On 'Good Uses' for the Confederate Battle Flag

One of my colleagues in the ministry of the Lutheran Church - Missouri Synod (LCMS) recently wrote that among "good uses" for the Confederate battle flag are "diaper, shop rag, kindling, stuffing for a pillow, burping cloth," and "toilet paper."  In the ensuing discussion - which I was not a part of - he added, "It's a treason/slavocracy flag.  Plain and simple.  It's the revisionists that have a complete lack of understanding of history."

Fortunately, this kind of churlish and disrespectful rhetoric is not common among my brethren in the ministerium.  

But it is a helpful window into how much our education system and culture have degraded.  There was indeed a time when the movie Idiocracy was a farcical comedy and not a documentary.

His assertion is that anyone who disagrees with him is a "revisionist" with a "complete lack of understanding of history."  My colleague is quick to point out that he is a Ph.D. student.  I wonder if his Declaration of Historical Ignorance applies to scholars like Clyde N. Wilson, M.E. Bradford, Richard M. Weaver, Jr., or the twelve scholars known as the Southern Agrarians - among many others in the Southern intellectual tradition. 

Maybe these men, unlike my enlightened and brilliant colleague, were all just stupid.

My colleague's hubris is the inevitable result of history being taught in our schools as "social studies," as political activism, where intelligent discussion is replaced by an iron-fisted intolerance of dissent, where history is not permitted to be a dialogue between different schools of thought, but rather a Pharisaical, virtue-signaling, one-size-fits-all interpretation to be determined by the state and its interests.  And in such a Soviet-style 1619 Project-based "education" paradigm, there is no room for historiography or the examination of original source material from differing sides of a conflict.

In the current paradigm, there are not many perspectives and voices in the study of history, only the right view (which is politically-correct) and the wrong view (which is deemed "white supremacist").  The arrogance and ignorance in my colleague's rhetoric takes the tack that he has read deeply on the subject, and has considered various perspectives.  And having done so, anyone who disagrees with him is a "revisionist."  

But just what has been revised?

In any conflict, there are different assumptions and interpretations.  That's why there are conflicts.  This is why there are debates and disputes, and this is why there are wars.  Johnny says the toy is his.  Mary says the toy is hers.  Each child sees his claim as valid.  If the children cannot agree, an adult will have to step in and resolve the dispute.  And lacking such a judge, the larger and stronger child will simply prevail.  And the smaller child's perspective may or may not be remembered.  The result of the bigger child winning may well simply be accepted by all as the outcome.  But the point is that there is a dispute because there are two different claims of ownership.

In the war of American secession from Great Britain, there were two rival claimants as the legitimate overarching government of the colonies/states.  And in international disputes, there is no authority, no adult to decide to which child the toy belongs.  And so there is sometimes war to "settle" the matter.  In the case of the First American War of Independence, the secessionists won, and American government schools generally teach the school of history friendly to the rebels, while the loyalist point of view, if taught at all, is downplayed.

And yet, regardless of who wins or loses, there are differences of opinion.  To really understand what happened, it is important to consider all points of view - even if, and especially if, one's opinion is biased toward one side or the other.

Our Confederate ancestors - be they the politicians who led, the military personnel who fought, or the civilians on the home-front who supported the war effort and suffered depredation - had a point of view.  It was based on the Jeffersonian understanding of the Union, the compact theory of the Constitution.  Their opponents held to the Hamiltonian perspective of the Union, the nationalist interpretation of the Constitution.  This dispute predates the Constitution itself, as manifest in the debate between the so-called Federalists and the Anti-Federalists.  To this day, both views are held by different camps of Americans.  Without understanding this nuance, it is impossible to make sense of the conflict.  Nor is it possible to go beyond the churlish historiography of "the toy is mine and anyone who disagrees with me is a poopy-head."

Unfortunately, the "poopy-head" theory of history is precisely what is being taught in our schools and on our ubiquitous TV screens.  It is pushed in popular culture and shrieked by activists.  It is how most of our politicians operate.  And it is, of course, based on the victors' perspective and the Big-Government Hamiltonian school.  It ignores the Jeffersonian model that has, of course, been around since the beginning of the Republic.  It ignores the fact that there has been no "revision" - as the Southern perspective on the War for Southern Independence has been consistently taught for a century and a half.  The idea that there was a consensus and a united historiography until now - when all of the sudden, people invented a new history, a revised history - is simply objectively untrue.

The radical changes in our culture and worldview: the resurgence of socialism, the new interpretation of all American history as "racist," the plummeting test scores for Americans in literacy and math, the politicization of every educational subject, and even the normalization of the Frankfurt School's Critical Theory in matters of race and sex are all evidence that we are not dealing with historical revisionism, but rather a social and cultural revolution.  And the teaching of history has been coopted by this movement.  The 1619 Project agenda - with its demonstrable falsehoods - has been mainstreamed.  Sadly, my colleague has fallen for it.  But it is also part of a psychological agenda to be on the Hegelian "right side of history."  People want to be part of the "winning team."  And from where we stand right now, the malleable and political "right side of history" is with the iconoclasts who are toppling monuments - not only memorials to Confederate history, but to American history as a whole.  My colleague will either one day scratch his head when statues to Washington, Jefferson, and even Lincoln and Grant come down (which has already begun), or he will be so invested by that point that he will be part of the mob, self-righteously calling for their eradication.

But perhaps more disturbing than his shocking ignorance of history and historiography is his hatred toward people who hold the Confederate battle flag with reverence.

Symbols are, by nature, subjective.  Most Americans hold the Stars and Stripes dear.  And this can be for many reasons.  It may be as simple as a love for one's home.  It may be that one's family members fought in past wars for the nation.  It may be that one sees in the flag the principles of liberty.  Or it may be a combination of all three.

But there are also other opinions. 

Perhaps someone is a recent immigrant without any particular sense that the flag represents his home.  It may be that one's ancestors - like perhaps the American Indians - fought against the United States, and may have even been oppressed by the United States or by individual Americans.  It may be that one believes that the premise of liberty is a lie, as one's family may have been transported as slaves on boats flagged with Old Glory, or one's recent family were interned in camps for Asians during World War II with the Stars and Stripes on the flagpole, or maybe one has been railroaded by a crooked prosecutor representing the federal government.

How might a victim of the My Lai massacre see the US flag?  How about those whose families were incinerated by bombs dropped on civilian targets by the United States?  What if one's entire family, innocent of any wrongdoing, were wiped out in a drone strike?  Do such events in history mitigate against a family in Peoria putting out Old Glory on the house for the 4th of July?  Would it be within the grounds of propriety to suggest that the flag of the United States should be used as toilet paper?  

After all, as the 1619 Project will gladly point out, just as Robert E. Lee was an aristocratic Virginia rebel who fought for a county that had black slaves, so too was Washington.  In fact, Washington's image appears on the great seal of the CSA.  Every stripe on the current US flag stands for a slave state in 1776.  Nearly every signer of the Declaration of Independence was a slaveholder.  And on that 4th of July, the slaveholding United States seceded from a nation that had abolished slavery.  The 1619 Project holds that the entire reason for being for the United States was the preservation of slavery, and thus slavery must be the single interpretive lens for reading American history.

The narrative sounds vaguely familiar, doesn't it?

Another similar disagreement over history and symbols is seen in the intertwined history of England and Scotland.  For centuries, Scottish rebels fought in wars of independence against their English overlords.  In the 13th and 14th centuries, Sir William Wallace led the Scottish bid for independence, until he was captured.  He was tried for treason, tortured, and executed as an enemy of the state.  His head was put on a pike to discourage any further rebellions.  Centuries later, following another Scottish rebellion in 1745 - one that members of my own namesake ancestors participated in - the defeated Scots, who had already been banned from speaking their native language, were proscribed from wearing their traditional tartan symbols of their tribal allegiances.  

