Review: Versions of Academic Freedom

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Versions of Academic Freedom, Stanley Fish. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2014.

Summary: An analysis of the idea of academic freedom, identifying five schools of thought, arguing for limiting this to the core professional duties of an academic in one’s institution and disciplinary field.

The relevance of this work is clearly evident in the presence of regular stories of how academic freedom in our universities is threatened or complaints about particular actions of faculty that are rationalized as “academic freedom.” What can or cannot be taught in a classroom? Can a faculty member email her students about the need to protest in favor of Palestinian rights against Israel? Is it an infringement on academic freedom to prohibit wearing political clothing and buttons in a class one is teaching? Is it proper for a faculty member to disclose one’s political or religious beliefs as they bear on the course material at the beginning of a course? Should a faculty member be punished for publishing research findings arrived at according to the standards for research in one’s field if those findings challenge accepted social norms and the paradigms of one’s discipline?

At least part of the answer, Stanley Fish maintains, is how one defines “academic freedom.” For him, it hinges both on what we understand to be the scope of the duties of an academic and how expansive our idea of freedom is. In this work, drawn from the Campbell Lectures sponsored by Rice University, Fish delineates five schools of thought from a very narrow definition of academic freedom to a very expansive one and argues that only the narrowest reflects what can really be called “academic freedom.”

The five schools of thought are:

  1. The “It’s a job” school. Educators provide a service of advancing through research and instruction a particular body of knowledge in one’s discipline as specified by the course catalog and syllabus. Within the scope of their professional duties they should enjoy freedom to do their job. They are not inculcating moral values, mobilizing social justice warriors, or training citizens to uphold some vision of democracy. Such things, while commendable in their role as citizens and enjoying First Amendment protection do not fall under the scope of academic freedom.
  2. The “For the common good” school. Those in this school, going back to the 1915 AAUP Declaration of Principles would go beyond the protection of scholarly work done within the scope of one’s professional duties to emphasize the academy’s role in upholding democratic values and principles of justice against the “tyranny of public opinion.”
  3. The “Academic exceptionalism or uncommon beings” school. This argues that by virtue of training, gifts, and character, academics are exceptional persons who not only correct popular opinion but are not subject to the same laws and restrictions of ordinary citizens. One example is the Virginia state law prohibiting access of state employees to pornography on state-owned computers without supervisory permission. Professors argued “academic freedom” rights to warrant declaring the law invalid for them.
  4. The “Academic freedom as critique” school. This school, with Judith Butler as a leading representative, argues that the norms and standards of the academy and one’s discipline are inherently conservative, and academic freedom protects dissent from or critique of those norms. The work of a scholar is to interrogate those norms.
  5. The “Academic freedom as revolution” school. This school invokes academic freedom to protect the scholar whose critique challenges and seeks the overthrow of corruption in the academy and society for the sake of social justice. This has been used to justify “academic squatting” in which professors, instead of teaching the advertised course, use the classroom to advance their critique and to advocate revolutionary activity.

Fish places himself in the “It’s a job” school, contending that this is the only context in which the protections of academic freedom apply. Academic freedom exists to further scholarship. Period. While other aims may be laudable, they do not fall under the rubric of academic freedom. Fish observes both the hubris and the dislocation of the focus of academic work in the “common good” school. This places academic work in the service of something else. Against both the critique and revolution schools, Fish does not dispute the conservative character of disciplines but emphasizes that new disciplines do emerge from old as “existing norms preside over their own alteration,” citing as an example the rise of women’s studies. This approach is a safeguard against the unraveling of the university, which he believes would be the consequence if these approaches prevail.

Finally, he returns to the idea of exceptionalism–the idea that academic freedom protects individuals from legal requirements with which ordinary citizens must comply. Much of this is a discussion of public employment law and specific legal cases. The basic message here is that academic freedom is a professional norm and not a legal right. Much of one’s professional duties are contractually established. Speech in the course of one’s employment is different than the exercise of First Amendment rights, with which academic freedom is often confused. One can’t depart from the subject matter of a course to talk about whatever one wants. On the other hand, the results of research undertaken as part of one’s duties, when conducted according to disciplinary practice, cannot be “directed or scripted, by the government.”

Fish’s analysis did two things for me. One was to bring greater clarity to the terminology of “academic freedom.” Instead of an umbrella term to cover many kinds of activity, Fish argues for a focused used, referring to the professional duties of an academic as well as the core function of a university as Fish understands it:

“The academy is the place where knowledge is advanced, where the truth about matters physical, conceptual, and social is sought. That’s the job, and that’s also the aspirational norm: the advancement of knowledge and the search for truth. The values of advancing knowledge and discovering truth are not extrinsic to academic activity; they constitute it.”

