"Sure on this Shining Night": Origins and Meanings

Morten Lauridsen's 2005 choral composition "Sure on this Shining Night" sets to music several lines of a James Agee poem published in 1934. Performers, audiences, and listeners have warmly embraced this lovely marriage of lyric and music.

Among a host of recordings by professional, amateur, and youth choruses, I especially admire the recording by the Minnesota Chorale Artists, with Lauridsen at the piano: < https://bit.ly/2AxnpoQ >.

Sure on this shining night
Of starmade shadows round,
Kindness must watch for me
This side the ground.

The late year lies down the north.
All is healed, all is health.
High summer holds the earth.
Hearts all whole.

Sure on this shining night I weep for wonder wandering far alone 

Of shadows on the stars.

A number of commentators have called these ten lines "an untitled poem by James Agee." This is misleading. The lines are actually excerpts from a longer poem by Agee. A web posting by Debi Simons, 10/25/15, acquainted me with the fact that the lyric is "ripped from the middle of a longer Agee poem titled 'Description of Elysium'."

"Ripped" is a strong word; I prefer "excerpted" or "extracted." But I fully understand Simons' point: it seems unfair to lift and isolate ten congenial lines from a poem of forty-six lines, when the final sixteen lines of that poem are somber in the extreme.

Presumably the ten-line extraction was made by the composer Samuel Barber, who in 1940 set the words for solo voice and piano in what soon became a beloved art song titled "Sure on this Shining Night."* I've found no evidence that that Agee had any part in excerpting the text or naming the song. Agee and Barber first met in 1947, and they became good friends. Barber wrote "I met with him last week and admired him," and later recalled "I used to have lunch with him once every two weeks or so."**

The entire "Description of Elysium" was included in the volume of Agee poems titled Permit Me Voyage, published in 1934 by Yale University Press. Here is the complete poem, to which I have added section numbers in brackets to keep us oriented.

     "Description of Elysium"

 [Section 1]

Whole health resides with peace,
Gladness and never harm,
There not time turning,
Nor fear of flower of snow

Where marbling water slides
No charm may halt of chill,
Air aisling the open acres,
And all the gracious trees

Spout up their standing fountains
Of wind-beloved green
And the blue conclaved mountains
Are grave guards

Stone and springing field

Wide one tenderness,

The unalterable hour

Smiles deathlessness:

No thing is there thinks:

Mind the witherer

Withers on the outward air:

We can not come there.

[Section 2]

Sure on this shining night
Of starmade shadows round,
Kindness must watch for me
This side the ground.

The late year lies down the north.
All is healed, all is health.
High summer holds the earth.
Hearts all whole.

Sure on this shining night I weep for wonder wandering far alone 

Of shadows on the stars.

[Section 3] 

Now thorn bone bare

Silenced with iron the branch's gullet:

Rattling merely on the air

Of hornleaved holly:

The stony mark where sand was by

The water of a nailèd foot:

The berry harder than the beak:

The hole beneath the dead oak root:

All now brought quiet

Through the latest throe

Quieted and ready and quiet:

Still not snow:

Still thorn bone bare

Iron in the silenced gully

Rattling only of the air

Through hornleaved holly.

Section 1 of "Description of Elysium" characterizes the timeless realm of the blessed dead: "Whole health resides with peace, / Gladness and never harm...." Agee yearned for such innocence, but was profoundly disturbed by human failures, including his own.

Section 2 expresses the poet's response to a night of marveling inspiration: "Sure on this shining night / Of starmade shadows round...." Composer Lauridsen has described this moment of respite amidst human folly as "the wondrous awe that one has being within nature."***

Section 3 introduces menacing apocalyptic imagery: "Now thorn bone bare...of hornleaved holly." Agee wrestled with his harrowing premonition that "Pride, a mortal sin, can quite as coldly and inevitably damage and wreck the human race as the most total power of ‘Greed’ ever could."

The final two lines of Section 2 have generated a great deal of discussion:

Sure on this shining night I weep for wonder wandering far alone 

Of shadows on the stars.

What do the enigmatic phrases "weep for wonder," "wandering far alone," and "shadows on the stars" convey? Are the phrases ominous? Are they transcendent? Are they simply inscrutable? 

I have long been undecided about whether the concluding couplet of Section 2 expresses hope or despair or enigma, and have found Agee's phrase "shadows on the stars" completely puzzling. But I think I have some new light to shed.

Several singers and listeners have told me that the final couplet of "Sure on this Shining Night" seems to be a darkening transition into the bleak remainder of the larger poem. But in fact the larger poem has no such transitions.

