Christian & Conservatory -- USA, Canada, Britain, Northern Ireland

A national category under our consideration in this blog-entry is that of American Political Conservatism; it is narrated historiographically in several current sources that will be compiled:

Patrick Allitt,
The Conservatives: Ideas and Personalities throughout American History (2009)

"Allitt understands the Civil War as a “clash of rival conservatisms,” the conservatism of Clay, Webster, and Lincoln, who wished to conserve the Union, and the conservatism of the Confederacy, which wished to conserve the South’s traditional way of life. Both conservatisms abounded in paradox." -- Peter Berkowitz

David D. Kirkpatrick,
"The Conservative-Christian Big Thinker," NYT (Dec20, 2009)

Robert P. George, a Princeton University professor of jurisprudence and a Roman Catholic, is this country’s most influential conservative Christian thinker. "For free access to this article and more, you must be a registered member of NYTimes.com". Well, I am registered but coudn't manage the rigormorol of regaining access today.

See also, David Kennedy on historian Margaret Macmillan's somewhat recent book, Dangerous Games: The Uses and Abuses of History (2006). There, among other targets, Kennedy says, the historian Macmillan especially f+ts against nation-loving historiography which, assumedly, glorifies / absolutizes any particular nation (or, I woud guess, nationality within a country that are constituted by more than one nationality). Nationalism is her Great Satan of historiography.

That hypothesis would include, it seems to me, all history-writings which argue historiographically for "American exceptionalism." Christian non-historian and self-designated theologian with a doctorate in political science from Duke University (Chapel Hill, North Carolina), James Skillen (recently retired as President of the Center for Public Justice, Annapolis, Maryland) is another absolutist against the said exceptionalism.

American Exceptionalism

by Justin Webb, BBC (Apri6,2k9)

One of the talking points on the bus as we arrived in Ankara was the Decline of America (there were other talking points as well, but I won't bore you with them) with the Brits, including me and Tom Baldwin, the mild-mannered but influential London Times correspondent, asked to give an assessment of how we see the post-Obama US.

Our replies I won't trouble you with, but the discussion was prompted in part by one of Obama's most interesting replies at a news conference - in Strasbourg half way through the trip - to a question asked by Mr Luce of the FT only moments after that vomiting incident but looking remarkably perky.

Does the president believe in American Exceptionalism, he asked.

The answer - yes, but in the same way as other nationalities (he mentioned Greece and Britain) believe in themselves - raised the spectre of Greek Exceptionalism but was nonetheless praised by some egghead journos as being rather wonderful.

Wrong I think. Greece is a country, America is an idea. True, there is Greek influence in the America idea but to compare patriotism with exceptionalism is to miss the point.

It was a great answer in that it was thoughtful and generous and patriotic all in one; but it was the wrong answer. American Exceptionalism stems not from love of country but from the universality of the values of the country.

In part, Webb's remark is self-contradictory: his phrase "universality of the values of the country" then is conceived in a Kantian way, as no values in America are truly universal, except as in the folkloric truism "death and taxes." Because of freedom of religon/s (including our American atheisms), the most important "American values" are the least universal. There remains a modicum of more-or-less widely-held "values" like "love of country," but in Webb's presumptuous definition that's much like "love of waffles."

Obama's dogmatism and Webb's fatuousness aside, the Macmillan-Skillen hypothesis, by expansion logically, m+t include as well a presupposed generalized negative evaluation of all American historiography that focuses its work in an approach decidedly favorable to the secessionist stance revived by some scholars today regarding the Confederacy, or that seeks to celebrate and expand today the pre-CivilWar "Southern Way of Life" in a manner which takes little account of the institution of slavery, before it was effectively abolished. See Kennedy on Margaret Macmillan (rW2 blog-entry Dec22,2k9). She is utterly opposed to all nationalism in the historiography of all nations, apparently. That's too generalized to suit me. There does seem to be, in any case, a residual nationalism (a full blown regionalism at least, with a Neo-Confederate nationalist tendency of its own); here woud be a conservative romanticism, a traditionalism with a considerable nostalgia and with an apparent agenda for at-least partial restoration of that way of life. Much of the readership of the historians involved are affiliated with the political program of the Neo-Confederate restorationists who still find attraction to secessionism, at least as a concept worth arguing at length. But there is no state in the Union where that is practicable.

Also see "Scholars nostalgic for the Old South study the virtues of Secession, quietly" (Chronicle of Higher Education's Dec6,2k9). This article by Ben Terris is subtitled: "To avoid being tagged as racist, professors retreat to the Abbeville Institute to study the virtues of secession" of the Southern states from the Union. Caption of the article's excellent accompanying pix: "Donald W. Livingston, a philosophy professor at Emory University [Atlanta, Georgia], sits in a historic plantation house. He founded the Abbeville Institute -- named for the birthplace of John C. Calhoun, an advocate of state's rights and slavery," and a staunch Presbyterian, I must add. Amazingly, the article cited does not discuss religion in the South -- either before, during, or after the Civil War.

Yet there exists even today a whole legacy of theological justification by still-revered southern Presbyterian thinkers supportive of back-in-the-day slavery (Robert Lewis Dabney, James Henry Thornwell both have their fans). "In the 1830s, Southern Presbyterian theologians studied the question intensively and arrived at a proslavery consensus" (JSTOR review of Proslavery Millenialism: Social Eschatology in Antebellum Southern Calvinism by Jack P. Maddox Jr.

The refrain of the regional war of words had other dramatic and long-lasting historical effects. The Presbyterian (1837, 1857, 1861), Methodist (1844), and Baptist (1845) denominations split into northern and southern wings over the issue of southern demands that slaveholders receive moral vindication and that abolitionists be purged as [anti-]biblical heretics and dangerous social subversives. Southern ministers then controlled new independent regional denominations, newspapers, and periodicals that they used to promote their proslavery biblical argument.

Today, the conservative evangelical and partly-Calvinist exodus from the previous Southern Presbyterian denomination, the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA), has renounced all racism. However, also today, some point to/at Rev. Douglas Wilson (Moscow, Idaho):

A reader wrote in to inform me of who Wilson is, and I was appalled. He has a ministry in Idaho which has ties to the white supremacy movement! … He runs a private school [Logos School and on the tertiary level New St Andrews College] in Idaho that celebrates Robert E. Lee’s birthday; he wants a “cultural reformation” in America, and his model, his ideal, is the antebellum Confederacy … Here’s a collection of links that point to the vileness of this sleazebag … I don’t understand at all why [leftwing atheist Christopher] Hitchens would want to be associated with such a creature [by debating him], unless he was specifically seeking out the very worst that American Christianity brings to the table. Unfortunately, he’s contributing to the reputation of a monstrous blight on the Palouse [region, Idaho], a racist, theocratic ideologue whom [some] people of that region deplore.

I can't certify this assessment, nor can I check the ostensible sources to which the author refers. I've seen some of that stuff a while back, but remember not being quite sure it all was documented, not well documented.