The other thing Fish did was make clear that academic freedom has no legal basis, but rather a shared consensus that protects professors, not in anything they do, but in the performance of their scholarly work. In particular, it seems that disciplines, college administrations and boards, and the state ideally ought to share a consensus that it is vital to protect the freedom of academics to pursue scholarly work without dictating the results of that work, including teaching that reflects the current state of learning in a discipline.

I would like to see Fish update this work, written in 2014, addressing the actions of state legislatures to dictate what may and may not be taught in courses. Traditionally, these are decisions made by departments and colleges in establishing a course of study, including the content of courses according to the current body of learning relevant to the course subject. The “it’s a job approach” in this context makes faculty the mouthpiece of a state ideology in the guise of complying with specified course context. Often this means excluding material that constitutes a significant part of the body of knowledge in a discipline. More troubling, it implies that only certain lines of inquiry with state-approved results will be supported. While Fish rightly, I believe, rejects more expansive schools of academic freedom, he fails to answer how to protect the more circumscribed idea of academic freedom he upholds.

Reflections on the Reading Life

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Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

No, I don’t read for a living. But I can’t think of a time when reading hasn’t been an integral part of my life. That idea, how reading weaves into one’s life and makes everything else richer, is something I want to reflect on for the next few minutes.

Learning to read. It began with the wonder of being able to decode words and sentences that made up stories. I ploughed through the Dick and Jane readers at school, because as my vocabulary and reading skill improved, so did the length and complexity of the stories. No longer did I need to plead, “tell me a story” (though I’ve never stopped loving good storytelling). Now I could get books from the library and read both the classic fairy tales and the ones I’d not read before.

Libraries. Book temples, really. That’s what I thought when my dad took me to the Reuben McMillan Library in Youngstown the first time. Even the children’s area had miles of shelves, and the stacks upstairs beckoned, saying, “there is plenty more where these came from–enough to last your life.” Later, as a college student, it was both a place of discovery as I did research for a class and my favorite place to study. Again, the stacks seemed to say, “when you master what is in the textbook, we have more for you.” In later years, I would stand in wonder in the atrium of Thompson Library at Ohio State where you can see floors and floors of stacks. I found amazing the vast accumulation of human knowledge as well as the awareness of how much yet we do not, and the tiny fraction that I would ever grasp. It is profoundly humbling.

Talking about books. My earliest memories was reading over lunch with my mom, and pausing at points to talk about what we were reading. Later, it was so fun to find fellow LOTR fans and lose ourselves in discussing the finer points of Middle Earth. We might read in solitude, but talking books with others is a great way to while away a few hours. I remember meeting a group of friends to try and figure out Till We Have Faces by C. S. Lewis. We saw far more together than I ever did in my own reading.

The joys of bookstores. I still remember a wonderful old bookstore outside of Toledo in a storage building with shelves and stacks of books throughout. Or the wondrous delight of discovering the Harvard Co-op and the used bookstores around Cambridge Square next to Harvard. Then there was a used bookstore between Ashland and Wooster operated by a former faculty member at Wooster. I can look over my right shoulder at the church history I picked up there for a song. He also sent the most marvelous newsletters! This brings to mind the delight of stumbling across a bookstore on a driving trip. Bookstores are one of the places where we encounter serendipity. We never know when we will find a treasure we’ve been looking for or find a new author we come to love. And when they started selling good coffee…

Family outings. We used to visit Twice Loved Books, a delightful used bookstore in a house on visits back to our hometown in Youngstown to give a break from visits to family. Or Saturday trips to our local Half Price Books, sharing our finds in the car on the way home.

The leisure of reading. There are moments when our setting, our seat, our beverage and the book at hand combine together in quiet pleasure. Sometimes it even includes dozing off on a porch by a lake, listening to the lapping of water on the shore. That’s quite OK! Sometimes it is the quiet morning in the house before anyone else is stirring, where I can almost hear the voice of the writer as I read.

Reading and faith. Every faith, even atheism, has sacred texts or foundational readings. For me as a Christianity, literacy and faith walk hand in hand. John 1:1 says, “In the beginning was the Word.” Over 40 writers under God’s inspiration wrote 66 books over a thousand year period, compiling a veritable library that I try to visit every day of my life. The reviews on this blog got started as my attempt to reflect on the books I am reading, to remember what I’ve read. I’m glad when someone else finds them helpful. Yesterday, in an interview with a church historian, he made the suggestion of reading the early church fathers and shared his own practice of reading the Philokalia. He thought their situation most like our own at the present time. Reading allows me the chance to learn from great saints and thinkers across 1500 plus years. They might help me see my time more clearly than some contemporary writers immersed in that time.

