Children and Moral Reasoning

You can learn a lot about what is right or wrong by attempting to explain things to your children.

My children have begun to learn about the civil rights struggle of African-Americans.  It is bittersweet because on the one hand the history presents a good way to learn about justice.  On the other, it awakens racial awareness in them that was not really there before.  I regret that children have to learn about such things.  Sometimes, I fantasize that we could all wake up with no knowledge of the past of racial slavery or segregation.  Of course, it is probably better to remember mistakes so as not to repeat them.

In any case, as Andrew and Grace learn about these matters, they ask questions of their mother and me.  They would like an explanation for the wrongs that were committed.  They have also wanted to understand what happened with the American Indians and the Trail of Tears.  

(I will admit that I was anxious to learn from my son whether he knew anything more about Andrew Jackson than that he authored the evil of the Trail of Tears.  In my effort the flesh things out, I even looked up the lyrics to The Battle of New Orleans on my iPhone and then sang them to the family at the dinner table.)

When you start to try to answer those questions, it is very simple, indeed, to see who was right and who was wrong.  White Europeans imposed themselves on the natives of this land with a substantial amount of force and fraud.  The same general group engaged in a vicious chattel slavery and a massively inhumane slave trade.  The moral lines assert themselves quite easily (thus demonstrating the silliness of relativism).  The stronger people dehumanized the weaker ones and found a way to justify getting what they wanted.  

And what is really suggestive for our view of current controversies is that I felt the same sort of tension winding up as I tried to explain abortion to my son.     

 

 

Should Evangelicals Give Up on Christian Politics?

The University Bookman asked me to review D.G. Hart’s book on how evangelicals have subverted conservative politics.  While I appreciate his strength of mind and his craft, I disagree with his thesis that striving for something like a biblical politics is a non-starter.  Here’s a clip:

As a professor at a Christian college, I must cede to Hart and his argument in this excellent and provocative book that many of us do live and work inside a movement aimed at extending the lordship of Jesus Christ to politics and every other endeavor of human life. Certainly, I can understand how many Christian political ideas and efforts add up to a “betrayal” of conservatism as Hart sees it. But the call to evangelicals to give up this task of developing a Christian politics and attempting to bring it into being through persuasion, office-seeking, and other work is unlikely to succeed.

 

The first major barrier is the immense effort (specifically of the last quarter century) that has gone into encouraging Christians to “think Christianly” about every area of their lives, including politics. The second barrier is the related lack of desire that evangelicals have to return to something like the early Falwellian position that the church has no business encouraging activism with regard to matters of domestic (such as race) or international policy (such as the Cold War). That form of church-state separation looks in the rear-view mirror very much like the pitiable refuge of those who were more concerned about intra-congregation conflict than with calling for righteous action.

 

While Hart likely does not intend to frame exactly this message, in some ways the very civil and erudite complaint against overly ambitious Christian politics comes across as a call for Christians to subordinate their faith (or at least a prominent interpretation thereof) to conservatism. He seems to be encouraging a political secularism of the right at exactly the time when Christians have been working vigorously to do away with it as an excuse for not bringing ideas from the church into the public square.

You can read the whole thing here.

What Do I Read?

A young person just asked me what I read. Interesting question.

I rotate through a variety of different magazines. Favorites include First Things, Touchstone, Christianity Today, Fortune, BusinessWeek, The New Atlantis, The City, Foreign Policy, Foreign Affairs, National Review, and Kiplingers. A publication I would like to read, but haven’t gotten around to other than the occasional web read is City Journal.

With regard to books, my favorite author of fiction is Walker Percy.  I am also very fond of Lars Walker’s work.  My  tastes are eclectic, but I tend to gravitate toward mysteries and the old pulp action stuff, like from Robert E. Howard or Edgar Rice Burroughs.  My son has gotten me back into comic books.  We’ve been reading through huge sections of the Avengers series.

On the non-fiction side, Whittaker Chambers’ Witness may be the best single book I ever read.  I have a mini-obsession with Peter Drucker’s books.  I am currently reading through the volumes I think of as having to do with social thought, but he was mostly associated with management.  I love lots of different political thinkers:  Augustine, Aquinas, Luther, Locke, Rousseau, Paine, de Tocqueville, Sandel, Nozick, MacIntyre.  Hadley Arkes is really great, too.

I used to be a great reader of many websites.  You could count on me reading American Spectator, National Review, Weekly Standard, and Christianity Today online with great regularity.  With the popularization of Facebook and Twitter, I find that I spend a lot more time reading things other people point out to me.  I have come to count on Real Clear Politics a lot more, though.

UPDATE:  I should add that I read the Bible, too.  In recent years, I have felt much more strongly that is important to do so.  Before, I felt secure in my sense that I understood the basic message and what it is all about, but I came under conviction that it makes no sense to examine all kinds of other texts closely and not to spend more time on the single most important text.

“Love Makes Me Rather Terrible . . .”: A Review of Troll Valley by Lars Walker

My primary complaint with Lars Walker is that I have read all of his books.  He set his hook deep with Year of the Warrior.  I have hungered for more ever since.

Lars wrote his first three books (Year of the Warrior, Wolf Time, and Blood and Judgment) for the well-known sci-fi and fantasy publisher Baen Books.  I’m not sure that Baen ever really knew how to market Lars’ work.  Still, he has a growing cult following.  I am convinced there is money to be made in buying the rights to his work from Baen.

He wrote a fourth volume for Nordskog (a sequel to Year of the Warrior called West Oversea).  I heartily recommend them all, though Year is my personal favorite.  I have read from it to stunned silence from underclassmen and professors alike.  The book has impact.  Gene Veith prefers Wolf Time.

Now, Lars has bravely taken the path of writing a book directly for Amazon and the other ebook formats.  Troll Valley is available for a mere $2.99 at Amazon.  I happily loaded it on my kindle and read it like some guilty pleasure which would occasionally turn my emotions inside out.

The story revolves around a young man named Chris Anderson.  He is the grandchild of Norwegian immigrants living in Minnesota in the early 20th century.  There are three outstanding facts about Chris.  He has a deformed arm he bitterly compares to a duck’s wing.  He has an honest-to-goodness fairy godmother (it is she who is made terrible by her love for him).  And when he feels angry, inferior, or threatened, strange things happen.  Though it sounds like it, this book is not for children.  

I am not enough of a student of literature to say what genre this book fits into, but if I had to hazard a guess, I would call it something like Christian magical realism.  Lars has a special gift for writing engrossing stories which also contain many lessons, most of them about the faith.  

I urge you to start reading the books written by this talented and wise man.  Troll Valley at $2.99 is not a bad place to start.

A Son Speaks to His Non-Famous Author Father

My short introduction to political thought will come out this summer.  Andrew (9) had some concerns.

Andrew:  Did you dedicate this book to me and Grace like you did the first one?

