Confessing Evangelical

You are 'French'. In the nineteenth century, it
was the international language of diplomacy.
It is a 'beautiful' language, meaning that it
is really just a low-fidelity copy of Latin.

You know the importance of communicating
'diplomatically', which for you means both
being polite and friendly when necessary and
using sophisticated, vicious sarcasm when
appropriate. Your life is guided by either
existentialism or nihilism, depending on the
weather. You have a certain appreciation for
the finer things in life, which is a diplomatic
way of saying that you are a disgusting
hedonist. Your problem is that French has been
obsolete for a long time.


What obsolete skill are you?
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Update: Apparently this site was causing some people major problems with pop-ups, spyware, the works. So I've replaced the link with one which people who had these problems might find more useful ;-)

I would have posted this GK Chesterton essay on the Terrible Swede's new beer-related group blog, Purpose Driven Drinking, but the title disqualifies it: "Wine When it is Red".

Firstly, Chesterton expresses his dislike for the word "alcohol":

If it is true, as I surmise, that "alcohol" is a word of the Arabs, it is interesting to realise that our general word for the essence of wine and beer and such things comes from a people which has made particular war upon them. I suppose that some aged Moslem chieftain sat one day at the opening of his tent and, brooding with black brows and cursing in his black beard over wine as the symbol of Christianity, racked his brains for some word ugly enough to express his racial and religious antipathy, and suddenly spat out the horrible word "alcohol."

This word distorts the whole manner in which the subject of drink is discussed, because:

...the word really involves one of those beggings of the question which make these moral matters so difficult. It is quite a mistake to suppose that, when a man desires an alcoholic drink, he necessarily desires alcohol.

Let a man walk ten miles steadily on a hot summer's day along a dusty English road, and he will soon discover why beer was invented. The fact that beer has a very slight stimulating quality will be quite among the smallest reasons that induce him to ask for it. In short, he will not be in the least desiring alcohol; he will be desiring beer.

But in fact, questions relating to the rights and wrongs of drink go right to the heart of what it is to be human (which perhaps explains why these questions have commanded more attention from the world's religions - whether from Muslims and Methodists in one direction, or the likes of Luther and CS Lewis in the other - than can be accounted for simply by the moral objections to drunkenness):

The real difficulty which confronts everybody, and which especially confronts doctors, is that the extraordinary position of man in the physical universe makes it practically impossible to treat him in either one direction or the other in a purely physical way.

Man is an exception, whatever else he is. If he is not the image of God, then he is a disease of the dust. If it is not true that a divine being fell, then we can only say that one of the animals went entirely off its head. In neither case can we really argue very much from the body of man simply considered as the body of an innocent and healthy animal...

(The words in bold in that last paragraph are one of my favourite Chesterton quotes ever, BTW.)

This is true of drink, among many other things:

Doubtless, it is unnatural to be drunk. But then in a real sense it is unnatural to be human ... All the human things are more dangerous than anything that affects the beasts - sex, poetry, property, religion.

The real case against drunkenness is not that it calls up the beast, but that it calls up the Devil. It does not call up the beast, and if it did it would not matter much, as a rule; the beast is a harmless and rather amiable creature, as anybody can see by watching cattle. There is nothing bestial about intoxication; and certainly there is nothing intoxicating or even particularly lively about beasts.

Man is always something worse or something better than an animal; and a mere argument from animal perfection never touches him at all. Thus, in sex no animal is either chivalrous or obscene. And thus no animal ever invented anything so bad as drunkenness - or so good as drink.

Of course, drinking is not without its problems, and there are all too many sad cases of what Chesterton describes as "plainly an evil thirst", but this darker side to drink is often misunderstood:

...in so far as drinking is really a sin it is not because drinking is wild, but because drinking is tame; not in so far as it is anarchy, but in so far as it is slavery.

Probably the worst way to drink is to drink medicinally. Certainly the safest way to drink is to drink carelessly; that is, without caring much for anything, and especially not caring for the drink ... In such things to be careless is to be sane: for neither drunkards nor Moslems can be careless about drink.

I knew I'd been drifting that way on the UK's Political Compass, but it still came as a bit of a shock to discover I'm now fairly right wing even by American standards.

And my ideal president is apparently George H Bush! Aargh! I demand a recount! (Or should that be, "This will not stand"?)

As for "extreme conservatism", that sounds more like the sort of thing you find advertised on cards in London phone boxes, rather than an ideology I'd be signing myself up to any time soon. Apparently "Capital Republicanism" is a "moderate form of conservatism", which sounds a bit nearer to the mark.

