Ted Cruz Links

As Ted Cruz emerges as the only GOP primary candidate in a clutch of a dozen or so with the nerve to challenge The Donald, the media is bursting with a sting of vignettes from his backstory. Too many to count, I'm collecting them here.

When Ted Cruz Argued at SCOTUS
He has argued nine cases before the high court, defending the death penalty and butting heads with a Republican president.
Sam Baker
@SAM_BAKER
March 23, 2015

Cruz, who on Monday be­came the first of­fi­cial can­did­ate of 2016, has ar­gued nine cases be­fore the high court. And those ar­gu­ments have a lot in com­mon with his time in elec­ted of­fice””namely, ag­gress­ively con­ser­vat­ive po­s­i­tions, some­times chal­len­ging the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment, with de­cidedly un­even res­ults.
[snip] 

Cruz spent most of his time be­fore the Su­preme Court de­fend­ing tough crim­in­al sen­tences, in­clud­ing the death pen­alty (not too sur­pris­ing, for the Texas so­li­cit­or gen­er­al).
The death pen­alty was the cent­ral is­sue in Cruz’s last case as so­li­cit­or gen­er­al, in which he and oth­er at­tor­neys on his side missed a crit­ic­al fact that might have swung the case their way. 

Cruz jumped in­to a 2008 case over a Louisi­ana law that sen­tenced child rap­ists to death. The Court ul­ti­mately ruled that the sen­tence was un­con­sti­tu­tion­al, re­ly­ing in part on the fact that only a small hand­ful of states al­lowed it. 

Dur­ing or­al ar­gu­ments, Cruz urged the justices to de­fer to those states, and said that more jur­is­dic­tions might ad­opt pen­al­ties sim­il­ar to Louisi­ana’s. 

“What we are ad­voc­at­ing is that there is an evolving un­der­stand­ing of the enorm­ous, unique, ir­re­par­able harms to chil­dren, and it’s elec­ted le­gis­latures that can sit and listen to those ad­voc­ates from the groups, listen to the em­pir­ic­al data, con­sider the de­terrence ef­fect””con­sider all of these and de­cide one way or the oth­er,” Cruz said. “I would fully ex­pect, in time, some states would act to es­tab­lish cap­it­al pun­ish­ment and oth­ers would not. And that that’s pre­cisely how the labor­at­or­ies of demo­cracy should op­er­ate.” 

But the law­yers ar­guing in fa­vor of the death pen­alty missed a po­ten­tially im­port­ant fact: The U.S. mil­it­ary had changed its code to al­low cap­it­al pun­ish­ment for child rape. The fact that the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment had ac­cep­ted the pen­alty might have un­der­cut Kennedy’s ar­gu­ment that it fell out­side the “evolving stand­ards of de­cency” by which cap­it­al pun­ish­ment is judged. 

Cruz told The New York Times after the rul­ing that the change in mil­it­ary rules had “eluded every­one’s re­search,” and that he didn’t think the Court would change its un­der­ly­ing de­cision, even if the over­sight was cor­rec­ted.

Every voter needs to know this about Ted Cruz
By Ian Reifowitz
Tuesday Jan 12, 2016 

Given how closely I follow politics and the news, I can’t believe this is the first time I’m hearing this story about Ted Cruz. Kudos to David Brooks for bringing it to light:[article below]  

During the Supreme Court hearing, Justice Anthony Kennedy—left incredulous by Cruz’s position—asked him: “Is there some rule that you can't confess error in your state?” 

Brooks’s article is titled “The Brutalism of Ted Cruz.” An apt description indeed. 

Would hearing this story undercut Cruz’s support among Republican primary voters? I really don’t know. I do know that a person who would fight such a case all the way to the Supreme Court is lacking something very basic—something important not only for Christians, but for any of us, and certainly for anyone seeking to become the most powerful individual in the world. That thing is judgment.

The Brutalism of Ted Cruz
David Brooks 

JAN. 12, 2016

In 1997, Michael Wayne Haley was arrested after stealing a calculator from Walmart. This was a crime that merited a maximum two-year prison term. But prosecutors incorrectly applied a habitual offender law. Neither the judge nor the defense lawyer caught the error and Haley was sentenced to 16 years. 

Eventually, the mistake came to light and Haley tried to fix it. Ted Cruz was solicitor general of Texas at the time. Instead of just letting Haley go for time served, Cruz took the case to the Supreme Court to keep Haley in prison for the full 16 years.
Some justices were skeptical. “Is there some rule that you can’t confess error in your state?” Justice Anthony Kennedy asked. The court system did finally let Haley out of prison, after six years 

The case reveals something interesting about Cruz’s character. Ted Cruz is now running strongly among evangelical voters, especially in Iowa. But in his career and public presentation Cruz is a stranger to most of what would generally be considered the Christian virtues: humility, mercy, compassion and grace. Cruz’s behavior in the Haley case is almost the dictionary definition of pharisaism: an overzealous application of the letter of the law in a way that violates the spirit of the law, as well as fairness and mercy. 

Traditionally, candidates who have attracted strong evangelical support have in part emphasized the need to lend a helping hand to the economically stressed and the least fortunate among us. Such candidates include George W. Bush, Mike Huckabee and Rick Santorum. 

But Cruz’s speeches are marked by what you might call pagan brutalism. There is not a hint of compassion, gentleness and mercy. Instead, his speeches are marked by a long list of enemies, and vows to crush, shred, destroy, bomb them. When he is speaking in a church the contrast between the setting and the emotional tone he sets is jarring. 

[snip] 

Evangelicals and other conservatives have had their best influence on American politics when they have proceeded in a spirit of personalism — when they have answered hostility with service and emphasized the infinite dignity of each person. They have won elections as happy and hopeful warriors. Ted Cruz’s brutal, fear-driven, apocalypse-based approach is the antithesis of that.

[For the sake of balance here is a link to a WSJ rejoinder from James Taranto taking Brooks to task for "Borking" Cruz. I would call this a journalistic double-technicality whiplash, beginning with Cruz enabling a miscarriage of justice on a technicality, then getting a pass himself (with Brooks' criticism) thanks to another technicality concocted by Taranto. But that's just my biased opinion.

Mr. Taranto seeks to keep his hands clean with the "I report -- you decide" dodge (see below). I'm familiar with that ploy having used it myself on occasion. But in this case it reveals as much about the writer as the subject he seeks to salvage. Sorry, I'm not buying it.]

Brooks Borks Cruz
A deceptive attack on the former solicitor general.

JAMES TARANTO

Jan. 12, 2016

Yesterday we had a mischievous thought: What if Donald Trump, on the eve of the Iowa caucuses, were to announce (or merely suggest) that if elected, he would nominate Ted Cruz to the next vacancy on the U.S. Supreme Court? Such a move would give some Cruz supporters a reason to switch while reassuring other conservatives nervous about the soundness of a President Trump’s judicial nominees. 

Trump could even use the occasion to reinforce his current Cruz-directed mischief. After all, nobody can claim that Cruz’s Canadian birth would pose an obstacle to a Supreme Court appointment. Several early justices were born in England and vicinity; Justice Felix Frankfurter was a naturalized immigrant from Vienna; and Justice David Brewer was born as far away as Turkey.

Is David Brooks thinking along similar lines? We ask because his New York Times column today looks an awful lot like a pre-emptive borking. 

[snip] 

...what led us to think Brooks probably wasn’t shooting straight here—is his unexplained segue from the skepticism of “some justices,” including Kennedy, to Haley’s release thanks to “the court system.” We inferred that Cruz had won the case, and we inferred correctly. The vote was 6-3, with Kennedy among the dissenters. The majority opinion was written by Justice Sandra Day O’Connor and joined by, among others, Clinton appointees Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer. 

