history

Haiti: The Aftershocks of History

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Haiti: The Aftershocks of History, Laurent Dubois. New York: Picador, 2013.

Summary: A history of Haiti, from colonial rule under France up to the earthquake of 2010.

If you are following world news you will have noticed the descent of Haiti into gang violence and a dissolution of its government with no president since the assassination of President Moise in 2021 and the resignation of acting Prime Minister of Ariel Henry in March 2024. Numerous citizens have been kidnapped, many have fled the country and the country is facing critical levels of food insecurity. With that in view, I picked up this history of the country to see if I might gain some understanding of the current events. Laurent Dubois narrates the history of the country from the colonial period under France up until 2010, although the period after the Duvaliers, father and son, is only briefly covered.

It is a history to make one weep. The country is the only country to gain independence through the revolt of a slave people, in this case against France. Slaves on the profitable sugar plantations rose under the leadership of Toussaint Louverture in a fight running from 1791 to 1804 for independence. Toussaint died as a prisoner of war during an attempt by the French to recapture the former colony. The French were finally defeated in 1804 under a coalition led by Jean-Jacques Dessalines who proclaimed himself emperor, re-established the plantation system rather than the small farms people wanted, and then died.

One element of this story is the instability, authoritarian character and corruption of leaders that goes back to the nation’s origins. Over its history, the country has experienced over 30 coups. Leaders re-wrote constitutions several time to protect their power, in one instance, for life. There was a reliance upon the military, or in the case of the Duvalier dynasty of 30 years, the employment of a private militia, the Tonton Macoutes to ruthlessly stifle opposition.

Another is the pattern of foreign interference throughout the country’s history, beginning with the colonial rule of France. After independence, France held the country in thrall through an onerous indemnity, that took the best part of a century to liquidate, setting up a destructive pattern of borrowing and debt that held a stranglehold on the country. For a period of time, the country’s treasury was a French bank!

The United States did not recognize Haiti for over fifty years, frightened by the idea of a successful slave revolt. Then with the expansion of U.S. Naval power Haiti first became attractive as a site for a coaling station. Later, business interests were interested in what could be extracted from the country. Internal order brought an invasion of U.S. Marines in 1915 to restore order, build roads and infrastructure, and promote agricultural reforms.

It was a high-handed paternalistic effort, with few bothering to learn the language and culture. When resistance was encountered, villages were destroyed and atrocities occurred for which there has never been a reckoning. Our Marines were only withdrawn in the 1930’s but our countries’ interests continue to be intertwined. In the Duvalier era, for example, Nelson Rockefeller can be seen in chummy photos with “Papa Doc” Duvalier. Dubois extends this paternalistic approach to many of the NGOs, aid and mission organizations working in the country, that often competed with local economies, supplanting local trades, draining resources, and often repeating the military’s mistake of not learning French or Creole, nor the indigenous culture.

Dubois presents a picture of a country in which the people often outshine the leaders, pressing to be free from plantation economies and foreign interests, and for government reforms. Sadly, the pattern of people rising to leadership, only to follow the corrupt, authoritarian models of their predecessors, is repeated again and again.

Finally, we see the natural devastation of the country, from monocultures that exhaust the soil, hillside erosions and the loss of topsoils, and deforestation, culminating in the devastating earthquake of 2010 (and another, after publication, in 2020). What is grievous is that this was a country once rich in natural resources that is the poorest country in the Western hemisphere.

Amid all the devastation, Dubois still holds out hope that the people who rose from slavery can rise to build a new Haiti. I found myself far less certain, wondering how the habits of good civil government, the rule of law, ethical business practice and sustainable agriculture can be established and developed. Given the current descent into gang violence and anarchy, I wonder if we are watching a nation in the throes of self-destruction, one that could precipitate a terrible genocide. Is it not time for the international community to act to prevent great loss of life, provide critical aid, and to offer the breathing space to restore civil order? But only Haiti can do the rest.

Review: Istanbul

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Istanbul, Thomas F. Madden. New York: Viking, 2016.

Summary: The history of this great city at the meeting place of Europe and Asia from the Byantine Empire beginning in 667 BC through the modern Istanbul up to 2016.

Istanbul, located on the Bosporus Strait connecting Europe and Asia, and possessing in its Golden Horn a natural harbor, was a strategic city and crossroad of the world for centuries. Thomas F. Madden, a medieval and renaissance history professor captures in 360 pages the history of this great city (in fact, the name, Istanbul means “the city”).

He traces its beginnings in 667 BC when Greek settlers, including it founder, Byzas, from Megara recognized its natural advantages both for trade and defense and settled there, naming it Byzantium after its founder. He traces the transitions from Persian to Greek to Roman rule and the rise of the city under Constantine, where it became New Rome, the capitol of the Roman Empire. He follows the long history as, first barbarians from Europe, and then Muslims from the East erode the boundaries of empire. We see the city embroiled in the schism of the Christian East and West, with the Hagia Sophia the powerful symbol of the Eastern church.

