Tolkien on America, democracy, and 'the West'

Here I am going to cite some of J.R.R. Tolkien's letters to illustrate the point of view I discussed here, in which America, far from being part of a Western Civilization whose great theme is democracy, is a different continent, fundamentally alien to a Europe, whose great theme is spirituality, rootedness, and hierarchy.

Here follows a florilegium of quotations, with a bit of commentary (references is to the letter number in the Humphrey Carpenter collection).

One theme in Tolkien's relations with America was his suspicion of American publishers, agents, and movie-makers, whom he tended to suspect of cultural illiteracy and sensationalism, although sometimes he was pleasantly surprised. Here is him trying to be diplomatic:

As for the illustrations [for the Hobbit]: I am divided between knowledge of my own inability and fear of what the American artists (doubtless of admirable skill) might produce . . . It might be advisable, rather than lose the American interest to let the Americans do what seems good to them -- as long as it was possible (I should like to add) to veto anything from or influenced by the Disney studios (for all whose works I have a heartfelt loathing). I have seem American illustrations that suggest that excellent things might be produced . . . (no. 13, May, 1937).

Or else being somewhat amused:

A backwash from the [Science Fiction Convention at which Tolkien received the International Fantasy Award] was a visit from an American film agent . . . who drove all the way in a taxi from London to see me last week, filling 76 Sandfield [Tolkien's home address] with strange men and stranger women -- I thought the taxi would never stop disgorging. But this Mr. Ackerman brought some astonishingly good pictures (Rackham rather than Disney) and some remarkable color photographs. . . . The Story Line or Scenario was, however, on a lower level. In fact bad. But it looks as if business might be done (no. 202, September, 1957).

A more usual theme is this:

The Americans are not as a rule at all amenable to criticism or correction; but I think their effort is so poor that I feel constrained to make some effort to improve it, though without much more hope of effect than in the case of the appalling jacket they produced for the Hobbit (no. 145, May, 1954).

And every once in a while, American artists and publishers lived up to his worst fears, as with the famous Barbara Remington cover pictured here, which went on to be smash success in the USA:

I wrote . . . a short hasty note . . . to this effect: I think the cover [of the new paperback edition of the Lord of the Rings] ugly; but I recognize that a main object of a paperback cover is to attract purchasers, and I suppose that you are better judges of what is attractive in USA than I am. I therefore will not into a debate about taste -- (meaning though I did not say so: horrible colours and foul lettering) -- but I must ask about this vignette: what has it got to do with the story? Where is this place? Why a lion* and emus? And what is the thing in the foreground with pink bulbs? . . . .

Mrs. _____ [a representative of Ballantine Co.] . . . rang me up. I had a longish conversation; but she seemed to me impermeable. . . . When I made the above points again, her voice rose several tones and she cried: 'But the man hadn't TIME to read the book!' (As if that settled it. A few minutes conversation with the 'man' and a glance at the American edition's pictures should have been sufficient.) With regard to the pink bulbs she said as if to one of complete obtusity: 'they are meant to suggest a Christmas Tree'. Why is such a woman let loose? I begin to feel that I am shut up in a madhouse (no. 277, September, 1965).

Of course sometimes he felt he was just defending England against ignorant American prejudice:

I found myself in a carriage occupied by an R.A.F. officer . . . , and a very nice young American Officer, New-Englander. I stood the hot-air they let off as long as I could; but when I heard the Yank burbling about 'Feudalism' and its results on English class-distinctions and social behavior, I opened a broad-side. The poor boob had not, of course, the faintest notions about 'Feudalism', or history at all -- being a chemical engineer. But you can't knock 'Feudalism' out of an American's head, any more than the 'Oxford Accent'. He was impressed I think when I said that an Englishman's relations with porters, butlers, and tradesmen had as much connection with 'Feudalism' as skyscrapers had with Red Indian wigwams, or taking off one's hat to a lady has with modern methods of collecting Income Tax; but I am not sure he was convinced. I did however get a dim notion into his head that the 'Oxford Accent' (by which he politely told me he meant mine) was not 'forced' and 'put on', but a natural one learned in the nursery -- and was moreover not feudal or aristocratic but a very middle-class bourgeois invention. After I told him that his 'accent' sounded to me like English after being wiped over with a dirty sponge, and generally suggested (falsely) to an English observer that, together with American slouch, it indicated a slovenly and ill-disciplined people -- well, we got quite friendly. We had some bad coffee in the refreshment room at Snow Hill and parted (no. 58, April, 1944).

His World War II letters, however, reveal much darker fears about a militant Americo-cosmopolitanism and its threat, along with Russo-Bolshevism, to European civilization. After the Tehran summit of Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin, he wrote:

I must also admit that in the photograph our little cherub [Winston Churchill] actually looked the biggest ruffian present. Humph, well! I wonder (if we survive this war) if there will be any niche, even of sufferance, left for reactionary back numbers like me (and you). The bigger things get the smaller and duller and flatter the globe gets. It is going to be all one blasted little provincial suburb. When they have introduced American sanitation, morale-pep, feminism, and mass production throughout the Near East, Middle East, Far East, U.S.S.R., the Pampas, el Gran Chaco, the Danubian Basin, Equatorial Africa, Hirther Further and Inner Mumbo-land, Gondhwanaland, Lhasa, and the villages of darkest Berkshire, how happy we shall be. At any rate it ought to cut down travel there will be nowhere to go . . .

But seriously, I do find this Americo-cosmpolitanism very terrifying. Qua mind and spirit, and neglecting the piddling fears of the timid flesh which does not want to be shot or chopped by brutal and licentious soldiery (German or other), I am not really sure that its victory is going to be so much the better for the world as a whole and in the long run than the victory of ____. I don't suppose letters in [to the R.A.F., in which his son was serving] are censored. But if they are, or not, I need to you hardly add that them's the sentiments of a good many folk -- and no indication of lack of patriotism. For I love England (not Great Britain and certainly not the British Commonwealth (grr!)) . . . (no. 53, December, 1943).

. . . When it is all over, will ordinary people have any freedom left (or right) or will they have to fight for it, or will they be too tired to resist? The last rather seems the idea of some the Big Folk. Who for the most part viewed this war from the vantage point of large motor-cars. Too many are childless. But I suppose the one certain result of it all is a further growth in the great standardised amalgmations with their mass-produced notions and emotions. Music will give place to jiving: which as far as I can make out means holding a 'jam session' round a piano (an instrument properly intended to produce the sounds devised by, say, Chopin) and hitting it so hard it breaks. This delicately cultured amusement is said to be a 'fever' in the U.S.A. O God! O Montreal! O Minnesota! O Michigan! What kind of mass-manias the Soviets can produce remains for peace and prosperity and the removal of war-hypnotism to show. Not quite so dismal as the Western ones, perhaps (I hope). But one doesn't altogether wonder at a few smaller states still wanting to be 'neutral'; they are between the devil and the deep sea all right (and you can stick which D you like on to which side you like). . . . There lies some hope that, at least in our beloved land of England, propaganda defeats itself . . . (no. 77, July, 1944).

