The thing is that cooking and washing were compatible with childcare, while teaching and medicine generally are not. Children benefit from stay-at-home moms; I did, anyway. And if your values differ from those of the broader culture, daycare is likely to drag your kids at least part way to that culture.
I know that this isn't practical for all families. But we should try to make it practical for as many families as we can. And for those couples who are on the fence about what to do, we should let them know that it's good for them and their kids.
Edit: Since this discussion started with college, I'd like to add that the liberal arts are valuable for most intelligent people -- the actual liberal arts, not activism in a skinsuit. Making those available in a way that is culturally and economically compatible with housewifery as a life path is a worthwhile goal in itself.
Hieronymus
1mo ago
No one is denying the relevance of Christianity’s Jewish roots. The Old Testament is important, and Jesus as the Jewish Messiah is a central doctrine of Christianity. But gentiles were included from a very early date.
I want to riff on hydroacetylene’s examples, keeping in mind that the Battle of Milvian Bridge, when Constantine began to move toward Christianity, happened in 312.
Acts 10–11 covers the Jewish church’s acceptance of gentile converts, and Acts 15 relates the decision not to impose the Mosaic law on them. Even if you do not accept Acts as history, it demonstrates the presence of gentile converts who did not practice the Jewish law at the time the book was written. It may be from the 60s, because it doesn’t include Paul’s death, but I think that some liberal scholars have it as late as the early second century.
The Didache is a super interesting document of early Christian teaching and practice. It has a ton of Jewish influence, but it also takes pains to distinguish Christians from non-Christian Jews (ch. 8) and to include gentiles (14:3). Its date is hotly disputed; it is most likely from the first century, but at the latest from the middle of the second.
The church fathers cover a long span of time, but they begin in the late first century. The earliest group is called the apostolic fathers (as distinct from the apostles themselves), and they take it as a given that the church includes gentiles.
Hieronymus
1mo ago
The classical liberal chamber of my heart grew three sizes today. A move that simultaneously targets overregulation, the illegibility of the administrative state, and strict liability? I hope that the president can find a way to parlay this into lasting change.
Hieronymus
1mo ago
Sure. But then, all people would be the same in that regard. Love has to single out a particular person (or a particular thing) in contradistinction to others.
Fair enough. I think that's a pretty base level definitional difference with Christianity.
When I looked into liberation theology, what I found was a group of people using gospel language but assigning the terms Marxist definitions. It wasn’t that they denied the resurrection but that they rendered it irrelevant, something one could take or leave. If that’s not representative, I’ll be pleasantly surprised; I considered reading Gutiérrez, but by that point I wasn’t particularly inspired to look deeper.
I will have to check out your link.
Edit: Do you know of a link to the words of the people’s mass you linked? My Spanish isn’t great, and I will do a better job muddling through text than audio.
Hieronymus
1mo ago
It means that love of neighbor follows from love of God, but the former doesn’t subsume the latter.
Let me give an example that I read a zillion years ago in the New Foxe’s Book of Martyrs. I may get the details wrong, and I haven’t confirmed the thoroughness of the book’s sources, but it works just as well as a thought experiment anyway:
A woman was in the custody of the Soviet secret police. These sometimes took a perverse joy in breaking people they weren’t going to let leave alive anyway, and they had decided to break her faith. When maiming her legs didn’t do it, they brought in her children and threatened to shoot them if she did not deny Christ. She refused, and the secret police shot her children in front of her.
If love of God is the higher good, she did the right thing. It’s not that she didn’t love her children enough; it’s that she loved God more than that.
Hieronymus
1mo ago
These are not evangelical theologies---and it's fine to dislike them for that reason…
The gulf here is much wider than that. If Jesus Christ was not raised from the dead, then confessional Lutheranism, or Roman Catholicism, or Eastern Orthodoxy falls apart. Liberation theology and the social gospel movement keep on trucking.
… but they obviously incorporate the supernatural.
