Heating Up Hell for Mark Noll and other Non-Voters
October 13, 2004
“The hottest places in hell are reserved for those who, in a period of moral crisis, maintain their neutrality.” –The Divine Comedy*More on the “not voting” malady among committed Christians: What does it portend when a luminary of Evangelicaldom, a former supporter of cultural and political “engagement” among culturally and politically withdrawn, self-disenfranchising religious rightists, publicly declares his intention not to vote?
The Christian Century reprinted Noll’s declaration of his disengagement, perhaps because the Century’s typical, liberal reader will find a sign of slow progress and hope for the future regarding the housetraining of the once uppity evangelicals. A supposedly “militant” pro-lifer who doesn’t vote against John Kerry obviously isn’t very militant and may in time gather the courage to come out of the closet and cease being a crypto-liberal.
From the John Kerry campign site:
John Kerry will only nominate individuals to the federal bench whose records demonstrate a respect for the full range of constitutional rights, including the right to privacy and the right to choose.
Note the ever-popular grammar of hell, the language of an enslaving illusion of freedom, the favored dialect of liberalism’s “rights”–the objectless infinitive, a verb ascribing a never articulated power to the subject. Here is a linguistic predeccessor, the devil of democracy:
One fatal Tree there stands of Knowledge call’d,
Forbidden them to taste: Knowledge forbidd’n?
Suspicious, reasonless. Why should thir Lord
Envie them that? can it be sin to know,
Can it be death? and do they onely stand
By Ignorance, is that thir happie state,
The proof of thir obedience and thir faith?
O fair foundation laid whereon to build
Thir ruine! Hence I will excite thir minds
With more desire to know, and to reject
Envious commands, invented with designe
To keep them low whom knowledge might exalt
Equal with Gods; aspiring to be such,
They taste and die: what likelier can ensue?
Cf.:
…thy desire which tends to know
The works of God, thereby to glorifie
The great Work-Maister, leads to no excess
That reaches blame, but rather merits praise
The more it seems excess…
–
*Note: This is clearly a prose redaction, and a popular one on the internet. Regarding “those who ‘remain neutral in times of moral crisis,’” alert reader Lambert Simnel comments, “a quick glance at Canto Three will clarify their punishment in the fashion of contrapasso, namely those humans and angels who did not ‘choose sides’ are driven around the perimeter of hell, chased by a swarm of stinging insects.” Arguably all this constant exercise must raise the poor creatures’ temperatures to truly infernal levels.This is Heating Up Hell for Mark Noll and other Non-Voters in The Japery, a part of The New Pantagruel. Previously: Liberals Talk Turkey | Next: “We didn’t want to upset you.” | TrackBack (8) | Comments (0)
Trackback Pings:
TrackBack URL for this entry:
Listed below are links to weblogs that reference Heating Up Hell for Mark Noll and other Non-Voters:
» An Election Dialogue from 1.4
The following dialogue took place by email in October 2004 between four of The New Pantagruel’s contributing editors: Eugene McCarraher, Assistant Professor of Humanities and History at Villanova Uni… [Read More]
Tracked on October 30, 2004 07:30 AM
» Editorial Preface to An Election Dialogue from 1.4
On election eve, “discerning” Christians are awash with unsolicited advice and testimonies on the subject of voting. A growing chorus of Christian notables, now including Mark Noll, Alisdair MacIntyre, and Paul Griffiths [link], find things so decidedl… [Read More]
Tracked on October 30, 2004 08:17 AM
» An Election Dialogue from 1.3
On election eve, “discerning” Christians are awash with unsolicited advice and testimonies on the subject of voting. A growing chorus of Christian notables, now including Mark Noll, Alisdair MacIntyre, and Paul Griffiths, find things so decidedly unsat… [Read More]
Tracked on October 30, 2004 09:58 PM
» A continuing survey of the farce; or, where the folks are given the last word; or, a pointed laugh from 2.1
The Love Song of A. Gelical Prufrock “Now, we are living today in a civilization where the confusion of ideas is such that everything that Plato had rejected as philodoxie is called philosophy.” – Eric Voegelin Imagine my surprise, upon… [Read More]
Tracked on February 1, 2005 05:37 PM
» A continuing survey of the farce; or, where the folks are given the last word; or, a pointed laugh from 2.1
Having returned at last to his office in Crim Tartary, and availing himself of his superior’s speediest carrier pigeons, Fr. Gassalasca Jape, S.J. (Pantagrueliste and Controversialist Extraordinaire giving aid and comfort to Misfit Traditionalists ever… [Read More]
Tracked on August 29, 2005 04:44 PM
» Alasdair MacIntyre Joins the Not-Voting Camp in Slouching Toward Babylon from The Japery
This is just sad. Depressing. As the media reports on Rehnquist’s cancer, the cop-outs continue among prominent members of the thoughtful, unembedded, non-neoconservative Christian…right? middle? muddle? Come on people, can’t you at least muster a vo… [Read More]
Tracked on August 29, 2005 04:55 PM
» A Dialogue on the Presidential Election from 1.3
On election eve, “discerning” Christians are awash with unsolicited advice and testimonies on the subject of voting. A growing chorus of Christian notables, now including Mark Noll, Alisdair MacIntyre, and Paul Griffiths, find things so decidedly unsat… [Read More]
Tracked on September 8, 2005 06:21 AM
» Will GOP Unity Hold? from The Japery
RJN is convinced or would really like us all to believe with him that religious conservatives in the GOP will stay there unless the almost unthinkable happens: a serious pro-life Democrat alternative becomes available. In RJN’s calculation, the GOP is… [Read More]
Tracked on March 14, 2006 06:54 PM