This man is not worthy of his wife or his three boys.
In fairness he offers this update:
Of course there can be forgiveness and reconciliation, and this marriage and family can be saved. One has to hope and pray for that. But healing begins with this adulterous husband and unfaithful father recognizing in his marrow the depth of his betrayal. There can be no healing without repentance, and no true repentance without authentic contrition.Still, I don't understand the certainty with which some of us approach the personal lives of people we have never met. Whatever happened to the failings of others triggering some self-reflection, some assessment of our own works? When I see them foreclosing on the house next door, I don't talk. I check my credit.
What good is marriage if it doesn't humble men? What good is a creed that does not leave you self-aware and conscious of the evil that lay in the marrow of us all? What, precisely, is the point?
UPDATE: This...
I have often found it confusing how readily social conservatives pounce on any evidence of sins of the flesh, while remaining blithely unaware of their own pride, which (at least from a biblical perspective) is just as dangerous a sin.
...highlights something I may be missing. I didn't come up Christian. I'd like to hear some analysis of this from the devout.
The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood 
Beautifully put.
I suppose what is fueling so much of this self-righteous rhetoric is that Sanford himself was seen as a self-righteous moralizer. And we love to flay hypocrites (all but ourselves). But he's also proof that the pendulum swings back and forth. The preachers today will be the fools tomorrow. And because it's the American way, Mark Sanford will likely be blogging on the right-wing version of Huffington Post within a year. Oh, how things change and don't!
I have often found it confusing how readily social conservatives pounce on any evidence of sins of the flesh, while remaining blithely unaware of their own pride, which (at least from a biblical perspective) is just as dangerous a sin.
From my reading of the bible, I'd say pride is the worst sin. Go to biblegateway.com and do a keyword search for the words "pride," "proud," and "humble." You'll see how much God hates pride.
Yep, pride is the original sin...from Lucifer being too proud to submit to Yahweh / Allah / etc. to Adam feeling like he and Eve deserved to have the knowledge they felt they were being denied. Pride is also what led to such problems between Jesus and the Pharisees, or David and Solomon and God, according to the Bible.
Ultimately you have people cherrypicking dogma from the Bible (in which all sorts of arguments can be made and justified) to fit a priori worldviews, then claiming moral high ground "cause God said so."
But they always purposefully miss the radical commentary about poverty, about humility, about social change, about man judging man.
What good is marriage if it doesn't humble men? This is a very odd comment TNC. I wonder what you mean?
I'd love to read a response to this, as well.
I took it to mean that marriage is one of those relationships that exposes so many of your flaws - and basic human functions and failings - to another person. Such exposure should breed humility, but just as often breeds contempt, which would help explain the divorce stats...
TNC can obviously speak for himself, but I took it to mean that marriage, more than just about any other human institution, makes you aware of your flaws and shortcomings, and forces you to deal with them on a daily, sometimes hourly basis. Plus, you're living with someone who sees you at your very worst, in such a way that it's impossible to maintain a spotless image with him/her, which is how a lot of people maintain their own personal mythology.
It also beats hell out of dating, and has myriad perks. But even my marginally-legal same-sex marriage has made me more humble.
What Bleak and Christina said. And I don't think it's very odd if you consider it within the context:
Perhaps I should have said "humble human beings" to avoid confusion.
I realize that might have read agressively. It wasn't meant to be. I was merely curious. I thought you might mean men in particular in light of your earlier post. I think there might be something to it actually, though I'm not sure of the dimensions. Then again, maybe not. Anyway, I was interested to see where that envelope was going to get pushed. But alas, I was overreading. It's cerainly not the first time!
"What good is marriage if it doesn't humble men?"
Do I have your permission to have this inscribed on the inside of my wedding ring?
Didn't Jesus say something about the sin-free throwing the first stone?
The more I read about Sanford the more I feel bad for the guy.
He is weird and genuine and very human.
Unlike many other politicians.
You get the feeling that he is suffering because of what he did and how it makes him feel. NOT because he got caught.
This is a man struggling. It's almost seems like a nervous breakdown in slow motion.
As for Dreher I don't read the man's writing very often so I won't speculate as to what "sins" or hookers he may have hiding under his bed.
I'm of two minds about this.
On the one hand, I see what IP's saying. Sanford's not play-acting here. He's really torn up inside, and it's sad to watch a man unravel so thoroughly out in public. And I really shouldn't point fingers, since I don't know with iron-clad certainty that I wouldn't have made the same mistake. That particular temptation has never come my way.
But on the other hand, a pretty basic part of being a man is being able to think with the right organ, the one holding your ears apart. At a minimum, it was a massive self-deception on his part to believe that this could have gone undetected indefinitely.
Maybe we just oughtta let it go...
Why is it that people can not just be responsible for their actions...flat out. Whats to be sorry for here. The guy just abandoned (possibly short term only) his wife and kids for more excitement. Whats so awful about people considering him a jerk.
TNC, I was quoting 1 John 2:16, which lists pride right along with the "lusts of the world" and "lusts of the flesh." I was raised hard, HARD right, and I heard a lot about pride, and how it can make us feel that we know what's right just as well as God does.
There's also the passage, often cited, about "judge not, lest ye be judged" and removing the log in your own eye (eg. pride) before checking out the speck in someone else's.
And, finally (is this too much), Jesus was always going on about the legalism and hypocrisy of the Pharisees.
I was brought up by conservative Christians in the sense of being Republican, rather than crazy, but for what it's worth the best fictional depiction I've seen of what Christianity is supposed to be is June Carter's parents in Walk the Line. Their daughter needs their love and support, which they give. This guy who's crushing on her and fighting demons needs help, so their first impulse is to help him. Jesus was all the time condemning the power structure and offering compassion to lepers, adulteresses, tax auditors, and other people everyone hated.
