The Arrogance of Faith
Marty, Martin E.
RIDING A THESIS OVER A CLIFF THE ARROGANCE OF FAITH Christianity and Race in America from the Colonial Era to the Twentieth Century Forrest G. Wood Alfred A. Knopf, $29.95, 517 pp. Martin E....
...Special programs in Spirituality, Word and Worship, and Mission and Cross-cultural Studies are examples of imaginative developments in the school...
...If only I could write two reviews of this book...
...Michael J. Scanlon, O.SA., S.T.D...
...The book is itself an expression of ideology, at once snide and condescending...
...This may have been "the result of an apparently unique West African susceptibility to external religious influences...
...Now for the issues that have so strongly engaged him: First, there is his important role in the starting of the Peace Corps, a prime example of"service to others...
...It is hard to see on what basis Wood would form or find a covenant for improving things...
...He rarely tells explicitly of his intimate feelings...
...The Christian who knows something of the story, is aware of and acknowledges and deeply regrets the flaws in the faith community, is especially on the spot...
...The atmosphere at the school is warmly human--people feel that they are treated with personal interest and concern...
...It is a story that needs no help from an ideology which, in the end, distracts from the point...
...He has taken over a literary form from the Puritans he so despises: the jeremiad...
...After citing the missionary impulse as the driving force behind Christian subjugation of other people--and an unmistakably strong force it was--Wood admits, "after all, it is unfair to condemn the sins of Christianity without at least acknowledging the sins of all societies whose oppressed classes have owned their condition to the power of religion...
...If only the book did not give such appearances of mastery and definitiveness...
...One would be an appreciation of the story Forrest G. Wood has to tell, a story of almost unrelenting expressions of racism by white Christian Americans...
...IN BRIEF GOD, COUNTRY, NOTRE DAME, by Theodore M. Hesburgh, Doubleday, $21.95,274pp...
...He has read the texts, engaged in a proper "hermeneutics of suspicion," found bad ideals followed and good ideals traduced--the way good Christians are supposed to seek and find them...
...Such language about "unique susceptibilities" itself verges on culturalism or racism, but any instrument evidently will do to explain away what often turned out to be free choices by slaves...
...If only...
...God, Country, Notre Dame itseff embodies an obvious refutation of the apathetic notion that"in the modern world one person cannot make a difference...
...The story is one of horror and terror, too rarely interrupted by nobility and hope...
...Think of the gulags...
...With all the salient missions he undertook in this country and overseas and the many executive roles in which he functioned year after year, Father Hesburgh's primary concern and the major part of his activities encompassed the remarkable academic and spiritual development of the University of Notre Dame...
...Why did West Africans adopt two mis72: Commonwealsionary religions, Christianity and Islam, even in circumstances of slavery...
...From the prophetic tradition he has taken another habit: to see himself virtually "alone in Israel," solitary in his faithful witness...
...It is uninformed by any nuances of comparative religion or cultural studies...
...But they operated out of some sense of covenant which could call people of conscience to an accounting...
...Chairman Department of Systematic Theology For further information contact: WASHINGTON THEOLOGICAL UNION Dept...
...And he comes to play a key role in the reaching of an atomic arms agreement and in lessening tensions between our country and the Soviet Union--and there is more...
...Oppressed classes have owned their condition also to the power of nonreligion as well...
...Show us where...
...He dismisses some scholars because they have a "religious bias" and thus could not be scholarly, evidently not recognizing that an "antireligious bias" could also skew scholarship...
...He was indeed involved in the many-sided social progress he cites with such satisfaction...
...E.S.S...
...their "unique susceptibility" gets the blame...
...He also finds himself called upon to defend the cause of academic freedom...
...I would expect nonChristians to holler "Enough...
...Yet: what picture will new generations of readers carry from it of a faith community which displays complexities, ambiguities, and paradoxes which are overlooked here, along with all too rarely expressed virtues Wood would not dare to mention...
...Wood thinks that the racism of Christianity "has been so pervasive that it has always escaped the full force of criticism, a situation encouraged by the fact that the true believer is not likely to acknowledge----or even recognize--the errors of his faith...