If arguing against Haley’s legal position “reveals something interesting about Cruz’s character,” what does deciding against it reveal about the character of O’Connor, Ginsburg, Breyer and the others in the majority? Don’t worry, there won’t be a test. The answer is nada; the question is rhetorical and demonstrates the falsity of Brooks’s premise. 

That is not the limit of Brooks’s deception, which begins in the very first paragraph with the assertion that “prosecutors incorrectly applied a habitual offender law.” We naturally read that to mean Haley was doing time for a crime he didn’t commit—that he was harshly sentenced under a “three strikes” law but had been convicted for only one prior felony (or none). 

In fact, Haley did have the requisite two prior felony convictions. From the syllabus: “As it turned out, the evidence presented at the penalty phase showed that respondent [Haley] had committed his second offense three days before his first conviction became final, meaning that he was not eligible for the habitual offender enhancement.”

Thus the error here was procedural, not substantive: Haley had been duly convicted of three felonies, but because of an accident of timing, the second one should not have counted under Texas law. He was, in other words, trying to get off on a technicality.
That is not to say he should not have. The law is the law, and there was no dispute that Texas officials erred. They too were pleading a technicality: “that respondent had procedurally defaulted his sufficiency of the evidence claim.” The question before the court was whether “the actual innocence exception applies to noncapital sentencing procedures involving career offenders and habitual felony offenders.”

This columnist does not have a firm opinion as to whether three-strikes laws are prudent or just (a policy question), much less on the legal question whether the actual innocence exception applies to noncapital sentencing procedures involving career offenders and habitual felony offenders. (A layman’s simplification of the court’s answer to the latter question: Maybe, but not in this case.) 

Cruz’s successful appeal in Haley tells us nothing about him except that he was a competent solicitor general. His job was to make legal arguments, not moral judgments about crime and punishment or personal ones about particular criminal defendants. If Brooks thinks Haley’s punishment was unjust—and there is nothing to suggest he has an informed view of the matter at all—he can fault the legislators who passed the three-strikes law, the prosecutors who applied (and misapplied) it, and the trial judge who imposed the sentence. 

Brooks means to denounce Cruz, not to vindicate Haley. Criticizing politicians, even denouncing them, is part of the job of an opinion columnist. But Brooks’s treatment of this case is either deliberately deceptive or recklessly ignorant. It may raise questions of character, but not Ted Cruz’s.

~~~

The famous birther question is once again rearing it's ugly Constitutional head. My opinion is that it's a remnant of our colonial past that needs to be tossed aside. But that is not going to happen. In the meantime it is being used yet again to malign a candidate for a reason having zero to do with his eligibility to be president of the United States. I don't even like Ted Cruz as this collection of links makes clear, but the birther issue, in my opinion, is thin gruel indeed. And this is not a new issue in the history of presidential elections, it seems. Wikipedia has one of those shaggy-dog endless articles about the subject. I learned that Barry Goldwater was born in Arizona Territory before it was made a state!

My own opinion is that it's time to toss that requirement with a corrective amendment. Birthright citizenship is no guarantee of anything, and we have a couple centuries of evidence as proof. As for the constitution, it was that document that produced our first president via the electoral college, at a time when only male white property owners could vote. No poor people. No slaves. No freedmen of color. No women. No newcomers. We have come a long way since then, and we still have a way to go.

As for Ted Cruz, he is one of the most dangerous people ever to run for president. His birthright as the offspring of am extreme right-wing Bircher is far more troubling than where he might have been born. He's a manipulative, power-hungry, sneaky little man with the markings of a Uriah Heep. It was said of Hillary Clinton that she doesn't lie but she handles the truth very carefully. But Cruz puts her management of the truth look amateurish by comparison. He doesn't lie, but he handles the truth like a deck of cards in the hands of a gifted magician. Cruz and a few others display an artful use of rhetoric that has not been heard for years.

Moving right along...

~~~

Ted Cruz’s birther problem grows as more constitutional law scholars say he can’t be president
NEWSWEEK
14 JAN 2016

A growing number of constitutional law scholars are arguing that Ted Cruz’s birth in Canada makes him ineligible to become president. Their argument could prove a thorn in the side of the senator, who is a zealous originalist on most constitutional questions—with what seems like a notable exception. 

The issue has moved to the center of the presidential campaign, with Cruz’s rise in the polls and Donald Trump claiming that Cruz needs to prove he’s eligible to run by getting a declaratory judgment in federal court. 

There is some ambiguity in the question of eligibility. The Constitution sets down three requirements to assume the nation's highest office: one must be at least 35 years old, have been a resident of the U.S. for at least 14 years (though whether those years must be consecutive or can be cumulative is a question up for debate) and must be a "natural-born citizen" of the United States. But the founders did not explicitly define "natural-born citizen," leaving room for doubt and debate. 

While Cruz has told reporters his eligibility to become president is "settled law" because his mother was an American citizen when he was born and never renounced her American citizenship while she was a Canadian resident. Many constitutional theorists agree with Cruz that it's not really up for debate. 

But it’s hardly unanimous. An increasing number of high-profile constitutional law professors, including one of Cruz's own professors from Harvard Law School, have in recent days argued publicly that Cruz's birth disqualifies him.

More details at the link. The reader is welcome to go down that rabbit hole without further encouragement from me.


How Ted Cruz’s best friend drew him into Jamaican politics and business
By Rosalind S. Helderman and Tom Hamburger 

January 22

Kingston, Jamaica — The ambitious young men sat for hours at a restaurant here to map out plans for a business venture that could make them millions.
In a group that included three Jamaican entrepreneurs, one participant seemed out of place — a 27-year-old former U.S. Supreme Court law clerk of Cuban descent who was visiting from Washington. 

Ted Cruz had been invited by his roommate from Princeton and Harvard Law, David Panton, who was eager for the group to win the rights to manage a new Caribbean-focused investment enterprise launched by one of the island’s most prominent executives. 

The idea was modeled after U.S. private equity companies that made fortunes by using investor dollars to remake underperforming companies. The Caribbean concept came with a twist — the investor dollars would be drawn in part from governments, including from the United States, leveraging funds intended to boost the developing world. 

It was an odd fit for Cruz, who as early as high school and college expressed a strong belief in limited government. But the plan held potential for big profits. And Cruz was welcomed by Panton’s fellow Jamaican partners as a skilled negotiator well suited to help hone their pitch for managing the new firm. 

“A good devil’s advocate,” said Jeffrey Hall, one of the partners at the meeting.
With Cruz’s help, they won the right to control what they hoped would be a $150 million fund. The firm, founded in 1998, lost its contract within five years, in part because of a dispute over an investment decision, and was soon shuttered. 

Nevertheless, it provided a tidy sum for Cruz. He initially pitched in $6,000 for start-up costs and exited the partnership shortly before it disintegrated with a payout of $25,000, plus a promise of an additional $75,000 to come later, according to Panton.
The episode is one part of an unusual chapter in Cruz’s life — a foray into Jamaican society and politics amid his otherwise straightforward rise from the Ivy League to coveted clerkships to the U.S. Senate and, now, the top tier of the Republican presidential field. 

Ted and David
At the heart of it all was Cruz’s long and enduring bond with Panton. The two college buddies had each been destined for high-profile success, the Canadian-born Cruz as a constitutional lawyer in the United States and Panton, son of prominent Jamaican parents, as a potential prime minister of his native country. 

