W. D. J. Really Think?

The Rt. Rev. Stacy F. Sauls, former bishop of Lexington, Kentucky, now serves as CEO of The Episcopal Church. In a letter published today in the Wall Street Journal rebutting a column by a disgruntled New York layman, Bishop Sauls writes:

The church has been captive to the dominant culture, which has rewarded it with power, privilege and prestige for a long, long time. The Episcopal Church is now liberating itself from that, and as the author correctly notes, paying the price. I hardly see paying the price as what ails us. I see it as what it means to be a follower of Jesus.

Many years ago when I was a parish priest in Savannah, a local politician and disaffected Episcopalian began a conversation with me. In that case the subject was homosexuality. It could have been any of the things mentioned last week as our ailments. "I just think the church should not be governed by the culture," he said. I replied that I agreed with him, but that "I just hadn't noticed that the culture was all that hospitable toward gay people." He stammered. "Well, maybe not here in Georgia."

The Episcopal Church is on record as standing by those the culture marginalizes whether that be nonwhite people, female people or gay people. The author calls that political correctness hostile to tradition.

I call it profoundly countercultural but hardly untraditional. In fact, it is deeply true to the tradition of Jesus, Jesus who offended the "traditionalists" of his own day, Jesus who was known to associate with the less than desirable, Jesus who told his followers to seek him among the poor.

The bishop's argument is eloquent but a little off point. Back in Georgia, he delicately maneuvered his friend into admitting that their state was hostile to gays and lesbians. Since then, the U.S. public, led by our young people, has grown far more accepting. Americans' support for gay marriage appears to increase month to month. The elite culture, especially opinion leaders in the media and popular culture, is militantly hostile to homophobia, and rightly so. And though we haven't fully lived into the democratic imperative of honoring the dignity of each individual and offering opportunity to all, it's also an exaggeration to say that our society marginalizes ethnic minorities and women.

Anyway, in our common struggle for human dignity, it's hard to say who's governing whom. Church people have been part of all our great civil rights movements, as have the unchurched. In formalizing equity in law and canon, sometimes secular society has led the way, other times the church. Today, TEC and what Bishop Sauls calls the dominant culture (especially its judges, DAs, and civil rights divisions) are essentially synchronizing.

So with apologies to the bishop, we actually haven't liberated ourselves from the culture. We have, however, pretty much liberated ourselves from members of our own covenant. He appears to be putting the best possible face on what amounts to us Christians' failure to remain in dialogue and community -- left and right, progressive and conservative, gay- and women-friendly and not. One may assign the blame for our separations and schisms however one wishes. But a failure is a failure. Alienation is alienation. While we honor Christ by welcoming all into his body, there are members of the body we don't much care for. The left hand is often appalled by what the right hand is doing, and vice versa. Christianity is a divided house, and we may remember what our LORD said on that subject.

We're all hopeful that the mainline church's center of gravity is shifting to a place where it will attract those who would never have worshiped with us 30 years ago. But will the secular-minded elites who in all sincerity applaud our enlightenment on identity and gender actually come on Sunday morning to participate in our communities, in the sacraments, in practices and disciplines that call everyone, even the exceptionally enlightened, to humility, repentance, and amendment of life? We may say that it's all up to God. But unless they do come, we will also have also liberated ourselves from the imperative of evangelism.

The Episcopal Church is doing better than its critics claim. Many of our parishes and missions are thriving as inclusive, loving, service-driven communities. And yet I fear our secular political partners on a whole array of issues view us progressive Christian soldiers as objects of curiosity and sympathy as much as sources of inspiration. From a secular perspective, Christ's whole church appears to be diffuse in its core message, even dying, in large part as a result of its failure to transcend its internal tensions and contradictions and keep both left and right wings under the mighty shadow of our Creator and the abiding hope of the Resurrection. In the end, Jesus -- who loves unity as well as justice -- might not be quite as pleased with any of us as we may think.

Nixon Would Be Reading But Maybe Not Blogging

"RealClearWorld," the international news web site, just named The National Interest, published by the Nixon Center, as one of its top world news web sites. Other winners: The Wall Street Journal and Der Spiegel.