And yet today, a monument and statue of William Wallace stands at the site of one of his greatest victories over England.  Today, members of the English royal family wear kilts bearing the tartans of their own Scottish ancestors.  The flags of Scotland and England are both part of the flag representing the political Union between the two.  And in spite of both waving the Union Jack, both singing God Save the Queen, they are separate countries.  When there is a soccer game between England and Scotland, the English sing their national anthem Jerusalem, while the Scots sing their anthem of rebellion Flower of Scotland.  Both sides have a perspective, a narrative, a historiography, but as a people coexisting in a Union, there is mutual respect.  And while the flags of England and Scotland are waved by the rivals in the stadium, and while both sides see their own view as correct, neither side considers it to be its duty to crush a different perspective, or use the other side's symbols for toilet paper.

Southerners are like their British cousins, being inclined to remember their ancestors and nations, while the denizens of other regions of America scoff at such nostalgia.

I have no particular affection for the national symbols that are not my own nor of my heritage.  But I certainly understand that other people do hold these symbols with reverence.  I could not imagine telling my Russian, Kenyan, or Brazilian friends that I would like to use their flags for toilet paper.  I may not respect their symbols as they do, but I respect the people who do respect them, and I understand that which they hold dear may not be that which I view with reverence.  

The Confederate battle flag as we know it today became a unifying symbol for the defeated South, and has since also become a symbol of many things: rock and roll rebellion, motorcycle culture, Southern music, food, and folkways, as well as a symbol of political liberty - as it was waved in East Germany and other Iron Curtain countries as Communism fell and nations held captive were permitted to secede and establish home rule apart from colonial oversight.  It continues to be treasured the world over.  It is a symbol that we continue to place at the graves of our ancestors - a characteristic of Southern culture that often mystifies people from other regions who perhaps could not even tell you the names of their own grandparents, have no particular attachment to familial land, and who care little for their heritage.

How many bumper stickers or tee shirts have you seen that say, "American by birth, Midwestern by the grace of God"?

I have been a member of the Sons of Confederate Veterans for nearly 30 years.  It is in one sense a genealogical society, but it is really much more than that.  When the Confederate veterans returned to civilian life, they received no federal pensions, and in many cases, their destroyed states were too poor to provide for their needs.  And so, they created a veterans' organization, the United Confederate Veterans (UCV) in 1889.  And their daughters stepped up, establishing the United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC) in 1894 to establish homes for the aging veterans and to erect monuments and grave markers.  Their sons established the Sons of Confederate Veterans (SCV) in 1896 to be the legal successor organization to the UCV.

There has been a continuum from the veterans themselves, to their sons and daughters, to their grandchildren who continue to honor their memories today.  We are the guardians of their history, their stories, and their artifacts.  We have their diaries and their writings. We have their uniforms and their flags.  We meet each and every year, as we have without fail since 1896.  We are the inconvenient speedbumps to the 1619 Project and its Orwellian scheme to rewrite history and crush dissent.  And we are also living monuments, whose very existence is repugnant to the keepers of the Marxist oppression narrative.

Perhaps the most repugnant aspect of my colleague's words is the obliviousness to the fact that other people, those who have a different historiography than he, those with family ties to the South, hold the Confederate battle flag with affection, see it as a symbol of their own families - ancestors and descendants alike - and use it as a funerary device.  Of course, we continue to mark and visit the graves of our veteran ancestors - some of whom lived full lives after the war and were buried in family plots, and some of whom fell in battle and were thrown into unmarked trenches and mass graves.  The monuments across the South serve as grave-markers for those who were never found.  

Today, not only are these statues, many more than a century old, being toppled by mobs (often while police watch passively) and removed by legislatures, mayors, and governors - even grave markers and tombstones are being vandalized and destroyed, all with self-righteous justification.  And of course, this cancer of the vandalism of graves has metastasized and spread even to the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier of the American Revolution.

When nothing is sacred, even funerary symbols are treated with contempt.

And the Confederate battle flag is not only used to mark the graves of Confederate veterans.  For it is a symbol of our heritage, and our families are a continuation of that heritage.  For example, when my fifteen year old son died suddenly and tragically last year, he was buried with certain symbols.  First, of course, was the cross that he wore to serve with me at the altar for seven years.  The cross is the symbol of his redemption and of his impending resurrection.  Second, he was buried in the dress blue uniform of the US Air Force Auxiliary: the Civil Air Patrol.  He loved serving his community, state, and nation, and held the rank of Cadet First Lieutenant.  He saluted the US flag and was even called on a live mission for the Air Force on one occasion.  Like many Confederate descendants, he was an American patriot and served his country insofar as he was able to do so at his young age.  

I do regret that I didn't also bury him with a piece of the MacBean family tartan, as he was proud of that aspect of his heritage as well, and the DNA in his bones reflect our brave ancestors who fought for their country and clan, as well as for political liberty and independence.  That too is part of who we are as a family - past, present, and future.

But I did bury my boy, a member of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, with two Confederate battle flags (a generic one, and the flag of a Virginia military unit) - the symbols of which my colleague thinks should be used as toilet paper.  By contrast, that symbol meant a great deal to my son.  He knew his heritage.  And just as he saluted Old Glory, he also saluted the flags of the Confederacy.  He stood for Dixie.  Along with his favorite pop music, he listened to the old songs of our ancestors: Dixie, The Bonnie Blue Flag, I'm a Good Old Rebel, and many others.  He understood that God created him incarnationally as part of a family, bearing flesh that was given to him from his ancestors: including men who fought for Scottish independence, American independence, and Southern independence.

Tolerance is the hallmark of a civilized and intelligent people.  Only barbarians and savages cannot understand that there are many different sides to a conflict, and that it is natural and laudable to honor one's fathers and mothers and respect one's heritage while being respectful of the heritage of others.  Our country and our culture have descended to a dark and sinister place, one where there are masters on the top of the pyramid, who dictate history and historiography to the rest of us, who sit in judgment of our heritage and of our ancestors, who tell us what we are permitted to believe and hold dear, a place where we who dissent are being increasingly marginalized, proscribed, and even subjected to violence.

And no matter how crass, vile, hateful, and churlish people like my colleague are, and will continue to be, I am honored that my son awaits the resurrection with symbols of who God created him to be in this life: a Christian, an American, and a Southerner - as well as a dissident against an increasingly intolerant and totalitarian culture and state.  

May he rest in peace until I see him again.  Deo vindice.

Tolerance, Part Two

As a postscript to my previous post on tolerance, my interlocutor replied in an interesting way.  He revealed that he cannot possibly see any other point of view - not even theoretically - than that the hundreds of thousands of men who fought in the Confederate armed forces - and the millions of civilians who supported them - were "traitors," saying, "How else could they be described?"

He says, "They fought against the Governing Authorities, the United States Government, and they lost."

His reference to the "governing authorities" comes from the English Standard Version translation of Romans 13:1-6, in which St. Paul writes:

"Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God. Therefore whoever resists the authorities resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment. For rulers are not a terror to good conduct, but to bad. Would you have no fear of the one who is in authority? Then do what is good, and you will receive his approval, for he is God's servant for your good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword in vain. For he is the servant of God, an avenger who carries out God's wrath on the wrongdoer. Therefore one must be in subjection, not only to avoid God's wrath but also for the sake of conscience. For because of this you also pay taxes, for the authorities are ministers of God, attending to this very thing. Pay to all what is owed to them: taxes to whom taxes are owed, revenue to whom revenue is owed, respect to whom respect is owed, honor to whom honor is owed."

