Hiram Vander Klay on Tour with the Seminary Choir 1930

I wrote this for a discussion on Calvin-in-Common

The CRC used to fold more of its own paper. Most CRC paper today seems to come pre-folded. 

I’ve been reading an interesting dual biography on Gandhi and Churchill.

It’s been enlightening. I’ve read other Gandhi bios before but lining him up next to Churchill illuminates all kinds of things.

Gandhi, as most consequential leaders had numerous flaws and failures. One of the things he had to come to terms with was empire and civilization as understood in the context of the 19th century British. He of course was an interesting mix of all sorts of cultural streams from Chesterton to Thoreau to Tolstoy plus of course his own Hindu background. Lots of stuff you wouldn’t figure could live together in one head.

This quote from the book struck me this morning.

Ideas were percolating furiously in his brain, and just before he left England, Gandhi drew up his own fifteen-point Confession of Faith. He sent a copy to Henry Polak, to serve as a crucial measure of his personal journey to that point and as the starting point for his next move.

Gandhi’s first point was that “there is no impassable barrier between East and West.” The second stated that Europeans had “had much in common with the people of the East” before modern civilization killed the West’s spiritual values and the simplicity of its rural life. Gandhi worried that the same modern blight was descending on India. “It is not the British who rule India,” his fourth point stated, “but modern civilization rules India through its railways, telegraphs, telephone etc.” As a result, “Bombay, Calcutta, and other chief cities are the real plague spots of Modern India” because they are the main conduits of civilization’s malign influence. Indeed, “if British rule were replaced tomorrow by Indian rule based on modern methods, India would be none the better.”

The final world-shattering conclusion came in point number twelve: India’s salvation consists in unlearning what she has learned during the past fifty years. The railways, telegraphs, hospitals, lawyers, doctors, and such like have all to go, and the so-called upper classes have to live consciously, religiously, and deliberately the simple peasant life, knowing it to be a life giving true happiness.31

Herman, Arthur (2008-04-29). Gandhi & Churchill: The Epic Rivalry that Destroyed an Empire and Forged Our Age (Kindle Locations 3402-3405). Random House Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

Now there’s lots in there of course. Gandhi’s romanticism about ancient, rural India, etc., but the insight into the impact of technology and empire is helpful.

There’s never really any “going back” of course as what would happen after Gandhi’s success in releasing India from the Raj would illustrate, and certainly as today’s India develops in the information age, but in some of what Gandhi notes here you can see strands of the Bible’s critique of empire and Babylon.

There’s no putting the CRC back in the 19th century milk jug that gave birth to so much of that culture of Calvin College or the culture we felt had something to contribute. Whether it was selling soap, oil or the dairy farm to developers desiring the fruit of empire and empire always has its way with our hearts.

The Bible never gives into the the Romanticism or Ludite impulses. The book of Revelation much abused by greedy hearts that wish to make it into a crystal ball for the politics of the day both calls out the whore astride the beast while also ending the one story and beginning the next in a new city of wealth and power.

Solomon to me is such a telling figure. He is kingdom come, second son of his hot mother who captured David’s lusting heart whose own appetites both draw the Queen of Sheba and sow the ruin of the briefly united kingdom.

The CRC is of course no great civilization like India but the heirs of Afscheiding frarmers and Frisians who live in the land of plenty and were sharp enough to catch the imperial wave when they saw it. Will we simply dissolve?