Your Score

Your scored 4.5 on the Moral Order axis and -4 on the Moral Rules axis.

Matches

The following items best match your score:

System: Conservatism
Variation: Moral Conservatism, Extreme Conservatism
Ideologies: Capital Republicanism
US Parties: Republican Party
Presidents: George H. Bush (97.79%)
2004 Election Candidates: George W. Bush (95.06%), John Kerry (65.70%), Ralph Nader (48.60%)

Statistics

Of the 47637 people who took the test:

0.3% had the same score as you.
72.4% were above you on the chart.
22.3% were below you on the chart.
6.8% were to your right on the chart.
90.8% were to your left on the chart.

Thanks (I think) to Theresa.

Rick Ritchie's entertaining and thought-provoking dialogue between St Augustine, Martin Luther and C.S. Lewis includes one section that addresses a similar issue to my post last week on dilution of the evangelical "trade mark" (not to mention Rob's classic ad on the same subject).

At one point during the discussion, "Martin Luther" describes his confusion at walking into a monastery in contemporary California "where the Papacy has given up every pretense of being Christian". It's not the fact that the monks were wearing orange robes that bothered him - he could see how the change of colour might be welcome - but the fact that they were sitting in front of a giant gold statue rather than a crucifix.

After it is explained to him that this was a Buddhist monastery rather than a Roman one, Luther replies:

Luther: Thank heaven! So why did they use the word monastery? Don't the pagans have a word of their own?

Ritchie: There is probably a Chinese word for such a place, but they want people to understand what it is, so they choose the closest equivalent in English.

Luther: What an evil perversion of language. Don't people realize what that kind of thing does? Before my time, the gospel was lost to the church for centuries because of the improper translation of one Greek word that you in English translate "repentance." It could happen here too. If the Buddhists can call their religious place a monastery, what is to keep some other pagan group from using the word "church"?

Ritchie: They do it all the time.

Luther: And Christians don't protest? What are those outside of the church to think if they hear the same word applied to Christians and pagans? They will think that all religion is the same. It is confusing enough when you share these words with heretics. You need to win this word back!

As Ritchie points out, "Luther" is right, but the cause is hopeless: we can't outlaw people's use of these words.

But thinking about it, the word "church" is probably even more important than the word "evangelical". People can be saved without so much as ever hearing the word "evangelical" - though it wouldn't do them any harm to come across the word on the front cover of the Book of Concord :-). But the idea that people can reliably find salvation without the church - that is, without (in both senses of that word) "the congregation of saints, in which the Gospel is rightly taught and the Sacraments are rightly administered" - is one of the most persistent and dangerous delusions we encounter today.

And it probably reveals something of a blindspot on my own part that I should be so alert to misuse of the word "evangelical", but so blasé about the word "church".

Our elder son's current favourite video - sorry, DVD; he's very particular about the distinction :-) - is Finding Nemo. He has been watching it incessantly for the past month, which suits us because it is a wonderful film that bears repetition rather better than, say, Percy the Park Keeper.

Not only is Nemo very well made, but it also deals with themes that are obviously closer to a (nearly) four-year old's heart than you might expect. This comes out in the questions that T asks my wife about the film: "Why did Nemo want to make his daddy cross because his daddy made him cross?" (sic); "Why does Nemo's daddy want to find Nemo so much?"

One thing that's clear is that the reason T is asking these questions (repeatedly!) is not because he doesn't know the answer to them. Rather, it seems to be a way of processing the emotions that are stirred up for him by the film. He asks the question ("Why does Nemo's daddy want to find Nemo?") not because he doesn't know the answer, but because he wants to hear E say it anyway ("Because he loves Nemo very much. Because daddies do love their children very much").

In this T is, of course, being a good Lutheran. Because that's why Lutherans emphasise the public ministry of the Word and Sacraments so much: it's not enough simply to know the Gospel, in our heads. We need to hear it proclaimed to us, over and over again, in the Absolution, the preaching of the Gospel, the Lord's Supper.

Yet another way in which "whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child shall not enter it".

Talking of the Gospel, the following words are, I dare say, familiar enough to many of us. But they struck me with fresh force last night, when I had cause to look them up for the first time in a number of months; and they certainly bear repetition.

