Thucydides: The Peace We Cannot Keep

In the autumn of 413 BC, the largest expeditionary force Athens had ever assembled was destroyed in Sicily. Those who survived the final desperate retreat were herded into stone quarries, where they died of exposure, thirst, and disease over the course of weeks. Thucydides, who had spent the war gathering testimony from both sides as an exile, describes the scene with such controlled restraint that the grief beneath it is almost unbearable. A peace treaty had been signed two years before the expedition sailed. The war was supposed to be over. What you are about to encounter is one of antiquity's most searching inquiries into why human beings, even when they can see disaster coming, cannot stop themselves from walking toward it — and why the deepest answer to that question comes not from the historian but from the gospel.

When Peace Has No Peace

The Peace of Nicias, signed in 421 BC after ten years of the Peloponnesian War, was supposed to last fifty years. It collapsed within five. Thucydides' account of its collapse is a masterwork of political anatomy. Neither side lacked intelligence — the Athenian Nicias and the Spartan negotiators knew what the treaty required. What they lacked was the moral courage to enforce it against their own internal pressures. Corinth and Boeotia refused to ratify the Spartan side of the agreement. Alcibiades, brilliant and reckless, immediately began maneuvering Athens into alliances that violated the treaty's spirit while maintaining its technical letter. The ephors looked away while their allies flouted the terms. The peace was a text on papyrus; the ambitions beneath it were unchanged. Thucydides does not editorialize. He simply narrates, clause by clause, conference by conference, until you begin to feel what he felt: a cold dread at the spectacle of intelligent people choosing, again and again, the path toward catastrophe. What he is describing is not strategic error. It is moral failure at the level of the will — the refusal to pay the price that genuine peace requires.

The Comedian Sees What the Historian Knows

While Thucydides was gathering evidence with the gravity of a physician at a deathbed, Aristophanes was doing the same thing with a different instrument. His Acharnians, performed in 425 BC, follows a citizen who makes his own private peace treaty with Sparta — a comic fantasy in which one man does what the Assembly cannot. His Peace, performed in the very year of the Peace of Nicias, stages the allegorical rescue of the goddess Peace from the cave where War has imprisoned her. His Lysistrata, performed in 411 BC after the Sicilian catastrophe, gives the women of Athens and Sparta a plan their husbands lack the wisdom to execute. Aristophanes is not merely being funny. He is doing what comedy in its greatest forms always does: telling the truth that polite discourse cannot bear to say directly. The longing for peace that runs through all three plays belongs to the farmers who cannot tend their fields, the mothers who have lost sons, the citizens who see the gap between the rhetoric of their leaders and the consequences of their decisions. Together, Thucydides and Aristophanes form a two-voiced lament — the historian's cold precision and the comedian's desperate laughter converging on the same diagnosis.

The Prophets Had Already Named It

When you read Thucydides' account alongside the Hebrew prophets, you notice something remarkable: the prophets had already named exactly what Thucydides narrates, a century and more before Athens and Sparta signed their doomed treaty. "They have healed the wound of my people lightly," Jeremiah writes, "saying 'Peace, peace,' when there is no peace" (Jeremiah 6:14). The Hebrew shalom — comprehensive flourishing, right relationship, justice and wholeness woven together — was the peace God had designed his creation to enjoy. What the false prophets offered instead was a verbal substitution: the word without the reality, the treaty without the transformation. The reason leaders cannot keep the peace they make is that the peace they make does not go deep enough. It does not touch the heart. And the heart, Jeremiah insists elsewhere, is "deceitful above all things" (Jeremiah 17:9). The Athenian Assembly that voted for the Sicilian Expedition with festive enthusiasm, the Alcibiades who dressed imperial ambition in the language of strategic necessity, the Nicias who assented to a venture he believed doomed because he could not bear the political cost of saying no — these are portraits of the deceitful heart rendered in political terms by a historian who does not believe in the prophets' God, yet who cannot escape the prophets' diagnosis. Isaiah gathers it into a single devastating line: "The way of peace they do not know, and there is no justice in their paths" (Isaiah 59:8). This is not a peculiarly Greek failure. It is the condition Scripture identifies in every nation, every generation, every heart that has not been transformed from within.

James Reads the Transcript

The apostle James, writing to scattered Jewish Christians in the mid-first century, offers a diagnosis of conflict so precise that it reads like a commentary on the Thucydides text. "What causes quarrels and what causes fights among you? Is it not this, that your passions are at war within you? You desire and do not have, so you murder. You covet and cannot obtain, so you fight and quarrel" (James 4:1–3). James uses military vocabulary — strateuesthai, to wage war — for the condition of desires within the self, before external war begins. He is making the same point Thucydides makes about Alcibiades and the Athenian demos, but driving the analysis one level deeper: the war in the Assembly is an externalization of a war within. The Greek word he uses for passions — hedonon, pleasures — names the love of pleasure and prestige that drove both Alcibiades' advocacy for the Sicilian Expedition and the Assembly's enthusiastic approval. Paul makes the same point in universal terms, gathering the prophets' testimony in Romans 3 and culminating in verse 17: "and the way of peace they have not known." This is not a peculiarly Athenian or Spartan failure — it is the condition of humanity apart from God. The moral resources that genuine peace requires go deeper than any political calculation can reach, and the New Testament is explicit about why: the problem is not mismanagement but sin, and sin requires not a better strategy but a Savior.

Not as the World Gives

Jesus, on the night of his arrest, spoke these words to his disciples: "Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give to you" (John 14:27). The contrast is not rhetorical decoration. The peace the world gives — and the Peace of Nicias is a nearly perfect specimen — is the peace of negotiation between competing self-interests, maintained only as long as it serves the parties' purposes, and therefore inherently fragile. When Alcibiades concluded that the peace no longer served his ambitions, he began dismantling it; there was no moral resource within the Athenian political system to stop him. The peace Christ gives is of an entirely different order. Paul writes in Ephesians 2 that Christ "himself is our peace, who has made us both one and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility" (Ephesians 2:14). Aristophanes dreamed of a pan-Hellenic peace — Greeks laying down their weapons, finding their common humanity. He was dreaming in the right direction, but he could not imagine what Calvary accomplished. The reconciliation the cross achieves is not a negotiated settlement. It is a substitutionary act: the strong One taking the place of the weak, absorbing the full consequence of hostility, and emerging from the grave with the power to make genuinely new what human self-interest can only temporarily suppress. The Holy Spirit, poured out from the risen Christ, applies that reconciliation to hearts — not merely adjusting behavior but reordering loves, so that what Paul calls the "peace of Christ" can actually "rule in your hearts" (Colossians 3:15).