The implication is clear, our Confederate ancestors were sinning against God, because God had apparently determined that the Hamiltonian legal theory is correct and the Jeffersonian legal theory is not.  And also notice that he adds "and they lost."  According to this logic, the sinfulness or righteousness of a particular act depends upon the outcome.  So if your state secedes and you defend your state, there is no way to know whether this is sinful or not at the time.  If the mother country recognizes your independence, then it is not sinful.  If the mother country does not recognize your independence, and unleashes a military invasion - then it is still up in the air.  If there is a war of independence, and you win the war, your act of secession is, ex post facto, not sinful.  But if you lose your war of independence, your act of secession is, ex post facto, sinful.

This exposes a remarkable flaw in the ethics of my interlocutor's view.

It is akin to saying that if a guy shoplifts, it is only sinful if he gets caught.  It is also a variation of "might makes right," that an act is moral if one has the sheer force to get away with it.

The question of whether or not secession is legal or illegal, moral or immoral, cannot be grounded in the ultimate success of the action without adopting a kind of moral relativism.

Moreover, in appealing to a particular historiography of the United States Constitution combined with the "might makes right" premise, what does this say about slavery?  To use my interlocutor's reasoning, under the "governing authorities" of the day - both that of the private slaveholder and the United States government as authorized by the Constitution, slaves are obliged not to rebel, and anyone giving a runaway slave aid and comfort (such as the Underground Railroad) are condemned under the same moral principal laid down by my interlocutor.  Slavery was legal according to the United States Constitution.  And according to the Fugitive Slave Acts, anyone discovering runaways were obliged to turn them in and return them to their masters.  Hence Lincoln's misnamed Emancipation Proclamation not only protected slavery in the Northern states where it existed, but specifically exempted Confederate territory occupied by Union forces, such as my own Jefferson Parish, Louisiana (mentioned by name in the Proclamation).  In other words, the Union Army, under the auspices of the Constitution, made it their policy to return runaway slaves to their masters and bolstered the institution of slavery.  My interlocutor's belief that federal law trumps all is a pro-slavery assertion.

He also accuses Confederate officers who were "graduates of our service academies" of "betraying their Oaths as Officers of the United States Army or Navy" and compares them to "Tomoya Kawakita" and "Max Haupt."  He also works in the Rosenbergs.  He misunderstands the nature of oaths.  They are no longer in force when a person is no longer a citizen of that country or a member of its armed forces.  For example, if a person were to emigrate from Canada and become a United States citizen - his obligations to the Crown cease and his nationality becomes American.  If he were to join the US military, the president of the United States would be his commander in chief, and the American forces would be his chain of command.  And even if he had served in the Canadian military forces, he is no longer bound by that chain of command.  When I lived in Ohio, I became a notary, and was under oath to the Constitution of the State of Ohio.  When I was no longer a resident of Ohio, my oath was (and is) nullified.

The officers of the United States military forces resigned their commissions with the United States before accepting commissions in their state militias or the military forces of the Confederate States.

This is similar to the argument that I have heard by some Roman Catholics that Luther broke his monastic vows by leaving the authority of the pope and getting married.

Modern American history is taught in a terribly anachronistic way that conveniently serves a narrative.  There is the assumption that the American Nationalism we take for granted today was the same as it was in antebellum America.  It simply was not the case.  There are ulterior motives in vilifying half of the American population of 1861, just as there are reasons why half of the population that voted for Donald Trump are similarly denounced as traitors, Nazis, and racists.  In 1861, people owed their primary allegiance to their states.  That is a fact that is seldom taught in our schools.  One of the results of the Union victory was to establish the supremacy of DC over nearly every aspect of American life.  The federal government today even regulates how big one's toilet bowl may be.  This kind of micromanaging in the lives of our people and states would have been unthinkable in 1861.  Today, DC micromanages school curricula (which explains the self-serving way the War Between the States is taught).  The vast expansion of the powers of Washington that resulted from the Union victory is the subject of Emancipating Slaves, Enslaving Free Men: A History of the American Civil War by Jeffrey Rogers Hummel (no friend of the South and no fan of the CSA).

1861 was very close in time and thought to 1776.  In fact, the last veteran of the Revolutionary War was still living and receiving a pension at the close of the War for Southern Independence.  Men who were brought up to lionize the Virginia General George Washington (whom my interlocutor would have called a traitor and accused of violating Romans 13 had a couple battles gone the other way) likewise lionized Washington's grandson in law, Robert E. Lee.  Many a Southerner went off to war carrying his grandfather's Revolutionary War musket.  Historian James McPherson (a strong partisan of the Union who makes no bones about his biases) conducted a study of letters from the soldiers North and South to determine their motivation for fighting.  His 1994 publication What They Fought For reveals that the Southern soldier saw himself as defending the ideals of 1776, similarly defending his home from invasion just as his secessionist grandfathers did.  The seal of the Confederate States of America features an image of George Washington on his horse.  In the same way that Lutherans see themselves in continuity with the ancient church and not in rebellion against it, Confederates saw themselves in continuity with America - and not in rebellion against it.  They saw their enemies as perverters of the Constitution.  I would bet that not one in a thousand Americans has a clue of any of this.

Moreover, the USMA at West Point taught constitutional law using an 1825 text written by Philadelphia lawyer William Rawle, (1759-1836) a friend of George Washington and an active abolitionist.  Rawle's View teaches the Jeffersonian compact theory of the Constitution.  It argues for the legality of secession and essentially gives a step-by-step guide to how it would be done.  The Jeffersonian view was mainstream in those days.  This is the view of the Constitution that was taught to the military and government leaders in antebellum America.  The Jeffersonian view was so established in antebellum America, that a secession convention was called in Hartford, Connecticut by New England states considering secession in the waning days of the War of 1812 (the war's end brought the secession movement to a close).  There were threats of secession made in Northern states over the annexation of Texas.  Abolitionists like William Lloyd Garrison proposed secession of non-slave states from the Union.  There was no suggestion at that time that secession was treason, as the Jeffersonian view was the mainstream legal theory of the time.  Those court-historians who write the current American school curricula who deny this are either ignorant or engaged in gaslighting, if not outright propaganda.  I would bet that not one in ten thousand Americans knows this.

To have an actual understanding of the conflict instead of an oversimplified Schoolhouse Rock-style self-serving cartoonish court-historian view, it is necessary to examine the motivations of both sides - even if ultimately one disagrees with the Southern argument.  Simply dismissing us as traitors and racists is no different than the modern sepsis of Trump Derangement Syndrome.

Tolerance

On a recent church discussion thread on Facebook, a member of my church body made what was a virtual throwaway comment that the Confederates were "traitors" and that their monuments should never have been erected.  Ironically, his remarks were in the context that he felt that some political opinions of others were disrespectful of his ethnic heritage.  It was a classic moment of projection.  We are now to the point where no dissenting views of American historiography are tolerated, and it is acceptable to say hateful things about certain other ethnicities in the name of "tolerance.  It is downright Orwellian.

I chose not to engage the issue on that forum - which was dedicated to Lutheran education.

This issue is personal to me, as my heritage came from Ground Zero of this conflict between the two sides of the War Between the States.  My folks were Virginians - from what is today West Virginia.  Every branch of my family tree was affected by the conflict - some on either side.

One of my great-great-great-grandfathers, Thomas Benton McLaughlin, was a Union veteran who served with the 10th West Virginia Infantry.  After the war, he enjoyed a career with the Federal government in the Department of the Treasury.  He enjoyed a good pension that was secured to Union veterans by the Grand Army of the Republic (GAR) veterans' lobby.

