Truth in Other Religions: Reflections on Stratford Caldecott, C. S. Lewis, and a Conversation with a British Repairman

David Russell Mosley

Ordinary Time
7 October 2015
The Edge of Elfland
Hudson, New Hampshire

Dear Friends and Family,

Today I was reading Not as the World Gives, the final book of the late Stratford Caldecott. Stratford has been a significant influence on my thought and theology in the last few years and I still mourn the fact that I never met him on this side of the veil. His last book is a treatment of justice or Catholic Social Teaching as broadly construed. In the chapter I was reading today, “Evangelization of Culture,” Caldecott is going through the changes necessary to present culture to bring more in line with a Christian understanding of culture and society. At the end of the chapter, Caldecott relates the importance of the family and of other religions, under the umbrella of family toward this end of the evangelization of the culture.

Caldecott writes, “The basis of the family is self-giving love; it is relationality. Members of a family are constitutively related to each other to such a degree that we commonly say “blood is thicker than water” and accept the necessity of living together despite the most enormous divergences of attitude, personality, and belief.” His point is that even as broken and degraded as the family is today, we still understand it as a place of acceptance and toleration, if not always a place where one’s beliefs or actions are condoned. He suggests that the family might suggest a way forward for ecumenism, not just inter-Christian ecumenism, but interfaith. After all, it is in the family that we learn to encounter the other with respect and dialogue. He concludes:

It we were to build our relations with other religious traditions and communities on the analogy of the family, and work for collaboration and friendship primarily through civil society, rather than through political negotiation (which reduces even theology to politics), we would also create the optimum conditions for truth to reveal itself to all, since the truth is ultimately a “person” rather than an idea, and comes to us through persons, in the radiance and fragrance of those who share our life, those we can love (155).

What Caldecott reminds us of both here and earlier in the chapter is that it is not as simple to say that Christianity is the only true religion and all others are totally false. He writes:

It is not easy, as I have argued elsewhere, simply to assert the truth of Christianity and the utter falsity of every other tradition, since each tradition is a tapestry rich in elements of goodness, beauty, and truth. I believe that wherever Christianity flatly contradicts another faith, it is Christianity that will turn out to be true––or truer––but I also believe that such moments of flat contradiction are fewer and harder to find than at first appearances, once the complexity of religious language and the difference of cultural context are taken fully into account (153).

What Caldecott says here reminds me of two separate but related things. The first is C. S. Lewis. In order to convert to Christianity, Lewis had to be brought to the understanding that the myths he loved but believed to be nothing better than lies breathed through silver were not lies but truth. They were not the whole truth, but there was truth in them, truth is what they sought to communicate. Christianity then is the True myth, the myth, and the truth, from which all other myths derive whatever truthfulness they have. This would lead Lewis to suggest that it is the Christians who get to truly retain the truth of these myths, as well as of other religions, since it is only through Christianity that their truth can be fully understood.

The second thing Caldecott, and now Lewis, remind me of is a conversation I had with a repairman who had come to fix our oven when we lived in England. As most conversations do, this one began somewhere and found its way to the “What do you do?” question. I had no need to ask him, since it was apparent by his presence in my house. But he duly asked the necessary question and I responded that I was a PhD student studying theology at the University. This led us to his marriage and the baptism of his child. He and his wife had had several conversations with the vicar of their parish church and he confided in her that he was uncertain about what he believed. He had, as the story often goes, been to church as a boy but had stopped going and now wasn’t sure of religion, though he had a pretty significant feeling that there was a God. The vicar suggested to him that all the world religions make up a mountain range which we can only see the back of. This led him to the understanding that all the world religions are essentially the same and so we must just pick the one that best suits us. Not even Caldecott would go this far. For the Christian Christ is at the center of all things. If no other point divides us from other religions then at least this one does (and I think others do as well).

I suggested to him, therefore, that a better way to understand Christianity in the light of other religions is this. Of course there is truth in other religions. There must be. All humans, according to the Bible, are made in the image and likeness of God. This means that to some extent we must participate in God, who is the source of all being. If we didn’t we wouldn’t exist. Even in our fallen state this is not totally lost to us. If it were, we would cease to exist. This means that as humans seek to understand their desire to worship, and as we create systems of worship, they will to greater and lesser adhere to truth, beauty, and goodness. I did not get into Aquinas’s controvertiblity of being, but I touched its edges as I tried to describe to him that other religions will always have aspects of the truth. However, I tried to emphasize that for there to be aspects of the truth in other religions, there must be a standard by which this is judged. This standard, as Caldecott says, is a person, Christ, the Son of God, second person of the Trinity, who is himself the Way, the Truth, and the Life.