Section 1 ends with the absolutely exclusionary words "We can not come there." Section 3 begins abruptly with bleak new imagery of "hornleaved holly." In between, Section 2 is quite distinct—not transitional but entire.

Allow me a personal observation. A few years ago a hornleaved holly sprang up volunteer in my little patch of garden. The official name is "Chinese Holly," Ilex cornuta. It is an escaped species, not native. Where it came from I do not know. One thing I do know—and this from bleeding experience—is that the horned leaves of Ilex cornuta make an impenetrable barrier:

 

My Horn Leaf Holly
Ilex cornuta

Still worse are the rigid, desiccated leaves of dead holly: 

Now thorn bone bare...

    Rattling merely on the air

Of hornleaved holly....

Given these barriers, I think we can say that we have three poems, joined only by mutual exclusion and a common title. "Sure on this Shining Night" finds itself between inaccessible innocence and goodness on the one hand, and quaking fear of self-destruction on the other. So, too, Agee finds himself, and the human race.

A few details from Laurence Bergreen's exemplary biography, James Agee: A Life, have further convinced me that Section 2 is coherent and expresses Agee's transcendent, spiritual experience.

Bergreen informs us that in 1930, the summer before Agee's junior year at Harvard, he was introduced to the household of Arthur Percy Saunders and Louise Brownell Saunders of Clinton, New York. The Saunders family quickly embraced young Agee, and the fondness was mutual.

Agee wrote to his mentor and life-long friend, Father James Flye: "They're the most beautiful and happy family to know and watch I've ever seen. It's hard to write of such people without becoming mawkish." At summer's end he wrote to Louise, "I've been homesick ever since I left you, and the last time I was homesick, I was nine years old." Agee and one of the Saunders daughters, Olivia or "Via", were mutually attracted and married in 1933.

Bergreen reports that Agee "roamed the large Saunders home at will, pausing to amuse himself with the professor's powerful telescope, through which Agee gazed at shivering images of the moon and the rings of Saturn." Bergreen describes the Saunders family as "blessed with enough money and intelligence to live exceedingly well." Also he reports that the father was a scientist, a retired professor of chemistry at Hamilton College. I think it fair to assume that the Saunders' telescope was a good one.

Again a personal note. In my senior year of high school I ground a six-inch mirror and mailed it off to be silvered—or in Agee's own terminology, "quicksilvered" ("The Truce", 1931). Upon its return I mounted the mirror in a tube with a secondary mirror and focusing lens. The magnification was good, but the telescope was limited in performance by the unsteadiness of my homemade tripod.

When all was completed I climbed at night to a dark hilltop. I focused first on the moon. The detail was stunning but not deeply engaging. Then I focused on Saturn. The tawny image of perfect, ringed symmetry suspended in prodigious darkness and absolute silence caught my breath and brought tears to my eyes.

It is probable that the Saunders telescope resolved detail beyond the capacity of mine. In particular, it might have disclosed the phenomenon of Saturn's shadow upon its rings, and the rings' shadows upon Saturn's surface. With amateur telescopes, seeing this phenomenon usually requires repeated viewings over long periods of time, as Saturn's position is constantly changing in relation to the locations of earth and sun. Also, earth's atmosphere must be at its clearest.

We know that the Saunders' father, called by his middle name Percy, did view the stars repeatedly. A biographer of the family writes:

He lectured, it is true, in chemistry, but through his warm personality he was able to come in close touch with many students. They shared his interest in music, art, literature, drama. On clear nights they could gather with him in the fields and explore the heavens through his telescope.****

In the practiced hands of Percy the 1930 telescope might well have resolved the Saturn shadows.

Telescopic View of Saturn from Earth

Here the sun is behind the viewer, below and slightly to the right. We glimpse part of Saturn's shadow on the rings as the small black interruption of the rings immediately above the sphere, slightly to the left. The shadow cast by the rings onto Saturn's surface is the very faint pinkish band, parallel to the rings, about a third of the way between the rings and the top of the planet's sphere.

I think that Agee might have included the phrase "shadows on the stars" in his verse as a kind of nod to his generous host through whose telescope he had shared views of Saturn's shadows. (I'm assuming that that Agee chose to use the poetic-licensed "stars" instead of the literal but clomping "planets.") The family biographer describes Percy as "a unique, incredible being. And yet he moved among us so simply with that quiet amused charm of his, unaware that he was in any way set apart from the rest of us." We are also told that Percy had an interest in literature. Agee's future father-in law seems a person likely to appreciate his clandestine reference in verse to shared experience.