Prior to his death in 1911, he became close to his granddaughter Mamie Bryan McLaughlin, who was born in 1900.  Her family was broken, and her grandfather was kind to her.  His love and affection made a huge impression on her.  Mamie was my great-grandmother whom we used to visit every Sunday when I was a child.  We were very close.  She knew all of her grandparents and other family members - and I grew up knowing my heritage and feeling a sense of connection to my family.  These were not theoretical characters in a book or marble statues, but my flesh and blood.  I was only one link removed from her grandfather who was born in 1839!

Thomas McLaughlin fought in the Union army because his wife's family were Union sympathizers.  The rest of the family was not.  His brothers Richard and James wore the gray and fought for Virginia in the 25th Infantry regiment.  The family did not own slaves.  It's hard enough to grow potatoes in West Virginia, let alone cotton.  Virginia was not enthusiastic about secession, and initially opted to remain in the Union.  But when Lincoln ordered the invasion of South Carolina, Virginia decided to defend its fellow Southern state from military aggression, and seceded from the Union.  A new confederation of states was formed, and the Confederate States of America raised military forces from the various state militias and fought in defense of its declaration of independence.  Young men across the South volunteered to defend hearth and home from invasion.

At the top of this blogpost is a representation of the regimental flag of the 25th Virginia Infantry.  You can see on the banner some of the horrific battles this unit took part in.  Their story is not unlike those of regiments all across the now-United States.  The battles the regiment fought in in its four years were: Rich Mountain, Cheat Mountain, Jackson's Valley Campaign, Seven Days' Battles, 2nd Manassas, Sharpsburg, Fredericksburg, Siege of Suffolk, Gettysburg, Cold Harbor, the Valley Campaigns of 1864, and the Appomattox Campaign.

My uncle Richard Johnson McLaughlin enlisted at the war's beginning at age 19.  He was wounded in the knee at Gettysburg and captured.  He was paroled and exchanged three months later.  He returned to his unit and was again captured at the Battle of Spotsylvania Courthouse.  He was imprisoned at Point Lookout POW camp in Maryland, where he died three months later of inflammation of the lungs at age 23. Point Lookout had a world-class hospital onsite, but prisoners were not admitted.  They had to make do with primitive field hospitals.  More than 4,000 prisoners whose names are known perished there.  Estimates are that as many as 8,000 actually died there, as many names have been found in records that are not recorded on the site's monument.

His brother James Buchanan McLaughlin, obviously also my uncle, enlisted with his brother at age 18.  He was captured at the Wilderness and sent to the POW camp at Belle Plain, then on to Point Lookout where his brother died - after which, he was sent to the notorious Elmira Camp in New York - which housed 12,000 prisoners and boasted a 25% death rate.  He survived ten months before taking the oath of loyalty to the United States after the war's end.  After returning home, he married and had a family of ten children.  He died in 1940 at the age of 97 in Glendon, West Virginia.  His brief account of his war service has survived.

Americans across the North and South continued to honor their veterans during their lifetime and beyond.  The United Confederate Veterans (UCV) chose the Sons of Confederate Veterans (SCV) as its successor.  The Grand Army of the Republic (GAR) did the same with the Sons of Union Veterans of the Civil War (SUVCW).  Both the SCV and the SUVCW still exist today, as does the United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC).  These are hereditary societies that honor their veterans and keep the family history alive.

My Southern ancestors had a rougher go of it post-war than my grandfather Thomas McLaughlin.  Pensions for the Confederate veterans had to come out of state budgets - and the states were decimated by the war.  The federal government did however recognize the service of the Confederate veterans and supplied tombstones for them and allowed them to be buried in national cemeteries.  As the men of that generation were dying off, the federal government decreed that Confederate veterans were legally U.S. veterans and entitled to the same benefits as their Union counterparts.

Whether or not the Confederates were traitors has nothing to do with slavery or whether your family wore the blue or the gray.  It is an objective legal question relating to the nature of the Constitutional Union and a moral question based on natural rights.  The United States of America was itself formed by thirteen acts of secession from the British Empire, as well as a confederation of states in defense against the spurned "mother country" who declared the seceding states to be in a state of rebellion.

At very least, if Robert E. Lee is to be denigrated as a traitor, so must George Washington be.

Secession is one way in which new governments - governments recognized by the United States and the world - are formed.  Texas seceded from Mexico.  Panama seceded from Columbia.  Eritrea seceded from Ethiopia.  Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia seceded from the Soviet Union.  South Sudan seceded from Sudan.  And of course, every July 4th, Americans celebrate "Independence Day" - honoring the joint act of secession by the original 13 United States from Great Britain.  Surely, the participants in all of those acts of secession are not to be denigrated.

Of course, a legal argument regarding the nature of the US Constitution can be made both ways: the Hamiltonian "national" historiography or the Jeffersonian "compact" view of the Constitution.  The fact that the former has become politically correct - largely by a kind of guilt by association of the latter with slavery - is irrelevant to the question.  Whether or not the Confederates were traitors is a legal question regarding secession, and that question has nothing to do with slavery.  There were slave-owners and non-slave-owners on both sides of the secession issue in both north and south.  In Louisiana, the largest plantations of slave-owners actually favored the status quo, and those parishes were most loyal to the Union.  And the converse is also true: the parishes with little slave ownership were more willing to take a risk on secession and confederation with the other Southern states.

Interestingly, after the war ended, there were no treason trials.  Confederate President Jefferson Davis was held as a POW for two years, but was bailed out and all charges were dropped.  The Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, Salmon P. Chase, was of the opinion that it was too risky to try Davis for treason - as there was a risk that he might win his case and vindicate the South.  There was a general amnesty, and as both sections worked to reunify the country, both sides honored their war dead.  In fact, the veterans who wore the blue and gray held joint reunions.  In 1894, Mississippi incorporated the Confederate battle flag into its state flag.  On into the 20th century, US presidents dedicated monuments to the men on both sides of the conflict who wore the uniform and died for their respective American countries - now reunified into one nation. 

All over the country, the veterans were honored in parades, and as their numbers dwindled, monuments were erected in their honor.  At the fifty year point, there was an upsurge in interest in honoring all of the veterans.  In 1913, a joint reunion was held at Gettysburg.  Amazingly, the few remaining survivors met again in 1938 to celebrate the 75th anniversary!  More monuments went up as the last remaining veterans were dying off.  In the late 1950s, as the 1961 centennial of the war approached, there was great nostalgia in movies, TV shows, and pop songs.  President Eisenhower (a great student of the war and admirer of General Robert E. Lee) urged each state to take proactive measures to honor their respective War Between the States veterans and history.  A few days later, Judge Bell of Georgia submitted a redesigned memorial state flag incorporating the Confederate battle flag.

However, the historiography taught in schools over the past several decades has been shaped by textbooks by openly Socialist historians such as Howard Zinn and Eric Foner.  Their Marxist lens and northern bias has become the mainstream historiography in nearly every public and private school in America.  Over time, the Confederate cause has been vilified.  And this Marxist bias has resulted in the removal of not only monuments to Confederate veterans, but even movements to remove (some of which have been successful) tributes to George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson, Lewis and Clark, Christopher Columbus, and even people like the musician Stephen Foster and actors Lillian Gish and John Wayne.  Schools in Louisiana named after President George Washington and Governor Francis Nicholls were renamed because of political correctness.  There is an iconoclastic witch hunt to tear down monuments and plaques to anyone from the past who does not conform to our current acceptable mores.

