Becoming "The Man"

Last night I caught up with a former student, now working hard on a fascinating doctoral project in sociology. She is a feisty black woman who has succeeded in elite white schools because she is smart and funny. I always enjoy talking to her. She was recounting her difficulties with her department chair, who she critically resists. The difficulty is not that she critically resists – she does that to everyone in authority; it is what sociologists call a structural critique, as opposed to a personal critique. The difficulty is that he does take it personally. She is not criticizing him. She is criticizing The Man. That is how she got to be a good critical thinker.

She keeps rising in all these institutions because she is a good critical thinker. Teachers in every school she has ever attended have asked her to teach, and I am no exception. So it is inevitable that someday she will be The Man. And then I will laugh.

No, said she, "then you will point and laugh."

True. I look forward to that day. Secretly, so does she.

Governor Warner is Out for Good Reasons – But I am Still Bummed

Former Virginia Governor Mark Warner has decided not to run for president in 2008. I am disappointed – he was My Guy. However, I fully respect his reasons. He made the decision after his father's 81st birthday. My father, were he living, would be 82. Warner was showing his daughter, Madison Warner, colleges that she might soon go off to. My MW is in college now, and I am at them moment on the road showing colleges to daughter #2, NW (who delightfully signs herself Endub). Indeed, as Gov. Warner says, these days will never come again. Even the presidency can wait and, if necessary, pass.

So I am bummed out. But I understand.

And I still want a successful governor as our candidate for president.

Will Immigrants Renew Marriage?

Los Angeles County has shown an increase in its marriage rate this past year. This wouldn't seem like a big deal – except this is first time this has happened in a populous county in more than thirty years. No one has analyzed the numbers yet, but David Popenoe, one of the country's best marriage trend counters, thinks that this reflects the greater commitment of Asian and Latino immigrants to marriage.

Los Angeles County also brings us the normally sorry spectacle of the Hollywood Marriage. They say that a Hollywood marriage is like an African democracy – if it lasts five years, we call it a great success. (Ok, I said that – but maybe it will catch on.)

Perhaps to counterbalance the Hollywood Marriage, Southern California will also bring us the East L.A. Matrimonio and the Orange County Danh Tu (which I hope is the right Vietnamese word for marriage).

Under New Management

I am on the road with Junior Gruntled #2 for a college search. We saw a wonderful example of the right understanding of family life. Driving down the highway was a black SUV, probably his, with this legend painted on the back window in bright colors:

Just Married.

Under New Management.

I think they will go far.

The Invisible Christian Movie Line Makes the "Cosmopolitan" Cities the True Parochial Backwaters.

The most interesting production story about movies at the moment is about "Facing the Giants." Made by amateurs from Sherwood Baptist Church in Albany, Georgia, the film is about a high school football team that enjoys divine help after committing to God. To almost everyone's surprise, it has been released in 400 theaters and is doing pretty well.

The Washington Post reported the story. But, of course, the film is not actually playing in Washington. What I found most interesting was the explanation of where the movie was and was not playing. Reporter Peter Whoriskey lets the distributor tell why:

According to Julie Fairchild, a spokeswoman for Provident Films, "There's a sort of imaginary line where Christian films don't play." Where it is showing, she says, is the "flyover country that Hollywood has been ignoring."

I wish Provident films well in serving this ignored market.

The real loss is to Washington, DC, and all the other blue-state metropolises that shield themselves from the discomfort of films that don't fit their worldview. A similar cultural censorship is not so common in flyover country. The little town I live in showed both "The Passion of the Christ" and "Fahrenheit 9/11." I expect that "Facing the Giants" may get to us, too. Which is more than can been said for our "greatest cultural centers." This is a pity, as we could all benefit from balance in our culture, as well as in our politics.

Harvard Gets Religion

Harvard is considering adding a new course in "Reason and Faith" to its core curriculum.

Zachary Steward's Wall Street Journal article quotes Prof. Louis Menand, co-chair of the curriculum committee, as saying "I think 30 years ago, people would have said that religion is not something that everyone needs to know. But today, few would disagree that religion is supremely important to modern life."