When their business dissolved in 2003, Panton seemed to stumble — through a very public divorce from a former Miss World and a romance with a former Miss Universe that provided tabloid fodder across the Caribbean. Panton has said that Cruz provided emotional support through some of those difficult times. 

Cruz’s loyalty over many years to Panton, who he has said is “like a brother,” shows a different side of a politician who has developed a reputation for being abrasive, even unlikable. Panton, in turn, has been one of Cruz’s most enthusiastic political supporters, helping launch the first super PAC backing the senator’s White House bid. 

Cruz declined to be interviewed for this article, and a campaign spokesman did not respond to detailed written questions. Panton agreed to answer questions only via email.

[More at the link. The reader can take it from here.]

~~~~~

Here are a few links regarding Rafael Cruz, the father of Ted Cruz.  The headlines speak for themselves and the contents are easy to grasp. 

Ted Cruz’s dad is even more frightening than Ted Cruz
The wingnut didn't fall far from the tree. We followed Pastor Rafael Cruz to Iowa and heard some full-on crazy
Robert Leonard

Sept. 26, 2015

Why Ted Cruz’s father could become a campaign liability
03/23/15 -- UPDATED 03/24/15
By Adam Howard

Rafael Cruz Right Wing Watch Posts Archive

Ted Cruz Out To Reflect God’s Love, Punish Supreme Court for Marriage Equality Ruling
SUBMITTED BY Peter Montgomery on Friday, 1/29/2016

Ted Cruz, his father Rafael, and supporters like Glenn Beck and David Barton all believe that Cruz is on a divine mission to save America. As we have been reporting, Cruz’s campaign has been celebrating near-dailyendorsements from some of the most extreme characters in the Religious Right. Just before yesterday’s Republican presidential debate, the Focus on the Family-affiliated group CitizenLink released audio clips of conference calls the group has been holding with conservative candidates. The clips of Ted Cruz’s remarks include repeats of much of his standard campaign rhetoric, with a particular focus on the religious rhetoric Cruz has made central to his campaign. He said, for example, that a president who does not begin each day on his knees in prayer is not fit to be commander-in-chief 

On the CitizenLink call, Cruz reiterated his campaign’s foundational premise that he can win the White House not by appealing to some mushy middle but by promoting conservative values with a “joyful spirit” that will energize the right-wing base. “There are more of us than there are of them and if we simply stand up and vote our values we can turn this country around.” Cruz said his prayer for his campaign was not “God help us win,” but that “God’s love will be reflected and seen in how we conducted this campaign.”

~~~~~~

I almost forgot about this collection of responses Senator Cruz received at his Facebook page when he said a few respectful words about Nelson Mandela when he died in 2013. I collected them at a blog post in case they were later deleted, but as of this writing over two years later they remain part of the record.

This brief, respectful, almost perfunctory statement from a US Senator borders on bland to the point of being disrespectful. Read for yourself. Then go to the link and see the avalanche of outrage it received -- apparently from the Senator's constituents and followers.

Nelson Mandela will live in history as an inspiration for defenders of liberty around the globe. He stood firm for decades on the principle that until all South Africans enjoyed equal liberties he would not leave prison himself, declaring in his autobiography, 'Freedom is indivisible; the chains on any one of my people were the chains on all of them, the chains on all of my people were the chains on me.' Because of his epic fight against injustice, an entire nation is now free. 

We mourn his loss and offer our condolences to his family and the people of South Africa.

At this writing (2/6/16) Senator Cruz' Facebook page cites 1.4k comments.
First three top comments are...

This is the reason you sir, will never be elected President. Your base is made up of a bunch of racist, uninformed idiots who know nothing about basic history. Reading these comments make me shocked at how many people in this country are so hateful and just outright stupid (550 likes) 

As a South African, I just want to say that our country is a much better place for the existence of Mr Mandela. On nearly every indicator, South Africa and its people are better off than in 1994. Mandela was flawed, as are we all, but he was a great man, and ensured that South Africa became a democracy and a place where all its people can live in peace. I feel sorry for the many bigots that have posted on this page. Their intolerance and racism is a horrible thing to see. (616 likes) 

These are exactly the comments I would expect from supporters of Ted Cruz. Dimwit, hateful, ignorant comments. (378 likes)

~~~~ 

Here is a snip from the New Hampshire Republican Debate  (2/6/16) indicating Senator Cruz has no reservations about waterboarding. He's riffing here on something said earlier by Trump who had said "I would bring back waterboarding and I'd bring back a hell of a lot worse than waterboarding."

Outsourcing -- Today's profit maker

[I wrote this in 2004 and it has held up pretty well. I'm reprinting it here since I no longer have access to my old blog and because wherever that old blog is living has creaky servers and takes several minutes to fully download.]

We speak in respectful tones about that primordial soup from which profits flow, the marketplace. Great numbers of people worship at that altar...probably more than worship in old-fashioned religious venues. When the numbers are good, the news announcer reading the results often has happy background music playing, something like "We're In the Money". If the numbers are down, the music might be "Stormy Weather". It's as much a part of our culture as sports and popular foods to rejoice when the "Market" is good, and gloomy if the report is "down". At some level everyone, even those who will never see a stock certificate, some of whom will never guess that there is a cap on social security taxes every year for people earning over a certain amount...everyone feels connected.

It's not fashionable to ask where profits come from, however. It's like asking if someone has had cosmetic surgery or was fortunate enough to come into a lot of money following the recent death of a loved one. We want the dealership from which we get our car to be profitable enough to keep up with the warranty service, but we don't want any profit to that dealer from our purchase, and we sure as hell don't want to pay dealer prices for service. Profit is what happens when a company makes a good deal with someone else. When I have to make the same deal, however, they are taking advantage of me.

Not everyone thinks like this, of course. There are lots of people who cheerfully pay a dear price to be the first or latest in their peer group to see a movie or own a certain fashion or travel to some wonderful destination. Big tips, ostentatiously bigger than the norm, are sometimes found by delighted service people who don't care that they say more about the ego needs of patrons than the quality of their service. And I think there are a few people who take a balanced view of profits and don't get disturbed about their contributions to someone else's profit.

In the face of all this resistance on the part of customers, clients and patrons to cut them out of reasonable profits businesses are forced to be imaginative about being able to report ever higher profits. The word "bubble" comes to mind first, because that is the easiest track to profits in the short term. We have seen it many times, from the famous tulip bulbs to the California Gold Rush to the explosion of dotcoms. In the end the bubble bursts (hence the term) but there are what I would call "serial bubbles" (see "serial monogamy") in real estate, fashions, entertainment and advertising. I heard a couple of weeks ago that insurance stock prices go up when a hurricane hits because historically that is when premiums go up, not only to cover "losses" due to weather, but improved profits as well. Why do insurance companies jack up the prices at just the time that their policy holders can least afford to pay more? Because they can.

A few years ago, and to some extent continuing today, the phenomenon of "mergers and acquisitions" yielded breathtaking "profits". When two companies in the same line of work merge it is a win-win situation (except for the people whose jobs are sacrificed for the deal) because the new, stronger company has one less competitor in the marketplace (whew!) as well as a more efficient operation, because the payroll departments, accountants, ad agencies and other support operations can be performed by one department instead of two. All this improved efficiency translates into profits.

Speaking of accounting, now there is the toolbox from which a lot of profits can be made to flow. When they get the cooperation they need from operations there is practically no end to the profits that can result. Just ask the people at Enron how easy it can be.

Have you noticed that so far that nothing has been mentioned about productivity? That is my point. The only real source of profits has to be that something has been produced. Moving the furniture around does not produce anything, unless you are paid to be an interior decorator. Mergers might squeeze a few cents from the economy of scale, but the real improvements, if you can call them that, is that there is more to report for profits because fewer people are being paid.

This brings us to the notion of outsourcing, the ultimate job eraser. Outsourcing has had it's bony finger in nearly every business enterprise in the marketplace. I would like to advance the notion that corporate reliance on outsourcing is tantamount to an admission of failure. It is easiest to see in something like janitorial work, the bottom of the economic ladder by most standards. Very few organizations today directly employ the people who literally clean up behind them. The reasons are easy to grasp. Nobody wants to take out the trash, clean the restrooms and refill the soap dispensers, so it is easier to pay an outside company to do that job than go to the trouble to hire and train someone and hold them accountable. And don't even mention the benefits that the would expect. After a few years they could get to wanting a vacation like everyone else. Next thing you know, they might even want to be getting ahead in life and someone would have to be trained to replace them. Imagine that.

I'm trying not to sound cynical, but I'm not trying very hard. I have watched for years as the idea of people skills and management accountability have become less and less a part of business life. Few supervisors are trained to spell out their expectations in language that is clear but not judgemental. Even fewer are trained to be the patient coaches they have to be if they are to develop their subordinates into more than robots. For the past few days I have been thinking that outsourcing is the contemporary successor to mergers as a generator of false profits, because in most cases the end result neither improves the service nor generates any new value to the owner/stockholder.

And the social consequences of jobs being lost....don't get me started.

