The Perfect Discipline

My life changed forever in an undergraduate U.S. History class.

My professor, the late Irving Katz, had interrupted his lecture to address the issue of a late student arrival.  My classmate had come in about 10 minutes late, due to her work at the Indiana Daily Student (the IU-Bloomington campus newspaper).  Her arrival had disrupted the class because the only seat available in the small 40 or so seat room was her usual one, about 3 chairs into a row.  Prof. Katz asked her why she was late, and she told him that she had lost track of time while working on the next edition.  He stopped her and asked a follow up, why was she wasting her time seeking a journalism degree when History was the perfect discipline.  Not only, he said, does it inform us of the past, make sense of our present, and shape our future, but it also is the only thing a person can ever study that is the foundation for every other discipline.  Because, he noted, everything and everyone has a history -- and no other academic area, from Accounting to Zoology could make such a claim.  It was, at that moment, that I decided I didn't want to go to law school anymore.  I wanted to go to graduate school and become a professional historian.

I share that story or some variation, with every new class that I teach.  And I believe it today just as strongly as I did when Prof. Katz first said it.  I was thinking about that today, not because we are at the start of a semester (thankfully, Spring Break -- if not spring itself-- is nearly upon us), but rather because as events have unfolded this week, both near and far, I hope my students have taken that very lesson as their own.

Like Prof. Katz, I am an Americanist by training.  But, because I'm an Americanist, I also know a few things about European History as well (from Colonization to the Present, you really can't understand American History if you also don't understand at least the basics about what is going on in Europe).  And maybe that's why I was not shocked to read this morning that Russia is essentially carving out the Crimea (at the very least) from the Ukraine.  If anyone is shocked by this, then they simply are ignorant of History (and if they happen to be policymakers, so much the worse for us all).  Any pretense that Russia, is a functioning democracy (and that Democratic State Theory -- which was once all the rage amongst Political Scientists, and that states that democracies don't make war on other democracies) should have been banished long ago.  No, Russia is an empire.  And it is behaving just like an empire (indeed, just like the Soviet Union was an empire, and Tsarist Russia was an empire).  Perhaps our problem is that we don't know how to deal with empires anymore.  And if that is the case, it is because those who lead have neglected the lessons of History.

I hold out hope that this won't be the case forever, or at least not with my students (and I hope others at other institutions are learning this lesson as well).  Earlier this week, Laura Bush came to the campus of Butler University and spoke as part of a lecture series.  Part of her remarks, which were filled with humor and family stories, was geared towards one of her passions:  promoting literacy.  As the Butler Collegian noted, and as my email inbox can attest, part of her remarks centered on Uncle Tom's Cabin and how one book helped change the course of American History.  As someone who teaches an entire course dedicated to Harriet Beecher Stowe's book and the coming of the Civil War (complete with discussion of if Stowe "got it right" via the reading of slave narratives -- something that is quite "cool" right now thanks to the Oscar nominated "12 Years a Slave"), it was nice to hear another voice reminding students of the power that can be found in both words and in the past.  It was equally gratifying to read those emails from students, who talked about how awesome it was to the former First Lady talk so passionately about a topic they knew something about because they had studied it.

As George Santayana noted, in words that were on the wall of my high school history teacher, "those who do not remember the past, are condemned to repeat it."  If we don't study the past, there is little hope for us moving forward.  If we reject the perfect discipline, then when evil empires rise, whether to conquer or enslave, we'll be powerless to stop them.

Finnish With Style

Like many of you, I've spent the past few weeks watching the Winter Olympics.  Although I don't get quite as much into the Winter games as I do the Summer games, I appreciate not only what the athletes are able to do in the snow and ice (and this year, perhaps my indifference has more to do with how much snow and ice we've had here in Indiana) but also the fact the winter games never seem to drag like the summer ones do (perhaps because there aren't nearly as many events).  That being said, and though I do miss, when it comes to ice skating, the old national judging system, it has been great to see such outstanding competition (even if the USA didn't always win).

This year's Winter Games are being held in Sochi, Russia. And like anytime the games aren't in the US (or at least so it seems) the media has paying a good deal of attention to the host country.  Some of that attention has been favorable, some of it has been perhaps overblown (it is not as if Sochi was the first games were there were cost overruns, the politicians in power gave contracts to their friends, and not everything was finished when people started arriving), and some of that attention has not been all that it should have been (glossing over the atrocities of the Soviet era for example).

While much of the attention before the games was on the Putin government's policies to gays and lesbians, in the last week, the world has been reminded that Putin has also been working towards recreating the lost Soviet Union (or at the old Russian Empire).  And to a degree that has gotten me thinking about matters of faith.  Oh sure, there are from time to time mentions of God or religion in reports from the games themselves (either from the athletes or from American reporters discovering the Orthodox Church), but for me the image of faith and the games comes not from Sochi, but rather from the Ukraine:




The image above, and others like, made the rounds on the Web this week, as priests from the Orthodox Church in the Ukraine stood between protestors and security forces (who backed the now deposed Russian supported prime minister).  For a few moments at least, the fighting stopped.  Perhaps we will one day look back and see it as the moment the opposition needed, the moment the government's forces began to question what it was they were doing.  Perhaps. Much is likely yet to play out over Ukraine's future, and who knows what might happen once the world's attention is drawn away from Eastern Europe.

But that image also got me thinking about conditions in the US.  We have entered, in the past year or so, a great debate over religious liberty in America, as well as a related one on the proper demarcation line between Church and State.  Readers of this blog (as well as of The Mainline) know that it is an issue I've touched on before.  And it is one that was raised last month, when a friend from Finland posted an article on Church and State in his country.  My friend and I corresponded a bit more on the topic, with his thought below:

"Paradoxically, Christianity plays a lot larger role in US politics compared to over here, state church or not. Presidential candidates are asked maybe once an election cycle about their views on religion, and a round-edged answer of maybe appreciating everyone minding their own spiritual business and Christmas church being a nice tradition is the correct and proper one. A politician openly demanding policy based on Bible or even Christian morals (as opposed to just, you know, what's moral) is considered to be fringe and eyes are rolled. I'd say the separation of C'n'S is more ingrained in the individual citizen, if you will, around here."

While American priests, ministers, and pastors are quite active in battling over social issues (where their is much disagreement between both Americans in and out of the pews on a host of topics ranging from abortion to gay marriage), one wonders if any of them would be willing to stand between warring factions and literally remind people on both sides that it was time to stop killing.  One wonders if people on either side would listen.  Are we different than Finland in that respect?  Are we different than the Ukraine?  Let us pray that we need not ever have to find out. 

Religious liberty is not something to be taken lightly, nor are infringements upon it trivial (even if they don't amount to persecution).  But part of this discussion over the proper role of Church and State is also about religious symbolism, and how politicians employ it.  Perhaps it would be a good thing, if like in the Ukraine, the Church in America invoked its own symbols (and talked openly about doctrine) as much as those seeking votes from people in the pews.