That doesn't square with anything I've read of Sanford's governing style. I kind of get where he was going with the religious context, that following god's law should keep you straight when you forgot the other reasons not to hurt your family, but....your wife asks for a trial separation and the first thing you do is sneak out of the state (and off the continent), without telling anyone in the state, to spend a week with your mistress? That's bad on so many fronts.
I was too squicked to read much of the e-mails but I read his wife's statement. It's not good. But when I try to put myself in the "if she were my friend I would have suggested she edit this down considerably" shoes, I can see where I'd be so cross-eyed mad at Rick that I would want every bit of "I did right, I tried, I am in the right here" to stay, and doubled. To my mind I wish she would dump him, because he did not do right by her, and he has humiliated her as publicly as possible. I wish she were taking the "if this is how you treat us, we're done" approach.
But, I'm not in their marriage, so who knows.
Regarding Walk the Line - I saw that movie and thought, if more people were Christian like that, I could so get behind Christianity. It's sad that more people aren't.
deva, I can't speak for TNC, but I take "What good is marriage if it doesn't humble men?" to mean that if marriage does not teach a man to care, to give, and to direct his own actions toward the good of his family rather than just himself, what's the point? If marriage can't keep you from doing whatever you want in love or lust, are you really meant to be married?
Of course, in the context of the post, it probably means more to take this as a cautionary tale, instead of just breathing fire, as Dreher is doing. As in, marriage (or committed togetherness - it doesn't have to be sanctioned by anyone) is partnership, sharing, and involves some sacrifice - a story like this should first make one look at one's own life before criticizing Sanford.
On the other hand, TNC seems well "humbled" - is a real partner - and isn't married, so yeah, you're right, this one is a little odd. But it's a great aphorism in the form of a rhetorical question, aphorisms usually are tough to crack.
Could you elaborate on that, TNC?
Did. I throw myself in there, too. I don't see much difference, on a commitment level, to my "long-term relationship" and a marriage. So, I subbed one for the other. Just word economy.
Didn't Jesus say something about the sin-free throwing the first stone?
Yes, and I always loved the joke in which at that point, everybody stops and hesitates, and then one woman throws a stone and everybody goes back to stoning the adultress. And Jesus says,"Mom, sometimes you really piss me off."
Anyway, I get the impression that Rod Dreher is so sure of his virtue that he wouldn't hesitate to throw the first stone either.
Never heard that joke. It's hilarious!
A better bit of scripture might be Matthew 7:3-4, ""Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother's eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, 'Let me take the speck out of your eye,' when all the time there is a plank in your own eye?"
At least, that's the first one that comes to the mind of this formerly devout person.
Those that live in Wingnuttiaville are modern day Pharisees.
"What good is a creed that does not leave you self-aware and conscious of the evil that lay in the marrow of us all? What, precisely, is the point?"
The Calvinists call this "total depravity" of human nature and say that there is no hope outside of the redemption of God, and the concept of "Catholic guilt" definitely comes from this kind of soul-searching as well.
For me at least, as a Christian, I'm definitely conscious of that evil all of the time. I can't speak for everyone, but when I see what others do, it doesn't surprise me because I expect us to screw up. The scriptures are definitely full of people who screwed up a lot. Dreher might be thinking of David here (adultery and murder) and his confessions in Psalm 51. At least that's what I'm getting from it.
To be honest, I don't really understand it when people get so smug and self-righteous because if anything, I think I'm more cynical about human nature for this reason than most people.
That last point you posted is definitely a biblical principle, that all sins, no matter how big or small, are equal in the sight of God (though obviously certain things will affect and devastate more people than others).
I'm no theologian by any means and there are definitely much more articulate people on here, so I'd love to hear what the rest of you have to say even if I'm sure we're not going to agree.
You are quite articulate and I think that you theology is not only sound but more to the point also orthodox, for the non-churched read conservative, but I think that this is more a matter of anthropology than metaphysics. When many conservative christianists speak with what comes across to many as prideful/self-righteous (often rightly by the way I think) they see it as being passionate and faithful to the Lord so it's not their certainty but God's that they are giving voice to. As "evangelical" christians they feel that they are doing as they have been commanded to and so are, within their logic, being submissive and not arrogant. The broader concern here is that we shouldn't confuse the principals that people say they live by as necessarily being the ones that they do live by, nor should we expect that pointing this out to them will make a difference. Before he got a gig at the NYTimes St. Fish spent a lot of time showing liberals how they contradicted themselves by defining issues like tolerance and inclusiveness in ways that were intolerant and non-inclusive. So 'fallen' or not we all have work to do, which I think is the point of T's secular there but the grace of God go I post here.
Ella Fitzgerald's version of Nobody's Business
What a fool to step into those shoes
Either way you know they win or lose
You know money talks
Your eyes they ain't so blue
You love to watch the green-backs walk
You got a five-buck side-pack
Tell me, tell me someone stop this pain
It's your place I was in a rage insane
I wanted your love so bad
But your eyes are never blue
Droolin' over green-back poolin'
You got a five-buck side-pack
Well I must have been right about something
Yes to make it to here and to tell you something
Cause nobody's business but my own
Nobody's business but my own
Well I must have been mad about something
Cause I'm M A D and I spell it for nothing
Cause nobody's business but my own
Nobody's business but my own
What a fool to step into those shoes
Either way you know they (you?) win or lose
You know money talks
Your eyes so paralysed
Don't you realise
For love and hate it's just too late
Nobody's business but my own
Nobody's business but my own
Nobody's business but my own
Nobody's business but my own
Nobody's business but my own
As on most subjects, I'll defer to Bob:
Now the medicine man comes and he shuffles inside
He walks with a swagger and he says to the bride
"Stop all this weeping, swallow your pride
You will not die, it's not poison"
F**kin' Bob... the rock I built my church upon.