~~~~~

Shortly after that was written I came across an essay by a venture capitalist who was/is a card-carrying computer programer, Paul Graham, who is still being productive and has his own Wikipedia link. I gather from Mr. Google he is a glittering success, both as programmer and investor -- an ideal subject to be Exhibit A for meritocracy. And as every schoolboy knows, whatever else our economic and social system may be, it is first of all a meritocracy, richly rewarding those who create "value."

His most recent essay indicates he may be somewhat prickly about the Piketty effect (income and wealth inequality and all that) and I'm just an old man blogging in retirement and am not equal to any pissing contest with someone of his accomplishments. Nevertheless, here is a snip from that essay making my point. 

In the real world you can create wealth as well as taking it from others. A woodworker creates wealth. He makes a chair, and you willingly give him money in return for it. A high-frequency trader does not. He makes a dollar only when someone on the other end of a trade loses a dollar. 

If the rich people in a society got that way by taking wealth from the poor, then you have the degenerate case of economic inequality where the cause of poverty is the same as the cause of wealth. But instances of inequality don't have to be instances of the degenerate case. If one woodworker makes 5 chairs and another makes none, the second woodworker will have less money, but not because anyone took anything from him. 

Even people sophisticated enough to know about the pie fallacy are led toward it by the custom of describing economic inequality as a ratio of one quantile's income or wealth to another's. It's so easy to slip from talking about income shifting from one quantile (sic) to another, as a figure of speech, into believing that is literally what's happening.

Did you catch that? The "quantile" reference is a giveaway reference to Piketty. I think he was trying to say quintile, the metric by which most charts about income and wealth inequality are illustrated, with the middle quintile being equivalent to the proverbial middle class. But like most highly successful people Mr. Graham knows better than anyone how he became successful and he has little sympathy or patience with those further down that ladder of success. 

My own focus lately has been exactly on that other end of the economic continuum, those at the bottom, the population commonly called the working poor, who spend their entire working life barely making ends meet, living from one check to the next, with no hope or expectation of life ever getting much better. But that is a subject for another discussion. This morning's reflections are my response to a NY Times article about a group of professionals with demonstrable merit -- high on the meritocracy ladder -- doctors. Seems like an outsourcing trend (as I was railing about in my 2004 link above) has found its tentacles all the way to the top of the ladder in the form of outsourcing doctors, for crying out loud!

Dr. Alexander’s method is at the center of an emotional debate in medicine, in which the imperative to increase efficiency in a high-cost health care system is often at odds with the deference traditionally accorded to doctors. 

It’s a debate that came home to Sacred Heart in the spring of 2014, when the administration announced it would seek bids to outsource its 36 hospitalists, the hospital doctors who supervise patients’ care, to a management company that would become their employer. 

The outsourcing of hospitalists became relatively common in the last decade, driven by a combination of factors. There is the obvious hunger for efficiency gains. But there is also growing pressure on hospitals to measure quality and keep people healthy after they are discharged. This can be a complicated data collection and management challenge that many hospitals, especially smaller ones, are not set up for and that some outsourcing companies excel in.

To be fair to Mr. Graham, his essay also refers to the rentier class (although he doesn't use that exact term, but that's the reference).

As a manufacturer of economic inequality, the underlying causes are something I know about. Yes, there are a lot of people who get rich through rent-seeking of various forms, and a lot who get rich by playing games that though not crooked are zero-sum. But there are also a significant number who get rich by creating wealth. 

And that group presents two problems for the hunter of economic inequality. One is that variation in productivity is accelerating. The rate at which individuals can create wealth depends on the technology available to them, and that grows exponentially. The other problem with creating wealth, as a source of inequality, is that it can expand to accommodate a lot of people. 

I'm all for shutting down the crooked ways to get rich. But that won't eliminate great variations in wealth, because as long as you leave open the option of getting rich by creating wealth, people who want to get rich will do that instead.

But as in nearly every case, that creation of wealth theme trumps all other arguments, leaving the rest of the discussion in the dust.  But as in the case of the working poor, that is a subject for that other discussion I mentioned above. This one is about doctors.

Puritanism: A Legacy Disdained by Historians and Sullied with the Devil’s Victory in Salem

About the Author: William L. De Arteaga, Ph.D., is known internationally as a Christian historian and expert on revivals and the rebirth and renewal of the Christian healing movement. His major works include, Quenching the Spirit (Creation House, 1992, 1996) andForgotten Power: The Significance of the Lord’s Supper in Revival(Zondervan, 2002). Bill pastored two Hispanic Anglican congregations in the Marietta, Georgia area, and is semi-retired. He and his wife Carolyn continue in their healing, teaching and writing ministries. He is the state chaplain of the Order of St. Luke, encouraging the ministry of healing in all Christian denominations.AnglicalPentecostal.blogspot.com

The Puritans were the first major renewal group within the English Reformation. Puritan pastors, writers and theologians recovered much of the Hebraic “earthy” perspective that accentuated the goodness of life on earth. This is in contrast to the predominant pre-Reformation theology of the Western Church (Catholic) which was heavily “Hellenized” and “other-worldly,” and often slighted the role of the layperson in Church life.2 The Puritan’s rejection of Christian Hellenization was not a conscious goal, but rather the natural result of reading the Bible, including the Old Testament, without the allegorical and ascetical traditions that were dominant in Christian theology since the 4thCentury. Puritan writers and theologians made Reformed theology into a practical, and biblically centered way of life that looked heaven ward while valuing of life on earth. A recent book by the noted Christian scholar, Leland Ryken, calls the Puritans “worldly saints” because of their concerns with practical living.3 All this is contrary to their current caricature, which paints them as glum killjoys focused on avoiding earthly temptations.

The Puritans were originally a faction within the Church of England (the Anglicans) who wanted their church “purified” and to be more like Calvin’s Reformed Church in Geneva—and less like the Church of Rome. Most Puritans stayed within the Anglican Church and worked for reform from within. Among these were some of Puritanism’s greatest theologian/pastors such as John Owens, Richard Baxter and William Perkins. A minority were “separatists” who could not tolerate the “papist” ways of Anglicanism (such as vestments and fixed liturgy) and chose to separate from Anglicanism, often at considerable cost—as in losing their salaried pastoral offices.