More politically speaking, Southern slavery was a slavery which some argue had already been written into the original compromise on how to count the entire population in the USA Constitution (the slave states gained a 3/5 ratio for slaves regarding the representation of slave states in Congress, altho those very states blocked these "incomplete" persons from voting at all, Article 1, Section 2). I don't damn altogether everything Livingston may be trying to say; but nothing I've read so far recommends to me this form of Southern USA conservatism. Indeed, the juxtaposition of "Christianity and Conservatism/s," suggested by my blog-entry title above, makes it necessary to cite Calhoun's Presbyterian slavery-ideology. The issue of pre-Union slavery in some British colonies that became part of the USA later and then after Union the Constitutional and other legal arrangements to maintain in those states and to extend the number of such states (as their number enlarged) when new territories entered statehood, is a palpable instance, when included with the Civil War, Reconstruction, Jim Crow laws and racial segregation in former slave-states r+t up to the Civil R+ts Act of 1964 perhaps -- arguably are a major instance of American exceptionalism, depending on the definition of the term in question.

The term “American exceptionalism” is attributed to Alexis de Tocqueville, who noted that the United States held a special place among nations, because it was as a country of immigrants and the first modern democracy (Tocqueville 1954). 4 [4 Lipset – referring to de Tocqueville – names five basic features of American ideology: liberty, egalitarianism, individualism, populism, and laissezfaire. Symptomatic for authors dealing with American exceptionalism in a
broader context, he derives from these characteristics explanations for characteristics as diverse as the lack of a welfare state, American’s continued religiosity or the persistence of capital punishment (Lipset 1996, p.26).] As Deborah Madsen (1998, p.1) concludes, the phenomenon has been with us ever since: “American exceptionalism permeates every period of American history and is the single most powerful agent in a series of arguments that have been fought down the centuries concerning the identity of America and Americans.”

Winthrop’s quote also shows that the Puritan settlers who founded the Massachusetts
Bay colony regarded their social experiment not only as “different”, but also as exemplary. Malone and Khong (2003) describe exceptionalism as “the widely held belief in the United States that its values and institutions are the best yet devised, the conviction that the world needs to adapt itself to American ways rather than vice versa.” The belief in the superiority of the American model is reflected in the perception among Americans of America’s role in the world.5 [ 5 This relation also works in the opposite direction. As Rudolf (1999, p. 73)notes, the definition of an international role for the US at the same time serves as a definition and affirmation of its national identity.] That American foreign policy is based on moral principles is a consistent theme in the American discourse – a phenomenon recognized even by those who are skeptic of such an assessment.6 [ 6 As Stanley Hoffman (2005, p.225) notes, “[t]he lofty feeling of democratic superiority and universal relevancen was perfectly compatible, in practice, with a pursuit of national interest and advantage that was just as fierce as elsewhere.” Note that the term exceptionalism is almost exclusively used by those who are at least somewhat critical of the claim of a strictly moral foreign policy. Proponents of the notion that US intentions are generally noble, do not usually refer to the term. For an exception, see Koh (2005).] Johannes Thimm, page 3, American Exceptionalism -- Conceptual Thoughts and Empirical Evidence, Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik (Berlin) PDF (2k6?)

Thimm goes to great effort to distinguish exceptionalism and its often unilateralist foreign policy. "Acknowledging that American political identity is somewhat exceptionalist -- meaning that the self-perception one of uniqueness and moral superiority -- does not necessitate a preference for unilateral policies. In attempts to explain American unilateralism, one shoud not fall into the trap of making a direct causal link between an exceptionalist identity and a unilateralist foreign policy" (page 8).

After surveying a stack of public opinion surveys: "If however the concept is applied to American identity, there is an important distinction to be made between exceptionalism and unilateralism. As the public opinion data has shown, it is well possible for the public to hold exceptionalist beliefs about the US without displaying unilateral attitudes with regard to American foreign policy (Thimm, page 16). Here, I'll take the author's word on this main point, but his entire discussion of the surveys is tendentious and ahistorical in several regards which have changed with time and macro-events like 9/11, the massive propaganda effort of the teaching profession and the mainstream media, and a long list of other factors which must be included and weited in a multifactoral historical evaluation. So, Thimm's hypothesis is not one I woud recommend, except as a foil to the leftwing hatred of any (possibly valid and valuable) American exceptionality found in the writings of theologian James Skillen. Thimm is a corrective from the same side, but has a much h+er level of credibility.

Christian scholarship: Africa: Upcoming conference in Abuja, Nigeria

Anglican Primate, Nigeria

Moved from rW1 sidebar's Calendar, placed here for process of re-writing (Nov28,2k9). Updated, rewritten, and expanded (Nov30,2k9)

Mar 26-29, 2010:

IAPCHE, the International Association for Christian H+er Education, after two 2009 regional conferences, first in Europe and then in Qererato, Mexico, at the Free Institute for Advanced Studies last year, now turns its focus toward a third Faculty Enrichment program. The third in the series will take place in Abjua, Nigeria, where Bingham University is hosting the event.

The Evangelical Church of West Africa created Bingham University. Wikipedia says of ECWA:

The Evangelical Church of West Africa (ECWA) is one of the largest Church denominations in Nigeria, reaching about five million people. ECWA is a partner church of the international Christian Mission Organisation: Sudan Interior Mission (SIM). It was founded in 1954 when the SIM-related churches (initially in Nigeria) came together to form an indigenous body. Since that time, mission stations, Bible Schools, academic schools, and medical programs have been transferred to ECWA leadership.

Throughout Nigeria but especially in the central regions, ECWA churches are growing rapidly. Some churches have experienced as much as 400% growth. Churches in the Northern (traditionally more Islamic) parts of the country are also growing. There are currently more than five thousand ECWA congregations with more than five million attenders and a church membership of over three million people.

ECWA has started two theological seminaries (ECWA Theological Seminary Igbaja, established 1941 and Jos ECWA Theological Seminary), eight Bible colleges and fifteen theological training institutes. ECWA's Medical Department co-ordinates a wide network which includes four hospitals, a Community Health Programme with over 110 health clinics, a Central Pharmacy and the School of Nursing and Midwifery.  It is also involved in radio, publications for outreach and discipleship, rural development, urban ministries, and cross-cultural missions. There are more than 1600 missionaries from ECWA churches who serve in Nigeria and other countries with the Evangelical Missionary Society (EMS), the missionary arm of ECWA.

I don't know how old the foregoing Wik-entry is, but "ECWA Bingham University" is also an entry in the same Wikipedia:

ECWA Bingham University is a new Nigerian university.  ECWA started planning for the university in 2003. A charter was granted by the Nigerian University Commission in 2005. Lectures commenced in 2006. The university has its permanent campus on the outskirts of Abuja (the Nigerian capital) in New Karu, Nasarawa State and has occupied it since 14 March 2008. Accommodation for students is on campus with no exceptions. The school maintains high Christian moral and academic standards. The university offers courses such as

* Business administration
* Economics
* Mass Communication
* Biochemistry
* Microbiology
* English
* Medicine only
* Sociology
* Political Science
* Computer Science

Initiatives are being undertaken to expand the courses taught.