Only in the sense that they try to “use the stairs of heaven as a shortcut to the nearest chemist's shop,” in Lewis’ inimitable phrase.
Hieronymus
1mo ago
“You shall love your neighbor as yourself,” is the second greatest commandment. The greatest is, “And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.” The two commandments are not the same, and the order is important. You can’t just swap out the gospel for any old cause, not even one that preaches love.
If you remove the supernatural bits from Christianity, you are not left with a new kind of Christianity; you have a new movement wearing Christianity as a skin suit. There have been plenty of these. Off the top of my head, liberation theology, the social gospel movement, and the preaching of John Ball seem to be pretty straightforward parallels.
The command to love your neighbor does not imply that you are to love everyone to the same degree and in the same way. Christians disagree among ourselves about the details. I personally find the first epistle of John to be helpful here, but I also consider it one of the most difficult books of the New Testament. A lot of people read John talking about love, have fuzzy feelings, and ignore the things he says that make it complicated.
I don’t know enough Aristotelian (I assume) philosophy to speak fittingly in terms of essences, properties, and qualities. But I can point out that in Christian belief all men possess the image of God, which gives them value in itself and may resolve your dilemma.
No problem, still appreciate the reply. Hope it's been interesting for you as it has in return. Or maybe I have too much time on my hands.
I respect and appreciate the enthusiasm.
To be frank, my ADHD makes it hard for me to handle all the subjects of discussion in our exchange and consistently organize my replies in a useful way. As a younger man perhaps I would have made it work by hyperfocusing on the thread to the exclusion of all else, but that’s rare these days. Since it’s the best I can do tonight, rather than leave you hanging I am going to summarize a couple of partial thoughts.
I agree that Hebrews was probably not written by Paul but by someone in his circle. In the absence of internal attribution I am partial to the Barnabas theory, but that’s really underinformed speculation on my part.
I somehow did not predict that the Mormon view of Hebrews would be so different, but in retrospect it would have to be to correspond to the Mormon view of priesthood. I think that view bakes in some assumptions about what the Levitical priesthood is for, though, that I want to dispute. The primary function of the Old Testament priesthood was to present offerings to God, particularly sacrifices. That’s why the author of Hebrews presents it as being not only surpassed but replaced by Christ’s role as a high priest after the order of Melchizedek (e.g., Heb. 10:8–14).
That phrase, “after the order of Melchizedek,” is a reference to Psalm 110, which is a royal psalm. The phrase applied to David as king in Jerusalem, so David is being treated as a type and Christ the antitype. Christ is priest-king in a way that David only foreshadowed, and he is a priest forever unlike Aaron or (metaphorically) David. He made his one sacrifice, himself, and sat down at the right hand of God. But the office of priest-king is unique; since Jesus lives forever, he can have no successor. There cannot be another priest after the order of Melchizedek (Heb. 7–10, more or less).
I really have to spell it out for you people, I guess. Encourage Protestants to use the power of the state to enforce their religious morality and they may well decide to come after Catholicism, which they have traditionally seen at best as a corrupt and degraded form of Christianity.
I, for one, appreciate having this spelled out. I might have anticipated that objection during the George W. Bush administration, but I don’t anticipate it now.
I think you are writing in good faith, but I don’t think you understand how Protestant social dynamics have evolved. When Berry says “a Protestant nation,” he has a different idea what that means than a turn-of-the-twentieth-century counterpart might have had. While on a theological level Catholic vs. Protestant theological differences mean as much as they ever did, on a social level differences between theological liberalism and theological conservatism are much more salient. (This is strongly related to social progressivism vs. social conservatism and weakly related to economic leftism vs. economic rightism.)
If Berry got his dream, would he shutter Roman Catholic schools? No, I don’t think so. Would he shutter Jesuit schools? Maybe. But not because of Jesuits’ oaths of loyalty to the pope – because they are, in fact, liberal as heck.