Exacerbating his gloom was the sense that World War II would soon be followed by an Americo-Russian war. After his son Christopher in the R.A.F. hoped to be transfered to the Fleet Air Arm in the Far East with the end of the war in Europe, he wrote:

It would not be easy for me to express to you the the measure of my loathing of the Third Service [i.e. the R.A.F.] -- which can nonetheless, and is for me, combined with admiration, gratitude, and above all pity, for the young men caught up in it. But it is the aeroplane of war that is the real villain. . . . My sentiments are more or less those that Frodo would have had if he discovered some Hobbit learning to ride Nazgul-birds, 'for the liberation of the Shire'. Though in this case, as I know nothing about British or American imperialism in the Far East that does not fill me with regret and disgust, I am afraid I am not even supported by a glimmer of patriotism in this remaining war. I would not subscribe a penny to it, let alone a son, were I a free man. It can only benefit America or Russia: prob. the latter. But at least the Americo-Russian War won't break out for a year yet (no. 100, May 1945).

In fact, however, the Americo-Russian war did not break out, and the imposition of Americo-cosmopolitanism on England was far less systematic than he feared. While his travails with obtuse American publicity agents continued, he found the defense of the West from Communism to be much more a meaningful struggle than he had hoped. Contrary to popular belief, he did not think that England had ended up like the Shire after the War of the Ring:

There is no special reference to England in the 'Shire' -- except that as an Englishman brought up in an 'almost rural' village . . . I take my models . . . from such 'life' as I know. But there is no post-war reference. I am not a 'socialist' in any sense . . . but I would not say we have to suffer the malice of Sharkey and his Ruffians here. Though the spirit of 'Isengard', if not of Mordor, is of course always cropping up. The present design of destroying Oxford in order to accommodate motor-cars is a case. But our chief adversary is a member of a 'Tory' government (no. 181, early 1956).

Despite realism about the moral ambiguities, he was a convinced supporter of the anti-Communist side:

Of course in 'real life' causes are not so clear cut -- if only because human tyrants are seldom utterly corrupted into pure manifestations of evil will. As far as I can judge some seem to have been so corrupt, but even they must rule subjects only part of whom are equally corrupt, while many still need to have 'good motives', real or feigned, presented to them. As we see today . . . . There are also conflicts about important things or ideas. In such cases I am more impressed by the extreme importance of being on the right side, than I am disturbed by the revelation of the jungle of confused motives, private purposes, and individual actions (noble or base) in which the right and wrong in actual human conflicts are commonly involved. . . . .

He then explains that Sauron presented himself as a god to the Men in his service, and that his victory would involve extorting universal worship of him from all rational creatures.

So even if in desperation 'the West' had bred or hired hordes of orcs and had cruelly ravaged the lands of other Men as allies of Sauron, or merely to prevent them from aiding him, their Cause would have remained indefeasibly right. As does the Cause of those who oppose now the State-God and Marshal This or That as its High Priest, even if it is true (as it unfortunately is) that many of their deeds are wrong, even if it were true (as it is not) that the inhabitants of 'The West', except for a minority of wealthy bosses, live in fear and squalor, while the worshippers of the State-God live in peace and abundance and in mutual esteem and trust (no. 183, 1956).

Notice how 'The West' is now his referent, not England, or Europe.

But he still was not a 'democrat':

I am not a 'democrat' only because 'humility' and equality are spiritual principles corrupted by the effort to mechanize and formalize them, with the result that we get not universal smallness and humility, but universal greatness and pride, till some Orc gets hold of a ring of power -- and then we get and are getting slavery (no. 186, April, 1956).

See also his tart comments about Greece as the homeland of democracy:

Mr. Eden in the house [parliament] the other day expressed pain at the occurrences in Greece 'the home of democracy'. Is he ignorant or insincere? Demokratia was not in Greek a word of approval but was nearly equivalent to 'mob-rule'; and he neglected to note that Greek Philosophers -- and far more is Greece the home of philosophy -- did not approve of it. And the great Greek states, esp. Athens at the time of its high art and power, were rather Dictatorships, if they were not military monarchies like Sparta! (no. 94, December, 1944).

Later on in the 1960s, the rise of Tolkien clubs in America, and their association with the counter-culture (part of which he approved of and part of which horrified him), disturbed him. After hearing about the creation of a 'New York Tolkien Society' from W.H. Auden who said he feared the members would all be lunatics, Tolkien replied:

Yes, I have heard about the Tolkien Society. Real lunatics don't join them, I think. But still such things fill me too with alarm and despondency (no. 275, August, 1965).

It is in this context that we have to read what is doubtless the most categorically negative thing Tolkien ever wrote about America. After discussing the touching news that his works were being treated as literature on the syllabus in Oxford, he continued:

Not a soil in which the fungus-growth of cults is likely to arise. The horrors of the American scene [of Tolkien mania] I will pass over, though they have given me great distress and labour. (They arise in an entirely different mental climate and soil, polluted and impoverished to a degree only paralleled by the lunatic destruction of the physical lands which Americans inhabit) . . . (no. 328, autumn, 1971).

But the "horrors of the American scene" always drove him more to pity than anger. After citing a letter from a 12 year old Pennsylvanian who had said his Hobbit was "the most wonderful book I have ever read" and said "Gee Whiz, I'm surprised that it's not more popular", Tolkien commented:

It's nice to find that little American boys really do say 'Gee Whiz'.

He added more seriously:

I find these letters which I still occasionally get [this was long before the Lord of the Rings had been published] . . . make me rather sad. What thousand grains of good human corn must fall on barren stony ground, if such a very small drop of water should be so intoxicating! (no. 87, October, 1944).

When on the back cover of the Ballantine edition in addition to his famous plea "Those who approve of courtesy (at least) to living authors will purchase it and no other", he added that this was especially designed for "those over the Water", this was what he meant: designed as a drop of water for those born into the polluted and impoverished mental and physical environment of America.

It is important to remember that Tolkien had never been to America in his life. His comments are thus particularly valuable as a source for studying stereotyped images of America among Englishmen of a certain age and cast of thought, although they are of course that much less valuable as a source for actual knowledge about America.

Here's a map to keep in mind when people in the Metroliner Corridor (Boston to Washington) tell other people to just shut up and accept that high gas prices are just what we need to save the environment. (There's an article with it here, but it's just in the nature of a caption.)