Martin Luther, in the Smalcald Articles (Book of Concord, Kolb edition):

Here is the first and chief article:

That Jesus Christ, our God and Lord, "was handed over to death for our trespasses and was raised for our justification" (Rom. 4[:25]); and he alone is the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world (John 1[:29]); and "the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all" (Isa. 53[:6]); furthermore, "All have sinned," and "they are now justified without merit by his grace, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus...by his blood" (Rom. 3[:23-25]).

As CS Lewis says in Mere Christianity, "That is the formula. That is Christianity. This is what has to be believed."

And that is why it is not simply "wrong" or "incorrect", but nonsensical to introduce any element of human works or merit into the Gospel (to talk about "the law of the Gospel", like Roman Catholics, or "Gospel imperatives", like some modern Calvinists [see comments]). The Gospel is a set of declarations: Christ "was handed over", "is the Lamb of God"; we "have sinned", "are now justified". You can't "earn" those statements: you can only believe them, or disbelieve them.

As Luther goes on to say:

Now because this must be believed and may not be obtained or grasped otherwise with any work, law, or merit, it is clear and certain that this faith alone justifies us, as St. Paul says in Romans 3[:28,26]: "For we hold that a person is justified by faith apart from works prescribed by the law"; and also, "that God alone is righteous and justifies the one who has faith in Jesus."

Nothing in this article can be conceded or given up, even if heaven and earth or whatever is transitory passed away. As St. Peter says in Acts 4[:12]: There is no other name...given among mortals by which we must be saved." "And by his bruises we are healed" (Isa. 53[:5]).

We've had the Law, in my earlier post about Pilate, so it's only right that we follow that with the Gospel.

As I argued in my previous post:

The human beings responsible for Jesus' death were not engaged in a deliberate, conscious attempt to destroy the Lord of Life: they were people who were cutting a few corners to deal with a situation that threatened their own positions.

This included, in particular, those members of the Jewish religious establishment who were instrumental in bringing about Jesus' betrayal, arrest and death. While they were not blamelessly ignorant - since they were obstinately refusing to believe the clear evidence as to who Jesus was - nevertheless we have to assume that, by and large, they were acting on the assumption that Jesus was an imposter, rather than deliberately and knowingly killing the Messiah simply because He had failed to measure up to their expectations.

So it can only be imagined how a conscientious priest would have felt as he heard, first the rumours of Jesus' resurrection from the dead, then (within another couple of months) the bold preaching of his followers, announcing that "God has made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom you [and how that "you" must have stung!] crucified". How he would have been "cut to the heart" to realise he had been complicit in the judicial murder of Israel's Messiah.

All this leads up to one of the most fascinating and moving verses in the New Testament:

And the word of God continued to increase, and the number of the disciples multiplied greatly in Jerusalem, and a great many of the priests became obedient to the faith. (Acts 6:7)

"A great many of the priests became obedient to the faith". This was surely one of the greatest answers (out of many) to our Lord's prayer as He was crucified: "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do".

And if even those who were directly responsible for the crucifixion of Jesus were able to find forgiveness through faith in the One whom they had crucified, how much more are we - for all our own complicity in the Lord's death - able to find forgiveness through that same crucified and risen Saviour.

Does anyone know of a bow-maker (as in bows and arrows, rather than violins) by the name of John Ha1ton*, or similar name?

I've received an email from someone who is wanting a bow made as a gift for his son. I've told him he's got the wrong guy, but - knowing how important it is for fathers not to disappoint their sons in these things - I'd love to be able to help out if possible. So if anyone does know of the bow-making John Halt0n, please email me.

Thanks!

(* "1" used instead of "l" as a slight obfuscation for Google purposes!)

Finally got round to watching The Passion of the Christ recently. Powerful stuff. For all the film's flaws - particularly its lingering focus on physical details that the Gospel writers choose to pass over in a few words - it defies understanding that anyone could watch that film and not acknowledge Jesus as the Son of God and the Saviour of humanity. But then, the film itself depicts well the ability of people to witness these events at first hand and still come away unmoved.

Of course, not all the responses shown are negative. One of the best moments is Mel Gibson's treatment of the centurion's declaration, "Truly this man was the Son of God." How on earth do you depict this on film without calling John Wayne irresistibly to mind? Simple: don't have him say it at all. But as he removes his helmet and looks towards the body of Jesus on the cross, we all know what he's thinking. The restraint of that shot is particularly moving in a film that is otherwise not exactly characterised by restraint (which I don't mean as a criticism, but which is still true).

However, like Tony Blair - who once famously described him as "the archetypal politician, caught on the horns of a dilemma" - one figure I found particularly compelling in the film was Pontius Pilate.