I've always likened it to when you're on your way home from your Aunt and Uncle's house after a party. The Aunt and Uncle's that always act out, and nobody better tell their kids to stop screaming and cursing because you're in their house.
Its empowering, because during that car ride home you can reaffirm that you are at least better than , even though once you get home you know mom & dad are going to start arguing about who is telling whose business outside the house, and your sister is going to put on her best hooker-get-up and hit the roller rink.
For a lot of socially conservatives, the rest of us are the can't-get-right side of the family, even while the bones are rattling in all the closets of their house.
It's funny to read men on Sanford, and I just watched the women from The View. I never ever agree with Elizabeth, but she saw it the same way that I did ----- he's spent the better part of a year having his cake and eating it too. You'll never convince me that that press conference would have taken place without him getting caught. His wife and four children have lived in limbo land, while he got his thrill on.
Rikyrah,
It's a penis thing.
How can I explain?
Once in awhile I will walk my neigbors dogs.
There is a glorious cemetery near me, Graceland Cemetery-Chicago, that is walled. At one point there is a softball sized hole in the wall where brick meets concrete.
The dogs see the hole and go crazy trying to get in.
It's instinctual. They're part hound-dog.
Men--------part hound dog.
Thanks IP. I guess I couldn't get past the ' My wife found out FIVE MONTHS AGO.' I'm still stuck on that. (If he says FIVE, it's my experience that womanly 'spidey senses', means that his wife knew at least 3-6 months before that.
He says five months ago, but the newspaper says they got tipped the e-mails in December.
It shames me how much I want to know more of this tawdry tale.
While Jenny would make my list for possible e-mail leakers, I wouldn't stop there. All sorts of staff might have access and been pissed at what was happening. Their oldest kid. Political enemies could draw the obvious conclusion from "Gov Sanford keeps slipping his security and disappearing," then go fishing like the guy who easily guessed Palin's password last year.
The five months ago really gets me, too. You're supposed to confess in the sense of "and I am so, so sorry dear, and I will break it off tonight, immediately, and try to repair our marriage" not "I met someone and there's a spark, like I haven't felt with you in years, and so I need to see where that goes."
it gets better.
On June 10 (when Jenny threw him out) is when he bought the plane ticket. And it was supposed to be a 10 day trip; he came back early when he learned there was a lot of interest in his absence.
http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2009/06/report_sanford_booked_10-day_argentina_trip.php
I am not religious now, but I grew up the daughter of a Southern Baptist pastor in South Carolina. This may be a little OT (or maybe not), but since you wanted an analysis from someone who came up in the culture I thought I'd point out that Dreher is riding hard here on the 'salvation by faith not works' doctrine that is particularly strong in some flavors of Protestantism (Southern Baptists among these).
The language there is straight out of the sermon stencil for how you can do right things, and if you don't have the right kind of feelings about it then they don't count as righteous. The marriage can be 'saved', but not by actions (forgiveness and reconciliation, both of which require some activity on the part of the participants). Instead saving the marriage starts somehow by Sanford figuring out the precise alchemy of repentance required to... I don't know, make Dreher happy? I'm not too sure where his insistence on 'authentic' comes from, as it seems to me that no one but Sanford and perhaps his wife is in a position to have any sort of opinion on that. It reads to me that what he's saying is 'authentic-looking', which is a whole other kettle of fish. (Note that 'repentance' was originally a word of action; one repented by doing something in penance. Here it is being used in a more abstract way, as some state of feeling that should be achieved. Here repentance means more like 'feeling sorry and resolved not to do this again'.)
The paragraph Dreher added is subtly a reinforcing to his readers (most of whom likely agree with him) that their faith -- and by extension, their goodness or lack thereof -- comes mainly from beliefs and emotions, and only secondarily from how you act on those beliefs. The self-righteous tone of the whole thing comes from the logical extension of this 'faith not works' premise: that as long as the person reading has the right kind of beliefs, they are still safe from the sort of embarrassment and pain that Sanford is in at present.
John Stewart called him a man with "A conservative mind and a liberal penis."
I came up Christian, and while I no longer believe in any sense beyond a humanistic one, there's a whole plethora of scripture on human fallability, the limits of human potential, salvation by grace, etc. If Sanford truly believes then he's wrestling with some very deep issues.
There's Ephesians 5:1-7:
There's 1st Corintians 6:12-20. In most churchs the last bit gets heavy play but I've heard all of it preached on:
There's also James 1:12-18
Also James 2 14-19
Sorry to quote scripture like a preacher. On the other hand, if Sanford is like a lot of republicans with a head for christian votes and no heart for christian morals towards the dispossed then none of this applies.
Interesting that your post comes just after mine, as I talked about the doctrine of faith-before-works, then you pull out James. (See also: Mark 13:31 "This is necessary to believe. This cannot be otherwise acquired or grasped by any work, law or merit. Therefore, it is clear and certain that this faith alone justifies us ... Nothing of this article can be yielded or surrendered, even though heaven and earth and everything else falls", or practically the whole book of Romans.)
It's awfully hard to claim the Bible is self-consistent! As I understand it, this very question was one of the cornerstones of the Lutheran break with Catholicism. It was also influential in the formation of the Southern Baptist Convention.
Reconciling James with Paul. Ephesians 2 with James 2. Much has been done on this, but I always thought that Pauls words were worth remebering.
τῇ γὰρ χάριτί ἐστε σεσῳσμένοι διὰ τῆς πίστεως· καὶ τοῦτο οὐκ ἐξ ὑμῶν, Θεοῦ τὸ δῶρον,
for you all are saved with charity through faith and entirely not from yourselves (salvation is) the gift of God.