UPDATE: A longer post on the same thing, with links (best of all) to more cool maps, here (HT: Rod Dreher).

One Small Catch in the General Downward Slide

Amazing! Some one uses the phrase "beg the question" and uses it correctly -- in a blog comments thread no less. Can you find it here?

"Europe" vs. "Western Civilization"

Has anyone here read Tintin in America? It's an absolutely fascinating compendium of 1930s European stereotypes of America. I was thinking of it lately, after reading Adam Tooze's magnificent Wages of Destruction: The Making and Breaking of the Nazi Economy, one of the most thought-provoking books in twentieth century history I have read in a long time.

Tooze's basic argument runs like this: Germany in the 1920s and 1930s was not Europe's most advanced economy, but a relatively poor, relatively backward economy in Europe -- and the Nazis knew it was. Britain and France on a per capita basis far outpaced Germany, and both had access to colonial resources and markets. Nazi Germany's bid for world conquest was a bid by a self-consciously weak country, directed in the last analysis, at the world superpower, which in 1918 was already recognized to be America. Nazi Germany thus shared with Stalin's Russia, Imperial Japan, and other ambitious but poor powers a need to control the economy, and direct its resources into favored sectors of heavy industry that could be easily fed into a war economy. And like those other economies, the Nazi economy planned from 1939 on for massive use of slave labor, and starvation of scores of millions: in this case, easterners.

Tooze's thesis recasts the relationship of the war in the East to the war in the West. Previous writers have argued that the war in the East, on Stalin's Russia, the ultimate aim of the Nazi war machine and that the war with England was, from the point of view of Hitler's strategy, a mistake. But Tooze shows that for the Nazis the ultimate threat was the terrifying economic power of America. Conquering Russia and killing scores of millions was necessary -- but primarily to give Germany and Europe the resources necessary for a fighting chance to resist American domination and make Europe once again the leading continent. Only war on Russia could secure a colonized continent for Germany, just as the United States had in America west of the Appalachians. What was the role of England in this? Hitler in his writings in the 1920s originally planned to try to get England to ally with him in his European-wide anti-American coalition. But when England refused to join in 1939, it was proof that Roosevelt and the Jews had finally gotten control of England and made it a satellite of America. From then on England was just a satellite of America.

Tooze's analogy between the German aims in Russia and the American colonization of the West highlights unsettling similarities between Nazi Germany and the American republics . To illustrate this, let me recall a scene from the movie Judgment at Nuremberg. The German defense lawyer (played by Montgomery Clift) defends the Nazi sterilization law by referring to similar opinions rendered by Oliver Wendell Holmes. (Actually that's an illustration of the thesis of this recent book.) But the movie pulls its punches, unfortunately. When it comes to Nazi miscegenation laws, the German defense lawyer never once refers to the similar laws polluting the books of many American states at the time. Likewise, it is shaming to realize how much what the Nazis were up to in Russia was modeled on the American dispossession of the American Indians. (As Tooze says, the only difference -- a big one in political economy terms -- was that American colonization was almost most privately run, while the Nazi colonization was state-run.)

This leads to strange question, though: why did Nazi Germany make so little common cause with racism in the United States? Why, for example, in a contest between non-white Japanese on one side and white Americans interning Japanese-Americans on a racial basis on the other did Hitler instinctively and whole-heartedly support the non-whites against the whites? Why was no attempt ever made by the Nazis to win the sympathies of Southern segregationists and Klansmen in America?

After reading Tooze's book, the answer I think is pretty plain: Nazism wasn't just about racism, it was also about Europeanism. In other words it was not just about making "Aryans" triumph over Jews, Roma, and other inferior races in Europe, it was also about making Europe as a continent triumph over rival continents. And by rival continents, the only one really in question was North America. One could even go so far as to say that the racism was instrumental to the "continentism"; that grinding inferior races in Europe into the dust was only a means to the end of keeping Europe the world's leading continent. What is so striking about this is how geography trumped race even in the strategy of the most justly notorious racists in history. How could this be?

Here is where Tintin in America comes in. To understand European fear of North America, one needs to understand the European image of America. Tintin's America is a gangster paradise, a land of skyscrapers and anarchy, of grotesque slaughterhouses and industrialized food, drunken sheriffs enforcing Prohibition while citizens have fun at a lynching parties, a land where oil companies routinely dispossess Indians, where you can go to sleep in a prairie one day and wake up in a traffic-jammed metropolis the next. Now, this is Tintin, and it is all fairly light-hearted. (My personal favorite line is where Tintin as a celebrity has to turn down product endorsement offers, including this gem: "Join our new Islamo-Judeo-Buddhistic religion and earn the highest dividends in the world!") As Tintin leaves on a steamer back for Europe, he sighs, "Funny, and I was just starting to like the place." But make no mistake, America is not part of some "Western civilization" -- it is just as alien to Herge's European readers as Africa, the Soviet Union, or the Arab world and India, scenes for his immediately preceding and following Tintin volumes.

And it is not surprising therefore that in volume ten of the series, The Shooting Star, we see the following rivalry: pure-minded, impractical, yet lovable scholars from Belgium, Paris, Heidelberg, Stockholm, and Salamanca, are pitted against ruthless, gun-toting Americans, whose aims are set by their greedy financial backer Blumenstein. Now when I tell you that the book was written in 1941-42, you will understand why the lovable scholars are all from German-occupied or pro-German countries and why the financier has a hook nose, big lips, and no scruples when it comes to blood-sucking. Post-war editions scrubbed the American flag off the rival expedition's boat and the Jewish name off the financier, but the fact remains, this book links perfectly (and again in a light-hearted, non-didactic way) the stereotypes of Tintin in America with the European agenda of the Nazi party, as seen in Tooze's Wages of Destruction. Note that in Herge's unreflective viewpoint we see a strange co-existence of a morally-based dislike of America's dispossession of the Indians with an implicit approval of the Nazi-led mission to defeat America by conquest and colonization of Russia.

It is this European image of America, as found in Herge, combining monstrous economic growth and urbanization, lack of any state-imposed order, alienation from nature and a willingness to dispossess others purely for profit that makes sense of why Nazi racism could never make common cause with American racism. American racism existed within the context of a society which was categorically hostile to the traditional order of Europe which Nazism was defending. The social self-image of Nazi Germany, however delusional in practice, really was closer to that of militarist Japan than to America, no matter how pure "white" -- and determined to stay that way -- the majority of Americans then were.

