South Dakota has had unseasonably warm weather recently. That, combined with the fact that we have received far less snow than we had a year ago, meant that much of the snow had melted. In fact, I was observing the absence of snow yesterday and thinking how nice it was to see grass in February—even if it was not very attractive grass, given that it is a weird brownish-gray color.
This morning, however, I awoke to find that it was snowing again. It was not a shock, as the meteorologists had accurately predicted it. But within a few hours it had snowed enough that all of that grass I could see yesterday was no longer visible. It had been covered by the snow and the world around me was all white again.
That transformation, on Valentine’s Day, reminded me of the transformation that is made possible by the love of God. I wrote a post about that twelve years ago (you can find it here) so I will not go into detail about God’s Valentine. But God’s love for humanity caused Him to send His Son, Jesus, to die on the cross in payment for our sins, and the forgiveness of sin is often symbolized as a stain being made white. Isaiah 1:18 says, “Come now, let us reason together, says the Lord: though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red like crimson, they shall become like wool.”
That verse was, I imagine, the inspiration for James Nicholson’s hymn, “Whiter Than Snow,” and it was the lyrics to that hymn that went through my mind this morning, specifically the first verse and the refrain:
Lord Jesus, I long to be perfectly whole; I want Thee forever to live in my soul, Break down every idol, cast out every foe; Now wash me and I shall be whiter than snow.
Whiter than snow, yes, whiter than snow, Now wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.
Thank you, Father, for the assurance of knowing that “I shall be whiter than snow.”
Photo credit: “Footprints in the Snow.” Wikimedia Commons.
I recently received a mailing from Hillsdale College that had, visible through the address window, this bold-face question: “Will you help put the Constitution back in South Dakota schools?” As an educator in South Dakota–and a history teacher, specifically–I was curious what this was about. I have known of Hillsdale College for years and I enjoy reading their publication Imprimis. But I knew that the Constitution was not, in fact, missing from South Dakota schools.
The letter begins with the statement, “K-12 education in America is at a crisis point.” Not at all alarmist, right? Of course it is at a critical point, and there are very real problems, but then, when have there not been? The next paragraph is where the buzzwords come out, referencing “activists,” “entrenched education bureaucrats,” “destructive ideas” “critical race theory” and “other Marxist ideologies.” That was followed up with the bold, underlined sentence, “And they’re doing so in K-12 classrooms in your state.”
The letter is a plea to give money so that Hillsdale can continue to distribute pocket-sized copies of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, one of which they kindly enclosed with the appeal. The letter references a letter from “a little girl named Bailey” and even includes a copy. While neither the appeal letter nor Bailey’s letter says so, the response card says, “Schoolchildren like Bailey in South Dakota are counting on you!” Maybe the intent is to refer to schoolchildren in South Dakota who are like Bailey, but it sure seems to imply that Bailey is from South Dakota–just like the visible part of the letter I received suggests that the Constitution is missing from South Dakota classrooms.
So here’s my message to Hillsdale College–just tell the truth.
I can respect Hillsdale caring about the country. I can respect an effort to provide copies of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution to schoolchildren. I can respect that there are real concerns about public education in the United States and about critical race theory. What I cannot respect is lying to try to get my support.
Sadly, lying seems to have become an accepted part of American life. Politicians do it regularly. Tucker Carlson does in just about every show. So do other so-called journalists. And this is on both sides of the political spectrum. It seems that an “end justifies the means” approach has taken over and few people have an issue with it. But it’s not just sad, it’s scary. And it will, if left unchecked, lead to the end of America as we know it.
For the record, the Constitution is not missing in South Dakota classrooms. The Social Studies standards that were adopted in 2015 say “Students will explain the historical impact of primary founding documents including, but not limited to, the Declaration of Independence, the U.S. Constitution, the U.S. Bill of Rights and subsequent amendments.” And that’s not for fourth grade, by the way–that’s the standard for kindergarten. The new standards, adopted in 2023, say, “The student identifies and explains the meaning of different symbols of America. Symbols may include, but are not limited to” followed by a list of thirty-three documents, dates, places, songs and mottos, including the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution as well as the national motto, “In God We Trust.”
I could provide ample examples from the 2015 standards, but let me stick with the 2023 updates. For first graders, “The student can recite the Preamble to the United States Constitution from memory.” A second grade student “demonstrates knowledge of the United States Constitution,” with seven subpoints laying out what that looks like. A second-grader also “demonstrates knowledge of the early United States under the Constitution” (six sub-points for that one) and knows the “initial and later views on the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution” of Frederick Douglass. Fourth graders have nine-sub points to demonstrate an understanding of the Constitution, seventh-graders have eight sub-points to do so (plus another seven sub-points about James Madison, including his role in the Constitutional Convention and in writing The Federalist Papers) and have another eleven sub-points for demonstrating “understanding of the structure and function of the United States Constitution.” Eighth grade students can name and explain the “16th, 17th, and 18th amendments to the Constitution” and can compare and contrast “the main ideas and programs of Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society and the principles of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.” This is all before the student reaches high school, where both United States History and American Government are required for graduation.
So please, Hillsdale, don’t act like the Constitution is missing from South Dakota classrooms. Make sure you know what you’re talking about–and tell the truth!
South Dakota has recently implemented a new way of counting students for the purposes of classification of schools in the South Dakota High School Activities Association—the governing body for interscholastic activities among member schools in South Dakota. This means of counting students was approved as a constitutional amendment to the SDHSAA by a 65% favorable vote in 2022. The proposed amendment was actually submitted by the SDHSAA Native American Advisory Council and SDHSAA Staff. Here is the rationale given for the proposed amendment:
We have a number of schools on the line between classifications with large populations of students who qualify for Free and Reduced Lunch. In general, those schools and students have severe discrepancies in access to equipment and school/personal access to outside training opportunities as compared to similar sized schools with low populations of students who qualify for Free and Reduced Lunch.
That seems reasonable and is no doubt true. After all, schools with a large percentage of students who qualify for Free and Reduced lunch necessarily have a large percentage of students from families with low income—maybe even below the poverty line—and it logically follows that those students do not generally live in areas of high property value. What is absurd is the proposed remedy. The amendment, once approved, actually puts this into Article III, Section 2 of the SDHSAA Constitution:
In addition to actual figures collected by the South Dakota Department of Education, a Free and Reduced Lunch Multiplier shall be utilized to adjust enrollment counts dependent upon the reported percentage of students in grades 9-12 at each school who qualify for Free and Reduced Lunch according to the South Dakota Department of Education per Federal guidelines. The free and reduced lunch percentage shall be multiplied by 30%, and the resulting percentage will be used to reduce the enrollment count of the school, with a maximum multiplier reduction of 30%. The resulting enrollment count with multiplier shall be used as the official enrollment number of the school when determining classifications.
Before you go back and read that again, thinking that you surely got something wrong, let me put you at ease. You didn’t. That’s right—you read it correctly. The proposal—which passed with a 65% “yes” vote—says that students who qualify for Free and Reduced Lunch will not be counted as whole students for the purposes of classification.
If you are a student of U.S. History, or at least remember your History classes from school, you will likely remember another time when people were not counted as whole persons. When the Constitution was written and adopted—the United States Constitution, not the SDHSAA constitution—enslaved individuals were counted as three-fifths of a person for the purpose of determining representation in the House of Representatives.
The SDHSAA now creates a multiplier by taking the percentage of students who qualify for Free and Reduced Lunch and multiplying it by 0.30 (or 30%). So, for the purposes of illustration, suppose there was a school with 300 students in grades 9-12. Of those students, let’s suppose that 70% of them qualified for the Free and Reduced Lunch program, That would mean that 70 would be multiplied by 0.30, which would result in a multiplier of 21%. That would then be multiplied by the total enrollment of 300, yielding the number 63. That number would be subtracted from the total enrollment and, in this case, the difference would be 237. Now that school’s enrollment is counted as 237 students rather than 300. Suddenly, sixty-three students at that school do not count at all. It is as if they do not exist.
This is an absurdity. It is ridiculous. Who in their right mind thinks that this should be acceptable? I mean who besides the majority of 65% of the school boards in South Dakota. Oh, and the school boards in North Dakota and Minnesota too, which have similar policies in place and actually use even higher multipliers than South Dakota does.
Please understand that I am not suggesting that the wealth of the area a school is in has no impact on its athletic teams or fine arts productions. I am sure that it does. The quality of their athletic or fine arts facilities, the budget for their programs, the quality of their equipment, the salary or stipend (if any) for the coaches—all of those things, and more, will be impacted by the wealth of the area from which the school draws its students. But classification of schools is not based on the wealth of the school or the school district. Not in South Dakota nor, to my knowledge, anywhere else. It is based purely on the number of students in the school. In South Dakota it is called Average Daily Membership. The National Federation of State High School Associations (NFHS) is, per its website, “the national leader and advocate for high school athletics as well as fine and performing arts programs.” Its website includes a link to a PowerPoint from the South Carolina High School League entitled “Methods of Classification for State Association Tournaments.” What are the methods included? Um, just one. “Schools are ranked by enrollment size grades 9 through 12.” Just for fun, and to look coast to coast, Oregon also uses ADM and Delaware uses “a DOE certified enrollment count for grades 9 through 12.” Maybe it’s different in the South? Nope. In Alabama, “Classification is based on Average Daily Membership (ADM) figures furnished by the State Department of Education.”
I certainly hope that no one is suggesting the children from financially-challenged circumstances cannot be good athletes. There are far too many examples otherwise for anyone to argue that. Those in favor of these adjusted counts based on Free and Reduced Lunch, then, must be arguing that overall financial resources of a school’s enrollment can impact level of play. If someone wants to argue that—and I think they could make a strong case—then let them. And if classification are going to be determined that way, then let them. But do it honestly, not by pretending that certain students do not exist.
I read fifty-three books in 2023. And here, without further ado, is my overview. As usual, I will address them more or less by genre or topic and not in the order in which I read them.
Jon Meacham’s And There Was Light is an excellent biography of Abraham Lincoln. With the abundance of Lincoln biographies already in existence it is understandable to be a bit skeptical of whether or not yet another one could really add anything new to our understanding of Lincoln. Pleasantly, Meacham manages to do that. Allan Gallay’s Walter Ralegh: Architect of Empire is a hefty book but one that I would strongly suggest for anyone interested in in first English attempts at colonizing the New World or in Raleigh himself. And yes, I spelled the title correctly; there were, evidently, numerous spellings of Raleigh’s name, and that is the one Gallay went with.
Larry Loftis’s The Watchmaker’s Daughter is a terrific biography of Corrie ten Boom. Even for those who know her story, I would highly recommend reading this book. And Ron Rapoport wrote a first-rate biography of Ernie Banks with Let’s Play Two. I did not know much about Mr. Cub before reading it other than that he was a great baseball player and always seemed to enjoy the game. Those things are true, and reinforced by the book, but it also gives a look at Banks’ personal life (difficult) and details of his career.
David Maraniss is an excellent writer and his Path Lit by Lightning, a biography of Jim Thorpe, is no exception. This, too, is a hefty book, but it would be enjoyable reading for anyone interested in Thorpe, in professional sports in America (particularly baseball and football), in the Olympics, in the boarding schools attending by so many Native American youth of Thorpe’s generation, or just in that period of history in general.