Me:  No, I dedicated this one to your mommy.  You’ve already had your dedication.

Andrew:  Yeah, but nobody at my school knows about your first book.  (He is referring to The End of Secularism.)

Me:  Well, the book wasn’t written for elementary school children.

Andrew:  None of my teachers know about it either.

Symmetry and Beauty

I read sometime ago that people’s perception of beauty in others has a lot to do with symmetry.  Sadly, I must report that I am sorely lacking by this reckoning.

My hairline has receded asymmetrically.  It goes further back on the right side than on the left.

One of my hips is higher than the other.

My smile is crooked and my canine teeth are almost vampire long.

I find it almost impossible to sit still and have a tendency to draw one leg up under me so as create a slanted look.

One eye is almost always more open than the other.

Amazingly, none of this bothers me terribly much,  for which I thank God for giving me perspective and my beautiful wife for possessing the feminine virtue of looking beneath the surface in evaluating a mate.

The Future of Higher Education

A colleague and I went to a presentation by Apple Computer on using their technology in higher education.  They showed us some things I’d seen before such as lectures by some of the most famous professors online for anyone to see.  My colleague was stunned and began to develop a view that higher education as we know it is over.  After all, if anyone can have access to the substance of an ultra-fine education whenever they want it, why have a multitude of institutions doing the work separately across the land?

I am less sure than my colleague that the revolution is on the horizon.  There are several reasons.  Just because someone can witness all the lectures from Verygood business school does not make them a Verygood business grad.  They don’t necessarily have the scores to get into Verygood business.  They won’t have spent a few years interacting with students in Verygood business.  Nor will they have had their work evaluated by Verygood business professors over a period of years.  If access to content were the whole ball game, then the profusion of good public libraries in the twentieth century would have spelled the end of higher education.  Content is NOT king in higher education.  Part of the answer is that education is about more than the information a professor can convey in a series of lectures.  Grades matter.  Class dynamics matter.  Class participation matters. Interaction with the professor matters.  Community matters.

The basic question remains, though.  Why can’t I just watch all the Verygood business lectures and then do my own homegrown projects and show up for a job interview with a portfolio I have compiled?  Isn’t it true that in the past many lawyers simply studied on their own and then took the bar?

Better yet, why don’t employers create their own schools to teach exactly what they want and then recruit students out of high school to attend?  Why doesn’t Apple have an Apple Institute full of teachers of all things relevant to making Apple great and profitable?

The answer on both counts is that the current system makes life easier for employers.  Sure, human resources departments could look at the entirely self-taught individual’s portfolio and try to make a judgment as to his or her skill.  But it is much easier (and you will never go broke betting on easy) to find a recognizable credential and filter out the ones who have it for further consideration.  College and university degrees provide a time-saving way to evaluate large numbers of applicants.  The same is true of a law school class rank, for example.  A firm might weed people out by considering only graduates in the top 15% of their class.

And why doesn’t Apple run its own college or school?  Why should the shareholders of Apple foot the bill for such an exercise when they can sit back and wait for lots of promising young people to graduate (at their own expense) so they can skim the cream with no more cost than what it takes to recruit and evaluate?

No, higher education is not dead simply because the content is easy to access for potential do-it-yourselfers.  Nor is it going to be replaced by expensive institutes run by employers for employers.  They would rather students pay and they pick the winners afterwards.

The Peter Drucker You Never Knew

Most readers will recognize Peter Drucker’s name as the author of many books about management.  The Austrian immigrant was revered in that field and sold millions of books.  Few realize, though, that his academic training was actually in international law and that he moved toward business out of his conviction that management is a liberal art.  I have embarked upon a research project to read and understand his social thought.  In the process of reading his first book, The End of Economic Man, I have run into many gems, including this one:

Realization of freedom and equality was first sought in the spiritual sphere.  The creed that all mean are equal in the world beyond and free to decide their fate in the other world by their actions and thoughts in this one, which, accordingly, is but a preparation for the real life, may have been only an attempt to keep the masses down, as the eighteenth century and the Marxists assert.  But to the people in the eleventh or in the thirteenth century the promise was real.  That every Last Judgment at a church door shows popes, bishops, and kings in damnation was not just the romantic fantasy of a rebellious stonemason.  It was a real and truthful expression of that epoch of our history which projected freedom and equality into the spiritual sphere.

This is not the stuff of The Effective Executive, but it is great stuff.

Huntsman’s Team on Why He Lost

Press secretary Tim Miller gives the answer, “Mitt Romney beat us,” and then goes on to explain the things Mitt Romney has done well.  That’s fine.  Mitt Romney probably has been a better candidate this time than in 2008, but the answer regarding Huntsman’s own campaign is far from sufficient.

It is probably too soon for a post-mortem from a member of the team, but at some point I would like to see one of them explain how it is that a successful governor with a strong record managed to be the ONLY candidate in the race who failed to get a turn in the spotlight.  We have seen Michele Bachmann and Herman Cain earn serious consideration and high poll numbers.  Santorum and Gingrich have both mounted threats to Romney, despite seemingly being finished as office-holders.  And yet, Jon Huntsman, a man with a terrific resume’ and a solid record, was scarcely able to beat the margin of error.

Why?  I think the answer is that he gave off the wrong signals right from the beginning.  Huntsman was asked about matters such as climate change and evolution.  His answers gave the clear impression that he felt conservative voters have failed to comprehend the rationality and power of science, thus demonstrating that he apparently buys into the standard narrative of the conservative idiot.  Voters will never choose the man who appears to hold them in contempt.

He could have held exactly the same opinions he has, but addressed the matter differently.  For example, he could have said that he understands the evidence regarding climate change and thinks the primary question for non-scientists is what it all means.  Much of the resistance regarding climate change arguments is not so much to the idea of it as to the question of what should be done.  The wall begins to rise when the globo-catastrophists list their very expensive demands.  Huntsman should have turned the question to those issues rather than making acceptance or denial of climate change the issue.  With regard to evolution, Huntsman should have likewlse turned the question to the implications.

A second, though less significant answer, is that Huntsman missed his one big opportunity to make an impression on voters.  After coming in third in New Hampshire and getting prime time air to give a speech, Huntsman failed to have any kind of compelling message ready.  When Rick Santorum made his big splash in Iowa, he spoke without notes to massive effect.  He was ready.  Huntsman’s “ticket to ride” speech left his audience wanting more.

Barack Obama: Mayor of Portlandia

The president has ruled against granting permission to build the Keystone Pipeline in the United States.  In so doing, he makes a decision against the oil of our friendly, democratic, and peaceful neighbors to the north and for the oil of tyrants in the Middle East and a dictator in Venezuela.

Perhaps more important, he has decided against using the North American energy revolution to rebuild the economy.  You need real businesses to provide real jobs.  You also happen to need real businesses and real jobs to fund government jobs and the welfare state.