While the city, now Constantinople, faces numerous attacks and is forced into alliances with Venice and Genoa, it does not fall for over a thousand yearsd due to its protected harbor and massive walls and natural barriers in approaching the city. Then finally, in 1453 it falls to the Ottomans becoming the centerpiece of the empire of Suleiman the Great. Madden chronicles the long decline under a succession of sultans until the end of the Ottoman empire following World War I and the rise of Turkish nationalism under Kamal in the 1920’s and the rise of the Erdogan regime and the transformation of Istanbul into a modern city, even as the seat of government moves to Ankara.

The history seemed to me one in which this great city struggled with complacency about its greatness. Despite encroaching powers, the city seemed invulnerable. Madden gives us a story where the internal weaknesses of the city aided its enemies. Yet Madden also portrays the magnificence of the city–its temples, mosques, palaces, hippodrome, and walls and harbor. In a compactly rendered history, he helps us understand why the city was both great and strategic for centuries, and even now, and what contributed to its defeats, and the transitions of power it has undergone.

Review: Ramesses II, Egypt’s Ultimate Pharaoh

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Ramesses II, Egypt’s Ultimate Pharoah, Peter J. Brand. Columbus, GA: Lockwood Press, 2023.

Summary: Drawing heavily on archaeology, this lavishly illustrated work describes the life, historical and cultural context, and physical record of this arguably greatest of Egypt’s Pharaohs.

This is an impressive work about an impressive figure in human history. Peter J. Brand is an Egyptologist whose study focuses on the imperial age (ca. 1550–1100 BCE), during which Ramesses II ruled. He is also the “director of the Karnak Hypostyle Hall Project, which is recording, conserving, and interpreting hundreds of scenes and hieroglyphic texts carved on the walls and columns of the Great Hypostyle Hall” (from book website). In Ramesses II, Egypt’s Ultimate Pharoah, he has given us a lavishly illustrated and extensively documented account of the life of Ramesses II, who ruled longer than any other pharaoh at 67 years [some believe Pepi II in the Sixth Dynasty ascended to rule at age six for 94 years] and left more monuments to his rule than any other. The book is printed on high quality paper rendering the many full-color images of monuments, temples, and renderings of ancient paintings and inscriptions that serve as documentation of Ramesses II’s reign.

The book begins by setting the rule of the Ramessides within a chronology of the successive kingdoms of Egypt and tells the story of his family including his father, Sety 1 who ruled for just ten years, but long enough to train his son and establish him as Crown Prince. He ascended to rule in his early twenties, and immediately occupied himself with building monuments and producing heirs. A major event in his career is covered extensively by Brand, the Battle of Kadesh against the rival Hittite Kingdom, in 1274 BC. It was a near disaster, with Ramesses II nearly defeated after being ambushed. Accounts emphasize personal heroism in repelling the attack and the eventual “victory” of Ramesses after reinforcements arrive, although Kadesh remained in Hittite hands. Brand reveals an the impressive public relations effort it took to turn this near disaster into a glorious victory. The victory is disputable but Ramesses II’s courage is not. Later wars in the first two decades protect Egypt’s territories but don’t change the balance of power.

It was perhaps the realization of this that led to negotiations with the Hittites that led to the Silver Treaty in the third decade of Ramesses II’s rule. It didn’t turn the two kings into friends although Brand shares the diplomatic exchanges calling each other brothers and the snide ways each sought to assert his own greatness, even after the peace. Perhaps as extensive were the negotiations for Ramesses to marry not one, but eventually two Hittite princesses, always the way of sealing accords.

Two marks of Ramesses II’s success were his children and his Jubilees. Altogether, Ramesses sired at least 45 sons and more than fifty daughters with his various wives. For a godlike figure to have so many children was a good sign for the fertility of the nations crops, and indeed, Egypt of these years was the grainary of the Middle East. Brand gives us brief biographies of the successive heirs to the throne, three of whom pre-deceased Ramesses, We also learn of his five daughter wives.

The Jubilees both celebrated the length of his reign and were cermonies of renewal The first was held at year 30 of his reign, with twelve more Seds held at intervals of three years. Many Pharaohs never made it to the first. These were the occasion of building more monuments including the Temple at Abu Simbel in southern Egypt, the object of an extensive rescue effort when the construction of the Aswan High Dan threatened it with inundation.

Brand’s account concludes with briefer coverage of the later and twilight years, Ramesses death, and his successors, and how he has lived on including his treatment in literature and in Hollywood. There is even a fascinating account of a trip his mummy took to Paris for preservation treatments, requiring a passport and royal honors upon arrival.