Barack Obama’s A Promised Land may be the most well-written political autobiography I have ever read. I am sure that Obama had someone helping him with it, but its readability is also a testament to the fact that Obama is a good writer and an effective communicator. I did not anticipate that Obama would change my mind on any political issues on which we disagree, and he did not, but it is worth reading, especially for anyone who enjoys presidential history. So Help Me God, by Mike Pence, is a very readable autobiography that makes clear that Pence is the decent person he seems to be. Given the way Donald Trump turned on him on January 6, 2021, Pence does an incredibly admirable job of treating Trump fairly, and even admiringly, up to that point in the book. But he makes no apologies for his actions on January 6 and reinforces, for anyone who cares, exactly why Donald Trump should not be elected president again. But if Pence doesn’t convince you, read Cassidy Hutchinson’s Enough. On the one hand, the book amazed me in its revelation of just how much power and influence someone so young was able to wield in the Trump White House (Hutchinson is only 27 now). On the other hand, and unfortunately, her first-person accounts of what went on in that White House—particularly after the elections in November 2020 and on January 6, 2021—do not shock. She famously testified before the January 6 Committee, of course, and Trump responded to her testimony—then and since—the way he usually responds to anything and anyone he doesn’t like: like a playground bully. But for the life of me I cannot see that Hutchinson had anything to gain if her story is not true.
A disappointing read was Robert Dallek’s How Did We Get Here? The subtitle is “From Theodore Roosevelt to Donald Trump” and the book purports to show how previous presidential administrations paved the way for the election of Donald Trump. This is an important thing to understand and I was interested in knowing what a respected historian like Dallek would have to say about it. Unfortunately, this reads as chapter-long overviews of the presidents Dallek chose to include—nice, short, historical overviews that are fine in and of themselves—but that completely fail to answer the title’s question. Dallek’s own politics are revealed more often, and more clearly, than they should be in a book like this. Dallek did not include every president from TR to Trump and that might be fine. What is bizarre, though, is the fact that he did not include any president between Reagan and Trump! To think that it would be possible to show how previous presidencies led to the election of Donald Trump without addressing at all the preceding twenty-eight years and the presidencies of George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama is just plain foolish.
In part because of the debates around recent presidential elections—and, because of the increasing tendency of states to want to award all of their electoral votes to the winner of the national popular vote—Tala Ross’s Why We Need the Electoral College is an important book. For those who understand the electoral college—including how it works and why the founders set up our presidential elections the way that they did—it will not share much that is new, but it will serve as a valuable reminder of why we should be very careful when it comes to discussions of eliminating it.
Elizabeth Rogliani’s How Progressivism Destroyed Venezuela: A Cautionary Tale struggles a bit at times but overall it is an insightful and important examination from someone who grew up there of how the progressive politics of Venezuela’s recent “leaders” have destroyed the country.
I was excited to read Mari Eder’s The Girls Who Stepped Out of Line, which tells the stories of fifteen women who “changed the course of WWII” as the subtitle states. I was particularly excited because Eder is herself a retired Army general. Unfortunately, the book was disappointing. Yes, the stories told are interesting, but Eder makes some factual blunders in the book which she should have known and/or her editor should have caught. Also, the end of the book strays into her own political opinion. On the other hand, David Denton’s The Reverend Spy was a delightful look at how a pastor was able to serve America as a spy for America, in America, during WWII. It was loaned to me by a friend or I doubt I ever would have come across it.
T. J. English’s Dangerous Rhythms is a captivating story of jazz and the influence of organized crime in the early years of jazz. I thoroughly enjoyed this book and the appearance of so many jazz greats in its pages. David Kirp’s Improbable Scholars is a celebration of how a city in New Jersey has turned around a failing school system. Unfortunately, like most books of this ilk, it is a wonderful story about committed educators but falls short of anything that other places could implement in their own struggling schools. And, of course, a strong left-leaning political bias peeks through.
David Grann’s The Wager is an incredible story. If it were fiction, readers would, understandably, say, “Okay, he took it too far, that is no longer believable.” Since it is not fiction, the reader is left in awe of what humans are capable of enduring. Grann’s account of the shipwreck of The Wager in 1740 and the ensuing fight for survival and return to England was named Best Book of the Year by multiple publications and it is easy to see why. John Carlin’s Playing the Enemy tells the story of Nelson Mandela’s election as president of South Africa, and the beginning of his term in office, with rugby as the backdrop. The book was the inspiration for the movie Invictus and it offers a masterclass in dealing with people with whom you disagree in pursuit of a worthy goal. It also provides insight into how deeply rooted Apartheid was in South Africa.
Charles Person’s Buses Are A Comin’ is his first-person account of being one of the African-Americans selected to be part of the first Freedom Rides challenging the segregation of buses and bus stations. It is an important book and one that I will surely read excerpts from to my class when teaching about the Civil Rights movement.
Richard Snow’s Disney’s Land tells the story of the imagining, construction and opening of Disney Land. In the course of doing so, it provides a look at Disney as a person, his marriage, his personal interests and hobbies and his unique style of management. That Disney Land was not a flop after the chaos of its first day is a testimony to the desirability of what Disney wanted to accomplish. The book would be particularly interesting to anyone who is a fan of Disney—the man or the company.
Shane Claiborne and Michael Martin wrote Beating Guns both to address the issue of gun violence in America and to propose alternatives, such as literally beating guns into gardening tools. Some of the book comes across as a bit too Pollyanna-ish but it does ask some real questions that deserve real answers. I just do not think it is as easy as they want to make it seem.
Saying It Well, by Charles Swindoll, is essentially a primer on how to communicate effectively. What I personally found most interesting was Swindoll’s overview of how he prepares his sermons. The End of Average, by Todd Rose, is an overview of the problem of doing things based on averages. He presents evidence that while average may have its place, almost never is there anyone who actually is average. For example, the design of airplane cockpits for an average pilot resulted in a wide variety of issues for the actual pilots of those planes. The point of the book is to resist averages and embrace uniqueness.
Victory, by A.C. Green, is a collection of advice and life lessons from Green, a former NBA star. This was a book that my father actually sent to my son, but I decided to read it, too. It would be of most interest to someone who likes basketball, but I appreciated Green’s clear stance on doing what is right even when that is not popular or easy to do. Kidnapped by the Taliban by Dilip Joseph is the author’s account of exactly what the title says, something that occurred while he was doing medical work in Afghanistan. It is an engaging, and at times harrowing, story.
Ken Ham’s Divided Nation is a short book, easy to read, and is Ham’s commentary on the importance of a biblical worldview, especially in this age in which such a worldview is increasingly unpopular. Those familiar with Ham will not find a lot of new information here but it is a pertinent reminder. Roger Erdvig’s Beyond Biblical Integration is a book targeted at teachers and is an effective tutorial on doing more than just integrating biblical concepts and Bible verses into classroom lessons. Inside the Nye Ham Debate lists Ken Ham and Bodie Hodge as the authors, but Hodge is really the author. He interviewed Ham and included some of his comments in the book verbatim. The book purports to be an in-depth look at the well-known debate 2014 debate between Bill Nye, “the Science Guy,” and Ken Ham. The book does include the full transcript of the debate, which can be a valuable resource, but the book itself has some definite weaknesses. For one, while Ham is given the opportunity to provide further explanation of some of his debate answers, and Hodge provides yet more detail, Nye was apparently not given that opportunity. Granted, the book is published by Master Books, which has published most of Ham’s books and is a Christian publisher, so it is understandable that presenting the creationist side is their goal. But the book’s subtitle is “Revealing Truths from the Worldview Clash of the Century.” That should entail a deeper revealing of both sides. After all, there is no harm is exposing more of Nye’s position. If Nye was given the opportunity to expand on his answers and declined, that’s one thing, but I do not recall any mention of that being the case. The book’s other weakness is that Hodge is Ham’s son-in-law and more than once the book seems to stray into hagiography.
I am not sure if excitement would be the reaction of most people upon discovering that John Piper had written a 750-page book entitled Providence but that was my reaction, and the book did not disappoint. Piper provides a thorough examination of God’s providence, or “purposeful sovereignty,” as seen throughout the Bible. Martyn Lloyd-Jones: His Life and Relevance for the 21st Century is written by Lloyd-Jones’s grandson, Christopher Catherwood. It is an excellent read and fulfills the subtitle’s claim.
Robert Lewis’s Raising a Modern Day Knight is not a new book by any means, but as the father of a teenage son, it seemed an appropriate time to read it. While Lewis lays out a specific plan that was adopted by him and two friends for teaching their sons what it means to be a man, including ceremonies and the creation of a family crest, many of the principles he includes are valuable even if the details of the process or not of interest.
Martin Marty is considered one of America’s preeminent religious historians, and his October 31, 1517 is a short but worthwhile overview of the Reformation. William Barker and Samuel Logan are the editors of Sermons That Shaped America. It includes some interesting choices—some of which I question really helped shape America—and leaves out others that might have been better choices, but it is worthwhile reading, both for the content of the sermons and for the introduction that reading them can provide to previously-unknown ministers and theologians.
Is Christianity the White Man’s Religion? by Antipas Harris has parts I may disagree with, but it addresses a number of relevant questions, such as why the Bible seems to endorse slavery and why Jesus is so often depicted as European. If nothing else, it effectively answers the question in the negative. C. Herbert Oliver wrote No Flesh Shall Glory in the 1950s, and it, too, effectively quashes any notion that racism is biblical. What is sad is that Harris needed to write his book more than sixty years later since the same question is still being debated. Skot Welch and Rick Wilson attempt to do the same thing in Plantation Jesus. Again, I don’t agree with them on everything, but I applaud their efforts to set the record straight on the ridiculous notion that the Bible condones slavery or racism.
Constantine Campbell’s Jesus vs Evangelicals showed promise initially. It seemed that it was going to be what I expected it to be—a look at how so many Evangelicals have abandoned, or conveniently set aside, their biblical convictions in the pursuit of political victory. But it strayed from that. Partially that may be due to the fact that Campbell lives in Australia now, but some of what he had to say left me wondering how in the world he had ever been a professor at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. The book purports to be “an insider’s critique” but I would have to disagree. He is not as faithful an adherent to what evangelicalism is—or is supposed to be—as he would have us believe.
Joseph Stowell’s Eternity was written almost thirty years ago and I don’t know that it is still in print. I found a used copy. Stowell is one of my favorite Bible teachers and this book is among the best of his that I have read. It does not give much insight into what heaven will be like; rather, it shows how the reality of heaven should shape the lives of Christians here and now.
Fiction this year included James Patterson’s Triple Cross and Cross Down (with Brendan DuBois), both part of the Alex Cross series, and Shattered and Obsessed (with James Born) in the Michael Bennett series. I have written about both of those series before, so I will add only that this is the first of Patterson’s books co-written with DuBois that I recall reading. I do not know how much Patterson writes and how much his co-authors write, but there seemed to be a distinct difference in how Nana Mama was portrayed—and not for the better. Also, in Cross Down, Cross’s partner, John Sampson is the narrator, something that it takes a bit of getting used to. Thomas Perry’s A String of Beads is the second of Perry’s books that I’ve read, but the first featuring Jane Whitefield, who is apparently the main character in nine Perry novels. Whitefield is Native American and Perry connects that—and Native American culture and religion—to some of her abilities in protecting innocent people whose lives are at risk. That makes for some interesting character details but also sometimes seems a bit unbelievable.I have read all of Mark Pryor’s Hugo Marston novels. Die Around Sundown is the first installment of his new series featuring Inspector Henri Lefort. Fans of Marston will likely enjoy Lefort, as well. Gabriel Allon is back at it in Daniel Silva’s The Collector. It is, of course, quite unrealistic that Allon would be able to do all of the things he does in this book, but Silva continues to create enjoyable stories that intertwine international espionage and the art world. Find Me by Alafair Burke was an pleasurable read. It leaves the reader wondering—and going back and forth—in trying to determine who to believe and who really is the victim. I was disappointed by John Grisham’s The Exchange. It was supposed to be a sequel to The Firm, but it really wasn’t. Other than the fact that Mitch McDeere makes a visit back to Memphis early in the book, and the memories that that brings, the book could have been written about completely different characters and been the same book. Jeffrey Archer’s Traitors Gate continues the ongoing battle between William Warwick and Miles Faulkner. But the plot this time centers around a theft more bold that anything Archer has written about since Honor Among Thieves. I had not read a David Baldacci book in a few years but I did read One Good Deed in 2023. It was an enjoyable read. It was apparently intended as a stand-alone book, not part of a series based on a character, but there are now two more books featuring Aloysius Archer. The book is set in 1949 and tells and interesting story. I think one of the reasons I had abandoned Baldacci books was the increasing inclusion of sex, and this book does have that too, unfortunately.