And unfortunately, our country is becoming less literate, more angry, less devoted to the past, intolerant, and increasingly ignorant of even the most basic facts of American history.  It is also becoming oppressive to hold a view contrary to the Marxist historiography, as violence against someone defending a dissenting historiography is not uncommon - especially on college campuses.

Those of us who honor our ancestors who fought for the Confederate States of America, and even those who simply appreciate the other side of the story to get a deeper understanding of the conflict are being forced into a closet, lest they be doxxed and shunned and exposed to violence.  It is as though any dissenting viewpoint will not be tolerated.  The well-honed arguments arguing for the compact theory of the Constitution have been relegated to the Memory Hole, and anyone who believes that a case can be made for it is subject to whatever punishment is necessary to shut him up or compel him to say that 2 + 2 = 5.

The people that sport "coexist" bumper stickers are operating under a different definition than what the word objectively means.

As for me, I have family on both sides.  I was taught history at an Ohio school named for Abraham Lincoln.  After decades of study, I believe that my Confederate ancestors were right.  The USA was constituted as a Federal, not a National system.  Many of the founders wanted a National system, but backed off and sold the Constitution as a Federal system - knowing that the American people would have rejected such a plan that would have reduced their states to provinces and given them a new incarnation of Parliament and George III.  These arguments are laid out in the Federalist papers and the Antifederalist papers - which were at one time required reading in public schools.  Even following the logic of the Federalists, the states had the right to secede, and the federal government aggressed against them when they invaded.  President Buchanan did not invade South Carolina in 1860 or 1861.  He understood that the Constitution gave him no authority to do so.  President Lincoln, however, made violating the Constitution a routine practice.

Those who are intolerant of those of us who reject the Zinn/Foner historiography of American history should strive to be more tolerant.  They should understand that while they have their opinion, it is an interpretation of the facts - and other decent people may disagree.  America is a multi-ethnic society, and Southern heritage is part of that tapestry.  Of the 50 stars on our flag, 13 of them are Confederate states that were annexed by the United States.  And just as each state has its own history, and just as each ethnicity brings in its own story into the American experience, there is no one claim to what constitutes "American."  We are all in this together, and we should all be encouraged to honor our heritage and be tolerant to others.

One could argue that it is not unreasonable for American Indians to wish to see statues to the Buffalo Soldiers removed - as these black US troops took part in the extermination of Indians.  And similarly, black Americans could point to the fact that Indians owned slaves and even fought for the Confederacy - and determine that Indian statues should be torn down.  Indians could argue for the removal of statues to Columbus, and white Americans could argue that Indians such as Chief Joseph, Geronimo, and Red Cloud were traitors who took up arms against the United States, and demand that their memorials be removed.  Some of my ancestors fought against Indians in frontier wars - and those wars were not waged according to the Geneva Convention, with Indians scalping their white POWs.  Would it be reasonable to hold them accountable to current rules of warfare?  Would it be reasonable to be bitter against their descendants today?  Moreover, Indians made war against other Indians.  Black Africans enslaved each other and sold each other to Arabs and Europeans.  Arabs enslaved a huge number of whites.  And the history of Europe is a whole mess of wars and invasions between nationalities.  How are we to iron it all out if we're looking for scapegoats to blame for our own problems, and grievances to collect for points in the victim-Olympics?

And is it reasonable to expect people from the past to live to modern standards?  In our current culture, we consider slaughterhouses and steak restaurants to be normal, the way things have always been.  But there are abolitionists who see the eating of meat as a profound evil.  They are a small minority, and largely dismissed as kooks - but so were the American anti-slavery abolitionists at one time.  What if a hundred years from now, the meat-is-murder argument becomes the dominant and legal view?  What if the eating of meat is seen by our descendants as barbaric, and the slaughter of animals as cruel and immoral?  Would it be wise to tear down statues of Martin Luther King and Rosa Parks because they were not vegetarians?  Would it be proper for our grandchildren to speak ill of us and be disgusted with us because we ate hamburgers?  Should Abraham Lincoln's statues be torn down because he felt it should be illegal for blacks to intermarry with whites or serve on juries, and because he believed society should treat whites as superior?  There has been at least one statue of Gandhi torn down because of his less than enlightened views on race.  What do we expect of people who lived in past epochs?

Instead of celebrating how society has advanced, are we to ever simply destroy our own history with each change, setting fire to everything that came before us?

Of course, we Americans are typically a patriotic people.  But is it possible to have an alternative point of view of history?  What about people whose grandparents were vaporized at Hiroshima and Nagasaki?  Is it unreasonable if they have a different perspective about the US in World War II?  Would it be reasonable to tear down American WW2 monuments out of deference to Japanese-Americans who may be offended?  And what about men like my grandfather who suffered in German POW camps in World War II?  Would it be unreasonable for such men to not be fans of the German language and culture?  Should we ban Oktoberfests for their sakes?

Every ethnicity has its share of legitimate beefs with other ethnicities.  That said, I do believe everyone has the right to honor his own heritage as well as the responsibility to be tolerant of others - even if you disagree with it, and even if you are offended by it.  This is especially true for brothers and sisters in Christ.  For ultimately, our citizenship is in heaven, and our family transcends bloodlines.  We should strive to avoid attacking the ancestry of others in the American tapestry.  I don't expect other Americans to have any interest at all in the history of the Highland Scots.  Why should they?  Their lack of interest is not hatred toward my heritage.  It would be strange indeed to compel non-Scottish children to learn Scottish-American history in school.  Let families instill a sense of ethnic belonging in their children, and let the schools teach everyone to have a voice and celebrate his heritage no matter what it is.  And we need more diversity when it comes to historiography.

How about we take the slogans about tolerance and coexistence and actually put them into practice?

Here is a postscript: Tolerance, Part Two.

Avril vs. Pia

Sometimes the cover is better than the original.

The original by Avril Lavigne:

The cover by Pia Ashley (8,600 views in 6 days!):

I think Pia's voice is richer. Full disclosure: her husband Bryan (playing guitar) is Miz Grace's brother.

Feminization of the Church

The following talk was given by the Rev. Dr. Steve Hein at the 2017 Consortium for Classical Lutheran Education's 17th annual conference in Cheyanne, Wyoming (#CCLEXVII).

Dr. Hein takes up the thorny topic of gender in the church.  But this isn't what you think.  This has nothing to do with "gender identity" and transgenderism.

Rather, he addresses the symptom of modern western churches largely being unrepresented by male parishioners, and the effects which flow from this disparity.  Dr. Hein traces this phenomenon historically - and surprisingly, it isn't rooted in the modern feminist movement, but dates back to the Middle Ages.  This is not only an intriguing topic in terms of history and theology, it is a pastoral issue as well - especially considering the role of fathers in the propagation of the faith to their children and the future of Christianity in the West.

Here are links to the audio:

• Part One 
• Part Two
• Part Three

Other audio and video from the many outstanding presentations can be found here.

A couple of books that Dr. Hein refers to in his presentation are:

• Why Men Hate Going to Church by David Murrow, and 
• The Church Impotent by Leon Podles

A couple of works by Dr. Hein that you might find of interest:

"Fathers, Don't Let Them Die" (blog post)

The Christian Life: Cross or Glory? (book)

Thank you, Dr. Hein, for tackling this controversial and crucial issue to the life and faith of not only ourselves, but our descendants as they battle the world, the devil, and the sinful flesh.  I encourage everyone to listen to his presentation and think about what can be done in your own family and parish for the sake of the Gospel.