Reading as sense making. Reading helps me make sense of the world. Sometimes it does so by inviting me to look at what I thought I knew and see it from a different perspective. Reading Robin Wall Kimmerer’s Braiding Sweetgrass made me look at the world around me differently and recognize the wisdom of indigenous peoples. Somehow, reading offers the critical distance that our visual media does not, to calmly assess the arguments and ideas someone is advancing, which come off differently in print that on screens, big or small.

I suspect every reader is nodding their heads as they read this. Reading carries this kind of lived experience for you as well. I’m not sure how many non-readers are reading, let alone have made it to this point. If you have, I hope it gives you some sense of what it is like to walk around in the skin of a reader. All in all, it’s not a bad life!

Review: The Loneliness Epidemic

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The Loneliness Epidemic, Susan Mettes (Foreword by David Kinnaman). Grand Rapids: Brazos Press, 2021.

Summary: A study of the prevalence of loneliness in America, misconceptions about loneliness, and steps leaders and individuals in the church can take to address loneliness.

Loneliness is epidemic in America. Over half the population feel lonely at least once a week and fourteen percent all the time. Forty-five percent describe their feelings of loneliness as somewhere between intense and unbearable. Loneliness is linked to depression and suicide and affects not only mental but physical well-being. It contributes to heart disease, weakened immunity, stress, sleep disorders, and dementia.

Susan Mettes introduces us to this data, much of it drawn from Barna Research. She offers this definition of loneliness: “the distress someone feels when their social connections don’t meet their need for emotional intimacy.” She describes two kinds of loneliness. One is that for a buddy, and almost any buddy whose company we enjoy will do. The other is our longing for intimacy, not just sexually, but with people we can be our truest selves with.

One of the most fascinating parts of her study were the ways in which it punctured our stereotypes. We often think of the old as lonely, but actually, aside from the bereaved or disabled, young adults are the loneliest. The emphasis on deferring marriage to focus on education and career may contribute. We think the solution to loneliness is finding true love. While marriage can help, the quality of our relationships, single or married is most important and cultivating community that includes singles is vital. We need both privacy and belonging. Loneliness and the lack of privacy actually rise together. It is insecurity, which may have to do with status as well as self-talk, rather than poor social skills that contributes to loneliness.

Social media can supplement in-person relationships but can also make people jealous and lonely if it becomes a replacement for those relationships. Contrary to the belief that church makes people less lonely, Christians are generally as lonely as non-Christians (and may under-report due to stigma). Yet the pandemic also revealed a striking finding: that practicing Christians exhibited a resilience against loneliness when it was not possible to meet in person.

The third part of the book looks at what leaders may do to address loneliness. One is to foster belonging. One key idea here is that we often fail to follow up with those we meet to do something of mutual interest together. Another is closeness, which may be nurtured as we practice hospitality, appropriate physical touch, and neighborliness. We can also help by setting real-world norms and expectations including the reality that we all experience loneliness (even Jesus) as well as the steps that help address this, like inviting people over while puncturing unrealistic, social-media fed expectations about “living my best life now.” At several points, Mettes challenges leaders to model a healthy relationship with devices, and ways we keep them from getting in the way of people.

This is an important book for churches thinking about the renewal of community, even as some are walking away from relationships. Authentic hospitality, enjoying shared interests together, even appropriate hugs never go out of style. Some of us may have gotten rusty in our relationship skills and coaching in community may help us get out of our rusty ruts. Creating a culture that includes singles and the bereaved makes sense when marriage is delayed, and the pandemic has taken so many. Perhaps it is time to think about how we may foster a community epidemic in a lonely, hostile, and divided nation.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary review copy of this book from the publisher.

Growing Up in Working Class Youngstown — The Tornado of June 7, 1947

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Youngstown Vindicator, June 8, 1947, Section 2, p. 1 via Google News Archive

Many residents in the Youngstown area talk about the Newton Falls-Niles-Wheatland, PA F-5 tornado of May 31st 1985. Driving with my grandparents up Belmont Avenue to the airport north of Vienna, my grandfather pointed out where a tornado passed through that area a number of year earlier.

The tornado was on June 7, 1947, seventy-five years ago and it followed a similar track, about three miles to the north. I remember my grandparents talking about that area as being a “tornado alley.” This tornado began in the Silver Lakes area of Cuyahoga Falls, passed just north of Ravenna, near the arsenal, on to the DeForest area between Niles and Warren (a little north of Newton Falls), a couple miles south of Vienna, crossing Belmont and doing significant damage on Smith Stewart Road and Youngstown-Vienna Road before roaring over West Hill in Sharon going through the residential section of the city, damaging over 1,000 homes, striking the Gordon Ward Pontiac dealership and garage. It then went on into Mercer County.

