The PWI Required Reading List

Reading this now actually on @anon71262119’s recommendation.

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Initial thought is that I always assumed you were a guy. If you are, sweet nail polish.

I’m at the office, but will type out some thoughts later this evening. I enjoyed it, quite a bit.

I think UK conservative has different parameters. But given the threat Islam poses to homosexuals, I can see why the issue may drive them away from the pride group. Murray is very concerned about it.

I think gay people are starting to get sick of the identitarian politics, which may be the reason for the increasing numbers of them leaning more to the right.

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Bump!

Churchill came up in another thread. I’ll put these here. I don’t know a lot about him. I could probably get The Mister to book group a Churchill book with me since he likes history.

I’ve been watching some Jordan Peterson lectures, and this book keeps coming up. It sounds sooo dark, which makes me hesitate. Did you ever try it, @Legalsteel? I’ve been reading a Holocaust memoir, that’s just beautiful prose. Ruth Kluger’s Still Alive. It’s very sad, but has so much heart. Really. She’s a poet. Debating about trying Ghulag because I can only take so many really serious, sad, cruelty of humanity books. It seems like JP has everybody reading Nietzsche or Ghulag.

For people thinking of philosophy and religion, this one came up in another thread. Something @EyeDentist recommended. I picked it up, but haven’t started it yet.

Also, for people thinking about meaning in life, I’ll put this here. A classic along those lines. @anonym, this might help since you’re cleaning your room and slaying dragons. smile. He certainly accepted that life is suffering, and his use of logos is profound, and ties in.

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Just wrapped this guy up … will be re-reading sometime soon.

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oohhh, looks interesting. It’ll have to wait until I finish this monster (which I’m pretty stoked to get into):

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These are really good.

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Have you read the whole series?

Yes, although I originally didn’t read them in order.

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I’ll have to keep that in mind. I just happened to see this one the other day and grabbed it.

Not yet! I was hoping for an audible, but there isn’t one, so I’ll have to get a physical copy.

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I’ve read this one … the other 2 are on the list

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I just came across these, Legalsteel, and thought of you. I know you wanted an audible version. You might like these lectures. JP talking about The Gulag Archipelago.

I didn’t realize that it won the Nobel Prize in the 70s, or that it’s been required reading for Russian high school students since 2009. - source wikipedia

Just 30 minutes. I listened to it last night.

And a longer lecture. I haven’t watched this one yet.

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@EyeDentist. I finished The Courage to Be yesterday. Really enjoyed it. Glad I bought a print copy instead of Kindle, because it’s not an easy read, and it made it easier to back up and underline and reread some of the passages.

I don’t know what I’d think of it if I were not religious, but I found myself wishing I’d have read it about a decade ago. I think it would have been helpful when I was experiencing my own philosophical and religious crisis. Much of that made personal sense. The first couple of chapters were rough for me because he lays a lot of groundwork where a deeper philosophy background would help. The Stoics, Plato, Aristotle, Aquinas and the Existentialists, particularly Nietzsche. The second half of the book was more speaking my language and then I couldn’t put it down.

For PWI readers, It’s not a really political book, although he does get into history of Christianity, and a bit of Greek and Roman philosophy, totalitarian regimes of the 20th century, and the kinds of ideologies that caused them, that kind of thing. Certainly you can look at faith or character in yourself, or human condition kinds of things in how we cope or fail to cope with anxiety, uncertainty, mortality and doubt. Some people don’t really go there, at least not in a conscious way, but if you do think about some of the big existential issues, then it’s got some profound thoughts.

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Tillich is rough for everyone–kudos on making it through! I find the way he envisions/describes the nature of God particularly compelling (and an elegant rebuttal to the God is dead argument of Nietzsche).

That’s it in a nutshell, right there.

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I’m 100 pages in. Really a thought provoking book. Can’t stop thinking about it. Please let me know if any of you decide to read it. I highly recommend for anyone who is Christian and conservative, even if you’re more Libertarian on many social public policy issues. Note the quote by NYT, conservative Op Ed writer David Brooks in the link.

If you’re curious, it’s getting lots of press. I came across it in a private forum related to religion, politics and psychology.

This is a very moving article about the book and author, Dreher.