The Question Thucydides Could Not Answer — and the One Who Can

If you close Thucydides' History feeling the weight of what he has narrated — the destroyed army, the stone quarries, the waste of the most brilliant generation Greece ever produced — and then carry that weight to the gospel, something clarifies. Thucydides sees the problem with extraordinary precision. He can tell you that the Peace of Nicias failed because neither side had leaders willing to subordinate personal ambition to the common good, and he can show you exactly how that failure unfolded, conference by broken conference. What he cannot tell you is where such leaders would come from, whether transformed community is possible, or whether the Melian Dialogue's cold logic — the strong do what they can, the weak suffer what they must — is the final word on human history. It is not the final word. The Prince of Peace does not accumulate power; he gives it away. He does not exploit the weak; he becomes weak for their sake. He does not negotiate a peace that serves his interests; he makes peace at infinite cost to himself so that it might serve ours. If you do not yet know him, you are living inside Thucydides' history — watching the strong do as they will, feeling the gap between the peace you long for and the peace you can achieve, perhaps wondering, with Aristophanes, whether all that remains is laughter at the absurdity. The gospel announces that the one who broke down the dividing wall of hostility is alive, and that the peace he gives is available to you today. The stone quarries are real, but they are not the end of the story. 

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Thucydides: Pericles' Funeral Oration and the Limits of Human Glory

In the winter of 431/430 BCE, as Athens buried its first soldiers fallen in the Peloponnesian War, the statesman Pericles stood before a grieving city and delivered what history has never forgotten. Thucydides preserved the speech in his History of the Peloponnesian War, reconstructed, by his own admission, from what was appropriate to the occasion — meaning we read not merely a transcript but a literary and political monument. Every generation of the Western world has returned to it, because every generation has felt its pull: the promise that a great enough city can give its citizens something worth dying for, something that outlasts their deaths, something that answers grief with glory. Christians must read this speech — not to admire it uncritically, and not to dismiss it as mere paganism, but to understand the most eloquent case ever made for a salvation the city cannot deliver.

Literary Backgrounds: The Oration in Its Greek World

The Funeral Oration belongs to a formal genre called the epitaphios logos, the public eulogy delivered at state funerals according to ancient Athenian custom. Bones of the fallen were displayed, carried through the city, and buried in the Kerameikos, the great public cemetery outside the walls, while an appointed statesman spoke for the community's grief. The genre demanded epideictic rhetoric — the oratory of praise — and Pericles fulfills the form while radically reshaping it. Where tradition expected praise of ancestors and the fallen, Pericles pivots almost immediately to an extended encomium of Athens itself: its democratic constitution, its openness, its meritocratic culture, and its destiny as, in his famous phrase, the school of Greece. The dead are honored not by rehearsing their individual lives but by displaying the city that made them. The speech draws deeply on Homeric heroic ideals, transferring the glory of the individual warrior to the collective democratic polis, and employs the polished rhetorical techniques of fifth-century sophistical culture with a mastery that has made it a model of Western oratory for two and a half millennia. Thucydides places it immediately before his account of the catastrophic plague of 430 BCE — a juxtaposition that is not accidental. The reader is meant to hold both together: the vision of ideal Athens and the reality of a city crowded with dying bodies. Even within Thucydides' own narrative, the glory Pericles proclaims is already under siege.

Theological and Ethical Analysis: The God Athens Made of Itself

Pericles constructs a vision of human flourishing that commands genuine respect. Athens is praised for democracy, rule of law, tolerance of private difference, and the cultivation of excellence across the whole range of citizen life. These instincts echo, however distantly, the creation order Scripture describes — human beings made for community, for justice, for a shared life oriented toward something greater than personal survival. But the theological catastrophe at the center of the Funeral Oration cannot be resolved by admiring its better impulses. Athens, in Pericles' telling, is itself the highest good — the source of meaning, the standard of excellence, the end for which its citizens live and die. When Pericles instructs the bereaved to gaze on the power of the city and let that sight answer their grief, he is asking them to do what Scripture reserves for God alone. The glory Pericles ascribes to Athens belongs, in the language of Isaiah and the prophets, exclusively to the Lord. To give it to a city, however magnificent, is not an understandable patriotic excess. It is idolatry — and idolatry, Scripture teaches with consistent and terrible patience, always ends in the destruction of the thing worshiped in God's place.

Old Testament Analysis: The Prophets and the Ruin of Glorious Cities

The Old Testament offers a sustained and devastating critique of exactly the civic theology Pericles articulates. Isaiah's oracles against the nations expose the pretensions of the ancient world's great cities with an irony so precise it reads like prophecy written after the fact: Babylon the indestructible, Tyre the commercial empire, Egypt the civilization that had outlasted every rival — all addressed as temporary arrangements whose glory is already measured and found wanting. The charge is not that these cities lacked genuine achievement. The charge is that they located ultimate meaning in themselves, placing themselves under the judgment of the God who raises up nations and brings them down. Pericles makes precisely this move — not merely claiming Athens is great, but claiming Athens is the kind of greatness that should replace grief and answer the deepest human questions about death and loss. Psalm 46 responds directly: God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble — not the city, not the army, not the walls however thick. The plague of 430 BCE, which struck Athens the year after the Funeral Oration and killed Pericles himself the year after that, is Ecclesiastes written in history. The school of Greece became a city of mass graves, and the citizens instructed to find consolation in its glory found instead that glory is not immune to pestilence.

New Testament Analysis: The True Polis and Its Risen King

The New Testament walks directly into the tradition Pericles represents and reorders it from the foundation. When Paul stands on the Areopagus in Acts 17, he is standing in the institutional heart of the civilization that produced the Funeral Oration. He tells his audience that the God who made the world does not live in temples made by human hands, is not served by human hands as though he needed anything, and has fixed a day on which he will judge the world by a man he has appointed — confirmed to all by raising him from the dead. Every element of this announcement stands against Periclean civic theology. The city does not give life its meaning; the Creator does. Human institutions do not provide ultimate consolation; the resurrection does. Pericles tells grieving parents to look at Athens. Paul tells a grieving world to look at the empty tomb. In Philippians 3:20–21, Paul borrows the precise political vocabulary of the polis to reorient it entirely: our citizenship is in heaven, from which we await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform our lowly body to be like his glorious body. The word Savior is doing enormous theological work. Athens needs no savior in Pericles' speech because Athens is itself the source of salvation. Paul announces that this city does not exist, that every earthly city is a city of the dying, and that the only Savior is the one who has already passed through death and come out the other side.