It's an inspiring belief, and there are days when it gives me hope.
hey Sorn I'm out of here, keep the faith, and keep learning and teaching, and keep an eye out for deniers of the origins of the SBC:
The Southern Baptist Convention was born on May 9, 1845, at the meeting house of the Baptist church in Augusta, Ga. There were 236 delegates from 165 churches who registered at the May 8-12 organizational meeting. It was on Friday morning that a resolution was unanimously passed “to proceed to organize a society for the propagation of the Gospel.” The states represented in the meeting were Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Louisiana, Kentucky and the District of Columbia. The Florida Baptist Convention was not begun until nine years later in 1854.
Slavery was the reason.
Other issues were important and vital in efficient missionary operations but the bottom line in the room was the slavery question. Anti-slavery societies had been organized, pro-slavery statements had been made and other denominations had already split over the slavery issue. The Presbyterians split in 1837 and the Methodists split in 1844. Slavery was the issue that would not go away. Abolitionists, conscience and the Holy Spirit would prevail.
For Baptists in the South the point of no return was the hypothetical Alabama question of 1844. The Reverend John Bushyhead was a highly respected Indian preacher who was employed by the Board of the Home Mission Society of the Triennial Convention, the first national Baptist denomination in America. In 1844 the board caused the retirement of Bushyhead because he owned slaves. There were those who felt that the national board had violated the slavery compromise of the 1844 national convention. In that meeting, Dr. George B. Ide, pastor of First Baptist Church in Philadelphia, presented a resolution that sought cooperation in foreign missionary work disclaiming “all sanction either expressed or implied whether of slavery or of anti-slavery.” This laid the matter on the table but it did not resolve the controversy.
The Alabama question of 1844 was hypothetical but plain and simple. The question was “would slave-holders and non-slave-holders” have the same privileges in mission service? The answer came back that slave holders would not be appointed by the national Baptist group. This is the primary issue that brought about the Augusta meeting of May, 1845
Hey D.
Thanks for this. I was unaware. I Guess those roots run deep.
I read through some of the e-mails between Sanford and his mistress, Maria. In one he states that 15 years ago he didn't know he needed love. But age, political battles, and life itself served to teach him otherwise. So, he gradually fell in love with Maria. Fidelity left his heart long before it left his pants.
I don't know what it's like to fall in love with someone in the middle of a marriage to someone else. I would imagine it would be a special combination of heaven and hell. So, I extend my sympathies to him on this matter, all the while remembering how he would not move outside his own walls to empathize with and advocate for the poor, unemployed, and ill-educated in his state.
The wonderful thing about literature is that it is news that stays news: The Scarlet Letter. I suppose we've come a long way in that Edwards' and Sanfords' mistresses don't have to walk around with a big "A" embroidered to their hearts (though I think Monica Lewinsky had to pose with such embroidery for a number of years). Dimmsdale and Chillingworth (the wimp and the sadist) are archtypes of a particularly American kind of masculinity. We're a nation in part founded by puritan sensibilites, which also connect to our sense of exceptionalism.
But I do think to quote a movie, The Contender, in which a political woman led the husband of her best friend to her bed, "the heart is an involuntary muscle," and that when it comes to sex, Diogenes is still on the lookout for a single honest man or woman--gotta love Dana Perino, who commented that women don't have time for affairs.
To the point that Sanford's behavior compromised his ability to be a responsible public servant, I care; to the degree his public political posturing is betrayed by his personal behavior, one would hope might temper others who so self-righteously pontificate and legislate; the rest is a bathetic set of sorrows he and those who have loved him will just have to find their way through.
As a democrat/liberal/progressive whatever - I have enjoyed the perp walk of all these republicans getting caught with their pants down. Especially the ones that were so vehement about clinton's infidelities or so anti-gay marriage.
But as a human being, I didn't really enjoy Sanford's press conference and can't read Sanford's emails with his mistress b/c they are none of my business. I get no joy or sorrow from any of this - I don't know him or his family.
I guess Dreher felt like he had to read the e-mails and comment because he is the face of christian engagement with popular and political culture? I think it's not just the sin of pride, it's the sin of thinking you have to say something about everything that happens? The pride of punditry?
Not sure - but seems like we participate (Kate and Jon and their poor 8 kids) too much in other peoples' pain and some stuff (the actual e-mails, Kate and Jon's lives) should just not be open for review.
I am hearing all sorts of strange echoes of religious language in Rob Dreher's comments. "Not worthy" is particularly striking; in Protestant terms, that's an odd one because of the Protestant emphasis on total depravity--that no one is worthy, that "all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God"; in Catholic terms, because of the phrase before receiving the Eucharist, "Lord, I am not worthy to receive you, but only say the word and I shall be healed."
It strikes my ear as odd because no matter where you are on the religious spectrum, "worthiness" is generally not part of the religious person's make-up. Was Sanford worthy before? Is it only because of the affair that he's unworthy?
And then the next bit about reconciliation and forgiveness. I'm struck by his use of the word "saved"--this family and marriage can be saved. Not salvaged. Not repaired. Not even healed, but saved. I'm probably reading too much into that. But still, that's rather loaded language.
Here's the key point, though. I remember friends of mine getting very angry when Christian singer Amy Grant got a divorce. They were mad AT AMY GRANT herself. I remember thinking, "What on earth does this have to do with you?" But it wasn't just about her getting a divorce; she had betrayed Christianity itself by getting a divorce. Her witness for Christ was forever after tarred by this brush. I suspect that some of this judgmental language may stem from this same anger. He let down his wife, sure. Even worse, he let down the team.