The current [university leader] is Prof. Anjorin, a prominent medical doctor who aims to take Bingham University to greater heights. ... Among prominent visting lecturers to the school recently is Dr. Francis Ohanyido, the Nigerian Public Health Physician and eHealth expert.

rW sociologizes: BU competes for intellectual leadership, graduating Christian students to enter society as budding leaders in excellence and creativity in various professions, amidst the volatile scene we associate with Nigerian inter-religious tensions, sometimes to the point of ruthless riots.

Contrastively, BU is preparing young Nigerians in a wide range of professions, needful to the country's future, if it is to be a peaceable society, especially inter-tribally and inter-religiously (there's a Muslim vs. Christian divide in parts of the country).

In Nigeria, BU is part of a growing number of Christian schools of h+er education at the tertiary level, aspiring to the rank of those offering quality Masters degrees and PhDs.  Alongside a lengthy list of public universities in Nigeria, there's a slowly growing list of almost 20 private universities.

BU is the creation of ECWA, somewhat parallel to a competing Christian university of similar size, Covenant University, an indigenous Pentecostal institution in Ota, Ogun State, Nigeria.   It is organized into three discipline-based colleges:  Business and Social Sciences (2000 students, 2k5 stats); Human Development (they offer a 4 yr BA in Philosophy program, but I saw no description of what this may consist of as far as curricular offerings are concerned; and Science and Technology (with lots of computer science, for which a required course woud best be devised, perhaps using Basden's Frameworks text.

There's also a Reformed-faith seminary of the Church of Christ among the Tiv in Nigeria (Mkar, Benue State, 140 students), with long historic connection to the Christian Reformed Church in North America (some Tiv have studied at Calvin Theological Seminary, Grand Rapids, I believe).  The Tiv Church also cooperates with 4 other denominations in a Reformed theological seminary in Jos, Northwest Nigeria (320 fulltime students, 200 partime).

I haven't yet studied the advanced-education institutions operated by Anglicans in Nigeria. I'm aware of St Paul's University College, Awka Anambra, Nigeria, amongst some 22 Anglican educational centers, mostly devoted to theology at lower levels. It must be said the schools and university college's of the Anglican Church in Nigeria, all serve under the Primate of the Church of Nigeria (Anglican Communion) with its "nearly 20 million practising Anglicans,"  soon-to-retire Primate Peter Akinola pictured above / interviewed by Times of Nigeria via blog Women Living under Muslim Laws (the  home diocese of Bishop Akinola is the national capital city of Abuja).

Archbishop Akinola is prominent worldwide as a leader of the global coalition of Anglicans who don't want gay bishops, gay marriages or .... Altho from outside the USA, he is nevertheless powerfully present in North America as a signer of the Manhattan Declaration of 125 Roman Catholic bishops, Anglican bishops, and including at least one hierarch of Orthodox Christians, all prelates apparently, and along with them, Evangelical preachers led by layman Chuch Colson.

Not only in liberal Anglican quarters in Britain and the USA, but also among Nigerians:  there are those bitterly critical of the Anglican Archbishop. Akinola is charged with sub rosa sponsorship of severe anti-homo legislation. In trying to understand this alleged involvement of the Archbishop in advancing legal severity of the public law, one has to consider that the Archbishop is constantly struggling to deflect Nigerian Muslim claims that Chrtistianity, Anglicanism with it, is soft regarding, and tolerant of homos. I suspect that Akinola, as fine an archbishop as he otherwise may be, nevertheless in this case he seems to have succumbed to a reactionary reflex, supporting legal punishment for homos,  a revised public law that constantly mandates five years in prison if an offender is found guilty of certain kinds of behaviors (homosexual).

... [I]n Nigeria he is at the more liberal end of the Christian spectrum. More importantly, he is in the front line of relations between Christianity and Islam. In the northern, Sharia states of Nigeria, Christians have been driven from their looted homes, even murdered. The relationship with Islam is central to his ministry and he has found a way to counter Islam without violence: it is called evangelism.

That's the larger picture, and some of its features. To return to the upcoming IAPCHE gathering at Bingham University, near Abuja in March, I'm seeking a broader understanding of what BU woud be able to signify reformationally in the pursuit of an ethos of excellence in service in all spheres of life and accompanying roles, under the macro-conditions of modernizing development in Nigeria.  And the need for inter-religious tolerance, dialogue, and inter-tribal good will in Nigeria.  And, hence, in the larger zone of Black Africa (Subsaharan Africa) and All-Africa. And thus, in inter-religious dialogue, and understanding. That's the implication of Bingham University's status as a key IAPCHE event and venue for Africa.

This compares with IAPCHE's main center for Africa for decades, the longtime center that had been the former Potchefstroom University for Christian H+er Education, which has been folded into NorthWest University (NWU), now with 3 campuses and a combined administration, plus the new post-apartheid mandate to justify its existence by serving a h+ly diverse post-apartheid society.

[T]he NWU Potchefstroom Campus:

This is the largest of the NWU’s campuses, having had 35,174 students registered in 2008, of which more that 18,800 were enrolled for distance learning programmes. The Potchefstroom Campus also accounts for most of the NWU’s research output and National Research Foundation-rated researchers.

The Potchefstroom Campus has eight faculties: Arts; Natural Sciences; Theology; Education Sciences; Economic and Management Sciences; Law; Engineering, and Health Sciences.

The Campus has 20 research entities, as well as many academic and research centres of excellence.

The former Potchestroom U seems to have a very meek approach to its (former?) Christian identity (often confused with a racial identity, the identity of the white deomination that founded the institution, ), but that is the past with its good and its evil, whereas now by government mandate "Potch" (as I've heard it called) is in a development of its educational planning for decades ahead, undergoing transitional problems and pleasures to become something new again.

In 2004 the Potchefstroom University became one of the three campuses of the new North-West University (the others being in Mafikeng and Vaal (situated in Vanderbijlpark).

I found the Potch campus' research center for text fascinating:

CTexT - Centre for Text Technology

* Spelling checkers[3] for several South_african languages including Afrikaans, Setswana, Sesotho sa Leboha (Pedi), isiZulu, isiXhosa
* TSENANG! SETSWANA is a multimedia language acquisition programme
* NGENANI! ISIZULU is a multimedia language acquisition programme

The foregoing productive research has as background:

Language Notice

The North-West University acknowledges the realities of a multilingual society and a multilingual university environment. The university subscribes to an accommodative multilingual framework according to which functional multilingualism is implemented in a diversified way at the different levels of operation and communication at the university.

As required by its Statute, the university has embarked upon and made good progress with a consultative language planning process aimed at formulating an institutional language policy that is flexible and functional, that seeks to address the language imbalances of the past and that promotes access, integration and a sense of belonging.

On the basis of our commitment to multilingualism, we are currently in the process of making our corporate website available in Setswana, English and Afrikaans – the current three official languages of the university. Until this process has been completed it may occur temporarily that some texts will be available in English and Afrikaans only, or English only or Afrikaans only.

Mafikeng Campus, NorthWest University.