Herge himself was no ideologist, just a trimmer spinning with the wind. In his 1958 The Red Sea Sharks, he reflects a new pro-American view by making the crew of an American cruiser the role of heroes rescuing Tintin and a cargo-load of Africans being sold as slaves. The American sailors are indeed called "cowboys" -- but only by chief slave-trader and aristocratic villain Rastapopoulos. In context it's a badge of honor.

What happened between Tintin in America and the Red Sea Sharks (and its superb sister volume The Calculus Affair)? Obviously the annihilation and discrediting of the Nazi ideal. But another way to see it is the acceptance by Europeans of the "Western Civilization" as a summing of their highest ideals to replace "Europe." What's the difference? Well obviously "Western Civ" includes America, and not just as a peripheral player either, but as a central part of the narrative. But the inclusion of America changes how the whole narrative works. In "Western Civ" the aim is democracy and individual rights. From Greek city states to the Magna Carta, to New England town meetings to today; or as David Gress put it, From Plato to NATO. Christian theocracy, feudalism, absolutism, fascism -- these were somehow aberrations in the narrative. The power of the "Western Civ" narrative is how it links a particular praxis (extensive social and economic ties between the Western European and American upper classes, dwarfing those either has with any other region), a particular policy (multilateral democracy promotion), and a particular understanding of history.

The problem is that this understanding of history was made plausible only by the annihilation of fascism as an alternate understanding of Europe's destiny in the modern era. In a purely historical reading, from Plato's racist and aristocratic Republic, to the Christian empire, to the feudal Carolingian monarchy, to absolutism, to fascism's peculiar synthesis of social mobility and corporatism under the leader-principle is at least an equally valid way of looking at European history. In this reading, hierarchy and leadership justified by enlightened reason, war as a testing of the soul, caste endogamy, and a dichotomy of free and unfree are the central messages of European civilization. (I've touched on a Swedish Christian version of it here.) Nazism served up this ideal in a way that its humane adherents such as J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis detested and were willing to fight to destroy, but as they themselves recognized, this hierarchical ideal was recognizably in line with the ideals of the Greco-Roman and Germanic roots of European civilization. And just as recognizably to them, America was not.

This is a part of China you don't hear much about, but it brings back memories.

At dawn the next day, we were awakened by the sounds of clanging pots. Outside the bus, hotel workers were cooking in a makeshift kitchen. The rice congee (basically a watery boiled rice) they prepared was the diet of Chinese babies and "very healthy," our stalwart tour guide, Frank Wang, assured us. It became our staple, sometimes supplemented with pickled vegetables and small pieces of pork salvaged from the hotel's refrigerators.

And this too.

Even when the food is bland (rice congee!) or too salty (pickled vegetables), there something about the Chinese ability to joke and share and be neighborly in conditions of extreme physical discomfort that is really touching. Not to mention the goofy games that build school spirit, like here.

On the other hand there's this bit of nasty amateur theodicy, or should I say Buddhodicy?

Actually Existing Complementarianism

Imagine someone who said to you: "I used to believe that premarital sex was just wrong. Then my daughter started dating and got pregnant. Since then our family has been completely overturned, and my Christian life devastated. As a result of all these troubles, I've realized all that stuff about premarital sex being against God's plan for families is just wrong." If you are like me, you'd think the logic was a bit strange. Isn't the trouble that follows from breaking the law you used to believe in normally seen as confirmation of the law's justice? I mean when violating some rule makes for unhappiness all around, we conclude that the rule might make sense. But if the person saying the opposite seems otherwise intelligent, we might assume that there is something else there, some hidden assumption going unexpressed, that makes the logic make sense. And if scores of other people agreed with the person when he said that, we might conclude that these hidden assumptions are actually widely shared. And that would be so even if those assumptions contradict the explicit theology of those persons.

I am thinking about the iMonk's recent post on his agony attendant upon his wife, Denise, becoming a Catholic (he's a Southern Baptist pastor). I would link to it, but it seems to have been removed by him from his site. I don't want to talk about the personalities and rights and wrongs of it all, but as I remember the post, it did have something of the shape: "I used to believe in a man's spiritual leadership in the home; my wife has rejected my spiritual leadership; my life and family are now in complete chaos; so I realize how wrong I was ever to believe in a man's spiritual leadership in the home." Now since this makes no sense at all logically and since the iMonk is certainly an intelligent person, it's clear that there are some hidden assumptions going unexpressed. And I am going to tell you what they are, and why they are there. And I'll start off by saying that those hidden assumptions are not his, but his quite accurate understanding of the sub-text of what "complementarianism"* means in churches that practice it.

Now, in theory "complementarianism" means something like this: "God has given to men a duty to exercise leadership (especially religious leadership) in the home and in the church." Corollaries include the idea that violation of this cause trouble, and so on. Let's call this "theoretical complementarianism."

But that is not all that "complementarianism" means, and not even the main part. It is certainly not the proposition that the iMonk saw completely shattered by his last year as his wife prepared to convert to Catholicism. Rather what was shattered is a quite different proposition: "When men exercise spiritual leadership in the home and church, women will inevitably welcome and follow this leadership." This would have the corollary that "If women deny male headship in church or home, it is all the fault of the men over them." You could also phrase it as "When men exercise spiritual leadership in the home and church, God hears their prayers and makes those who should follow, do so." Practically the result is the same: where men lead rightly women do, in fact and practice, follow. Let's call this proposition "actually existing complementarianism."

Now this would certainly be shattered by the iMonk's experience. He thought he was a good husband and good Baptist pastor -- and now his wife is rejecting his spiritual headship by becoming Catholic. So he now has two alternatives: 1) continue to accept actually existing "complementarianism" (as opposed to the theoretical version in the paragraph above) and take the blame as the bad husband and bad pastor whose failures drove his wife into Catholicism, and prevented God from responding to his desperate prayers; or 2) reject actually existing complementarianism. Now if theoretical complementarianism has been firmly enough linked to actually existing complementarianism, then rejecting the second will mean rejecting the first.

Now, what is the relationship between these two propositions? It certainly isn't some kind of logical corollary. Let's take an analogy: "God had ordained civil authorities as enforcers of the law and all citizens should obey" and "If civil authorities properly enforce the law, all citizens will obey" are independent propositions. None thinks the second follows from the first as some kind of automatic corollary. Likewise, the idea that good parents, for example, never get grief from teenage kids is not part of usual Christian teaching. So how did the Southern Baptist Church, and other churches teaching the same, get from one to the other in the case of husbands and wives?

Even stranger is that "actually existing complementarianism," despite being taught in Christian churches, seems to contradict Christian teachings about human nature. For example, original sin. How can we believe that an original sinner pastor/husband could ever exercise leadership well enough that "actually existing complementarianism" could be anything other than a purely theoretical issue? And how can we believe that even if the pastor/husband is perfect, an original sinner wife/congregant would inevitably welcome this leadership? I mean, does the Bible really teach that when prophets and priests lead in God's way that people always and inevitably follow? In fact, "actually existing complementarianism" is simply an assertion that both men and women can and will fulfill the law of theoretical complementarianism.