In the Time of the Butterflies, by Julia Alvarez, will celebrate its thirtieth anniversary in 2024 but I just finally read it in 2023. It is a wonderful work of historical fiction, telling the story of three sisters who worked against the dictatorship of General Rafael Trujillo in the Dominican Republic. A fourth sister, who was not involved, tells the story. If it were possible to remove two or three sentences from the book, I would recommend it for high school students. Sherman Alexie’s The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian is often assigned reading for high school students, and it has a lot of good things going for it. It tells the story of a Native American teenager in Washington state who decides to attend the high school in the local all-white town rather than the school on his reservation. What Alexie describes is a conflict that I have read about from others and have witnessed firsthand with a number of Native American students I have had the opportunity to work with. Unfortunately, the book also includes a lot of adolescent “humor” and references to sexual activity. Arthur Spiegelman’s Maus: A Survivor’s Tale, however, is a novel—a graphic novel—that I would highly recommend. It tells the story of Spiegelman’s father during the Holocaust and it depicts the Jews as mice and the Nazis as rats. I am not big of graphic novels and had never read one in its entirety until this one, but it is both a creative and effective way of presenting this important history.
Of Mice and Men, by John Steinbeck and Erich Maria Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front were the “classics” I read in 2023. The Steinbeck book I had read in high school but wanted to reacquaint myself with it. I am not sure why I had never read Remarque’s book, but it is certainly worth reading. It is intriguing to read the perspective of a German soldier in WWI determined to oppose hatred—especially knowing what happened in Germany not many years later. I understand the book has been made into a Netflix movie, but I haven’t seen it and that is not why I read it.
So, there it is, another quick overview of another year of books. I hope it prompts you to check out a book or two for yourself.
The cover of the September issue of Christianity Today says “they them their” staggered across three lines, with the question below, “Does it matter if Christians declare their pronouns?” That question is not really the main thrust of Kara Bettis Carvalho’s article, though. The article’s lead page says, “Gender pronouns are increasingly controversial in public life. Christians are grappling with how to engage.” That is a more accurate lead-in.
To be fair, Carvalho does cover the use of preferred pronouns by Christians, beginning her story with the account of two residence life employees at Houghton University who included their pronouns in their e-mail signature despite it being a violation of school policy for them to do so. The two in question, however, claimed that they did it in order to help students identify their genders because of their unusual names—Shua and Raegan. It is true that their names are unusual, and it is true that one might inaccurately guess their genders if inclined to do so. Shua, for the record, is male and Raegan is female. But Shua’s explanation in a video released after their firing is a bit flimsy. He said that he included it because “It’s an unusual name. And it ends with a vowel, ‘a,’ that is traditionally feminine in many languages. If you get an email from me and you don’t know who I am, you might not know how to gender me.”
Fair enough, but guess what? We don’t necessarily need to gender anyone. Long before the issue of gender identity and preferred pronouns was a thing there were people whose names did not reveal whether they were male or female. Believe it or not it is possible to reply to an e-mail, politely and respectfully, without knowing someone’s gender or using any pronoun at all to refer to the person being addressed. So while I may understand his reasons for including the pronouns, I do not believe their explanation justifies them refusing to remove the pronouns when being told to do so by their employer. Raegan’s explanation holds no water, in my opinion. (I’m not even going to address the fact that Shua told ABC News that his views on gender and identity do not fully align with those of the Wesleyan Church, which is the denomination with which Houghton is affiliated other than to simply say this: Then why work there? If you cannot support what they believe and stand for, find another job).
The most important part of Carvalho’s article, in my opinion, is the second half—the half that deals with how churches should deal with what Carvalho calls “evolving linguistic norms” and the question of whether or not using preferred pronouns can ever be a sin. The article mentions Travis Rymer, a pastor in Rhode Island who has studied pronouns and taught on gender ideology and who sees it as “a sort of secular religious system that aims to dismantle the binary of male and female. To use preferred pronouns without further honest conversation is not only to acquiesce to a belief system that is biblically unfaithful, but also to promote it.” And on that he is absolutely correct.
I would actually a step further, however, and posit that to use preferred pronouns even after further honest conversation is to acquiesce to a belief system that is biblically unfaithful—assuming, of course, that those preferred pronouns are not consistent with the individual’s sex—and Rymer evidently agrees, since the article says that he encourages his congregation not to use “others’ self-identified pronouns” and that refusing to do so is actually an act of love.
Carvalho provides all sides of the argument; she cites Rosaria Butterfield and Robert Gagnon as examples of those who hold that using a preferred pronoun that does not match biological sex is sin—“bearing false witness and an affront to the Creation mandate.” A bit further over on the spectrum are those like Robert Smith, who prefers to avoid using pronouns altogether. Moving further yet are those like Mark Yarhouse, who will offer his pronouns if asked and believes that there is value in “acknowledging people whose experiences do not fit into social norms about gender identity” and adds that people can teach, talk and preach in such a way that shows awareness that there are people who have “these experiences.” And then not quite to the other end of the spectrum, but getting close, are those like Preston Sprinkle, who promotes the use of preferred pronouns as a way of “showing grace and building relationships.” And Sprinkle is also the one to whip out what may be the most overused and erroneously used expression in Christianity today: “All throughout Scripture, we see God meeting people where they are in order to walk with them toward where he wants them to be.” While Sprinkle believes that pronouns should match biological sex, he doesn’t “think it should be a short-term prerequisite.” The far end of the spectrum is Meg Baatz and others who say that not even so-called pronoun hospitality is enough; in fact it is condescending. “We believe in mutuality. We use language to build trust,” Baatz said. Use preferred pronouns, in other words.
To his credit, Sprinkle does at least acknowledge that Jesus met people “where they are” in order to move them to where they should be—that is the part that so many people leave out—but he fails to recognize, or at least to acknowledge, that while Jesus met people where they were he never affirmed where they were. He met adulterers and prostitutes and tax collectors and more “where they were” but he never told them that being there was okay. He never did or said anything that communicated to them in any way that their behavior was acceptable, even for the short-term. He made it clear that they were sinners and that they needed to repent of their sins. He loved them even while they were sinners but He always condemned their sin.
Baatz and Elizabeth Delgado Black are the co-founders of Kaleidoscope, an organization with the mission of “Providing LGBTQ+ people opportunities to engage with tangible expressions of Christ,” and a vision: “We long to see every LGBTQ+ person empowered to encounter Jesus and mature within supportive Christian communities authentically.” Black says that “Christians should show generosity to those with a different framework.” No small part of the problem is that Kaleidoscope does not acknowledge transgenderism or any of the LGBTQ+ choices as sin. In fact, one of Kaleidoscope’s four values is diversity, accompanied by this statement: “Knowing God’s creative glory shines through our ethnicity, culture, faith expression, age, ability, gender identity, and sexuality, we commit to upholding diversity.” God’s glory does not shine through someone’s gender identity unless that identity is consistent with the gender with which God created them. To suggest otherwise is to suggest that God’s glory can be honored through sin and believe me, God can never be honored through sin. This post is not about Kaleidoscope, so I won’t address that organization further, but if you check out their website you will see exactly the kind of thing that Rymer warns against: acquiescence to a belief system that is biblically unfaithful—despite their assertions of the opposite.
The author J. K. Rowling made news in recent days for declaring that she would gladly spend two years in jail if the alternative was “compelled speech and forced denial of the reality and importance of sex. Bring on the court case, I say. It’ll be more fun than I’ve ever had on a red carpet.” This was in response to the possibility that the government in the UK might make refusing to use someone’s preferred pronouns a hate crime. Rowling’s position is based largely on common sense—certainly more than on any religious convictions, at least to my knowledge. But she has garnered much hatred for saying unequivocally that so-called trans-women are not women. “It isn’t hate to speak the truth,” Rowling tweeted earlier this year (when tweeting was still a thing).
It is unfortunate that Rowling is willing to acknowledge and say what so many professing Christians will not. To say “it isn’t hate to speak the truth” is to succinctly summarize the earthly ministry of Jesus Christ and the call of those who are believers to share the truth of the Bible with a lost and dying world. If Jesus were on our planet today in physical form, would He sit with, eat with and even hang out with people who have preferred pronouns that do not match their sex? I am sure He would. But I am equally sure that He would not use their preferred pronouns and that He would not in any way affirm their confusion and rejection of their God-given identity.
Sam Allberry said that he believes the use of pronouns is a “wisdom matter, not a righteousness matter,” and that Christians should have enough grace to disagree and to accept others’ motives as honorable. “We don’t want to see trans people demeaned or bullied,” he added.
No, of course we don’t. But there seems to be a lack of understanding among those who advocate for some kind of middle way that it is not possible to lead someone to a saving knowledge of Christ while embracing their sin. Salvation requires coming face to face with the reality that I am a sinner and that because of my sin I need a Savior or I will spend eternity in hell. You cannot tell someone both that their sin is okay and that their sin will send them to hell unless you are suggesting that hell is a viable option.
Voddie Baucham has often expressed his frustration that so many Christians will treat homosexuality differently than other sins, soft-pedaling any condemnation or judgment and insisting that they know and love gay or lesbian people. That’s the issue here, as well. Yes, love them, but do not affirm their sin. In keeping with Baucham’s position, no one would affirm someone’s drunkenness or adultery or abuse of another in order to make them feel comfortable and in the hopes of then helping them to realize the error of their ways, so why would we do that with gender identity? Love them, yes, but do not affirm their sin—and using preferred pronouns does affirm their sin.
Carvalho closed her article with this comment from Yarhouse: “I wouldn’t want to reduce my ambassadorship to a pronoun.” Neither would I, sir. But ambassadors do not affirm that which their country opposes in an effort to make the other country comfortable and then try to change their mind later. They don’t do it because it wouldn’t work. It would be foolish at best and dangerous at worst. The issue of pronoun usage is no different.
Donald Trump hugs Kristi Noem after being introduced at Monumental Leaders Rally on September 8
Last Friday evening, Kristi Noem, Governor of South Dakota, gave her endorsement to Donald Trump for the 2024 presidential election.
Last Friday evening, Kristi Noem, Governor of South Dakota, officially became a sell out.
No, I am not talking about the crowd of 7,000 people that Noem and Trump attracted to the rally in Rapid City, SD. I am talking about the betrayal of her principles for political gain. I am talking about the betrayal of what she has purportedly stood for and fought for in exchange for the opportunity to hitch her wagon to the man that she thinks will help expand her own political horizons. I am talking, sadly, someone who revealed herself as a hypocrite—live, in front of 7,000 people, but, by extension, in front of the United States of America.