Apparently, some Coptic churches regard Pontius Pilate as a saint. Well, if he is a saint, then surely he is the patron saint of unforeseen consequences. Or perhaps more precisely: the patron saint of underestimated consequences.

Let's look at this from Pilate's perspective. Is his sin really so shocking? After all, governing authorities have been condemning innocent people to death for the sake of public expediency since time immemorial. Pilate was scarcely to know that Innocent Victim #2,365,485 out of total to date of 145,635,485 was in fact the Lord of Life, the Son of God and the Saviour of the world.

In short, Pilate - though by all accounts a pretty nasty specimen - was not especially or uniquely wicked. Any other Roman governor in his position would probably have done the same thing. Pilate was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Much the same thing can be said about the others involved in Jesus' death, such as the soldiers, or members of the Jewish religious establishment. The human beings responsible for Jesus' death were not engaged in a deliberate, conscious attempt to destroy the Lord of Life: they were people who were cutting a few corners to deal with a situation that threatened their own positions. "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do".

So, does this make what Pilate did OK, then? Not at all. This isn't about saying "Well, Pilate's sin wasn't all that bad in itself, it just had unexpected consequences". Still less is it about saying that Pilate was a "saint". Rather, Pilate's sin shows just how consequential our "small" sins really are.

Jesus Himself teaches that it is the small decisions, the casual words, that reveal our true character and which will condemn us at the Judgment . Pilate is perhaps history's greatest example of how this can work in practice.

One"expedient" decision, one "pragmatic" bypassing of proper behaviour - and you end up in the Creed.

The Telegraph's Sarah Sands (or "little Sarah Sands", as Alan Clark refers to her in his diaries, after she interviewed him in the early 90s) goes off on one about "tribal" politics:

Notwithstanding that many of my best friends are Labour voters, etc etc, I find socialists - as a tribe - craven, defeatist, unpatriotic, naive, unaccountable, snobbish, pleased with themselves, humourless, bossy, high-spending, stingy with their own money, vindictive, meddling, whingeing, self-pitying, reductive, dreary. None of these characteristics is their fault, because their destiny lies with the state rather than in themselves.

I don't entirely endorse this - though the stereotype is certainly very recognisable - but it did make me laugh. Though not as much as Sands's comment later on, which both made me laugh and with which I heartily concur, as she considers Tony Blair's decision to sideline female cabinet ministers during the forthcoming election campaign:

[Blair] perceives the Labour Party disinterestedly. Thus he can identify the grating effect of Labour's Lady Bountifuls and ruthlessly plans to keep them out of the electorate's way.

Patricia Hewitt reportedly claims that this is prejudice against feminism, but I am afraid it is more personal than that. There is a long tradition of well-educated socialist women who talk to you as if your lack of learning skills does not altogether detract from your worth as a person. Margaret Jay is an obvious example and the Blair Babes have it in spades. As soon as one of them talks about being "more grown-up" or calls for "joined-up government", I want to lob a chair at them.

Nice to see the word "disinterested" being used properly for once, too.

I'm less convinced by Sands's admiring comments about the shadow cabinet - I notice she manages to avoid mentioning the "quiet intelligence" and "fighting instincts" of Theresa May, Tim Yeo or Nicholas Soames :-) - but I share her admiration for Condoleeza Rice's "cool, clear brain", and her belief that "private charity is more appealing than stagy public virtue".

Rob over at Love and Blunder leads the charge to reclaim the word "evangelical" for the Reformation, with a new advertising campaign.

Great stuff - certainly beats the nonsense that the Churches Advertising Network comes out with each Christmas, such as "Santa Jesus" in 2003 and 2004's utterly baffling "heaven's call centre" ad. (The heading in that last link is particularly good for lovers of unintentional irony: "Lines to Gog open 24/7"? Is that Gog as in "and Magog", end-time enemies of the people of God? Coming soon to a church near you!)

Josh's comments on his local megachurch called to mind the Internet Monk's current campaign to "out" Joel Osteen as an enemy of Reformation Christianity.

I've never heard of Joel Osteen, so don't feel qualified to join the iMonk's blogosphere crusade against him. However, the tendency to evacuate the word "evangelical" of any useful meaning is one of which I am all-too aware.

In the UK this tends to take a slightly different form. The problem here is so much health-and-wealth megachurches (these exist, but are normally perceived as a "Pentecostal" rather than "evangelical" phenomenon) as the loose coalition of "open" and "charismatic" evangelicals that now dominates UK evangelicalism, particularly in the Church of England.