Actually existing complementarianism looks very much like Mencius; you know, the Confucian philosopher who argued that human nature is inherently good. Mencius was asked how a prince should get the common people to observe proper ritual. The answer? Just lead and the people will inevitably follow:

The prince said again to Ran Yu, 'Hitherto, I have not given myself to the pursuit of learning, but have found my pleasure in horsemanship and sword-exercise, and now I don't come up to the wishes of my aged relatives and the officers. I am afraid I may not be able to discharge my duty in the great business that I have entered on; do you again consult Mencius for me.'

On this, Ran Yu went again to Zou, and consulted Mencius. Mencius said, 'It is so, but he may not seek a remedy in others, but only in himself. Confucius said, "When a prince dies, his successor entrusts the administration to the prime minister. He sips the congee. His face is of a deep black. He approaches the place of mourning, and weeps. Of all the officers and inferior ministers there is not one who will presume not to join in the lamentation, he setting them this example. What the superior loves, his inferiors will be found to love exceedingly. The relation between superiors and inferiors is like that between the wind and grass. The grass must bend when the wind blows upon it." The business depends on the prince.'

Ran Yu returned with this answer to his commission, and the prince said, 'It is so. The matter does indeed depend on me.'

So for five months he dwelt in the shed, without issuing an order or a caution. All the officers and his relatives said, 'He may be said to understand the ceremonies.' When the time of interment arrived, they came from all quarters of the State to witness it. Those who had come from other States to condole with him, were greatly pleased with the deep dejection of his countenance and the mournfulness of his wailing and weeping.

Now Mencius believed firmly in the goodness of human nature and the naturalness of Confucian ethics. And there is something in this that responds to our usual moral intuitions. If the government is good, people will obey -- generally and as a rule. But conservative Presbyterians and Baptists believe just as firmly in original sin and the unattainability of the Christian ethic. So how did this teaching of actually existing complementarianism get established?

Certainly it is not particularly traditional. I have read quite widely in the pre-20th century Christian tradition, and while theoretical complementarianism is virtually universal in it, the actually existing kind seems nowhere to be found. In other words, a model of family life is set out, but there is no real expectation that just because the husband follows it the wife will -- or the other way around. In general if you act well, the other person in the marriage will frequently respond, but there's nothing inevitable about and nothing shocking when he or she doesn't reciprocate. So why is it so important to insist in conservative Christian churches that traditional sex roles is entirely up to the pastor/husband, and that he alone, simply by personal rectification, can inevitably make them welcomed in his household?

Several reasons, I think. One important one is because of the dynamics of the church teaching situation. Most teaching that takes place in Christian churches in a market environment is men teaching women. When a male pastor teaches actually existing complementarianism, he is doing several things: 1) assuring the women in his audience that they will not be, and cannot be, compelled to submit to their husband's leadership; it's purely voluntary. 2) He is building up his own sense of righteousness and manliness. Look at it this way: actually existing complementarianism has as its corollary that any man to whom women submit is exercising leadership properly (OK, it's not exactly a strict logical inference, but it's close enough for real life.) If I as a Southern Baptist pastor tell my mostly female congregation that they should submit to male headship in the family and church -- but only when the man's leadership is godly --, and they prefer my preaching to that of the Methodist church with a woman pastor down the road or to their own good-for-nothing husbands, well then, then my leadership must be godly than theirs. And godly in a specifically male way.

To a certain degree, then, "actually existing complementarianism" is a way of throwing down the gauntlet to other men: if you are a real man, your wife will welcome your leadership, and if she doesn't -- well then, you mustn't be a real man. Now if the iMonk was raised in this kind of environment it's easy to see why his wife becoming Catholic was a shattering humiliation. He could either live with the humiliation or rip up the whole game. No wonder he chose the second.

But this sort of real man one-ups-manship has been going on for a long time, and actually existing complementarianism is a new thing. So there must be something new in the situation to account for it. Here's the new thing: complementarianism has become an "ethnic" marker, a marker that separates the people of God from outsiders. And it is the distinctive feature of such marker-laws that they have to be attainable. Think of it this way, if not eating pork is the mark of a Jew as one of the people of God, then not eating pork has to be a fulfillable command. If somehow it's not possible to not pork, then all kinds of people who want to be Jews will be turned from Jews to gentiles against their will. And if your life is built around your religious community, that's pretty upsetting.

But the use of marital relations as a marker of being part of the people of God is actually pretty new. In 1858, liberal Episcopalians and evangelical Baptists all had pretty much the same view of family ethics. In 1958, differences were there, but with at a fairly high level of abstraction. But today, views on "complementarianism" vs. "egalitarianism" have becoming major denominational distinctives. If "complementarianism" defines the Southern Baptists, then "complementarianism," (like teetotalling, but unlike loving your neighbor, which all denominations try to do and all fail at perfecting) has to be do-able. Otherwise you won't have any credible "witness." If you are a member of, to chose a different example, a conservative PCA church, and want to remain so, having a good "complementarian" marriage, is as important as not eating pork as is to remaining an Orthodox Jew in good standing. (OK, I exaggerate a bit -- but only a bit.)

Now I can't think of anything less well-suited to be a dividing line between the clean and the unclean than marital relations. An insider/outsider marker should be: 1) easily documented, one way or the other; 2) clear-cut at any point whether you are living up to it or not; 3) Not connected to personality. Otherwise you are saying only one personality type is allowed in this denomination, which is going to drive vast numbers of growing children out of your body each generation; 4) individually determined, so that whether you adhere or not is under your own control, not someone else's. Now, you might point out that kosher rules are set by the family; if a wife refuses to keep a kosher kitchen, the Orthodox Jewish husband's stuck. But in this case, Jewish law allows and would even encourage divorce of a spouse who refuses to comply with membership codes. But in Christian churches, divorce is not explicitly recognized as an option (although in reality it plays an important under the table role in border-maintenance). But what you have in "complementarian" churches is a marker of cleanliness that is hard to check, dependent on endless subtle shades of interaction, determined by the interaction of two distinctive individual personalities, and in the end, out of the control of either partner. This can't help but cause anxiety.

(It is also true that explicitly liberal churches who place emphasis on being progressive have the mirror image problem, giving you the widespread figure of the bossy husband and mousy wife in a UU or Episcopalian church desperately denying that their family order is traditional patriarchy. But since liberal churches are in step with the wider society, are in fact the wider society at prayer, ideological consistency lacks the peculiar imperatives of border maintenance. If you admitted you act like a patriarch, despite believing in "a woman's right to chose", you'd just be a jerk, and not a social outcast.)

