. Paul from my elementary school library. My mother noticed that Fosdick was the author, and cautioned me against it. This was wise. I did notice a tendency to downplay the supernatural.
As a short history of the American religious publishing game in the mid-20th century, and the signal role one man… played in that history, virtually transforming what passed for religion in the broader reading public’s imagination, Stephen Prothero does yeoman’s work in God the Bestseller. Anyone in the publishing trade will find this an enjoyable, if somewhat repetitive, read.