June 7, 1947 tornado track (Source: Viennapedia, “Tornado, June 7, 1947”)

The storm was classified an F-4 tornado, which has wind speeds between 207 and 260 mph. It struck around 2:30 pm in the Niles-Vienna area. At the airport, personnel saw a “black cone-shaped cloud” to the south as 65 mile per hour winds and two inch hail punctured the wings of aircraft. While this storm missed Newton Falls, it was so dark, street lights were turned on and one witness said “It was so dark you could just barely see your hand in front of you.” The storm inflicted heavy damage to homes on Niles-Vienna Road (where the family pictured above lived) and Youngstown-Vienna Road, where two people died, and Smith Stewart Road, where a woman and her grandchild died.

The storm arrived in Sharon about 3:15 pm. As it came over West Hill, it cut a 600 foot wide swath through the residential district. Two men were killed at the Gordon Ward dealership and garage, which collapsed on them. A 26 year-old mechanic, Michael Marenchin, was sucked out into the air “and away I went like Superman.” He landed atop debris, badly injured but survived. (Source: The Herald, “Eye of the Storm.”). Power and phone service was out throughout the city.

Before the storm dissipated, it struck the Mercer County fairgrounds, leaving much of it, including the grandstand, in ruins.

Hundreds of people were injured and over 600 were left homeless, depending on the help of the Red Cross. Hospitals across the area were jammed with the injured, over 100 in all, over 35 requiring hospitalization. Damages were estimated in excess of $1,500,000. Homes were reduced to matchsticks. Others were blown off their foundations. Survivors in the path of the storm sheltered in cellars to emerge to shattered houses. Cars, stoves, and tractors went airborne.

I hope I never find myself in the path of a tornado. Reading stories like these remind me how important it is to take tornado warnings seriously. Today, we have the means to give people ten to fifteen minutes to find shelter rather than a minute or two. And I think if I lived north of Youngstown, I’d keep a special lookout…

To read other posts in the Growing Up in Working Class Youngstown series, just click “On Youngstown.” Enjoy!

Review: The Shape of Christian History

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The Shape of Christian History, Scott W. Sunquist. Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2022.

Summary: An exploration of how Christian history is written and read in an era of “Christianities” proposing three framing concepts that give coherence to the whole arc of Christian history while respecting the diversity of its expressions.

In current scholarship, it has become commonplace to speak of the diverse cultural expressions of Christianity as “Christianities.” While this honors the diversity of global Christianity, it also carries the implication that there is not, and may never have been a common thread that can be traced through the two millenia history of the Christian movement. Scott W. Sunquist, a missiologist and church historian questions this trend and sets out in this work to answer this compound question: “What is Christianity as a historical movement, and how can we best understand and explain Christianity as God’s redemptive work in history?” He argues that this is not a mere academic question of how we teach church history but also how we prepare students and pastors to live as missional participants in the global Christian movement.

Before proposing his response to this question, Sunquist offers us a “brief history of history,” exploring the history of accounts of the Christian movement through history. He begins with James Dennis and his Christian Missions and Social Progress and traces these attempts up to Kenneth Scott Latourette’s A History of Christianity. The narratives are ones not only of geographic advance but also social progress, the bringing of what was thought the best of Western culture from hospitals to schools under the mantel of colonialism. In a post-colonial situation, this narrative no longer works and Sunquist believes only the biblical story, the experience of the global church, and Jesus himself offer coherence. He proposes three framing concepts, or three threads that conform to these criteria and serve to connect the history of the global church: time, cross, and glory.

Time: Two crucial events in time inform the direction of Christian history. Creation emphasizes that the story has a clear beginning, and one of beauty, rather than an endless cycle of birth, growth, decline, and death. It speaks of the goodness of the material creation against religion that denies the goodness of the body and material world. Incarnation tells us that something decisive was done in the past that shapes our present reality and gives us a future hope. All of this addresses the religious and secularist systems that fail to offer hope of redemption on one time, or try to realize heaven on earth in over-realized eschatologies that usually end up violent.

Cross: The cross and resurrection are central to the redemptive work of God throughout human history. This is true not only in what was accomplished through suffering and vindicated in the resurrection, but also serves as a pattern for the mission of the church. The church in its mission is to be cruciform, sharing in the sufferings of Christ. Sunquist shares case studies, particularly of the Moravians and how their suffering brought life as well as generations of mission work in China, often with great persecution, only to eventuate in what may be the largest Christian movement in the world today. Sunquist challenges the versions of a Christianity of success and conquest from the Inquisition to “prosperity” Christianity.

Glory: The glory in view here is the splendor of God and the honor due God for who God is. It is what motivates mission, not in a quest for personal glory but a zeal that this be acknowledged to the ends of the earth. Sunquist traces stories of those who suffer unto glory, including that of Julia Mateer and the school she began for Chinese boys. It moves us to hope, humility, and hospitality, the “little glories” that point to the greater glory.