There's a similar puzzle in the second stanza of Section 3. The phrase "a nailèd foot" has seemed to me impossibly obscure. Now I have learned from Bergreen that in the summer of 1930, Agee "was forced to hobble about on one foot, the painful result of inadvertently stepping on a nail." So I think phrase may be another in-family wink and nod—"nailèd foot" both describing Agee's summertime injury and also reinforcing Section 3's recurring theme of "thorn bone bare."

Two thirds of a century later, NASA launched its Cassini spacecraft to explore Saturn and its rings and moons. Here are two Cassini images:

Sunlight  coming from the right;

planet's shadow falling to the left.

Sun coming from the lower right;

Saturn's horizontal rings near the bottom;

surface shadows of the rings at upper left.

Percy and Agee were never to see such stunning images. But Agee and NASA share a sense of wonder. In a NASA report titled Ten Things: Why Cassini Mattered, the tenth item is this: "Cassini revealed the beauty of Saturn, its rings and moons, inspiring our sense of wonder." Wonder makes additional appearances in the report: "For more than a decade, NASA's Cassini spacecraft shared the wonders of Saturn." And "Cassini revealed in great detail the true wonders of Saturn."

Wonders of astronomy were often in Agee's thoughts. To Father Flye he suggests that body and mind are "like binary stars." His poem, "A Nursery Rhyme" (1937), compares "nebulae" to "the blown seeds of a dandelion," and seems to refer to the possibility that other galactic intelligence may be observing us:

Our galaxy, so runs the hope,

Is mirror for a telescope.

It is important to acknowledge that when the word shadow appears throughout Agee's writings, more often than not it serves as a metaphor for death. Here are two of many examples:

So, for a space, the Shadow will relent,

Befooling us with slow yet sure consent:

And, in due time, once more it will return,

Coolly to blot out what once more must burn.

                       ..."The Shadow" (1930)

How God must grieve, 

Watching in all this shadow land

The flinching vigil candles of this countless loss

In night’s nave each a life.

                       ...Letter to Father Frye, March 29, 1945

In Section 2, however, I believe that "shadows of the stars" evokes not death but Agee's living wonderment at his sheer existence in a vast cosmos graced with the delicacy of Saturn's shadows.

I am often unable to penetrate Agee's turgid poetry. So I feel fortunate that we have a prose account of an experience of wonder under the sky as sensed by a young boy. It comes from Agee's novelette, The Morning Watch, published when he was forty-two. Agee names his central character Richard, but the novel is obviously rooted in autobiographical recollections of Agee's experiences at St. Andrew's Episcopal School, 1919–1924, when Agee was in his early teenage years.

Young Richard and some of his classmates break rules by slipping outside after lights-out;

For the first time this year, he felt the ground against the bare soles of his feet.... Even though the ground in this schoolyard was skimmed with dusty gravel, its aliveness soared through him like a sob and lifted his eyes in wonder upon the night. There was no moon and what few stars were out, they were made faint by a kind of smiling universal milky silence, not fog, or even the lightest kind of mist, but as if the whole air and sky were one mild supernal breath.

 Agee portrays Richard in attendance at the St. Andrew's Good Friday service:

His heart opened. Almighty and everlasting God, he prayed, Maker of all things, Judge of all men (and he saw as in a wheeling rondure the shining of all things, the shadows of all men)....

I think we've no reason to doubt Agee's weeping for wonder beneath the rondure of stars, suspended in what he calls "space and darkness of sky beyond conjecture" ("Dedication", 1934).

We have one further detail of "Sure on this Shining Night" to consider: the phrase, "wandering far alone."

By all accounts, Agee was throughout his life an ebullient socializer, talking far into the night with enraptured comrades, male and female. Yet in matters of the "binary stars" of mind and soul he suffered increasing solitude. A simile Agee uses in The Morning Watch could well apply to himself: "lonesome as nebulae."

Agee was profoundly motivated by Christian morality. John Hersey speaks of his "enormous humanity and pity and sorrow." Adam Kirsch speaks of Agee's "desperate sincerity and fearful compassion." Robert Fitzgerald, Agee's close friend from Harvard days, writes, "For poverty and misery in general he had a sharp-eyed pity. Yet 'Church' and 'organized religion' in relation to awe and vision bothered his mind."

Agee attended Christian worship. At Harvard he frequented the Cowley Fathers Monastery (Anglo-Catholic) near Harvard Square, assisting as a server in the Mass. He sang in an octet at First Church (Congregational) Cambridge. Later, he and Via went to Anglo-Catholic Confession and partook of the Lord's Supper. They were married in a traditional Episcopal service.