Hieronymus
1mo ago
I don’t have the time or focus tonight to give this as thorough a reply as I’d like, particularly to the biblical references, but I will write what I can and try to pick out the most important points.
For us, a modern council of 12 apostles is where the overall legitimacy resides, as it did anciently, given by various figures literally appearing and laying on hands in the earlier days of the church….
Ah, I see where your reservations about Paul come from. Interestingly, while no biblical figure matches the idea of apostleship you lay out below, including Jesus’ twelve disciples, St. Paul comes closest in other respects.
Authority is also nearly synonymous with the actual right to receive specific guidance for your position, such as leading the church, and at the top that encompasses doctrinal revelation.
This explanation is very helpful, and I think it’s a very important difference between Mormonism and Christianity.
I would view it as a great error to assume humans are allowed to do it all by themselves with their own permission (Hebrews 5:4).
Hebrews is saying something almost the opposite of that. It’s about how the high priesthood of Christ is the ultimate reality toward which the Levitical priesthood pointed. Christ having accomplished his sacrifice once for all, the Old Testament priesthood is now unnecessary.
The scriptures are great, my church did actually come from a Sola Scriptura initial background, but in general the intention is for them to be used alongside current divine guidance (eg 2 Tim 3:16-17).
I don’t see how you get that from 2 Timothy at all. Particularly if you look at the whole passage starting in verse ten, Paul is saying that the Scripture itself is edifying, that it gives knowledge of salvation, and that it lets one discern false teachers. Verse 16 discusses its use between Christians in a way that applies to church leaders, but there is no sign of an expectation of ongoing revelation to those leaders.
Hieronymus
1mo ago
I appreciate the summary. Could you clarify what you mean by authority in this context? You seem to be using it in a particularly Mormon way.
It likely goes without saying, but the Protestant take is that the Bible is the inspired and authoritative guide to the apostolic faith and that all subsequent teachers are to be judged by that standard; the canon is closed.
Obviously, Roman Catholics and Eastern Orthodox have their takes on the apostolic succession, but I don’t think their notion of authority is the same as yours, and it would be interesting to see it explained from your side.
Hieronymus
1mo ago
As a Protestant, I agree with you that the papacy is no guarantor of doctrinal fidelity. But the core question is this: The pope is said to be the vicar of Christ – is he? Flawed historical assertions and doctrinal contradictions count as evidence against the claim, but the claim itself is true or false and should be addressed as such. (Whether this is the right forum to go deep on that question is a separate issue.)
The same is true of claims about the president of the Mormon church: Is he a true or false prophet? Having a true prophet may be useful, but that doesn’t determine whether Joseph Smith and Russell Nelson qualify. Flawed historical assertions and doctrinal contradictions count as evidence here too. And I think it’s audacious to say that the LDS score well.
What about the Mormon history of pre-Columbian America, which doesn’t jive with any historical source or archeological finds? Or the book of Abraham, whose source manuscripts turned out to be Egyptian funerary texts once we could read hieroglyphs? Or the edits to the Book of Mormon regarding the nature of the godhead? Or the doctrines which were said to be unchangeable but were nevertheless changed, like plural marriage?
Hieronymus
2mo ago
I am not sure if you mean to imply more depth than you give explicitly, but the version you wrote is not the same as Magusoflight’s. I think it’s misleading to say, “This is fine,” without qualification, at least where kids are involved.
Consider teaching children about paraplegia. You want children to respect its victims and to be aware of what they really are and are not capable of. You want them to understand that disability is not a moral failing. But you don’t want them to think that being wheelchair-bound is just as good as being able to walk, that it’s no affliction at all, and that given a choice between being healthy or paraplegic there is no reason to prefer one over the other.
I think that the folks adding intersex conditions to the preschool and grade school curricula are trying to say that there is no reason to prefer not to be intersex; they are looking to deconstruct sex and gender in the minds of children as young as they can get them. To teach that this is an affliction, to add that little bit of complexity, would undermine their goals.