Benefits of Reading and Implications for Christian Belief and Practice

Reading Pericles' Funeral Oration carefully is not optional equipment for Christians who want to understand the world they inhabit. Western democratic culture is Periclean in its deepest instincts — valorizing freedom, prizing individual merit, celebrating national achievement, and treating the political community as the highest available framework of human meaning. When politicians speak of national greatness as a near-sacred category, when grief over national loss is answered with calls to renewed civic pride, Pericles is speaking whether anyone knows his name or not. Christians who have not engaged the oration at its most serious are poorly equipped to explain why the gospel is not merely a supplement to civic virtue but a fundamental challenge to civic ultimacy. The oration also clarifies what Christians should affirm. Pericles is right that democracy, rule of law, and civic friendship are genuine goods — goods Scripture affirms through its teaching on justice, the image of God in every human being, and the governing authorities of Romans 13. The error is not in valuing these goods but in treating them as ultimate. Reading the oration alongside the prophets and the New Testament equips Christians to love their country without worshiping it, to grieve its failures without despairing, and to serve its common life without mistaking it for the kingdom of God.

Applying the Oration to Christian Life Today

Every political season, Christians are tempted to speak of their country in the elevated idiom of Pericles — to treat national greatness as a theological category and to answer grief over what is lost with pride in what remains. The gospel will not permit this. It permits Christians to love their country, serve it faithfully, grieve its failures, and work for its justice. But it will not allow any nation to occupy the place that belongs to God alone. The consolation Pericles offers grieving parents — your sons died for something eternal, and that something is Athens — is the consolation of a city defeated and dismantled within a generation of the speech that celebrated it. The consolation the gospel offers is grounded in a resurrection that no plague, no military defeat, and no political catastrophe can undo. Pericles' Funeral Oration is the most eloquent argument in Western literature for a city that cannot save. Read it, honor its greatness, feel its pull — and then turn to the one who stands at the end of every funeral procession, not with beautiful words about civic glory, but with the only words that matter: I am the resurrection and the life.

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Aristophanes: The Birds and the City That Only God Can Build

When Feathers Meet the Fall: A Comedy That Asks the Deepest Questions

You already know the feeling. The leaders who were supposed to protect you have failed you. The system you trusted has ground you down. The war drags on, the powerful keep winning, and somewhere deep in your chest a voice says: there has to be something better than this. In 414 BC, Aristophanes gave that voice a play. Two exhausted Athenians fly off with the birds, build a city in the sky, blockade the gods, and win. The audience roared — because the audience recognized themselves. But here is what Aristophanes could not give them and what no comedy, no revolution, and no human scheme has ever provided: the city they were actually looking for. This ancient play is far more than a museum piece. It is a portrait of every human heart that has ever longed for a world that works, a city that lasts, a king who is actually worthy of the throne. The gospel speaks directly into that longing — not to dismiss it, but to fulfill it beyond anything Aristophanes ever dared to imagine.

Literary Backgrounds: Old Comedy, Hesiod, and the Parabasis

Aristophanes was the undisputed master of Athenian Old Comedy, a genre performed at the sacred festivals of the City Dionysia and the Lenaia — civic and religious events where satire of politicians, war policy, and even the gods was ritually licensed before the assembled citizen body of a democracy fighting for its survival. Athens in 414 BC was bleeding from the Peloponnesian War. Plague had devastated the city, the treasury was strained, and the catastrophic Sicilian Expedition was underway even as the audience laughed. A people who had buried their children, watched their generals fail them, and paid taxes for a war that never ended were now being invited to imagine a world where ordinary people won. That is the emotional soil in which The Birds was planted. The play follows the architecture of Old Comedy with precision: a prologue launches the outrageous premise, a formal debate pits opposing arguments against each other, and the parabasis — the play’s most distinctive and daring feature — sends the chorus forward to address the audience directly, stepping entirely outside the story to speak as citizens to citizens. It is in that parabasis that the play’s deepest literary roots appear. When the chorus announces that birds existed before the gods, before the earth, before everything, Aristophanes is openly parodying Hesiod’s Theogony, mirroring its sequence of Chaos, Night, and Erebus almost line for line but replacing solemn theology with feathered rebels. Every educated Athenian knew Hesiod by heart and felt the impious wit of the parody in their bones. Looser echoes reach into the Ancient Near East as well: Egyptian texts celebrate the Bennu bird as a self-created primordial being rising from the waters of chaos, and the Mesopotamian Anzu myth tells of a monstrous bird that steals the Tablet of Destinies and challenges the gods. The shared human imagination of birds as sky-rulers gives Cloudcuckooland a resonance that crosses every culture and every century — because the dream it embodies is not Greek. It is human.

Theological and Ethical Analysis: Pride, Fantasy, and the Limits of Cleverness

Think carefully about what the play is actually offering. At its center stands a claim dressed as a joke: that birds are older than the gods, that the universe belongs to the feathered race, and that two clever citizens can reorganize the cosmos through sheer ingenuity. The hero Peisetairos succeeds not through virtue or piety but through audacity — he starves the gods, marries a divine bride, and ends the play in total triumph with no judgment, no reckoning, no morning after. The comedy’s verdict is cheerful and final: the cleverest trickster wins. How much of your own energy flows from exactly that same conviction — that the right scheme, the right leverage, the right moment could fix everything on your own terms? Jonathan Edwards once observed that the natural man will pursue the form of the good he was created for while refusing the only source from which it can actually come. Peisetairos is a perfect illustration: brilliant, energetic, genuinely longing for something better, and fatally committed to getting it without God. The play does not show you a villain. It shows you a mirror.

Old Testament Analysis and Critique

The Old Testament never read Aristophanes, and Aristophanes never read the Old Testament. But place the two texts side by side and the contrast illuminates both at once. In Genesis 1:20-21 God speaks on the fifth day and birds appear: not as ancient rebels or self-created powers, but as creatures called into being by the effortless word of Yahweh, blessed to fill the sky exactly as he intends. The play’s chorus claims the opposite — birds came first, before the gods, before order itself — and the comedy of that inversion is the engine of the whole play. Genesis 11 presses the confrontation closer to home. The people of Babel gather with one language and one ambition: to build a city and a tower with its top in the heavens, to make a name for themselves, to refuse the scattering God had ordained. They are not cartoonish villains. They are frightened, ambitious people who want to matter, who want to belong, who want to build something that will outlast them — and God comes down, and in a moment their unified language dissolves into confusion and they are scattered in the very judgment they tried to forestall. Cloudcuckooland succeeds in the comedy. The tower of Babel fails in the canon. That difference is not incidental — it is the difference between a story that tells you what you want to hear and a word that tells you what is actually true. Genesis is not condemning human creativity or the desire for community. It is diagnosing the specific spiritual poison that infects every tower humanity has ever attempted: seeking significance through self-exaltation rather than through covenant relationship with the God who made us for himself. If you have ever poured yourself into something you thought would finally make you matter and felt it crumbling in your hands, you already know this from the inside. The Bible names what happened. And then it promises something better.

