Stationary Bandit

Does Europe have a Faith Vacuum?

Niall Ferguson believes it does.

There was a time when Europe would justly refer to itself as "Christendom." Europeans built the Continent's loveliest edifices to accommodate their acts of worship. They quarreled bitterly over the distinction between transubstantiation and consubstantiation. As pilgrims, missionaries and conquistadors, they sailed to the four corners of the Earth, intent on converting the heathen to the true faith.

Now it is Europeans who are the heathens. According to the Gallup Millennium Survey of religious attitudes, barely 20% of West Europeans attend church services at least once a week, compared with 47% of North Americans and 82% of West Africans. Fewer than half of West Europeans say God is a "very important" part of their lives, as against 83% of Americans and virtually all West Africans. And fully 15% of West Europeans deny that there is any kind of "spirit, God or life force" — seven times the American figure and 15 times the West African.

Unfortunately, Professor Ferguson succumbs to the mistaken belief that Europeans were once religious peoples.  In fact, they have always been heathens.  Rodney Stark, a prominent sociologist of religion, has written "the average person [European] has always been absent from the pews on Sunday."  Another notable sociologist, Andrew Greeley, has come to the same conclusion.  He wrote, "There could be no de-Christianization of Europe... because there never was any Christianization in the first place." 

From Slaves to Millionaires

A tumbledownshack believed to be the only slave cabin left in Prince George's County will be restored in the field where it was found.

And surrounding it will be a neighborhood of million-dollar homes, most of which will probably be owned by African-Americans. 

Isn't it amazing how in a few generations a group can go from slavery to high levels of wealth when the government does not keep them down?  Here is the story. 

Washington's Farewell Address

Today is George Washington's birthday.  His advice offered in the "Farewell Address" remains as relevant today as it was in 1796. 

As a very important source of strength & security, cherish public credit. One method of preserving it is to use it as sparingly as possible: avoiding occasions of expence by cultivating peace, but remembering also that timely disbursements to prepare for danger frequently prevent much greater disbursements to repel it--avoiding likewise the accumulation of debt, not only by shunning occasions of expence, but by vigorous exertions in time of Peace to discharge the Debts which unavoidable wars may have occasioned, not ungenerously throwing upon posterity the burthen which we ourselves ought to bear.

Ranking the Presidents

Jeff Hummel put together a list of the best and worst Presidents.  His top ten are Martin Van Buren, Grover Cleveland, Warren Harding, Calvin Coolidge, Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson, James Garfield, Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan, and Dwight D. Eisenhower.  The bottom ten are Abraham Lincoln, Woodrow Wilson, Harry Truman, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Lyndon B.Johnson, Theodore Roosevelt, George Bush, Herbert Hoover, John Adams, and William McKinley.  I am definitely sympathetic to the bottom 10.  But I am wondering why William Henry Harrison is not in the top 10?  After all, how much damage could he do in 30 days?

A New Lincoln Museum

From today's Washington Post:

"Lincoln was no friend of the black man. His Emancipation Proclamation freed no one. Just look at the map!"

An image of the black abolitionist John Rock appears on the center screen in the Union Theater, where BRC staffers are previewing the museum's second big theatrical production, "Lincoln's Eyes." Rock's role is to question the Great Emancipator's motives. His sentiments are real, but the voice-over's language is that of a scriptwriter.

Look at the Confederate states, he continues, as a colorful map of the divided nation replaces his angry face: No slaves freed there, because Lincoln didn't control them. Look at the northern states: No slaves freed there, because there were none. Look, finally, at the slaveholding border states still loyal to the Union: No slaves freed there, because Lincoln exempted those states, fearing they would secede if he didn't.

"The Emancipation Proclamation was a slick but empty trick by a cynical politician," Rock adds.

I must say that I am a bit surprised that this appears at the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Museum (or Six Flags over Lincoln as it is referred to in the article).  Usually, Honest Abe is portrayed as the Great Emancipator.  I have doubted that the Emacipation Proclamation was much more than a political document without substance so it is nice to see that others thought the same.