A third campus is under a new round of development in the Vaal Triangle Campus NWU,

Situated on the banks of the Vaal River in a proclaimed nature reserve, the Vaal Triangle Campus with its diverse population also boasts a unique environmental setting, with various species of game roaming the campus grounds. The Campus has two faculties, namely the Faculty of Humanities with four schools and the Faculty of Economic Sciences and Information Technology with three schools

While IAPCHE's centering in South Africa was generous toward the rest of Africa (even during Apartheid, despite the scarcity of funding, see the essay by Bennie Van der Walt (2004a -- originally published in Afrikaans in the bilingual Journal for Christian Scholarship / Tydskrif vir Christelikewetenskap , Vol. 43: 216-234, 2007. © B J van der Walt 17; and now in English in a PDF downloadable format) is specifically focused on Africa. "The Institute for Reformational Studies in Potchefstroom, also did much for Africa on the Christian worldview level," ["until it was closed in 1999)], now 10 years later, perhaps Nigeria can be envisioned as a second IAPCHE hub within Africa and for all Africa.

Eventually, we can fantasize religiously a Christian research university for Africa, English-speaking but facing the multilingual aspect of society (as exemplified by Potchefstroom Campus, NorthWest University), the mix of differences in language, religion, tribes, and mores.

Welcome to the Mafikeng Campus!

Invest in the North-West

The North-West University (NWU) is an entrepreneurial, innovative and truly South African university. The University is committed to meet the needs of the community by providing quality education to the disadvantaged and rural communities from which many of its students originate.

As higher education becomes increasingly complex and competitive, the University also remains committed to responding to the new challenges that includes information technology, changing learner needs and demographics, and increased globalization.

Mafikeng Campus offers a range of undergraduate and postgraduate programmes in five faculties. The programmes are offered on both full-time and part-time bases. Masters degrees are offered by dissertation or by taught courses and a mini dissertation, while Doctoral degrees are offered by dissertation.

In Nigeria, to my mind, a Christian research university for Africa woud need to educate a team of young Nigerian philosophers equipped to resource what is variously called Christian Nonduality (Friesen), the Philosophy of the Cosmonomic Idea (Robinson), Protestant Philosophy / Ethics (Stafleu), Reformational philosophy and worldview (ICS Toronto, Redeemer, The King's, Dordt, Trinity Christian, Calvin College), likewise the UK's West Yorkshire School of Christian Studies (WYSOCS) along with the Brit association general's blog, ReformationalsUK. A veritable university-level digital library of English-language writings by Reformationals, often philosophy-minded in the spirits of Dooyeweerd, Vollenhoven, and Van Riessen, All of Life Redeemed blog by Steve Bishop. Another reformationalUK interlocutor and leader is Dr. Jonathan Chaplin, Director, Kirby Laing Institute for Christian Ethics, at Tyndale House, Cambridge, England. Dr Adrienne Dengerink Chaplin is freelancing in Britain (where she is now moved also from their previous professorships, he in political theory, she in philosophical aesthetics, both at the Institute for Christian Studies, Toronto. Dr Andrew Basden's work, Philosophical Frameworks for Understanding Information Systems, offers a point of contact with the Christian programmes in computer sciences and related fields that are in early stages in Africa (noticeably emphasized at Covenant University, Ota, Ogun State as well as at Bingham University, Abuja capital region.  And perhaps the doyen and doyenne of Reformationals in England, Dr. Alan Storkey and Dr Elaine Storkey. Or, rather, is that honour is equally one that goes to Dr David Hansen (medicine, resident resource at WYSOCS)?

Cliosophics: History: Reformational thinker remarks on 'inner history' of our scholarly community

Some remarks by Jacob Klapwijk

Reformational philosophy clarifies its own inner history, relation to Dutch society

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Another task that Klapwijk took upon himself was to analyze and evaluate differences between the university's two leading lights, both now long deceased but both with partisan followers who could live less with the leaders' differences than could those leaders themselves. One of Klapwijk's first attempts to articulate this critical stance for his philosophical community occurred in a widely-read volume edited by Hendrik Hart, Johan van der Hoeven, and Nicholas Wolterstorff, reviewed in Theology Today, by Eugene Oosterhoven: "An excellent chapter on Rationality in the Dutch Neo-Calvinist Tradition.'by Jacob Klapwijk, Professor of Philosophy at the Free University treats Abraham Kuyper's doctrines of common grace, and the antithesis, and his failure to harmonize the two, especially when he dealt with human reason. Kuyper's attempts to give the antithesis organizational form is shown to "lead to a dangerous identification of the Christian (or, if you will, Reformed) cause with God's cause" (p. 97). Although Kuyper intended Christian organizations to be a means for Christianizing society, 'the danger was that they were considered not as deficient instruments but as ends in the struggle for the kingdom of God'."

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

As mentioned by Oosterhaven, one major difference in ideas between Bavinck and Kuyper is formulated largely in theological terms that contrast a doctrine called "Common Grace" with a doctrine called "the Antithesis." Bavinck emphasized Common Grace, while Kuyper emphasized (sometimes severely) the Antithesis. A comparison of the two positions, which came to designate two interwoven and contentious traditions in the GKiN and the Christian social movements that flowed from its membership, is presented in one of the three chapters that Jacob Klapwijk contributed to a very important self-critical work of Reformational philosophy, entitled Bringing into Captivity Every Thought (1991). He was one of the three editors of the volume and among nearly a dozen contributors.

Clarifying his philosophical movement's task as transformational in the wider world

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Klapwijk wanted to think of Reformational philosophy not only, not even primarily as "Calvinist" in V's term, not only as "reformational-ecumenical" (in D's terms), but as a transformational philosophy atheletic enough to keep pace with the broader non-philosophical world in which it may hope to survive by doing good work for the neighbour and the Lord in the realms of theoretical thought.

Free University in Amsterdam (VU Amsterdam) -- a history (1880-2995)

Updates: 1st on Nov28,2k9; 2nd on Jan5,2k10)

The Distinctive Character of the 
Free University in Amsterdam, 1880-2005:
A Commemorative History

by Arie Theodorus Van Deursen
translated by Herbert Donald Morton

Original Dutch: Een hoeksteen in het verzuild bestel:
De Vrij Universiteit 1880-2009 (published 2005 Amsterdam: Uitgeverij Bert Bakker)

English translation: Eerdmans (Paperback - Mar 15 2008)

At the moment, Amazon.com is offering the volume for Cdn $80.76 -- oops!, I guess more correctly the site that charges in Cdn dollars woud be Amazon.ca. Later: it proves to have been the former website, and the full price with taxes came to USA $91.00. This blog-entry was rewritten (expanded) Drec5,2k10)

Van Deursen narrates according to his periodization of his theme:

√ Venturing forth alone (1880-1905)

This first chapter r+tly has a focus on the singular leader Abraham Kuyper whose vision was the Vrije University Amsterdam (he had several large visions, not all of them consistent with one another, but his rhetoric carried the day, the hour. Fortunately, the author is not blinded by the l+t, but takes up the student body, the faculty quarrels, the search for ideological solidarity in regard to the sphere-sovereignty of the university as an institution of scientific thawt (imagination, the arts, literature and free expression generally were in short supply or tacitly suppressed, but priorities had to be almost-cruelly determined sometimes -- were the vision to be realized much at all.