Dwight Macdonald, Agee's friend since St. Andrew's days, spares no words:

Although he was deeply religious, he had his own kind of religion, one that included irreverence, blasphemy, obscenity, and even communism (of his own kind). By the late forties, a religio-conservative revival was under way, but Agee felt as out of place as ever...always out of step.

 MacDonald's words are borne out by Agee's self-description:

I have a religious background and am 'pro-religious'—though not on the whole delighted by this so-called revival—but doubt that I will return to religion.

In 1938, Agee, age 29, wrote to Father Flye, "I trust nothing else save a feeling of God, and love, and in part myself...." 

In 1945, age 36, he wrote to Flye:

It seems unlikely that I will ever become fully religious or a communicant again. But I hope I need not tell you, and feel sure you will not scorn, how grateful I am for such religious feelings as I do have. ...I have to doubt so much that at the same time I trust: thoughts and realizations mixed with personal and historic memories and projections so fill me with tears, and with faith and certainty, that it seems incredible to me not to be a Christian and a Catholic in the simplest and strictest senses of the words. But I am at once grateful for the emotions and doubtful of them.

 In 1950, age 40, five years before his death, Agee wrote to Father Flye:

I evidently move, as I imagine many people do, in a rough not very predictable cycle, between feeling relatively uninvolved religiously and very much involved: though I'm not sure that "religiously" is the right word for it: but anyhow a strong sense of being open, aware, concerned, in the ways which are rooted usually in religion, or in the more serious kinds of poetry or music, or just in a sense of existence—i.e. a relatively very full and emotionally rich sense of it, as compared with the opposite side of the cycle. I'm evidently swinging into it again now. At times or moments I feel virtually sure that nothing short of coming back into a formal religion (probably the one I was brought up in) will be nearly enough for me: at others, just as sure I never will. But at all times I feel sure that my own shapeless personal religious sense, whatever that may be, is deepening and increasing: even the swings away are less far away from it: keep some kind of religion with it. I wish I were with you and could talk about this, but even if I were I doubt there would actually be much to say about it...essentially a very private matter and should be....

In mind and soul, this most gregarious of poets felt himself solitary—"very private," "wandering far alone."

 CODA

Agee's lyric and Lauridsen's musical setting seem to me a perfect wedding. The flowing melodic lines and melting harmonic tensions—seconds and fourths, sevenths and ninths—convey tender warmth throughout.

Amidst the gentle harmonic tensions, the only sustained dissonance comes with the enigmatic words we have been considering:

I weep for wonder wand'ring far alone
of shadows on the stars.

Lauridsen asks the altos to sing a dissonant C ("far alone"?) and repeat that discordant note throughout three full measures. The dissonance is subtle but disquieting. Then the resolution of that dissonance on the concluding word, stars, is as heart-melting as any musical cadence I can call to memory.

In the recording linked at the beginning of this posting, listen for these three dissonant measures and their cadence at 2:43ff.

James Agee

__________

* Besides Barber and Lauridsen, a least two other composers, Mark Foster and Z. Randall Stroope, have published settings of "Sure on this Shining Night."

** I have included references for only a few of the quotations in this posting, trying to minimize what the literary critic Edmund Wilson has called "scholarly barbed wire." If anyone should want particular references, feel free to send me a request by e-mail (albertblackwell39@gmail.com) and I shall answer promptly.

*** Quoted by Margaret B. Owens, "Morten Lauridsen's Choral Cycle, Nocturnes; A Conductor's Analysis" (2019). < https://bit.ly/3j5fGzF >

**** Elsie M. Pomeroy, William Saunders and His Five Sons, The Ryerson Press – Toronto, 1956.

*****

Should I Pray for Donald Trump?

Betendes Mädchen (Praying Woman)
by Käthe Schmidt Kollwitz (1867–1945)

A few weeks ago a close friend asked me "Do you think we should pray for Donald Trump?" I answered, "Yes, I suppose we should." But this exchange left me thinking hard about how we should pray.

Let me offer some reflections on the nature of Christian praying, quote a number of prayers for our President, and share some thoughts about fault finding, human dignity, and demonic risk.

Praying: Conditional and Normative

My thinking about Christian praying has been significantly influenced by Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768–1834)—German pastor, biblical scholar, theologian, philosopher, and political activist. He writes that when Christians pray "in the name of Jesus" we should understand this to mean praying "in the sense and spirit of Jesus," praying about "the concerns of Jesus." Too often, he writes, we tend to pray for divine alterations of future conditions, seeking to "exert an influence on God."^1

Schleiermacher names these different modes of praying "normative" and "conditional." Normative praying seeks to align our concerns with norms established by Christ's life and teachings. In contrast, conditional prayer seeks to "deflect" God's will according to conditions we request.