Instead, our president acts as though he is the mayor of Portlandia where young people go to retire and the unemployment problem has been solved by paying citizens to finish each other’s sentences.

Reflections on the Occupy Movement

As a college professor, I find myself frequently thinking about the Occupy movement.  Though the absolute numbers of participants are not large, it is clear that the general sentiment of disillusionment and anger has tendrils which spread into the general population of young people.  I would like to explore the question of whether they have a point and how we should think about it.

Getting the Bill for the Six Parties Ahead of You

There are many good reasons for the young to be frustrated.  First, they are coming to adulthood at a time when older generations have taken a course of action that damaged their own prospects.  Large corporations have been severely hindered by old agreements to provide for workers after retirement.  The CEO of General Motors, prior to his dismissal, complained that he felt he was running a health insurance company rather than a car company.  Many of the great old corporations have struggled against massive legacy costs of this type.  Who gained?  The old management gained because they were able to reduce wages in exchange for costs they could put off well into the future.  The old workers gained because they have secured a right to benefits which run for decades beyond their last day of labor.  Old labor gained.  Old management gained.  Who is left with the check?  Later generations must pay the bill in terms of reduced competitive capability for the enterprises and less money to invest on growth.  Resources which flow to those who ran things decades ago are unavailable to the rising cohort.  The more pensions, the more health insurance legacies, the less which can be used for building strong companies today.  Labor and management conspired to make the future pay.

Our elected officials have done the same thing, ultimately.  We have financed government at a level beyond our willingness to pay for it and thus have racked up debt which grows prodigiously.  The young realize that while entitlement after entitlement accrued to their elders, they will be expected to pay for those programs while suffering great pessimism over whether they will ever enjoy the fruits of them.  Just as with corporations, the government officials and their constituents (the management and labor, so to speak) have conspired to postpone costs into the future.  The young are supposed to look hopefully into the future.  But how can they do so when it has been loaded with debt like some ill-fated corporate spin-off?

The Psychological Terror of Being Young

One of the great difficulties of being a young person just out of college like many of the Occupy protesters is that one’s personal future is very much in doubt.  Right up until the end of college, the young person has been on an escalator that is going somewhere.  Preschool to kindergarten to elementary school to middle school to high school and then to college.  It is all easy to understand and the next steps are clear.  But what to do at the end of the escalator?  There are some programs which seem to feed people right along into another series of escalators, such as teaching, nursing, medical school, maybe accounting, but many others lead to a more open future with widely variable outcomes.  What of the English major or the student of history who does not go into graduate study?  What does an art major do?  How about the dramatic pupil, the communication arts scholar?  For these students, there is no continuing escalator.

When I got out of college in 1992, I could not simply enter an academy of government service and get an assignment.  Interestingly, I tried to do something like that.  I obtained a master’s degree in public administration with the sole goal of getting into the Presidential Management Internship which would feed me right into a government agency.  Despite being at the top of my class, I did not get the appointment.   The uncertainty of my future terrified me.  I spent the next several years of my life trying to figure out what to do and where to go.  I earned a law degree and a Ph.D.  Only then did I find my own path.  During those years of confusion and wilderness, how I envied those with sure paths.  I raged at the way my own life circumstances had left me without the kind of parental connections or other favorable breaks which could start me in a career.  I am sure that many young people in the Occupy movement share those feelings.

I went through all of that in the era of relatively inexpensive tuition.  Thanks to scholarships and help from the parents (mainly at the undergrad level), I escaped with very little debt.  For the average Occupy protester, student debt is a very substantial part of the grievance.

Being Prepared for Reality

There is an indictment to be delivered on those of us in the college game.  Generally speaking, we don’t prepare students mentally for the end of the escalator.  We need to impress upon them that getting the credential of a bachelor’s degree and completing a program of study is just the base level in the process of getting a job.  Very few people come out of college ready to do the jobs they plan to get.  College does not train most students for a job in the way a trade school might.  Instead, college signals employers that a particular student has a degree of competence, can receive and complete assignments, and is used to showing up at a given place at a given time in some kind of routine way.  The college program is a foundation.  But during college, the student needs to be looking well beyond just passing classes.

Throughout, a young person should be thinking in the manner of the old Evangelism Explosion which queried individuals as to what they would say when God asked them, “Why should I let you in my heaven?”  Except, in our scenario, the question from the employer is, “Why should I give you a job with my company?”  If your only answer is that you have completed a course of study at a university and have no experience or no special skill to offer, then you are not a very attractive candidate.  You need to have completed your course of study AND know how to write really well AND be able to analyze problems AND come up with good solutions AND have some basic quantitative skills AND be computer literate AND have cultivated habits of lifetime learning AND have reasonably good social skills AND be opportunistic about finding work and delivering results.

Until a young person starts to understand just how steep the wall is that they face before they become attractive to an employer, they will mostly be bewildered as to why things aren’t working out.  But think about it from the employer’s side of things.  They can either pay you a salary or spend that money on facilities, technology, profit for investors, making a product better for customers, or any number of other items which may be more attractive than  hiring an inexperienced young person.  Being a warm body with a nice credential doesn’t work well unless the economy is smoking hot, as with the dot.com boom.

And, by the way, the economy is not smoking hot, nor does it show signs of being smoking hot any time in the near future.  As to why, please see the first section on getting the bill for the six parties ahead of you.

Conclusion

The solution to the fiscal problem is not to make sure that the government increases its budget to spend a lot more on young people to go along with the very large (and unsustainable) amount we spend on older people.  Rather, the solution is to reverse the bad habits.  Corporations have been hard at work for years getting younger employees on the 401k train rather than on pensions.  Governments will need to do the same thing.  Pensions are not a sustainable model for a population like ours that barely replaces itself.  Neither do they make much sense when people may live as many decades after working as they spent working.

The solution to the problem of being young and uncertain is to do a better job of preparing young people for the end of the escalator.  The old join a corporation and spend forty years there and then get a pension model is finished.  Whoever embraces it will be defeated economically by those who do not.  Everyone must be an entrepreneur of their own skills and abilities.  If you aren’t prepared to do that, then find one of the few remaining escalators left which run all the way to retirement.

Giving a Speech: Read or Speak without Notes?

During the past few years, I have had the opportunity to give many speeches and lectures.  I wrestled with the question of whether to speak without notes, to speak from an outline, or to speak from a prepared text.  Having done all three, I have come down squarely on the side of speaking from a prepared text.

Most people, I think, intuitively disagree with that answer.  So, let me explain.

When people speak without notes, they have a great tendency to repeat themselves, to lose the organizational structure of what they are saying, or even to get stuck in pauses as they compose on the fly what they are going to say next.  They will also find it very difficult to hit a specific time for the speech with an appropriate introduction and conclusion.  There are people who can do it, but they are few and far between.  When speaking, the only people who should go without notes are the very best.  It’s like golf.  Most of us should punch a shot from the woods right back into the fairway rather than trying to play a line drive through the trees toward the hole.

