I had a great ten days in the US. It started with the SBL at Boston, bumping into the usual serendity of people – Tom Wright, Neil MacDonald, Doug Campbell, Alan Garrow, Mark Elliott, caught up with Murray Rae, roomed with Luke Tallon and Dan Driver and met some of their talented St Andrews mates. Lots of theological exegesis going on: I was impressed by Edith Humphrey and then by Peter Leithart on typological exegesis of the Book of Ruth. Ephraim Radner was there but gave me the slip.
Then on to Justyn Terry at Trinity Evangelical School for Ministry at Pittsburgh for Thanksgiving. The college was quiet so didn’t get to meet local heroes Bill Witt or Leander Harding, but I’m hoping they will invite me back. We went to service for Pittsburgh’s 250 year anniversary at the Cathedral Church with Bishop Bob Duncan, apparently not ‘deposed’ so no unseemly fight between bishops for the throne. From Justyn’s account both sides of the Episcopalian ruck seem to understand the Church as a corporation, with Presiding Bishop as CEO, bishops as the branch managers that can be sacked – so the churches, that is, actual Christians, would then be employees perhaps, or consumers? A properly ‘episcopalian’ church would understand that a bishop is king in his own diocese, his relationship with the people of the church in his city indissoluble, so that any other jurisdiction such as province or national church is not higher but simply honorary. Anyway, a wonderful time with the Terry family, while writing my piece for Princeton
Then Princeton and the new Institute for Theological Inquiry which had set us the task of talking about Covenant and the Human Future. Supper and (Episcopalian) Church with the Jensons. I was crushed to find that Jean Bethke Elshtain had withdrawn: her vast output anticipates most of my proposal. I want to produce my theological economics book along with new stuff, on the long-term political-and-demographic result of the dissolution of marriage, which Allan Carlson of the Howard Center is doing, as is Elshtain. A very mixed but also quite elderly company, Darlene Weaver and Gerald McDermott the exceptions, and one of the rabbis one was certainly impressive, but it is not easy to see what will emerge from this. Saw a lot of Rusty Reno, who was being extra-irenic and refused to reveal the identity of Spengler, my new hero, and on to a Madison symposium chaired by Robert George on Eric Cohen’s In the Shadow of Progress
Why are the wealthiest people in human history the least likely to want children? What kind of civilization will we become if we seek cures for the sick by destroying human embryos?
Also found Ben Myers, who has been working away on the Jenson book after all, I was very relieved to find. All in the US were very relaxed about political and economic developments, but here it feels as though we are about to disappear into the maelstrom, so not at all relaxed, but dithering between continuing the effort to interest London diocese clergy in their faith while working towards a marriage institute, and running away to Scottish island monastery.