However, the basic underlying issue is the same: the drift away from Reformation (i.e. biblical, evangelical) Christianity, and the related tendency to define "evangelical" in terms of something other than doctrine. It's about the songs you sing (and listen to), the clothes you wear, the church you go to, the views you have on particular issues (third world debt, for example), the way you pray. It's not necessarily about the doctrines that you believe, teach and confess. As Josh puts it, "it's all about your private, personal relationship, not your public confession".

The result of all this is that it has become harder and harder to know for sure what the word "evangelical" means. I once spoke to someone from an independent evangelical church (at which the word still carried all its old meaning and force) who commented that, "Thirty years ago, when an Anglican said they were an evangelical, you knew what they meant. Now, you can't be sure." The very fact we now have such a plethora of qualifying adjectives appearing before the word - "open", "charismatic", "mainstream", "conservative", not to mention "confessing" (though that last term is rarely used in the UK) - demonstrates how the word itself carries little meaning on its own.

What has happened - and is still happening - to the word "evangelical" is depressingly familiar to anyone who has had any dealings with trade mark law or brand management. It is the process by which a poorly-managed brand can be diluted until it becomes "generic" and ceases to have any worth as a trade mark.

The classic genericisation morality tale that IP professionals use to scare their children is that of the Escalator Company. The Escalator Company invented the moving stairway in the late 19th century, and "Escalator" was the name they coined as trade mark to denote their new product. The name caught on, and the company was delighted to see that people were using the name of their product - "escalator" as a general term for moving stairways. Why, even their competitors - such as the Otis Elevator Company - were using the term. Free advertising!

The only problem was that the word "escalator" quickly became a generic term for moving stairways. So the Escalator Company had no benefit from their brand. And by the time they woke up to the problem and tried to register the name as a trade mark, it was too late - the application was rejected because the name was no longer distinctive to them. Before too long, the Escalator Company had gone out of business and the likes of Otis were going from strength to strength.

This is why so many brand owners - Hoover®, Biro®, Anglepoise®, to name just three - spend thousands on having lawyers engage in what appears (not least to the recipients of the letters) as the pointless and obnoxious practice of sending stoppy letters everytime someone refers to using an anglepoise lamp to find the biro they'd dropped while they were hoovering the carpet. They can't stop us using these words generically, but they can produce a stack of files to demonstrate to the courts that they have been doing everything in their power to maintain the all-important link between the brand name and their own goods.

The parallel with what has happened to the word "evangelical" is clear. Like the word "escalator", the word "evangelical" once had a definite meaning and a clear link to a particular "product": namely, the biblical Christianity rediscovered and reinvigorated at the Reformation, particularly in its Lutheran form (the heirs of Calvin and Zwingli being referred to a "Reformed").

However, over time, people purveying other products - in particular the semi-Pelagianism (and the "semi-" is putting it charitably, frankly) of Charles Finney and his successors, from the mid-19th century right down to Joel Osteen and the Lexington Megachurch - have chosen to ride in on the coat-tails of the established "evangelical" brand, just as other makers of moving stairways found it useful to let some of the benefits of the Escalator Company's brand rub off on their own products.

And, like the Escalator Company, evangelicals have often taken the approach of "the more the merrier": the more people describe themselves as "evangelical", the more evangelicals there will be. The hope is then that this will increase the influence of the "real" evangelicals, just as the Escalator Company no doubt hoped that the increased use of its brand name would result in higher sales for itself as the "real" escalator manufacturer.

Now we find ourselves looking over the same abyss that confronted the Escalator Company. Just as the word "escalator" ceased to have any real link with the Escalator Company, so the word "evangelical" is losing any real connection with the theology of the Reformation. The brand has become diluted almost the point of genericisation: it is now next-to impossible to protect the name in its original meaning, because having allowed so many diverse uses to continue, we have forfeited the right to enforce our original trade mark (registered at the Wittenberg Trade Mark Office in 1517) against the counterfeiters.

So we have a choice. Either we abandon the brand to its fate and adopt some other term. Or (and this is the approach I'm inclined to favour) we follow the likes of Hoover® and Biro® by insisting at every possible opportunity that the term "evangelical" be restricted to the biblical, Gospel-centred Christianity of the Reformation. People won't like it - they'll think we're being obsessive, even pathetic, just as people find it laughable to receive cease-and-desist letters just because they've asked someone to pass them "a kleenex" - but that may be the only way the word can be rescued.