And what of Israel? Most of the discussion of Israel comes in discussion of the Hollywood accounts. Otherwise, the only places it comes up in the text postdate Ramesses rule–one to Solomon’s marriage alliance with Egypt, and one to an inscription on the Stela of Merenptah, Ramesses II’s son, from 1210 BCE, listing them as an ethnic group in Canaan. Given the absence of archaeological evidence, Brand remains silent about Israel, treating them as insignificant to Ramesses II’s reign. Of course, this hinges on the dating of the exodus, which biblical scholars date between c. 1400 and 1280 BC, the latter date falling within Ramesses II’s reign and the more widely accepted.

Peter J. Brand has given us an up-to-date and illuminating account in this work, the first since Kenneth Kitchen’s Pharaoh Triumphant forty years ago. It reveals both the culture and the man behind the legends of this great ruler of Egypt at the zenith of Egypt’s power. We stand in wonder at the works portrayed in images that celebrate this Pharaoh three millenia later. While he made much of his “victory” at Kadesh, one cannot help wonder if his greater victory was the decades of peace and stability resulting from the Silver Treaty, that allowed the time and resources to build so many monuments. Brand’s work helps us appreciate one of the greatest rulers in human history, often hidden in the mists of time and legend.

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

Review: The Herods

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The Herods: Murder, Politics, and the Art of Succession. Bruce Chilton. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2021.

Summary: A history of this dynasty, tracing its rise from Antipater, the rule of Herod the Great, and his descendants who struggled to recover control over the territories he ruled amid Roman power and rising Jewish discontent.

Any reader of the New Testament recognizes that one or another of the Herods plays a significant part in the birth of Jesus, the ministry and crucifixion of Jesus, and the beginnings of the Christian movement, and the trial of and appeal by Paul to Rome. What is often not considered is the rise of this family from Idumea amid the power struggles of the Jews to maintain independence amid, first the Seleucids and then the Roman power that came to assert control over the lands that once constituted ancient Israel.

Bruce Chilton traces the history of this family and their shrewdness in maintaining Jewish support and pleasing their Roman masters. It begins with Antipater, who modestly never claimed the title “king” of Idumea but allied with Hyrcanus II as high priest of the Jerusalem temple and leader of Judea and allying himself with Pompey against the Seleucids, securing both Hyrcanus in Jerusalem and securing Roman favor for his own family.

Herod, known as “The Great,” was his son. He married Mariamne, the granddaughter of Hyrcanus, gaining legitimacy with the Maccabees, and works first with Mark Antony and then Octavian, securing kingship over Jerusalem, Samaria, Galilee, and Idumea. Chilton traces his ruthlessness, executing first Mariamne’s brother, then Mariamne, and her sons but leaving his kingship in disarray at his death.

Chilton situates the birth of Jesus and the massacre of the innocents during the brief reign of Herod’s son Archelaus over Judea. while Philip ruled in Gaulanitis and Antipas in Galilee and Samaria. Antipas was the shrewdest, stealing his brother Philip’s wife Herodias and working throughout his reign to regain control of Judea and Jerusalem, only to lose it all to his nephew, Agrippa I, who had cultivated Caligula, who succeeded Tiberius, who had favored Antipas. Antipas was the one Jesus called “the fox” and Chilton has some interesting insights into gospel passages alluding to Antipas, who concurred in the execution of Jesus, as well as the beheading of John.

Agrippa I recovered the realm of Herod the great, persecuted restive minorities, including the followers of Jesus, and, as recorded in Acts, died an early and grisly death just days after being proclaimed as a god. He was succeeded by Agrippa II over parts of Agrippa I’s realm under tight control of Rome, aided by his sister Berenike, perhaps the more ambitious of the two. But affairs among the Jews were spiraling into open rebellion that they could not stop, resulting in brutal Roman suppression and the fall of Jerusalem. It was Agrippa II and Berenike who consult with Felix and hear Paul’s defense and appeal to Rome.

Chilton offers a narrative that underscores the shrewdness and ambition and ruthlessness, when necessary, of the Herods. He also shows the significant roles played by women in this dynasty: Mariamne, Herodias, Salome, and Berenike among them. We learn of other competent, but lesser lights, like Philip, who appears to have led well in Gaulanitis, and Phasael, Herod the Great’s more restrained older brother who administered Jerusalem until Herod took control.

While Chilton provides both a timeline and a Dramatis personae of important figures, it would have been helpful to provide a family tree or genealogy to make clear the relations among the various figures, and the offspring of multiple marriages. It is also evident that Chilton credits other sources like Josephus above the New Testament writers at points of conflict.

That said, Chilton’s account of this dynasty enriches our understanding of the figures who intersect with the New Testament narratives and played a vital role in second Temple Israel during the decisive century before the fall of the temple.

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

Review: The Children of Ash and Elm

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Children of Ash and Elm: A History of the Vikings, Neil Price. New York: Basic Books, 2020.

Summary: A history based in archaeological research of the rise of the Vikings, their ways and beliefs, and their development as a trading, raiding, and invading power.

The story is that the gods, as they were creating, found two pieces of wood, out of which they fashioned the first man and first woman. The man was of Ash, the woman of Elm, and from these the people that became known to us as the “Vikings” sprang. Or so the Norse legends say.