Having discussed the writing of history and laid out his three framing ideas of Christian history, Sunquist concludes with a marvelous chapter on the reading of Christian history and how this may be transformative for students and for the church. He urges that we:

  • Read history looking for little glories.
  • Read history for biographies.
  • Read history for the influence of ideas (theology).
  • Read history for our local churches.
  • Read history to meditate on the ambiguities of history.
  • Read history for our missionary involvement.
  • Read to have a greater awareness of evil.
  • Read history to understand the relationship between the kingdom of God and earthly kingdoms.
  • Read history to learn unity and love.

What a great apologetic for reading Christian history! He particularly encourages the reading the discovers the unsung heroes of the faith. I research and write local history and I can attest that so much of it is about people, people who often have acted with courage, character, compassion, and competence, and whose stories have been lost to their home towns. How much more for the history of the church! I’m also keenly aware as I look at the landscape of the American church that this transformative reading of church history seems greatly lacking. This raises questions for me about what happens in the training of pastors in our seminaries.

More foundationally, Sunquist reminds us of the only threads that can tie together the diverse global movements that identify as Christian: time, cross, and glory. We all believe God has acted in time to create and to incarnate his saving work in his Son, extending that through his people. We all believe in the centrality of the cross and the resurrection, and that these central events ought shape our lives. We all belief that our greatest end is God’s glory. What a fascinating study Christian history can be when given to seeing how this thread plays out, even in the darkest times, when we are at our worst and occasionally, at our best.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary review copy of this book from the publisher.

Review: The Mystery of the Blue Train

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The Mystery of the Blue Train (Hercule Poirot #6), Agatha Christie. New York: William Morrow, 2005 (originally published in 1928).

Summary: A rich heiress carrying a rare ruby is murdered on the fashionable overnight train to the French Riviera on which retired detective Hercule Poirot happens to be riding.

Agatha Christie’s most well-known train mystery is Murder on the Orient Express (1934). This was preceded by a lesser-known train mystery, The Mystery of the Blue Train, published six years earlier. It wasn’t one of her favorites and one she struggled to write. But I thought it contained some interesting plot twists and a surprise ending that I wasn’t looking for.

The plot revolves around the murder of Ruth Kettering, daughter of American tycoon, Rufus Van Aldin. Just before departing for a trip to the Riviera on the Blue Train, a luxury, overnight train through France, she agrees to her father’s counsel to divorce her philandering husband, Derek Kettering, whose most recent “bit of stuff” is an opportunistic dancer, Mirelle. He also gives her the fabulous gift of a rare ruby, with a history of murder attached to it. Van Aldin tries to buy Derek off, which he refuses, even though he faces mounting debts with no income besides Ruth’s. The only way he will get anything from her is if she dies. He also knows Ruth has resumed an affair with the Comte de la Roche, who is a rogue and a swindler who thusfar has escaped the reach of the law.

Ruth is accompanied by her new maid, Ada Mason, who after her death, tells authorities that Ruth asked her to leave at Paris and stay at the Ritz. Katherine Grey is a single woman who has been an elder companion, whose service meant so much that she was left a sizable sum by the woman she cared for. She has decided that there are things to see and experience that are now possible. She has been invited to stay with her cousin, the Viscountess Tamplin and her daughter, who also hope to benefit from Katherine’s new found wealth. And Poirot, retired and seeking to enjoy the world, is also on the train, talks wisely to Katherine, who thinks detective stories are just something fictional people are part of. It turns out she will end up far more involved than she could have imagined. Poirot agrees to assist, as well as to work for Van Aldin, and his quiet, war veteran assistant, Major Knighton.

The case revolves around the time between when Ada left Ruth in Paris and who the tall male was seen entering and leaving Ruth’s compartment before the train passed through Lyons. Initial suspicions center around Ruth’s love, the Comte de la Roche, in league with a jewel dealer. Was this just a jewelry theft gone bad or something more? Yet Poirot is not so sure and suspicions turn to Derek. A cigarette case found in the compartment is thought to be his. Then Mirelle, who Derek has decided to ditch in his interest in Katherine, goes to Poirot and tells him that she saw Derek leave Ruth’s compartment at about the time the murder was purported to occur. Katherine also saw a man around Ruth’s compartment and possibly enter it.

One other detail troubles Poirot. Why did Ruth’s murderer not only strangle her but also strike her face with a disfiguring blow. Could Derek have done that? Katherine, who is now being pursued by both Derek and Major Knighton is drawn into Poirot’s counsels. At the risk of looking “past it” with Van Aldin, Poirot keeps looking, and particularly for a shadowy figure known as the Marquis.

As I mentioned, I wasn’t expecting the ending, which made this all the more fun. Poirot and Katherine match each other in very different ways in their own self-possession. I would have liked to see them together again–and perhaps Poirot would have as well–but she makes a different choice that, depending on your perspective, may seem “safe” or alternatively reflect a mature self-understanding. I think the latter and found her one of the most interesting of Christie’s characters, in her understated way.