Speaking with notes is better, but the problems of timing and composing on the fly still exist.  Ditto with repetition.  It is very hard to control these things without a ton of practice.  And I’m not sure how many of us have hours and hours to spend attempting to memorize a speech.  The time could be better spent on superior composition and crafting the message.

Speaking from a prepared text solves a lot of problems.  You will have organized it perfectly because you have written it and can easily read what you have written to see if it is clear and gets the message across.  It is easy to see if the speech matches the time allotted because you can simply time yourself in a run-through.  You won’t repeat yourself because you will be able to read the speech and see if you are repeating yourself.

Some are unconvinced because they can remember the horrible experience of watching someone read a speech.  And yes, it can be quite awful.  That is why a person who reads a speech must be able to look up frequently, vary the pitch, and provide emphasis where it is needed.  I have watched a recording of myself reading a speech.  It has become so natural for me that I do not look like a reader.

But the clincher for me is that William F. Buckley read his speeches (as he detailed in Cruising Speed).  He was an outstanding speaker.  Buckley insisted on a Q & A after each speech so the audience would see that he was capable of holding his own without a text.

A Six Year Old’s Theology of Bullying

The public schools are going all out to stop bullying these days.  My children both attend a public elementary school, so I hear a lot about it.  

Yesterday, though, my six year old daughter put together what she is hearing in school with what she has learned about the Christian faith.  I was astonished and touched by the truth and clarity of it.

Sitting across the kitchen table while I read and she did her homework, she said, “You shouldn’t be a bully because God didn’t make you to be mean to people. He made you so people wouldn’t be lonely.”

Unsolicited Thoughts on Running Your Own Business

My friends make fun of me for having spent so much time in academic programs.  I hold a professional graduate degree in public administration, a law degree, and a doctorate in religion and politics.  All this school-going and my current occupation as a professor disguises my great interest in business.  I love to read about it and think about it.  

One of the things I enjoy most is asking entrepreneurs questions about their businesses.  My sister and her husband are both corporate types who dream about owning their own operation some day.  I love to talk with them about the different forms that could take.  

From watching the many different television programs in which experts come in and try to turn around failing businesses and from the high failure rate of new start-ups, I suspect there are some basic points people don’t think about when they get into business for themselves.  

Here goes:

1. You must know what it will cost you to provide the good or service you are offering for sale.  It is not enough to know that you had to purchase the widget for $1 in order to then sell it.  You must know how much it costs you to possess the widget and how much it costs you in addition to possessing it in order to sell it.  How much does it cost you to rent or own a store in which to display the widgets?  How much do you have to spend on utilities, business licenses, supplies, etc.?  How much do you have to pay employees?  Somehow, some way you need to find a way to break those costs down into little pieces you can attach to each widget you want to sell.  
2. You must know what price you can get from consumers for your widgets.  Once you figure that out, you will know if you can offer the widget for a competitive price at all.  If you can’t, then don’t go into business selling widgets or whatever it is you wish to sell.  Business doesn’t work if you can’t get a price that is higher than your TOTAL cost per unit.  
3. You need to know the velocity of the widgets you have for sale.  By velocity (a concept I learned from reading this book by Ram Charan), I mean the number of times you can successfully sell your widget each day.  If you will sell the widget many times in a given day, then you have the opportunity to rack up a nice profit AND spread out your overhead costs over lots of units which helps you offer attractive deals on the widget.  If you will only sell the widget once each day or a few times a week, then you’d better have a very large profit margin.  Think about Wal-Mart.  They don’t have a large profit margin on each item, but their velocity is very high.  They engage in a gigantic number of transactions which add up to a massive profit.  If they only sold a few items each day, the big stores would quickly go bankrupt.  
4. If you are buying an existing business, then you need to have a very good idea of what it is worth.  For example, if you buy a restaurant that rents its space in a strip mall, then all you are getting is the lease, the equipment, and whatever goodwill you think can retain or expand.  You should be VERY careful what you pay for a business, ESPECIALLY if you are not getting a major physical asset such as the building.  

Just a few thoughts, but very important ones.  

Adventures in Student Expression

A student wrote:  ”The  truth hit me like a bag of rocks to the intestines.”

No, it didn’t.  Not unless there was a lot of screaming, crying, and internal bleeding.

The Description of Heaven

I just read Heaven is for Real by Todd Burpo.  A few of my family members recommended it very strongly.  The main attraction is that Mr. Burpo’s son nearly died of acute, misdiagnosed appendicitis and survived to report that he had been to Heaven.  Young Colton Burpo did not simply recover and start telling everyone about his trip.  Rather, he said some things in conversation that piqued the interest of his parents.  They eventually began asking him questions and were astonished by what their 4 year old had to say.

The part of the book that was really gripping for me was the account Todd Burpo gives of the year leading up to Colton’s near death experience and his terror at nearly losing a child.  My daughter was very ill during her first two years and I felt some of those fears, but not at the level of crisis which faced the Burpos.  What Colton has to say about Heaven is interesting, but does not give me the sense of powerful revelation.  He saw relatives in their young and healthy forms.  He saw Jesus.  People were wearing bright white robes with sashes.  Jesus had a dazzling rainbow colored horse.  There was a war between heavenly and satanic forces.  The strongest evidence of Colton’s visit is that he was able to identify his great grandfather as a young man in a photo without ever having met him or really having knowledge of him.  He knew who the man was and what he was called.  Overall, though, the description of heaven did not strike me as ultra-surprising for a son of a pastor, even a very young one.  Still, it is interesting.  I read the book quickly and was eager to find out more as I went.

The problem, I think, is that there is something fundamentally wrong with human attempts to describe heaven and/or the things of God.  I’m not saying it can’t be done at all, but it seems to me that other than through full-on revelation (as in the book of that name), the sublimeness of heavenly things can only be approached from the side or seen from the corner of the eye.  A direct confrontation seems doomed to fall short.  I felt that way to some extent about Heaven is for Real (a non-fiction account) and more so about the picture presented of the divine appearing by Jerry Jenkins at the conclusion of the Left Behind novels.  When Jesus arrives in the story, he appears to everyone in exactly the same way with exactly the same message.  It feels like the description of a heavenly voicemail attached to a hologram.

Second Corinthians 12:4 mentions the man who was caught up to paradise and heard inexpressible things he is not even allowed to mention.  The most powerful sense of eternity I have ever experienced in reading outside of the Bible was in Walker Percy’s Lancelot (a dark book).  A man has had a confrontation with evil which has left him a little insane and obsessed with harsh justice.  He completes his book-long conversation with a priest-psychologist friend from his youth.  During the course of the story, we observe (only in flashes) that the priest-psychologist is returning to his faith and his vocation.  He will take a small parish in Alabama.  His one-word replies (always the same word) to Lancelot in the final chapter make the hair stand up on the back of my neck.  He doesn’t describe anything.  But the reader can feel the gigantic, looming reality which will explode forth just as the story ends.  Out of the corner of the eye.  Possibly inexpressible.  The mystery remains a mystery until, all of a sudden, the image clears and we will see and understand and will know as we have been known.  But not yet.