Beginning with this story, Neil Price renders a history of the people known to us as Vikings. It is a story of a people who emerge from the fjords of Norway and the fastnesses of Sweden, from a collection of locally powerful lords of halls to invade and settle as far as Uzbekistan, Kabul, and Baghdad in the east and Iceland, Greenland, and the eastern shores of North America to the west. They contributed to the founding of Russia and their blood runs through William the Conqueror.

Price draws deeply on archaeological research to reconstruct the rise of these peoples in a time of volcanically-induced extended winter. The first part of this work traces their roots amid a Europe reconstituting itself after the fall of the Roman empire and the spread of Christianity, including to isolated monasteries in England that fell to early raids. Price uses archaeology to reconstruct their life, their beliefs (the Norse gods were a violent and promiscuous bunch) their burial customs (a most fascinating part of the book, including the boat burials, the rites and sacrifices, and what they were interred with), their social organization, including the employment of slaves, and their gender and sexuality.

The second part of the book traces the rise of the Vikings as a maritime culture from trading to raiding (“why trade for it when we can just take it.”) to their full scale invasions. What drives all of this is growing economic power and the needs to sustain and expand it. Price is unsparing in his accounts of the violence of these raids and invasions, and especially the consequences for women.

The third part of the book then builds upon this expansion to trace the extent of their dispersion throughout northern and eastern Europe, Russia, Constantinople and the trade routes to the east. We also learn of their dispersion from Scandinavian countries to Iceland and the attempts to settle in Greenland and North America (Vinland). Price traces the wars in England, the back and forth struggles of alternating Anglo-Saxon and Viking kings until the death of Knut in 1035 and the invasion of William, who as mentioned, was a Viking descendent.

In addition to this sweeping history, Price offers us a glimpse of the avalanche of data coming from archaeological work, from excavations, to artifacts, to DNA samples. We learn of the excavation of a warrior burial site that the warrior was a woman, from DNA evidence. Price offers evidence of fluidity in both gender roles and sexuality which might be explored further in terms of whether contemporary constructs are being read into the record, or whether the record bears out the existence of gender and sexual expression that parallel contemporary experience.

The work helps the reader enter into the worldview of these people, their maritime and military prowess, the sheer breadth of their advances and influences, and, in the end, their assimilation into Christendom. We see both the glories of the hall and the ugliness of their violence and some of their rites. The work offers maps that should be referenced to track the movements of the Vikings and a variety of illustrations of sites and artifacts referenced in the text. The references also offer extensive additional readings, as well as references for each chapter in the text.

All of this comes in a highly readable account, seasoned with Price’s wit from time to time. While there may be matters for continued scholarly debate in Price’s account, he offers an account that separates myth from fact in our understanding of these people–for example, there were no horned helmets but rather head pieces of armor and mail! This is a “go to” resource for those interested in the current research on the Vikings and their history and ways.

Review: A Short History of Christian Zionism

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A Short History of Christian Zionism, Donald M. Lewis. Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2021.

Summary: An account of the understanding of the Jewish people’s claim to their ancient homeland throughout history, and particularly since the Reformation, focusing on Great Britain and the United States.

The idea of the claim of the Jewish people to their ancient homeland has not always been held (at least prior to return of the Messiah), either among the Jews or among Christians. This work traces the history of this idea and the various movements, both Jewish and Christian, and both theological and political that have given rise to Christian Zionism in its modern expressions.

Donald M. Lewis begins with offering his definition of the contentious term, “Christian Zionism”:

[A] Christian movement which holds to the belief that the Jewish people have a biblically mandated claim to their ancient homeland in the Middle East.

He notes that for many in history, this has implied a Jewish return but not necessarily a Jewish state.

With that he traces that history, beginning briefly with the period of the early church to the Reformation. For much of this period, the church was characterized by anti-Jewish attitudes, even blaming the loss of the land on the crucifixion of Jesus. While Jerusalem and the Holy Land was an object of the Crusades, it was not for the purpose of restoring the Jewish people to this land.

The change began with the Reformation and the bulk of this book treats the history from the Reformation to the present, particularly beginning with Calvin’s Geneva. It was here that the idea of the Restoration began among the theologians that followed Calvin, distinguishing the Protestants from Catholics, first with the idea of spiritual restoration of the Jews, a mass conversion at some future point, and second of a return to their homeland, seeing in this the fulfillment of Old Testament prophecy. As the Calvinist movement spread to England, so did these ideas, particularly in the form of seeing England as a chosen nation tasked with protecting and restoring the Jewish people. Meanwhile, German pietism under Philip Spener emphasized Jewish evangelism. These movements would shape the future of Christian Zionism in both Great Britain and America. In America, here as in so many things Jonathan Edwards played a major role, not only in anticipating a great future conversion of the Jews but in the restoration of the people to the land, aided by American political agency.