In her introduction of Trump, Noem said, “It is my honor to present to you the man in the arena. He is a man of significance. He is the leader, the fighter, that our country needs. He has my full and complete endorsement for President of the United States of America. I will do everything I can to help him win and save this country.”
Less than a year ago, following the atrocious outcome for Trump-endorsed candidates in the 2022 midterm elections, Noem told The New York Times that she did not believe that Trump offered the best chance for Republican victory in 2024. In June 2023, Noem commented that Doug Burgum, governor of neighboring North Dakota, had asked for her support. And while she called him a “good guy,” she said, when asked if she was going to endorse any candidate, “No, I don’t think so. President Trump is in the race and right now I don’t see a path to victory for anybody else with him in the race and the situation as it sits today.”
But just last month, doing an interview for the Fox News show “Breakfast with Friends,” she tried to get cute. First, when the interviewer commented that a lot of governors were running for president, she said, “Almost all of ‘em” before laughing at her own joke. It wasn’t really all that funny though—nor was the question all that astute—since there are exactly two governors running for the nomination—Ron DeSantis of Florida and Doug Burgum of North Dakota. There are twenty-six Republican governors right now. Saying that two of twenty-six is “almost all of ‘em” is, well, pitiful. Funnily enough, there are more GOP governors who have already endorsed Trump than there are running for president (Noem’s endorsement makes her at least the fourth sitting governor to endorse Trump).
Math difficulties and attempts at humor aside, though, Noem explained that no one else had a chance to win the nomination as long as Trump was running. She added that Trump “did some great things for our state and our country,” and stressed that he let her do her job as governor. Then she made another attempt at humor and this one was even worse, cracking that President Biden would be offended by some of the flags being flown at Sturgis. Some of the flags said “Let’s Go Brandon,” based on the next comment, but some, no doubt, had a more explicit sentiment. That Governor Noem would joke about such flags rather than condemn them is deeply disappointing. She was then asked if she would endorse Trump at the rally in September. She demurred, of course, saying that the tickets sold out in a day and that people always hear “something interesting” from Trump. No resounding endorsements there. When asked if she would consider being Trump’s VP, she said that he hadn’t asked her and she does not answer hypothetical questions. Apparently she has changed her position on that, because when Newsmax asked her last week if she would consider it she replied, “Oh, absolutely. I would in a heartbeat.”
Way back in January, Noem was asked by Robert Acosta of CBS News if she felt “a rush…to make a decision on 2024” to which she replied, “No, I think it’s important that people focus on governing rather than going out and making big, broad statements and going out and taking action for their own political futures.”
Oddly enough, then, Noem decided to do exactly that on Friday night. Equally as hypocritical, Kari Lake then took the opportunity to attack Noem’s obvious angling for the VP spot on a 2024 Trump ticket, saying, “Anyone who’s talking about a position and dreaming about a position in Trump’s second administration really needs to get off their high horse,” to which she added that the focus need to be working “in the grassroots and start making sure Trump has a second administration.” This came in the same conversation in which Lake stressed the fact that she had been supporting Trump even before he had entered the race.
Lake, of course, is not even remotely qualified to be VP, having never held any elected office. But then Trump wasn’t remotely qualified to be president in 2020, either. But Lake is bizarrely committed to Trump, a commitment revealed when she kissed a painting of Trump on the stage at the CPAC convention last March. Marjorie Taylor Greene is rumored to be under consideration for Trump’s running mate, too. I cannot imagine Kristi Noem would find it to her advantage to be mentioned in the same breath as Lake and Greene; they’re so extreme that they might accurately be described as wacko. Fortunately for Noem, Elise Stefanik, Nancy Mace and Nikki Haley have also been mentioned as possibilities, though I think it is safe to say that Haley would decline if asked. Sarah Huckabee Sanders has also been rumored to be a possibility but, interestingly, she has declined to even endorse Trump so far, despite having been directly asked by Trump to do so according to The New York Times.
Which, actually, leads to another point. If Trump was so wonderful, why are Mike Pence, Nikki Haley and Chris Christie running against him for the nomination? Pence was Trump’s VP, Haley was his UN Ambassador and Christie was one of his strongest supporters. Vivek Ramaswamy has said that he thinks Trump as the best president of the 21st century to this point, yet he, too, is running against him! Really only once in American history has someone who had been the vice president run against the president under whom they served, and that was when Thomas Jefferson ran against John Adams. Given the way that vice presidents were selected then, that really doesn’t even count; Jefferson was only Adams’ vice president because Adams had received more electoral votes than Jefferson had when they were both running for president in 1796. The only other instance was John Nance Garner running against FDR in 1940—but Roosevelt was not an announced candidate when Garner announced his candidacy, or for most of the campaign season. And given that no president had ever served more than two terms before that point, and FDR was finishing his second term, it really isn’t fair to say that Garner was running against FDR, either. In other words, Mike Pence is really the first person who ever served as a vice president to knowingly and intentionally run against a president whom he willingly served.
Over a year and a half ago, James Downie, writing in The Washington Post, said that “the [Republican] party’s most prominent figures are willingly empty vessels in thrall to the GOP base. Until that changes, the GOP will stay the party of Trump.” He included Noem in that accusation. Until recently, I was a supporter of Noem. I voted for her governor twice. To be perfectly honest, I wrote her name when I cast my vote for president in 2022 despite the fact that I know that South Dakota does not count write-in votes. I could not vote for Trump. Or Biden. I have openly and publicly supported the way that she handled COVID as well as her general approach to governing. When she vetoed a bill passed by the state legislature dealing with transgender athletes because of some specific concerns, I thought she demonstrated a willingness to stand up to the GOP base and do something that was right rather than something that was politically popular. She did, of course, later sign a measure that corrected those concerns. But Noem has now shown that she would rather go along with the guy who is popular than do the right thing. She has shown that Downie may have been right. And she has certainly shown that she is no Nikki Haley, who has been willing to speak honestly about Trump and to stake realistic positions on issues such as abortion that do not cater to the fringe wing of the republican party.
I have made absolutely no secret of the fact that Donald Trump is not fit to serve as President of the Unted States—and that was all before the 2016 election, let alone the insurrection of January 6, 2021. So, Noem pretty well ruled out any future support from me when she endorsed Trump, a man who lacks every one of the character qualities that Noem has expressed are needed to be a true leader. Very early in her book Not My First Rodeo, Noem writes, of her decision to pursue public service, “I would not follow the glittery distractions of whatever was popular or convenient at any given moment.” Four sentences later she said, “…what matters is not how hard life is, but rather how hard you fight for what is right—and how tall you stand against what is wrong.”
Well, Governor, there is no greater “glittery distraction” in the Republican party these days than Donald Trump. It’s too bad that you have decided not to fight for what is right.
I should start by acknowledging that until the two songs I am about to address became big news I could not have picked Jason Aldean or Oliver Anthony out of a lineup. I had heard of Jason Aldean but could not have named one of his songs. I am confident I had never even heard of Anthony.
I’m a little late to the game in commenting on Jason Aldean’s “Try That In a Small Town” and that is actually by design. I almost jumped in as soon as the song started making headlines and I decided to wait and see if my thinking changed any as the hullabaloo dissipated. It hasn’t, and since Anthony song “Rich Men North of Richmond” is now also getting a lot of attention I decided I would address them both at once.
It is my understanding that Aldean’s song was released a couple of months before the video for the song and that it attracted little attention until the video was released. I think that the images used in the video went a long way toward contributing to the level of attention that the song received—and can specifically be credited with the accusation that the song is pro-lynching—but the song has real issues even if there had never been a video made.
Aldean tried to downplay the possibility that he was endorsing lynching by claiming, rightfully, that there was not a “single clip that isn’t real news footage.” The video, however, was filmed in front of the Maury County Courthouse in Columbia, Tennessee. According to a number of reports, Aldean did not choose the location of the filming and I have no reason to doubt that, but someone did—and it seems unlikely that it was chosen at random. That courthouse was the location of a lynching in 1927. Columbia was also the location of a race riot in 1946.
The song’s lyrics reference “good ‘ol boys, raised up right.” That, too, makes Tennessee a poor choice for filming the video, since southeastern Tennessee was the location for annual gatherings of law enforcement officials known as the “Good ‘Ol Boys Roundup” in the 1980s and ‘90s. Eventually the Department of Justice’s Office of the Inspector General released a 314-page report finding that those gatherings included “shocking racist, licentious, and puerile behavior by attendees occurring in various years. We also found that an atmosphere hostile to minorities — and to women — developed over time because inadequate action was taken by the Roundup’s organizers to appropriately deal with instances of racial or other kinds of misconduct.” The investigation “found substantial credible evidence of blatantly racist signs, skits, and actions in 1990, 1992, and 1995. We also found substantial credible evidence of racially insensitive conduct in 1985, 1987, 1989, and 1993.”[1]
Aldean has said that the song is about “the feeling of a community that I had growing up, where we took care of our neighbors, regardless of differences of background or belief.” He also told a crowd in Cincinnati, shortly after the ruckus about the video began, “I know a lot of you guys grew up like I did. You kind of have the same values, the same principles that I have, which is we want to take our kids to a movie and not worry about some a**hole coming in there shooting up the theater.”
That may be all well and good, but Aldean did not grow up in a small town. Some news reports referenced Aldean’s “native Tennessee” but he is not native to the Volunteer State. He was born in Macon, GA, and grew up splitting time between Macon and Homestead, FL, after his parents divorced. Macon is not a “small town.” Its population exceeded 100,000 for the entirety of Aldean’s growing up years, with Macon usually among the top-five largest cities in the state. Homestead, FL, is actually a small town itself, but given that it is a suburb of Miami, it would be difficult to argue that it fits the definition most people think of when they think “small town”—or that the lyrics of the song have in mind. Aldean now lives in Nashville, a city of nearly 700,000. It would seem that the smallest town he ever lived in was Centerville, TN. Of course, it is not really accurate to say that he lived in Centerville. After all, his residence was over 4,000 square feet and sat on 1,400 acres. Aldean also lived in a home in Columbia for about three years—a home of almost 9,000 square feet with a custom fish tank, a detached bowling alley of more than 4,000 square feet and a 10,000 square foot barn—a property that he sold for some $7+ million. Suffice it to say that Aldean has really never lived in a small town and has not, for quite some time, lived anything like the majority of Americans.
Now that doesn’t mean that he cannot have what one might call small town values. That is, after all, what the song is purportedly about. But like it or not, there is no way around the fact that the song distinctly implies a violent response to undesirable behavior even if it does not say one word about lynching. After all, how else might one interpret “…try that in a small town/see how far ya make it down the road”? It is safe to say that car trouble is not being suggested. The second stanza pretty much threatens a violent response should there be any effort to take away the gun that his grandad gave him. I support the Second Amendment, and I don’t know of any serious effort at gun control measures that would threaten to take away the kind of gun Aldean or most anyone else would have inherited from a grandfather.