Harvard, whose original motto was Veritas pro Christo et ecclesia, seems to have forgotten some things about how the other 99% of humanity lives and what we value. It is refreshing to see them catch up with what is customary at most liberal arts colleges, like the one I teach in.

Seriously, Harvard is often a curriculum leader, especially for the secular research universities. I am glad that they have given up on the fantasy that religion will just go away, and are trying to bring their students "in the center of contemporary religious debates."

No Scruples in Sacramento

Sacramento Presbytery had a special meeting on September 9 to consider and adopt four strong resolutions. The presbytery is now committed to
1)not ordaining anyone who has a scruple about any of the church's constitutional standards;
2) not to accept a minister ordained elsewhere with such a scruple;
3) not to make up money due the national church that any congregation withholds in protest; and
4) not to contest any congregation that wants to leave with its property.
Leslie Scanlon's solid article in the October 9 Presbyterian Outlook covers the whole meeting in more detail.

The intent of these resolutions I judge to be a serious attempt to find a middle way of keeping the constitution of the church whole. The presbytery commits to upholding a strong standard of the constitution, but it also makes room for those who do not find even this strong stand to be enough.

The first resolution, which was adopted on a vote of 87 to 59, says:

To promote the peace, unity, and purity of our presbytery, we resolve that the Sacramento Presbytery holds that all candidates for ordination, installation, and/or membership in this Presbytery shall comply with all standards for ordination set forth in the Constitution of the (PCUSA) (G-1.0500), or shall be ineligible for ordination, installation, and/or membership.

I have long wished that the church would take its whole constitution more seriously. We attend minutely to the Book of Order, but neglect the first book, the Book of Confessions. Yet the confessions are supposed to be the real meat of our constitution. If the first Sacramento resolution means that they will now take all the confessions seriously, I applaud them.

But I think Sacramento Presbytery bit off more than it can chew.

The Book of Confessions contains hundreds of tenets. I keep hoping that we will have a serious discussion about usury, prohibited by the Westminster Larger Catechism. Any up for the "undue delay of marriage" fight? Keeping "stews?"

$100,000,000 Ego Houses

The "Veblen Effect" is when people pay way more than they have to for something to show how rich they are. Among the mega-egos with big bank accounts, there is always a competition to have the Most Expensive of Them All. This is not at all the same thing as having the Best of Them All.

When we think of mega-egos with money, one name may leap instantly to mind. Right. Donald Trump has led the way in building a nine-figure house, just to beat all the other guys. His 80,000 square foot monstrosity in Palm Beach has a "price" of $125,000,000, which is a makeover of a quaint little cottage that he bought for a mere $41,000.000.

And what would one call such a theater of intimidation? Maison de l'Amitie.

The punchline, though, is that Prince Bandar of Saudi Arabia, who has even more ego and less sense of propriety than Trump, already has a $135,000,000 house is Aspen.

Amish Class

In a week of horrible school shootings, the deadliest and most graphically awful were the five young girls killed in the Amish schoolhouse in Pennsylvania. Four of them were buried today.

The Amish are very serious Christians. So they turned the other cheek. They have tried to comfort the dead murderer's widow and her children. They urge her stay in the community. They pray for the crazy person who molested and murdered their children before killing himself as the police closed in. The grandfather of two to the dead girls was asked by a reporter if he had forgiven the killer. "In my heart, yes, " he said, "through God's help."

That is the class of humble people.

Nobel Prize Colleges

The count of the colleges that produced our new Nobel prize winners so far:

Berkeley
Brown
Harvard
MIT
Swarthmore

Stay tuned.

The Euston Manifesto I

A new venture in sensible center-left politics has begun in Britain, and spread to America. The British version begins with the "Euston Manifesto," to which a group of Americans has signed on.

I am always in favor of sensible centrist politics. I am working through the details of the manifesto and its amendments, to see what I think about it.