I will likely never know what the outcome of that conversation will be. All I can do is pray I did something good and commit this man to God. But the greater point to be drawn here, as Caldecott does, is this nature of truth sharing between Christianity and other religions means that we have allies in the fight against secularism. Of course we want also to convert our Muslim brethren as we do our atheist, but we must not forget that the we can fight beside the Muslim and not just against him (as we must do on certain points of theological and salvific importance). We can pray for our cooperators conversion as we fight together to evangelize the culture. And we can do this because Christ, who is Truth, is at work in what is true in Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism etc.

Sincerely,
David

Vicars in Austen: Ridiculous or Virtuous Men?

David Russell Mosley

Ordinary Time
6 October 2015
The Edge of Elfland
Hudson, New Hampshire

Dear Friends and Family,

I’ve just finished, last night, the second of Jane Austen’s six novels in my annual re-read of them (if you can’t tell, I re-read a lot of books each year). This year I’ve decided to go with publication order so I began with Sense and Sensibility, just finished Pride and Prejudice, and have Mansfield Park, Emma, Northanger Abbey, and Persuasion left. This is not, for those who don’t know, exactly the order in which the books were written. In fact, along with some unfinished works, Northanger Abbey was the third book Austen wrote, but it was not published until after her death. But there is something I’ve noticed as I’ve begun this annual re-read that I thought I would share with you all at the beginning and revisit when once I’m done.

With the exception of Persuasion, which I’ll get to in a moment, the books in publication order show clergyman in the Church of England in good and bad light. This is what I mean. In Sense and Sensibility we have Edward Ferrars, firstborn son in the Ferrars family, though second born overall, who desires to enter the priesthood in the Church of England. Edward is a good man, though with some faults that ostensibly arise from his good character traits being taken advantage of by a less than good woman. Then, in Pride and Prejudice, we get the simultaneously self-important and self-effacing Mr Collins, a ridiculous clergyman with a rich patroness. In Mansfield Park we are given Edmund Bertram, a second born son desirous of entering the church, like his similarly named counterpart in S&S, but not being hindered by his family. Edmund, not unlike Edward, is a good decent man who is parish minded and desires others to lead a good, Christian life and is caught by the attentions of woman who is not so interested in this kind of life (far less so than Lucy Steele). In Emma, however, we meet Mr Elton whose primary desire as a bachelor vicar is to net himself a wealthy wife. Northanger Abbey gives us Henry Tilney, only the second, thus far, actively practicing priest when we meet him (Mr Collins being the other). He like the others is a good and moral man. Persuasion is where the deviation lies for the clergyman there plays neither quite so big a role as the others, never being even a potential love interest for the heroine, but yet is a good vicar, nor is he a ridiculous one like the others before him.

The back and forth nature of Austen’s depictions of clergy is less important, since it works even less well when examined in the order in which she wrote the books, than the fact that Austen, whose own father was a clergyman, seems to be able to see both the good and, if not the bad, then at least the absurd in the Church. I’m sure much more could be made of this and am equally sure others have noticed this before me. Still, I am now looking forward to continuing my read of Austen’s novels to see how she conceives of the Church, both in its universal sense and in its local sense.

Until then I remain,

Sincerely yours,
David

Anti-Artisanal: Budweiser, Craft Beer, Hipsters, and Distributism

David Russell Mosley

Ordinary Time
5 October 2015
The Edge of Elfland
Hudson, New Hampshire

Dear Friends and Family,

Today as I was on Facebook, I came across a rather funny video lampooning “hipsters” and the “artisanal” movement. You can find it here. In the video we see two men, an owner and an apprentice, who run an artisanal firewood shop with pieces of firewood costing upwards of $1200. The satire was really quite spot-on, but I couldn’t help but wonder what more was underlying it. Of course artisanal firewood is ridiculous, especially the way the video portrayed it. It reminded me of the hilarious video from the television series “Portlandia”, Dream of the 1890s. You can watch it below.