My Son the Natural Capitalist

Somehow at dinner time we began discussing the existence of cocoa powder and cocoa beans that grow in the rainforest (I assume this is true).  My son Andrew (age 9) announced that he would like to go into the rainforest and place a picture of himself on one of the cocoa trees in order to claim it as his own (an interesting account of how property is acquired).  After his mother informed him that there might be large snakes in the rainforest, he responded with aplomb, “That’s no problem.  I’ll just hire workers who are also explorers and they’ll travel into the forest to collect the beans for me.  Then, I can sell them and make money.”

There are no entrepreneurs or arbitrageurs in our family.  I have no idea where all this came from.

The Deep Unfairness of Chris Matthews to Tea Partiers

I tuned in to the Washington Ideas Forum on C-Span recently to see Chris Matthews talking about Mitt Romney and the tea partiers.  Matthews described Romney as a happy robot who has never had a bad day and who doesn’t hate anyone.  He contrasted the tea partiers to Romney.  Unlike him, according to Matthews, the tea partiers are continuing to fight the Civil War and have a problem with black people getting ahead in America.

What movement is Chris Matthews watching?  And if he is right, then how can it be that Herman Cain is the candidate rising in the polls as tea partiers seek an alternative to Mitt Romney?

There was a time when Chris Matthews was one of the fairest commentators out there.  He was a moderator for events at the Reagan Library.  Though Matthews could be counted on to oppose the conservative agenda, he did so in a cheerful and reasonably charitable way.

Chris Matthews wrote some great books.  Interesting books.  Thoughtful books.  Kennedy & Nixon was one of them.  Hardball was another.  You’ll get a lot more out of reading those than from listening to him these days.

A Warped Hallmark Moment

Grace (age six): Daddy, I missed you while you were on that trip out of town.

Me (age none of your business): I missed you, too, sweetheart.  Daddy always misses you when he goes away.  I wish I could take you everywhere.

Grace (age six):  Except for the bathroom.

Real Steel and Real Entertainment

My parents started a tradition of taking my sister and me out to a fancy dinner and a movie on New Year’s Eve when we were teenagers. It quickly became one of the high points of the year for Christina and me. I still remember the first place we had dinner. It was a steak place called Rebrof in Pensacola. You could cook your own steak over a huge blazing grill if you wanted to. The first film we saw together was Dune starring Kyle Maclachlan and Sting!

During one of the following years, I was allowed to choose the movie and selected Broadcast News with Holly Hunter, William Hurt, and Albert Brooks. The film was the kind that wins awards. Morally complex, no real heroes, no clear route to happiness. As an emerging adult, I liked it. Found it very stimulating and thoughtful. When I asked my folks for their reaction, I was disappointed to hear that they didn’t enjoy the film. Both my mother and father stated their preference for a film which would uplift and entertain them.

I may have finally become old enough to appreciate their sentiment. My son Andrew (age nine) and I went to a Saturday matinee showing of Real Steel with Hugh Jackman.  Without giving too much away, you might say the film is a high tech remake of Rocky.

A film critic might look at Real Steel and say, “I’ve seen this story before.  It lacks gritty reality.” OR “Not another happy ending in which all the problems are solved in under two hours.”  I think a critic could say those things about Real Steel and maybe be right by way of description, but none of it makes any difference.  The film is entertaining, edifying, and redemptive.  It is the kind of story that encourages people never to give up, that it is never too late to do the right thing, and that money falls well down the list of what is really important.  And it does all this in a way that holds you from start to finish.  I’m the kind of guy who deconstructs films and stories, looking for manipulation and time-tested tricks.  Sometimes, I congratulate myself for being such a savvy consumer of pop culture and media.

Real Steel is the kind of movie that makes me want to throw all the analysis out the window and sign up for the full emotional commitment.  And that’s worth a lot more than I paid to get in the door.

Reviewing the Bidding on the GOP Nomination

Reviewing the Bidding on the GOP

Rick Perry, governor of Texas, has now participated in two debates with his fellow nomination seekers after announcing his campaign and instantly zooming to the top of the polls. Was he THAT famous before making his announcement? Had his book Fed Up! been a monster best-seller? The answer to both questions is no, so why did he rise? More important, how is he handling his front-runner status?

It seemed that Mitt Romney would cruise to the nomination. Mitch Daniels was out. Tim Pawlenty failed to catch fire and quit the race. Romney had the advantage of having run semi-continuously for president for about four years.

The problem for Romney as a Republican primary contender has always centered on two main facts. First, he is the one-term governor of Massachusetts, which is a state that normally produces governors at odds with the national party because of the compromises they have to make with their electorate. Indeed, Romney has started insisting that Perry benefits from a state with oil and a conservative political climate. Second, he pushed for a government health care program, which he must now defend and simultaneously insist is not right for the country as a whole.

Romney’s vulnerability created an opening for Michelle Bachmann, who sprinted through it for a win in the Ames Straw Poll in Iowa. Bachmann’s win signaled to Perry that it was time to enter the race. He did so to instant acclaim and sent Bachmann back to the second tier. She knows he is the source of her rapid descent and pursues him vigorously in the debates, looking to exploit his weaknesses.

In contrast to Romney, Perry is the governor of Texas. Republican governors of Texas have become what governors of California once were, which is nearly automatic candidates for president. His position has put him in the lead. The question is whether he can stay there.

The Texan’s performance in the first debate was poor. He appeared surprised by attacks launched by moderators and other candidates upon his record. A question about climate change caught him so flat-footed he struggled to get through his answer. But the scouting report on Perry is that he learns rapidly. He showed that with a much more confident showing earlier this week in his second attempt. But the trouble this time was that he said a few things about his policies that may reduce his appeal with the GOP base. For example, he defended a program in Texas, which gives in-state tuition to the children of illegal immigrants. In his view, the program makes children of illegals productive whereas denying those benefits might lead to a young person going on welfare. His rationale wasn’t bad, but there is toxicity in the border issue.

The biggest question about Perry for GOP voters is whether he is their best chance to sweep to victory in 2012. Right now, they think he is. Romney stands next to him a little impatiently, perhaps knowing that his measured, technocratic approach could give him a better chance against President Obama. Rick Perry has the best chance of whipping up enthusiasm from the base, but he is also the most vulnerable to being demonized by the opposing party. In an election where the president faces an uphill battle due to the economy, less exciting might be a formula for victory.