The Pilgrims of Plymouth Rock fame were Puritan Separatists, but the majority of America’s Puritans came to New England a decade later, during the “Great Migration” of the 1630s, and were technically Anglicans. However, since there were no Anglican bishops in America they developed a “congregational” type of church government where the local church was governed by its members. They ultimately separated from the Anglican Church.

All Puritan ministers had to be highly educated and well-read in the classics of Greece and Rome, the Early Church Fathers and the Reformers. Among the first things the Puritans did in the New World was found HarvardCollege as a place to educate their clergy (1636). However, the Bible was always the final word on theology or church practice. In fact, one might say that Puritanism, Colonial or English, was primarily a biblical renewal movement.4

The Puritans reject rejecting the Jews (supersessionism):

Because the Puritans read the Bible literally and without the allegorical traditions of Catholicism, they greatly increased their appreciation of the Old Testament. Supersessionism, the long held theory that the Church totally displaced the Jews as the “people of God,” and by implication, that the Old Testament was of little practical concern for the Christian, melted away. Puritans discerned that much of the Old Testament was a good and practical guide to the everyday life and spirituality. One of the fruits of this biblical recovery was that Puritan writers came to appreciate Paul’s understanding of the Jews’ continuous importance and ultimate, future reincorporation into the Church.

Some Puritan theologians even developed a Jewish-centered understanding of the end times that predicted a restored Jewish state. In that view, Jews would resettle Palestine and then would attack and destroy the Ottoman Empire (the most powerful Islamic entity at the time). After this, the Jews would convert to Christianity and the usher in the millennium.5 That the Jews would be restored again to Palestine was new to Christian thought, and certainly a valid prophetic insight—even if it did not happen as soon or in the way they expected.

Oliver Cromwell, who ruled Great Britain as a Puritan commonwealth (1645-1658) believed in this early form of Jewish Zionism. He attempted to further Jewish interests by inviting the Jews back to England, and providing them with legal rights.6 (The Jews had been expelled from England in the 1200s, as in most of Europe, after being blamed for the spread of the bubonic plague.)

Puritan Sabbataranism

The most noticeable aspect of the Puritans’ renewed appreciation of the Old Testament was their desire to observe the Sabbath according to biblical mandates.7 That is, the Sabbath was to be reserved as a day of worship and rest. Catholic Europe had a few long-standing restrictions on Sunday activities, as in forbidding hard labor. Luther and Calvin were reluctant to go much further than the Catholics, as they were especially weary of legalism.

However, the Puritans believed that a strict observance of the Sabbath was not just an Old Testament issue, but an eternal mandate for Christians. In fact, one issue of hot concern for the Puritans in England was their irritation at the proclamation of the king, Charles I, read in all churches, that it was all right to play sports after Sunday church service. The Puritans felt sports and recreations were good and necessary, but not on the Sabbath.8

The Puritan attitude towards the Sabbath was one of the legacies that endured in the United States, and made American Protestantism different from it European cousins. Whither or not contemporary Christians agree with the Puritan’s on Sabbath observances, it is important to note that they understood that the Old Testament regulations of a Sabbath of rest and worship was truly for our good, and not just as an historical oddity of the Old Testament.

Puritan Sexuality: Recovering the Biblical Perspective

Ironically and contrary to the caricatures about them, the Puritans were reformers, indeedrevolutionaries, against the Medieval Catholic distortions of Biblical sexuality.10 Both Luther and Calvin had ended monasticism and celibacy as central Christian ideals. But the Reformers were quickly overwhelmed with the responsibilities of establishing Protestant life in face of immediate contention and warfare. It was the Puritans, a century later, who had the time to elaborate a new and Biblically centered theology of sexuality.

Puritans reversed the Catholic understanding of marriage as intended for procreation only. For instance, in Medieval Catholic theology it was taught that it was a sin to have intercourse with one’s wife once she was pregnant, because the “intention” of marriage was fulfilled in pregnancy. In fact, for a period the Church declared that normal sexual relations between husband and wife could be a “venial sin”—a minor sin.11 Puritan thinkers and theologians, to the contrary, argued that marriage was for companionship (sexual) and friendship, plus procreation. Puritans cited the fact that in Genesis the first reason for the creation of Eve was companionship for Adam, only after which came the command to procreate (Gen. 2).12 Puritans writers also helped create a revolution in the Western ideal of romantic love. In the Middle Ages, the theme of romantic love, or “courtly love” as it was called, was invariably associated with adulterous relationships. This was due partly to the prevalence of arranged marriages (recall the plot of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliette). But English Puritan writers, and other Anglicans, served at the forefront of refocusing the romantic love ideal to “eligible singles” and between husband and wife.13

The greatest Puritan poet of all, John Milton, author of Paradise Lost, rightly understood that traditional Catholic suspicion of sexuality and the allegorical (and de-sexed) interpretation Song of Solomon were wrong.14 In Paradise Lost he presented the sexuality and love between Adam and Eve as representing God’s original intention and a model for Christian marriage.15 Thomas Hooker (1586-1647), New England Puritan pastor and founder of the Colony of Connecticut, wrote about the love between husband and wife in terms no Catholic cleric would dare.

The man whose heart is endeared to the woman he loves…dreams of her in the night, hath her in his eye and apprehension when he awakes, museth on her as he sits at the table…She lies in his bosom. And his heart trusts in her, which forceth all to confess that the stream of his affection, like a mighty current, runs with full tide and strength.16 All this points to the fact that Puritans celebrated love and marital sex in a way that was, affirming, Hebraic and biblical. They even encouraged remarriage after the loss of a spouse. They did, however, draw biblical bounds around sexuality, and, for instance, abhorred any type of public display of sexuality. For this belief in modesty modern writers continue to berate them as prudes and anti-sex.

Puritanism and the Biblical Work Ethic

John Calvin made major contributions to the recovery of a biblical work ethic for the Christian layperson—the very thing absent in the Medieval tradition of spirituality. The model community he established in Geneva was controversial, but it was a success in an area Calvin did not imagine. Its biblically centered theology of work began to disperse the anti-commerce prejudices of traditional theology and established the pattern for the coming prosperous Europe. Christians could pursue the devout life and labor in any lawful craft without guilt that they had missed the “way of perfection” of celibate, monastic life.

Just as with the theology of sexuality, what the Reformers began, the Puritans elaborated.17 An early example is the pioneer work of the merchant John Browne, who specialized in trade with Spain. In 1591 he published a textbook for aspiring merchants. It included practical advice on dealing with foreign merchants, rates of exchange and the like, all interspersed with a biblical perspective:


The Godly and diligent man shall have prosperitie in all his wayes: but he that followeth pleasure and voluptuousnesse, shall have much sorrow before he die… If thou wilt prosper well pray: if thou wilt have blessings, restore what thou hast evil gotten: if thou wilt have joy of thy labors, be single in thy tongue and eye, use no lying, nor deceit …18

What is noticeable of Browne is that he took the promises of the Book of Proverbs literally and seriously—without allegory—as operating in everyday life for earthy goals. Browne had rediscovered the literal meaning of the Hebraic precepts and advised their use as principles of successful business. Significantly, opposition to the new layman’s prayer books and manuals came from the clergy who believed these works were too “worldly” and not sufficiently concerned with theological matters—a touch of the Pharisaic to be sure.19

In fact many Puritan ministers held on to the traditional Medieval view, shared with the Ancient World, that a mercantile life was ungodly. The early Puritan pastors of New England often railed against the merchants in their communities and contrasted them to the “honest” farmer. It took a generation of more biblically attuned Puritan theologians to see this attitude was unbiblical.20Among them was William Perkins (1558-1603), Puritan theologian and Cambridge professor. He became the most influential and widely read of Elizabethan theologians. In his work A Treatise of the Vocation or Calling of Men, written about 1600, there would be no Christian gentlemen, such as Don Quixote, who did not work. Honest labor, including merchant’s work, was essential to righteousness, and idleness was a sin:

Sloth and negligence in the duties of our callings are a disorder against the comely order which God hath set in the societies of mankind, both in church and commonwealth. And, indeed idleness and sloth are the causes of many damnable sins. The idle body and the idle brain is [sic] the shop of the devil.21

The writings of William Perkins were among the most often imported for the personal and pastoral libraries of the colonies. His and other works like it established the work ethic for the American colonies.

