As I've stated elsewhere, I'm an agnostic who admires religion's power to tap humanity's propensity for archetypal concepts. So on one hand I'm somewhat sympathetic to Kirk's religious leanings, though not to his evangelism. Kirk insists that the intertwined faiths of Judaism and Christianity are, or should be, the universal truths for humankind, and I reject that assertion whether it comes from theists or atheists. So I can only value Kirk's formulations in a Jungian fashion, even though Kirk rejects that sort of comparativism.
The short review is that STOP is strongest when Kirk is speaking passionately about the Sabbath as a means of recapturing one's spiritual energies by "tuning out," as the hippies used to say. For instance, since Kirk's God is a being incapable of becoming tired from activity as humans tire, Kirk declares that when God finished creation, his "rest" on the seventh day was not a matter of exhaustion. Rather, he was simply looking upon his creation and deeming it good. Similarly, for humans the Sabbath is not intended to be just a day to "veg out." Keepers of the Sabbath are supposed to be connecting with the traditions of their faith(s) and recognizing their place in God's creation.
Since I knew Kirk was not a comparativist, I didn't attach much importance to his statement that the archaic Jews were first to formulate any custom like that of the Sabbath. If corrected on this point, Kirk could have always claimed that even if the Jewish Sabbath wasn't the first custom of its kind, it was still the best because "reasons." This is the sort of special pleading Kirk indulges in during Chapter 1, where he makes the self-aggrandizing claim that for all other religions of the ancient Near East, the gods were purely expressions of natural forces while the Hebrew God was totally outside nature. Kirk holds similar views when speaking of modern polytheism. Also in Chapter 1, he mentions how, as a child, he encountered the many gods of Hinduism and could only think of the lack of "moral order" implied by such a plenitude of competing deities. Yet in a later chapter he's not above quoting Scripture to demonstrate that the Church Fathers possessed a far-sighted tolerance toward individual customs and/or proclivities-- which IMO also explains the early evolution of polytheism:
One person considers one day more sacred than another; another considers every day alike. Each of them should be fully convinced in their own mind.-- Romans 14:5-6
Thankfully, Kirk mainly attacks secular movements that compete with Judeo-Christianity. He doesn't devote much space to the most execrable movement seen in his lifetime, that of the so-called "anti-racists," but that's probably because he couldn't make their grievance-happy rhetoric relevant to his theme. More space is given to the influence of modern American atheism, but most of these arguments are funneled from Stephen Meyer's RETURN OF THE GOD HYPOTHESIS, which I found interesting though not compelling, given my Jungian preferences. Kirk only attacks one Marxist for having dumbed-down the academic campuses, Herbert Marcuse. But Marcuse seems a good choice, since one Wiki-author claims that he is "considered among the most influential of the Frankfurt School critical theorists on American culture, due to his studies on student and counter-cultural movements on the 1960s." But though I realize that STOP's subject could not take on a voluminous topic, I'd like to have seen more on that subject here, since Kirk lost his life making his philosophical appeal to an academic audience.
A couple of titles have a self-help ring to them, such as "The Sabbath Improves Your Sleep," though I believe Kirk was sincere, not playing huckster-games. His most egregious special pleading appears in Chapter 8, which takes as its starting-point Exodus 20:8-11, a section emphasizing that the Hebrew Sabbath and its blessing of rest was extended not only to Hebrew believers but also to "livestock" and to slaves of any faith. Kirk labors mightily to sell the notion that the custom of the Jewish Sabbath was an "ontological" change from older cultures' beliefs about the status of the enslaved. Kirk also seeks to distance Hebrew slavery from the "moral abomination" of American chattel slavery. However, this opens Kirk up to a familiar criticism of 19th-century Christianity, which has become notorious for using a particular Scriptural citation in defense of slavery:
24 And Noah awoke from his wine, and knew what his younger son had done unto him.
25 And he said, Cursed be Canaan; a servant of servants shall he be unto his brethren.-- Genesis 9:24-25
Did 19th-century Christians quote Genesis out of context? Probably, but slavers in both North and South were still practicing Christians. Maybe they were abominable because they didn't keep their version of the Sabbath properly? Also, I tend to doubt that even the most liberal translation could erase the core idea in that passage: that the children of Ham, whoever they were, were destined to serve Hebrews. To a believer, this declaration is as much a part of sacred history as the commandment to keep the Sabbath holy. Since as a comparativist I believe that the anthropological evolution of the slavery custom is far more complex than Kirk represents, I could wish he hadn't gone wading in such deep waters.