Getting Francis Schaeffer Right

Lately with all the talk of “Dominionism” and the scary religious right and Frank Schaeffer chiming in, I feel the need to draw attention to a portrait of Francis Schaeffer that I think really portrayed him fairly and without the usual political histrionics.  I wrote the following review (which appeared in Themelios) of Colin Duriez’s Francis Schaeffer: An Authentic Life back in 2009.

As a PhD student, I provided research assistance to the Baylor historian Barry Hankins as he wrote his biography of Francis Schaeffer (Francis Schaeffer and the Shaping of Evangelical America [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2008]). At the time, I remember asking Professor Hankins if the family had been cooperative. They had not. Having read Colin Duriez’s treatment of Schaeffer, I think I know why. The family was cooperating with him, so much so that this book could be considered an authorized biography. Duriez’s portrayal is very powerfully personal, more so than anything I have read save Schaeffer’s own books, which are self-revelatory to some degree.

An Authentic Life features a number of unforgettable scenes from Schaeffer’s life. The reader who has a jaundiced view of Schaeffer as some kind of plastic-mold religious right stereotype will encounter a complex man who had a powerful instinct for justice. As a teenager, young Fran had a job with RCA Victor where he worked in the factory. The women posted along the production line were mistreated and overworked. One day, a woman stopped her work and began calling for a strike. She was soon joined by Schaeffer, who jumped up on a counter, yelling in his piercing voice, “Strike, Strike” (p. 24). This was, after all, the same man who would one day criticize comfortable American Christians for their addiction to personal peace and affluence and their non-compassionate use of wealth.

The pioneer of Christian worldview had a hard road to ministry. His father asked to speak to him at 5:30 a.m. on the morning he was to leave for college and pre-ministerial studies. When they met, his father bluntly told Schaeffer that he did not want a minister for a son and did not want him to go. The young man asked to go pray about it. Tearfully, he tossed a coin three times with each outcome landing in favor of going on to college at Hampden-Sydney. He informed his father, “I’ve got to go.” Just before slamming the door on his way out, his father promised to pay for the “first half year” (pp. 25–26). Time would bring the father to share his son’s beliefs.

Duriez’s book is full of similar interesting vignettes from Schaeffer’s life. One theme stands out very clearly. Francis Schaeffer was a man filled with love for the so-called “little people” who were not valued by the world. While he was still a young minister, we discover that he tutored a young boy with Down Syndrome twice each week and took great delight in every increment of progress. He felt the boy’s forward steps were just as important, in his wife Edith’s words, “as talking to any university student about his intellectual problems” (pp. 50–51). This event perfectly foreshadows his later powerful insistence upon the importance of the sanctity of life, an area in which he was far ahead of the main body of evangelicals and fundamentalists.

Connecting the young Schaeffer to the more famous, older man is a great strength of Colin Duriez’s book. It has become well-accepted to break Schaeffer’s life up into segments and to characterize him as three different people. There is the young, fire breathing fundamentalist eager to “be ye separate” from the impure compromisers; the artsy, compassionate, bohemian founder of L’abri in Switzerland; and then the old man, brushing off his best instincts and returning to his fundamentalist roots to fight for the doctrine of inerrancy and “Christian America.” While it is possible to reach such a conclusion by looking at his early career and then considering the chronological development of his publications, this book rejects that approach by portraying Schaeffer as a consistent personality throughout.

The man who cared enough to tutor a little boy with Down Syndrome is also the man who told his church in St. Louis that he would resign if a black person ever came to his church and felt unwelcome. The budding intellectual who answered the existential questions of college students in Europe is also the agitator who took up the cause of the unborn and became arguably the finest shaper of and advocate for a potent evangelical critique of modern culture. Two sentences in the book make this point about Schaeffer brilliantly: “It was not a new Schaeffer that was emerging. His theology, honed over many decades since the passionate articles of the later forties and early fifties, was that of the lordship of Christ over every area of life—the womb as well as the university seminar room” (p. 182).

If one could ask for anything more from this book, it would be on the subject of Frank (AKA Franky Schaeffer). As Francis Schaeffer’s son has aged, he has increasingly distanced himself from his father’s legacy. First, Frank converted to the Eastern Orthodox Church. More significantly, he wrote thinly disguised novels about his family life that were unflattering to his father and then made a massive turn left politically, ultimately supporting Barack Obama despite his laissez faire policies on abortion. One suspects this topic was left alone for two reasons. The first is that, as I wrote above, this book feels like an authorized biography with the family’s full cooperation. They probably did not want this story to include the later years of Frank Schaeffer. The second is that the book very likely neared completion during the time of Frank’s increasing heterodoxy. Regardless, readers hungry for more on this front should look to Os Guinness’s powerful rejoinder to Frank in the journal Books and Culture (March 1, 2008; available at http:// www.christianitytoday.com/bc/2008/marapr/1.32.html).

Duriez’s book is an important contribution to Schaeffer scholarship and will challenge those who have portrayed an interesting Schaeffer with a unique voice who morphs into a conventional Christian rightist over time. Francis Schaeffer: An Authentic Life deserves a wide readership and may well be the standard in the field for some time to come.

Hunter Baker is the author of The End of Secularism

Another Run at the “Dominionist” Meme

In my last post, I rejected the contention by Michelle Goldberg and others that evangelical leaders such as Michelle Bachmann and Rick Perry are significantly influenced by the aims of the tiny Christian Reconstructionism movement.  I tried to make the point that CR has a negligible political influence on evangelicals and that it is not honest to view evangelical office holders and candidates in the light of CR’s aims.  The entire thing, I think, is a tar baby sort of trap in which evangelicals are supposed to come out of their corner talking very seriously about Christian Reconstructionism and Dominionism and giving legitimacy to those who have tried to raise it as an issue.

There is a simpler way to get at this thing.  I’ll go ahead and concede to Michelle Goldberg and Ryan Lizza that they are correct in their assumption that it is nervous-making to have someone with different ideas and values than one’s own running for political office.  This raises the spectre of having that person gain power and perhaps make policies with which one would disagree.  But the simple truth is that we are all in this position all the time.

The University of Texas law professor Douglas Laycock once noted that he had some concerns about the Christian Coalition gaining political power.  He quickly added that he would be equally concerned about any group with an ideological agenda (such as certain types of feminists or environmentalists) gaining power.  The simple fact is that power is a feature of politics and it is unpleasant to lose and have someone else use power to impose upon you.  This is very much the situation many have been through in the past two years.  A great many people feel that a nationalized health care system would have disastrous effects upon our society.  Nevertheless, they have had to suffer through it because the side that wanted to enact such legislation won the election convincingly.

And here’s the thing . . . It doesn’t matter what Barack Obama’s motive was in pushing for national health care.  It doesn’t matter if he had a religious conviction, a secular principle, a sentimental attachment to the idea, or a desire to be the first Democrat to ever achieve such a thing.  He gained power through politics and enacted his agenda.