Sheryl Crow was one of many celebrities to speak out against the song. She tweeted that the song is “not American or small town-like. It’s just lame.” The problem, though, is that it isn’t lame. It is tapping into the fomenting sense that violence is the answer that is stoked by Donald Trump and those who think he is the savior of the United States. In February 2016 Trump said, at an Iowa rally, “If you see somebody getting ready to throw a tomato, knock the crap out of them, would you? Seriously. Just knock the hell out of them. I promise you, I will pay for the legal fees.” Three weeks later, at a rally in Nevada, he said of a protester, “I’d like to punch him in the face,” and then, “We’re not allowed to punch back anymore. I love the old days. You know what they used to do to guys like that when they were in a place like this? They’d be carried out on a stretcher, folks.” When, a few weeks later, a Trump support did punch a protester in the face at a Trump rally in North Carolina, Trump called the action “very, very appropriate” and the kind of action we need more of. I could, sadly, go on at length referencing Trump’s tendency to encourage violence. Not surprisingly he has called Aldean’s song “great” and shared on Truth, “Support Jason all the way. MAGA!” Donald Trump, Jr. and Lauren Boebert were among others to publicly support the song. My own governor, Kristi Noem, has strongly endorsed the song, even inviting Aldean to perform on the front lawn of the governor’s mansion. In a video she posted to social media, Noem said that Aldean “and Brittany [his ife] are outspoken about their love for law and order and for their love of this country, and I’m just grateful for them.” She also said that the lyrics represent “the feeling of a community that I had growing up, where we took care of our neighbors. There is not a single lyric in the song that references race or points to it.” Later, on Fox News, Noem said, “All it does is love America, love the flag, love our law enforcement, and it’s everything we should all be proud of.”
Now, Noem did grow up in a small town, graduating from Hamlin High School—in a town of about 6,000. And the majority of South Dakota is what you would think of when you think small town. The problem is that Aldean’s song does not actually say anything about taking care of neighbors or loving law enforcement or loving America. It implies respect for law enforcement but including cussing out a cop or spitting in his face among the behaviors one ought not try in a small town. It also implies love for America by including stomping on our burning the flag as behaviors that one won’t get away with. But nowhere is there any mention of calling law enforcement or supporting law enforcement as they deal with such behavior. Nowhere is there mention of neighbors coming to the aid of a threatened or injured neighbor. While the chorus says “we take care of our own,” the lyrics indicate that such care comes in the form of avenging any wrongs done to them.
There is an obvious question in all of this: what are small town values? What are the characteristics and standards that are seemingly being assumed by Crow and Noem, though reacting oppositely to Aldean’s song? On “Daily Kos” a writer identified as The Choobs wrote in late July that small town values include, or result in, higher rates of gun deaths, suicide, spousal abuse, child abuse, LGBTQ discrimination, drunk driving, vehicular deaths, teenage alcohol use, methamphetamine addiction, cigarette smoking, teen pregnancy and obesity. I don’t know anyone who claims any of those things as values, though, and while there is room for some honest debate over the claim, I am certain that isn’t what anyone in this conversation really has in mind.
Scott LaForest, writing for “Medium” in June, called small town values “the bedrock of all communities.” His article is worth reading—and he gets at what no doubt Crow, Noem and even Aldean all had in mind despite coming at it differently. “Whether it’s rallying together in the face of natural disasters, standing in solidarity against injustice, or pooling resources to help those in need,” LaForest wrote, “the heart of these actions lies in the values fostered in small towns: community involvement, neighborliness, and a deep-seated sense of empathy.” His article elaborates on these and a few others. I don’t have space to give them a full exploration here, but it is not hard to imagine why a community that has high involvement, neighborliness and empathy would be both less likely to experience the behaviors that Aldean’s song references and more likely to address them if they did occur. But by address them I don’t mean with violence, and no matter what Aldean or anyone else may say, there is simply no denying that “try that in a small town” is not an invitation but rather a challenge or even a threat. It is a thinly-veiled assertion that doing so will result in consequences. That’s not liberal interpretation or projecting anything—that’s what “try it” means and anyone who understands the English language and is honest with themselves will acknowledge that.
I am quite willing to grant that there is nothing in the lyrics about race and certainly not about lynching. I am equally willing to grant that Aldean may not have selected the location of the video shoot. But it strains credulity to suggest that another location could not have been chosen. After all, Columbia is almost 50 miles from Nashville; how many other courthouses are there between Nashville and Columbia—or within a 50-mile radius of Nashville? Centerville, for example—the town outside of which Aldean had his 1,400-acre spread, is home to the Hickman County Courthouse and is 60 miles from Nashville. A 2020 article in the Williamson Herald, a newspaper out of Franklin, TN, indicates that there are 95 county courthouses in Tennessee. The one in Columbia is included among the eight that the author says are the state’s most attractive, but that leaves seven more even if one wanted to argue that aesthetics was part of the reason the Maury County Courthouse was chosen. One of those eight is the Cannon County Courthouse in Woodbury, 58 miles from Nashville. Another is the Montgomery County Courthouse in Clarksville, TN—53 miles from Nashville. The Giles County Courthouse in Pulaski is just 73 miles from Nashville.
There are indeed small-town values that could and should be celebrated and about which songs could be, and have been, written. This particular song, however, has connotations and implications that are not anything that should be celebrated. Having said that, there are many songs that have lyrics and messages that should not be celebrated and many of them are far more offensive and blatant than “Try That In a Small Town.”
One last note before moving on. Aldean graduated from Windsor Academy, a Christian school in Macon, in 1995. There is no evidence that the school has any issue with the lyrics or the video for “Try That In a Small Town,” and apparently the school is more than happy to tout Aldean’s affiliation with the school, including his picture and a brief biographical comment on its website as part of “Our Team,” a section in which everyone else pictured is a current member of the school’s faculty and staff. It’s too bad that the school has not seen fit to issue a statement clarifying why the song does not represent the kind of values that we should be seeking to embrace.
Now, what about Anthony Oliver’s “Rich Men North of Richmond”? Well, it’s become an overnight viral sensation. Sadly. Political protest songs are nothing new and neither are lyrics that portend to speak for the downtrodden, the working class and the politically ignored. But this song has very little going for it for anyone who gives it serious consideration. It doesn’t have much in common with Aldean’s song other than the inclusion of profanity, which has become increasingly—and depressingly—common. What the two songs do have in common is the base to which they appeal, despite Oliver claiming that he is a political centrist. But when Marjorie Taylor Greene and Kari Lake both come out in support of the song, you can quickly identify the audience with which is resonates.
The song starts with these lyrics: “I’ve been sellin’ my soul, workin’ all day / Overtime hours for bullsh*t pay / So I can sit out here and waste my life away / Drag back home and drown my troubles away.”
Well, hmmm. I am not sure how working full time equates with selling one’s soul. Usually selling your soul implies doing something that is wrong, or morally dubious at best, in order to achieve a goal or obtain a want. By that definition, Anthony would be suggesting that not working is what he desires but he has to work in order to achieve what he wants. In Facebook posts, Anthony has discussed the lousy wages he earned working third shift in a paper mill. But apparently he also dropped out of high school. Sometimes we do indeed reap what we sow. We’ll come back to the not working shortly, but if he is working—not just full-time, but overtime—what is he doing that for? What goal is he trying to reach? Apparently not much, since the lyrics indicate that he is doing it so that he can sit “out here” (wherever that may be) and waste his life, drowning his troubles away. Though is doesn’t say so explicitly, one can easily imagine that drowning of troubles after dragging back home to involve copious amounts of alcohol.
The next lines say, “It’s a damn shame what the world’s gotten to / For people like me and people like you / Wish I could just wake up and it not be true / But it is, oh, it is.” This is a line that makes little sense since the listener is left wondering who exactly “people like you” is and what precisely it is that Anthony would like to not be true. Presumably, based on the chorus, Anthony would prefer a world with a lower tax rate, since it goes like this:
Livin’ in the new world / With an old soul / These rich men north of Richmond / Lord knows they all just wanna have total control / Wanna know what you think, wanna know what you do / And they don’t think you know, but I know that you do / ‘Cause your dollar ain’t sh*t and it’s taxed to no end / ‘Cause of rich men north of Richmond.
There is seemingly unanimous agreement that the “rich men north of Richmond” are the politicians in Washington, D.C, though it could possibly refer to the wealthy D.C. suburbs, too. Not that I cannot relate to wanting to keep more of my money, but current U.S. tax rates for someone making the kind of money Anthony sings about are not all that high historically speaking. BUt high taxes is not the only thing that Anthony thinks they are wrong about. The song continues:
I wish politicians would look out for miners / And not just minors on an island somewhere / Lord, we got folks in the street, ain’t got nothin’ to eat / And the obese milkin’ welfare.
Well, God, if you’re 5-foot-3 and you’re 300 pounds / Taxes ought not to pay for your bags of fudge rounds / Young men are puttin’ themselves six feet in the ground / ‘Cause all this damn country does is keep on kickin’ them down.
One cannot help but ask how Anthony would like politicians to look out for miners. Does he want less emphasis on “green energy” or more safety protocols for mining? Or does he think miners should make more money? It would be hard to imagine more government oversight and safety requirements and benefit funds than there are already in place for current and former miners. And miners are not generally low-income earners, either. In fact, the median salary for a coal miner is almost exactly the same as the median salary for all U.S. workers. Many coal miners don’t go to college not because they couldn’t but because they do not need to. ABC News ran a story in 2010 touting the ability of a beginning coal miner in Appalachia to earn $60,000 or more—and according to Mint, $70,000 is still the average salary of a U.S. coal miner.
What is clear is that whatever it is that Anthony wants for miners, it is more important to him than protection for sexually-abused minors—a commentary that is truly sad. Of course, it also seems out of place for Taylor Greene to endorse the song with this lyric since she is such an adherent of QAnon and the thus-far unproven rumors that there is a vast pedophile ring in existence among the world’s wealthy elite. Suggesting that too much attention is paid to minors on an island somewhere doesn’t fit with the QAnon narrative.
The next few lines don’t make much sense, either. Anthony goes from lamenting that there are folks in the street without food to chastising the existence of welfare programs that provide food for those who cannot afford it. Now, it is clear that by referencing the “obese milkin’ welfare” and the grossly-overweight person eating fudge rounds that Anthony thinks that those receiving what is commonly known as food stamps are often abusing the system.
According to a story on NBC’s “Today,” Anthony acknowledges struggling with mental health and drowning it with alcohol. He said that is sad to see a world in which everyone is fighting with each other. Chastising those on welfare seems an odd way to try to bring about peace—especially when one listener commented on X that the line about a 5-foot-3 person weighing 300 pounds is the “best lyrics in the history of music.”
Anthony drew lots of attention for selling out a concert he will be doing in Farmville, VA, in three minutes. News reports indicate that people are driving from as far away as Ohio and New Hampshire to attend. I cannot help but ask, “Why?” Anthony is a flash in the pan, the current unknown-makes-it-big story that most everyone seems to love. But the reality is that while he might have a decent voice, it’s a lousy song. Anthony has been open about saying that he wrote it while suffering from poor mental health and depression. I do not intend this to be funny, and certainly not to mock the reality of depression and mental health challenges, but that might explain why the song doesn’t make sense.
As this post is already rather long, I will not go further into disingenuous lyrics of the song in terms of the political arguments it attempts to make. Others have done that already, including Kenan Malik in The Observer and Eric Levitz in The Intelligencer. Jamelle Bouie, in an opinion piece for The New York Times, sums up well what I think of Anthony’s politics when he writes, “For my part, I can’t help but think there’s something ironic about the fact that, despite sitting close to this history, the latest populist voice to come out of the commonwealth has chosen, in the end, to give comfort to those with the boot on his neck and scorn to those who might try to help lift it.”
The article in response to Anthony’s song that perhaps struck me the most was Hannah Anderson’s piece for Christianity Today. Anderson takes strong issue with Anthony’s lines about welfare, saying that she was instantly reminded of the time when her family was on food stamps and the shame that she felt about that reality. Anderson rightly makes points about the judgment that others so often place on those receiving government assistance and about the way that those on assistance often feel about it.