STOP offers a good portal into the mind of a celebrity evangelist. Not all of Kirk's justifications hold water, but he was still more dedicated to a vision of human improvement than, say, anyone in the Frankfurt School or any of their exploitative descendants.
3 comments:
GENE,
As a 70-year-old atheist (of the "never found objective evidence of any deity's existence therefore lacks belief in any" variety , not the "NO deity exists!" variety), I also agreed with many if not most of Kirk's political and societal views.
I likewise admired his ability to articulate those employing empirical and objective evidence.
With his evangelical foundation, obviously, I disagreed.
I've told you in other Comments that I spent ages 25 through 44 as a zealous, Bible-literalistic, "born again" Christian (the latter half of that period membershipping in a conservative Mennonite group).
What you might find interesting is the alternative beliefs regarding the Sabbath issue.
Kirk held interpretations and applications stemming from what I considered a hybrid macro-interpretation which incorporated elements found in what Christians term "the Old Testament" into the "New Testament".
The question reduces to, "What is the relationship between the Old Covenant Law taught by God to the people called Israel and the New Covenant doctrine taught by God to all people"?
Due to the ubiquitous ambiguity of intended meanings of the text of the Bible, various interpretational answers have existed since the beginnings of Christianity (their existence indicated by their being the motivation for many of the points expounded in the alleged epistles of Paul, for example).
Kirk's is among those variations. His, as do others likewise or similarly, to various extents, interpret the principle of "sabbath" remaining or continuing in some form of practice into and within the New Covenant.
However, others, including myself, held that the New Covenant and its contents superceeded the Old in a way which makes all and everything established by the Law given at Mount Sinai to Israel ( including not only the so-called "Ten Commandments" but also the other of the 613 commandments contained in the Torah) terminated when the New Covenant initiated.
That interpretation posits that the New Covenant contains much of the same moral commands which the Old contained, not because those commands somehow "remained in effect" but because God independentally, unconnectedly included them.
Both Covenants, consequently but independently condemn murder, lying, bearing false witness, stealing, adultery, for examples.
However, physical circumcision and food prohibitions are taught but the Old but not by the New.
"Supercessionists" (as I was) interpret that the sabbath and all related practice was part of the entire Old which terminated; that, therefore no sabbath obligation of any kind exists under the New (I didn't preclude a practical lesson about the benefit of time off from one's normal efforts to survive being an optional application of the sabbath; while I found no divinely-mandated obligation, that didn't to me equate to God forbidding any voluntary personal application).
With that "termination of the Old Covenant sabbath commandments", subsequent corollary interpretations also differ.
Passages in the New Testament Epistles which criticize those who observed any days as obligatory, I and others interpreted to specifically address this difference between the Old and New.
The writer(s?) of the Epistle to the Hebrews, we interpreted to support our interpretation -- that Epistle apparently employs "sabbath" in an escahatological manner, utilizing the specific Greek wording of the (majority) Septuagint translation of the Torah (rather than the differing words for "rest" and "sabbath" found in the the Masoretic Hebrew version of the Torah), using the sabbath "rest" as the foreshadow of "ultimate eternal rest" rather than any weekly or earthly "rest".
From that, we interpreted the existence of the Old Covenant weekly sabbath to have been a prophetical instrument mandated by YHWH which served no further purpose once the New Covenant began.
Yes, I agree. Kirk is clearly cherry picking what he wants to keep from Judaism. I think every religion borrows from others, but it's false for him to impute absolute goodness to ancient Hebrew slaveholders. If they were all so wonderful, why does Leviticus (as I recall) warn observant Jews not to treat Jewish slaves as they treat non-Jews? (A dubious moral position for moderns in itself.)
GENE,
Agreed, regarding the slaveholding issue.
Certainly an argument can be made that imposing slavery on conquered enemies, especially those who had initiated violence or war against one's tribe, was a more humane alternative for eliminating their threat than killing them...but, that a "lesser of the evils" is somehow "not an evil"? Nope.
A parallel which Kirk - - a professed follower of the New Testament's "better" teachings - - failed to integrate might be found in Iesus's criticism of the Pharisees' applications regarding divorce:
"They said to Him, 'Why then did Moses command to give a certificate of divorce, and to put her away?'
He said to them, 'Moses, because of the hardness of your hearts, permitted you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so.' " (Matthew 19: 7,8)
As you mentioned, Leviticus (and Exodus and Deuteronomy also) indicates even that version of deity deemed slavery "not a good."
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