Review: Saint Francis of Assisi

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Saint Francis of Assisi (Paraclete Heritage Edition), G. K. Chesterton. Brewster, MA: Paraclete Press, 2013 (Originally published in 1923).

Summary: Less a biography than a reflection on the meaning of the life of St. Francis.

l will begin with a caveat. If you are looking for a biography of St. Francis of Assisi, this is not your book. It is not that there is not biographical information about St. Francis to be found here. However, you can probably find all that is here biographically in a Wikipedia article. Chesterton himself describes his approach as neither that of a secular biographer or a devotional biographer, but as an admiring outsider trying to make sense of what may be baffling about St. Francis from what we understand of him. How do we understand the mixture of gaiety and austerity in his life, his love of all creation and the abuse of his own body. How do we make sense of his attempts to convert the Muslims? Or the climactic episode of his life on Alverno?

A theme that runs through it all for Chesterton is that what is senseless to the outside observer is not to the lover, and what we have in the story of Francis, God’s Troubadour, is the life of one passionately in love with God, with humanity, indeed all of creation. Indeed, Chesterton suggests that his very name foresees his love of the French troubadours and the gaity of the jongleur de dieu may be seen in his fun loving youth and eager response to the call to war. His dream that leads him to enlist in the Crusades is one more example of not only his zestfulness but longing for glory, until turned back by illness, accompanied by another vision that pointed him to a different quest that began with a downward ascent, culminating in the embrace of the leper.

This leads to Damiano and the call to restore the ruined church, a concrete expression of a larger church in ruins. He gets in trouble for selling his father’s goods to do this, and when confronted renounces it all, and his heritage, going into the woods with a hairshirt and a song, begging stones. Chesterton observes that the way to build a church is to build it. And as he does so, and Portiuncula to follow, others are drawn to his song, Bernard, the rich burgher and Peter the church Canon, who are the beginnings of a new society, living in a hut next to the leper hospital.

Chesterton then stops to consider the Jongleur de dieu image further–not only as jester, or joculator, or juggler, but also as tumbler. He reflects on Francis’ journey to this point, from the son of an affluent merchant to his dark night of imprisonment and illness, his stripping himself all, and the tumble from there into the praise of God, having been shorn of all else. He explores Francis discovery of the richness of and love for every creature, and in turn, every person as an individual, a royal personage in the courts of God, whether beggar or Pope. He traces out the attempt to regularize this growing movement of friars, itinerant rather than secluded monastics, holy among the world.

Later chapters reflect on his attempt to pass through the lines to convert the Muslim Sultan as the “mirror of Christ” the accounts of the miracles surrounding Francis and the encounter with Christ at Alverno and the reports of the sigmata. Chesterton neither dismisses nor argues for any of this but takes the course of simply telling the story. He argues that beyond supposedly supernatural events was the supernatural life of Francis himself, up until his final moments, removed from his bed to lie on the ground.

Whether one likes this, it seems has to do with what one is looking for in reading about Francis. At times, this felt to me as if Francis was a foil for Chesterton, and his ways of drawing out paradox and turning ideas on their head. No doubt there is that in the life of St. Francis, whose downward way began the rebuilding of a church in ruins. I appreciate the approach Chesterton takes of neither debunking nor devotionalizing (is that a word?) Saint Francis. Yet I felt I was reading about St. Francis through a very Chestertonian lens, and while I like Chesterton, I think I would have liked more of Francis, even at the expense of making sense of conflicting data. Perhaps that is a fourth approach, that leaves the more baffling aspects of Francis unresolved, allowing each of us to wrestle with what to make of this most unusual saint.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary review copy of this book from the publisher.

Review: Discovering Biblical Equality (Third Edition)

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Discovering Biblical Equality: Biblical, Theological, Cultural & Practical Perspectives (Third Edition), Editors: Ronald W. Pierce and Cynthia Long Westfall, Associate editor: Christa L. McKirland. Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2021.

Summary: A compendium of scholarly essays addressing gender differences in marriage and the church supporting an egalitarian perspective.

One of the divides among evangelical churches is over the question of the roles of women and men in the home and the church. One group would contend that the Bible teaches distinctive roles for women and men, teaching the subordination of women to the headship of men in marriage, and that men alone may lead and teach in the church, except in the case of ministry with women or children. This position has been variously termed traditional, hierarchical or most popularly, complementarian. It is represented by the Council of Biblical Manhood and Womanhood (CBMW). The other group would maintain that the Bible teaches mutual love and service of husband and wife in marriage and open all roles in ministry to both men and women on the basis of gift rather than gender. This position is most often referred to as biblical equality or egalitarian, and as evangelical feminism by its opponents. This position is most publicly represented by Christians for Biblical Equality (CBE) International.