However, she has several missteps in her column, as well. For one, she uses the term “food insecurity” in a way that I would consider inaccurate, despite the fact that it is consistent with the way that the U.S. Department of Agriculture uses it. That, however, is mostly a matter of semantics and opinion. Anderson wisely points out that she and her husband were both college-educated at the time that they were on food stamps, and that her husband was employed, highlighting the fact that not all of those on government assistance programs are just moochers unwilling to work. She does not acknowledge, though, that some of the reasons why her family could not make ends meet were of their own doing. Anderson states that she was not employed; rather, she stayed at home with their children. There’s nothing wrong with that, of course, but she references the fact that once they had their third child they could no longer make her husband’s salary cover their needs. (Her husband was a pastor and I’ll come back to the church’s culpability in a moment). Is it responsible to have another child if someone knows they will not be able to afford to care for that child? I would suggest that it is not. Once they qualified for SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, the federally-funded program commonly referred to as food stamps), Anderson said the money that they had previously used for food was “relocated” to pay for things like gas and preschool for her daughter. Preschool? I’m sorry…I thought Anderson was a stay-at-home mom? Why would she and her husband pay to enroll her daughter in preschool if they could not afford food? That too, was irresponsible.
Anderson also commented that there were limits to what SNAP would cover, specifically mentioning that paper products, toiletries and cleaning supplies were not included. Well, that’s good. They shouldn’t be covered. After all, they are not nutritional items and SNAP is decided to ensure access to proper nutrition. SNAP also does not cover alcohol, tobacco or pet foods. Neither will it cover food that is hot at the point of sale or vitamins.
That last one doesn’t seem to make much sense, particularly given that SNAP will cover snack foods. It is the snack foods coverage that gives rise to Anthony’s line about fudge rounds, the chocolate frosting between two chocolate cookies made by Little Debbie. While they’re tasty, they are not nutritious, and I absolutely can relate to the frustration of seeing someone purchase junk food with government assistance funds. I don’t approve of the body shaming that is clearly included in Anthony’s lyric, but I share the opinion that fudge rounds—and snack foods in general—ought not be covered by SNAP.
Anderson does rightly call out the casually-used language of some within the Church that uses too wide a stoke when condemning government assistance programs. Should there be work requirements for welfare recipients? Absolutely. But are there some people who are working hard and still struggling to make ends meet? For sure.
That is, by the way, where the Church should come in, and that is actually the most offensive part of the story that Anderson tells. Her husband, at the time that their family was receiving SNAP benefits, was a pastor. His salary was only $28,000. Anderson does not say whether their housing was provided and she does not say how long ago this was, either; she references being 30 years old but there is no indication of when that was. She said that they asked the church board for a raise in order to better provide for their family but were given half of what they asked for and were told that social services were available. Unless the church could honestly not afford to pay any more, this is appalling. A church has an obligation—a biblical responsibility—to provide for its pastor. If the church truly could not support the Andersons full-time, then Anderson’s husband should have sought a second job and become bi-vocational or sought some other way to provide for his family if that was where he believed God wanted him to serve, but the fault in this story lies with the church board. Directing someone within their congregation to utilize government assistance should never be the first reaction of a church body; the congregation should care for its own—and certainly for its pastor.
Anderson is correct when she writes, “The price of accessing food through SNAP or a church food pantry must not be the poor’s dignity and self-worth.” I can relate to the shame she felt and the desire to keep it under wraps that their family needed government help. When I was a young teenager my father left a well-paying job to enroll full-time in Bible college. He worked at the college, too, but our family’s needs were beyond his income and we qualified for free lunches at school and WIC benefits for my younger sisters. Later, as an adult, I lost my job suddenly and experienced the sudden change in circumstance that many people experience when losing a job. I went from taking students to volunteer at a Salvation Army shelter to serve meals to, not too many weeks later, going to a church food pantry to get some food when the pastor extended to us the offer. It was humbling. We never had to accept any government assistance at that time beyond the unemployment payments I received, but it did cause me to rethink the judgment that can easily come into one’s mind—and be reflected in one’s attitude—when we see someone not able to provide for themselves or their family.
So, Mr. Anthony, I agree—fudge rounds should be out. But SNAP and similar government programs do serve a legitimate purpose—one too often neglected today by the Church. And no one who legitimately needs such government services should ever be scorned or belittled. The odds are good that they hate needing it already; the last thing they need is for you or me to condemn them for that need. But most importantly, it is a sad day when professing believers cannot even see that “love your neighbor as yourself” would certainly include ensuring that your pastor’s family can afford to eat.
Ultimately, these two songs are getting a lot of attention–much ado, one might say. In the case of the Aldean song, it is not much ado about nothing because there is, and should be, a legitimate debate over the kinds of things the song is about. While he is correct that the behaviors he sings about should not be tolerated or go without consequence, he is wrong to suggest or imply that they should be dealt with by some kind of vigilante justice. In the case of the Anthony song, though, I think it really is much ado about nothing. After all, the song has no discernible point.
Last week Target was in the news for a clothing line created by the British company Abprallen for its “PRIDE” Collection. While the items being sold by Target did not, apparently, include Satanic messages, Abprallen is known for selling Satanic merchandise. According to Abprallen’s Instagram post on May 9, the company had been approached by Target to design items for the collection and Erik Carnell, the founder and designer, said that it would be an opportunity “to ensure that any young people who saw Abprallen in Target would know that who they are is beautiful, purposeful, and worth expressing.”
The Abprallen website proudly (pun intended) proclaims itself “Independent LGBTQ+ fashion and accessories, designed in London.” It includes a picture of Carnell who identifies as a “gay trans man” and says that the name of the company comes from the German word for ricochet. Carnell says that pastel colors feature prominently in the company’s designs, juxtaposed against images of “skulls and spooky things.” The statement from Carnell closes, “I hope you find something of yourself in Abprallen and embrace the parts of you you’ve been told not to love.”
While the Abprallen items offered by Target included a tote bag, a messenger bag and a sweatshirt, the company’s website says that it specializes in enamel pins and button badges. Most of the enamel pins are a raised fist symbol, but the buttons—more than 150 of them to date—include a variety of messages promoting LGBTQ+. The pastel goth pride collection is the one in which Carnell takes the most pleased—a series that began with a pin featuring a Baphomet head over a twisting ribbon that proclaims “Satan respects pronouns.” By way of explanation, Carnell writes, “Satan Respects Pronouns is a fun way to show your Pride—a lot of LGBT people have found that Christianity hasn’t always been the most welcoming to them and find solace and humor in the idea that Satan would.” That pin design is also available on a t-shirt.
Other items featured on the Abprallen website feature these messages: “Heteronormativity is a plague,” “Witches and wizards love trans people,” “Time’s up for transphobes” and a guillotine over which is a sign that says “Homophobe Headrest.” The company’s homepage says, under the link for the collection of pins, “Wear your truth.”
Therein lies the bottom line, of course—“your truth.” The notion of “your truth” is a denial of the existence of any actual truth, since if there is such a thing as “your truth” there must also be such a thing as “my truth” and truth for many others, and when we all get to choose our own truth there is no truth. I am reminded suddenly of that notable exchange in A Few Good Men when Lt. Kaffee tells Col. Jessep, “I want the truth!” Jessep replies, “You can’t handle the truth!” Erik Carnell, among many others, really cannot handle the truth. In fact, Carnell would replace Jessep’s “You can’t handle the truth!” with “There is no truth!”
Within days of the Abprallen line debuting at Target, the company faced strong backlash. Target’s pride collection reportedly included more than two thousand items, only three of which were from Abprallen—none of which included the Satanic of threatening designs—and supposedly none of which were being marketed to children. The three Abprallen designs included a sweatshirt that was a play on the caduceus with the words “Cure Transphobia, Not Trans People,” a messenger bag that said “We Belong Everywhere” and a tote bag that said “Too Queer for Here.” The suggestion that the products were not marketed to children loses some merit when Carnell, who I understand to be 29 years old, said on Instagram, “I imagined what it would be like for a younger version of myself to see something more specific, more tailor made than a lacklustre rainbow flag. I wanted to create a range that would embrace younger me and tell him that who he is is more than OK, that being trans is special and wonderful and that the closet is not made for him to thrive in.”
Perhaps these products were not marketed to children, but there are plenty of items in Target’s expansive pride collection that are; just visit the website and see for yourself. In fact, some of the clothing items can be found in infant sizes.
I have seldom shopped at Target since its announcement several years ago regarding the use of bathrooms according to one’s gender identity. Of course, it helps that the closest Target to me is more than 100 miles away, too, but when I used to live close to one, I always preferred Target over Wal Mart. I realize that one could find a reason to boycott just about any company these days and I have not been a committed advocate of boycotts. If you decide to boycott Target because of its pride collection and its association with Abprallen in particular, I would certainly understand and support that decision.
What’s not okay, though, is threatening Target employees because of the pride items. On May 24 Target issued a statement that it was pulling some of the items in the pride collection because of threats to employee safety and well-being. There is no place for threatening anyone who works at Target over anything the stores may sell. There have been reports in recent days that Target has lost $9 to $10 billion in market value since attention has been drawn to the Abprallen association, and that’s fine. That’s an appropriate and effective means of communicating displeasure with a company’s choices. Anheuser-Busch has allegedly lost more than $15 billion in market value since its campaign featuring transgender individual Dylan Mulvaney. Also fine. Money, as they say, talks. Let yours speak loud and clear.
While Target’s decision to utilize a designer that has promoted messages that embrace Satan and even suggest, or at least hint at, execution for those opposed to the LGBTQ+ agenda, is deeply concerning to me and deserves whatever financial repercussions it may bring, Carnell’s messages unaffiliated with the Target merchandise are the greater concern. If nothing else, all the hullabaloo over the Target collection will drive more people to the Abprallen website, cause more people to see and purchase the more offensive and controversial items and prompt further looking into what Carnell has to say about the designs. For example, in on Instagram post, Carnell said, “Satan loves you and respects who you are; you’re important and valuable in this world and you deserve to treat yourself with love and respect. LGBT+ people are so often referred to as being a product of Satan or going against God’s will, so fine. We’ll hang with Satan instead. Satanists don’t actually believe in Satan, he is merely used as a symbol of passion, pride, and liberty. He means to you what you need him to mean. So for me, Satan is hope, compassion, equality, and love.”
Therein lies the real target in all of this; Erik Carnell—and others—have targeted the hearts and minds of everyone willing to listen, and young people in particular, with the goal of convincing them that Christianity is not only wrong, it desires to deny them the right to be who they really are. Christianity is wrong and people who oppose homosexual marriage and deny transgender identity are antiquated in their thinking, bigots who need to be reeducated if not eliminated. That is the real target; not selling some t-shirts or tote bags. Adding in that Satan is fun, a symbol of liberty and the one who really respects people for who they are is an eternally dangerous side dish that Carnell is serving up alongside his “be whoever you want to be” buffet.
Make no mistake, Satan is real, and he is thrilled by the notion that people would think that he isn’t. He is equally thrilled by the idea that Carnell or anyone else would suggest that Satan loves and respects them for who they are. Satan does not love anyone. Satan does not know or understand what love is. Satan has no interest in anyone’s wellbeing. His greatest desire is to have as many people as possible spend eternity in hell with him. We know how the story ends; we know he is going to lose. Don’t play games with Satan.