In this situation you need desperately to avoid the suggestion that justification by this particular Law is out of your hands. You have to believe that "complementarian" marriages are clearly and easily distinguished from "egalitarian" ones. That conscious belief and will, not the myriad shades of in-born personality types built by each person's unique nature and nurture, determines your interaction with your spouse. That husbands as leaders and wives as followers can indeed be close to sinless enough for actually existing complementarianism to apply.

To admit that these beliefs are obviously false, and would sound as strange and contrived in 1858 as they do today, is hard to bear. (Think of it this way -- have you ever read any good literature built on these principles? I thought not. And if it can't make a good novel, it probably can't be lived out in real life.)

But anything else leads to the dreaded condition of ethical fatalism, the believe that whether or not you are a good person and a member in good standing in the church is out of your hands. And that dreaded condition was what giving your life over to Christ was supposed to get you out of.

So my conclusion is, that "actually existing complementarianism" is created not by traditional Christian doctrine ("theoretical complementarianism") itself, but by that doctrine in interaction with a particular sociological situation: gathered congregations in a religious market in a society with serious conflict over marital ideals . Since those sociological features aren't going away, so too actually existing complementarianism isn't going to go away any time soon. But as you could probably tell, I believe it is overall pretty destructive. That is, however, not because traditional Christian teaching on the family is wrong, but rather because this good Law is being misused. I tend to agree with the biologists that people are mammals, and that means that when males are actually in the pack they generally lead it, and that females have a natural connection with child-raising*. People are overall happier and children are overall better raised where our heritage as a particular sort of mammalian creatures is worked with and not fought against. But daily interaction between husband and wife is just not something that can be legislated. If churches want border-markers between "complementarianism" and "egalitarianism" let them use nice and simple devices that are suited for the purpose, such as wives taking their husband's family name, or including "obey" in wedding vows -- do it once, in public, and then you can forget about it and get on with trying to be a good husband and father, wife and mother, without letting -isms get in the way. That's the approach of conservative liturgical churches and while it is less effective at challenging the broader society, it breeds fewer shattered and bitter opponents like the iMonk.

UPDATE: Here it is in black and white, as another comment of Michael Spencer's troubles.

*I must say, the sheer ugliness of this word is something of a tip-off to the absurdity of some of the views associated with it. It reminds me of what Disraeli once said of "conservatism" back when that new word replaced good old "Tory": "It sounds like something made by a pastry chef."
**Spotted hyenas, where females lead the pack, also have pseudo-male genitalia and aggressive temperaments due to an embyonic bath of testosterone. They are the mammalian exception that proves the rule (more here).

Check out a great new Finnish blog (that is, a blog about Lutheranism in Finland, not actually a blog in Finnish!), Tentatio Borealis by Esko Murto, a pastor/sem student at Ft. Wayne. HT: Bill Tighe.

Amos and the Consumer Credit Industry

After finishing I-II Kings, I reread Amos, Hosea, and Micah, the great prophets of the pre-exilic Northern Kingdom. They are also the great prophets of justice, particularly Amos. But reading them today, we implicitly translate. What is it they are attacking? Economic development, urbanization, centralization of rule: these are some answers offered by historians for the abstract description of their processes. See this previous post on Jezebel here. A problem with this reading is that if that's the point, they become pretty unusable to us today. Can de-industrialization and return to agrarian life really be an agenda for the church today?

Others say that the enemy described is capitalism as a system of seeking profit, and that today's answer is social democracy: a system of centralization and urbanization that aims to supply as many services in life as possible by tax-funded public programs. The problem with this being the a response to the prophetic denunciation is that Amos, Hosea, and Micah are explicitly harking back to the multi-generational family ideal of the Law, the idea of each family being settled on a particular plot of land, and so being tied to the family before the state. All of this is flatly contrary to any conceivable notion of social democracy (More here and here.)

I would like to suggest abuse of consumer credit (particularly in the housing industry) as the best usable answer today (and by the four laws of intertestamental Bible interpretation, the Bible is always relevant). Here's a shocking article by Elizabeth Warren on the new wild west of consumer credit from Harvard Magazine.

Here's how it starts:

It is impossible to buy a toaster that has a one-in-five chance of bursting into flames and burning down your house. But it is possible to refinance your home with a mortgage that has the same one-in-five chance of putting your family out on the street—and the mortgage won’t even carry a disclosure of that fact. Similarly, it’s impossible for the seller to change the price on a toaster once you have purchased it. But long after the credit-card slip has been signed, your credit-card company can triple the price of the credit you used to finance your purchase, even if you meet all the credit terms.

And here are some of the crazier grafs:

For example, after 47 lines of text explaining how interest rates will be calculated, one prominent credit-card company concludes, “We reserve the right to change the terms at any time for any reason.” Evidently, all that convoluted language was there only to obscure the bottom line: The company will charge whatever it wants. In effect, lenders won’t be bound by any term or price that becomes inconvenient for them, but they will expect their customers to be bound by whatever terms the lenders want to enforce—and to have the courts back them up.

Talk about getting your neighbor’s goods in a way that only looks right! The author explains how long-standing regulations have been virtually voided by imposing the much looser federal regime on the closer state regulations propounded when banking was limited by states. She proposes a Financial Products Safety Commission (modeled on the Consumer Product Safety Commisssion created by President Nixon:

For example, an FPSC might review the following terms that appear in some—but not all—credit-card agreements: universal default clauses; unlimited and unexplained fees; interest-rate increases that exceed 10 percentage points; and an issuer’s claim that it can change the terms after money has been borrowed. It would also promote such market-enhancing practices as a simple, easy-to-read paragraph that explains all interest charges; clear explanations of when fees will be imposed; a requirement that the terms of a credit card remain the same until the card expires; no marketing targeted at college students or minors; and a statement showing how long it will take to pay off the balance, as well as how much interest will be paid if the customer makes the minimum monthly payments on the outstanding loan balance.

Framing the issue this way opens a different perspective on our economic system. Compared to ancient Israel, or any agrarian economy, capital is amazingly cheap today and interest rates over-all shockingly low -- and that's a good thing (sorry, Mr. Jefferson and Mr. Barry). Here's a story of credit abuses from the North China under the Mongols in the 1240:

All at the same time, endless schemes were used to push people into accumulating debts. In addition, debts which the clerks in office had borrowed from Turkestanis lending silver each year would double. The next year with the interest added in again it would double again. This was called “sheep’s-lamb-profit.” The debts simply never ended and they often destroyed families and scattered clans, to the point where wives and children had to be pawned, yet in the end could not be redeemed. Yelü Chucai [a Kitan Confucian serving the Mongols] asked His Majesty and all the debts were repaid in silver with official funds, totaling 76,000 ding. He memorialized as well that it be fixed from now on that no matter how many months or years have passed that when the interest has come to equal the principal, then the loan will no longer bear interest. This then became a set rule (from Song Zhen's biography of Yelü Chucai).