@Alrightmiami19c, @pat. Really, I think more Orthodox Catholics would especially relate, but @treco, @Aragorn, you might really like it as well. It might be the timing, but I’ve been thinking more of meditation and contemplation, and changing my life in meaningful ways, so it struck a chord.

He’s not talking about moving to a monastery, but building small communities of faith where you can live your religious values, retreating as much as we can from the cultural and societal norms such as consumerism, isolation and loneliness of the secular society, constant connection to pop culture and technology that replaces family and real interaction, that sort of thing. He’s talking about what life will be like for Conservative Christians as an often despised minority, which is what he thinks we’re looking at in the very near future, particularly as religious liberty will loose it’s importance as our society continues to become more secular. That part is very frightening. Are we willing to suffer for our faith. That’s really part of the question.

And another related blog post.

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What, no @EyeDentist shout out on this? You assume a liberal Protestant type wouldn’t love this book?

You’re right. :wink:

Actually, full confession: I haven’t read it, and am not sure I will. But I am well-versed regarding it and its theme. (As you note, it’s getting a lot of press these days.) I am also quite familiar with the author–he is a Loozyanna boy and a Tiger, after all–and have read his blog (not all of it, of course). He’s a very intelligent, articulate and thoughtful guy, and obviously sincere and serious regarding his views.

But certain things about his story trouble me. First is his conversion from Methodist to (conservative) Catholic, then–and this is especially perplexing–to Eastern Orthodoxy. I understand his reason for leaving the Catholic Church (the pedophilia scandal), but why did he join it in the first place? What motivated the conversion from Methodism to a rather severe form of Catholicism? Further, why did he decide–for himself and his family–to join the Eastern Orthodox Church? I don’t mean to suggest there’s anything wrong with the Eastern Orthodox faith-tradition, just that it is rather far removed from American Catholicism–except in the fact that both are culturally conservative, rigidly dogmatic, and reject much of modern life. Is that why he was drawn to it–not for its theology, but rather because it fit his cultural predilections? If true, this disturbs me–it’s like choosing a particular church because you like the taste of their communion wine, or the color of the priest’s vestments.

I am also weary of the alarmist ‘Christianity in America is doomed! Doomed!’ message he is promulgating. His position is a variant of Bill O’Reilly’s trope concerning a ‘War on Christmas’ (albeit an infinitely more thoughtful and less cynical version). The New Yorker piece you linked includes a section which covers this well:

“Dreher’s many critics sound a few common notes. They argue, first, that he is an alarmist about the decline of Christianity, and that he exaggerates the legal threats to its orthodox expression…(“Ten years from now, ‘The Benedict Option’ will be an interesting artifact showing just how anxious white conservative Christians were about their changing place in society,” Robert P. Jones, who runs the Public Religion Research Institute, told me.)”

Yes, society is changing in ways that run afoul of the beliefs of some Christians. Chief among these ways (for Dreher) is the growing acceptance of LGBT lifestyles. But I ask you–is that really the hill Christians should die on (if you’ll pardon the expression)? Are we as Christians so sure that being gay and/or transgendered is so anathema to God that we have no choice but to disengage from any society that would countenance treating such individuals with a full accord of respect and acceptance? By my reading of the Gospels, I am not convinced of such.

@EyeDentist, thanks for taking the time. Long attempt to answer, as best I can.

For everyone else, please pardon the long politics intersects religion tangent here in the book thread.

I might be wrong, but sections of the book probably will not resonate with you. :slight_smile:

As I understand it, the doctrine of your church is in line with current progressive political platform issues. I assume you have no worries on that score. Your church and the direction of the world - the results of the culture war - are in accord, and it’s mostly positive, bending the arc toward justice and all of that. Still, there’s much about the book that is good, and that you might find very thoughtful and sincere, but you would likely not relate, and would dismiss his concerns about political issues intersecting with religion, since your kind of faith doesn’t place you at odds with the the hot social issues.

