Technically,
Archbishop Sheen will not be beatified until Thursday, Sept.24. But by the time
many readers notice this post, the event will have taken place.
In any
case, thousands have already taken to heart, during his lifetime or in the
nearly half-century since his death, the spiritual lessons of perhaps the
greatest mass communicator in the history of American Catholicism.
The image accompanying this post, from the 1959 Best Picture Oscar-winner, Ben Hur, shows Jesus awaiting Pilate as the Roman procurator washes his hands. It illustrates why Jesus, in saying "My kingdom is not of this world," disappointed those who expected, in French's words, “a true Messiah [who] was supposed to lead the people to political triumph.”
Today, their counterparts are often labeled Christian nationalists. I wish there was an alternative name that didn’t spark a negative reaction, but “Dominionism,” “Christian Supremacy,” and “The Seven Mountain Mandate” are not immediately understood.
But Patrick Shreiner’s 2023 post “The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly of Christian Nationalism” on the Website of the Gospel Coalition identifies two elements that make this ideology
problematic: it desires either a fusion of Christianity with civil life, or
even a supremacy over it, often with a resort to power to force belief in tenets that violate notions of freedom of conscience and separation of church and state.
John Newton—born
300 years ago today in London—knew all about a Christian’s “difficulties.”
Before his conversion, his days, as a young sailor on a slave ship, been filled
with drinking, gambling, and profanity. Nor was his radical change of heart the
product of a single day: it would be some years before he gave up how he made
money, as the captain of several slave ships and an investor in the slave
trade.
But when the change was complete, it was remarkable. He
became one of the most prominent proponents of the African slave trade, and
lived to see Great Britain abolish the practice just a few months before his
death.
Long after his death, Newton has continued to
influence lives. Among his compositions is “Amazing Grace,” perhaps the
best-known Christian hymn. It has sustained movements, notably for civil rights,
and, at the most personal level, individuals struggling with substance abuse, as
related in this March 2018 blog post on the Website for the Council on
Recovery.
One of those individuals is singer Judy Collins, who began
singing the hymn in concert in 1964 and recorded it in 1970. In an interview with Beliefnet, she told how the song offers “a spiritual message which anybody
can relate to, because people understand that transformation happens. And that
it comes as a surprise and is often inexplicable, which means grace has to have
something to do with it.”
The image accompanying
this post is from a painting of the apostle by Flemish painter Peter Paul
Rubens (1577-1640).
Phillips Brooks may be best known today for writing
the lyrics to the gentle Christmas hymn “O Little Town of Bethlehem.” But his
ministry stretched from the Civil War to the heart of the Gilded Age—times of
severe trial that left many Americans all too “spotted from the world,” as they
inflicted violence on nonwhites and widened the economic chasm between
themselves and those less fortunate.
The accounts of his life indicate, as Fr. Peter Kountz notes in this blog post from three years ago, that Brooks was “available,
approachable, inspirational, authentic and reverent.”
But you can’t read the words above, nor the sermon in
which I first encountered this great 19th-century preacher, “The Seriousness of Life,” without feeling that he also possessed a spine of
steel, and a willingness to call out the worst instincts of his time.
I was stunned when I saw how aptly the quote above
applied to one contemporary figure who, more than anyone I can think of,
exemplifies this “cynicism,” “disbelief,” and “hard-heartedness.”
This Republican is a far cry from the first one to
occupy the White House, Abraham Lincoln, whom Brooks hailed, in the post-assassination eulogy that made the young preacher famous, as one who “showed us how
to love truth and yet be charitable—how to hate wrong and oppression, and yet
not treasure one personal injury or insult.”
Sadly, though, the current Republican’s attitude has
not merely become an infection but a plague in American life. Otherwise, how
else to explain why more so-called Christian preachers haven’t criticized his
Christmas message urging those who differ from him to “ROT IN HELL”?
I’m afraid this blight on the national spirit will not
be eradicated until preachers with the credibility of Brooks, across the broad
spectrum of American denominations, denounce what that current national figure
embodies.
(The accompanying photo
of John Dominic Crossan was taken during a lecture at Bellarmine University on
Nov. 8, 2008 by Donald Vish.)