Each has published compendia of scholarly articles serving as resources in support of their respective positions. CBMW’s publication is Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood, edited by John Piper and Wayne Grudem, now in a revised edition. Discovering Biblical Equality represents the scholars who would identify with CBE International, including Mimi Haddad, its president. It is in its third edition, with Cynthia Long Westfall taking the place of Rebecca Merrill Groothuis, co-editor of the first two editions and an essay contributor, who passed away in 2018. Christa L. McKirland also joined the editor team as an associate editor and contributes one of the most thought provoking articles on gender essentialism.

The work is set up in four sections. It is not meant to be read straight through necessarily, as I did, but to serve as a reference work. For the sake of brevity, I will summarize the content of each section, highlighting essays that particularly caught my attention.

Looking to Scripture: Essays in this section address questions of exegesis of the relevant passages on gender in marriage and the church. I particularly appreciated Aida Besancon-Spencer’s study of Jesus’s treatment of women in the gospels and his affirmation of women as learners, disciples, and laborers alongside men, while also addressing reasons for the male apostles. Lynn Cohick’s study on Ephesians 5:21-33 and Colossians 3:18-19 addresses historical and exegetical concerns and supports the idea of mutual love and submission within marriage. Linda L. Belleville’s exceptionally thorough essay on 1 Timothy 2:11-15 discusses the translation of authentein and contends that Paul is addressing a particular occasion in which the Ephesian women were trying to gain advantage over men by teaching in a domineering fashion, and thus that Paul is not prohibiting all teaching but only that striving for the upper hand.

Thinking it Through: Theological and Logical Perspectives: Christa L. McKirland argues against the gender essentialism of Piper and Grudem that roots maleness and femaleness with distinctiveness of roles in being created in the image of God. She argues that dominion and reflection of the divine presence are not gender dependent, and that genderedness connects us not with the image of God but other creatures. Hence, personhood is not essentially male nor female. That doesn’t mean there are no differences, but these are not essential differences. There are interesting questions this essay raises about gender identity, particularly in cases of intersexuality or gender dysphoria that I would like to see developed further. Kevin Giles offers a helpful summary of the theologically questionable use of hierarchical arguments about the subordination of the Son to support the subordination of women, noting that other complementarians have refuted this position. Finally, the essay by the late Rebecca Merrill Groothuis on “Equal in Being, Unequal in Role” shows the logical fallacies in this view, often invoked by complementarians and reminds us of the fine scholar we lost in her.

Addressing The Issues: Interpretive and Cultural Perspectives: Jeffrey Miller offers a helpful, data-based essay on the impact of gender-accurate translation and how our contemporary translations differ in this regard. Heidi R. Unruh and Ronald J. Sider offer a highly relevant essay on gender equality and the sanctity of life, written pre-Dobbs. They argue for a compassionate, pro-life feminism. They argue for a whole of life approach to being pro-life, and argue for how pro-life and pro-choice advocates may work together to seek the flourishing of women.

Living It Out: Practical Applications: I appreciated Mimi Haddad’s essay of how at the church level, people might be helped to understand biblical equality through: speaking biblical truths in understandable language, emphasizing how mutuality improves marriages, connect this message to core Christian beliefs, model the message, and allow simple, safe ways for people to try out their Christian freedom with regard to gender. Kylie Maddox Pidgeon’s essay on “Complementarianism and Domestic Abuse” makes a powerful case that intended or not, complementarianism creates systemic discrimination, and “implicit and explicit biases that disadvantage women.” Alice P. Mathews concludes this section with an essay titled “Toward Reconciliation.” She calls for honest discussions between those holding competing paradigms with both biblical rigor and courtesy, the paradigms must be explained at many levels, and we need to work at embracing each other across the chasm, centering our relations in the gospel.

My sense is that the “sides” of this discussion operate as echo chambers, each amplifying its own voice and muting the others. Certainly with regard to this book, egalitarians could use this work as just such an echo chamber. Yet this work is important, especially for women in contexts where they receive little encouragement for their gifts or support for their personhood in their marriages. I pray for the days when scholars on both “sides” of this discussion engage with each other rather than writing about each other in separate tomes like this one or the CBMW counterpart. I look forward to the days when what scholars of color are saying is heeded in what has been a predominantly white discussion. I look forward to the day when there is one less instance of the “pervasive interpretive pluralism” that evangelicalism’s critics have observed of us. And I hope this work will serve to promote understanding rather than unfruitful argument.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary review copy of this book from the publisher.

Review: At the Back of the North Wind

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At the Back of the North Wind, George MacDonald. New York: Open Road Media, 2022.

Summary: Diamond becomes friend with the North Wind, who takes him on many adventures, even while he is a help to everyone he meets and known for his rhymes.