Altho very important, especially after his 1902 acceptance of an appointment as professor of dogmatics on the theological faculty (the only faculty where formal subscription to the Three Forms of Unity was required of professors), Herman Bavinck played a very important role at VU. When Kuyper's party won seats in the Second Chamber of the Dutch Parliament, Bavinck became the party's leader there, while Kuyper remained in the Commons, the lower chamber, and from there became elgible to lead the government, if his party and coalition coud win sufficient votes.


Summing up, in many ways, it now seems, the struggle for a distinctive university of Reformed character had just begun.


After Bavinck's and Kuyper's deaths in the early twenties of the 19th Century, the former Governor of the Dutch colonial empire's jewel of the Orient, Indonesia, this protege replaced the Founder in the party (ARP, Antirevolutionaire Partij) and on the VU board, Hendrik Colijn.

√ Inherit or borrow (1905-1926)The second chapter lays out the provisions of the law recognizing the VU and sets a herculean task for its future, perhaps with the hope of some that it woud fail. The institution had persisted for 25 years without recognition or govt financial support (chapter 1).

In 1901, however, the coalition of Catholics and calvinists (gereformeerden) won the general elections (humanist elites were over-represented to the tune of 260 of the professorships in the Netherlands, only two Catholics had received appointments in the universities, and only one was a calvinist, he an Amsterdam chemist). Abraham Kuyper, at the top of the candidates' list of the most numerous political party in this epochal electoral change of 1901 now became leader of the cabinet in the lower chamber. Thanks to some of his coalition partners, eventually, a law was proposed to recognize VU Amsterdam; all hell broke loose, due in large part to the left and the furious Hervormed members of the chamber who resented Kuyper's exclusion of them from the VU's leadership. They may have been hervormde, but they were not gereformeerde in principles, according to Kuyper's strictures for the formative direction of VU. The recognition-law passed on May 22, 1905.

I quote Van Deursen's opening paragraph of his second chapter:

At the Annual Meeting of [the Association that founded and operated VU, in] 1905, [the presiding officer] Anema sketched the conditions the Free University must meet under the new law. There must be three faculties, each having at least three professsors; after twenty-five years there must be a fourth faculty, and after fifty years a fifth. The University must dispopse of a start-up capital fund of 100,000 guilders. Moreover, an overs+t commission of the government woud produce an annual report on the examinations. The [govt] commission continued in existence until 1960. It did not play a great role in the history of the Free University.

Altho very important, especially after his 1902 acceptance of an appointment as professor of dogmatics on the theological faculty (the only faculty where formal subscription to the Three Forms of Unity was required of professors), Herman Bavinck played a very important role at VU. When Kuyper's party won seats in the Second Chamber of the Dutch Parliament, Bavinck became the party's leader there, while Kuyper remained in the Commons, the lower chamber, and from there became elgible to lead the government, if his party and coalition coud win sufficient votes.

Summing up, in many ways, it now seems, the struggle for a distinctive university of Reformed character had just begun.

After Bavinck's and Kuyper's deaths in the early twenties of the 19th Century, the former Governor of the Dutch colonial empire's jewel of the Orient, Indonesia, this protege replaced the Founder in the party (ARP, Antirevolutionaire Partij) and on the VU board, Hendrik Colijn.

Colijn delivered an address about the expansion of the VU. Both the means and the personnel were missing, and one could not depend on a subsidy [from govt]. One coud limit the objective and be satisfied with the extension of the three existing faculties, or one coud str+k out on a different course. The Association coud establish special chairs at the public universities designed to grow into parallel faculties. These woud then form part of the Free University but at the same time be incorporated into the body of public institutions. In this way the medical faculty woud lean against the existing universities, which woud be responsible for a large part of the training [of VU's future medical doctors and nurses] . In this way universities. Yet that was not an insurmountable objection. For many subjects, the spiritual direction of the teacher was of no importance.

Here, Colijn brazenly drew on the arguments of VU's psychiatric medico L. Bouman and the later-world-renown anatomist F.J.J. Buytendijk (who left VU in 1924), and natural scientists who had already organized themselves into the Christelijke Vereeniging Natuur- en Geneeskundigen [the latter three words strangely translated as "Physicists and Physicians," perhaps because there were no biologists in the group? or was "Natuurkundigen" meant to reduce natural sciences/arts to what we coud call today "the physical mode"? in order perhaps to accomodate the Scholastic ontological dualism of "the physical" vs. "the spiritual"]. Talks had been held two years earlier with the Gereformeerde Vereeningen voor Ziekenverpleging (Reformed Nurses Association).

Also figuring into the most early developments was Vereeningen tot christelijke verzorging krankzinnigen en zenuwliders in Nederland (Association for Christian Care of the Insane and Neuropathic in the Netherlands). This professional body founded and maintained a sanitarium at Bloemfontein, led by Dr L. Lindeboom, who trained most of those who became briefly forerunners of Medicine at VU and then built the Valerius Clinic in Amsterdam in affiliation with the VU. I benefitted directly from its loving expertise in 1970 -- thanks to Dr Simon J. Ridderbos (pastoral counsellor) and Dr W.S. Ungar (psychiatrist). Along this latter of line of historical tracing of lines, I found this come-on page that draws a teacher/student relation between L. Bouman and a later phenomenological psychiaterist of world renown:

I have to leave matters ruffly hanging here, except for closure's sake: VU for several reasons, including finances and qualified personnel who deviated from the "Kuyperian line" not least in regard to his doctrine of "two sciences" which I have not h+l+ted, as it was nested in the larger doctrine of "antithesis" (Klapwijk has analyzed the core of this matter well.)

Christian scholarship (1926-1955)

Social scholarship (1955-1968)

The shadow of Marx (1969-1980)

Privatization of belief (1980-2005)

Check it out!

Philosophical Readings for "Protestant-Ethicals," by M D Stafleu

Updated: Dec13,2k9

readings in "Protestant Ethics"

The first time I encountered the concept of Protestant philosophy was in a retrospective now-classic, History of Protestant Thought before Kant. I learned a lot, as mindful as I coud be at the time in regard to DHTh Vollenhoven's consequential problem-historical method and schematic charts for the historiography of philosophy.

The next time I ran into the phrase "Protestant philosophy" was quite recently when stumbling upon the same phrase in the title of Dr William Young's book of 155 pages, Toward a reformed philosophy: the development of a Protestant philosophy in Dutch Calvinistic thought since the time of Abraham Kuyper (Piet Heiln, publishers, 1952).

Now there's the current appelation "Reformational philosophy" perhaps transiting to become perhaps obsolesced by Stafleu 2006 in favor of "Protestant philosophy," but that word these days carries more weit in Dutch society where after years of Together on the Way, the three main Protestant denoms of the Netherlands united to become the Protestant Church of the Netherlands. In this last usage, in English, are reformationals now expected to call themselves "protestantals" ?

Marinus Dirk Stafleu
Relations and Characters in Protestant Philosophy
electronic text 2006

outline

√ Introduction

Part I. Culture: What makes people different?

√ Labour  - completed
√ Playing - completed Nov23,2k9 -- see my notes below
Speaking and listening
Reasoning
Believing

Part II. Civilization: How should people deal with their differences?

