Posted on by Daniel Vitagliano

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Posted on by Marc O. DeGirolami

Pontano, “The Virtues and Vices of Speech”

A new English translation of this wonderful 15th century work by the poet, scholar, man Pontano.jpgof letters, and Neapolitan statesman Giovanni Pontano. From a time when scholars thought about whether speech was healthy or not for the polity, and sought to influence public policy accordingly. I’m sure that there are more than a few things of use in this old work, originally titled De Sermone, for today’s interminable debates about the value of free speech in American society. The book is The Virtues and Vices of Speech, by Giovanni Pontano (Harvard University Press) (translated by G.W. Pigman III).

Giovanni Pontano, who adopted the academic sobriquet “Gioviano,” was prime minister to several kings of Naples and the most important Neapolitan humanist of the quattrocento. Best known today as a Latin poet, he also composed dialogues depicting the intellectual life of the humanist academy of which he was the head, and, late in life, a number of moral essays that became his most popular prose works. The De sermone (On Speech), translated into English here for the first time, aims to provide a moral anatomy, following Aristotelian principles, of various aspects of speech such as truthfulness and deception, flattery, gossip, loquacity, calumny, mercantile bargaining, irony, wit, and ridicule. In each type of speech, Pontano tries to identify what should count as the virtuous mean, that which identifies the speaker as a person of education, taste, and moral probity.

Posted on by Mark Movsesian

Bebbington, “Baptists through the Centuries” (2d ed.)

6286For students of church-and-state in America, the Baptists loom very large. Together with Enlightenment figures like Madison and Jefferson, the Baptists had a profound influence in the early Republic as strong advocates of separationism. Next month, Baylor University Press will release a new edition of a history of the Baptist movement, Baptists through the Centuries: A History of a Global People, by historian David Bebbington (Baylor). The new edition discusses the spread of Baptist churches in the global south. Here’s the description from the publisher’s website:

Baptists through the Centuries provides a clear introduction to the history and theology of this influential and international people. David Bebbington, a leading Baptist historian, surveys the main developments in Baptist life and thought from the seventeenth century to the present.

The Baptist movement took root and grew well beyond its British and American origins. Bebbington persuasively demonstrates how Baptists continually adapted to the cultures and societies in which they lived, generating ever more diversity within an already multifaceted group. Bebbington’s survey also examines the challenging social, political, and intellectual issues in Baptist history―attitudes on race, women’s roles in the church, religious liberty, missions, and theological commitments.

The second edition of this proven textbook extends the scope with chapters on three parts of the world where Baptists have become particularly numerous: Latin America (where Brazilian Baptists number over 2 million), Nigeria (where Baptists are at their strongest outside North America, numbering roughly 5 million), and the Naga Hills in India (where Baptists form over 80 percent of the population). Each chapter also highlights regional issues that have presented new challenges and opportunities to Baptists: holistic mission in Latin America, the experience of charismatic renewal and the encounter with Islam in Nigeria, and the demands of peacemaking in the Naga Hills.

Through this new edition, Bebbington orients readers and expands their knowledge of the Baptist community as it continues to flourish around the world.

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Posted on by Mark Movsesian · 1 Comment

Winn, “Reading Mark’s Christology under Caesar”

5211Here is a forthcoming book from IVP Academic that reads the Gospel According to Mark as, in part, a response to imperial propaganda. I don’t know enough to evaluate the author’s argument, but the idea that first-century Roman Christians would have recognized references to the Flavian emperors, and to current events like the sack of Jerusalem, that elude us today is certainly plausible. Perhaps Mark’s Gospel is, at least in part, a reflection on Roman state policy. The book is Reading Mark’s Christology under Caesar: Jesus the Messiah and Roman Imperial Ideology, by Adam Winn (University of Mary Hardin-Baylor College of Christian Studies). Here’s the description from the publisher’s website:

The Gospel of Mark has been studied from multiple angles using many methods. But often there remains a sense that something is wanting, that the full picture of Mark’s Gospel lacks some background circuitry that would light up the whole.

Adam Winn finds a clue in the cataclysmic destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans in AD 70. For Jews and Christians it was an apocalyptic moment. The gods of Rome seemed to have conquered the God of the Jews.

Could it be that Mark wrote his Gospel in response to Roman imperial propaganda surrounding this event? Could a messiah crucified by Rome really be God’s Son appointed to rule the world?

Winn considers how Mark might have been read by Christians in Rome in the aftermath of the fall of Jerusalem. He introduces us to the propaganda of the Flavian emperors and excavates the Markan text for themes that address the Roman imperial setting. We discover an intriguing first-century response to the question “Christ or Caesar?”

Posted on by Mark Movsesian

Miller, “The Character Gap”

9780190264222If men were angels, no government would be necessary. Madison’s famous observation from The Federalist captures the Framers’ unromantic view of human nature. Given the very obvious flaws in human character, they thought, it would be unwise for a state to depend on citizens’ moral progress. In fact, as the twentieth-century liberal political theorist Richard Hofstadter once observed, with frustration, the Framers had a Calvinist outlook that stubbornly rejected any idea of human perfectibility: they were quite sure human nature was weak and would never change. Much safer, they thought, for the state to contain checks on ambition, treachery, folly, and pride, which were bound to assert themselves in time, no matter what people’s better intentions.