The video looks at “hipster culture” and sees it for part of what it is, namely a desire to go back to a simpler way of living, without necessarily leaving behind all the true advantages of our present time. This video too is somewhat satirical, as if having funny facial hair were as essential to this way of life as making things from scratch. Which of course it isn’t, though it is an added bonus for the follicularly robust such as myself. But both videos are now, for me, place in the context of this one from Budweiser.

Viewed in this light, the satirical video on artisanal firewood takes on new meaning for me. Perhaps rather than a good-natured ribbing given to some of the oddities of the artisanal and hipster movements, it’s a satire against being artisans of any sort. Perhaps some of this comes from the relationship between the artisanal movements of recent decades and the hipster movement which has been alive since at least the 1950s with both the greasers and beatniks. Perhaps something about the present ironic nature of many “hipsters” has led to a general degradation of any attempts to create things on one’s own or on a micro-level.

The Budweiser video wastes no time in suggesting that craft-beer is merely for the pretentious and not for the person who simply likes a good glass of beer. They act as though the brewers of craft-beer are simply looking to put together odd flavors and act as though they taste good when, in reality, they do not. And this is true of some craft-beer, believe me, I’ve tried (Banana Bread Beer is disgusting). But does this in turn mean that mass-produced beer where the primary fermenters are corn rather than the traditional barley or wheat is by nature better? Or, does Budweiser begin to realize that people are actually beginning to prefer good, solid craft-beer, especially when they can find it locally made, to their mass-produced alcohol that only tastes good ice cold, because it tastes of nothing?

So the big corporation tries to pretend it is the friend of the working-class (because its cheap) and not the affluent millennial hipsters. Even the artisanal firewood video makes this point when we see the $1200 price tag on a single piece of firewood and a well-dressed white woman comes in to buy it. According to these videos, the artisan is a charlatan, by his beard and leather apron he makes himself appear as a working class man, but he isn’t since he caters to the bourgeois. But are really to believe that the big corporation is friend to the proletariat? Now it’s true that many artisanal items, including the organic, are often beyond the price range of many such as myself. For the artisanal this is usually because of the labor required to make the item or items that would normally be machine made. For organic food it often also has to do with paying for the title organic. Now David Cooney over at Practical Distributism reminds us that we need to start re-thinking price when it comes to our purchases (often the long-term price of cheaper items is higher than the short-term price of those of better quality). I’ll let you read his essay for his arguments.

My emphasis in this letter is rather on the need for craft, for micro-productions. Not only are these often more economic in the long run, since they will last longer, but they are usually more sustainable. A leather company that hand makes it’s goods will not go through nearly so many cows as an industrialized one. A micro-brewery will not require industrialized farming to grow the necessary ingredients to make delicious beer which in turn means that the land used to grow those ingredients can be better cared for, will require less water, etc. Now it’s true that I currently don’t buy as much as I’d like from small producers in my area, nor do I create much. These are the plagues of the underemployed, that price must factor in when you don’t make enough to support your family without extended family assistance. Still, we do what we can. However, if more small, artisanal-style, businesses could and did open, it would eventually be easier to buy from them, perhaps not easier than buying from the big box stores, but easier than it is currently. This will never happen, however, unless at least three conditions are met. First, the big corporations will either have to stop abusing the craft industry or else we will have to disabuse people of the false conceptions big corporations are spreading. Second, we as consumers have to change the way we think about buying. We have to stop thinking only in terms of short-term costs and start thinking in terms of long-term costs. Third, we may have to petition our government for certain deregulations that make it more difficult for small businesses than for large ones. Big business can afford certain costs related to many regulations that small or individually owned businesses cannot. These regulations should not favor the big over the small.

So I return to these videos. Two clearly meant as satire and, I hope, satire that is friendly, that is self-effacing because the people creating the satire are the people who believe in these ideas, if not their oddities. The other is much more malicious. It seeks to make us think big business is our friend and the craftsmen are pretentious snobs and therefore our enemies. Let us not buy into that lie.

A final note, if we want to see the changes in society put forward by distributism (and admittedly many of my correspondents do not), we need to stop eschewing the millennials and hipsters and bring them into our folds. Hopefully we can rid them of the chaff of irony and help them keep that kernel of craft.

Sincerely,
David