Forget Halloween, this is Reformation Day. A day to celebrate that we’ve got the Bible, that we’re saved by the work of Christ, that we have Christian freedom.
Today at Cranach we will stop making people mad by talking politics; rather, we will make people mad by talking religion. We will devote all of our postings for today and spilling over into the weekend to contemplate all things Reformation. That includes thinking how the Reformation applies today.
We begin with two music videos to set the mood, whereupon I invite you to nail your own theses to the door.
Here is a multi-media Reformation celebration, with “A Mighty Fortress is Our God” accompanied by the art of the Reformation, with lots of Lucas Cranach.
Going from the sublime to the somewhat ridiculous and from the 16th century to the 21st, we continue our celebration with the 95 Theses Rap, created by some students at Yale, who recognize just how COOL the Reformation is, with just the right kind of rebellion against established false authorities:
More about this here. And if, like me, you can’t take in rap lyrics without a transcript, here are the words.
OK, the Yalies are a little confused at some points, but they get Luther’s basic points. My favorite lines:
I warned y’all that Rome best agree to the terms.
If not, then you can eat my Diet of Worms!
You think you done something spectacular?
I wrote the Bible in the vernacular!
A heretic! [What?] Someone throw me a bone.
You forgot salvation comes through faith alone.. . .
“Oh snap, he’s messin’ with the holy communion.”
But I ain’t never dissed your precious hypostatic union!
“One place at one time.” Well, thank you Zwingli.
Yeah, way to disregard that whole “I’m God” thingy!
Getting’ all up in my rosary… you little punk.
Your momma shoulda told you not to mess with no monk.. . .
I’ve come back from obscurity to teach y’all a lesson,
Cuz someone here still ain’t read their Augsburg Confession.
I said Catholicism brings a life of excess,
And we all remember what went down with Philip of Hesse!
But you forgot about me and my demonstration?
Like you can just create your own denomination?
“We don’t like this part, so we’ll just add a little twist.”
Now we Anglican, Amish, and even Calvinist.
I gave you the power, you gone and abused it.
I gave you God’s truth, you just confused it.
What needs reforming in today’s church? Do you see any reversions to the medieval errors? Do you see anything new that calls for a return to the Gospel and to the Word?
Tonight, do not give candy out of trick-or-treat coercion or obligation, but as a free gift.
When you see people in masks, contemplate the masks of God; that is, the doctrine of vocation.
When you see our culture’s strange celebrations of death–all the gore, corpses, and graveyards–let it remind you of our Lord’s gruesome death on the Cross, His burial place, and His glorious resurrection.
“I just hate what the Republican Party has done to Christianity.” So said tODD, who had stopped posting for awhile, fed up with the harsh tone of our political discussions. I’m glad he’s back. (And despite his defense of democrats and what some of you have accused him of, he is NOT an Obama supporter after all. He wrote in an early vote for Ron Paul, who is both anti-war and pro-life!)
Isn’t it true that the secular public is confusing conservative Christianity with conservative politics, just as many conservative Christians are doing?
Has the Christian alliance with the Republican party helped the cause of Christianity? Or prevented people from taking it seriously?
Has the Christian alliance with the Republican party helped the cause of political conservatism? Or prevented people from taking it seriously?
I predict that in the likely Republican defeat that seems imminent that Republicans will blame the conservative Christians in their midst.
I further predict that many Christians will retreat into the neo-monastic stance of not wanting to contaminate themselves with the world since politics is dirty, which would also be wrong.
What should Christians learn from all of this, and how should they respond?
So, did you see the Barack Obama commercial, when he commandeered a half-hour of prime time on seven of the major networks? I didn’t. If you did, please report.
He sure has a lot of money to burn, unlike John McCain, the father of campaign finance reform. It is ironic justice that McCain is now hampered by his own free-speech-denying rules.
Commenter Paul gets the virtual prize for his suggestion on the “What shall we call it?” post that the emerging intellectual and cultural movement be called “Reconstructionism.”
Here is what I see is happening. Notice that on university campuses and in the current products of the intellectual establishment, we are not hearing relativism, which considers one truth claim or ideology as valid as any other. Rather, we are hearing what commenter the Jones has described as “absolutist certainty.” Christianity is wrong! Conservatism is wrong! Creationism is wrong!
Nor are we seeing moral relativism, which considers different moral choices as being equally valid. We are hearing dogmatic, judgmental, and intolerant moral denunciations. Christianity is evil! Conservatism is evil! Creationism is evil!
Thus far, the absolutist pronouncements are mostly negative. What these new thinkers believe is evident–conventional leftist sentiments on feminism, the environment, sexual freedom, etc.–though not perhaps ideologically worked out in a positive fashion.