Companionship
Mutual service
Leadership
Justice
Loving care

Part III. History: Experimental philosophy, a case study

Isolation of a field of science
Searching for objectivity
Technical progress
Searching for universal laws
The hidden structure of matter
Philosophy of experiment

Part IV. Evolution: Relations and characters in 20th-century science

Theory of characters
Sets
Symmetry
Periodic motion
Physical characters
Biotic characters
Inventory of behaviour characters

Cited Literature

Name index

=============================

I'm reading on screen a downloaded digital PDF entitled

"StafleuR&C[02AestheticRelations.pdf"

You can get your own digital copy from 

All of Life Redeemed

(website of Steve Bishop, site proprietor and
Master Digital Librarian, English Publications,
specialist in Reformational Philosophy, Christian Worldviews)

click category "Stafleu" in banner-index of authors


Stafleu:  Relations and Character in Protestant Ethics (2k6)

Part I: section 2
√ Playing -- completed Nov23

keywords

play,

aesthetics, ....from natural origins in the throat, the pleasurable gurgling of the human infant (Julia Kristeva) before and while she or he begins learning the mother-tongue thru formaic activity/experience in child's play, to traditioned craft discipline/s, eventually perhaps mastery

sports ... training, competition, rules, teams, clubs, fans, followings

cult --- rites

On aesthetics, Stafleu references Seerveld, Rookmaker, Dooyeweerd, Zuidervaart, Goodman, Cassirer, Huizinga, Borgdorff.

p 201

Protestantism has exerted a large influence on Western culture and
Protestant philosophy dealt with the arts extensively.


Kuyper, Dooyeweerd, Rookmaker, Seerveld, Birstwistle
to whom shoud be added Luitikhuizen, Zuidervaart, Adrienne Dengerink-Chaplin,
Rebekah Smick-McIntire


p 203
Huizinga's Homo ludens Man the Player, the playing man

And takes aesthetics into arts, disciplines, etc., institutions.


p 240
In Catholic churches, a priest acts as a mediator between God and
the people. In Protestant churches, synagogues and mosques this is not the
case. Now the pastor is not a priest, although he often cannot resist the
temptation of behaving as such. {This snippet jumped out at me because
of other readings, quite elliptical to  Stafleu's purposes in the preceding.)


p  246
Stafleu has already situated himself as a perichoretic trinitarian.  Thus:
Each human being shows himself as a person, as an image of God, who
reveals himself as a person. Maybe that is the deepest meaning of the
aesthetic relation frame.

Corporations USA: Healthcare Insurance industry's structure, allegedly makes inevitable a single-payer health system

 Part I -- Healthcare Insurance Businesses have Achilles Heal

"The inevitability of an American single-payer health system," by Rick Ungar. Ungar's article, vital to understanding the capitalism oi American healthcare appeared on the Policy Page, True/Slant (Sep20,2k9). This article, tho not from my own viewpoint, I recommend strongly as vital reading in these days.

Virtually all large health insurance companies are publicly held; and public companies have a life force that is unlike any other. They are driven by the desire of current management to show improved profits of about 10% each year so as to sustain share price increases for the shareholders and compensation increases for management. Also understand that while public companies like to talk about the “long term”, the phrase has no true meaning to them.

Management and shareholders worry about this year’s numbers with an eye towards next year’s – and that is as far as it goes. Most shareholders and managers have no expectation of being around in the ‘long term.’ [Especially at the scale of coporations that are "too large too fail."]

Thus, while current management [personnel] of the large health insurance companies may very well realize that they cannot sustain their business model for the longer term, this is not something they can afford to worry about.

Interspersed commentary by economics reporter / opinionater /ranter, EconoMix,  and Albert Gedraitis (rW publisher):

Here at last we found a clear, concise ins+t into the American economy -- such that the specific healthcare-insurance industry and its permissible corporate forms instance a valid exception to the general rule presumably established for enterprises otherwise ("free enterprises generally but not specifically in regard to healthcare-industry free enterprises").

Ungar:

Their shareholders want returns on their investment as management wants boosts to their compensation and they are looking for it now. The future will be someone else’s problem.

Take virtually any failed industry in America and you will see that the dynamic set forth above is inevitably true. Whoever ran General Motors before the CEO in charge when the industry fell apart probably knew what was down the road for the company. But it wasn’t his problem. An adept shareholder in GM who got out five years ago, really didn’t care where the industry was headed, nor did a CEO who had no plans to be around when the balls in the air crashed to the ground.

So, when the price of health insurance reaches the point where most Americans truly cannot afford it – and the numbers make it more than clear that the point will be reached and reasonably soon – what then?

Will ‘free marketers’ be out there arguing that we should just let the health insurers fail? After all,that’s how a pure, capitalist system is designed to work, right?

So severely distinguishing, Ungar has laid bare how the general capitalist investment ethos in North America, is deadly to the specific corporate interface between healthcare itself and insurance tailored to the task of the separate and sovereign sphere of providing that medical professional care (a signficicant part of "healthcare") in regard to the role of specifically medical healthcare insurance.

Unstated presupposition of the Ungar article: the only options for reform of American healthcare insurance are

either the single-payer system (a socialist conception in origin -- but not necessarily socialist when advocated today, lest we fall prey to the genetistic fallacy [Albert Wolters] which often crops up in theoretical thawt and policy decision-making and -advocating)

or an unalleviated, unameliorated, unregulated free-market system, free to the point of madness, the apocalyptic madhouse being a favored metaphor of today's arts and society, a metaphor frawt with ambiguity, semantic slipperiness

(on behalf of which metaphor many "conservative" public thinkers and rhetoricians are making extreme authoritarian reverse-totalitarian claims today).

A digression on social conservatism

To the strident woud-be TV definers of conservatism, just compare the social conservative duo of Russell Kirk and Hadley Arkes, cited recently as beyond the scope of David Koyzis in his piece "Why I am not a Social Conservative." Koyzis apparently aims at rebuking advocates of the moralistic "pet" issues of what I call "TV conservatism" in America.

Koyzis also registers his objection to prioritizing the "consistent ethics of life" (Roman Catholic moral doctrine). He does not elevate this theory of morality to be, while distinctvely Catholic, a more broadly Christian political program, regarding all of which Koyzis and rW share a point of agreement. In the exchange following upon his blog-entry, the Koyzis duo of social conservatives of another kind is supplemented by Francis Beckwith who additionally lists George Gilder, Francis Canavan, Robert P. George). To this list of non-individualist societally-conservative American philosophers, some woud want to add the name of a Brit historian of the American national experience, Paul M. Johnson, especially for his book, A History of the American People (1999). More recemtly, there's the new work by Patrick Allitt, The Conservatives: Ideas and Personalities throughout American History (2009).

"Allitt understands the Civil War as a 'clash of rival conservatisms,' the conservatism of Clay, Webster, and Lincoln, who wished to conserve the Union, and the conservatism of the Confederacy, which wished to conserve the South’s traditional way of life. Both conservatisms abounded in paradox." -- Peter Berkowitz

An unalleviated Capitalism,  a system that generates human misery as a byproduct of its many good achievements otherwise, such a Capitalism ossified now into an absolutist ideology brayed aloud by some of the oxen on FoxNews -- regarding healthcare insurance, of all things!