Diamond is a young boy, who is described as having “a tile loose,” and yet is so pleasant and helpful and even precocious that he is a delight to his parents and all those his life touches. His first bedroom is in a barn above the stable of “Old” Diamond, the faithful horse his father drives, first as a livery man and later as a cabbie. The wall behind his head has a hole in it that he and his mother both try to plug until he learns that in so doing he is plugging one of the windows of the North Wind. Diamond befriends her and goes on a number of night adventures. In one, he helps a little girl, Nanny, a street sweeper. Most of the adventures with North Wind are delightful but not all. On one, North Wind is a great storm that swamps a ship, with the loss of all but a handful aboard. At another point, he learns of the land at “the back of the North Wind,” and in a time when he is very ill, he is permitted to go there, a place North Wind herself has not gone, by passing through North Wind into a paradise-like place.

On his return, a crisis had passed in his illness, and a turning point occurred in his life, much like that of many who report near-death experiences. He has an uncanny capacity to create rhymes that soothe the baby in his home and improvise on nursery rhymes. By now his father is driving cab and he learns to handle Diamond, and takes his father’s place during illness. There is a period where he rarely encounters North Wind. But he helps Nanny who has taken sick, seeking the help of Mr. Raymond, a philanthropist, who had been a fare and was taken with the boy. While she was in the hospital, she has dreams of going to the Moon, which she tells Diamond, making him wonder if his own adventures with North Wind were real or also just dreams–or can dreams be real?

I won’t reveal the ending except to suggest that I believe Diamond discovers the answer to his questions, which remind one of the questions one might have about the life of faith. And what of the North Wind? We have both a beautiful woman who creates a nest for Diamond in her hair or holds him to her bosom, but is also a fierce power sending a ship full of people to their deaths. Is North Wind a kind of angel of death (very different than typically portrayed)? Diamond is given up for dead at the time he goes “back of the North Wind.” Death hovers over this story, as it did over life in this period where children often died young, a pregnancy could end in death, or an illness strike down a hearty man, as it nearly does Diamond’s father. There is at once an inscrutable character about death but also the assurances of One who will be near us in our dying, even a friend of the dying.

Most of us do not have near death experiences from which we return. MacDonald doesn’t shy away from this reality. In Diamond, we have one whose life is transformed by dying, “as one who has been back of the North Wind.” And the story suggests to me that when we face death’s realities and our hope for what is beyond, we also may be changed. Stern stuff for young readers in our day, but in MacDonald’s time, children became acquainted early with death and needed stories to help them live in light of its reality. As do we.

Growing Up in Working Class Youngstown–When Phone Numbers Had Letters/Words

/ rtrube54 / 12 Comments

Remember when, if someone asked you your phone number, you said something like “SW2-3456” or “SWeetbriar2-3456”? And if you were dialing, you looked for those letters or the first two letters in the name on your phone dial (that’s where “dialing” came from). SW was 79.

Those names were tied to phone exchanges and corresponded roughly to geographic areas of town. The four most popular in the immediate Youngstown area were:

  • RIverside (74): Downtown and Northside
  • SKyline (75): Boardman, Poland, Struthers area
  • STerling (78): Southside
  • SWeetbriar (79): West side, Austintown

In the 1920’s, your phone number was just four numbers, for example 2345. Eventually, as populations grew, a fifth number was added, allowing up to about 50,000 numbers. In some areas, a three letter prefix followed by four numbers was eventually added (for example COLumbus-2345). By 1950, the Bell system standardized the two letter-five number sequence across the country, creating the two letter prefixes and standardized names (ST for example could only be STate, STerling, STillwell, or STory). And like the picture above, your phone probably had a sticker in the center of the dial with the two letter prefix with the rest of the exchange name in lower case following followed by five numbers in this form x-xxxx. A name and five numbers seems easier to remember for some than seven numbers.

By the late 1950’s, the transition began to all-number calling. In Youngstown, this change occurred some time in the mid-1960’s. The January 1966 Vindicator still had alphanumeric numbers. By January 1967, ads showed all-number phone numbers. This facilitated direct dialing of long distance calls as well (remember when operators, who knew the area codes, would place these for you?). Before we had phones with built in memories, we had to write down or remember ten numbers–a more difficult challenge.

The alphanumeric system is not completely gone. Look at the keypad on your cell phone. Above each number, beginning with 2 you still have the alphabet in groups of three. The only change is that the “Z” has been moved to the 9 and “Q” has been added to 7.

Do you remember the name for your phone exchange growing up? And if you lived in other areas of the Mahoning Valley, what was the name of your exchange? Do you remember the change, and if so, how did you feel about it?

To read other posts in the Growing Up in Working Class Youngstown series, just click “On Youngstown.” Enjoy!