Monday, January 1, 2018

Where Is Our Machen

          Emil Mazey, a twentieth century labor leader, is reported to have paraphrased the older proverb known as the duck test when he said the following..."I can't prove you are a Communist. But when I see a bird that quacks like a duck, walks like a duck, has feathers and webbed feet and associates with ducks-I'm certainly going to assume that he is a duck."
          The rule for the radio in our automobiles is whoever is driving gets to pick the station. Consequently I'll drive 90% of the time on a long drive so as not to have to listen to country music stations. I'm not an afficiando of country music by any means but whatever this is today it doesn't quack like a duck...doesn't walk like a duck....and I don't think it even hangs around with other ducks. So to me it ain't a duck.
           So on our way to Ohio for breakfast at a favorite Dutch Mennonite restaurant and then a little Christmas shopping, I had Breitbart and Steve Bannon on Sirius XM. My wife is familiar with Bannon and what he looks like but not his voice..... "Is that Steve Bannon.....he sounds so young!".
           Steve Bannon says it just about every show....."Donald Trump is the best public speaker since William Jennings Bryan"....and I think it every time he says it.....'no....you Steve Bannon are the best public speaker since the early twentieth century fundamentalist politician.....three times candidate for president and Secretary of State for Woodrow Wilson.".
           This is not a 100% endorsement of Steve Bannon. During the 2016 campaign when Hillary and Obama were the opposition, Bannon was unstoppable in disseminating basic truths and rallying us conservatives.. Today that oratorical power.....yes he does sound a lot younger than he looks....is not primarily in disseminating truths....rather it is in putting forth an agenda of economic nationalism and defense of a man who is very similar to how Richard Hofstadter described William Jennings Bryan in The American Political Tradition: And The Men Who Made It......"Bryan in power was like Bryan out of power: he made the same well-meant gestures, showed the same willingness under stress or confusion to drop ideas he had once been committed to, the same inability to see things through."
          Bryan.....good man that he was....knew that the Bible was the very Word of God but he didn't know a whole lot else in that Word of God. To understand the political power of the evangelical of today one must understand who came before them. Secular historian Frances Fitzgerald did a very credible job in connecting the dots in her latest book The Evangelicals, The Struggle To Shape America. She writes about Bryan...."By the time of the 1923 General Assembly (Presbyterian) the fundamentalists had gained another powerful champion in William Jennings Bryan....for the past few years Bryan had made common cause with the fundamentalists, but in many respects he was not one of them.....he hadn't much interest in the fine points of theology.....he once admitted he had never had time to study the difference between Baptists, Methodists, and Presbyterians."
          Donald Trump is to the evangelical of today.....their William Jennings Bryan.....only Trump won his election to be our president....but he also.....like Bryan.....is not really one of us. He talks up marriage.....or abortion.....or anything else that is on our top ten list.....but he hasn't a clue. Unfortunately for us....far too many of the evangelicals of today do not have a clue either. Unfortunately for Donald Trump.....should God move over this land with a general awakening.....he will be seen as King Saul......and not King David as he is to many evangelicals today.
          Princeton Presbyterian New Testament scholar J. Gresham Machen was the true intellectual force in the early twentieth century fundamentalist movement. He wasn't a fundamentalist but joined with them because the Word of God was at stake. That's what so many of us have done with Donald Trump. Men like Walter Lippman laughed at William Jennings Bryan but sat back and listened to Machen. Where is our Machen today?
          This post was supposed to be on Steven K. Bannon and the new biography on him.....Bannon. Always The Rebel by Keith Koffler....but that I guess will have to wait.



NOTE: The closest thing to J. Gresham Machen today would be Michael Horton....the J. Gresham Machen Professor of Theology and Apologetics from Westminster Seminary California.....and the whitehorseinn.org.....if you are interested.