Subsequent chapters trace the turns these efforts to convert, protect and restore the Jews took in both England and the US, culminating in the Balfour Declaration, British control of Palestine following World War 1 and the migration of Jews to the land and parallel movements in the U.S. and the shifts that occurred from postmillenial to premillenial to charismatic theological support over the years. Lewis describes the various organizations supporting the return of Jews to the land, and later on, support of the Jewish state. He traces these organizations and movements down to the present day and the growth of these into a global movement.

There were several things I appreciated about this work, beginning with the fact that it was highly readable, even as Lewis negotiates the various theological positions, Christian Zionist efforts, and figures on both sides of the Atlantic. Second, I appreciated the fact that this was a descriptive work and not a piece of advocacy. No matter where one stands on the question of Jews and the land, this is a work that may be read with profit.

In addition, Lewis gives the lie to the exclusive association of Christian Zionism with premillenial dispensationalism. In fact, J.N. Darby rejected the idea of the return of the Jews to the land prior to Christ’s coming. He shows how Christian Zionism was adapted to postmillenialism, historic premillenialism, and eventually with pre-millenial dispensationalism theological persuasions, and even to pentecostalism.

He also chronicles the realization of secular leaders of the state of Israel of how important Christian Zionist support was to the Jewish state and Lewis traces how they made the most of Christian tourism to strengthen that support. Lewis draws the arc from Christian ministry efforts to political advocacy.

The book ends on an important question being faced at the present time of the place of conversionist efforts as part of seeking the blessing of the Jews. He notes the growth of a dual covenant theology that turns away from evangelistic efforts and Paul’s efforts to offer the gospel “to the Jews first.” Instead, it advocates love, esteem, and blessing that respects Jews distinctive covenant relationship with God. The dilemma for some is one of cultural insensitivity and offensiveness versus biblical faithfulness. True to the intent of the book, Lewis does not offer an answer but notes the trends that raise the question.

This history is valuable in understanding how we’ve gotten to where we are with Christian Zionism, from the justice issues relating to displaced Palestinians, to ways theology contributes to Christian Zionism as well as how historical events have shaped theology, and how religious and political efforts have intermingled, particularly in both Great Britain and the United States.

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

Review: To Build a Better World

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To Build a Better World, Philip Zelikow and Condoleeza Rice. New York: Twelve, 2019.

Summary: An account of the period from 1988-1992 and the transition of states, economic systems, and military alliances, reflecting an emerging post-cold war world.

When I bought this book, there was not a war in eastern Europe. All the world was thinking about a few months ago was get past a two-year pandemic. Life has changed and once again we live under the shadow of a potential global war.

Perhaps that sets in relief those few heady years at the end of the 1980’s when we thought we had entered a new world of global peace with the fall of physical and political walls between eastern and western Europe, when the major powers talked about reducing nuclear arms stockpiles and conventional forces, when Germany was unified, when former Warsaw pact countries gained their independence (including Ukraine in 1990) and more peaceable and mutually economically beneficial relations became a possibility with Russia.

This book traces the series of events that unfolded during those years, the issues that the U.S. and other powers faced, and the decisions made that have shaped Europe over the last thirty years, as well as the course of Russia. Rice and Zelikow were insiders during this era, working in both Bush adminstrations, Rice serving as an NSC adviser and eventually, as secretary of state.

The account begins with the increasing globalization of economic systems, the growing strains on the economic systems of the USSR and its satellites in eastern Europe. Amid this comes the bold attempt of Perestroika with not enough economic reforms with too many raised expectations. At first, the effort was to try to figure out how to prop up the system, as it became increasingly apparent that Gorbachev could fail.

As satellites broke away, the question became what would Europe become. Would the European Union expand to include these countries. And what would become of East Germany? The book takes us inside the delicate balance that had to be struck to not humiliate or antagonize the USSR, and to not arouse fears of a united Germany. And how might Russia be integrated into the new Europe.

And what would become of NATO, forged as a post-war threat by the Soviet Union and paralleled by the Warsaw Pact countries. At first, it was even considered to maintain these alignments with a de-escalation of the military presence. When this was unacceptable to the Warsaw Pact countries and interest was expressed in expanding the NATO alliance, the question became, how would Russia react. At one point, the door was even opened for Russia to also be a part of NATO.

What did happen was the expansion of the number of countries in the alliance, but a military de-escalation and recalibration of the mission of NATO, eventually joining the US in both peace-keeping and military missions in the Balkans and the Middle East. Nuclear stockpiles were destroyed without nukes proliferating to former Soviet satellites. Interlocking European and global trade agreements fostered trade. There was a period where US, Europe, and Russia even stood together against Iraq in Kuwait, and later in the fight against Al-Qaeda in the early 2000’s.