You're Welcome

At 12:38 p.m. Eastern time, I left this comment at the Wall Street Journal about its Nixonite personnel error:

You’ve got the personnel wrong on the July 1971 Haldeman notes. Haldeman was then chief of staff; Haig was Kissinger’s aide.

By 1:20, when I checked back, reporter Louise Radnofsky had modified her copy to read:

Mr. Nixon ordered his aides to exclude all Jewish-Americans from policy-making on Israel, according to formerly classified notes taken by then-chief of staff H. R. “Bob” Haldeman on a meeting with the president in July 1971. “No Jew can handle the Israeli thing,” the notes read. Later in the one-page excerpt, Mr. Haldeman writes, “Forget the Jews — they’re against” the administration.

That stipulation explicitly includes then-national security adviser Henry Kissinger, with accompanying plans to keep him out of the loop. The notes say that “whenever K calls — [then-aide Alexander] Haig should notify P.” and, later, “get K. out of the play — Haig handle it.”

Kathy, No More Meetings With People, Please

From the Wall Street Journal's anthology of items from yesterday's release of documents and tapes by the Nixon library in Yorba Linda:

A five-page memo by Mr. Nixon describes his personal habits for dissemination to “friendly columnists and authors,” and sets out the president’s loathing for social breakfasts, social lunches, social cocktails and social dinners, because they take time away for “long-range, broad-scope thinking,” and that he doesn’t feel he can afford to spend five hours playing golf for the same reason.

So Nixon didn't like people? On the contrary. But social interactions, except for those that made almost no demands on his emotional energy, were exhausting, as with all strong introverts. This listing ranks Nixon as an ENTJ on the Myers Briggs scale, but that can't be right. RN was definitely INTJ:

[M]any INTJs do not readily grasp the social rituals; for instance, they tend to have little patience and less understanding of such things as small talk...

And then there's small-minded talk. The Journal and others interpret a page of chief of staff Bob Haldeman's notes as a presidential order that the administration's Jews be banned from working on Middle East issues. Nixon's passions about Jews and their politics are well-documented and not pleasant to behold. And he was at his worst when talking with Haldeman. In this case, it sounds like Nixon was sounding one of his leitmotifs, which was that his national security adviser, Henry Kissinger, who was Jewish, couldn't be objective about the struggles and negotiations between Israel and the Arabs. Unless someone can dig up evidence of an order being issued and carried out, it's probably just hot air, plus an additional insight about the fascinating collaboration-cum-rivalry between the two towering strategists of detente.

As these releases continue, and we get further away from Nixon days, reporters will need to brush up on their history. Here's what the Journal says about the newly released page of Haldeman notes. Note that they have the personnel all wrong. Haldeman was chief of staff; Alexander Haig was Kissinger's aide:

Mr. Nixon ordered his chief of staff, Alexander Haig, to exclude all Jewish-Americans from policy-making on Israel, according to formerly classified notes taken by White House aide H. R. “Bob” Haldeman on a meeting with the president in July 1971. “No Jew can handle the Israeli thing,” the notes read. Later in the one-page excerpt, Mr. Haldeman writes, “Forget the Jews — they’re against” the administration.

They should check this stuff with Rupert Murdoch. He knows.

Hat tip to Maarja Krusten

Atheist In The Hole

Michael M. Phillips totally nails the beginning of this evocative story:

SANGIN, Afghanistan—They say there are no atheists in foxholes. There's one on the front lines here, though, and the chaplain isn't thrilled about it.

Navy Chaplain Terry Moran is steeped in the Bible and believes all of it. His assistant, Religious Programs Specialist 2nd Class Philip Chute, is steeped in the Bible and having none of it.

Together they roam this town in Taliban country, comforting the grunts while crossing swords with each other over everything from the power of angels to the wisdom of standing in clear view of enemy snipers. Lt. Moran, 48 years old, preaches about divine protection while 25-year-old RP2 Chute covers the chaplain's back and wishes he were more attentive to the dangers of the here and now.

It's a match made in, well, the Pentagon.