DAVID BRENT: ...you know, but we’re in our thirties now.

TIM: Well, I’m only just 30. Are you, you must be 39?

BRENT (dodging question): No ... both in our thirties is the fact. Yeah? You know, who’s to say, you keep your head down, you could be in the hot seat. Like me, so ...

TIM (musing): When I’m nearly 40?

BRENT (annoyed at the suggestion he’s nearly 40): Well, we’re both in our thirties at the moment, is what I’m, you know ... Just chewing the fat, but ... Good, you’re on the right lines.

- The Office

Interesting how everyone's results in the "What age do you act?" quiz seem to cluster around the age of 30. Those aged over thirty seem to end up with a result of slightly over thirty on the quiz, those aged under thirty come out as just under thirty on the quiz. For example Chris W (27), Chris Atwood (33), Devona (29). The comments to Devona's post seem to bear this out.

My theory is that the results demonstrate how "about thirty" has become a sort of default cultural age for people in the West. People under thirty strive to attain a certain degree of maturity, not wanting to be perceived as "just kids". People over thirty enter into a state of arrested development, reduced to watching Spongebob Squarepants just so they (OK, we) can feel they are still "down with the yoof": the so-called "kidult" tendency described by Telegraph columnist Jim White in an entertaining article last year.

The net result is that everyone ends up being, in cultural and emotional terms, "about thirty".

The only other possible explanation for these results is that it is a very silly quiz that we shouldn't take too seriously. Hah! The very idea!

"People like you" (a slightly inelegant way of putting it, but perhaps that's just my verbal/linguistic side showing) "include ... attorneys...". The power of the web. Two quizzes, I'm pinned down as a 31 year-old lawyer.

You scored as Verbal/Linguistic. You have highly developed auditory skills, enjoy reading and writing and telling stories, and are good at getting your point across. You learn best by saying and hearing words. People like you include poets, authors, speakers, attorneys, politicians, lecturers and teachers.

Verbal/Linguistic		86%
Musical/Rhythmic		82%
Intrapersonal		75%
Logical/Mathematical		71%
Visual/Spatial		54%
Interpersonal		39%
Bodily/Kinesthetic		36%

The Rogers Indicator of Multiple Intelligences
created with QuizFarm.com

Now all I need is someone to explain to me the difference between "intrapersonal" and "interpersonal", and I'll be there. Perhaps someone who scores highly on the "psychobabble" measure? :-)

This is spot on - though only for the next three weeks. Then (assuming my results remain unchanged) I'll be officially Young For My Age. Yay!

You Are 31 Years Old

31 Under 12: You are a kid at heart. You still have an optimistic life view - and you look at the world with awe. 13-19: You are a teenager at heart. You question authority and are still trying to find your place in this world. 20-29: You are a twentysomething at heart. You feel excited about what's to come... love, work, and new experiences. 30-39: You are a thirtysomething at heart. You've had a taste of success and true love, but you want more! 40+: You are a mature adult. You've been through most of the ups and downs of life already. Now you get to sit back and relax.

In this week's Spectator, Anthony Kenny writes on The end of left and right as a useful form of political analysis or (self-)identification. As Kenny writes:

Is Osama bin Laden left-wing or right-wing? How about Robert Mugabe? Who has a more left-wing approach to women's sexuality: Pope John Paul or Hustler magazine? Consider Fidel Castro. He persecutes homosexuals crushes trade unions, forbids democratic elections, executes opponents and criminals, is a billionaire in a country of very poor people and has decreed that a member of his family shall succeed him in power. Is Castro left-wing or right-wing? Explain your answer.

Kenny describes the left/right distinction as "the great intellectual curse of the French Revolution, which has crippled political thought for more than two centuries", and "an infantile notion that replaced rational argument with a playground division into two gangs who understood nothing clearly except how much they hated each other".

He then spends the bulk of his article "grinding out the illogic of 'left' and 'right'":

What is the meaning of "He is to the right of Attila the Hun"? Was Attila right-wing because he was violent and cruel? Lenin was more violent and cruel. Is Lenin to the right of Attila the Hun?...

Are regimes left-wing or right-wing when the economy is heavily controlled by the state, such as the Soviet Union, Nazi Germany, Castro?s Cuba and apartheid South Africa? Is it left-wing or right-wing to believe in free trade, like Adam Smith and Karl Marx?...