There is no difference in anything Rick Perry, Michelle Bachmann, or any other American officeholder might do.  Indeed, the likelihood is great that any laws they might enact would be far less intrusive than one mandating that every American purchase health insurance.

Wringing Hands Over Dominionism

Michelle Goldberg has a column up at the aptly named Daily Beast letting us all know that we really need to worry about something called “Dominionism” which supposedly prevails among Michelle Bachmann, Rick Perry, and folks who support their campaigns.  Reinhold Niebuhr once warned of the dangers of religious illiteracy.  Here we have exhibit A.

Goldberg claims Bachmann and Perry are “deeply associated” with this “theocratic strain” of Christian fundamentalism.  Yes, they are probably so deeply associated with it that neither one of them has ever heard of R.J. Rushdoony (whom Goldberg tags as the father of this theocratic movement).

I have been part of organizations of Christian conservatives for many years and can assure Ms. Goldberg that Rushdoony and Christian Reconstructionism (making Hebraic law obligatory upon the broader society) exert very little influence.  In fact, I think I can probably argue empirically that Rushdoony has captured the attention of many more liberal reporters with an axe to grind than it has evangelicals.  For those of us who spend so much time thinking about political theology as to even have heard of CR, it is primarily a novelty.  To view standard issue evangelicals in the same light as Christian Reconstructionists would be like taking rank and file Democrats and comparing them to the most extreme and exotic atheistic socialists.

The overwhelming majority position of Christians around the world is that forced religion is a stench in the nostrils of a holy God.  Instead, Christians give their money to sustain people called missionaries.  We support their efforts to persuade those who don’t believe in Jesus Christ that he is the son of God and that they should enter into a relationship with him.  If those people subsequently refuse to believe in Jesus, missionaries pray for them and move on to other people.  Those engaged by missionaries join churches or just keep on doing what they were doing before.  It’s actually a pretty non-threatening business.  This is the Christian idea Rick Perry and Michelle Bachmann would endorse, not some fever dream of journalists hoping to bring down candidates for office.

Now, is it true that Rick Perry and Michelle Bachmann would like to get elected and attempt to pass some of their aspirations for the good society into law?  Certainly.  This is a process called politics.  It is a feature of democracies.  And I suspect what Perry and Bachmann would like to do is reduce the size of government, which, incidentally, is not all that great a danger to individual freedom.

Of course, both are pro-life and would like to protect unborn children from being killed in the womb.  If that position is so extreme as to warrant exclusion from the political process and raving condemnations in print . . . well, in that case I’m afraid I can’t do much to help.

 

The Decline of the American Magazine

Suffering from information overload and tired of the sessions in which I would find myself exhausted from surfing too many sources on the web, I made a retro-style decision.  I subscribed to Time.

Newsweek was gone, but Time was still standing.  I assumed it was because Time was still Time.  Besides, I’d read a biography of Henry Luce (Time‘s founder) and was sentimental for his greatest creation.  Here, in one place, I would have an overview of the news fit to print.  It would be fairly objective and would adequately cover the bases.

The experiment has been a failure.  I have not especially enjoyed my subscription.  I do not feel better informed than I was.  What I have basically achieved is a greater sense of the opinions of Fareed Zakaria, Rana Foroohar, Joe Klein, and Mark Halperin.

Thanks to Time, I recently learned from a “constitutional expert” that we shouldn’t worry about the health insurance mandate because the states have been mandating auto insurance for decades. (Federalism, anyone?  Not a key feature of the document, I suppose.)

It has also come to my attention that the Tea Party was responsible for the troubled debt deal because they wouldn’t tolerate tax increases. (Neither did Barack Obama when he controlled both chambers of Congress and could have had his way.)

Finally, I have discovered that the debt compromise has actually legislated inequality because it will reduce government jobs and entitlements.  (I had not realized the government was supposed to make us equal through the rewarding of government jobs and entitlements.)

No, I don’t think I have time for Time, anymore.

P.S. Whatever you do, please don’t go back and look at past issues such as those from the 1950′s.  It’s just too depressing.

How Newt Gingrich Has Been Underappreciated

This is not an endorsement, but rather an attempt to put Newt Gingrich in context.

Perhaps because of his relentless (and ultimately successful) efforts to gain the House of Representatives for the Republicans in 1994, Speaker Gingrich has been thought of and portrayed as the most partisan of partisans. It would be wrong to think of him that way.

Newt Gingrich has always been a man interested in ideas. He is not especially interested in serving an interest group population. What he really wants to do — and you can see this in his policy books, speeches, and even in his novels(!) — is to find innovative solutions to long-standing problems. When Andrei Cherny, a speechwriter for President Clinton, published The Next Deal, a book on government for the 21st century, Gingrich was quick to offer praise for the portions with which he could agree and to encourage everyone interested in public policy to read it.

One might also remember the brief surge of interest in Alvin Toffler’s books, such as Future Shock and The Third Wave, when Speaker Gingrich endorsed them. He has always been forward-looking and ambitious for the well-being of the nation.

Selfishly, I’d like to see him continue on in the primary election if only so as to hear him talk about solutions. That is his strong suit. Perhaps some future president will invest him with a cabinet office or a commission where he can put his estimable qualities to work.

Is Making Money Evil, Harry Reid?

I was listening to news radio and heard an update in which the senate majority leader Harry Reid gave his interpretation of events on the debt ceiling negotiation. The part that really got my attention was where he insisted that further committee work would go after those “millionaires and billionaires.”

I wondered, “What is he really saying?” Let’s begin with millionaires and billionaires. Is Reid charging them with having committed some evil? If a person had made a lot of money by force or fraud, then I would agree that disapproval and punishment might be merited. Can we confidently say that rich people, as a class, have committed evils which make them suitable subjects of a public official’s desire to punish?

Why is he so angry? Why does he make these people sound like bad people? Is it the fact that they have quite a bit of money? I suspect he does, too. Indeed, it has been noted that Reid has become a somewhat wealthy man while holding office. Does he impute ill motives or actions to himself by virtue of his possession of resources well above the average?

What if we do think that having a lot of wealth is a sign of moral weakness? Perhaps we believe that having much more money than is needed to live (even live comfortably) represents a bad choice. Even if we think that, does that mean we invest the government with the moral right to appropriate that wealth as needed so as to operate without hard debates about limits on spending? Maybe our only right is the right to have our own opinion of how wealthy people should spend their money.

I think Harry Reid needs to think more about why he’s so morally exercised. Follow the conclusions of that anger and maybe we’ll get down to basic principles. Once we get there we can have a legitimate discussion.