What father tells the oncologist of their cancer-stricken child that they will not make their next appointment because it conflicts with her soccer game?  And yet, recent statistics suggest that many of our children baptized as infants joined many a soccer league, but never made it to their confirmation as adolescents.

~ Rev. Dr. Steve Hein

Goals! Devotional and Educational Reading for 2014, etc.

Last year, I read an article that mentioned a book by self-help guru Brian Tracy called Goals! (also available in Kindle format).  I was intrigued enough to buy the e-copy and give it a read.

We Lutherans tend to be smugly skeptical of self-help books, programs, and speakers, because there is so much of this kind of stuff "playing church" out there - supposedly Christian books teaching you how Jesus can help you to have a whiter smile, better breath, bigger hair, a faster private jet, health, wealth, and fame in just seven easy steps - that I think we have a healthy (or sometimes not so healthy) cynicism toward any hint that we can improve ourselves.  We certainly don't want to be accused of denying original sin or not placing the Doctrine of Justification at the front and center, so we typically don't even try to improve ourselves (an endeavor with which the sinful flesh is ever eager to assist).

In fact, the Rev. William Weedon may be on the trajectory to canonization for taking slings and arrows from many of his Lutheran brethren who see his enthusiasm for being healthy and fit to be scandalously un-Lutheran, bordering on the worship of Baal or siding with the French in the Franco-Prussian war.

Well, that's the caricature, anyway.

In spite of my Lutheran scruples, I found the Tracy book (as well as another book of his called No Excuses!) to be intriguing.  The gist of the Goals! book can be found here.

Our own auto-educational program here at Chez Hollywood has included the One Year Bible for several years now, and it is the foundation of our home study and family devotions (along with the LSB family prayer cards from CPH).  We typically add another reading of some sort, before or after COSEMP (the Caffeinated Order of Scrambled Eggs and Morning Prayer) - and the nature of the lection has been wide and varied over the years, e.g. spiritual authors such as Augustine, Chesterton, Pascal, and Lewis, etc. along with the pursuit of academic interests, such as the Free Market newsletter and political, philosophical, and economic thinkers by way of articles, essays, and various other books and podcasts.

For this year's devotional readings, we decided to take up the bibliography given by the Rev. Dr. Joel D. Biermann of Concordia Seminary - St. Louis as part of his course called "Woman and Man According to God's Plan" (we attended an abbreviated version of the lecture series last year in Pensacola).  We also listened to the entire lecture series on a subsequent road trip (available free of charge at iTunes University as video and audio).

Disclaimer: I heartily endorse Dr. Biermann's treatment of the vocation of male and female according to the order of creation, but I completely disagree with his views of government.

Anyway, given that the issue of the roles of the sexes is "the" issue in society, in the Church at large, and even the source of great disagreement within the Lutheran Church - Missouri Synod (which I would refer to as the GMWO issue: gay 'marriage' - women's 'ordination'), we have decided to systematically read through all of the texts referenced in Dr. Biermann's lectures - some of which are theological, some secular.

Here is the list (dates refer to publication):

• Bonhoeffer, Dieterich.  Creation and Fall.  New York: Touchstone, 1983.
• Budziszewski, J.  What We Can't Know: A Guide, Dallas: Spence Publishing Co., 2003.
• Eggerichs, Emerson.  Love and Respect: the Love She Most Desires; the Respect He Desperately Needs, Brentwood, TN: Integrity, 2004.
• Grudem, Wayne, ed.  Biblical Foundations for Manhood and Womanhood, Wheaton, IL: Crossways Books, 2002.
• John Paul II.  The Theology of the Body: Human Love in the Divine Plan: Boston: Pauline Books & Media, 1997.
• Rhoads, Steven E.  Taking Sex Differences Seriously.  San Francisco: Encounter Books, 2004.
• Sax, Leonard.  Why Gender Matters: What Parents and Teachers Need to Know About the Emerging Science of Sex Differences, New York: Doubleday, 2005.
• Zerbst, Fritz.  The Office of Woman in the Church: A Study in Practical Theology.  St. Louis: CPH, 1955.

Since it was available electronically, we started with Eggerichs's Love and Respect right off the bat.  The author is a Ph.D. and an ordained Protestant minister who spent many years serving as a pastor.  We both found his book remarkably illuminating - even as we celebrate our 20th anniversary next month.  We would love to have had this book when we were first married.  Today's feminist culture virtually assures that men and women go into marriage brainwashed that there are no fundamental differences between the sexes other than the obvious plumbing, and to the really radical, perhaps admitting some very slight difference in upper body strength (although TV shows and movies have largely taught us that women and men are even identical in regards to physical strength, Girl Power and all that).

We highly recommend Dr. Eggerich's book for married people, engaged couples, and anyone who might want to be married.  I recommend the book also to pastors.  It is a scriptural treatment of how husbands and wives can better communicate with one another, and avoid the communication breakdown the author calls "the crazy cycle."  It is a very practical work, fun to read, based on both scripture and years of seminars given by the author and his wife.

We have bought Grudem, Rhodes, and Sax in non-digital form, and they are patiently waiting their turns.  We will buy the others as the time gets closer, though the Fritz book is out of print and may prove more of a challenge.  We are working through Dr. Sax's book (Why Gender Matters) now.  The author is both an M.D. and a Ph.D.  His book is culturally iconoclastic, arguing from a purely clinical and biological secular perspective that the sexes are wired differently.  He cites a lot of research and presents it in an engaging way.  It is funny, though, how often he tries to weasel out of the obvious conclusions to be drawn.  We're just shy of being a quarter of the way through the book, and find it fascinating.  The egalitarian and feminist foundations of our entire culture - which is driving the current debate about marriage, sex vs. "gender," the role of women in the church, women in combat, etc. - are really laid bare for the fraud that they are.

Another project - which actually takes about five minutes a day - which Grace and I are pursuing separately, is the reading of St. Augustine's epic The City of God over the course of this year.  We joined a facebook group dedicated to that goal and have joined up with more than a thousand people on the moderator's reading schedule.  I am also taking a more disciplined approach to reading literature that I should have read in school, but didn't.  I began reading Fyodor Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment while in Russia two years ago, but got busy and stopped reading.  I restarted, made an overall goal and reading plan, and am now more than halfway done with the book.  This is especially good reading at bedtime (I'm reading this one without the electronic screen, as it seems that e-reading interferes with the production of melatonin which helps the body sleep).  The chapters are not long, and as long as I don't "stall" again, I should be able to complete it within a few weeks with just a short bit of reading each day.  We're also finishing up a delightful book about books, given to us as a Christmas gift by a friend: Howard's End is On the Landing by Susan Hill.  It makes for good reading in the car while running errands.  We'll have that one done in a few days.

Along the suggestions of Brian Tracy's Goals! book, I am tracking our reading and various projects using a planning Moleskine.  So far, I like the way this keeps us focused.  I'm using this same Moley to work on other projects that I have let slip because of not writing things down.

For example, I am working on the Pimsleur Russian course, which is an outstanding audio based series.  I own all 90 half-hour lessons broken down into three courses.  I have never gotten past about lesson 17 or so.  I am going to see if Tracy's premise that writing things down is the key to getting things done really works.  So far, it is helping!  I started back at the beginning with Unit 1 and and trying to get through 5 units or so a week (more if I am able).  I'm currently on Unit 10.  And since this course is audio, I listen while walking (which I am doing now), jogging (which will be a transition), and running (which I'm looking forward to doing regularly again, once more using the journal to keep myself in line).  I am also figuring out how to work in some more ambitious fitness goals, but at age 49, running a marathon by just showing up the morning of the race isn't an option the way it was when I was in my 20s (though even then that wasn't my brightest, shining moment, not that I regret doing it, for like most crazy things we do in life, I got a story out of the deal).  So I'm taking it a little slower these days.  We also eat paleo, though we need to tighten up after loosening the reins a bit during the holidays.