"He trusts God to keep him safe," says RP2 Chute. "And I'm here just in case that doesn't work out."

She Did Buy The Shoes, BTW

This afternoon I posted on Facebook about a friend's Mustang and, not long after, noticed a Mustang ad in the right-hand column. This Wall Street Journal investigation explains how they do that. I heard the reporter, Julia Angwin, talking about it on NRP's Fresh Air not long ago.

The sites we visit most often, and advertising firms that specialize in this stuff, have ways of gathering information about the things we look at on line and generating ads that match our interests. Angwin found that the average site puts over 60 tracking devices on your computer when you visit. Often third parties are running the tracking programs without the host sites' even knowing.

Angwin said that when she checked out some shoes on line, "they kept following me around the web" as ads popped up at other places she visited. While she says that our profiles can get pretty detailed and sophisticated, our names aren't attached to them. The data is mined and traded instantaneously, since the whole idea is to get to us while we're in the market and before the data are corrupted by our fickleness, or the other people who are using our computers and start searching for guitar strings instead of pumps.

I tried to summon some outrage about an invasion of privacy inherent in this example of the market in hyperactivity, but I couldn't. This is Big Broker, not Big Brother. I only got worried when the NPR interviewer, Dave Davies, asked Angwin, "Is anyone in the government interested in this?"

Rogue's Reading

On the Sean Hannity program tonight (a repeat from Wednesday), Sarah Palin, who twice said Iraq when she meant to say Iran, finally revealed what she reads: Newsmax.com (a conservative news compiler, which happily notes the endorsement here), the Wall Street Journal, and the Wasilla Frontiersman, plus other unspecified internet sources. Would it have killed her to have said New York Times? Perhaps. Ross Douthat reflects here on whether a conservative loses ground by sounding too smart.

"Come Home America" Watch, Day 35

The Wall Street Journal:

The Obama administration is moving toward a hybrid strategy in Afghanistan that would combine elements of both the troop-heavy approach sought by its top military commander and a narrower option backed by Vice President Joe Biden, a decision that could pave the way for thousands of new U.S. forces.

Burying The Lead On The Kindle's Value

At the end of a long reflection on how the Kindle may change the way we buy books, read, write, think, grow vegetables, and say the mass (I can sympathize: He's still in the throes of his Kindle krush), Steven Johnson gets to the all-important save-journalism part at the very end of his Wall Street Journal article:

If the Kindle payment architecture takes off, it may ultimately lead the way toward the standardized micropayment system whose nonexistence has caused so much turmoil in the news business -- a system many people wish had been built into the Web's original architecture, along with those standardized page locations.

We all know the story of how the information-wants-to-be-free ethos of the Web threatened the newspapers with extinction. Wouldn't it be ironic if books turned out to be their savior?

The Crossed Signals Of Gold

While I can't begin to have an intelligent debate about monetary policy, I also can't quite figure out this comment in the Wall Street Journal by Judy Shelton:

When President Richard Nixon closed the gold window, it marked the end of a golden age of robust trade and unprecedented global economic growth.

So speaking of robust trade and global growth, what was all that going on in the 1990s?

Murdoch: Once Satan, Now Savior?

David Carr, New York Times media writer, talking on a Dec. 26 Book Review podcast about Rupert Murdoch's impact on journalism and the Wall Street Journal, which he recently bought:

I was at a party last night for a Journal reporter that's switching assignments. Unlike a lot of journalism parties I've been to lately, number one, it was about a promotion, number two, it was filled with happy people who were excited about what they were doing. The suggestion that Mr. Murdoch was going to ruin the Journal, which I and others couldn't say often enough when he bought the paper, turns out to be not true, not so far....[T]o suggest that he or [managing editor] Robert Thompson have gone about the business of tearing it apart or diminishing it just hasn't proven to be the case.

Reminds me of an article my editor friend Tracy Wood sent me in November about a publisher's party where the paper's employees were parking cars to earn extra money. Turns out Murdoch, at whom newspaper people have been turning up their noses for years, may be one of the few publishers left who can keep them all in business.