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Subject: Percy-L: Literary, Religious, Scientific, and Philosophical Discussion on Walker Percy

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  • From: Ken Armstrong <armstron AT ohiou.edu>
  • To: "Percy-L: Literary and Philosophical Discussion" <percy-l AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: RE: [percy-l] "...to the gas chamber..."
  • Date: Thu, 06 Mar 2003 22:21:26 -0500

Steve,

Thanks for your apology to the list for the post. Do you really think it needs one? The Jews (not those banal Nazis) are responsible for the "effectiveness" of the holocaust. Christians do no evil (for then they wouldn't be Christian), though "evil cuts right through the heart of every man." And criticizing Christians for the things they do, therefore, "fuels animosity" toward Christ.

Actually I was half-tempted to agree that your umbrage with Jim for the Christian crusade remark might (might: take a look at the latest issue of First Things with its declaration of the "just war" about to commence)be justified, but your concept of who is and isn't a Christian....you might take your own advice and "avoid generalizations that declare" Christians incapable of evil acts. "Not me but thee" doesn't cure that heart condition.

Ken Armstrong

--On Thursday, March 06, 2003 8:46 PM -0500 "Parlin, Steven" <PARLINS AT culver.org> wrote:

Jim, if your "good ole anti-Semitic Christian Crusade" is a reference to
the USA's escalating war-in-Iraq preparations, your comment is not only
inappropriate -polemical?- but, well, a revelation of just the sort of
frightful ignorance that makes such murderous action possible in the first
place. Why? You quite simply fail to see that its not Christians preparing
for war, but consumer-driven secularists who may or may not be slinking
around behind a Christian veneer. Subsequently, your sort of rhetoric
blurs otherwise clear distinctions and fails to accurately identify the
true forces at work. It ain't the Christians. And, your rhetoric only
serves to fuel malicious animosity toward that which may well be the only
bastian of hope and sanity --Christ. Percy certainly thought so.

Anyone who ever has perpetrated such crimes against humanity are by that
very action NOT Christian. And, if you were simply making a generalization
about the ostensibly "christianized" West (ie. the US), I reiterate my
point about ignorance. Don't make such generalizations, for they are
dangerous misunderstandings which not only free the true culprits from
their culpability, but they also implicate the innocent, and in this case
even the advocate. No authentic christian has ever knowingly sanctioned
murder, else they weren't really Christian and thus cannot rightly be
identified as such. People don't hate what they know to be Chrstianity,
but they do hate misrepresenations of it --and your rhetoric is a grave
misrepresentation.

Moreover, you might also avoid generalizations that declare the Hebrews or
the Arabs as "victims". Consult the account of Hanah Arendt (a jewish
reporter) of the trial of Adolf Eichmann --Eichmann in Jerusalem; the
Banality of Evil. There are no manichean forces at work in such crimes.
Instead, evil cuts right through the heart of every man (Solzenhitzen) and
it's our "sentimentality", our inclination toward self-fulfilling fantasy,
not our faith that permits that evil to thrive. The truth is Eichmann was
a dissapointment. He was not the monster everyone wanted him to be.
Instead, he was a mouse of a man who had been lulled into a moral sleep
by sentiment. Indeed, the effectiveness and the efficiency of the
holocaust cannot be credited to men like Eichmann. No. That burden rests
squarely on the shoulders of those jews who were complicitously (and in
some cases quite agreeably) responsible for orchestrating the planning
and organizing and book keeping.

You make a concession in the end and assume some responsibility for your
own participation in the problem, but that doesn't excuse your previous
remarks. Avoid the sweeping generalizations. They're dangerous.

I apologize to the list for any misdirection, but a rejoinder was in
order. SP



-----Original Message-----
From: James Piat [mailto:piat1 AT bellsouth.net]
Sent: Thursday, March 06, 2003 5:16 PM
To: Percy-L: Literary and Philosophical Discussion
Subject: Re: [percy-l] "...to the gas chamber..."




The rare times I'm in the mall, two words go through my mind: kitsch and
despair (of course, kitsch and sentimentality go hand-in-hand). Gil
Bailie refers to shopping malls as museums of nihilism.
-DB

Well I'll take the kitsch of a shopping mall over the sentimental
nostalgia of another good ole anti-Semitic Christian Crusade any day.
First the Arabs in the middle ages, then the Hebrews in WWII and now it's
back to the Arabs again. That's the trouble I have with Percy and
O'Connor's example of the holocaust as an argument for Christianity or
moral absolutism -- it's not only ironic and in poor taste to say the
least -- it's a shell game. The problem is not moral relativism,
shopping malls, Arabs, Jews or even Christian anti-Semitism -- it's us:
or in my case, me, always blaming the other in the hope that this
somehow absolves, protects or elevates myself.

Best wishes,
Jim Piat

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Visit the Walker Percy Project at http://www.ibiblio.org/wpercy





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