That said, some of his message to Christians about how to live a truly Christian life, and what that means might resonate with you quite a lot. He looks at things like the normalization of divorce, and single parenthood, things which efffect all of us. If you get the sense that the Christianity many of us espouse doesn’t go very deep, in that it doesn’t make us very different or more caring as we move about in the world, then you might appreciate him. Much of what he says about the state of modern Christians isn’t political. We may claim Christianity but don’t give much real thought or take personal responsibility for relieving suffering. The idea that going to church doesn’t necessarily make you a Christian, any more than sitting in your garage makes you a car. We’re probably every bit as caught up in consumerism as our neighbors, or the idea that the purpose of life is the pursuit of self-gratification and our own happiness. The idea that a good life somehow avoids suffering, or are buying into some sort of of easy pop psychology version of religion that’s more about following our bliss and self-fulfillment than the real sacrifices that would happen if we were truly attempting to follow Christ. That’s been the more interesting part of the book for me. For you, I wouldn’t count the book out, but his politics may bother you.

About his religious shift to Eastern Orthodoxy, I believe he felt a desire to return to the roots of the faith. That involves both philosophy and tradition, and back to contemplative practice and obedience to structure. He thinks that modern Christians have lost something as we’ve moved away from our foundations. The book lays that out in great detail. He began to want to go back to embracing a more traditional Christianity, as a practice of discipleship. He talks about how the denominations have lost membership, and he doesn’t see Christianity as easy and designed to make us all feel comfortable, as the answer. Some of his talk about churches that reflect the values of the world, or that blow with the culture might be a bit offensive to some. He’s a bit critical of “low church” without liturgy and ritual as being assimilated into the modern culture, rather than being culturally different or set apart as Christians. He thinks the richness of liturgy, etc… helps people meet the challenges of postmodernism, or a secular culture. I appreciated his ideas, even though my sabbath worship is quite low church.

A tangent, off of his move toward the traditional roots. I recently became aware of a number of atheists or agnostics coming back to religious practice or at least appreciation, after watching Jordan Peterson’s Biblical lectures, and they seem to be drawn to Catholicism or Eastern Orthodoxy in particular. Maybe because of JP is a Jungian and he ties in Archetypes throughout the scriptures, and rich symbolism in tradition and liturgy. He’s taking a very symbolic or figurative view of the stories, and looking at eternal truths in other traditions. I don’t know. Maybe that’s an aside, but JP doesn’t attend church himself and feels much about organized religion has been corrupted, but he “attempts to live as a Christian and as if God exists, and he sees Jesus as the ultimate example of a hero.” He’s politically more of a Classical Liberal. Anyway, I was really interested in anyone who is pulling atheists back to religious belief, or an openness or appreciation of religion as holding some eternal truths about the human condition that is conveyed through symbols and archetypes.

To clarify, he’s not saying “disengage” entirely, as in move to an island or commune. Good thing, because I don’t want to live in Utah!! Ha! In fact, he espouses stability, or staying put in our communities if we can, since modern life means so many of us are transient, so it’s difficult to really build lasting and meaningful bonds or put down roots. He calls some of this “liquid modernity”, where we’re adrift, without structure, foundation, moral compass, or meaningful ties to one another. He’s saying that Christians should be as open to the world as we can be, without compromising our values. He’s also saying that we may do more good in acts of personal faith and service, rather than hoping to elect people who can somehow miraculously change the culture. Not to give up on politics entirely, but he’s saying we have more effect on cultural change by just living a truly Christian life. Be the salt of the earth, basically. Let goodness be a light in the world. Be different from the world. Also, I come from a faith tradition that has a very civic-minded voluntarily socialist side, so the idea of building small local communities of faith, of knowing and taking personal responsibility for the needs of the people around us. That part really resonates.

We’re seeing the churches grapple with how they will cope with the gay issue in particular. Personally for me? No, it’s not anathema to me, but I’m not in any position of power in my church. My personal interpretation of the Gospels? My faith has other doctrine about gender, families, and sexuality so even if I take a more progressive interpretation of scripture, I do not hold any authority, and I would soon find myself outside my faith, adrift. The same is true of devout Catholics. They have nowhere to go if they want to remain in their faith. About the hill to die on, I think these are the questions. Will churches change their doctrine as they get pressure both from within and without? We’re already seeing churches split apart over these issues, and some are rapidly changing to reflect the cultural changes. Will society be tolerant of those who attend churches who continue to hold traditional positions and do not change? To the later question, he’s saying he doesn’t think so.

As for the decline of Christianity in the West, we’ve seen a growing number of “none” in terms of religious affiliation. That really goes back to fundamental philosophical changes like the Enlightenment and the age of reason, and the advancement of science. I know you and I don’t have issues with reconciling science to faith, but it’s the reason given by a lot of atheists.