A new book from Oxford University Press, The Character Gap: How Good Are We?, by Wake Forest philosophy professor Christian Miller, shows the Framers were more or less correct about human nature. We really are, in the author’s words, “a mixed bag”: not altogether terrible, but not so great, either. The Framers were right to design our institutions as they did. Whether those institutions can survive over the long run remains to be seen. Here’s the description of the book from the Oxford website:

We like to think of ourselves, our friends, and our families as decent people. We may not be saints, but we are still honest, relatively kind, and mostly trustworthy. Miller argues here that we are badly mistaken in thinking this. Hundreds of recent studies in psychology tell a different story: that we all have serious character flaws that prevent us from being as good as we think we are – and that we do not even recognize that these flaws exist. But neither are most of us cruel or dishonest. Instead, Miller argues, we are a mixed bag. On the one hand, most of us in a group of bystanders will do nothing as someone cries out for help in an emergency. Yet it is also true that there will be many times when we will selflessly come to the aid of a complete stranger – and resist the urge to lie, cheat, or steal even if we could get away with it. Much depends on cues in our social environment. Miller uses this recent psychological literature to explain what the notion of “character” really means today, and how we can use this new understanding to develop a character better in sync with the kind of people we want to be.

Posted on by Mark Movsesian

Baddeley, “Copycats and Contrarians”

eee38ec1b7567339c2ae5c2dcf1e4aa7Under the influence of the Enlightenment, or Protestantism, or both, our legal system typically treats religion as individualist and intellectual: a personal assent to certain abstract propositions of faith. But this is not how most people experience religion in daily life. For most of us, religion is about joining a community with which we identify for various reasons, of which intellectual reasons may be the least important. A new book from Yale University Press, Copycats and Contrarians: Why We Follow Others… and When We Don’t, touches on the group dynamics of religion and other phenomena. (Here’s one group phenomenon the author apparently doesn’t address: academic life, which strikes me as quite dominated by the “herd instinct,” actually). The author is scholar Michelle Baddeley (University of South Australia). Here’s the description from the publisher’s website:

A multidisciplinary exploration of our human inclination to herd and why our instinct to copy others can be dangerous in today’s interlinked world

Rioting teenagers, tumbling stock markets, and the spread of religious terrorism appear to have little in common, but all are driven by the same basic instincts: the tendency to herd, follow, and imitate others. In today’s interconnected world, group choices all too often seem maladaptive. With unprecedented speed, information flashes across the globe and drives rapid shifts in group opinion. Adverse results can include speculative economic bubbles, irrational denigration of scientists and other experts, seismic political reversals, and more.

Drawing on insights from across the social, behavioral, and natural sciences, Michelle Baddeley explores contexts in which behavior is driven by the herd. She analyzes the rational vs. nonrational and cognitive vs. emotional forces involved, and she investigates why herding only sometimes works out well. With new perspectives on followers, leaders, and the pros and cons of herd behavior, Baddeley shines vivid light on human behavior in the context of our ever-more-connected world.

Posted on by Daniel Vitagliano

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Podcast: “Who Is Brett Kavanaugh?”

gs-FdUf9_400x400Last week, I sat down with First Things‘s senior editor Mark Bauerlein to discuss Judge Brett Kavanaugh’s record on church-state issues and what it might suggest about his future as a Justice. (Bottom line: he’s likely to look a lot like the person he’s replacing). You can listen to the podcast on the First Things site, here.

Posted on by Mark Movsesian

Jackson, “De Gaulle”

9780674987210-lgCharles de Gaulle was one of the most fascinating and controversial political leaders of the twentieth century. Although a devout Catholic, he did not speak much in public about his faith nor make it an express part of his program: Gaullism was a politics of nationalism more than religion. Yet his writings reveal that, for him, the “idea of France”embodied both nationalism and Christianity–both the Republic and the Church. How he was able to accommodate those two commitments is no doubt discussed in an interesting-looking new biography from Harvard University Press: De Gaulle, by historian Julian Jackson (Queen Mary University of London). Particularly now, as conservatives in France and across Europe seek a new way to negotiate the demands of Christianity and liberalism, de Gaulle’s example could be relevant. Here is the description of the book from the Harvard website:

A definitive biography of the mythic general who refused to accept the Nazi domination of France, drawing on unpublished letters, memoirs, and papers in the newly opened de Gaulle archives that show how this volatile and inspiring leader put his broken nation back at the center of world affairs.

In the early summer of 1940, when France was overrun by German troops, one junior general who had fought in the trenches in Verdun refused to accept defeat. He fled to London, where he took to the radio to address his compatriots back home. “Whatever happens,” he said, “the flame of French resistance must not be extinguished and will not be extinguished.” At that moment, Charles de Gaulle entered history.

For the rest of the war, de Gaulle insisted he and his Free French movement were the true embodiment of France. Through sheer force of personality he inspired French men and women to risk their lives to resist the Nazi occupation. Sometimes aloof but confident in his leadership, he quarreled violently with Churchill and Roosevelt. Yet they knew they would need his help to rebuild a shattered Europe. Thanks to de Gaulle, France was recognized as one of the victorious Allies when Germany was finally defeated. Then, as President of the Fifth Republic, he brought France to the brink of a civil war over his controversial decision to pull out of Algeria. He challenged American hegemony, took France out of NATO, and twice vetoed British entry into the European Community in his pursuit of what he called “a certain idea of France.”