Miscellanies

Puritan fashion is hot! No kidding. A top designer recently announced the resurgence of the Puritan doily! Yes, that white thing around Richard Sibbes’ neck is coming back. [Once for a college video project to portray John Winthrop I cut a neck hole in a table doily. Yes, there are pictures of me sportin’ the thing. No, you’ll never see them.]

There is more to the Puritans than hip doily fashion. So who were they? This question receives a great deal of answers but one book relinquishes definition of Puritan culture to the words of the Puritans. The book is titled The Puritans: A Sourcebook of their Writings (Dover: 2001) edited by Perry Miller and Thomas H. Johnson.

Perry Miller (1905-1963) was a professor at Harvard and is remembered as a fine Puritan scholar and winner of the Pulitzer Prize.

Narrowed specifically on the American Puritans, this 1,000 book is loaded with original source writings and helpful introductions covering the true Puritan in their manners, customs, behaviors, poetry and their thoughts on art, education, politiks and science. It provides a fascinating background in the search to understand true Puritan culture.

Here are a few choice cuts from the intro:

“Without some understanding of Puritanism, it may be safely said, there is no understanding of America … In the mood of revolt against the ideals of previous generations which has swept over our period, Puritanism has become a shining target for many sorts of marksmen. Confusion becomes worse confounded if we attempt to correlate modern usages with anything that can be proved pertinent to the original Puritans themselves. To seek no further, it was the habit of proponents for the repeal of the Eighteenth Amendment during the 1920’s to dub Prohibitionists ‘Puritans,’ and the cartoonists made the nation familiar with an image of the Puritan: a gaunt, lank-haired kill-joy, wearing a black steeple hat and compounding for sins he was inclined to by damning those to which he had no mind. Yet any acquaintance with the Puritans of the seventeenth century will reveal at once, not only that they did not wear such hats, but also that they attired themselves in all the hues of the rainbow, and furthermore that in their daily life they imbibed what seem to us prodigious quantities of alcoholic beverages, with never the slightest inkling that they were doing anything sinful. … if first of all we wish to take Puritan culture as a whole, we shall find, let us say, that about ninety per cent of the intellectual life, scientific knowledge, morality, manners and customs, notions and prejudices, was that of all Englishmen … They were not unique or extreme in thinking that religion was the primary and all-engrossing business of man, or that all human though and action should tend to the glory of God.”

This book is not Cross-centered but very useful in illustrating the Puritan Cross-centered spirituality existed within a cultural sensitivity to art, politiks, education, science and the world around them. Very useful to confront the caricature that the Puritans were dry, culturally withdrawn and excessive zealots.

TSS Podcast #1 (July 7, 2007)
Interview with Thomas Fluharty

Artist and blogger Thomas Fluharty is the busiest person I know, so when an opportunity opened to interview him this past Saturday morning I grabbed my microphone and met him at a local restaurant. Fluharty is known around the world for his illustrations and especially his editorial caricatures. His award-winning “Sir Hillary Poised for a Takeover” painting is one example. But my personal favorite will always be “Master and Commander,” a painting that caught my attention as a Weekly Standard subscriber long before I paid any attention to its artist. But more amazing than his illustrations is Tom’s personal testimony of God’s sovereign grace. Saturday was his 23rd anniversary of being saved on a street corner in New York City. Tom reminds us, in his own words, that being a Christian is not synonymous with being an American — but a radical experience where a sinful, idol-worshiping soul is unveiled to the infinite joy in Christ. The interview provided us a great excuse to launch the inaugural TSS podcast.

TSS Podcast #1 (July 7, 2007) 26.5 MB, 46:17

download or listen [you are free to download, burn and share this podcast]

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Journaling > A Day in the Life of a Humble Calvinist

Calvinism is big. It’s a worldview that embraces God’s sovereignty over every event in world history. God is over the shifting of political powers, the immigration of people, the establishment of cultures, natural calamities, and even down to the fact that you are reading this right now. By nature, Calvinism is concerned with everything because God is concerned with everything. So how can we allow the biblical theology of Calvinism and the Cross to penetrate our daily living so that dry, stoic, intellectual Calvinism becomes living and breathing Humble Calvinism?