Amy Grant wrote some of the best things I know about fidelity and temptation, starting with:
God you know the feelings here
Could wipe my world away
Ravaging the promises
A stronger heart once made
So hold me, I'm falling so fast
And tell me that the fighting inside will pass
As I walk away
And find the strength to choose
The man who waits for me
With a heart that's true
On that album, her first, she also offered "Sure enough (to stay for good)" and "Saved by Love," where every refrain starts with "Can't imagine ever leaving now."
Her vulnerability to temptation was ordinary, but her understanding of her vulnerability was (and probably still is) unique.
"But as a human being, I didn't really enjoy Sanford's press conference and can't read Sanford's emails with his mistress b/c they are none of my business."
Yep. Exactly. They're none of our business.
It's immoral to cheat on your wife -- everyone agrees with that. It's also immoral to read a stranger's love notes (or, for that matter, to watch a young Iranian woman die) just for the thrill of it.
Other people's sorrows shouldn't be fuel for our thrills.
I think so much of this comes down to our basic view of the world. If you take a Theory X v. Theory Y view, without too much oversimplification, people think that humans are inherently flawed and must be dominated, shamed or punished in a way that keeps us from turning into animals or you believe that we are basically good and with the right support and encouragement we can do amazing things. You can also frame this as Old v. New Testament where God felt we were so wicked we had to be punished to make us do right versus the theology of love professed by Jesus that even worse among us is deserving of love and respect.
Sanford violated the vows of his marriage and there should be a consequence for that, but to suggest that he doesn't deserve his family is ridiculous.
I'm from the Calvinist end of the Christian spectrum, holding firmly that none of us deserve anything. God made everything good, gave it to use, watched us screw it all up, and gave it all back to us again. And He's ready and willing to repeat, repeat, repeat.
That perspective reorganizes your life.
It lets you say that you're at least as big a mess as the man or woman next to you.
It says you're supposed to work hard on doing better today than you did yesterday, but you're going to fall far enough short that you'll never be entitled to claim superiority to anyone.
My take is that Sanford doesn't deserve his family, and I don't deserve mine either. And yet, without deserving it, I have love and trust and health and happiness in my life.
I wish Mark Sanford and Jenny Sanford and their sons the same good things. Here's hoping that their feeble effort and a mighty helping of God's blessings will make them a strong family for the years to come.
I wish Rod Dreher the same gifts, along with the grace to know he doesn't deserve them either.
I'm sure other Christians have pointed this out, but 1) we aren't monoliths -- Catholics stress different aspects of belief than do Protestants, and 2) there's tremendous variation between Protestant denominations. I am a lifelong Episcopalian who was brought up to look down on Evangelicals and Catholics (yes, it's very unchristian, no question)...but it behooves us all to remember is that people are human and flawed and wonderful but flawed still...today it's Mark Sanford, tomorrow it could be you or me. It's incumbent upon the professed to remember that and act accordingly, with compassion and kindness for all involved. But, since Sanford is such an ideologue and so judgmental himself, schadenfreude is hard to avoid.
Mark Sanford's is of little interest to me. His transgression is scornful but is even more regretfully common. What ticked me off the most was the way he had to bring "God's Laws" into it. He didn't care about God's Laws when he was committing adultery on another continent. But there are scores of other people that have never cared about God's Laws and still manage not to betray their spouses. But when Sanford wants forgiveness, suddenly, we hear all about God and faith. He either doesn't believe any of the religious talk he spouts off with...or does and is more twisted than most of us ever care to understand.
I think of Eric Hoffner and his book "True Believer". It characterizes those with the most aggressively pious faith as among those with the most doubts. They need everyone to feel as they do as to puff up their own beliefs.
Dreher is more interesting. If you know Rod Dreher, you know he fancies himself an intellectual and a conservative. His choice of religious paths seems purely functional, directed to help facilitate those two aspects of his own personality. I'm not saying he has no inward desire for religiosity in and of itself, he obviously does. But it is a slave to other parts of his self.
He was born and raised a Methodist and converted to Roman Catholism, largely stemming from study of the early Christian writers and theologians. I'm Catholic, we call them "Church Fathers". He then converted from Catholism to Eastern Orthodoxy based on a case of an abusive priest that he had gotten a close look at, too close apparently.
There is no branch of Protestantism that is both conservative enough and intellectual enough for Dreher. Southern Baptists don't care what early post-Biblical Christians thought and liberals feel too empowered in most Episcopal and Lutheran circles.
To be more specific, Dreher is a "Thomist". Thomist theological thought dates back to St. Thomas Aquinas. Aquinas's life goal, professional speaking, was to fuse all Pre-Christian intellectual thought into Christian thought. Aristotelianism, the biggest component, was of some worth but needed to brought into the Christian realm. What could be merged into accepted religious dogma was included, what could was thrown out entirely. It was this process that gave us natural law.
Basically, some things are naturally right, some things are naturally wrong. This works pretty well when we are discussing things like murder, theft and adultery. Be it today or three thousand years ago, be it a village with a few hundred people or a metropolis with a few million, you can see how social mores against some things just make sense. Believe it or not, Thomas Aquinas was a moderate in his day. The problem arises when we get to issues like stem-cell research, contraception and homosexuality, (as defined by modern medical science), things Aquinas and his contemporaries had no concept of. It's very hard, if not impossible, to assign some inherent wrongness to the issue itself. Stem-cell research didn't exist. Child mortality rates, woman's mortality rates in labor, economic quality of living and overall life-span made contraception only nessesary for adulterers. And homosexuality didn't exist, man-on-man sodomy was likened to drunkenness, something men did as to "act the fool".
You have to start with the process of assigning blame to such things on the basis that they contribute to actual offensives against natural law. Stem-cell research is actually murder somehow but not as bad as abortion though. Contraception removes the sexual act from the procreative act and thus cheapens it, which leads to a decline in overall sexual morality. Homosexuality is unnatural but not offensive unless put into practice, it's worse than contraception because there is zero chance of life resulting from the sexual act.