New Testament Analysis and Critique

Here is the turning point of the whole story. In John 1:1-3 and Colossians 1:16-17, the inspired witness declares that all things — birds, sky, earth, every power visible and invisible — came into being through Christ and exist for him. The Creator is not outwitted, not blockaded, not starved into submission. He is the eternal Son through whom and for whom the universe holds together at this very moment, including every restless longing inside you. And what did this Creator do when his creatures tried to build Cloudcuckooland without him? He did not send another judgment. He sent his Son. Philippians 2:5-11 sets before you the most astonishing inversion in the history of the universe. The play’s hero grasps divine power through cunning and pride. The Son of God empties himself, takes the form of a slave, and humbles himself to death on a cross — not because he was defeated, but because this was always the way the true King builds his city. He does not seize heaven. He descends from it, for rebels, for tower-builders, for everyone who has ever tried to storm the sky on their own terms. And because he descends in sacrificial love, God raises him to the highest place, so that at the name of Jesus every knee bows — not under comic blockade, not under coercion, but in the willing worship of those who have finally seen what true greatness looks like and found that it bears the marks of nails. Acts 2 shows that answer arriving in power: Babel scattered proud humanity in judgment; Pentecost reverses Babel as the Spirit descends and every divided tongue hears the wonders of God in its own language. The city whose builder and maker is God is not assembled from feathers and fantasy — it is purchased with blood, sealed by the Spirit, and it will stand when every human empire has turned to dust.

Benefits of Reading and Implications for Christian Belief and Practice

Why should Christians read The Birds at all? Tertullian urged believers to avoid the theater entirely, seeing every public spectacle as entangled with idolatry and moral corruption. John Chrysostom contrasted the holy assembly of the church with what he called the madness of the stage. Their warning carries genuine pastoral weight: entertainment that normalizes pride and clever rebellion is not spiritually neutral. But the Fathers did not destroy pagan texts — they read them, named their dangers, and used them to display the superiority of Christ by contrast. Spurgeon ranged widely across literature and human experience precisely because he understood that the darkness of the surrounding world, honestly seen, makes the light of Christ shine brighter. The Birds serves exactly that purpose. When you have watched Peisetairos starve the gods into submission, the humility of Philippians 2 becomes viscerally, unforgettably beautiful in a way that abstract exposition cannot achieve. When you have laughed at Cloudcuckooland, the judgment of Babel lands with new personal weight. The comedy also trains your eye to recognize the same logic in your own culture: the political program that promises transformation without repentance, the self-improvement system that offers a new self without a new birth, the entertainment that makes pride look like courage. Seeing it clearly in Aristophanes first makes you faster at naming it in the world you actually inhabit — and better equipped to offer your neighbors something more than the latest version of a sky-city that will not stand.

Applying the Text to Christian Life Today

Cloudcuckooland is being built right now — in your city, in your culture, possibly in the quieter ambitions of your own heart. Every generation reconstructs it with new materials: the right leader, the right movement, the right technology that will finally fix the cosmos from the bottom up without reference to the God who made it. Aristophanes gave his war-weary audience two hours of brilliant escapism, and they walked out of the Theater of Dionysus back into a city that was still at war, still falling apart. The gospel announces — with the full weight of apostolic authority and the certainty of an empty tomb — that the city whose builder and maker is God has already broken into history in the person of Jesus Christ, who opened heaven through his death and resurrection and is building his church as the firstfruits of the new creation. If you have never trusted him, let the failure of every Cloudcuckooland you have ever tried to build drive you to him. He came down so you would not have to keep climbing. If you already belong to him, let this ancient comedy deepen your love for the people around you who are still building their towers — exhausted, longing human beings who want justice, peace, significance, a story worth living inside. You know the Builder. Go and tell them. Every tower this world raises will fall. The city that comes down from God will stand forever, and there is still room at the gate.

Iraq: Positive Signs

Here is an interesting article from Stratfor.com.

Iraq: Positive Signs

By George Friedman

The latest reports concerning the war in Iraq suggest the situation is looking up for the United States. First, U.S. military and Iraqi civilian casualties continue to fall. Second, there are confirmed reports that Sunni insurgents controlled by local leaders have turned on al Qaeda militants, particularly those from outside the country. Third, the head of U.S. Central Command, in an interview with the Financial Times, implied that an attack against Iran is a distant possibility.

It is tempting to say the United States has turned the corner on the war. The temptation might not be misplaced, but after many disappointments since 2003, it is prudent to be cautious in declaring turning points -- and it is equally prudent not to confuse a turning point with a victory. That said, given expectations that the United States would be unable to limit violence in Iraq, and that Sunni insurgents would remain implacable -- not to mention the broad expectation of a U.S. attack against Iran -- these three points indicate a reversal -- and must be taken seriously.

The most startling point is the decline in casualties, and particularly the apparent decline in sectarian violence. Explaining this is difficult. It could simply be the result of the more efficient use of U.S. troops in suppressing the insurgency and controlling the Shiite militias. If that were the only explanation, however, it would be troubling. Standard guerrilla warfare doctrine holds that during periods of intense enemy counterinsurgency operations, guerrillas should cease fighting, hide weapons and equipment and blend into the civilian population. Only after the enemy shifts its area of operations or reduces operational tempo should the guerrillas resume combat operations. Under no circumstances should insurgents attempt to fight a surge.

Therefore, if we were considering U.S. military operations alone, few conclusions could be drawn until after the operations shifted or slowed. In addition, in a country of 25 million, the expectation that some 167,000 troops -- many of them not directly involved in combat -- could break the back of an entrenched insurgency is optimistic. The numbers simply don't work, particularly when Shiite militias are added to the equation. Therefore, if viewed simply in terms of military operations, the decline in casualties would not validate a shift in the war until much later, and our expectation is that the insurgency would resume prior levels of activity over time.

What makes the situation more hopeful for the United States is the clear decline in civilian casualties. Most of those were caused not by U.S. combat operations but by sectarian conflict, particularly between Sunnis and Shia. Part of the decline can be explained by U.S. operations, but when we look at the scope and intensity of sectarian fighting, it is difficult to give U.S. operations full credit. A more likely explanation is political, a decision on the part of the various sectarian organizations to stop operations not only against the Americans but also against each other.

There were two wars going on in Iraq. One was against the United States. The more important war, from the Iraqi point of view, was the Sunni-Shiite struggle to determine who would control Iraq's future. Part of this struggle, particularly on the Shiite side, was intrasectarian violence. All of it was political and, in a real sense, it was life and death. It involved the control of neighborhoods, of ministries, of the police force and so on. It was a struggle over the shape of everyday life. If either side simply abandoned the struggle, it would leave a vacuum for the other. U.S. operations or not, that civil war could not be suspended. To a significant extent, however, it has been suspended.