These positions and condemnations are asserted with no epistemological basis in reason or science (modernist style) or in culture (postmodernist style). They are basically assertions of the will and the will to power. This is postmodernist, but taken to a new level and a new phase.
First came the postmodernist project of “deconstruction,” in which all cultural artifacts–laws, literature, philosophy, religion, government, and families–were subjected to a radical critique that undermined them at an essential level. Next comes “reconstruction,” in which cultural artifacts of a different essence will be rebuilt on the ruins.
For example, marriage has been deconstructed by sexual permissiveness. The reconstruction of that institution is gay marriage.
Can any of you see other examples of what I am describing? Thanks, Paul, for your term, which is proving a catalyst for my thinking, making lots of previously disconnected observations come together into a clear pattern!
The Kenyan reggae artist Makadem has recorded this song, “Obama Be Thy Name.” At least it is a good song, catchy and memorable, easily the best of the political works of art to come out of this campaign. I offer it here to offset what some have called my partisanship. Also to note the Lord’s Prayer allusions, not just in the title and refrain, but in the line “Thy will be done.” But also to note the cheerful, idealistic, laudatory view of America that Makadem displays.
For information on the artist go here. His style is described as “Afro-Fusion” and is an alternative in Africa to American-style hip-hop. I like it! Setting aside politics and the religious cult, I would buy this album!
Fifty years ago, a Norwegian man named Bernt Aune received a cornea transplant from a man born in 1885. Today, Mr. Aune is 80. His cornea works works fine. It is 123 years old.
For details, see this. Somehow those cells did not degrade with age, as one might expect. Some think this phenomenon, should we come to understand it, could be a key to stopping aging. Good idea? Or a futile attempt at eternal life on our terms?
Obama supporters think it wrong–an example of “negative campaigning”–to draw attention to this 2001 radio interview, in which the future presidential candidate contemplates how to redistribute wealth. But a candidate’s beliefs and political philosophy are surely far more important than isolated policy prescriptions. I would like to concentrate on the constitutional theory that this former constitutional law professor sets forth:
If you look at the victories and failures of the civil rights movement and its litigation strategy in the court. I think where it succeeded was to invest formal rights in previously dispossessed people, so that now I would have the right to vote. I would now be able to sit at the lunch counter and order as long as I could pay for it I’d be o.k. But, the Supreme Court never ventured into the issues of redistribution of wealth, and of more basic issues such as political and economic justice in society.
To that extent, as radical as I think people try to characterize the Warren Court, it wasn’t that radical. It didn’t break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the founding fathers in the Constitution, at least as its been interpreted and Warren Court interpreted in the same way, that generally the Constitution is a charter of negative liberties. Says what the states can’t do to you. Says what the Federal government can’t do to you, but doesn’t say what the Federal government or State government must do on your behalf, and that hasn’t shifted and one of the, I think, tragedies of the civil rights movement was, um, because the civil rights movement became so court focused I think there was a tendency to lose track of the political and community organizing and activities on the ground that are able to put together the actual coalition of powers through which you bring about redistributive change. In some ways we still suffer from that.
First of all, is there anything more important than knowing what a presidential candidate believes about the Constitution that he must swear to defend and protect? Second, isn’t it significant that Obama wants to “break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the founding fathers in the Constitution”?
If you agree with that, fine, but we all need to realize that this is what he believes. That includes a big government that goes beyond constitutional restraints. And that one of this big government’s roles is “redistributive” change. Civil rights are not enough, since those are constitutional, and property right is a civil right.
Would that the debates, questions, and media attention focused more on such “theoretical” issues.
UPDATE: I see in finally checking the comments that FW has commented on this under “Conservatives for Obama.” He says this is just judicial conservatism, reflecting the limits of what the courts can do. But he is surely opposing here the philosophy that the government should be limited to what the constitution says it should do, which is one of the hallmarks of a conservative political theory and, indeed, of the rule of law. And “redistributive change” is not just talking about a progressive income tax!
Lucas Cranach was the great artist of the Reformation. He was a close friend of Martin Luther. He was a businessman, who first printed Luther's translation of the Bible; a politician, who served on the Wittenberg town council and served the city as its mayor; a chemist, who operated a pharmacy; a teacher, who trained a host of apprentice artists; a family-man, who helped arrange Luther's marriage with the two men serving as the godfathers of each other's children; and an active layman in his church, who gave his pastors important personal and material support.
As a Christian who lived out his faith in his many different callings, Cranach thus embodies the Reformation doctrine of vocation, using the gifts God had given him in service to Christ and his neighbor in the church, the family, the workplace, and the culture.
In the spirit of Lucas Cranach, this blog will discuss wide-ranging issues of Christianity and culture with a Lutheran twist.