That's one of Dreher's big problems, fitting every moral issue into a framework dating back to the Low Middle Ages. Thomism can be an excellent foundation but not a framework. Dreher's other big problem is his conservative instinct to idealize the 1950's in America. (Of course, I mean conservative in the modern cultural or modern social sense.) In short, the 1950's were great because the majority of the culture practiced chastity or in other words, sexual restraint. Those who didn't practice sexual restraint were then in turn, looked down upon by the rest of decent society. And sexual restraint is good because without it you get sexual diseases, abortions, unwanted children, bad marriages, abuse of all kinds, poverty, etc.
Mr. Coates has a bit of a row with Dreher over this, if I recall correctly. What Dreher seems to have a problem with is the existence of decent people who equally abhor all of the societal ills he warns about, yet disagree with the behavioral perspcriptions he holds up as the answer. In some cases they look upon things he considers as clear offenses against natural law, like gay marriage, as actual solutions.
In both cases, Dreher is the type that feels more comfortable with an authority putting properness down on him from some source outside himself. It's not enough for him to reject moral relativism and to hold that some things are bad for everyone and not just him. Everyone needs to have the same general sense of what's proper. As if we all can't take a page from Mr. Coates book...not his actual book, the figurative book he lays out above. It's actually quite biblical; foreclosure as to credit is almost speck as to log.
I do not wish to infer, as I did with Sanford, that Dreher's faith is phony...or even weak. But I can testify to religious conservatives constantly picking out certain sins that must be publically exhorted upon whenever the chance arises, while keeping other sins under lock and key, never to be spoken of. So you have the philanderer verbally scourging homosexuals or the chaste spouse letting their selfishness and greed rule their interactions with the world. The closer the sin to their own heart, the more we must look at those sinners with compassion. That's what makes Sanford so dammed loathsome, as demonstrated with his views on Clinton, Sanford can't even be consistent. The religious conservatives I know pick their sins to rail against once they find Jesus and actually manage not to fall off the holier-than-thou wagons they pick.
As to why conservatives pick out sins of the flesh as the worst of the worst? Well, one needs to keep in mind that the Christian Bible itself looks at sex in a rather negative way. Reproduction is not so bad, it would have been hard to pull a 180 from the Old Testament, which held up childbirth as the central goal in life. But if illicit sexuality could rob you of eternal life, (and it could!), why not err on the side of most caution and just be celibate. St. Paul in his Second Letter to the Corinthians, actual says, "it is best if a man not marry". He goes on to say that a man should only marry if his lust is burning him so badly that he risks burning in the afterlife over it. But what about his audience, he was speaking a fair number of faithful Jews along with the hedonistic pagans. It most also be kept in mind that the original authors of the New Testament originally expected Jesus' return within their life times. Reproduction was far less of an urgent concern, so sexuality's licitness was reduced greatly.
In the years after the books of the Christian Bible were first written, the most influencal theologian would end up being St. Augustine. Prior to his conversion, his life was hallmarked by a rather swinging sex life. He once lived with a woman who bore his son but was not his wife. He also had a regular girl on the side at the same time, thus he was a pretty slick player in any era. When he finally did convert, what sin do you think he ended up focusing on?
It wasn't until Dante, in the High Middle Ages, that the notion of the "Seven Deadly Sins" came about in such firm fashion. He surmised, quite correctly, that pride was the worst of the seven because it alone could blind you to the fact that you might be committing it...or any of the other six. Wise theologians and religious scholars and writers since then often held that lust was actually the least serious. It is the least serious because it is the most animalistic, it's the only one hard-wired to every animal as well as every human. Thus primarily it's a sin of weakness. It's situations like Sanford, all the details and complicating factors, that turn his transgression into something more.
But the fact remains, Christians have been trying to walk back the "celibacy is best" position for hundreds of years. Unfortunately, often times, it's still stuck at the, "sex is horribly sinful and disgusting...so be sure to share it only with someone whom you love enough to spend the rest of your life with", position.
Wow. That is one thorough and intellectually coherent comment.
Indeed, incredible.
I'd kinda prefer if he or she kept going.
Whoa. Do you blog?
No.
I have a tendency to think no one would be interested in anything I might want to write. This plagued me even into graduate school, where every paper you write, (at least in my major), is an argumentative one.
I even start posts here at the Atlantic then scrap them because I don’t like the way they sound.
But thank you for your interest. And thank you everyone for your kind words.
You've reset the tone for my day, thank you.
Thanks for this. Once again, Coates' posters are the best in the game.
Thanks for this post, and thanks too for your useful comments on Christianity and desire, but as a medievalist, I have to intervene on a few points.
And homosexuality didn't exist, man-on-man sodomy was likened to drunkenness, something men did as to "act the fool".
The debate about whether 'homosexuality' or indeed 'heterosexuality' 'existed' (was practiced?) in the Christian Middle Ages is ongoing. But, one of the interesting things abt a Thomist conception of sodomy is that it encompasses ANY non reproductive sexual activity. A husband could commit sodomy with his wife, for example, which is a point that never fails to confuse my students. For a longer discussion, see what I have to say here.
That's one of Dreher's big problems, fitting every moral issue into a framework dating back to the Low Middle Ages.
Huh? Thomism, since it dates from the 13th century, is high middle ages. Like Dante.
In re: 7 deadly sins. Gluttony and lust were also standard suggestions for the worst of the 7 sins (the key here was what sin drove the sin in Eden). See here for much more.
“But, one of the interesting things about a Thomist conception of sodomy is that it encompasses ANY non reproductive sexual activity. A husband could commit sodomy with his wife, for example, which is a point that never fails to confuse my students.”