That means that some political decisions were made, at least on the local level and likely at higher levels as well, as several U.S. authorities have implied recently. Civilian casualties from the civil war would not have dropped as much as they have without some sort of political decisions to restrain forces, and those decisions could not be made unilaterally or simply in response to U.S. military pressure. It required a set of at least temporary political arrangements. And that, in many ways, is more promising than simply a decline because of U.S. combat operations. The political arrangements open the door to the possibility that the decline in casualties is likely to be longer lasting.

This brings us to the second point, the attacks by the Sunnis against the jihadists. Immediately after the invasion in 2003, the United States essentially attempted to strip the Sunnis -- the foundation of Saddam Hussein's strength -- of their power. The U.S. de-Baathification laws had the effect of eliminating the Sunni community's participation in the future of Iraq. Viewing the Shia -- the victims of Hussein's rule -- as likely interested not only in dominating Iraq but also in retribution against the Sunnis, the Sunni leadership, particularly at the local level, supported and instigated an insurgency against U.S. forces. The political purpose of the insurgency was to force the United States to shift its pro-Shiite policy and include the Sunnis, from religious to Baathist, in the regime.

Given the insurgency's political purpose, the power of U.S. forces and the well-organized Shiite militias, the Iraqi Sunnis were prepared to form alliances wherever they could find them. A leading source of support for the Iraqi Sunnis came from outside Iraq, among the Sunni jihadist fighters who organized themselves under the banner of al Qaeda and, weapons in hand, infiltrated the country from outside, particular through Syria.

Nevertheless, there was underlying tension between the local Sunnis and the jihadists. The Iraqi Sunnis were part of the local power structure, many having been involved in the essentially secular Baath Party, and others, more religious, having remained outside the regime but ruled by traditional tribal systems. The foreign jihadists were revolutionaries not only in the sense that they were prepared to fight the Americans but also in that they wanted to revolutionize -- radically Islamize -- the local Sunni community. By extension, they wanted to supplant the local leadership with their own by supporting and elevating new local leaders dependent for their survival on al Qaeda power.

For an extended period of time, the United States saw the Sunni insurgency as consisting of a single fabric. The local insurgents and the jihadists were viewed as the same, and the adopted name of the jihadists, al Qaeda, caused the Americans to see them as the primary enemy. Over time, and particularly since the death of al Qaeda in Iraq leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the United States has adopted a more nuanced view of the Sunni insurgency, drawing a distinction between the largely native Iraqi insurgents and the largely foreign jihadists.

Once this occurred and the United States began to make overtures to the native Iraqi insurgents, the underlying tensions between the foreign jihadists and the Iraqi insurgents emerged. The Sunnis, over time, came to see the jihadists as a greater danger to them than the Americans, and by the time U.S. President George W. Bush last visited Iraq, several Sunni leaders were prepared to be seen publicly with him. The growing animosities eventually turned into active warfare between the two factions, with al Qaeda being outnumbered and outgunned and the natives enjoying all of the perks of having the home-court advantage.

From the U.S. point of view, splitting the Sunni insurgency politically and militarily was important not only for the obvious reasons but also for influencing the Shia. From a Shiite point of view -- and now let's introduce Iran, the primary external backer of Iraq's Shiites -- the worst-case scenario would be the re-establishment of a predominantly Sunni government in Baghdad backed by the U.S. military. The political accommodation between the United States and the Iraqi Sunnis represented a direct threat to the Shia.

It is important to recall that Hussein and his Baathist predecessors -- all Sunnis leading a predominantly Sunni government -- were able to dominate the more numerous Shia for decades. The reason was that the Shia were highly fragmented politically, more so than the Sunnis. This historic factionalization made the Shia much weaker than their numbers would have indicated. It was no accident that the Sunnis dominated the Shia.

And the Shia remained fragmented. While the Sunnis were fighting an external force, the Shia were fighting both the Sunnis and one another. Given those circumstances, it was not inconceivable that the United States would try, and perhaps succeed, to re-establish the status quo ante of a united Iraq under a Sunni government -- backed by U.S. power until Iraq could regenerate its own force. Of course, that represented a reversal of the original U.S. goal of establishing a Shiite regime.

For Iran, this was an intolerable outcome because it would again raise the possibility of an Iran-Iraq war -- in which Iran might take another million casualties. The Iranian response was to use its influence among the competing Shiite militias to attack the Sunnis and to inflict casualties on American troops, hoping to force a withdrawal. Paradoxically, while the jihadists are the Iranians' foe, they were useful to Tehran because the more they attacked the Shia -- and the more the Shia retaliated -- the more the Sunnis and al Qaeda aligned -- which kept the United States and the Sunnis apart. Iran, in other words, wanted a united Sunni-jihadist movement because it would wreck the emerging political arrangements. In addition, when the Iranians realized that the Democrats in the U.S. Congress were not going to force a U.S. withdrawal, their calculations about the future changed.

Caught between al Qaeda and the militias, the Sunnis were under intense pressure. The United States responded by conducting operations against the jihadists -- trying to limit engagements with Iraqi Sunni insurgents -- and most important, against Shiite militias. The goal was to hold the Sunnis in the emerging political matrix while damaging the militias that were engaging the Sunnis. The United States was trying increase the cost to the Shia of adhering to the Iranian strategy.

At the same time, the United States sought to intimidate the Iranians by raising, and trying to make very real, the possibility that the United States would attack them as well. As we have argued, the U.S. military options are limited, so an attack would make little military sense. The Iranians, however, could not be certain that the United States was being rational about the whole thing, which was pretty much what the United States wanted. The United States wanted the Shia in Iraq to see the various costs of following the Iranian line -- including creating a Sunni-dominated government -- while convincing the Iranians that they were in grave danger of American military action.

In this context, we find the third point particularly interesting. Adm. William Fallon's interview with the Financial Times -- in which he went out of its way to downplay the American military threat to Iran -- was not given by accident. Fallon does not agree to interviews without clearance. The United States was using the interview to telegraph to Iran that it should not have undue fear of an American attack.

The United States can easily turn up the heat again psychologically, though for the moment it has chosen to lower it. By doing so, we assume Washington is sending two messages to Iran. First, it is acknowledging that creating a predominantly Sunni government is not its first choice. Also, it is rewarding Iran for the decline in violence by the Shiite militias, which undoubtedly required Tehran to shift its orders to its covert operatives in Iraq.

The important question is whether we are seeing a turning point in Iraq. The answer is that it appears so, but not primarily because of the effectiveness of U.S. military operations. Rather, it is the result of U.S. military operations coupled with a much more complex and sophisticated approach to Iraq. To be more precise, a series of political initiatives that the United States had undertaken over the past two years in fits and starts has been united into a single orchestrated effort. The result of these efforts was a series of political decisions on the part of various Iraqi parties not only to reduce attacks against U.S. troops but also to bring the civil war under control.