In other words, it was a big reform to limit annual interest to -- 100%!! That's rather worse than even credit card debt! And even this reform didn't really work: scarcely twenty years later we read:

As wealthy people loaned money to the civilians, it would happen that the interest would equal the principal, and would then be added into the principal and a new contract drawn up with the interest added. When the term expired, the debts had to be repaid; it was called “sheep’s lamb interest.” The cruelty of their dunning debtors involved, for example, threatening them with fire in the summer or putting them in icehouses in the winter, and the people could not deal with their malice. Lian Xixian [a part Uyghur, part-Kitan Confucian and big fan of Mencius] corrected their suffering. Even though the term had long expired, it was not allowed exceed in settlements the repayment of the original principal and interest. If some one got more, then he had all the contracts seized and burned and then would treat them according to the regulations (from Lian Xixian's biography written by Gao of Henei).

So even enforcing a limit of interest to 100% is tough in an agrarian society!

Capitalism and economic development have created an economy in which in general and overall, consumer credit is available on amazingly easy terms, historically. The thirty-year mortgage is one of the great achievements of equity and humanitarianism. It is all the more valuable as it works to reinforce, not weaken, the family as an autonomous little commonwealth (more on this point here). But as we see in the sub-prime loan scandal, that achievement of a consumer credit industry that serves people and does not prey on them is always threatened by a return to speculation fever, both on the part of big lender Honest-Johns, and the little Pinocchios who think they can play the system.

So the solution is neither mooning after a return to agrarianism, futile prohibitions on lending on interest, or exhortations to never borrow money (people need capital, and rightly managed it is a vital part of ordinary life), nor is it a public housing industry, whole-sale income redistribution, and a generally condemnation of capitalism as built on greed, nor yet a general bail-out of debtors who tried to buy and flip houses, but rather a regulation of the consumer credit industry, limiting it to honest profits, something like what Elizabeth Warren suggests in her article. And specific denunciations of consumer credit loan-sharks wouldn’t hurt.

Framing Stories in I-II Kings

It's been over a month, I know, since my last post. Apart from being just busy, somehow I don't feel like any of my thoughts (and I do have them still!) are really in a shape to be blogged. But since I just got a prod from a loyal reader (hello, Eric R!) , let me give my readers some new content.

Yesterday, I finished I and II Kings (very delayed, I know). The more I read it, the more I believe the kind of reading I've been giving it in previous posts, one which focuses on irony, on disjunction between the narrative voice and the author's, is not a figment of the imagination, but an essential reading.

Notes for the future: the Elijah-Elisha cycle is introduced by a mother and child story (the widow of Zarephath and her son), just as the Samuel-David cycle (Hannah seeks a child), and the Solomon cycle (the two prostitutes quarreling over a child). In each case this is a metaphor for Israel and her king. How does this story reposition our reading of the Elijah-Elisha cycle? Elijah saves the widow's child, after she reproaches him for having given her hope of a child when she didn't even think of it, and then letting her darling die. So what is the implicit story then? God and His prophets save the kingship, when Israel reproaches God for first giving her a king when she hadn't even thought of it, and then letting her darling monarchy die. The framing story and my reading of it thus highlights Elijah and Elisha's implicit symbiosis with the kingship, their "pulling their punches" and ultimate support of it in the struggle with Damascus. Reread the whole thing -- you'll see it works out.

The systematic repetition of the Elijah and Elisha stories (almost everyone is a doublet) is worth noting (just like the Isaac-Abraham doublets). If we don't accept the source critical explanation (that there were a series of standard prophet-legends, some with Elijah's name on them, some with Elisha's, and the two were combined without recognizing them as the same), we need another explanation.

It should be noted, though, that the notorious bear tearing the kids episode is a good lead into Elisha's role as the one who promotes (despite his tears), the massacre of Jezreel (Jehu's ascension, cf. Hosea 1:4). Stories involving children seem to have a key framing role everywhere in the Deuteronomistic History.

Another point I noticed is how the message of the Rabshakeh (=field commander) of Assyria to Zion is strikingly parallel to the prophetic messages: idols will not keep you safe, your kings cannot protect you, siege and exile is coming, but if you accept this as judgment it won't be so bad and you will sit under fig tree and vine. When the king hears it he tears his robes. It is of course rejected by Hezekiah, and Isaiah, and God, but it is an important reflection of the Deuteronomistic History's theme of the ambiguity of prophetic utterance: prophets lie all the time. Here is a prophecy that is entirely true, and is not a prophesy of smooth things, but of judgment and woe -- and it's all a lie too! But when Josiah (a sort of second Hezekiah) finds a book that prophesies woe and exile, and tears his clothes: this is true prophecy.

I can't help but note here the reading of Richard Polzin, that the prophet of Deuteronomy 18 is the author of the Deuteronomistic History itself, and the insight of Richard E. Friedman that Josiah is described in the Deuteronomistic History as the best king bar none, the only true leader since Moses, and that the Deuteronomistic History was written by Jeremiah or an associate, first in the time of Josiah, with the rest added after. (The close association of the Deuteronomistic History with the language and concerns of Jeremiah is widely acknowledged.) Put them together and the two go together: the Deuteronomistic History is leading up not just to the rediscovery of Deuteronomy's Law but also the apprehension of the course of Israel's history by Jeremiah (or Baruch) as author of the Deuterenomistic History.

But the interpretation of Friedman's, dependent as it is on a two-fold compilation process, first under Josiah, and then an epilogue, so to speak, written in exile, would then leave the post-Josiah history of Israel hanging. It would be more satisfying to see the whole as a single story, with the end envisioned from the beginning. What's the point, then? That even when, through the Hegelian mission of the prophets to describe to Israel her story, the truth is set forth before Israel, the truth is not accepted. The moment of insight -- does nothing, and destruction follows.

Ever Wonder What Happened to Naaman after He Went back to Damascus?

Well, if you haven't, I have. There is that passage in 2 Kings 5:

And Naaman said, "Shall there not then, I pray thee, be given to thy servant two mules' burden of earth? For thy servant will henceforth offer neither burnt offering nor sacrifice unto other gods, but unto the LORD. In this thing the LORD pardon thy servant, that when my master goeth into the house of Rimmon to worship there, and he leaneth on my hand, and I bow myself in the house of Rimmon: when I bow down myself in the house of Rimmon, the LORD pardon thy servant in this thing." And [Elisha] said unto him, "Go in peace." So he departed from him a little way.