The net result of Puritan theology on work was revolutionary. For the first time in Christendom since the Fall of Rome, a merchant was given a “pass” as an honorable profession. Further, they were given specific guidance as to honorable behavior in commerce that overrode the Medieval suspicion of profit.22 This had the revolutionary results in bringing about the expansion of the economies of England, New England and the Netherlands (where Puritan influence was strong) and later the rest of Northern Europe.23

Great theologians, bad politicians

The English Civil War (1642-1645) pitted King Charles I against the parliamentary forces. The parliamentary army was composed mainly of Puritans and other devout Protestants. Under the brilliant military leadership of Oliver Cromwell, who was strongly Puritan, the parliamentary army won, and ultimately captured and beheaded Charles.

Oliver Cromwell wished to rule in conjunction with parliament, but lost patience with its political bickering and became “Lord Proctor”—king without the title. Cromwell divided Great Britain into military districts. His army helped enforce the laws, including many restraints on public conduct, such as violations of the Sabbath. When Cromwell died the Protectorate was overthrown, and in 1660 the monarchy was reestablished. Most Englishmen breathed a sigh of relief and partied. The restored monarchy of Charles II was known for its corruption and loose morals, but for many that was more acceptable for daily life than the Puritan government, and that judgment has been normative to most historians since.

The Devil’s victory in Salem, Myth as reality

For the average American, Puritanism is synonymous with the Salem witchcraft trials. And the most popular account of the Salem witch trials is the 1952 play by Arthur Miller, The Crucible. It is still assigned reading in many high school and college English courses. It was also made into a movie that was seen by millions. However, The Crucible is a distorted and historically inaccurate account of the trials. In it Miller presents the liberal, materialist perspective—that nothing supernatural took place in Salem. For Miller, the young girls who accused others of witchcraft faked their curse-induced torments for various reasons, as in increased attention or sexual longings. Miller took the liberty to make one of the original thirteen-year-old accusers into a seventeen year old in order to play out more credibly his hypothesis of sexual longings. Miller’s presentation represents the view of most text-book histories (and sadly many Christians).24

A few things must be noted to put the trials in proper perspective. All Christians of the 17th Century believed that witchcraft was real and deserving of capital punishment. The procedures used in English courts and the Puritans were much superior to many European nations, where often mob rule disposed of the accused before any sort of trial.25 The horror movie motif of a mob attacking a vampire and driving a stake through his heart represents an echo of this. The European mob vs. witch scenario parallels the current situation in much of Africa, where persons accused of witchcraft are often lynched by angry mobs.26

In the 1950s, when Miller researched and wrote his play, only a few scholars took witchcraft seriously, or had studied it extensively. But since the 1960’s, when Wicca and other witches “came out,” and the whole occult scene blossomed, there has developed a much better understanding of witchcraft and its history.27

It is now clear that witchcraft and witch covens were common in Europe from the earliest days of Christianity. The covens were derived from the “left over” Paganism from the incomplete and haphazard way in which various European peoples were evangelized. The most extreme example of this being the Gypsy peoples, the Romani, who were never evangelized at all, and to this day regularly practice witchcraft and occultism. The early monk missionaries of Northern Europe often focused on converting local kings and tribal leaders, who then forced all their subjects to be baptized. This seemed like a good policy, and it certainly produced great numbers of baptized “Christians.” But it left resentful Pagan followers in place, baptized but unconverted, to go underground and continue their rites and religion.28

Unfortunately, the Catholic Church allowed this situation to go on uncorrected for centuries. As a result, Medieval Catholics were often quite open to all sorts of divination, occult, and superstitious practices that blended with their more orthodox Sunday practices. Most churchmen looked upon witchcraft as delusion and something that could be lived with—a curious resonance with modern secular views. This parallels much Catholic practice in Latin America, where churchmen often allow indigenous occult rituals and worship to go on without much opposition—as long as the people baptize their children and sometimes show up for Sunday services.

In Europe, the Church’s tolerance of witchcraft began to change under the medieval papacy of John XXII (1316-1334). He had a true discernment that witchcraft was serious, and believed that its rites were “demonic sacraments” capable of real spiritual effectiveness and harm. In 1320 set up a commission to make witchcraft a “heresy” that could be dealt with by the Inquisition.29 This was a theological blunder, as witches are not heretics properly speaking, but non-Christians. In any case, Catholic logic, that anyone baptized was a Christian, placed witches and sorcerers in the “Church,” and thus under the Church’s jurisdiction. The local inquisitors then attacked the problem with all of their rational, legal and investigative tools that they had used against heretics (including, of course, interrogation by torture). But nothing in the theology or practice of the Church could be a substitute for the gift of discernment of spirits that had been largely lost to the Church since the 4th Century.30

By 1484 the famous textbook guide on witch hunting, the Malleus Maleficiarum, had been compiled and published. Thus began the official witch-hunting period of late medieval Europe. No one noticed that the New Testament pattern of countering witchcraft and sorcery with the power of the Spirit by temporary immobilization, as modeled by Paul (Acts 13:6-12). More correctly, no one imagined that such a thing was possible in the Church Age. Many innocent persons died as a result of this spiritual incapacity (and real witches too). In recent decades a mythology has arisen via the radical feminists, who often have no concern for the truth, that up to nine million witches were burned from the Middle Ages to modern times.31 This is a ridiculous and fantastic number, the real number being in the thousands—not counting mob vigilantism.

Understanding the Salem Witchcraft Trials

To return to the to the Salem witch trials, we can now appreciate the tremendous work done by the recently deceased scholar, Chadwick Hansen, professor emeritus of English at the University of Illinois, in his work Witchcraft in Salem.32 Building on the new scholarship that took witchcraft seriously, he meticulously researched the Salem trials from the manuscript evidence of the trials, and studied newer archeological findings. Yes, archeological investigations had found witchcraft paraphernalia in Salem such as voodoo like dolls stuffed with goat’s hair. His careful analysis of all the evidence showed that there was indeed true witchcraft in Salem, and that some of the executed were indeed guilty.

Hansen’s landmark work comes short only in not affirming that supernatural events really did happen at Salem. Rather he believed that witchcraft worked because it victims had “faith” in the power of witchcraft and responded psychosomatically to the claims and curses of local witches. This is a step forward from the traditional 19th and 20th Century views that it was all fake, and that Cotton Mather, the judge, was a cruel fanatic, and the judicial system ridiculous—the view of Miller’s The Crucible.

Perhaps Hansen was reluctant to call the witches at Salem demonically empowered33 out of prudence. Doing so would have discredited his fine work within academic circles and much of the public. As it is, his work has revolutionized the understanding of the Salem trials, and has influenced subsequent scholarship.34

A major factor that made the Salem trials so awful was the breakdown of proper rules of evidence. Both Catholic and Protestant witch investigators of the period understood that “spectral evidence” was inadmissible evidence. Specifically, at Salem the girl victims claimed that their attacks began and were continued by ghost-like apparitions of real persons in the locality. Churchmen had long known that Satan can disguise himself as an “Angel of Light” (2 Cor. 11:14) and of any person. Thus, that a ghost looking just like “Mrs. A” who attacks the victim does not prove that Mrs. A is really behind the attack. It might be just an attempt by the demonic to create confusion and accuse an innocent person.