To start with, though, I was struck by the different ways of describing themselves that the British framers and their American cousins adopt.

The preamble to the Euston Manifesto begins "We are democrats and progressives." They go on to say that they are mostly from the Left, but not exclusive. So, who are they trying to reach? "We reach out … beyond the socialist Left towards egalitarian liberals and others of unambiguous democratic commitment." The left-of-center barrier is the fixed point of their identity. They are not aiming to join liberals and the center. They don't even imagine a center. Instead, the new line they are trying to draw is "between the forces of the Left that remain true to its authentic values, and currents that have lately shown themselves rather too flexible about these values." The Euston Manifesto alliance is not distinguishing itself from the Reactionary Right – that is a given – but instead from the Looney Left.

The "American Signers of the Euston Manifesto," on the other hand, have views that "range from those of centrists and independents to liberals of varying hues on to the democratic left." The Americans see the Euston movement as a center-left alliance. The line they want to draw is somewhere right of center. There could be an enemy on the left, too, but it is not named.

The Euston alliance is made by the Left. The American counterpart is made by the left.

As the old joke says, Britain and America are two countries divided by a common language.

Black Incomes Surpass Whites in Queens

That is the title of a fascinating article in the New York Times by Sam Roberts. We can see the point quickly with some numbers:

$46,000 = average household income in the United States

$50,960 = average white household in Queens
$51,836 = average black household in Queens

By contrast, in neighboring Manhattan,
$86,494 = average white household
$28,116 = average black household

What is the difference in black achievement in the two boroughs? First, blacks in Queens are more likely to be immigrants. Second, blacks in Queens are more likely to be married.

Within Queens, the immigrant difference is clear:
$45,864 = average black native-born household
$61,151 = average black immigrant household

Married households in Queens have an even bigger advantage:
$70,324 = average black married native-born household
$84,338 = average black married immigrant household

And which factor matters more, marriage or immigration?
Clearly, marriage is the more important factor in raising household income. Married couples make about 50% more than unmarried households, even though many of the unmarrieds have two or more adults in them.

Queens shows the future of black achievement in America. Immigrants are likely to lead native-born African-Americans. But married couples, wherever they were born, will lead more.

Is the Global Presbyterian Fellowship Schismatic?

The Global Presbyterian Fellowship is a new project by some of the leading congregations of the Presbyterian Church (USA) to get beyond the endless internecine struggle, and get on with the business of spreading the gospel. They had an initial gathering in Atlanta this past summer that generated a major buzz. Something good might be coming, a way forward out of the old mess.

However, the GPF also raises a disquieting parallel. In the 1930s disgruntled conservatives, led by J. Gresham Machen, created an Independent Board of Presbyterian Foreign Missions. In its brief life, the Independent Board was aggressively critical of the existing church leadership. They asked congregations to give their mission money to the Independent Board instead of to the official mission agency of the church. The denomination ruled that the Independent Board was schismatic, and ordered all officers of the church to quit it. Machen and the other board members had, in my judgment, created the Independent Board in order to create a schism. Naturally, none of them quit the Independent Board when ordered to. They were tried, convicted, and, in 1936, removed from the ministry of the Presbyterian Church. By prior arrangement, they immediately created a new denomination, now known as the Orthodox Presbyterian Church.

When the call for the Global Presbyterian Fellowship was issued, it raised a red flag for me and others who know this history. We were relieved, therefore, to see that the first point of the initial invitation proclaims:

We choose to remain within the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), and we encourage congregations to continue to relate to their own presbyteries in the manner that they deem best. This is not an effort to start a new denomination or to write a new constitution.

At the Atlanta meeting, the GPF adopted a covenant. The language of the covenant is a little less reassuring than was the initial invitation. Gone is any explicit assurance that they choose to remain within the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.). Instead, we find this more ambiguous proposal:

To invest our financial resources only in those local and global mission efforts that we believe are biblically faithful and accountable, within the Presbyterian family and through other partnerships into which the Lord calls us.

That is not a call to schism, but it is not a proclamation of loyalty, either.