Yeah, I know and I thought about mentioning that as well. But I didn’t want to go too Catholic on everyone. Given the prominence Aquinas’ holds in theological thought, many non-Catholics take from him but not as many non-Catholics take everything he offers. I was trying to focus on how Dreher thinks and now that he is Eastern Orthodox, I don’t know if he still disapproves of contraception.
"Huh? Thomism, since it dates from the 13th century, is high middle ages. Like Dante."
Yes. That was a typo.
I originally used wording like “early” and “late”, then wanted to switch out that phrasing for “low” and “high”. Using the terminology that refers to the level of culture attained rather than simple chronology is more proper.
But I was getting sleepy and screwed it up. I’ve been known to do something similar by putting the “Teapot Dome Scandal” in the Grant Administration instead of the Harding Administration. If Mr. Coates ever starts a thread about political corruption in American history and I post something verbose there, perhaps, you’ll be lucky enough to be able point that out too. If you know your history well enough, you can guess why my fatigue mind might make that error as well.
It is important to make a distinction between, on the one hand, homosexuality as a kind of sexual nature—people who are sexually attracted to and disposed to fall in love with members of the same sex—and on the other hand, sodomy, or even homosexual acts that may be understood, as you suggest, as performed (sinfully) by heterosexuals, perhaps under the illusion that all people are "naturally" heterosexual. But the point that homosexuality didn't exist is dubious, though perhaps it wasn't widely known or understood.
Alcibiades gives a poetic account of love in Plato's Symposium, written several hundred years B.C.E. He describes a mythical proto-human, who had four arms, four legs, two heads, etc., and was perceived by the gods as a threat. To neutralize the threat, he was torn in half, leaving him with only two arms and two legs and one head, and a constant yearning to be reunited with his other half.
This account would be consistent with the view that there were no homosexuals, but that Alcibiades specifies that the proto-human came in three sorts: male, female, and male-female (or androgynous). The male-females that were torn apart, and then go seeking their other halves, account for heterosexuals. The males doing the same account for gay men, the females lesbians.
This is presented as as mythical, poetic account, but it illustrates that at least some Greeks living several hundreds years before Christ understood that some people have homosexual natures. Perhaps St. Paul didn't know that, and perhaps St. Thomas didn't, but it's inaccurate to say that homosexuality as we understand it today didn't exist.
Ugh.
Maybe it’s the weakness of the written word, compared to the spoken word.
I did not say nor did mean to suggest, that to the extent homosexuality is a biological condition, that it did not exist in the Ancient world.
I was talking about homosexuality as a separate, distinct and excusive orientation. Men had sex with and fell in love with other men in the days of Ancient Greece and Rome. I have no doubt that some were gay, some were not. But none thought of themselves in any other way but straight.
Perhaps I made it clearer in the other thread but I am detailing history with sympathy for homosexuals then and today. I’m not trying to say that homosexuality is made up and they can change if they want, by no means.
I made the mistake of saying Alcibiades in the previous post— the man I was thinking of was of course not Alcibiades, but Aristophanes.
I understand that our categories of "gay" and "straight" are in some ways different and perhaps stricter than most popular conceptions in the ancient world, and I understand that in, for instance, many Greek city-states, it was expected that men would marry women and father children but that they might have male lovers as well; but if you read the Aristophanes account of love in the Symposium, I am not sure how you can sustain this: "But none thought of themselves in any other way but straight." That, it seems to me, is surely false.
It may be that Aristophanes' categories were somewhat looser than ours, but he had categories, and they reflected different natures. He even mounted an argument that the man-loving men were the most courageous, the manliest people. He was clearly not thinking of them as straight men who sometimes took male lovers, but as a more fundamentally different type.
And whether or not Thomas was aware of this or gave it much consideration, Aristophanes' account demonstrates that the notion of not just homosexual acts but of homosexual NATURES did exist in the ancient world, and was not even obscure, as it is represented in Plato.
If you are still following this, I am replying up here as it is the only way I can reply to you.
I did think that you were going to bring up “The Symposium” when you mentioned Alcibiades in the context of this discussion. But I didn’t want to seem off-sides and correct you when I was almost sure of what you meant.
As you say, our categories of “straight” and “gay” change over time. I want to be careful here. It is a complex subject but we obviously are both educated people.
When I say such things as, “none thought of themselves in any other way but straight”, I mean to convey the lack of awareness of a biological aspect that made the attraction to the same gender both exclusive and unchangeable. Surely they understood that they preferred sexual relations with men rather than women. I’m sure Alexander the Great realized that his love for and attraction to Hephaestion was greater than what he felt for Roxana…or his other wife for that matter, who’s name escapes at the present moment.
Notice the context in which Plato talks about the subject, using mythical imagery. There was a definite attempt to understand. But in the end, I don’t think it was successful. Please take note of the key points I repeatedly stress, exclusive and unchangeable. I just do not think the ancients viewed homosexuality as an orientation in the way we do today, that homosexuals can not change nor can they choose to also be attracted to the opposite sex. Notice I use the word orientation, repeatedly, that is on purpose. People can be said to have a tendency to drink or have a violent nature, but both of those things can be controlled. An orientation, to my understanding, can not be.
Theologically speaking, it’s not just St. Paul and St. Thomas Aquinas, it’s everyone in-between the two and everyone after Aquinas up until the late 20th century. I mean, I said Aquinas was a moderate for his day and he was. He even theorized that abortion was licit until the “quickening”, the instance when the fetus in the womb was supposedly transformed from a blood clot into an actual being
I have a hard time believing that no one picked up on it for hundreds of years. That it existed as a notion in the Ancient world but it took scientists until the late 1800’s to rediscover the same notion…and completely independent of the Ancients’ understanding! I could be wrong but I don’t think so.