Needless to say, a strong current of interpretation says that we need to be angry at Naaman for "compromising with idolatry" and wonder that Elisha permitted it.

I'd rather read this along with the story of King Hakon the Good. He had come from England, where he had been baptized in A.D. 934. Going up to Trondheim, the richest district in the kingdom and the chief place of sacrifice in pagan Norway, he made an address,

to freeholders and husbandmen alike, of high and low estate, and so to all the people, young men and old, rich and poor, women as well as men, that all should let themselves be baptized and believe in one God, Christ, the son of Mary, and stop all idolatry and heathen worship; that they should keep holy every seventh day, abstaining from work, and fast every seventh day. (Heimskringla, p. 108).

The farmers grumbled against this because a Sunday rest would cut their income, and the working men and thralls thought they couldn't work on Friday without food. A farmer then gave a long speech (as cited by Snorri Sturluson), that emphasized how they wished Hakon to rule according to the inherited usages of the kingdom and not force them to abandon the customs they had from their fathers:

"But now we don't know what to think, whether we have regained our liberty or whether you are going to make us thralls again with the strange proposal that we should abandon the faith our fathers had before us, and all our forefathers, first in the time when the dead were burned, and now in the age when the dead are buried. And they were better men than we, and yet this faith has served us very well. . . . We all want to follow you and to have you be our king so long as one of us farmers who are at the assembly now is alive, if you, sir king, will observe moderation and ask only that of us which we can give you and which is within reason.

"But if you mean to pursue this so high-handedly as to contend against us with force and compulsion, then all of us farmers have made up our minds to desert you and chose another leader, one who will help us freely to have the faith we wish to have" (Heimskringla, p. 109).

The farmers all cheered this.

Earl Sigurd of Trondheim then negotiates between the two sides to delay a decision. But it couldn't be avoided.

In fall, at the beginning of winter there was a sacrificial feast at Hlathir [the temple seat on the other side of the Nidharos river in Trondheim], and the king attended it. Before that, if present at a place where heathen sacrifice was made, he was accustomed to eat in a little house apart, in the company of a few men. But the farmers remarked about it that he did not occupy the high seat when there was the best cheer among the people. The earl told him that he should not do that; and so it came that the king occupied the high seat on this occasion.

But when the first beaker was served, Earl Sigurd proposed a toast, dedicating the horn to Odin [chief of the Norse gods], and drank to the king. The king took the horn from him and made the sign of the cross over it.

Then Kar of Gryting said, "Why does the king do that? Doesn't he want to drink of the sacrificial beaker?"

Earl Sigurd made answer, "The king does as all do who believe in their own might and strength, and dedicated this beaker to Thor. He made the sign of the hammer over it before drinking." People said no more about it that evening. Next day when people had seated themselves at the tables, the farmers thronged about the king, saying that now he must eat the horse meat [the horse was sacrificed to Odin]. That, the king would not do under any condition. Then they asked him to drink the broth from it. He refused to do that. Then they asked him to eat the dripping from it. He would not do that, either, and they came near to making an attack on him. Earl Sigurd said he would help them come to an agreement, asking them to cease their tumult; and he asked the king to gape with his mouth over the handle of the kettle on which the smoke of the broth from the horse meat had settled, so that the handle was greasy from it. Then the king went up to it and put a linen cloth over the handle and gaped with his mouth over it. Then he went back to his high-seat, and neither party was satisfied with that (Heimskringla, pp. 110-11).

Later, the men of Trondheim even got together and sailed south to other parts of Norway and burned three churches and killed three priests.

But when King Hakon and Earl Sigurd came to Maerin with their troops, the farmers were there in very great numbers. The first day at the banquet the farmers thronged in upon him and asked him to sacrifice, or else they would force him to. Then Earl Sigurd mediated between them, and in the end King Hakon ate a few bits of horse liver.

Earl Sigurd tried to calm the king, but in the end, he left Trondheim swearing vengeance:

The king was so enraged that no one durst speak to him (Heimskringla, p. 112).

The conflict is cut short by an invasion of rivals for the throne, sons of his half-brother Eirik. He drives them out, but they harry Norway for the rest of his reign. In year 961, they invade again, and King Hakon is wounded.

King Hakon boarded his warships and had his wound bandaged. But the blood flowed so profusely that it could not be staunched. And as the day wore on the king became faint. . . . .Then he called his friends to his side and told them his wishes about the disposition of the kingdom. His only child was a daughter, Thora by name. He had no son. He requested them to send word to the sons of Eirik that they were to be kings over the land, but that they should exercise forbearance to his friends and kinsmen. "But even if I be granted to live," he said, "I would leave the country to abide among Christians and do penance for what I have sinned against God. But if I die here, among heathens, then give me such burial place as seems most fitting to you."

And a short while afterwards, King Hakon died on the same slab of rock where he was born. King Hakon was mourned so greatly that both friends and enemies bewailed his death and declared that a king as good as he would not be seen again in Norway. His friends moved his body north to Saeheim in North Horthaland. There they raised a great mound and in it buried the king in full armor and in his finest array, but with no other valuables. Words were spoken over his grave according to the custom of heathen men, and they put him on the way to Valhalla (Heimskringla, pp. 124-25).

Observations:

King Hakon attempted to winsomely represent the Christian faith in a position of leadership and was a greatly admired king -- and was for his pains even denied a Christian burial by the men who loved him.

It's not enough to let the men of Trondheim have their religion while you have yours. If you rule them, you have to eat the horse liver -- or at least gape your mouth over the greasy handle.

Eventually, Olaf Tryggvason did Christianize Norway. In the Heimskringla, his chapter entries read like this: "The King Has the Warlocks Burned"; "The King Forces the Farmers to Accept Christianity"; "King Olaf Destroys the Idols"; "Eyvind Kinnrifa [a die-hard pagan] Is Tortured to Death by King Olaf"; and so on. Of King Olaf it was said:

King Olaf was of a most cheerful disposition and full of fun. He was friendly and affable, impetuous in all matters, exceedingly generous, and a fine dresser. He exceeded everyone in bravery when in battle. When angered he was very cruel, inflicting tortures on his enemies. Some of them he had burned with fire, some he let wild dogs tear to pieces, others he had maimed or cast down from high cliffs. For these reasons he was beloved by his friends and feared by his enemies. And he had such success, because some out of friendship and good will did what he wanted done, and some, because of fear of him (Heimskringla, p. 218).

So which of the two gained the world and lost his soul? Or both? Or neither?