Tocqueville in Arabia: Dilemmas in a Democratic Age by Joshua Mitchell

Author:Joshua Mitchell [Mitchell, Joshua]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The University of Chicago Press
Published: 2013-02-15T00:00:00+00:00

4

Religion

Under Eden’s Spell

On the cold winter morning in February 2005 that found me trundling out to the Eastern Shore to investigate those several acres of wetland forest that beckoned, I passed a small church situated not much more than a mile from my final destination. A bit tired from the long drive, but curious about the sorts of denominations I might find in the area, I glanced over at the sign, which read: Antioch Methodist Church. How whimsical our world can be: my mother’s family, from Indiana, had been Methodist; and my father’s family, from the mountains of Lebanon, was Antioch Orthodox. The liturgical practices of each, I suspected, would have been horrifying to the other. Yet here, not far from what would become my new home, was a church whose name incorporated both halves of my lineage. Unassuming, rebuilt in the early part of the twentieth century after a fire had burned the original nineteenth-century wood-frame structure to the ground, the modest building was surrounded by once-majestic oaks and maples now grown old and tired, as if fatigued from being the constant, hovering witness to nearly two centuries of tears shed around the grave sites they overlooked.

On the many subsequent trips I made to the Eastern Shore that winter and spring, I would often wander through the graveyard at the Antioch Methodist Church, in search of clues to lives, short and long, that were put to their final rest under that canopy of oak and maple. In part, it was my way to begin calibrating my new life to the distinct rhythm of the Eastern Shore; more importantly, it was a way to place the worries of the world in their proper perspective. One gravestone in particular always drew me near:

The pains of death are past.

Labor and sorrow cease,

And life’s long warfare

Closed at last,

Her soul is found in peace.

I do not think my students understand Christianity. In Qatar, of course, they can hardly be held responsible for not knowing about a religion that is not their own. In America, on the other hand, many of my students at Georgetown are denominationally Roman Catholic. Some are Protestant. While childhood years spent in pews watching the liturgy or undergoing initiation rites of one sort or another certainly prepare them to recite creedal statements about their faith, few know of “labor and sorrow” or of “life’s long warfare.” They are still under Eden’s spell. They are decades away from the frail thoughts of old age and the betrayal of their bodies, from the breathtaking realization that from dust they come and to dust they go. Under Eden’s spell, they cannot know that. Under Eden’s spell, they cannot understand Christianity.

The Problem of Evil

When I teach about Christianity in both Qatar and in America, my aspirations are modest. I always begin with what has historically been called the theodicy problem: the problem of evil. It is not a problem with which Christianity alone has to contend. Indeed, it is a problem that is endemic to all monotheisms.

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