Cotton Mather, the leading cleric of the area wrote to Judge John Richards, one of the judges of the trials that spectral evidence was deceitful and treacherous, and admissible evidence must be from other sources, as in the physical evidence of witch paraphernalia or especially confessions.


And yet I most humbly beg you that in the management of the affair in your worthy hands, you do not lay more stress upon pure specter testimony than it will bear. When you are satisfied or have good plain legal evidence that the Demons which molest our poor neighbors do indeed represent such and such people to the sufferers. Though this be a presumption, yet I suppose you will not reckon it is conviction that people so represented are witches to be immediately exterminated. It is very certain that the Devils have sometimes represented the shapes of persons not only innocent but very virtuous…35

Unfortunately, in the course of the trials, and in the very court room, the young victims were constantly attacked, forced into contortions, and other phenomena—the authorities panicked. The victims’ piteous cries seemed too hideous to disregard, and several persons were convicted by spectral evidence alone.36

Is there a Biblical response to witchcraft?

Even if all of the wisdom of Catholic and Protestant anti-witch procedures had been followed, the Salem trials would have all fallen short of New Testament standards. Specifically, there was no congregation in Massachusetts, or anywhere else in Christendom for that matter, that could function as any of Paul’s Spirit-empowered congregations as described in 1 Cor. 12-14. Such a congregation would include persons gifted in exorcism and healing, and with the gift of discernment of spirits. That latter gift, exercised by tested and reliable persons, would have at the very least avoided the errors of false spectral evidence. Other members of the congregation would have used tongues to wage spiritual warfare, etc. This was impossible at the time as the Protestant doctrine of cessationism, central to its theology, had declared the gifts of the Spirit as non-existent in the post-Apostolic church, and the practice of the gifts of the Spirit as heretical or vain “enthusiasm.”37 It would take the rise of Pentecostalism at the dawn of the 20th Century before cessationism was seriously challenged in the Protestant world. Only at that time would congregations began forming in which all of the gifts of the Spirit were present on a regular basis. Even today, a century after the birthing of Pentecostalism, such congregations are rare. That is, the majority of Pentecostal and charismatic churches in the “First World” often have substantial healing and deliverance ministries, but do not systematically teach or cultivate discernment of spirits.38

In any case, the limitations of contemporary theology are not the main issue of this article. Rather I wanted to clarify why the so called Puritan “failure” or “scandal” at Salem was not what many Christian imagine. Certainly it should not hamper their appropriation of the great and valuable works of Puritan theologians and writers.

Recommended reading:

For a good introduction to the Puritans, read J. I Packer, Quest for Godliness: The Puritan Vision of the Christian Life (Wheaton: Crossway, 1990), and Leland Ryken’s Worldly Saints: The Puritans as They Really Were (Grand Rapids; Zondervan; 1986). See also the following issues of Church History: Issue 41: “The American Puritans,” Issue 77: “Jonathan Edwards: Puritan pastor and theologian,” and Issue 89: “Richard Baxter and the English Puritans.”

Notes

1 Ironically, the modern appreciation of Jonathan Edwards and the whole Puritan legacy was triggered by the masterful work of the Harvard historian (and unbeliever) Perry Miller. He began writing on the Puritans during the first decades of the 20th Century with great insight and evenhandedness. See especially his masterful work: Jonathan Edwards (New York, William Sloam Associates, 1949).

2 Hellenization refers to the melding of Greek philosophy and attitudes into the Gospel. This produced an over emphasis on doctrinal/philosophical definitions, and over emphasis on celibacy as a primary virtue. Hellenized Christian theology inflated the meaning of heresy to include any philosophical deviation from the norm, as for instance claiming that Coptic Christians were heretics because they affirmed a differing philosophical understanding of how Jesus was both man and God. For a scholarly anthology of Hellenization in Christianity see: Wendy E. Helleman, (ed.).Hellenization Revisited: Shaping a Christian Response Within the Greco-Roman World (Lanham: University Press of America, 1994). The seminal work contrasting Hebrew and Greek (Hellenized) ways of thought is: Thorleif Boman’s Hebrew Thought Compared With Greek, Translated by Jules Moreau, (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1961).

3 Leland Ryken, Worldly Saints: The Puritans As They Really Were (Zondervan, 1990). Preview:books.google.com/books?id=M0_ktxTHhdkC

4 J.I Packer. A Quest for Godliness, chapter six, “The Puritans as Interpreters of Scripture.”

5 For this view, and a wide variety of pro-Jewish, prot-Zionest views of Puritan theologians and writers see: Richard W. Cogley, “The Fall of the Ottoman Empire and the Restoration of Israel in the “Judo-Centric” Strand of Puritan Millenarianism,” Church History, 72:2 (June 2003) 304-332. It may well be that the Jewish state will have a major role in overthrowing Islam, which would make the Puritan writers acutely prophetic. Stay tuned.

6 On Cromwell’s view of the Jews see: George Drake, “The Ideology of Oliver Cromwell,” Church History, 35:3 (Summer, 1966), 259-272.

7 On this topic see: Keith l Sprunger, “English and Dutch Sabbataranism and the Development of Puritan Social Theology (1600-1660), Church History, 51:1 (March 1982), 24-38. For a contemporary view of why Sabbath rest is a “good” that should not be skipped see: Judith Shulovitz,The Sabbath World: Glimpses of a Different Order of Time (New York: Random House: 2010).

8 Most readers will remember the movie “Chariots of Fire,” which documents how the Olympic contender, and later missionary, Eric Liddell, would not run his event on a Sunday.

9 See Amy Julia Becker, “Secular People Need Sabbath, too.” Her Meneutics, Nov. 18, 2010. Becker cites secular articles and books that laud different forms of Sabbath rest.

10 On this issue see Leland Ryken’s Worldly Saints: chapter 3, “Marriage and Sex,” and Daniel M. Doriani, “The Puritan, Sex, and Pleasure,” Westminster Theological Journal, 53:1 (Spring 1991), 125-43. See also, Edmond S. Morgan, The Puritan Family: Religious and Domestic Relations in Seventeenth-Century New England, rev. ed . (New York: Harper & Row, 1966), chapter 2 “Husband and Wife.”

11For example, the great Catholic cannon law codification done by Gratian (12th C.) cites instances when normal sex between married person may be venially sinful, see “On marriage” at:http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/gratian1. How times change! Thankfully, in the last decades the Catholic Church has developed a splendidly biblical theology of sexuality which in many ways is more insightful and balanced than anything in the Protestant and Evangelical camp. On this surprising turn see the article the recent issue of Christianity Today, the lead American Evangelical magazine: Matthew Lee Anderson’s “God has a Wonderful Plan for Your Body,” (posted, August 12, 2011).
12 Ryken, Worldly Saints, 47.

13 See: C. S Lewis, The Allegory of Love: A Study in Medieval Tradition (Oxford: the Clarendon Press, 1936), and Ryken, Worldly Saints. 50-51

14 John Milton, Tetrachardon 2:597

15 John Milton, Paradise Lost, Bk 4, lines 741ff.

16 Cited in Morgan, Puritan Family, 61-62.

17 This section is mostly derived from the excellent study by Louis B. Wright, “The Whole Duty of the Citizen,” in: Middle-Class Culture in Elizabethan England (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1935.). See Also Perry Mill, “The Protestant Ethic,” in: Michael McGiffert, Puritanism and the American Experience, (Reading: Addison-Wesley Publishing Co., 1996).