Hieronymus
2mo ago
They are making a legal argument, not a political or moral one; the first amendment to the U.S. constitution calls out religion specifically. This is the flip side of a related issue, that the Constitution (or at least constitutional jurisprudence) does not sufficiently limit the imposition of irreligious totalizing ideologies because they are not an “establishment of religion.” In the same way, violating a philosophical commitment is not “prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”
Applying the religion clauses of the first amendment is already complicated in a country as socially and religiously diverse as America has become. Consider Masterpiece Cakeshop, whose proprietor’s sincere religious beliefs are not in doubt: He won at the Supreme Court on the grounds that the Colorado Civil Rights Commission was motivated by demonstrable animus against his religion, and even then the decision was 7–2.
Hieronymus
2mo ago
Taking this idea seriously, it's hard to see how it manifests in the US.
At best it manifests in a dictatorship where the victorious side murderously purges the other from any position of leadership, civil, military, or social. At worst you get something like the Spanish Civil War, but in a much larger country.
But it’d be a mistake to take it seriously. It’s a bit of dark humor from Scott.
Hieronymus
2mo ago
Yes, it would create further divergence between academia’s idea of legitimacy and the ways the federal bureaucracy has created to make academic legitimacy legible and manageable. It would harm Harvard insofar as it made the bureaucracy unable to grant it money because Harvard’s reputation was no longer formally legible.
That raises the question: Does this form of legibility do more good or harm?
Hieronymus
2mo ago
… the Trump administration's demands that they install right-wing commissars to monitor the university for wrongthink.
I think that this is a reasonable characterization, but it’s complicated by the fact that they’re demanding right-wing commissars to shoot the left-wing commissars. It’s commissars all the way down. As a conservative, I have deeply mixed feelings about all of this.
I’ve been thinking a fair bit about the conservative movement and how its idea of the relationship between private organizations and the state has changed since the middle of the twentieth century. (That’s not to say that the Trump coalition is identical with the conservative movement, of course.) We’ll see if those thoughts ever become solid enough for an effortpost.
Hieronymus
2mo ago
Thank you for this summary; the clarity is extremely helpful.
I am usually not a fan of mootness games, or of Roberts' dodging underlying issues, and I have mixed feelings about this one too. But I have to admire his cleverness at avoiding constitutional crises.
Hieronymus
3mo ago
It’s true. Ultimately it comes down to a question of what those basic rights are.
Hieronymus
3mo ago
The first one is straightforward, but I'd love to see you expand on the second. I think everyone has seen it happen, but I don't think I've ever seen it framed quite that way.
Hieronymus
3mo ago
Hieronymus
3mo ago
More controversially, I feel the same is true about mandatory ID cards and hate speech laws, by the way. If Vermont wants Euro-style hate speech laws, I really don’t care. Plenty of states will oppose them. The same is true for gun control, for civil rights, for gay marriage, for religion in government.
As a red-triber in a very blue state, who is often willing to support federalism even when it harms his interests, I draw the line at my basic rights as an American. I shouldn't have to leave my home and my family's legacy here to secure them.
Hieronymus
3mo ago
I am neither a parent nor a teacher. I know parents whose children have sound reasons for their IEPs, and sometimes teachers weren't responsive to their childrens' legitimate needs without them. But those same parents often make light of teachers' reasonable concerns. The whole thing strikes me as an awful, dehumanizing, bureaucratic kludge for everybody involved.
I'd be interested to read about your experiences.
There was an attempt at this with covenant marriage, but it doesn't seem to have accomplished much. That said, it'd be interesting to hear from mottizens who live in states where that's an option. It looks like it was watered down to make the law acceptable to the mainstream and undermined by the availability of no-fault divorce in other states.
And, while I can't speak for all social conservatives, I'd be reluctant to support any new version of this so long as Obergefell stands.
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