A few months ago, we laid out four scenarios for Iraq, including the possibility that that United States would maintain troops there indefinitely. At the time, we argued against this idea on the assumption that what had not worked previously would not work in the future. Instead, we argued that resisting Iranian power required that efforts to create security be stopped and troops moved to blocking positions along the Saudi border. We had not calculated that the United States would now supplement combat operations with a highly sophisticated and nuanced political offensive. Therefore, we were wrong in underestimating the effectiveness of the scenario.

That said, a turning point is not the same as victory, and the turning point could turn into a failure. The key weaknesses are the fragmented Shia and the forces and decisions that might emerge there, underwritten by Iran. Everything could be wrecked should Iran choose to take the necessary risks. For the moment, however, the Iranians seem to be exercising caution, and the Shia are responding by reducing violence. If that trend continues, then this really could be a turning point. Of course, any outcome that depends on the Shia and Iranians doing what the United States hopes they will do is fragile. Iran in particular has little interest in giving the United States a graceful solution unless it is well compensated for it. On the other hand, for the moment, Tehran is cooperating. This could simply be another instance of Iran holding off before disappointing the United States, or it could mean it has reason to believe it will be well compensated. Revealing that compensation -- if it is coming -- is the next turn of the wheel.

History with a Smirk

If you enjoy history, then you might be interested in this article in Books & Culture, January/February 2007, pages 25-27, entitled “History with a Smirk,” by Allen C. Guelzo, a review of David S. Brown’s biography Richard Hofstadter: An Intellectual Biography. Hofstadter was a prominent leftist historian who bucked the current trend towards intensively researched histories. He tended to write more in an essay style, commenting on ideas and ideologies, shunning the minute details of the daily lives of the historical period in question.

Hofstadter was sympathetic towards Communism and leftist ideology throughout his life, and ridiculed and sought to undercut democratic and conservative values and ideals. He was so arrogant he refused to believe that anyone on the Right could be an intellectual. He despised the middle class American values and thought the majority of Americans were mindless boobs, clueless and deceived.

Here are a few paragraphs from the article that I found most interesting:

Brown tends to see the resurgence of the Right as an intellectual movement largely through Hofstadter's eyes, as alarming in volume but philosophically insignificant by unit. This underestimation of the hitting power of Right intellectuals has been one of the chronic failures of the American Left; and as Hofstadter's own attitude demonstrates, there is no real cure for this failure, since the logic of Left politics actually requires that intellectuals on the Right be defined, ipso facto, as an impossibility. Brown remarks pretty sharply that whether it was "out of fear, anger or fantasy, the Far Right inspired Hofstadter to write some of the most original studies of American political culture ever produced." But "the Left never provoked such a productive reaction." Hofstadter preferred "to instruct radicals, not—as he had conservatives—to diagnose their mental tics."

So, despite the fact that Hofstadter lived his entire life "in an era dominated by liberal politics," he insisted on describing himself as "politically alienated." And from what, exactly? Born to the modest privileges of the urban upper-middle-class, he treated peace, plenty, and truth as the normal setting of human life, and intolerance, hypocrisy, and inequality as intolerable aberrations, when the norm of human history has been exactly the other way around. While making a university subsidized apartment on the upper East Side his home and a place on Cape Cod his summer retreat, and bathing in book contracts worth $1.3 million dollars at the time of death, Hofstadter nonetheless had never a good word to say about the nation, the politics, or the economic system which guaranteed his entitlements to these things. And despite the Andes of corpses which "a more severe brand of Marxism" piled up around the world in the 20th century, it was not the abominations of Stalin but the infelicities of Abraham Lincoln's prose which summoned forth his most vivid malediction. The vital power of Richard Hofstadter's oeuvre lay in the grace and color of his writing. But it was an almost entirely negative power, in the service of a freedom he wanted for himself, but not necessarily for anyone else.

You can read this article at: http://www.christianitytoday.com/bc/2007/001/14.25.html

God' Politics

Jim Wallis, founder to Sojourners magazine and national Christian speaker has written a powerful call to American Christians to evaluate their position on social issues in his book, God's Politics: Why the right gets it wrong and and left doesn't get it.

The way the church can be the most effective is to not be ideologically partisan or tied to one political party. When we raise issues of moral rights and justice we will challenge both parties. Religion is not rooted in rights but in the image of God.

A biblical understanding of evil and the fallenness of man will make us wary of concentrated political or economic power. The abuse of such power is something we should speak out against.

Our faith should exude compassion and justice. These are values that should drive the education of our children as well.

Our religious congregations are not meant to be social organizations that merely reflect the wider culture's values, but dynamic counter-cultural communities whose purpose is to reshape both lives and societies.

In recent history there has been a rise in secular fundamentalism in response to the growth on religious fundamentalism. But both religious and secular fundamentalism are dangerous they deny the foundations of a democratic society. Religious fundamentalists try to force a theocracy on everyone else while secular fundamentalists try to eradicate morals and values from public life, destroying the very foundation of democracy.

"No one gets to heaven without a letter of reference from the poor." How you treat the poor determines the genuineness of your faith. Jesus himself said he would judge the world based on their treatment of the poor, hungry, homeless, imprisoned and needy.

How should Christians respond to the terrorist attacks of 9/11? What do Jesus' words, "Bless those who hate you, and pray for those who persecute you" have to do with our response to terrorism? To say that THEY are evil while WE are good is both bad theology and leads to dangerous foreign policy. Loving your enemies does not mean submitting to their terrorism or hostile intentions. But it does mean we must treat them as human beings who have been created in the image of God. The threat of terrorism does not overthrow Christian ethics. We must respond biblically and not give in to anger, revenge or expediency. The "Myth of Redemptive Violence" has taken over much of our political discourse. We actually believe that violence can save us. As Christians, we cannot buy into this ideology.

Evangelical Christians then to be selective on their moral and ethical issues, picking and choosing those issues which are helpful for our political agenda while ignoring those that harmful for our political ends. Sexual and family issues are only one part of morality and ethics; there is also the issues of social justice that need to be taken into account. Questioning the religious right does not make you a religious leftist.

We cannot change our society by merely replacing one politician who is swayed by the wind of public opinion by another politician who also is swayed by the wind of public opinion. We can change society, not by changing the politicians, but by changing the wind. We need to change the social context in which political decisions are being made. Societies have been changed by movements with a spiritual foundation.

Poverty and social unrest is the result of a lack of vision. Where there is no vision, the people perish because they cast off restraint. Until we have a clear vision of social justice we will never defeat poverty and social injustice.

God is personal but never private. Private religion tries to avoid the consequences of public faith. Affluent nations tend to mainly Christians who have only a private faith because the public expression of faith would put the rich person in a dangerous social and economic position.