On the whole, I do not think the Global Presbyterian Fellowship is, or will be, schismatic. I say this partly out of trust for the initial impulse that created the GPF. I also believe, as I have written earlier, that the New Wineskins initiative has been the magnet for the schismatic forces in the church.

There is plenty of discontent in the Global Presbyterian Fellowship. So far, though, it is trying to build up the church from within.

If Pirates Oppose Zombies, Do Ninjas Support Them?

Austin had a wonderful "March for Zombies' Rights." You know, "Brains – The Other White Meat," and "Zombies Was People, Too." The zombie march drew some protesting pirates. Which raises the important question, if pirates oppose zombies, do ninjas support them?

Junior Gruntled #2 says yes, because ninjas help create zombies. I think they would, because ninjas can hide among zombies while sneaking up on protesting pirates.

The long war goes on …

Family Values Congressman Quits For Hitting on Teen Boy

Mark Foley, a conservative Republican representative from Florida, was caught sending emails to a 16-year-old page that are at least creepy, and seem much worse to me. The Republican leadership knew about them months ago, but covered it up. Now that they have come out, Foley has decided not to seek re-election.

Jon Stewart says the rule is simple: all politicians who decry sexual sins are committing them (ok, he put it a little more graphically). I am not that cynical, but the sheer hypocrisy of the family-values pols, and the shamelessness of their leaders, makes one want to weep.

We will look for better news tomorrow.

Hypergamy Means That the Rich Favor Sons; The Poor, Daughters

One of the most interesting things that I learned from Richard Conniff's The Natural History of the Rich is an implication of hypergamy. Hypergamy is the tendency of women to marry up socially, no matter how high they themselves are in the social structure. The highest-status women, therefore, run out of suitable mates, as do the lowest-status men. Therefore, the rich through history have favored sons and disfavored daughters, while the poor have done the reverse.

The new thought that this led me to was this helps explain why poor neighborhoods tend to produce matriarchal clans. It is not simply that the men are not expected to be responsible, but that the mothers favor their daughters as the more likely child to lift the whole family up.

I am still chewing on the implications of this idea.

No, New York Should Not Ban Fat

The New York City Board of Health took a step closer to banning trans fat in all city restaurants. Many doctors think that trans fat is bad for your heart. It probably is. But it shouldn't be banned in a free country.

The model that the fat banners use is the smoking ban in New York public buildings, including restaurants. I support a smoking ban in most places, including restaurants. Personally, I would let people smoke in bars, since people go to bars in the first place to do things that are bad for them.

The point is, though, that second-hand smoke is bad for other people beside the smoker. Second-hand fat is not even a meaningful concept. The Board of Health might spend its budget trying to convince people that trans fat is bad for them, and telling them all the kinds of food it appears in. They might require labels on all trans fat foods. They might even make fun of fat people.

But banning fat is just too intrusive. It gives some reality to the insult, "health Nazis."

61% of Americans Sleep Together

The National Sleep Foundation surveys the country about how, and how well, they sleep. Most Americans spend their nights "two in a bed," according to a new book by that name by sociologist Paul Rosenblatt. The vast majority of these co-sleepers are married couples. Many of them report that they would sleep better apart – due to snoring, thrashing about, differences in body temperature, etc., etc. Still, when Rosenblatt asked the couples he interviewed why they slept together anyway, "they looked at me as if I'd asked them why they keep breathing."

As most parents can prove from experience, co-sleeping is not always limited to two in the bed. Little people have a hundred reasons to appear in the night, wanting to be held. Often they then spend the rest of the night doing what seem like elaborate ballet routines in their sleep. When the junior Gruntleds were small, we referred to this as "spending the night with the Zamboni machine." For much of our children's youngest years, we hit upon the ingenious solution of sleeping on a mattress on the floor ourselves. The little ones would consent to sleep on the floor next to mom and dad if they were only a few inches higher. This was much better than having sharp little elbows in the ribs, or tiny feet suddenly in one's face.