At the beginning of the book, we are introduced to a young East German physical chemist who became interested in the changing politics of her country and a young mid-level KGB colonel in Dresden who was increasingly disturbed with the course of events in his home country. The first was Angela Merkel, the second Vladimir Putin. She represented the culmination of the many positive decisions made in those heady years, leading a German renaissance in a new Europe. He represented the lingering humiliation and resentments (despite George H. W. Bush’s understated diplomatic efforts) at the eviscerating of Russian greatness. Putin resented the effort of the second Bush administration to define the world as those for and against freedom. Russia had been at its best under autocrats which he increasingly became. Ukraine, which Putin stated in 2008 was not even a country, resented efforts to incorporate Ukraine into the EU and NATO, blocked by Germany in 2008. Even then, Putin saw this as a US attempt to push an integrated Europe right up to Russia’s doorstep, or underbelly.

This work was published in 2019, which was after the Russian annexation of the Crimea. Even then, the tensions in Ukraine’s eastern provinces were evident. None of this justifies the brutal invasion of Ukraine. Rather it makes evident that the storm clouds were gathering that would unravel the European peace established in the 1990’s. This book casts light on the developments of those years. One gets a sense of what it was like to face issues with multiple choices without a roadmap to show to where these would lead. The thing that stood out was the failure of finding a way to integrate Russia into the integrated Europe without diminishing its sense of national greatness or compromising the independence of other countries. It was the flaw in an otherwise fruitful approach to the opportunities of a new Europe. This was a fascinating, inside account of the opportunities and uncertainties latent in global diplomacy.

Review: American Diplomacy

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American Diplomacy, Expanded Edition, George Kennan. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984. (Link is to in-print 60th anniversary edition, 2012).

Summary: A compilation of Kennan’s six Charles R. Walgreen lectures, two articles on US-Soviet relations originally from Foreign Affairs, and two Grinnell lectures.

George F. Kennan (1904-2005) was one of the foremost thinkers, and at times, shapers of American foreign policy. He is perhaps most famous for the “long telegram” in 1946 from Moscow to the American Secretary of State, on how the U.S. should relate to post-war Stalinist Soviet Union. This telegram and two subsequent articles in Foreign Affairs which appear in this volume, served as the intellectual basis of the American policy of containment which prevailed until the end of the former Soviet Union in 1989.

This work actually consist of three parts. The first reviews American diplomacy from the Spanish-American War through World War 2 in six lectures sponsored by the Charles R. Walgreen Foundation. The second part reprints the two Foreign Affairs articles, “The Sources of Soviet Conduct” and “America and the Russian Future.” The third part consists of two Grinnell lectures given in 1984, one a retrospective of the Walgreen lectures, and the other a review of American foreign policy in Korea and Vietnam and our present military-industrial complex.

One of the basic threads that runs through the Walgreen lectures is that our diplomacy flowed out of “legalistic-moralistic” foundations or situational, politically shaped responses that lacked “any accepted, enduring doctrine for relating military strength to political policy, and a persistent tendency to fashion our policy toward others with a view to feeding a pleasing image of ourselves rather than to achieving real, and desperately needed results in our relations with others. The lectures start with our war with Spain launched without any clear policy but shaped by popular mood. The second focuses on the “Open Door” policy with China where what appeared to be noble foreign policy poorly apprehended the material interests of the other powers involved. The third lecture looked at our pre-Maoist diplomacy with China and Japan, over-sentimentalizing China, over-vilifying Japan, and failing to work toward a balance of powers between Russia, China, and Japan that may have averted war, and possibly the rise of Communist China (I doubt this, given the corruption of the Chiang Kai-shek government).

In the fourth lecture, he observes the irony of our entering World War 1 because of the violation of our neutrality, and then rationalizing it as a great fight for the values of civilization when in fact we acceded to the gutting of Germany which led to the second war. With the second war, we allowed ourselves to begin at a place of weakness that created the necessity of dependency on Russia and then adopted an idealized vision of the post war future that failed to realistically face the price Russia would exact for its alliance. He concludes for a diplomacy of professionalism and realism rather than a moralistic-legalistic effort to project American ideals.

Part two reflects the working out of Kennan’s ideas in relation to the Soviet Union. He argues that it is vitally important to understand the ideology of the communist conflict with capitalism, the infallibility of the Kremlin and the concordant concentration of power in what amount to a dictatorship. It is here, that recognizing the difficulties of relating to Soviet power, that he contends for a policy of disciplined “containment.” He writes:

“In these circumstances it is clear that the main element of any United States policy toward the Soviet Union must be that of long-term, patient but firm and vigilant containment of Russian expansive tendencies. It is important to note, however, that such a policy has nothing to do with outward histrionics: with threats or blustering or superfluous gestures of outward ‘toughness’ ” (p. 119).

The second article he argues that America should not directly challenge the Soviet Union, but allow it to decay from within, a consequence we watched unfold in the 1980’s.