Part II -- Dooyeweerd-style critique of healthcare-insurance  businesses

The necessity of disclosing the internal structural principle of an exceptional phenotype of a particular societal sphere, the sphere of business in its phenotype devoted to healthcare insurance by means of stockmarket-traded corporations; that phenotype will here be referred to simply as "American healthcare insurance companies" (but referring chiefly to megacorporations like Cigna, Aetna, Humana and similar entities traded on the stockmarket), this necessity presses upon all who are concerned with viable solutions in the present wave of interest in healthcare reform in the USA.

... The internal structural principle that typifies those business enterprises that have come to dominate the economics of healthcare as an industry, with spiralling costs to premium-payers in the USA is an important consideration when we are beset these days thawtless Conservatives and Liberals obfuscating the analysis that Protestant philosopher Herman Dooyeweerd has suggested.  Practically, we all must face "the rising spiral of healthcare insurance costs."

But healthcare insurance is surely built around what Dooyeweerd woud call a typically hybrided entity -- where, in this case, the aspect of medicalcare costs (optimatic-economic aspect of medicalcare) are enkaptically intertwined with the general socioeconomic climate and, precisely, a specialty profit-driven finance industry, the healthcare-insurance speciality of the finance industry.

Not that all the enterprises in healthcare insurance are profit-driven. There are some splendid examples of non-profit healthcare insurance companies. A few authentic "mutuals," like Northwest Mutual Insurance (as advertized on FoxNews channels) and some successful other forms of co-op structures in this industrial sector and speciality.

But the greedy metacorps that interlope into what shoud be rather the zone of a type that is carefully regulated to balance the intertwined symbiotic enkapses that constitute it in its uniqueness of type (displaying a duality at its core, its internal structural principle [Dooyeweerd], a zone with legislated incentives to balance that intra-industrial contrast and tension, just as in D's celebrated citation of the hybrided phenotype of the family farm (a business enterprise hybrided with a specific family community and structure).   Of course, sometimes a family farm proves itself dysfunctional as a family as a result of its particular configuration, but often family farms are quite functional as both family and as farm business, as one, aside from the rapidly changing economic climate and situation in which it is located, both  societally and ecologically.




Awareness that the healthcare insurance company can be organized differently from the firms that Ungar puts his finger on, in regard to the current mis-structration and antinormativity of the main greedy capitalist corporations dominating the industrial sector for some time.  These two moments of greed-capitalism today are keys to why the whole healthcare-insurance industry is unusually vulnerable to the determinants of stockmarket-traded corporations conceived more largely across all American industries.

I think Ungar locates two precise structuring principles that dominate the dominant type of megacorps in the health insurance industry; he shows what I mean by antinormative so-called "free enterprise" businesses gone amuck in the healthcare insurance field.

-- EconoMix

Pisteutics: Reformed denoms: South Africa's "Reformed family" in disarray

I found this article of great value in working to understand the Reformed situation in South Africa. It originates with Ecumenical News International via Ekklesia (a UK liberalationist journal). "South African churches still living with difficult legacy of apartheid" (May27,2k9)

A South African church suspended in 1982 from the World Alliance of Reformed Churches because of its support for apartheid, is "still not ready for readmission", a meeting of the grouping's executive committee in Geneva has been told - write Stephen Brown and Hans Pienaar.

The Nederduitsch Hervormde Kerk van Afrika (Dutch Reformed Church of Africa), or NHKA, had been excluded from the global Reformed Alliance because of the theological and biblical backing the church gave to the system of white domination under which South Africa was governed from 1948 until the early 1990s.

The church has applied to rejoin WARC but the Alliance's executive committee said in 2005 that the NHKA first needed to demonstrate to the churches in South Africa and the world that it has renounced apartheid "fully and completely".

WARC general secretary, the Rev Setri Nyomi, presenting his report on 23 May to the 2009 executive committee meeting in Geneva, noted that a WARC team had visited South Africa in March to meet the denomination.

"Our discussions showed a deep division in the church about moving beyond apartheid," said Nyomi, a Presbyterian from Ghana, in his report. "It was our determination that they were not ready for readmission." In comments to the Geneva meeting, Nyomi noted, however, "There were a few voices that … were committed to challenge the leadership of their church."

Five of the NHKA's leading theologians, writing in an article in South Africa's Afrikaans-language press early in March declared their "shame and hurt" that the NHKA has not yet officially declared apartheid "unevangelical" and "evil".

In 2007 the NHKA's general commission, or synod, had a motion calling for such a declaration on its agenda. But emotions ran so high before the meeting even began, the matter was taken off the agenda.

The theologians called for other members of the NHKA to add their names to their dissident declaration, in which it is also acknowledged that apartheid was dehumanising and caused great suffering which had to be redressed.

In his report, Nyomi referred also to mediation by the team sent to South Africa in separate discussions about the "stalemate" in the reunification of the Dutch Reformed church family, which was divided along racial lines during the apartheid period.

These discussions involve the Uniting Reformed Church of Southern Africa [which brings together Black Reformed and Coloured Reformed] and the Dutch Reformed Church (NGK), which was the white Reformed church in South Africa with the biggest membership.

Confusion in the identity of the churches can derive from the fact that the full names of the NGK and of the NHKA, which is much smaller, both translate into English as Dutch Reformed Church.

Both of them had supported the system of apartheid but the much larger NGK later rejected the racist ideology and was readmitted to the World Alliance of Reformed Churches.

The NGK is seeking reunification with the URCSA, which is itself a union of the formerly black and coloured (mixed race) branches of the Dutch Reformed family.

One of the issues hindering unification is the status of the "Belhar Confession", a doctrinal statement issued by the coloured church and later adopted by the black church, which rejected the theological and moral justification of apartheid as being a heresy.

The NGK has acknowledged that the Belhar confession was biblically grounded but declines to accept it as a fourth confession of faith, as was done by the URCSA. While the NGK leadership has been amenable to the move and most of its leadership desires it, the NGK says there is no unanimity among its lay membership over the confession.

In 2008, the URCSA declined to recommend the NGK for membership of the All Africa Conference of Churches, and its general synod placed a moratorium on any further reunification discussions. URCSA leaders insist this decision can only be rescinded at its next general synod in 2012,thereby suspending further unification moves.

While the NGK has long been a racially open church with many non-white members, its membership, tested in surveys, overwhelmingly reject the Belhar Confession as false doctrine. Many adherents claim the Belhar document is grounded in "liberation theology", long demonised by many Afrikaners.

URCSA members, on the other hand, say it would be difficult to renounce the confession as the basis for church unity. "They have to understand where we come from. The deep racism from the past still figures strongly," a URCSA source requesting anonymity told Ecumenical News International. "The inequalities produced by apartheid are still the cause of much suffering."

In his report to the WARC meeting in Geneva, Nyomi said, "Regarding the unification process, we hear both sides. We were encouraged that both agreed that what is needed includes a process towards reunification that is based on truth, restorative justice and reconciliation. It was also agreed to put in place a process of studying the Belhar Confession."

[With acknowledgements to ENI. Ecumenical News International is jointly sponsored by the World Council of Churches, the Lutheran World Federation, the World Alliance of Reformed Churches and the Conference of European Churches.]