About the LGBT issue, I’ll speak from my perspective, but we share many common issues with other Orthodox or traditional Christians like Catholics. The church made great efforts to reach out to our LGBT members with love, and has backed anti-discrimination laws. We’re a law abiding people, so there’s an acceptance of the Supreme Court decision. For people who don’t know, the LDS church originally took a pro-civil unions stance with all the rights of marriage, but objected to the term marriage. I personally opposed the church’s involvement in Prop 8, and wrote a very heartrending letter to the leadership at the time, but I have no authority to change doctrine. What is my option? If I decide gay marriage and full acceptance of gay behavior is a perfectly moral choice, then I can quietly believe that, but any action would place me outside of my faith. I can’t easily jump to another church, without loosing theology that is meaningful to me.

My church has accepted the new legal status, but has not changed it’s doctrine on LGBT marriage within the church or in homosexual behavior as not being in keeping with the commandments. I see no way for that to happen, since we have a fairly full theology regarding marriage and God’s view of sexual behavior, and so we’re now on the wrong side of that issue in the culture war. This is viewed by some as equivalent to being a racist, even if we condemn discrimination based on race, sexual orientation or gender in the public sphere. You probably have pro-life friends. You probably don’t have openly racist friends (I don’t). The progressive left sees sexual orientation as a civil rights issue, equivalent to race, so I can imagine that particularly younger progressives may not want friends or co-workers who do not believe gay behavior is perfectly ok with God, anymore than you’d want to be friends with a KKK member. If we pair racism with disapproval of homosexual behavior, it’s not a huge intellectual leap to being intolerant of people who hold any religious belief that is perceived as anti-gay.

We’re seeing rapid cultural change, and we can’t predict what will happen in ten or twenty years, but I think it’s not unreasonable to be concerned. I don’t know if his predictions are entirely unfounded and overly pessimistic. I hope so. We’ve seen such rapid change in the last decade, it’s hard to say. As you may remember, we saw people loose their jobs, forced to resign, for supporting the “marriage between a man and a woman” initiative in CA in 2008, despite the fact that prominent Dems publicly held that view at that time. As a result, I think my religion could be a handicap to me in some hiring situations. You once told me that gays likely had more to fear from me than from Muslims. That says something, right? Honestly, you can see someone throwing my resume in the circular file if they assume I think gay behavior isn’t fully ok with my God. They might make assumptions about me. I’m a BYU alumni so my religion announces itself on my resume. Dreher is predicting that there will be a time when holding that religious opinion may make traditional Christians unable to work in some fields. It’s not hard for me to imagine that, particularly as pfury (and activitiesguy who supported and liked his comments) have strongly argued for the need disclose not only public policy stances, but private religious views in any government or political position. That means they would not vote for me for even a low level position like the city council. I don’t know if they represent the next generation of progressives or not. I hope Dreher is wrong, but I wonder. We’re a very small group, but none of the posters from the left seemed to support me here when I was arguing with pfury about Article VI.

I wondered, we’re you raised in the Episcopal Church, or is it a church of your choosing? As I mentioned, as an LDS person, I can’t easily shift to other traditions without loosing some very meaningful aspects of my theology. Put it this way, I’m not staying in the church because of our traditional stance on gay marriage, but it also won’t be the hill that takes me outside of my tradition.

Sort of. The Episcopal Church of the USA (ECUSA) suffered a terrible schism over issues relating to homosexuality. Many parishes left the church and aligned with other, more conservative Anglican organizations.

Again, only sort of. There is much about modern culture–the fetishizing of consumerism; sexual relations outside of marriage (or at least a committed, loving relationship)–that we do not view as consonant with living in accord with a loving God.

Hear, hear.

I suppose I may have to read the book to understand his point here. Because it’s important to note that 1) there are aspects of “the roots of the faith” that are deeply shameful and deserve to be lost forever; and 2) by turning away from the pluralism that is a hallmark of progressive faith-traditions, a great deal of the potential richness of spiritual life is lost.