Getting the Old Testament (Or the Hebrew Scriptures)

As I have stated before, I became a Christian in college. My faith has always been very much a New Testament faith. Though people mistake me for a theologian because I study religion and politics, I am far from seminary-qualified. The Old Testament has often been a stumbling block for me. I delved into it on occasion and walked away shaken. My attitude became that I can accept all the wildness of the Old Testament because I have Jesus, who brings it along in his wake.

For the past several months, I have returned to the Old Testament. This time something seems to have changed. I have been able to stay with it night after night and reading straight through. I have just finished the long, sad story of Israel’s kings. It is fascinating to see how God warned the people about kings, but acceded to their request. At one point, I calculated the number of kings of Israel or Judah whom God judged righteous. The percentage was low.

Though David was the best, even he failed significantly and spectacularly. Most of the good things that happened in David’s life occurred before he became king. My conclusion upon reading all of Kings and Chronicles is that God gave Israel its kings, but the whole sad history was only a prelude to an unexpected fulfillment. Israel’s kings failed. But God would give them a true king who could and would bear the real cost of ruling. The true king is Jesus. I’m not a theologian, but this story arc helps me understand what the Reformers meant when they insisted on reading the Old Testament with Jesus in mind.

Princess Grace: The Native Texan

My daughter Grace (age 6) is the only native Texan in our family. We were playing on the beach today. She wanted to build a sand castle.

While she worked on building the structure (a large pile), she urged her brother Andrew (9) and me to protect the castle. I asked her for the name of this land we were protecting. She answered, “TEXAS!”

Daddy and Andrew built a wall and then dug several moats until we were tired. The princess demanded that we continue. She was able to keep Andrew on board by naming him Sir Andrew the knight and then promising him a reward. Daddy remained satisfied with his status as the engineer of Texas.

Confident that Texas was suitably fortified, the princess allowed us to play in the waves. She rode on my hip in the surf. I felt a little like a horse.

It was a good day. Especially since Mommy woke up from her nap and came out to the beach to find her husband being a good Daddy!

Solomon Kane: A Puritan Pulp Hero

I grew up reading both comic books and stories about various pulp fiction heroes.  My favorite in the pulp genre as a kid was Doc Savage, the Man of Bronze.  He traveled with his group of highly capable friends and resolved various terrible threats to humanity.  I recently picked one of the Doc Savage stories up in a thrift store and found that, despite the sentimental value, it didn’t hold up all that well.  Other notable entries in that publishing space include The Shadow, The Spider, Sherlock Holmes (a contender for the greatest), John Carter of Mars, Tarzan, and Zorro.

Despite my disappointing return to Doc Savage (maybe I just got one that was subpar), I have enthusiastically continued to read in the genre.  The Amazon Kindle has facilitated the habit marvelously as I now download the stories very inexpensively.

First, I downloaded Sherlock Holmes (to discover a character somewhat more interesting than the one I’d seen on television as a child).  Next, I stumbled upon Robert E. Howard’s Solomon Kane.  Jackpot.

Howard is much better known for creating his most popular character, Conan the Barbarian (and his Atlantean predecessor Kull the Conqueror), but his first big success was Kane.  For reasons no one is sure about, Howard killed himself at a tragically young age upon hearing of his mother’s death.  We lost many years of exciting stories and characters as a result, but what he wrote during his short life was highly memorable.

Solomon Kane, to my knowledge, is the only great Christian superhero ever to exist in the popular market.  I call him a superhero, though he theoretically has no super powers, because his strength borders on the superhuman as does his courage, raw toughness, determination, and skill with weapons.

He is a tall man, dressed in simple Puritan black, wears two heavy pistols (single shot), a rapier, and a dirk.  Kane also carries a musket, with which he is deadly.  The dour Puritan is almost never without his slouch hat which rests above his stern face characterized by a pallor almost like a corpse.  His people face religious persecution in England.  Persecution plays a part in Kane’s choice to live the life of a “landless wanderer” drawn into many mysterious adventures as though pulled on a line by supernatural force.

As with most great popular entertainments, there is a formula.  Kane typically happens upon some awful injustice and pledges himself to visit vengeance (he feels he is the instrument of God’s justice) upon the perpetrators.  At one point, he reassures a frightened woman that “in times past hath God made me a great vessel of wrath and a sword of deliverance. And, I trust, shall do so again.” Finding a girl dying in the woods and hearing her story, he comforts her until she passes and simply promises, “Men shall die for this.”

Part of what makes him so appealing is his single-minded devotion to justice.

A hunger in his soul drove him on and on, an urge to right all wrongs, protect all weaker things, avenge all crimes against right and justice. Wayward and restless as the wind, he was consistent in only one respect – he was true to his ideals of justice and right. Such was Solomon Kane.

Wandering through the jungles of Africa, he encounters slave traders callously marching natives to ships on the shore.  Observing their mistreatment, he is almost turned inside out with rage:

The fury Solomon Kane felt would have been enough at any time and in any place to shake a man to his foundation; now it assumed monstrous proportions, so that Kane shivered as if with a chill, iron claws scratched at his brain and he saw the slaves and the slavers through a crimson mist.

Kane is a complex character.  Though he is relentless in his pursuit of evil, he is confounded by the means he is provided to conquer it.  In several adventures, he makes good use of a “ju-ju stave” given him by an African medicine man.  Though he disdains it as a Puritan, he is often forced to employ its power.  Intriguingly, he comes to believe it may once have belonged to the great King Solomon in the remote past.

He is also often left feeling ambiguous after having sated his need to dispense justice.  Upon dispatching one vile villain, he remarks:

God grant all our deaths be as easy. But my heart is heavy within me, for he was little more than a youth, albeit an evil one, and was not my equal with the steel. Well, the Lord judge between him and me on the Judgment Day.

I can’t leave the post behind without offering the obligatory remarks about insufficient enlightenment on Howard’s part.  Africa is often the setting for Kane’s adventures.  It is a dark place where many horrors of the world have been driven by the “growing light of the western world.”  While Kane unfailingly treats the natives as human beings deserving of justice and protection, the narrative description often relies upon the type of evolutionary thinking which might place different races at higher and lower points on the scale of advancement.  Kane’s own reflection upon one African adventure provides a suitable endpoint and helps give the reader a sense of his own good intentions:

The light of God’s morning enters even into dark and lonesome lands,” said Solomon Kane somberly. “Evil rules in the waste lands of the earth, but even evil may come to an end. Dawn follows midnight and even in this lost land the shadows shrink. Strange are Thy ways, oh God of my people, and who am I to question Thy wisdom? My feet have fallen in evil ways but Thou hast brought me forth scatheless and hast made me a scourge for the Powers of Evil. Over the souls of men spread the condor wings of colossal monsters and all manner of evil things prey upon the heart and soul and body of Man. Yet it may be in some far day the shadows shall fade and the Prince of Darkness be chained forever in his hell. And till then mankind can but stand up stoutly to the monsters in his own heart and without, and with the aid of God he may yet triumph.