Is internationalism more right-wing than nationalism? Internationalist people and organisations include Adam Smith, Coca Cola, Karl Marx, McDonald's, Trotsky, Microsoft, the United Nations, Toyota and the World Trade Organisation. Those opposed to internationalism include Hitler, the anti-globalisation demonstrators, Verwoerd, Stalin and Naomi Klein...

How about attitudes towards the weak and the strong? Does the left or the right protect the strong but not the weak? Take the extreme examples of each - an unborn baby and an adult murderer. Is it very right-wing to allow the killing of the innocent baby but not the killing of the guilty adult?

Would you classify as left or right the Englishman in the last century who urged a massive increase in public spending and made the most radical proposal for a national health scheme that Britain had ever seen? I refer, of course, to Oswald Mosley, the fascist leader.

You get the idea.

After arguing that the "magnificently paradoxical" George W Bush may turn out to be the man who can finally "smash the silly consensus of political division", Kenny continues:

It would be so fruitful if we could scrap phoney political divisions and look at real ones. The most important real one is between those who believe in a lot of state control and those who believe in a little.

An accurate term for the former is "socialist". On one socialist extreme are the communists and National Socialists (Tweedledum and Tweedledee). On the other are the Social Democrats, such as the British Labour party.

An accurate term for those who believe in minimal state control is "liberal". Liberals put liberty as the highest political good and believe in equal opportunities and limited government. Liberals are suspicious of power; socialists admire it. (In America, "liberal" means "socialist".)

Kenny also points out that "the term 'conservative' is much more complicated and deserves thoughtful investigation.", which is something on which I have blogged myself previously. And the term "liberal" is not without its problems. But setting that aside, it was the distinction between the basic philosophies that Kenny describes as "socialist" and "liberal" that interested me. That certainly seems to capture the fundamental point of difference, a point which I develop further in the second post on this topic, below.

This previously formed the second half of the post above, but I've separated it out to avoid having one overly-long post, and also to separate out the valuable general point made by Anthony Kenny from my own maunderings about UK politics

Thinking on the distinction made by Anthony Kenny between "socialist" and "liberal" as an improved method of analysis compared with "left" and "right", my own political views have gone from quite a long way to the left of the political spectrum to - well, I'm not quite sure where, but the Political Compass doesn't lie, and it has been tracking me steadily rightwards ever since I started my occasional visits to that site. However, as I read Kenny's article I realised that despite these changes, what has remained constant is a tendency towards "liberalism" in the sense of mistrusting central government as the most effective means of securing change and running people's affairs. Even at my most left-wing, around 10 to 12 years ago, I preferred models of "socialism" that were aimed at devolving power downwards as far as possible: workers' councils running companies, rather than the man in Whitehall knowing best.

This is similar to the way in which what I described in an early blog post as my "theological serial monogamy" - from evangelical to charismatic to Calvinist to Lutheran - had nevertheless been undergirded by certain constants that meant first of all that Lutheranism was what I had actually been looking for throughout that ten-year period, and secondly that a further journey on into Roman Catholicism or Eastern Orthodoxy would involve a far greater change than any I had undergone previously.

The socialist/liberal distinction also helps explain the great paradox of "New Labour", and one of the main things that has led to my increasing alienation from the current government: the apparent (and to a large extent real) embrace of market economics, coupled with a statist mentality that has seen a huge increase in public sector spending and in the size of the public payroll. How to explain this? Well, the point is that, however much Labour may have decided to accept market economics and the post-privatisation environment as a "done deal", the fact remains that whenever a problem arises, the instinctive reaction of the Labour government is to increase the size and power of the state in order to deal with it: pass a few more laws, hire a few thousand more public sector workers.

Unfortunately, there is no real "liberal" voice in the British political scene at the moment. You might expect the Conservative Party to provide this, but all they can manage are a few bleatings about "cutting waste" from the existing scope of state spending - always easier for oppositions to promise than for governments to deliver - rather than asking serious questions about where the boundaries of the state should be (for example, why should the state be involved in the provision of healthcare and education, rather than in just the funding and regulation of them?), coupled with shameful panderings to the law'n'order and anti-immigration votes. The last straw was the Conservative Party's support for ID cards, "in principle". What is the point of the Conservative Party if it is going to meekly acquiesce in the ultimate in big government, big state, big spending projects?

By all accounts, there are some younger figures in the Liberal Democrats who are arguing that the party should aim for that truly "liberal" ground, but they got pretty heavily slapped down by the leadership last year for voicing these thoughts in "The Orange Book". The LibDems as a whole remain firmly committed to the government doing things, spending more money, confiscating "excessive" profits etc.