18 Wright, “Whole Duty,” 161-162.

19 Ibid., 247.

20 On how Puritan theology morphed from Medieval anti-merchant to pro-merchant see: Mark Valeri, Heavenly Merchandise: How Religion Shaped Commerce in Puritan America (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010).

21 William Perkins, A Treatise of the Vocations or Callings of Man, in: The Works of William Perkins, ed., Ian Breward, (Applefond: The Sutton Courtney Press, 1970), 450.

22Deirdre N. Mccloskey, Bourgeois Dignity: Why Economists Can’t Explain the Modern World(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010).

23 The relationship between Puritanism (and Calvinism) and the economic blossoming of Northern Europe and the United States was first recognized by the German sociologist Max Weber in his seminal work, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism.

24 See the discussion of Miller’s distorted analysis fully described in: David C. Downing’s excellent articles, “The Mystery of Spirit Possession” parts 1 and 2, Books and Culture, Jan. 1, 1997.

25 Jeffrey Burton Russell, “Witch Craze: Terror and Fantasy in Baroque Germany,” Church History, 76:2 (June, 2007) 411-413.

26 Peter Jenkins, “Notes From the Global Church,” Christian Century, 125 (Dec. 2, 2008), 45.

27 See the multiple works by Jeffrey Burtan Russell, especially his Witchcraft in the Middle Ages(Ithica: Cornell University Press, 1972).

28 Russell, Witchcraft.

29 Isabel Iribarren, “From Black Magic to Heresy: A doctrinal leap in the pontificate of John XXII,”Church History, 75 (March 2007), 32-60.

30 Many of the saints and mystics had the gifts of the Spirit, including discernment of spirits, although that Pentecostal terminology was not used. See the classic work by the Jesuit theologian Augustin Poulain, The Graces of Interior Prayer (St. Louis: B. Herder, 1910), modern editions available. Unfortunately, the gifts of the Spirit were unknown in normal parish life, nor were they understood as a repeatable and normal gifting for Christian life, as in discerning witchcraft.

31 Irving Hexham, “The Invention of Modern Witchcraft,” Books and Culture (Jan/Feb 2004).

32 Chadwick Hansen, Witchcraft in Salem (New York: G. Braziller, 1969). Available in paperback. Hansen passed away in 2011.

33 William Peter Blatty, I’ll Tell Them I Remember You (New York: W.W. Norton, 1973). For an Evangelical perspective on extreme phenomenon of the possessed, see: Merrill F. Unger, What Demons Can Do to Saints (Chicago: Moody Press, 1977), 132-133. On the reality of demonic spiritual phenomenon really happening in the Salem Witchcraft trials see the more recent study: Larry Gragg’s, The Salem Witch Crisis (New York: Prager, 1992), Chapter 1, “Mists of Darkness.”

34On the central role of Hansen’s work see: R.D. Stock, “Salem Witchcraft and Spiritual Evil: A Century of Non-Whig Revisionism,” Christianity and Literature, 42:1 (Autumn 1992), 141-156.

35 Cited in Hansen, Salem, p.132.

36 For a details discussion of this misuse of spectral evidence see: Dean George Lampros, “Season of Anguish: The Formal Proceedings Conducted During the Salem Witchcraft Hysteria of 1692,” Westminster Theological Journal, 56 (1994), 303-327.

37 On the tragedy of cessationism, see my Quenching the Spirit (Lake Mary: Creation House, 1996) and Jon Ruthven, On the Cessation of the Charismata (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1993).

38 In my four decades of living and ministering in charismatic and Pentecostal churches in the United States I have seen only a few congregations that operated in all of the gifts of the Spirit. The literature indicated that churches in the “Third World” where witchcraft is often ever present, do much better on discernment of spirits—they have to!

Notes on False Equivalence

False equivalence contaminates many arguments but several subjects now in the news seem to be spinning out of control as two presumed "sides" wrestle for hegemony. 

• Firearms safety (Second Amendment)
• Free speech (First Amendment)
• Religious objections (First Amendment)

Thanks mostly to broadcast journalism some subjects are treated to false equivalence, the presumption that most discussions have but two "sides" and each should receive "equal time", presumably in the interest of balance. Print journalism -- books, pamphlets, magazines, newspapers -- doesn't have that challenge. It's more democratic. Most take one stand or another, and many encourage comments so anyone to take part. Air time, even for call-in programs, must be rationed, in the interest of "equal time." Consequently the nuttiest arguments find a place among others that are far more compelling.

Thanks to decades of NRA advocacy the firearms subject has become so one-sided in favor of an absolutist Second Amendment position that any variance from the party line is tantamount to treason. Another case of false equivalence involves the First Amendment -- free speech and exercise of religion especially.

Regarding the Second Amendment, the old Negro militias somehow morphed into the worshipful form of the National Guard (and by association a tribe of citizen militias to be prepared in the unlikely event the world's biggest armed forces runs low on either manpower or ammo).

Free speech has been preserved and protected to the degree that even the Pentagon Papers were eventually celebrated. Daniel Ellsberg came to be regarded as a respected whistleblower. To that end Ellsberg himself regards Snowden as a hero, so his censure in high places has become one of the fibers of the free speech conversation. Of course thousands of individuals have access to content tagged "secret" but those legions are sworn to secrecy lest too many *other* thousands find out what has already been seen and read so easily by the first legions. I'm speaking, of course, about Manning.

In all these cases there are nuanced variations being swept aside in favor of the absolutist interpretation of language. As a result we have seen the Confederate battle flag waved as a free speech symbol, and non-religious enterprises claim religious exemptions from the law arguing matters of conscience or religious belief.

These are a couple of examples of false equivalence that have bothered me lately. In both cases there are nuances lost by both "sides" and it is in that grey area that some kind of resolution to the argument must be found.

THE MYTH OF REDEMPTIVE VIOLENCE BY WALTER WINK

These are the opening paragraphs of a monograph by Walter Wink (1999). It was my good fortune to see and hear him talk once when he came to Cobb County, Georgia. His writing and thinking have been a formative influence on my thinking and beliefs. He died in 2012 at the age of 79.

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THE MYTH OF REDEMPTIVE VIOLENCEBY WALTER WINK (pdf) 

Human beings are thus naturally incapable of peaceful coexistence. Order must continually be imposed upon us from on high: men over women, masters over slaves, priests over laity, aristocrats over peasants, rulers over people. Unquestioning obedience is the highest virtue, and order the highest religious value. As Marduk’s representative on earth, the king’s task is to subdue all those enemies who threaten the tranquillity that he has established on behalf of the god. The whole cosmos is a state, and the god rules through the king. Politics arises within the divine sphere itself. Salvation is politics: the masses identify with the god of order against the god of chaos, and offer themselves up for the Holy War that imposes order and rule on the peoples round about. 

In short, the Myth of Redemptive Violence is the story of the victory of order over chaos by means of violence. It is the ideology of conquest, the original religion of the status quo. The gods favour those who conquer. Conversely, whoever conquers must have the favour of the gods. The common people exist to perpetuate the advantage that the gods have conferred upon the king, the aristocracy, and the priesthood. Religion exists to legitimate power and privilege. Life is combat. Any form of order is preferable to chaos, according to this myth. Ours is neither a perfect nor perfectible world; it is theatre of perpetual conflict in which the prize goes to the strong. Peace through war, security through strength: these are the core convictions that arise from this ancient historical religion, and they form the solid bedrock on which the Domination System is founded in every society.