The first of the Grinnell lectures basically reprises the Walgreen lectures and then considers Korea and Vietnam. He contends that our assessment of Communist global expansionist ambitions to be flawed, especially in Vietnam where he assessed Ho to first of all be a nationalist. In Korea, we failed to reckon with how our military presence in Japan, shutting out the Soviet Union, would be perceived as a threat warranting “consolidation of its military-political position in Korea, with all our efforts costing 54,000 casualties to achieve merely the status quo ante. I find this a bit troubling as he seems to infer that it would be fine if all of the Korean peninsula were communist. I don’t suspect today’s South Koreans, as much as they would like to see the reunification of Korea, would prefer communist rule. But there is an interesting question of whether a different settlement was possible if we had settled things differently with Japan, a historic enemy of Russia.

The second lecture argues that the large scale militarization of the U.S. in the post war reflected mistaken notions of Soviet global conquest and the folly of the nuclear arms race. He argues that having made these dispositions we cannot walk back commitments either to Japan or to NATO. His call is simply for a greater humility in our diplomacy, and that example is more powerful than demand. He hoped a budget of over $250 billion for our military would not be necessary. (Now it is over $750 billion).

I am writing this on the eve of what may be a massive Russian invasion of Ukraine, once part of the former Soviet Union. I cannot help but think of Kennan’s observations about both the communist mindset in Russia, humiliated in 1989, but hardly extinguished, and our lack of steady, professional diplomacy in the years since while the Putin government has been an implacable constant. I’m troubled by the corrosion from within, not of Russia but our own country, and the danger that this could further undermine a steady realism in our foreign policy.

A larger issue that Kennan raises is whether it is possible to have a “moral” diplomacy. One the one hand we may often be deceived by our own claims to morality or blind to other factors in international situations. Yet humility is a moral virtue. The recognition of human dignity inherent in our commitments to democracy is moral. Perhaps this compact volume was not the place to unpack whether a moral, if not moralistic diplomacy is possible. Perhaps we need to turn to his spiritual mentor, Reinhold Niebuhr, to explore these arguments, elaborated in Moral Man and Immoral Society and other works. Whatever we might conclude, Kennan’s call for a professional, unpoliticized and unmilitarized diplomacy that takes develops a long term approach to American diplomacy is worth considering.

Review: The Black Church

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The Black Church, Henry Louis Gates, Jr. New York: Penguin Press, 2021.

Summary: A companion to the PBS series on the Black church, surveying the history of the Black church in America focusing on why the church has been central to the life of the Black community.

It is practically a truism that the church is a central reality in the Black experience, and in many local Black communities. But why is this? That is the question Henry Louis Gates, Jr. explores in this companion book to the PBS series, “The Black Church.”

Gates contends that the church provided a place, first of all, for refuge that they could control and find hope in, when they were brutally subjugated, whether under slavery or Jim Crow. It was fascinating to learn that Spanish Catholics were responsible for the conversions of African-Americans in the early year. Gates also traces the elements of Muslim and traditional religion back to the earliest periods of slavery. White slave owners often were resistant to the conversion of slaves, recognizing the liberating messages to be found in the Bible, Anglican missionaries persuaded slave owners that it could be taught in ways that supported their control. What they couldn’t control was the introduction of music and dance that reflected African heritage, including the “ring shout.” and the unofficial gatherings in “praise houses.”

Many more were converted during the Methodist revivals, but when they were segregated, Richard Allen led the formation of the African Methodist Episcopal Church. Gates traces how the church increasingly becomes a force for abolition (and in the case of Nat Turner, for uprising) as well as renewal. Then with Emancipation, Gates traces the further growth of the churches of the south, the Bible women who helped spread the gospel message, and the “frenzy” that presaged Pentecostalism, which can trace its roots to William Joseph Seymour, who led the Azusa Street Revival, leading to the formation of the Church of God in Christ, the largest Pentecostal body in the country.

With the Great Migration, Gates traces the growth of Black megachurches in northern cities like Chicago and New York, and with this the growth of Gospel music from the Fisk Jubilee Singers to Shirley Caesar, and from this, the development of blues and jazz. This led to a growing tension between the music of the clubs on Saturday night and the music of the service on Sunday. The music and the preaching connected, nowhere more so than at the March on Washington when Mahalia Jackson urged King to “Tell them about the dream.” The gospel songs morphed into the freedom songs and sustained the movement.

Gates describes the period after King as a “crisis of faith.” He describes the development of Black theology, including the thought of James Cone and Jeremiah Wright, the pastor who married the Obamas. He observes the tensions around sexuality, the patriarchy of churches, and the conservatism around LGBT sexuality as well as the ascent of Blacks into the middle class, the ministries of pastors like T.D. Jakes, and how Obama revealed different sides of the church to white America. The chapter concludes with the resurgent white nationalism and Black Lives Matter.

An epilogue traces Gates own religious journey, his decision to join the church, his fear of “the Frenzy” and speaking in tongues and the irony that DuBois “Talented Tenth” were less the missionaries of culture than the Pentecostals, whose experience did more to uplift the marginalized. Gates observes that the experiential connected back to the African religious roots of the Black church.

