Evangelicals and Fatima

Cross-posted at First Things’ Evangel blog:

As I may have mentioned earlier, I grew up with Catholics on my mother’s side and the Church of Christ on my father’s side.  Not exactly a recipe for happy relations.  For the record, the Catholics were more gracious about it.  I found the tension painful, difficult, and unnecessary and thus tried to avoid religion as a young person.

The Hound of Heaven got to me, anyway, while at college in Tallahassee, Florida.  A story for another time.

Although my parents now go to the Southern Baptist church, my mother still bears the imprint of her Catholic upbringing and relates easily on religious matters to her brothers and sisters.  I went through a period at the beginning of this century where I thought I might convert to Catholicism.  Yet, here I am, still evangelical and probably not changing, although my mentor Francis Beckwith has crossed the Tiber.

Though I feel pretty settled as an evangelical — and the Reformation is part of why I feel that way — I do not understand why something like the claimed appearance of Mary at Fatima would be so disturbing.  We are talking about a woman who, if scripture is to be believed, bore the son of God in her womb.  We embrace the thought that God does everything for a reason.  And for some reason he chose her.  There is something I am missing, probably something obvious.  Someone on this list will tell me why I should find the purported appearance of Mary more unsettling than I do.

What is it exactly that is so objectionable about the claim that she appeared to some children?  I readily admit that I am not a theologian, but am instead more of a religio-political analyst.  My many Catholic relatives may be blinding me, too.  I just don’t see it.

What I can tell you is that I went to Mother Angelica’s beautiful church in Hanceville, Alabama a few years ago with my aunt and uncle, both of whom fit the old description of being more Catholic than the pope.  (My uncle, a good and godly man, died of an agressive brain tumor earlier this year.  He was the kind of man who wrote encouraging letters to prisoners.)  I sat in that place on a wooden pew and heard cloistered nuns (out of sight behind a screen) sing the most beautiful music I have ever heard in my life.  Even now, I can feel the sensation of it, vibrating into my soul.

What grieved me at that time and in that place was not whatever feeling those people had about Mary, but that I could not take communion with them because they did not wish it so.  Though I claimed Christ, just as they did, I was a separated brethren who could not share the sacrament.

The division of the church scandalizes me, especially in the world we live in.  Part of the reason we lost as much as we did in American culture is because the Protestants worried more about “Romanism” than they did about secularism.

I wish I could see the Reformation’s end in sight, in a way that would somehow satisfy us all.

Christian Academics Doing What They Do . . .

Benjamin Wiker interviews me at To the Source.  Fun stuff.

We talked about . . .

Wait for it . . .

Secularism.

What’s an Evangelical? An Adult Convert’s View

I’ve recently joined an evangelical group blog at First Things.  Think of it as The Corner for evangelicals.  So far, things are going swimmingly.  Lots of activity.  Joe Carter started us off by asking for a definition of an evangelical.  Here’s my entry:

When I became a Christian at Florida State University at the end of the eighties, I encountered a different kind of Christian from the ones I knew as a southerner from Alabama.

Growing up, virtually everyone was some kind of churchgoer whether they were Southern Baptists, Episcopalians, Church of Christ, Catholic, etc.  But that didn’t necessarily mean anything.  It was just a default.  To me, going to church was simply something people did.  My family did it more or less often over time.  Catholics, like my mom’s family, had stained glass, candles, and statues.  The Church of Christ, like my dad’s people, worshipped in spare chapel rooms with acapella singing.  ”There is pow’r!  Pow’r!  Wonder working pow’r!”

The Christians I met at Florida State through Intervarsity were faithful and committed to a real relationship with Christ well before any denominational identity came into view.   We didn’t spend a lot of time debating differences in Christian flavors.  We talked about knowing Christ and his Lordship in our lives.  To me, it was endlessly interesting and challenging.  The first time I heard the word “evangelical” it was IVCF’s sister organization, the International Fellowship of Evangelical Students (IFES).

Over time, I began to hear the word “evangelical” more frequently.  I associated it with liking C.S. Lewis, Francis Schaeffer, and Wheaton College.  I ended up marrying a girl in a classic evangelical family.

To me, it just meant taking your faith seriously.

General Thoughts on Being Reviewed

It is fascinating to read what other people have to say about the book (The End of Secularism).  So far, all the reviewers seem to like it.  Some show unconditional positive regard.  Others emphasize what they like or don’t like.  It seems to hit different people different ways.

For any would be reviewers who are curious, here’s what I’d say up front.

1.  The End of Secularism is not a prediction so much as it is an argument for secularism to retire as a supposedly neutral philosophy.

2.  The book is designed to make the average reader much more aware of the complexity of the question of religion and politics.  A simplistic separation approach doesn’t really do anyone much good.

3.  The book is a critique of secularism much more than it is a proposal for a great system of Christian thought.  I’m trying to tear one house down in the effort to clear space for a new one.

4.  If you take anything away from the book, please pay attention to my arguments about the nature of science and the inadequacy of science as a basis for political thought.  To me, this was one of the places where my critique strikes the deepest.

5.  Understand the separation of church and state.  Support the separation of church and state.  DO NOT let it morph into secularism, which goes much too far.

And by the way, the talented Matt Lee Anderson has reviewed the book.  I really respect his work and have enjoyed much of what he has written.  You can see it here.  He focuses the heavy beams on my critique of secular neutrality, but I think other parts of the book are equally important, maybe more so.

Andrew Klavan Digs The End of Secularism

Andrew Klavan has been my favorite writer of thrillers for several years now and has provided some of the best reading moments I’ve ever enjoyed. His books have been made into films starring Michael Douglas and Clint Eastwood. He also happens to be a conservative who writes sympathetically about Christianity.

For all of those reasons, I asked my publisher to send him The End of Secularism.

Amazingly, he read it:

Anyone who works in the writing business will understand: I don’t have time to read books sent or lent to me unrequested. What with informational reading, professional reading and reading for my craft and spirit, even books I want to get to sometimes have to wait as long as a year.

Plus I don’t remember ever having met Hunter Baker of Houston Baptist University so I don’t know why he had his publisher send me his new book The End of Secularism. But I’m startled to report I glanced at it while laying it aside, then picked it up again, then read it through. This is a very well written, concise and learned primer on the secularization of the public square. It gives a fair recital of the arguments in favor of it, and a strong but sensible and moderate outline of the arguments against. It has a firm grasp of history and neither falls for the usual “This is a Christian country!” rhetoric that makes its way onto television nor accepts the “separation of church and state,” pieties that were rendered obsolete by the state’s aggressive intrustion into what Dr. Baker calls “the life-world,” ie. our values and private lives. It’s a book you’ll be glad you read the next time you get in an argument about religion’s role in politics.

I wish I had time to write a full review of this book in a respectable venue (as opposed to this Blog of Ill Repute!). I just don’t. But if anyone from First Things or World Magazine or even the Weekly Standard or NRO is skulking through here and sees this, I think the book is well worth discovering.