Today, religion serves to silence the politics of God than to announce it to the nations. In the Old Testament, however, the prophets publicly announced the Word of the Lord to the nation. What was the content of their message? Quite secular topics really. Land, labor, capital, wages, debt, equity, taxes, homes,courts, prisons, immigrants, other races and peoples, economic divisions, social justice, war and peace. This is the stuff of politics. To whom were the prophets often speaking? Usually to rulers, kings, judges, employers, landlords, owners of property and wealth, and religious leaders. The powerful were most often the prophets' target audience. The prophets most often spoke on behalf of the dispossessed, the poor, the widows, the orphans, the homeless and the helpless.

God does not call for class warfare, but only desires the common good, equality and justice.

God is personal, and without a personal God there is no personal dimension to faith, and thus, no spiritual transformation. However, this personal God is never private. God is very public, and to deny the public God is to deny biblical faith itself. Exclusively private faith degenerates into a very narrow religion, and its adherents become obsessed with sexual morality to the exclusion of public social justice. Private faith then becomes merely a cultural religion focusing almost exclusively on assurance of self-righteousness.

Week after week we pass by the poor and needy, yet in our congregations and fail to offer a searing indictment of our society which has become a nation of endangered souls that is governed by values that are quite foreign to our religious convictions. We are failing to be a prophetic voice in our nation and have fallen far short of what God intends for us to be, no matter how religious we like to think we are. We merely have a religiosity that is characterized by privatized belief systems, void of the prophetic and social witness of Jesus and the prophets, offering nothing more than small "s" spirituality, that is really no more than ad hoc wish-fulfillment or a collection of self-help techniques we use to take the edge off our materialistic lives. What if we made the values expressed by Jesus and the prophets a litmus test for our political candidates, social agendas, and foreign policy? A personal God demands public justice as an act of worship.

Protests are not enough. We must offer a better alternative. Protests must be instructive to succeed. They must illuminate and educate society about the ills one is protesting. Protests must not be destructive but constructive, not merely complaining but offering creative alternatives. Protests should not only denounce what is but open the way for change by offering constructive and useful alternatives. When protest is both instructive and constructive society must deal with it.

We must not underestimate the power of evil and the brutality of evil people. When the peace movement is soft on the problems it will be seen as weak. To avoid war we must have realistic plans to deal with the real problems and solve the underlying issues. These peaceful alternatives must be more effective than war.

Just decrying the facts of poverty is not enough to end poverty. In a global economy it is easy to overlook the poor because we really don't need them. But God calls us to care for the poor because they are made in his image. The question is not whether faith should influence society but how faith should influence society.

For a social movement to succeed it must be spiritually based and politically independent. It will attempt to change political structures while not being tied to one political party or system. The focus needs to be on grassroots outside the political system and working towards the inside instead of trying to get political power and work from the inside out. We need to persuade the general public by moral argument that is lived out instead of trying to force a political agenda from the top down.

Many politicians use scripture and biblical phrases to gain support from Christians. But it is dangerous to use biblical prooftexting to support a political ideology. Don't ask if God is on your side but if you are on God's side.

Much of religion today is driven by fear, especially fear of losing the faith. Much rhetoric coming from religious leaders is histrionic and tries to motivate Christians to support a particular political agenda out of fear. However, the best response to bad religion is not to get rid of religion or secularism but to replace it with good religion. While there are many bad interpretations of the Bible, the answer is not to get rid of the Bible but to promote better interpretations.

Not only are there religious fundamentalists in America, but now there is a growing number of secular fundamentalists. Biblical faith is not merely to comfort believers but to transform the world. Such transformation must always be done in a way that enhances democracy and personal freedom. Religious faith should serve the common good.

Biblical Christianity has always had difficulty with the concept of empire. Until the time of Constantine, the church was persecuted by the empire and the church critiqued and sought to change the empire. However, when the church became equated with the empire Christianity changed and became the persecutor and resistant to critique and change. Today, as we once again embrace the concept of empire, it is easy to vilify the enemy and claim to be on the side of good, but repentance is much better.

Blessed are the peace-MAKERS not the peace-LOVERS. Christians need to develop new and creative systems of non-violent resistance patterned after those which have proven to be effective in the past. Humility is essential for peacemaking, while self-righteousness is politically destructive.

Is there a Christian alternative to empire? Peace and security are not found in military supremacy and economic dominance. The prophet Isaiah proclaimed that peace and security come from social justice and economic fairness. If you want peace, work for justice. There is no global security apart from local and common security. No one will be secure until everyone is secure. There is no national security without global security and there is no individual security apart from collective security. Fear leads to violence; take away the fear and you will take away the violence.

Taking care of the poor and needy is central to the Bible. As Christians, we must be committed to helping the poor and downtrodden.

Politicians find a problem and publicize it, then they make the public afraid of it, blame the problem on their opponent, then use it to win an election. After they get elected, they ignore the problem and do nothing about it.

Poverty is a spiritual and religious issue, not a left-wing political issue. Economic poverty is often associated with spiritual poverty. However, affluence often masks moral and spiritual poverty. This is clearly demonstrated in the many school shootings around our country where white, suburban,middle class students from two parent homes perpetrated horrible violence against their peers. So, the problems of poverty are not just political but also spiritual and religious.

Ignoring the poor has distorted the theology of the church in affluent nations. This neglect and distortion has made any prophetic role for these churches impossible.

Budgets are moral documents.

Bill Gates Sr. said, "I believe that one's obligation to society grows in proportion to how much one has benefitted."

We have the knowledge, expertise, technology and resources to solve the problems of poverty and poor health of the world; the problem is that we simply don't want to. The political will does not exist. In the nineteenth century you could argue that it was inadequate science, knowledge, technology and resources, but that is not true of today. The real barrier is indifference.

Racism isn't natural; it must be taught. Racism serves a purpose; it keeps certain people down so other people can succeed, and it also is an effective way to blame one's social and economic problems on a different group. While racism originally had an economic motive it touches every part of our lives and society.

As Christians, we must be separate from our culture. If the culture around you doesn't work, don't buy it; create your own.

Change is a real prospect. We can experience change in our lives, families, communities, nations, and the world. That's the promise of faith, and that's what makes change possible.

The prophets always start out with condemnation and social critique but end with hope. Hope is not a feeling but a choice. Hope is a decision that is based on your deepest beliefs. Hope is not a naive wish but a choice with your eyes wide open.

It is important to remember to enjoy the world while you are out changing it. God has given us life as a gift and he wants us to enjoy it and help others enjoy it. That is what drives us to bring social change to to the world.