This month marks the one-year anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. For one year I have been wondering why the rest of the world is allowing the fighting to continue to not evicting Russia from Ukraine, by force if necessary. Don’t get me wrong, I understand the reluctance to initiate another war—whether it be hot or cold. My son is nearing the age when he will have to register with Selective Service; the last thing I want is another world war and the possibility of a draft in the U.S. At the same time, the fear of hardship—even violence and war—should not be a deterrent to doing what is right.
C.S. Lewis said, “Integrity is doing the right thing, even when no one is watching.” That’s a familiar quote because it’s true. But if it is true that integrity is doing the right thing even when no one is watching then it certainly follows that integrity includes doing the right thing when everyone is watching. And the world is watching Ukraine.
Last September, when the war was but seven months old, the Pew Research Center reported that Americans were less concerned about the war spreading into other countries than they had been, with just over a quarter of U.S. adults saying that they were not too concerned or were not concerned at all about Russia defeating Ukraine. At the same time, 57% of Americans said that the U.S. was providing the right amount or too much support to Ukraine.
Well, let’s be honest—if the U.S. were supplying adequate support to Ukraine, the war would be over and Russia would have lost.
In December, Steven Pifer wrote, for The Brookings Institution, that the war has “proven a disaster for Russia — militarily, economically, and geopolitically. The war has badly damaged Russia’s military and tarnished its reputation, disrupted the economy, and profoundly altered the geopolitical picture facing Moscow in Europe.” That may be true, but wrote that two months ago today and Russia does not seem inclined to give up.
A year ago Paul Kolbe, the director of the Intelligence Project at Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs and a 25-year veteran of the CIA, said this about U.S. involvement in Ukraine:
From a principled standpoint, if the United States stands for democracy, if it stands for freedom of nations and peoples to choose their paths, if it stands opposed to aggression and efforts to change borders by force, then this is the ideal example of exactly where we should be walking the walk and not just talking the talk.
Kolbe was right then and his comments are still right today. Back in November, when Russia withdrew from Kherson, General Mark Milley, the Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, said, “When peace can be achieved, seize it.” Maybe. But there’s a reason why Neville Chamberlain is best remembered for the utter foolishness of his claim of having achieved “peace for our time.” Appeasing Hitler proved to be naïve but shortsighted; before long, Hitler was doing exactly what he promised he wouldn’t do. And who can blame him, given that the rest of the world’s leading countries had demonstrated a reluctance to do what was necessary to make him stop? In case anyone has forgotten, the appeasement approach was already tried with Putin, too. (Remember Crimea?)
In late December Vladimir Putin announced that Russia was interested in negotiating an end to the war. Specifically, he said,
All armed conflicts end one way or another with some kind of negotiations on the diplomatic track. Sooner or later, any parties in a state of conflict sit down and make an agreement. The sooner this realization comes to those who oppose us, the better. We have never given up on this.
In other words, Putin is ready for a diplomatic agreement that gives him what he wants. In the words of Admiral Ackbar, “It’s a trap!” Giving Russia even one square inch of Ukrainian soil would serve to embolden Putin further but would also embolden Xi Jinping and Kim Jong-un and others.
Paul Kolbe said that the reasons for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine “are complex and multifaceted and include history and psychology, longstanding grievances and grudges, and a bitter resentment of NATO.” All true—and none of them justify the invasion or giving Russia anything. Near the end of the American Civil War, the South made some overtures about a negotiated end to the war. The war had been going on for years and hundreds of thousands had died; no one in their right mind would have refused to listen to their offer. But Abraham Lincoln made one thing clear—there would be no end to the war without an end to slavery.
In the same way, the U.S., NATO and other Ukrainian allies would do well to listen to Putin about a diplomatic agreement, but only one that includes a complete withdrawal of Russian forces from all Ukrainian soil. That cannot be negotiated.
Last month, the George W. Bush Presidential Center released a report explaining why it is vital to U.S. national interest to support Ukraine. The report said, in part,
[I]t’s vital that the United States show total, bipartisan solidarity with Ukraine and any other country that might be threatened by thuggish, authoritarian regimes. The United States must lead, together with our allies, and that leadership starts with a united front between the executive and legislative branches on such a vital national security matter.
I agree with that assertion. But I agree even more strongly with this statement from earlier in the report:
There also must be accountability for Russian war crimes and genocidal acts committed against Ukrainians. Led by President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Ukrainians reject the notion of negotiations involving territorial concessions in exchange for a ceasefire.
The U.S. must stand by Zelensky and the people of Ukraine. Maybe, like a district attorney negotiating an agreement with a murderer and taking the death penalty off the table in exchange for a confession, war crimes are taken off the table in exchange for an end to the fighting and a removal of all Russian forces from Ukrainian soil. Short of that, though, there can be no deal.
John Adams once said, “To be good, and to do good, is all we have to do.” That’s easier said than done most of the time. But in this instance, it’s actually quite clear. We know what the good thing is to do. Are we willing to do it?
Another year has come to an end, meaning it’s time for me to write another review of my year in books. I finished the year having read fifty books exactly, and I think it included a similar mix of genres as most years do for me. Without further ado, here we go…
I read several more baseball biographies in 2022, starting with Joseph Thomas Moore’s Larry Doby. Doby does not get nearly as much attention as Jackie Robinson, though, as the first African-American player in the American League, joining the Indians just a few months after Robinson broke through with the Dodgers, he endured many similar experiences. He also came maddeningly close to being the first African-American manager in the MLB, though it was not to be. Lonnie Wheeler’s The Bona Fide Legend of Cool PapaBell was a fascinating read. Bell must have been quite the player! The book also provides insight into the workings of the Negro Leagues. Lew Freedman’s Warren Spahn was okay, but it had some glaring errors in it which should easily have been caught if not avoided in the first place. Doug Wilson’s Brooks is excellent. Even if you’re not an Orioles fan, there is not much debate that Brooks Robinson was the best third baseman in MLB history—certainly the best defensive third baseman. The book recounts his outstanding baseball career but also describes his personal life. Uppity, by Bill White, is a great baseball book but also a great commentary on society and the inner workings of baseball’s powers that be. White was a player, a radio and television commentator and a league executive, so he has rich and varied perspectives to share. Jim Kaplan’s The Greatest Game Ever Pitched interweaves biographies of Spahn and Juan Marichal with the story of the 1963 game in which the two pitching greats both went sixteen innings, throwing more than 200 pitches each, before the Giants finally won on a Willie Mays solo homer. Great book.
A number of political memoirs were part of my reading. Kayleigh McEnany’s For Such a Time as This was more than a reflection on her time working in the Trump White House. It was polite in references to Trump, sometimes even admiringly so, but it was not as gushy toward him as Sarah Huckabee Sanders’ memoir. Nikki Haley’s Can’t Is Not an Option was her first book, written back in 2012. It describes her growing up years, including unique challenges she faced as the daughter of Sikhs growing up in a small South Carolina town—the first family of Indians to live there, in fact. She describes the challenges she faced being taken seriously in politics, too—challenges she overcame to become not just a state legislator, but the first female and first non-white governor of South Carolina. Kristi Noem’s Not My First Rodeo is a political memoir, but it is a lot more than that. Living in South Dakota likely gives me a greater appreciation for some of what she shares in the book, but its overview of how she grew up and what has influenced her thinking is the main purpose. Of course, as someone widely considered to be a future candidate for national office, it also serves to introduce her to those who don’t know all that much about her.
This is not exactly a political memoir, but it has political relevance, so I will put it here: Fighting for Life by Lila Rose describes how Rose grew up to become one of the most influential anti-abortion activists in the United States and the head of Live Action. It was sad to read that she found such limited support for life among churches she interacted with, leading her to eventually adopt Catholicism, but her perseverance in doing whatever she can to bring an end to abortion is admirable.
The Silencing, by Kirsten Powers, was written in 2015, but I just purchased it last year. It contains a message that is not unlike that in Sharyl Attkisson’s Slanted or similar books, but it does not make her revelations about the manipulation of news and the shutting off of certain perspectives and ideologies any less alarming. Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt wrote The Coddling of the American Mind, an excellent examination of the flaws in critical theory and the increasingly-common practice of shutting out, or shutting up, speech which is deemed offensive.
Carol Berkin is an excellent historian and her book A Brilliant Solution is a fine overview of the crafting of the U.S. Constitution. David Waldstreicher, however, in Slavery’s Constitution, puts slavery at the heart of that document. While the Constitution did kick slavery down the proverbial road for twenty years and failed to deliver on the soaring rhetoric of the Declaration of Independence for just about anyone but white men, Waldstreicher is guilty of some of the same flawed thinking that is seen in the 1619 Project, though not to the same extent. To his credit, he wrote his book nine years before the 1619 Project, but he did defend it.
Nathaniel Philbrick’s Travels with George is an interesting addition to the vast canon of books about Washington. Philbrick and his wife, and their dog, travel to many of the locations that were significant in Washington’s life, leaving readers with a combination history book and travel log. The book’s subtitle is “In Search of Washington and His Legacy,” and I am not sure that it does much to clarify Washington’s legacy, but it was a fun read. Phyllis Lee Levin’s The Remarkable Education of John Quincy Adams describes exactly what the title says, but given that Adams was one of the most qualified individuals to ever hold the office of President of the United States, it is worthwhile reading.
Thomas Kidd’s Thomas Jefferson: A Biography of Spirit and Flesh may be the book that has been missing from the voluminous and ever-increasing mountain of scholarship on Jefferson. It is not a biography in the traditional sense, though it contains some of those elements. Rather, Kidd endeavors to explain Jefferson’s thoughts and beliefs. Perhaps identify them would be a better way to put it than explain, because Jefferson was so full of contradictions that one can not really be expected to either explain or understand. But finally someone, in one relatively small volume, elaborates on the ways in which Jefferson was influenced by the Bible and Christianity while also explaining that while Jefferson claimed to be a Christian, he was not claiming to be one in the sense that anyone else would define that word. This is a must-read for anyone who wants to try to understand Jefferson accurately.
Celia, A Slave, by Melton McLaurin, is a book I picked up in the basement of a combination bookstore/convenience store/souvenir shop in Tennessee. It is an incredible story and one I had never before heard. Celia, at the age of 18, killed her master. To tell much of what happened next would certainly be a spoiler, so I will refrain, but it is a story that deserves to be more widely known—and it is short, at less than 200 pages. David W. Blight’s Frederick Douglass won the Pulitzer Prize for a reason. It is a sizable book but it is an exceptional biography of a key figure in the abolitionist movement and the fight for equality for blacks. Barracoon, by Zora Neal Hurston, recounts her experience in 1927 visiting and interviewing the last-known surviving slave brought to the United States from Africa. That alone would make the book worth reading, but the combination of the memories shared with her by Cudjo Lewis and Hurston’s own observations, the book is an invaluable part of understanding that sad part of American history.
The Zealot and the Emancipator, by H.W. Brands, is a dual biography of John Brown and Abraham Lincoln and how their lives intertwined in the fight against slavery. The book would have tremendous value even if it only described Brown’s raid on Harper’s Ferry, but it does much more than that. Reading it shortly after I read Blight’s biography of Douglass was advantageous, too, since the efforts of Brown and Douglass intertwined literally for a time. Caroline Janney’s Ends of War tells the story of what happened to Confederate soldiers after Lee surrendered at Appomattox. I had read a fair amount about the surrender and about what transpired thereafter on the Union side, but Janney shed light on realities I had never before considered. This is a much-needed book for anyone interested in the end of the Civil War.
