By LeRoy Lawson
Einstein”s God:Â Conversations about Science and the Human Spirit
Krista Tippett
New York: Penguin Books, 2010
Churchill and America
Martin Gilbert
New York: Free Press, 2005
Climbing Parnassus: A New Apologia for Greek and Latin
Tracy Lee Simmons
Wilmington: ISI Books, 2002
There”s no yelling in Krista Tippett”s Einstein”s God, no name-calling. This book is not another shootout of science and religion. Instead, these transcripts from 10 episodes of her radio show Speaking of Faith thoughtfully raise issues that thinking people can”t avoid:
Can science and religion get along?
Can you believe in God and evolution?
What is the primary religious emotion?
Is there a role for faith in healing? If so, what is it?
How can you speak of a just and loving God when there are earthquakes and tsunamis?
Is free will possible, or is it merely an illusion?
And many more.
Dr. Sherwin Nuland captures the spirit of the book when he quotes Augustine: “Men go forth to wonder at the heights of mountains, the huge waves of the sea, the broad flow of the rivers, the vast compass of the oceans, the courses of the stars: and they pass by themselves without wondering.” These men and women wonder in the spirit of Albert Einstein, who in a 1941 conference famously said, “Science without religion is lame. Religion without science is blind.” Tippett assigns herself the task of helping both religion and science to see things whole, without limping.
She finds joy in her work. She admires persons who possess “a quality that keeps me interviewing scientists as often as I can””a delight in beauty, a comfort with mystery, a limitless ambition for one”s grandest ideas combined with a humility about them that many religious people could learn from.”
V. V. Raman captures the human need for both science and religion in his definition of poetry that, he says, “is what gives meaning to existence. Not facts and figures and charts, but poetry. Poetry is essentially a really sophisticated way of experiencing the world. And it is much more than mere words and stories. Poetry is to the human condition what the telescope and the microscope are to the scientist.” And in the context of these conversations, poetry is at the heart of religious expression.
The best thing about Einstein”s God is that it leaves you wanting more. I want to hear further from several of these interviewees, including Raman, Nuland, John Polkinghorne, Freeman Dyson, Mehmet Oz, Michael McCullough, and Parker Palmer. They have made me more curious than ever about this mystery we call life.
Remembering Churchill
To a person of my generation, Winston Churchill looms large. To a person of my profession as an English teacher, he remains an inspiration. He”s the man of whom President John Kennedy wrote, “He mobilized the English language and sent it into battle.” The war is over; the words live on.
World War II began in 1939, a conflagration so horrible we couldn”t have imagined it if we hadn”t lived through it. It very well could have wiped out Western civilization. Yet into the horror marched heroes. At home we didn”t know the names of all the soldiers and sailors who fought, but we knew their leaders: Roosevelt, Eisenhower, Marshall, and MacArthur, among others. And Winston Churchill.
In Churchill and America, Martin Gilbert, whose life”s work has been the study of England”s wartime prime minister, details the affectionate, sometimes stormy, and quite unprecedented love of the PM for his father”s and his mother”s lands. Descended not just from Americans but from Native Americans on his mother”s side and from English aristocracy on his father”s, Churchill devoted a lifetime to forging and protecting the strong Anglo-American bond we take for granted today.
Although he admired much about America, Churchill wasn”t blind to our vulgarity and vacillations. To the end of his days he fumed that the United States” refusal to join the League of Nations and stand firmer against Nazism led to World War II, a war that didn”t have to be. He also believed America to be generous, but not when it came to Britain”s war debt.
Churchill referred to Britain and America as the “English-speaking peoples,” tirelessly pointing to the history and common language uniting the countries. He pushed President Roosevelt to support England when from 1939 to 1941 that country stood virtually alone against Hitler. Roosevelt, ever sniffing political winds, temporized, cautiously doing what he could short of a declaration of war until Pearl Harbor. Then he acted, and the two men forged the partnership that brought down Germany and Japan.
In some ways the best””and most distressing””portions of the book are those covering the last couple of war years and the fretful peace that followed. Churchill felt increasingly snubbed by America”s leaders, worried as our presidents went soft on Stalin, strenuously disagreed with what he saw as their betrayal of Poland. This is Churchill”s book; the greater your sympathy for him, the more you question the calls of his American counterparts.
As I said, when I was a child, Churchill was a hero. Now, so many years later, he still seems larger than life.
Reconsidering the Classics
I started Tracy Lee Simmons”s Climbing Parnassus with eagerness. This man was singing my song. As readers of this column know, I advocate an education heavily loaded with courses in the humanities. Simmons goes me one better: he promotes study of Greek and Latin literature in their original languages. Now that”s a real classical education. Nothing like heavy doses of Homer, Plato, Sophocles, et al., in Greek and Plutarch, Cicero, Terence, and Virgil, et al., in Latin, he maintains.
But such studies are not very useful in the modern world, you object. Right, he agrees. Such an education is not “useful,” if you mean that it should be a sure-fire route to a good job. It can”t even guarantee the making of a good person. “Classics serves no class,” he admits. “Tyrants and oligarchs can quote Cicero too.”
Again you object, “But this tough educational formula isn”t for everyone.” Right again, he agrees. It is decidedly and deliberately elitist. It”s for the chosen few””and these few are chosen not by birthright or bank account, but by intellectual superiority and willingness to submit to rigorous discipline. It prepares an aristocracy of merit. It”s for building future leaders.
Climbing Parnassus is chock full of great quotations, chosen to bolster Simmons”s case. Here is Dean Martin”s (not the singer!) definition of the best education: “the organization of knowledge into human excellence.” Simmons lays out a plan to reach that excellence.
Simmons insists that a real education cannot be cheaply bought. He stresses the value of drill, repetition, grammar, and mastery of a few rather than a superficial skating over many authors and volumes.
He praises the remarkable intellectual attainments of our nation”s founders, an achievement looking all the more remarkable when contrasted with the pragmatic and typically superficial utterances of our current politicians.
I can recommend Climbing Parnassus to anyone disappointed in what now passes for education. You may, like me, tire of his not-so-subtle snobbery, but you also may join him in bemoaning the precipitous fall from Mount Parnassus that academe has suffered. You know what it”s called: “the dumbing down of America.”
It”s time to hit the books.
LeRoy Lawson, international consultant with Christian Missionary Fellowship International, is a CHRISTIAN STANDARD contributing editor and a member of Standard Publishing”s Publishing Committee. His column appears at least monthly.
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