Gates gives us an account of the Black church that both traces history, and enriches it with interviews with contemporary Black leaders and celebrities, drawing out the experienced significance of the Black church. The church that emerges is one of refuge and uplift, of resistance and abolition, of music and ecstasy. It is also an account of Black pulpiteers and the development of Black preaching from Richard Allen to Raphael Warnock. The appendix includes an alphabetical list of the great preachers of the Black church. Here as throughout this history, Gates does not confine his account to Christians, including figures like Malcolm X.

As history, this is more popular survey than an in-depth, scholarly account. Gates use of contemporary interviews interlaced with his history creates a much richer sense of the ethos of the Black church than one might get from a historical narrative alone. He captures the various ways the church epitomizes and sustains the identity of Black people. He concludes:

“It’s that cultural space in which we can bathe freely in the comfort of our cultural heritage, and where everyone knows their part, and where everyone can judge everyone else’s performance of their part, often out loud with amens, with laughter, with clapping, or with silence. It’s the space that we created to find rest in the gathering storm. It’s the place where we made a way out of no way. It’s the place to which, after a long and wearisome journey, we can return and find rest before we cross the river. It’s the place we call, simply, the Black Church” (p. 219).

Fall 2021 Book Preview — Fiction and Non-fiction

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I don’t only read academic theology. I enjoy history, essays, discussions of current affairs, and of course, good fiction. All of that has arrived at my door in the last months. Many are new books published this year, but mixed in are also some older titles, mainly from authors I’ve discovered I liked.

In the Shadow of King Saul, Jerome Charyn. New York: Bellevue Literary Press, 2018. Recently, I reviewed Swimming to the Top of the Tide. The publisher included a bonus book in their mailing, this collection of essays by the author of Sergeant Salinger, which I had reviewed this spring. I’m intrigued with what he will say in his essay on Saul, a biblical character I happen to have been studying of late.

Absence of Mind, Marilynne Robinson. New Haven: Yale University of Press, 2011. I love Marilynne Robinson’s fiction and essays, and this was a collection I had not read, found while browsing Thriftbooks. Turned out I was able to use a free book credit! What fun. She writes about the relation of science and religion and the new atheism in this collection.

Notes from No Man’s Land, Eula Biss. Minneapolis: Graywolf Press, 2009. I recently read this author’s Immunity and decided to pick up some of her other essays including this collection on race in America, a winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award.

Having and Being Had, Eula Biss. New York: Riverhead Books, 2020. This is a more recent collection, examining middle class ethics.

After the Apocalypse, Andrew Bacevich. New York: Metropolitan Books, 2021. Argues for a different approach to U.S. foreign policy based on moral pragmatism and mutual coexistence with war as a last resort.

Devil in the White City, Erik Larson. New York: Vintage Books, 2003. I’ve discovered Erik Larson’s books and I’m looking forward to this one on the 1893 World’s Fair and a serial murderer!

Riding High in April, Jackie Townsend. Phoenix: Sparkpress, 2021. Just received this with LibraryThing’s Early Reviewer Program. The book is a tech thriller with a human element of love and friendship written by a former Silicon Valley management consultant.

Abundance Nature in Recovery, Karen Lloyd. New York: Bloomsbury Wildlife, 2021. This is a collection of essays on conservationist efforts in the face of biodiversity loss.

The Power of Us, Jay J. Van Bavel and Dominic J. Packer. New York: Little, Brown, Spark, 2021. Builds on the idea that the groups we are part of shape identity and can enhance performance, cooperation and social harmony.

The Free World: Art and Thought in the Cold War, Louis Menand. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2021. Menand is an intellectual historian whose Metaphysical Club was one of my great reads several summers ago. This one is on the art and thought trends that arose during the Cold War.

Children of Ash and Elm, Neil Price. New York: Basic Books, 2020. The Vikings enter into the history of peoples from the Asian Steppes to North America. This birthday gift gives me a chance to read a history of these people who keep barging into so many others stories!

Cloud Cuckoo Land, Anthony Doerr. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2021. I thought All The Light We Cannot See was one of the best books I’ve read in the last decade. The writing voice I so appreciated in that work is here, but in a story occurring in three distinct times–as you can tell, I’m already into this book.

The Lincoln Highway, Amor Towles. New York: Viking, 2021. Towles is another novelist I’ve discovered in the past year, enjoying both of his deep dives into Jazz Age New York and a Russian hotel. This one is a cross-country flight to New York of several young fugitives on the title highway.

Along the way, I will be mixing in mysteries from Louise Penny, Ngaio Marsh and others. And what’s with the essays? Best I can figure is that blog posts are a version of essay, and I enjoy seeing how those who do it so well practice their craft–as well as the ideas they explore. Maybe this list will suggest some Christmas gift ideas–or not! At least you will know what not to buy me for Christmas if you are family! Whatever the case, you can look forward to hearing more about these books in the months ahead!