Another goal I've set for myself this year is to work on my Latin in a more disciplined way.  I have never completed the entire book Lingua Latina Per Se Illustrata: Pars I Familia Romana by Hans Oerberg (which is the natural method Latin course I taught to Junior High students for many years).  I want to not only complete all 35 chapters (I restarted with Chapter 1, and am currently on Chapter 9), but also want to read the sequel, Roma Aeterna.  Once those are done, I might like to tackle the two volumes of ecclesiastical Latin in Latin Grammar and Second Latin by Cora and Charles Scanlon.  Of course, elephants are eaten one bite at a time.

FH readers will note that I have not been keeping up with posting my sermons nor have I done much blogging.  I hope to be more diligent on both counts.

I also have other projects that need to be done bit by bit, and I am journalling those as well.  I adopted this Circle System for project management, and here is how it works, as explained below by Sara Caputo at Radiant Organizing (note: some of the links are dead):

The Circle System is another that was developed out of pure need and logic by another gentleman from Amsterdam.  Simply put, it’s a blending of his own to-do list with a series of circles that he devised and gave meaning to — here’s a picture of what it looks like:

Cool, huh?

Here’s the jist from his site:

Ok, this was about the bones and now it’s the meat. The Cir­cle.

We now have projects with its actions, all with cir­cles in front. And we surely have indi­vid­ual actions that are not part of any project, like Pay this bill and so on. Put every­thing in, every action you need to exe­cute at home or work. Don’t try to remem­ber every­thing — except one thing: The note­book remem­bers.

As things progress I add few things to the cir­cles. Here a list that explains in words and the pic­tures should be help­ful guides too.

• Cir­cle : Project or an action
• Stroke, a diag­o­nal line across the cir­cle : Work has started
• Filled lower part of the cir­cle : Work is half done (or wait­ing for some other step)
• Filled cir­cle : Work on the project or action is fin­ished or off my hand (delegated)
• Cross over the cir­cle, sec­ond stroke : Can­celled

This makes up the basic Cir­cle sys­tem and is a great starter. I also use a few extras for empha­sis In addi­tion to this you could also use:

• Num­bers to note in which order I need to execute
• Excla­ma­tion mark in front of the cir­cle for an impor­tant action
• Arrow or > after any cir­cle tells that a project or an action has been del­e­gated or moved to my GTD appli­ca­tion. Don’t for­get to fill the cir­cle at the same time. And also write down who is con­tin­u­ing the work if that is impor­tant. It usu­ally is.
• Dot in the mid­dle of the cir­cle is a sub­tle atten­tion mark.

I like them both because they were created around NEED and the system was devised around the individual’s workflow. Very often, task management systems that we try to plug into that others have created don’t work well because it is not a system that follows our individual needs.  When we devise our own system, as the gentlemen above have done, we are better able to follow it and have it be sustainable.  Just my own 2 cents.  More to come next Tuesday as we review 2 more systems…. have a great week of getting stuff done!

I don't carry my planning book around with me, but I do keep a personal notebook on me at all times.  In it, I have made my own calendars for several months, a to-do list for day-to-day tasks using the Circle System, a section for quick incidental notes, and I use the rest of the notebook for taking notes for all other meetings or other situations requiring note-taking.  At the first of the year, I completed my pocket Moleskine that I used for July through December 2013, and am now trying a notebook that I hope will be more robust: a German-made Leuchtturm 1917 pocket ruled notebook.  So far, I'm quite impressed with it.  I used my Leuchty to take notes at the 2014 Mises Circle in Houston, where we heard lectures by Jeff Deist, Tom Woods, Lew Rockwell, and Ron Paul (note: Dr. Woods's lecture is linked, the rest are on the way!).  The Leuchtturm is slightly larger than the Moleskine, and has very nice cream-colored high quality pages that are pre-numbered!  I'm hoping that it is more robust than its Chinese-made Italian cousin.

In terms of economics self-education and personal development, we attend the unique and delightful  Dr. Walter Block's Human Action seminars held at Loyola University twice per month (which restared this month after a long Christmas break).  In that ongoing seminar, we are reading, discussing, and debating Murray N. Rothbard's Economic Controversies (available as a free download here).  These seminars and the discussions that come afterwards really keep the brain running in overdrive!  

While at the Mises Circle, we picked up the following which we also look forward to working into the reading program:

• The Production of Security by Gustave de Molinari (1849)
• A Libertarian Critique of Intellectual Property by Butler Shaffer (2013)
• The School Revolution by Ron Paul (2013)
• 33 Questions About American History by Tom Woods (2007)
• Freedom Under Siege by Ron Paul (1987)
• Crony Capitalism in America 2008-2012 by Hunter Lewis (2013)

Since we were on a road trip, we started reading together aloud Dr. Paul's The School Revolution.  We're more than halfway through, and it is an insightful read!  

I know someone is going to respond: "You have too much time on your hands."  (I used to get that a lot when I was more prolific at writing and when I used to post funny broadsides at seminary). Actually, we all have the same amount of time. Well, here is what Grace and I have found helps us to get things accomplished.  These work for us, and I'm sure other people have great techniques as well for reclaiming time:

1. Get up early (last year, we set the alarm for 4:45 but got out of the habit later in the year when we were swamped with work that caused us to stay up too late - but are working our way back). 
2. Don't watch TV.  Aside from an occasional Netflix movie, we don't watch anything on the television: we don't have cable, we don't watch network broadcasting, no football, no news - no nothing. 
3. Eat at home.  We used to go to restaurants a lot, but now eat almost exclusively at home.  Not only does this save a ton of money, it buys us loads of time not spent getting ready, waiting for a table, dining, waiting for the check, and driving back.  During food preparation at home, we have additional time to read aloud to one another.
4. Turn the car into a 4-wheeled university.  Road trips are perfect for podcasts or long stretches of reading.  Running local errands is great for reading a chapter here and there aloud to one another.
5. Take Advantage of supermarket lines with a book, e-reader, or books on the iPhone.  Instead of complaining about the long line, turn it into a class, an opportunity to learn!

There is actually a lot of time for reading, studying, thinking, and writing - if it is a priority.   In spite of the time it takes to be a parish pastor and high school teacher; in spite of the time it takes to homeschool a third-grader, run a home, and serve the church as a volunteer - there is time to continue to learn and grow if we make the time and have the self-discipline to stick with it.

I hope Brian Tracy is right.

Call Kim!

Call Kim Patrick at 678-878-7888 (cell) of American Financial Network if you need to refinance your house!  You can also connect with her at LinkedIn here.

We had been trying for two years to refinance.  Our current bank was unable to help us without a huge down-payment.  We tried both Discover and Quicken, but to no avail.  We have a particular carrier of mortgage insurance that made it impossible for those companies to help us.  We were locked into almost 8% interest on a 30-year (10-year interest-only loan),  6 years in, and we were in a kind of no-man's land: making too much to quality for government programs, but not making enough to make a big down-payment.  It was extremely frustrating.

But after I called AFN and got the ball rolling, the entire matter was settled in less than two months - including the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays.  I was blown away every step of the process.

Kim was assigned to our loan, and she was my contact person.  I did not have to call with an account number to be put on hold only to deal with different people every time.  Kim made herself available to us by office phone, cell phone, e-mail, and text.  When we did have to deal with insurance matters, for instance (and a shout-out and huge thank you to Lisa Matherne and Sabrina at Allstate for their wonderful help as well!), Kim handled this for us.  When we did need to speak with other people, she was on the phone with us or involved in e-mails.  When we called, she either answered the phone right away, or returned our call quickly.  How often can we say that about anyone?