You may well be right that sexuality was not understood as being exclusive— certainly it was exceedingly common amongst the Greeks to marry a woman and also have male lovers.
But Aristophanes' account in The Symposium attempts to explain (at least to explain poetically or mythologically) why there are three types of people: (1) heterosexual men & women, (2) homosexual men, and (3) homosexual women. Perhaps Aristophanes would understand the homosexual men to also marry women in order to father children, but he without a doubt has three distinct types with distinctive mythological origins.
In my early comments I said that this suggests an understanding of homosexual natures. I think it is equally valid to say that this illustrates a clear notion of homosexual orientations. Perhaps one's homosexual orientation would not, for Aristophanes, preclude one from heterosexual acts or even relationships, but it seems quite clear from a straight-forward reading of The Symposium that Aristophanes was at least one person in the ancient world who understood different people to have fundamentally different sexual orientations.
Maybe he was the only one, but it seems clear to me that he was one.
If anybody's interested, you can find a translation of Aristophanes' speech here: http://www.anselm.edu/homepage/dbanach/sym.htm
And here's a highlight:
"Each of us when separated, having one side only, like a flat fish, is but the tally-half of a man, and he is always looking for his other half. Men who are a section of that double nature which was once called androgynous are lovers of women; adulterers are generally of this breed, and also adulterous women who lust after men. The women who are a section of the woman do not care for men, but have female attachments; the female companions are of this sort. But they who are a section of the male follow the male, and while they are young, being slices of the original man, they have affection for men and embrace them, and these are the best of boys and youths, because they have the most manly nature.
"Some indeed assert that they are shameless, but this is not true; for they do not act thus from any want of shame, but because they are valiant and manly, and have a manly countenance, and they embrace that which is like them. And these when they grow up become our statesmen, and these only, which is a great proof of the truth of what I am saying. When they reach manhood they are lovers of youth, and are not naturally inclined to marry or beget children,--if at all, they do so only in obedience to custom; but they are satisfied if they may be allowed to live with one another unwedded;"
I don't think you can read this honestly and say the man speaking thought of the people he was talking about (and presumably himself) as being REALLY straight. He's talking about a different nature, a different orientation. Men who love other men, who "are not naturally inclined to marry or beget children," and who, if they do marry and have children, do so, "only in obedience to custom," but are "satisfied if they may be allowed to live with one another unwedded."
Maybe the Christian theologians and philosophers were totally ignorant of this idea— all I'm saying is that the idea of homosexual natures/orientations DID exist, that it existed several hundred years before Christ, and if Christian theologians and philosophers didn't know about it, that's on them.
I look at Rod Dreher and think that he's not worthy of enlightened people's attention outside of as a cautionary tale of the corrosive effects of judgmental religious living.
Very thoughtful analysis.
A comment: As Nuada writes, pride surely is the most spiritually dangerous sin to the self -- that is, to the one who commits the sin -- yet lust probably has the greatest capacity for deeply damaging other people.
So, let's not be too quick to brush it off as comparatively harmless.
(Greed's up there too, of course.)
@bearing
C.S. Lewis notes pride as the 'anti-God state of mind': the place where you are least aware and/or dependent upon 'higher power' and which is the vice that will lead to all other vices. It is Satans vice, so to speak, since he can't be the devil without it... So, I think that it is indeed very damaging to the self, but it isn't limited to the self. Indeed, by the definition provided above, it can't be limited.
lust probably has the greatest capacity for deeply damaging other people
um, No. *Anger* is by definition the one that damages other people. Envy (resentment) is also intrinsically about wanting to hurt people. Lust is not the big dawg by a long shot.
Tell it to the kid whose dad runs off. Hey, I've *been* that kid. The reverberations can last for generations.
I'll accept it though -- no need to quibble. My main point is that pride stays inside and rots the soul. Anger, lust, greed come out and do damage to soul, body, and mind of others.
Lust doesnt have to equate to dads running off though.
I think thats moreso of a Lust + a side order of Selfishness deal.
There's a nice piece of reporting by Christina Davidson on another corner of the Atlantic that has some bearing on this discussion:
http://correspondents.theatlantic.com/christina_davidson/2009/06/on_sex_and_the_economy.html#entry-more
It never fails to surprise me, but it does continue to discourage me, the nature of the analysis that follows the fall from grace of, at least on the exterior, uber-pious persons, especially those with public roles. Most people look at the Mark Sanford scandal and immediately see high hypocrisy, hubristic comeuppance and an overall indictment of religious life and values as being wholly inferior to a humanist or more rationalist conception of the human condition and the existential quandaries we share as a common bond.
When I think of my faith and how it informs my opinion of governor Sanford, I don't think theology. Faith is so much more than the crafting of clever arguments to justify, explain and in most cases control human behavior. Which in my mind, is what theology is developed to do. It is a vain attempt to bridge our various interpretations of sacred text on how we should live and the challenges presented by every day life.
I do not question Governor Sanford's convictions nor his sense of piety. human psychology is such that we all harbor contradictions and gaps between our philosophies of life and right living and the actions we take in any given moment of choice, that would, if played out in the public sphere, make all of us appear to be physical manifestations of hypocrisy.
It is my contention that Mr. Sanford, and any man or woman, will sucuumb to their temptations with enough exposure and access, which he had as a major political figure. The christian faith to which I subscribe makes an allowance for the commission of sin, just not the acceptance of living in a state of sin.
As wrongheaded as Governor Sanford was on public policy and his interpretation of scripture which informs his political thought. He is still a brother in Christ, a simple man, fallible and deserving of sympathy. Though not retention of his position as governor of South Carolina. The forgiveness of sin does not provide for reprieve from the consequences of sin.