Revival or Political Action

In the 1700’s the First Great Awakening helped shape the new nation, rejuvenating the spirit of the colonies and propelling them forward to stand on their own as an independent nation. In the early part of the century, the religious climate of the colonies began to cool as men began to focus on building prosperity instead of seeking after God. Several great preachers, Jonathan Edwards being in the lead, vigorously proclaimed the Word of God in the power of the Spirit, igniting a revival the swept across the New World. The basis of the Great Awakening was the Bible and revival broke out when men began to live their lives according to the Word of God. The major result of the Great Awakening was the founding of schools to teach the Word of God to the next generation. Such great universities as Harvard, Yale and Princeton owe their existence to the Great Awakening.

In the 1800’s the Second Great Awakening helped shape the growing nation, calling many to work to rectify the many of the social ills plaguing the growing urban and industrial areas. Revival spread like wildfire through the frontier, as circuit preachers and revivalists whipped the hardened frontiersmen into a frenzy. The fire spread back east as well, and the whole nation was stirred. Prominent preachers, such as Charles Finney, Lyman Beecher, Barton Stone, and Peter Cartwright, focused not on a deep understanding of the Word of God, as in the First Great Awakening, but on getting people to make a “decision” for Christ. As a result, the revival was much more emotional and given to extreme excesses. In spite of this, the revival sparked a nation-wide effort to stomp out social ills and injustice. Instead of establishing universities, they established hospitals, orphanages, the YMCA, temperance societies and pursued women’s rights and the end of slavery. The greatest immediate impact was the rise of the abolitionists and the Civil War. The end of slavery was greatly brought about because of the Second Great Awakening.

In the 1900’s there was no great revival. Instead, conservative Christians retreated from the world in response to the embarrassment of the Scopes Trial and the incessant attacks of scientific rationalism. Mainline denominations responded to this onslaught by jettisoning orthodox theology and adapting to the growing rationalistic and scientific mindset of the nation. By rejecting miracles, creation, biblical inerrancy, the deity of Christ, and the sacrificial atonement, mainline churches lost their distinctiveness and spiritual power. They focused on social issues, such as the poor, segregation and equal rights. However, they lost the ability to change the spiritual condition of the nation.

Conservative Christians, on the other hands, retreated from the world and had a fortress mentality. It wasn’t until the 1970’s that they began to venture out of their enclaves and their own unique subculture to engage society. However, instead of seeking to renew society by first renewing the church through revival, Conservative Christians sought to change society through political action. First, they helped the first “born again” president to get elected. However, they quickly dropped Jimmy Carter in favor of the suave Ronald Reagan. Many Conservative Christians were enamored with Reagan and thought that he would be instrumental in restoring the nation spiritually. However, it is doubtful is Reagan was even a “born again” Christian according to Conservative Christian standards. His successor, George Bush Sr. did even less to solve the social ills that Conservative Christians lamented. Eight years under Bill Clinton frustrated their efforts until they got George Bush Jr. into office. Along with dominating the executive branch, Conservatives also took control of the legislative and judicial (somewhat) branches as well.

In spite of obtaining all of this political power in the last three decades of the 20th century, there has been little improvement in our society. There has been no revival, no spiritual renewal, no massive social change. Christianity had little impact on the ills of society in the 20th century. Unlike the previous two centuries, where revival brought social change, this last century brought neither revival nor social change, primarily because the order was reversed. Until the church seeks revival, and allows God to change us first, there will be no change in society. If the church is languishing and suffering from many of the same ills as society, it is powerless to make any difference. I'm not saying Christians shouldn't be involved in politics--they must--but that political action is no substitute for revival and the action of God.

While Mainline churches became like the world in their beliefs, and lost their influence, Conservative Christians became like the world in their practice, and lost all credibility and power. If the church is no different from the world, in belief and practice, it will be incapable of solving the problems that plague our nation. We need a mighty work of God, not man, that sweeps through the church, blowing out the dust within, making it holy, righteous and pure, so that it can be filled with the Spirit. Until then, we really have nothing to offer to the world.

Thy Kingdom Come

I have just finished listening to Randall Balmer’s book, Thy Kingdom Come: How the Religious Right Distorts the Faith and Threatens America. It is a well presented, cutting evaluation of modern Evangelicalism and the dangers of Christians pursuing political influence through single-issue politics and selective biblical interpretation.

Balmer traces the development of Evangelicalism from its beginning involvement in social reform and progressive politics to the present where it ignores social reform and attacks progressive politics. Balmer feels that the Religious Right has used selective biblical interpretation to push single-issue politics in order to motivate Evangelicals to vote for Republican candidates. Issues such as abortion and gay marriage have been used to lure Evangelicals to support the Republican Party without looking at all the other issues, many which were more important to Jesus. There is great danger in Christians becoming tied to one political party.

Religious freedom, pluralism, and separation of church and state are foundational to our democratic society. However, much of what the Religious Right is doing is contrary to the heart of the constitution. In stead of fearing pluralism and trying to gain hegemony, Christians need to embrace pluralism and seek to influence those who are different through love, care and personal evangelism. Much of what the Religious Right is doing is counterproductive and pushes others away from Christ.

Many Evangelicals will hate this book and seek to defame Randall Balmer. However, I think he needs to be head and his insights seriously considered. Humility and introspection is needed if Evangelicalism is to regain its voice and influence in our society.

The Suppliants by Euripides

One of my long-term goals is to finish reading all 54 volumes of the Great Books of the Western World. Right now I am reading the Greek plays of Euripides. While Euripides was not as popular as Aeschylus or Sophocles during his lifetime, his plays were in greater demand after his death, so that more than twice as many of his plays exist today than the others. Of the three, Sophocles is my favorite.

I just finished reading the Suppliants, a tragedy about the death of the seven valiant warriors of Argos who died trying to regain the Theban kingdom for Polyneices which was usurped by Creon after the death of Oedipus, Polyneices’ father. Creon refused to allow anyone to bury the dead warriors, forcing the aged king of Argos to plead for help from Thesseus, legendary king of Athens. Theseus agrees to help, moved by the Suppliants (mothers of the dead warriors) and Aethra, his wife, even though he is insulted and warned by Creon’s messenge not to interfere.

Theseus attacks Thebes, and in a fierce battle drives Creon back into the walled city and recovers the bodies of the seven warriors. The bodies are returned to Argos where they are burned and interred in a proper manner.

Several passages in the poem caught my attention. The first was the exchange between Theseus and the messenger from Creon. The messenger ridicules Athens for being ruled by a mob and Theseus counters with the travesties of a dictatorship. This is a classic debate between the two major Greek forms of government, democracy and monarchy. In this passage we get the major arguments for and against both forms of government.

The second passage is the eulogies pronounced by Adrastus, the aged king of Argos, for the seven warriors. It is moving how he portrays the character of each of the valiant men, emphasizing their courage, humility, and integrity. It causes one to pause and reflect on what one wishes to be at his or her own funeral.