So I find myself pretty frustrated as we approach a likely general election this May. The certainty of a Labour victory; the basic crapness, pardon my French, of the Conservative Party; the continuing smug superciliousness of the Lib Dems; and my own unformed, half-thought-out political views. I honestly never thought I would end up as a disillusioned floating voter, but that seems to be where I am at the moment.

What will be interesting over the next few years is where the restoration of liberalism will come from, if indeed it comes at all. Will the Conservatives finally get their act together? Not under the current leadership. Will the Lib Dems finally decide to take the risk of having a more definite and radical position, rather than their current triangulation strategy of trying to look like "nice" Tories in Tory areas and a more "principled" version of the Labour party in Labour areas.

Whichever one of these parties can start to articulate that truly liberal approach to politics, of a smaller state and personal freedom, will have a rough ride from the current political and media establishment, but will also find that a fair-sized chunk of the 21st century belongs to them.

Johnny Cash sums up his entire career in a single paragraph:

I love songs about horses, railroads, land, judgment day, family, hard times, whiskey, courtship, marriage, adultery, separation, murder, war, prison, rambling, damnation, home, salvation, death, pride, humor, piety, rebellion, patriotism, larceny, determination, tragedy, rowdiness, heartbreak and love. And mother. And God.

This comes from the liner notes for Cash's album Unchained, the second in his four "American Recordings" albums. Having now bought all four of these albums (in order of acquisition: 1 | 4 | 3 | 2), they strike me as one of the most astonishing achievements in popular music history.

Here's a man who could have settled for the nostalgia circuit, playing "I Walk The Line" to yet another theatre full of middle-aged people in stetsons. Instead, while in his 60s and 70s, and in failing health, he comes out with the best material of his career (which is saying something).

Do have a listen to the sample tracks on the Amazon pages linked-to above. Some stand-out tracks to try: "Beast in Me" and "Like a Soldier" (vol.1); "Rowboat", "Spiritual", "Southern Accent" and "Unchained" (vol.2); "I Won't Back Down", "One" and "Mercy Seat" (vol.3); "The Man Comes Around" (an extraordinary song on which I have blogged before) and "Hurt" (vol.4).

Don't miss the video to Hurt, either, which was recently voted top music video of all time by "a panel of music artists and industry insiders".

Have finally got round to some long-planned tweaks to my sidebar: removing the Sad Penguin on the grounds of obsolescence, adding Intolerant Elle, updating Craig's blog name.

Also, the link to our church's website (Christ Church Petts Wood) is now to the actual website rather than to the church's page on the ELCE directory, as before. This is "version 0.1", a holding site until I get round to doing "version 1.0", but it's still (I would modestly submit) an improvement on the previous effort, which was so ghastly I refused to link to it. And yes, I know the events need updating, but we're away for the weekend so won't be getting a service sheet this week...

I liked this one:

After church one Sunday morning, a mother commented, "The choir was awful this morning."

The father commented, "And the sermon was far too long."

Their 7-year-old daughter added, "But you've got to admit it was a pretty good show for a pound."

Latest Googlefight results just in:

"english lutheran" (15,000 results)
versus
"english calvinist" (596 results)

The winner is: "english lutheran"

Quite right, too. :-)

Song

I choose white, but with
Red on it, like the snow
In winter with its few
Holly berries and the one

Robin, that is a fire
To warm by and like Christ
Comes to us in his weakness,
But with a sharp song.

- RS Thomas

take the WHAT INTENTIONAL TORT ARE YOU test.

and go to mewing.net. because law school made laura do this.

Hat-tip to Twylah.

Erk. Slightly embarrassing moment this lunchtime. I was trying to set up a USB key with Flash Linux, from a set-up CD.

Had to repartition the USB key. The instructions warned of the dangers of accidentally erasing your hard drive instead of the USB key. "Like I'm about to do that," I scoffed.

You can probably see which way this is headed, can't you?

Right, let's just delete the existing partition, write that and ... hang on, why does this 256MB USB key appear to have 40GB of free space on it now? Oh no oh no oh no.

Shamefacedly dragged myself over to the IT department to confess my sin. Yes, I was stupid enough to do this at work (having read the firm's IT policy very carefully, I believe myself to have been in the clear - expect an amended version of the policy to appear quite quickly now...).

In fact, they were very relaxed about it, since my PC was on a standard image that can be restored very easily. So my usual PC is being un-foobarred ("fouled up beyond all recognition", to give the polite version) as we speak, and the only lasting damage is to my self-esteem...