...Again and again Wood takes the reader aside to give lectures on scholarship...
...Graduate Degrees and Opportunities for Continuing Education • Program of Spirituality • Ministries Development Program • Mission and Cross-cultural Studies WASHINGIION A Roman Catholic School for Ministry "The WTU is a creative response to a real need in the post.Vatican H Church, the need for a theologically educated laity who really are the Christian ministers to the world...
...Father Hesburgh says that each one of us can do something effective in the cause of a better world...
...Most of the giants in the discipline--Winthrop P. Jordan, Perry Miller, Sydney Ahlstrom, and their kind--get called to task for not seeing things as Wood sees them...
...Its advocates were as racist and enslaving as were the Christians they would replace...
...Look around...
...To overlook the ideological character of Wood's writing would be to give an unfair and misguiding account of the book...
...And then, if only I could review that version of his plot, I could say the good things about it that the violence of his writing here too consistently obscures...
...As Wood accuses others of racism, it is in place to accuse him of faithism...
...Martin E. Marly f only...
...Monotheist faith in general and Christianity in particular never gets a chance...
...Soon afterward he becomes involved in the civil rights movement at its most precarious stage...
...On the other hand, a second review would turn to the second book within Wood's covers...
...If only such a book did not put a great burden on a reviewer...
...of Institutional Advancement 9001 New Hampshire Avenue Silver Spring, MD 20903-3699 (301) 439-0551 25January1991:73...
...For all the evils of the enslavers' faiths, West Africans in the American Sruth found ways to do a kind of jiujitsu translation--using the force of the Christian power that was directed at them, against itself, to their advantage...
...in the course of their reading and reviewing...
...While criticism was always a minority voice and one which came late, it has been probing and profound...
...In large part this is an exciting story of the crises of our times...
...Completed just months before the trauma of the Persian Gulf, the book is basically optimistic...
...we increase our humanity by hearing it...
...The faith comes off as a calculated and calculating instrument for ideological suppression, by its white adherents, of blacks, Native Americans, Asians, and anyone else who did not fit...
...That one is an unrelenting dismissal of faith by one who is evidently a former Christian, still working out his case against Christianity...
...It weighs in with great heft as a contender alongside classics like Winthrop Jordan's White Over Black, and takes up themes matching H. Shelton Smith's durable In His Image, But...
...Wood might dismiss the eloquent Christian prophets as other than "true believers," but that would be to change the rules of the game...
...Their innovative enterprise gets little credit...
...Theodor Adorno has said that we dishonor sufferers by not telling their story...
...It is hard from this account to know why anyone who was not pathological ever turned to Christianity for prodding or solace, prophetic nudges, or consoling hopes...
...But why "the power of religion...
...African and Chinese religions, Native American faiths, / Buddhism and Hinduism, and polytheisms in general are off the hook--a sign that Wood romanticizes them or does not know them"up close...
...It always demands and deserves more retellings...
...To reject it leaves one vulnerable to the charge of insensitivity or, worse, the writing of apology for the Christian faith at the expense of one's historical and critical sensibilities...
...And there is the case of his hobby of flying in fast planes...
...If only Wood could rewrite his book with confidence in his story and less condescension toward his readers...
...While many a present-day autobiography is an account of a personal quest, Father Hesburgh presents rather a story of the way he was caught up in the big issues from the sixties on...
...By its seriousness and appearance it bids fair to be around for a long time, to be consulted as a reference or read as an epic tragedy...
...Wood has taken more from his Christian heritage than he knows...
...Then, later in the sixties, Father Hesburgh takes on the student revolt as it strikes his beloved Notre Dame...
...Enlightenment rationalism...
...Wood has done extensive research, knows the secondary literature, and writes with sufficient flair to hold reader interest...
...Marxism pure and simple...
...An exception is the way he writes of his love for his priestly vocation and of his devotion to his daily offering of the Mass...
...The story of human suffering caused by slavery and segregation in America is of immeas-urable scope...
...On Marxist-Leninism...
...As he does so, he tears Christian expressions out of their contexts...
Vol. 118 • January 1991 • No. 2