I find it hard to sleep when business takes Mrs. Gruntled or me away. I can fall asleep well enough when I try. It just seems unnatural to turn out the light and lie down alone. Which I suppose is a sign that marriage becomes second nature to us in a literal sense.

Two in a bed – the bedrock of American solidarity.

Virtual Wedding, Real Brideprice

The BBC reports of a couple of Zimbabweans who met in London, but wanted a traditional wedding back home. They couldn't afford to go home just for the wedding – and similar couples couldn't get back into Britain if they did go home – so their relatives held a wedding ceremony in Zimbabwe for them. The wedding was complete with everything, except the bride and groom. This last point was the news hook for the BBC.

What struck me about this story, though, was that the main reason they needed a Zimbabwean service was to make sure that the brideprice was properly negotiated and paid between the families. Since this is a negotiation that the couple do not take part in even if they were at home, the couple's residence thousands of miles away was no real impediment.

An American might ask, though, if the couple have indeed made it to London, met on their own with no family help, and are not only supporting themselves, but sending money back to their families, why do they need to pay a brideprice at all? The whole social structure that created the brideprice system – where women are scarce, and her family can, in effect, sell her to her husband's family – is missing in London. If they were truly emigrants, we might think that brideprice would be one of the first customs they would want to leave behind.

But, of course, they are not emigrants, but temporary guest workers, by their own choice. They are commuting to a job from the homeplace, like tens of millions of poor people around the globe. They are like hundreds of Appalachian couples over the decades who met in Lexington or Cincinnati or even Detroit, but came back home for the wedding. But in this case, the trip itself is too expensive and legally fraught to make even for a wedding.

These Zimbabwean couples don't want to leave behind the world of brideprice. They just want to pay it in pounds.

Jewish Aspersions

I have been trying to see it from Virginia Senator George F. Allen's perspective. The Southern California kid who turned himself into a Confederate clearly has been searching for roots all his life. He had exposed some bizarre vein of prejudice in calling an Indian-American "macaca" – a North African way of calling someone a monkey. It was in that context that reporter Peggy Fox asked him at a public debate about his rumored Jewish roots. "It has been reported," said Fox, that "your grandfather Felix, whom you were given your middle name for, was Jewish. Could you please tell us whether your forebears include Jews and, if so, at which point Jewish identity might have ended?"

Dana Milbank, of the Washington Post, reports Allen's reaction this way:

Allen recoiled as if he had been struck. His supporters in the audience booed and hissed. "To be getting into what religion my mother is, I don't think is relevant," Allen said, furiously. "Why is that relevant -- my religion, Jim's religion or the religious beliefs of anyone out there?"

"Honesty, that's all," questioner Fox answered, looking a bit frightened.

"Oh, that's just all? That's just all," the senator mocked, pressing his attack. He directed Fox to "ask questions about issues that really matter to people here in Virginia" and refrain from "making aspersions."

How should we read this? We now know that Allen's mother is indeed Jewish ethnically, though she converted to Anglicanism and raised her son an Episcopalian. Her father, Felix Lumbroso, was imprisoned by the Nazis in Tunisia because he was Jewish and had opposed them. We also know that Allen had only found out about his Jewish roots a month before this public question. And his mother had begged him not to tell, because she had kept it from the rest of the family.

Still, a month is time enough to get used to the idea, and to have an answer ready for the inevitable reporter's questions.

When asked if he had Jewish roots, George Allen took this question as an aspersion.

Now, I am about as Jewish as George Allen is – ethnically but not religiously, from several wonderfully intermarried lines. Like Allen, I carry a middle name from a pretty-Jewish grandfather – Joseph, in my case. My eldest carries my grandmother's maiden name, Blum, as her middle name to honor her beloved ancestor. My daughter is a Christian, an ordinary meat-and-potatoes Presbyterian. But she will Never Forget. We honor our Jewish heritage, as we do the rest of the family lines.

I don't think calling out Jewish roots is "casting aspersions." George Allen does. In that moment, like the macaca moment, he really did reveal his true identity.