Well, one of my dear friends has helped me see what this looks like. Tom Fluharty is an incredible artist. His talents are phenomenal. But even more phenomenal is God’s grace that allows him to focus his mind, will and affections on Gospel in his daily devotional times. I get to read some of these journal articles that he sends my way on occasion. I wanted to share a recent journal entry.

We’ve been talking recently about God’s abduction. Sinners like us don’t want God. We all naturally turn away from Him, fail to do anything to glorify Him, and thus we all become worthless to Him (Rom. 3:12). God must abduct us! He must chose for us something better than we’ve chosen for ourselves. This thought caught the attention and affections of Tom in his recent journal entry. This is what he wrote,

Kidnapped 1.20.07

I was abducted, snatched from a street corner one drunken Summer night. Snatched from the kingdom of darkness and immediately translated to the kingdom of the Most High King. A radical abduction that instantly changes or transforms the heart. Rather it’s a heart transplant by the great heavenly heart surgeon. Won over not wooed. Not an invitation, an abduction. Life came down on 8th st 5th Ave N.Y.C. The glory of God came to Greenwich Village to fill a wretched man, turning him into a lover of God. Deal no more with unreality. You poor soul wallowing in unfulfilling lust and drunkenness. Glory has comes. I have seen a great light. I have beheld His glory. Thank you Lord. I am now the temple of the radical living God. Thank you Lord for the past 22 1/2 years!

“Won over not wooed. Not an invitation, an abduction.” That thought flows from a radical, Humble Calvinism. Tom encourages me through his example. Our communion with God should be saturated with the Cross, saturated with an awareness of our depravity, the personal election of God, God’s strength to uphold us and the glory of God’s sovereign majesty! This is a reminder that Humble Calvinism should transform every area of my life, and even show itself in my journal entries. We build off theology. But let’s not stop by saying “Isn’t it amazing that God elects sinners?” Let’s move beyond this and say, “Isn’t it amazing that God elected such a sinner as I when I was … ?” Humble Calvinism must penetrate our hearts and reveal itself in how we worship the Sovereign Lord and this will show itself in our daily journals.

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UPDATE: I wrote this post Sunday morning only to find out that Tom and his precious family were invited over for the surprise birthday bash my wife pulled off that afternoon. Well, he shows up with a present. It was obvious that it was a painting he was giving me (that alone was and amazing). I open it to find one of my favorite paintings published on the cover of the Weekly Standard called Master & Commander.

I’m not really a political guy myself, more drawn to the phenomenal character and detail of the painting (like Condi’s pearl necklace). Because of these factors, this magazine cover sat above my desk for several months in Omaha — long before I ever met Tom. To know Tom and now to have the actual painting are both amazing gifts. You can see the painting here and you can read more about how he drew it here. But if you’re a friend, you can see it in person, featured at the Tony Reinke Museum of Art in Bloomington, MN. An amazing birthday gift from a very gracious man. Thank you Tom!

[You can watch Tom integrate art, Humble Calvinism and an amazing Cross-centered life here at his blog Amazed by Grace!]

Did you know one of the top artists in this country is also one of the most passionate about the Gospel of Jesus Christ? Thomas Fluharty (also a worship leader at Sovereign Grace Fellowship in Minneapolis) is a man driven by the Cross. It takes about 10-seconds into a conversation to know this man is driven by one aim:

“The chief end of Thomas Fluharty is not to be the greatest artist he can be, but rather to glorify the only living God and Jesus Christ whom He has sent for our sins. And to enjoy Him forever!”

There are not many who are as successful who give such amazing glory to Christ. And humble! (What grown man would put pictures like this of himself on the Internet?).

Check out his new blog to be humored by art and humbled by grace.