I don’t know if you saw my excerpt from Honest to God on the ‘Atheists’ post, but Robinson’s chief point is that the post-Enlightenment public is justifiably skeptical of the pre-Enlightenment manner in which the Christian faith is often presented. I think it is a point well-taken. Thus, I am deeply skeptical of the notion that the way to grow the church is to regress it. Quoting again from Honest to God:

"…Bonhoeffer was saying, the Church has based its preaching of the Gospel on the appeal to religious experience, to the fact that deep down every man feels the need for religion in some form, the need for a God to whom to give himself, a God in terms of whom to explain the world. [My comment: In other words, pre-Enlightenment thinking.] But suppose men come to feel that they can get along perfectly well without ‘religion,’ without any desire for personal salvation, without any sense of sin, without any need of ‘that hypothesis’? [My comment: In other words, post-Enlightenment thinking.] Is Christianity to be confined to those who still have this sense of insufficiency, this ‘God-shaped blank,’ or who can be induced to have it? Bonhoeffer’s answer was to say that God is deliberately calling us in this twentieth century to a form of Christianity that does not depend on the premise of religion, just as St. Paul was calling men in the first century to a form of Christianity that did not depend on the premise of circumcision."

In my opinion, Dreher is advocating for those with a ‘God-shaped blank’ in their heart to seek out and commune only with others possessed of the same blank, and to leave to their own devices those who do not. IMO, this is not what we are called to do. The Church must meet those who lack that ‘blank’ where they live, and not be afraid of their post-Enlightenment skepticism about the existence of God and the divinity of Christ. (This is why I am such a Tillich fanboy.)

Oh ye of little faith. :wink:

Your church is well-known for its history regarding issues of race, and I know you agree that that history includes a great deal which is shameful. (I don’t mean to single out the LDS in this regard; to my knowledge, an equivalent history plagues virtually all Christian faith-traditions.) Your church is also well-known for its very public renunciation and denunciation of its racist past. My point: If instead of sexuality, we (you and I) were having a conversation 100 years ago about the possibility of a change in the LDS stance on race, it’s likely you would have said “I see no way for that to happen”–yet it did. Obviously I can’t say with certainty that the LDS church (or the Catholic church, the Eastern Orthodox, etc) will come to accept LGBT individuals in full communion. But you know how I feel about the arc of the moral universe…

Did I really say that? I ask because I have no recollection of doing so, and it doesn’t sound like something I’d say.

Well, yeah, but is that really so unreasonable? At some point, religious views that are at odds with current law (as opposed to merely culture) become an issue. For example, would you hire someone from Westboro Baptist to be the EEO officer at your company? (Needless to say I hope, I’m not suggesting an equivalency between you, Dreher, the LDS or EO churches, and Westboro Baptist.)

I’m from NOLA originally, so it should come as no surprise that I was baptized Roman Catholic. (It’s a heavily Catholic city.) For reasons I do not know, my mother (RIP) moved us to the Episcopal Church when I was very young. However, it is now the church of my choosing.

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Maybe, but that would require a huge theological and doctrinal change. It’s a far bigger issue than race, which was a temporary policy issue (stemming from Utah attempting to get statehood in the Civil War era). The race issue was never a part of our original theology in the way the eternal nature of gender, confines of sexual behavior and the structure of eternal families are integral to our faith.

Yes, it can quickly become unreasonable, as it becomes a religious litmus test that doesn’t answer the right questions. Public policy/ political stance matter far more than private religious belief on some of these issues. I’m personally pro-choice in terms of public policy, so is it important to ask me about my personal history with abortion and what I would personally do and what my God would say if I were faced with x, y, or z? Harry Reid and Mitt Romney are both from my faith, and they differ dramatically on public policy. That matters. If they have conventional LDS beliefs, they’d both run afoul of what’s culturally popular on all kinds of issues of personal faith. If we get into asking someone if they think other groups have an insufficient theology related to salvation, then we’d disqualify millions of Christians, Jews, or Muslims from civic life. The same would be true of questions about how they think God views sexual behavior without commitment or marriage, or homosexuality.

Sorry. Not in those words exactly, in reference to “me,” but something to the effect that if you were a gay man, you’d have more to fear from the LDS than Muslims. I was a bit stunned, since we have no history of the kind of outright persecution of gays that happens legally in countries in the Muslim world. I explained our theology a bit, and you were very kind. To be clear, you did not offend me. I know you have limited interaction with Mormons in LA. This was in my Nationalism and Globalism thread.

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