History: Obscure Point: Coud RedCross' apparent meddling have resulted in only pseudo-legality for outlawing Jewish settlements

Not so long ago Owlb posted on rW page 2, a blog-entry with the prefix "Pisteutics" -- but it was a largely political text about the Settlements, Obama's targetting them, and Israel's Prime Minister, Binyamin Netanyahu then being forced to defend the Settlements in his own Parliament but also to the world. The 'silence' and the 'holocaustizing' of 4,000 years of Jewish and Judaic present in Israel

In the analysis following, Moshe Dann, previously an Israeli history prof, now a journalist, contributes to Jerusalem Post (jpost.com) an op-ed piece, How settlements became 'illegal'. For history buffs, the idea of an illegalization of the already-existing settlements, as well as those that followed, can become very intriguing. I certainly was intrigued. But I'm in no position to evaluate Dann's historiographical claims--about the International Red Cross, the legalities or lack thereof in the case of its dubious legality itself in judging the situation of the time, like a duly-constituted tribunal, but not. Here is Moshe Dann's important text in our Special Features for Christian political thinkers, Christian Democrats, and Reformed Political entities around the world:

In 1967, under attack, Israel struck back and conquered the Golan Heights from Syria, the Sinai Peninsula and the Gaza Strip from Egypt, and Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem (the West Bank) from Jordan. Israel had been threatened with a second Holocaust, and few questioned its actions. No one spoke of a Palestinian state; there was no "Palestinian people."

Many legal experts accepted Israel's right to "occupy" and settle its historic homeland, because the areas had been illegally occupied by invading Arab countries since 1948.

One organization, however - the International Committee of the Red Cross - disagreed.

Meeting secretly in the early 1970s in Geneva, the ICRC determined that Israel was in violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention. Based on the Hague Convention, GC IV was drawn up after World War II to protect innocent civilians and restrict brutal occupations. Unilaterally, the ICRC turned it into a weapon to delegitimize and demonize Israel.

As far as is known, the ICRC did not rely on any legal precedents; it made up "the law."

Judge and jury, its decisions lacked the pretense of due process. Since all decisions and protocols of the ICRC in this matter are closed, even the identities of the people involved are secret. And there is no appeal. Without transparency or judicial ethics, ICRC rulings became "international law." Its condemnations of Israel provide the basis for accusing Israel of "illegal occupation" of all territory conquered in 1967.

Although most of the international community, its NGOs and institutions accept the authority of the ICRC and other institutions, such as the International Court of Justice, as sole arbiters of what is "legal," or not, it's strange that some Israeli politicians and jurists cannot defend Israel's legal claim to the territories. And Israel's case is strong.

ADOPTED IN 1945, the UN Charter (Article 80) states: "...nothing in this Chapter shall be construed in or of itself to alter in any manner the rights whatsoever of any states or any peoples or the terms of existing international instruments to which members of the United Nations may respectively be parties."

This means that the designation of "Palestine" as a "Jewish National Home," incorporated in the British Mandate and established by international agreements adopted by the League of Nations and US Congress, guarantees Israel's sovereign rights in this area. All Jewish settlement, therefore, was and is legal.

Two years later, amid growing civil war, the UN proposed a division of Palestine between Jews and Arabs - changing the terms of the Mandate; the Jews accepted, the Arabs launched a war of extermination.

When Britain ended the Mandate and left, the State of Israel was proclaimed and local mobs who had been attacking Jews for years were joined by five Arab armies. The armistice in 1949 - for Jews, independence, for Arabs, nakba (tragedy) - did not result in a Palestinian state, because the Arabs did not want it. Arab leaders never accepted Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state - most refuse to do so today.

Pressured by Russia and the Arab states, the Security Council adopted Resolution 242, which spoke of Israel's military withdrawal from some - not all - of these conquered territories in the context of a final peace agreement. The question of sovereignty remained elusive and problematic.

Israel's political echelon and Supreme Court refrained from asserting full sovereignty over the newly acquired areas but, in the absence of any reciprocal gestures, agreed to allow Jews to return to Jerusalem's Old City and Gush Etzion, where a flourishing group of settlements had been wiped out in 1947. Striking a compromise, it allowed the building of Kiryat Arba, near Hebron, where the Jewish community had been wiped out in Arab riots of 1929; Jews were permitted to pray at the Cave of Machpela, an ancient building containing the tombs of Jewish patriarchs and matriarchs, for the first time in 700 years.

Although free to leave UNRWA refugee camps, with new opportunities and challenges, Palestinians did not call for statehood or peace with Israel. The PLO, which claimed to represent Palestinians, was dedicated to terrorism, not nation-building.

FOR SOME, this is not a "legal" issue, but a moral one: Jews should not rule over ("occupy") others. So Israel withdrew unilaterally from nearly all "Palestinian" cities, towns and villages and turned over vast tracts of land to the PA/PLO as part of the Oslo Accords in 1994 and a few years later in the Wye and Hebron agreements.

When Israel withdrew from the Gaza Strip, it became a bastion of Hamas. "Land for peace" in reality means "land for terrorism."

Influenced by these events, incited by Islamists, encouraged by Israeli concessions and seeking to undermine the state, Israeli Arabs identify as "Palestinians," demanding an end to "Jewish occupation" and discrimination, and the destruction of the state itself.

Others contend that "Israel's Jewish and democratic" nature will be threatened if it continues to include large numbers of Arabs who are not loyal and do not identify with the state. But nearly all "Palestinians" live under PA, not Israeli rule. The dispute now, therefore, is over territory, not people.

Predictions of an "Arab demographic time bomb" have not proven realistic or accurate. Moreover, allowing Arab residents full civil and humanitarian rights, without political rights, as exist in most other countries, could be considered in conjunction with resettling Arab "refugees" in Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, etc., dismantling UNRWA camps and ending terrorism and incitement against Israel.

That a second (or third) Arab Palestinian state would be an existential threat to Israel seems obvious. "Land for peace" has failed. Why then promote it?

I think it's important to hear this viewpoint among Israelis, as expressed so succinctly and clearly by journalist Dann. Obama targetted the Settlements, speaking as tho a truly justic policy toward them coud be presupposed.

I am no Christian Zionist (I shudder at most of what they say and do).

I am neither typical of the Liberation Theology viewpoint in regard to Israel constructed as a "colonial settler state."

My analysis is based on my USA heritage of a historical connection between State, Church, and Synogogue. I'm thinking of President George Washington's letter to the Judaic synagogue in Rhode Island. In that document of one of the Founders, the historical root of a special friendship between two nations, America and Israel, may be seen. The relation of the USA to its own citizens of Judaic faith was carried over with a special force to support the establishment of the State of Israel.

"The equality of nations" does not apply to any nation's special closeness to the general welfare of another particular country and people. Friendship between two countries and nations allows room for unevenhandedness in America's forming a policy favouring Israel over any other interest in the territory.

America has not had such a friendship with any Islamic country, rather our Marines were put into service against the Arab Islamic pirates of the Barbary Coast. "From the hall of Montezuma to the shores of Tripoli ..."