The process is subject to a lot of bureaucratic and governmental regulation.  But thanks to Kim, we sailed through all of that.  AFN makes maximum use of technology, and a lot of the forms were taken care of by e-signatures and by scanning into PDFs and e-mailing.  This was an extraordinary experience, especially since Kim lives near Atlanta, we live near New Orleans, and her home office is in California.  You would think that this would cause communications breakdowns and a long period of time.  But again, thanks to Kim and the way her company does business, it was very easy.

At closing (which took about 15 minutes) a local notary came to us after hours.  We ended up with a much lower interest rate, lower monthly payment, and we had two months off from making payments.  We did not have to put anything down, and in fact, we will receive a check for the overage as well as a check reimbursing us out of our escrow account in a few weeks.

The final result was even better than Kim's estimate - which suggests that she makes conservative estimates and is not just throwing numbers out there to hook a sale.  She even called us afterwards to check up on us and make sure we were happy with the results.

Grace and I are blown away by this company and by Kim.  I'm a big believer in free markets, and when someone offers an excellent product and superlative customer service, I want to make sure I do everything in my power to tell others about them.

If you have not refinanced, now is the time!  The Fed is starting to make rumblings about tapering.  I'm skeptical, but it does stand to reason that at some point, interest rates will rise.  They simply can't stay where they are forever.  If you want the process to be competitive, easy, and completely transparent, and if you want to work with a real person who knows what she is doing instead of a faceless bureaucracy, call Kim!

Thank you, Kim!  You are doing the Lord's work!

Anti-Christian Propaganda in Kid's Movies

We enjoyed seeing the children's movie "Turbo" - an unlikely tale of a snail in the Indianapolis 500.  It was a fun movie that did not try to compromise the innocence of childhood.

However, above is the trailer we saw as soon as the lights in the theater full of children dimmed. Within a few seconds of the first preview ("Boxtrolls"), there is a quick, though not-so-subtle swipe at Christian doctrine and traditional morality.

Although it is fun to make an occasional outing to see a film on the big screen, the overtly anti-biblical, anti-Christian sexual propaganda deliberately aimed at our children and increasingly being jammed down our throats - openly attempting to pry our children from our religious tenets - makes the trip to the theater less and less inviting to Christian people.  In their preachy calls for tolerance, the Hollywood elite is increasingly becoming intolerant of Christians, Jews, Muslims, and others who accept natural law and biological common sense with regard to the ancient human institutions.  The irony is that the message of "Boxtrolls" is supposedly one of openness to all kinds of people, when in reality it is promoting a kind of hatred and marginalization of the world's billions of people who accept traditional marriage as a religious doctrine.

It's getting to the point where we need not only to home-school but also to home-movie.

At least with Netflix, we can opt out of the propaganda.

Tenth Anniversary as a Deacon!

Today is my tenth anniversary as a deacon.

I was consecrated as a deacon when I was installed as a vicar at Holy Trinity Lutheran Church in Columbia, South Carolina by the Rev. Carl Voges on Auguest 3, 2003.  (Incidentally, the current pastor is a classmate of mine, a faithful shepherd and a dear friend, the Rev. Christopher Burger).

Consecrating vicars to the diaconal order is not the standard practice in the LCMS, but I think we should make some reforms and have both deacons transitioning to pastoral ministry (perhaps as vicars) as well as "permanent" deacons  - for several reasons.

First, it could solve the sticky problem of having vicars preaching - which is reserved for ordained ministers according to our confessional symbols.  We currently "get around" this by resorting to the legal fiction that the vicar is not actually preaching, but rather he is "reading" the sermon that has been vetted by his (ordained) supervisor.  I've never really been too satisfied by this sleight-of-hand.  If we were to ordain men into deaconal ministry, and restrict them from consecrating the elements of the Lord's Supper (as is done in many of the LCMS's partner church bodies), we would not have to play three-card-monte with Article XIV.

Second, to be a pastor is to be a deacon - especially when we consider the meaning of diakonia.  In the LCMS, we typically think of diakonia as "women's ministry" as we have a recognized synodical diaconate made up of women, whose work is officially to perform works of mercy.  There is no scriptural basis to deny the diaconate and its works of mercy to male practitioners and thus define diakonia in exclusively feminine terms.  I think consecrating vicars as deacons would help solidify diakonia as part and parcel of the pastoral ministry and not something forbidden (by implication) to men by synodical custom.  In fact, mercy is a huge part of what it means to be a pastor - as it should be.  While not all deacons are pastors, all pastors should consider themselves deacons.  We should liturgically recognize this during the course of a man's training for pastoral ministry by a consecration and recognition by diaconal vestments.

Third, there are men who may not have a pastoral vocation, but who are blessed vocationally with the gifts and opportunity to assist the pastor liturgically and in his work.  Our current commonly-used nomenclature "elders" comes close to this role, but the term is confusing.  Biblically speaking, "elder" (presbuteros, presbyter) is an ordained man, a pastor.  However, the vast majority of our "elders" are laymen, whose duties and vesture at the altar vary from congregation to congregation.  This confusion (originating in terminology borrowed from the Reformed churches) has manifested itself liturgically in some LCMS congregations where boards of elders "lay hands" on men who are being ordained into the pastoral ministry.  The Pastoral Care Companion actually has to have a footnote in the rite for "Visiting the Sick and Distressed" on page 34, in which the pastor reads James 5:14-16.  The text speaks of "elders of the church" praying and anointing the sick person with oil.  The footnote reads: "The Greek word for "elders," presbyteroi, in the reading from James refers to pastors and not lay elders."

In fact, some lay elders in the LCMS (who have never been consecrated as deacons) actually wear albs and deacon's stoles when assisting at the altar.  Moreover, some deaconesses likewise vest in alb and stole and assist the pastor at the altar.  I believe this latter practice presents confusion as to what the role of the deaconess is - not to mention the role of men and women in general. Ironically, we may have members of LCMS congregations that have only seen the deacon's stole worn by women.

Fourth, many of our partner church bodies, such as the Siberian Evangelical Lutheran Church, require men to serve as deacons (in the case of SELC, it is typically five years) before being ordained to the priesthood.  This is a very traditional structure, and allows a lot of time and observation - as well as actual parochial service - before turning a man loose to serve as a parish pastor.  There is a lot of wisdom in this kind of maturation process.

Of course, this is one of those issues that people really get worked up over (I don't really know why!); one LCMS pastor angrily denied that there were any LCMS deacons (said to me while I was serving as one). Consequently, the discussion typically just gets kicked like the proverbial can down the road in the interest of peace and harmony.

At any rate, I was consecrated a deacon ten years ago (while my hair was still brown), and I still consider myself a deacon (with my well-earned locks of gray).

While I was a seminarian, I attended the diaconal ordination of a friend in the ACC (Anglican Catholic Church).  The preacher spoke to the ordinand and reminded him that even if he were later ordained to the priesthood (which he was), even if he were to become a bishop, even if he were to become the archbishop - he would always remain a deacon.  It is not something you lose when you become a pastor.  His words stuck with me, especially since I was formally consecrated as a deacon later on myself.  And to me, this is a humbling reminder that a deacon is a servant, a minister, one who is dedicated to a life of mercy.  And that is certainly part of the pastoral vocation.

I am grateful to Pastor Voges and to the people of Holy Trinity for the year I served them as what one of my classmates called in a tongue-in-cheek way a "male deaconess."