Lars Anderson’s Carlisle vs. Army was tremendously interesting and it is probably not a book I would have picked up on my own; it was recommended, and loaned to me, by a friend. It is a story about football but also about Pop Warner, Dwight Eisenhower and Jim Thorpe. It also includes insight into the Native American schools of the period. It was Anderson’s book that prompted me to put David Maraniss’s recent biography of Thorpe on my to-read list (and since I got it for Christmas, I will likely read it in 2023!)
We Were Soldiers Once…And Young, by Harold G. Moore and Joseph Galloway, is a powerful look at a very small part of the Vietnam War—the battle in the Ia Drang valley. I know it has been made into a movie, but I haven’t seen it. I cannot imagine how a movie could do it justice. Anyone reading it has to come away with an incredible appreciation for what the men sent into that valley did and endured, regardless of opinions on the war itself.
After Queen Elizabeth II died, I decided I would finally read Sally Bedell Smith’s Elizabeth the Queen, which Smith wrote a decade ago and which had probably been sitting on my shelf almost that long. It was a delightful and enlightening book. Smith is an American, so she had a unique and perhaps more neutral perspective that some other authors might have—though she clearly sided more with Charles than Diana in their marital issues, which surprised me. Obviously, since it was written in 2012, the last years of Elizabeth’s life and reign are not included, but for anyone interested in knowing more about the queen as a person, about her reign and about her approach to her responsibilities as monarch, I would recommend this book. (As an aside, it also helps those who have seen the various movies and television series about the royal family know how much of it is fact and how much is fiction; in the case of The Crown, I would say there is far more fact than fiction).
Leah Wright Rigeur’s The Loneliness of the Black Republican was a thought-provoking look at the African-Americans who were part of the Republican party from the 1940s to the 1980s—a group that was a distinct minority among African-Americans and within the Republican party. Sadly, the Republican party has still not, in 2022, done what it could and should do to attract African-Americans to the party.
Thomas Sowell’s Inside American Education is about twenty years old now and some of what he writes about here is no longer pertinent. A surprising amount of it is, however. Sowell expresses real frustration with the American education system, most of it well-justified. Some of his frustration seems to be directed at teachers, and could even be taken as thinking poorly of teachers, but I think he is mostly frustrated with a system that allows ineffective teachers to remain ineffective and employed. I also read his Charter Schools and Their Enemies, which is only a couple of years old. There is a lot to like about charter schools in theory but they are not the perfect solution to the problems that are endemic in American public education. Still, Sowell effectively highlights the way so many of those who oppose charter schools—specifically teachers’ unions and educators—are in fact hurting the educational prospects for the very children they are, at least in theory, supposed to be concerned about educating.
Go Down, Moses by William Faulkner was one of the classics I read in 2022. I do not think it would be my first choice as assigned reading for a high school class if I wanted a fictional work that addresses the relationship between whites and blacks in America, and specifically the way that relationship changed after the Civil War, but it is worth reading.
I have not seen the movie based on the book, but I read Cormac McCarthy’s No Country for Old Men. It is quite a tale; not what I expected initially, to be honest. I can see how it could generate good discussion in a class or a reading group.
The Horsewoman, by James Patterson and Mike Lupica, is a different style than most of the other Patterson books I have read, which tend to include police detectives and murders. There were parts of it that were predictable, and it bears many of the hallmarks of Patterson’s writing style, but it was a decent read. The Russian, by Patterson and James O. Born, is the thirteenth book in the Detective Michael Bennett series and is much more typical Patterson fare. Sparring Partners, by John Grisham, is a collection of three short stories, the first of which brings back Jake Brigance—a character familiar to Grisham fans. The stories were enjoyable, but I don’t think they rise to the advertised level of “three of the greatest stories Grisham has ever told.” Grisham’s stand-alone novel for the year was The Boys From Biloxi, which I found to be different than many of Grisham’s books and one of his better offerings in recent years. In some ways it reminded me of a Jeffrey Archer book in the way that it looked at the way two individuals grew up in the same town, originally as friends and later as opponents. Speaking of Jeffrey Archer, his Next in Line is the latest installment in the Detective William Warwick series and is what one expects from Archer. Though still dealing with Miles Faulkner, Warwick also gets involved in rooting out problems in the royal protection division. Daniel Silva’s Portrait of an Unknown Woman finds Gabriel Allon finally retired from his position in the Israeli intelligence service, but he still draws on heir resources numerous times to solve the riddle of forged paintings and murder. Along with Archer’s book, Silva provides an enjoyable read along with insight into the world of fine art.
Marie Benedict’s The Mystery of Mrs. Christie is a fictional account of what may have happened during the real-life disappearance of Agatha Christie for eleven days in 1926. The Washington Post called the ending “ingenious,” but I think that’s a stretch. Still, it was an enjoyable read and it does offer an interesting possible explanation for her disappearance. Kristin Harmel’s The Book of Lost Names is a riveting bit of historical fiction, telling the story of forgers who helped to save Jewish children from the Nazis. The ending is too perfect—predictable but oh-so-unlikely; that aside, it is a book I would highly recommend.
Ellen Marie Wiseman’s The Lost Girls of Willowbrook is not a book I would recommend, or not casually. To the right reader I might. It is a work of fiction and the bulk of it is centered on what has to be among the most common nightmare scenarios known to mankind—being wrongly locked up in a mental hospital with no one outside knowing where you are and no one inside believing your story. Mix in a serial killer and you get the book’s gist. What is perhaps most alarming, however, is that Willowbrook was a real place, on Staten Island, survivors of which are still living. Wiseman admittedly takes liberties with the story, but far too much of it is based on reality. If anyone thought One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest was bad, The Lost Girls of Willowbrook takes it up a notch—or three. Wiseman has Nurse Vic to Kesey’s Nurse Ratched, but she is not the major figure in the story. The book has a lot of profanity, though; far more than I think necessary even given the story.
The Sower, by R. Scott Rodin & Gary Hoag, provides a biblical look at fundraising and financial giving. It is a short book but has valuable insights for those tasked with raising money and those seeking to steward wisely their financial resources. The Leadership Secrets of Santa Claus, by Steve Ventura, et. al., was an easy read. It does contain some valuable leadership principles but there is nothing there that cannot be found in other leadership books. Leonard Strob’s Mission Directed is written for leaders of Christian schools—namely administrators and board members—but it could be helpful for the leaders of other ministries, too. It would be a helpful resource for board training and development.
Rod Dreher’s Live Not by Lies is subtitled “A Manual for Christian Dissidents.” It is a good book and an important book but it also comes up short. Dreher effectively highlights the similarities that exist between what is happening in America today and what happened in totalitarian regimes, specifically the USSR, in the past. However, other than one brief mention, he either does not see or chooses not to point out that some of the things he points out are done as much by Donald Trump and his America First minions as they are by progressives and the political left. It is a significant misstep. It is a misstep shared by Os Guiness in his The Magna Carta of Humanity. I have more comments on that book that I usually include in these annual rundowns, so see the comments at the end if you are interested.
Dane Ortlund’s Deeper is a book about sanctification, a subject that does not get nearly the attention it should in evangelical churches. It is not about sanctification in the way many would assume, however. His Gentle and Lowly is a study of Matthew 11 and is an effort to understand the mind and heart of Christ. It draws extensively on Puritan writers. Before You Lose Your Faith is edited by Ivan Mesa and includes essays by a dozen or so Christian thinkers, including Trevin Wax, Brett McCracken, Karen Swallow Prior and Jared C. Wilson. It is a book intended to address the “deconstructing” movement and it addresses a variety of topics that those with questions would likely consider. A good read for someone straying into deconstructing or for anyone who wants to be able to effectively provide answers to someone who is doing so. The Believer’s Armor, by John MacArthur, is basically a transcript of MacArthur’s sermons on the fifteen verses in Ephesians 6 that describe the armor of God. Wayne and Elliott Grudem’s Christian Beliefs is a short book with short chapters providing an overview of “twenty basics” of the Christian faith. I don’t agree with the Grudems on all twenty, but it is a helpful book, especially for someone who is a young Christian or who needs reinforcement in the foundational elements of faith.
Sam Storms and Justin Taylor edited For the Fame of God’s Name: Essays in Honor of John Piper. As in any such book, some of the essays were better than others. Of course, different people reading the book might also have different opinions about which ones the “better” ones are. I particularly enjoyed a couple of the essays about Piper the man, in a biographical sense, but I think Bruce Ware’s essay, “Prayer and the Sovereignty of God” might be the entry that I found most meaningful and thought-provoking. I also appreciated Justin Taylor’s essay outlining how faithfully and effectively Piper preached against abortion during his years in the pulpit at Bethlehem Baptist Church. Oddly enough, given his reputation as a Greek scholar, I found William Mounce’s essay the least effective of the book and found myself disagreeing strongly with his recommendations for how to use, and not use, Greek in preaching.
Timothy Keller’s Hidden Christmas is a short book, one that could easily be read in the days leading up to Christmas, and I would recommend it for that. Keller brings attention to the importance of Christmas and provides unique perspectives on some of the realities of the birth of Christ.
So, there it is, another quick rundown of another fifty books.
The Magna Carta of Humanity, by Os Guinness, is a bit of an odd book. The cover features the famous picture of Washington crossing the Delaware. The book’s subtitle is “Sinai’s Revolutionary Faith and the Future of Freedom.” Guinness dedicates the book to Rabbi Jonathan Sacks and indicates at the end that it is a tribute to the exposition of Exodus by Sacks. More than once I wondered if I would have been better off just reading Sacks and Rabbi Heschel, so often and so extensively did Guinness quote them. Guinness endeavors to make the point that the covenant between God and the nation of Israel at Sinai is the real impetus for the design of American government and freedom and that “a rediscovery of the foundational principles of the Exodus Revolution” is what is necessary to heal America. But only in the last two chapters of the book does Guinness ever replace Sinai with Calvary—a hugely significant problem. There are numerous other issues with his contentions as well, but I will confine my comments here to two.
First, Guinness embraces the Jewish understanding of Exodus 3:14, which says, “God said to Moses, ‘I am who I am.’” Rabbi Sacks and others, he points out, put the emphasis on the future tense, rendering the verse, “I will be who I will be.” Guinness says that the danger of the more commonly Christian interpretation “I Am who I Am” is that it takes the understanding in a “Greek direction” and “mak[es] God into…the ‘pure being,’ or the ‘ground of all being’ who does not, cannot and will not change or feel anything.” The not feeling anything is a stretch, but I see no problem at all with the rest of that. It is in fact imperative that we understand God as unchanging. The idea that God will be who He will be, apart from who He is, leaves open the possibility that God can be anything at all in the future. Oddly, Guinness even states this, writing, “God, as he reveals himself at Sinai and afterward, is faithful and unchanging….”
Second, Guinness either fails to understand or chooses not to acknowledge that much of what he calls the Exodus Revolution was expanded, for the better, by the teachings of Jesus. For example, he quotes Exodus 22:21 as a “command to ‘love the stranger as yourself’” that “flies squarely in the face of the human tendency to care only for ‘people like us’….” But that is not what Exodus 22:21 says. That verse is actually a negative command—“You shall not wrong a sojourner or oppress him, for you were sojourners in the land of Egypt.” So, too, is the next verse—“You shall not mistreat any widow or fatherless child.” Not wronging or mistreating someone is certainly a good thing, but it is not nearly the same as doing good to them. One is not doing a bad thing, the other is doing a good thing. It was not until Jesus’s instruction to “do to others as you would have them do to you” that it became a positive command.
It is not a bad book, but it would not be high on the list of books I would recommend to someone wanting to study the issues Guinness intends to address.
THINKING OUT LOUD 