Schleiermacher maintains that normative praying should always be accompanied by actions that accord with Christ's norms: "Appropriate prayer occurs only when we engage in activities that go to fulfill our Christian vocation." Conditional praying, on the other hand, tends to "lapse into magic," awaiting an outcome that is in accord with our wishes.

Schleiermacher grants that it is natural for our prayers to express our deepest, most personal hopes and concerns. At the same time, in our praying we should seek to align our concerns more fully with those of Christ.

If our prayers are answered, Schleiermacher suggests, our appropriate response is gratitude: Thanks be to God. If our prayers are not answered, our appropriate response is acceptance: Amen (So be it). Both outcomes may give us occasion to grow in understanding our faith, to learn more about making Christ's norms our own.^2

I think that the biblical touchstone here is Christ's passionate praying in the Garden of Gethsemane shortly before his arrest and crucifixion:

Father, if you are willing, remove this cup from me; yet, not my will but yours be done. (Luke 22:42; also Matthew 26:39, Mark 14: 36)

Model Prayers

Where else may we find model prayers?

Many spiritual traditions provide examples. I have found model prayers particularly in The Book of Common Prayer (BCP)—the Episcopal volume that contains "the regular services appointed for public worship." Or more fairly, BCP prayers have found me.

In Episcopal worship our congregations regularly pray for our President, as also for other governing authorities:

[Officiant:] That it may please thee so to rule the hearts of thy servants, the President of the United States, and all others in authority, that they may do justice, and love mercy, and walk in the ways of truth,

[Congregation:] We beseech thee to hear us, good Lord. (BCP p.150)

The prayer here is that Christlike norms—in this instance justice, mercy, and truth—may rule in the heart of our President and other authorities. In specifying norms, the prayer offers congregations touchstones for assessing both Presidential actions and our own.

Numerous BCP prayers offer similar touchstones:

O Lord our Governor, whose glory is in all the world: We commend this nation to thy merciful care, that, being guided by thy Providence, we may dwell secure in thy peace. Grant to the President of the United States, the Governor of this State (or Commonwealth), and to all in authority, wisdom and strength to know and to do thy will. Fill them with the love of truth and righteousness and make them ever mindful of their calling to serve this people in thy fear; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God world without end. Amen. (BCP p.820)

The providential norms named here are security, peace, wisdom, strength, truth, righteousness, and service.

Another prayer broadens its scope to include international leaders and authorities as well as our nation's President:

For our President, for the leaders of the nations, and for all in authority, let us pray to the Lord.

Lord, have mercy. (BCP p.384)

The BCP sometimes directs that the President be called by name (see "for N." below), and some prayers name specific national and international institutions:

Let us pray for all nations and peoples of the earth, and for those in authority among them; for N., the President of the United States; for the Congress and the Supreme Court; for the Members and Representatives of the United Nations; for all who serve the common good: that by God's help they may seek justice and truth, and live in peace and concord. (BCP p.278)

The norms here: serving the common good; seeking justice and truth; living in peace and concord.

Another prayer specifies the President, members of his Cabinet, Governors, Mayors, and other national authorities:

O Lord our Governor, bless the leaders of our land, that we may be a people at peace among ourselves and a blessing to other nations of the earth.

Lord, keep this nation under your care. 

To the President and members of the Cabinet, to Governors of States, Mayors of Cities, and to all in administrative authority, grant wisdom and grace in the exercise of their duties.

Give grace to your servants, O Lord.  (BCP, p.821)

Here the norms are domestic peace, being a blessing to other nations, and wisdom and grace in the exercise of duties.

Finding Fault

Does praying for our President and others in authority rule out criticizing them?

I would say by no means. Affronts to norms that we express in our praying are sound bases for finding fault—whether the affronts are the President's or our own.

Surely we may find fault with President Trump when we compare his conduct with norms expressed in the BCP prayers we have considered: justice, mercy, truth, wisdom, righteousness, service, the common good, domestic peace, blessing to other nations, grace in the exercise of duties.

What is more, Christian norms expressed in the BCP prayers are neither all-inclusive nor exclusive. I believe that when finding fault we should be guided not only by religious norms but also by constitutional law, and by civic norms for basic decency such as these:

• To contend without being contentious
• To disagree without being disagreeable
• To object without being objectionable
• To make judgments without being judgmental
• To act zealously without becoming a zealot
• To seek certainty without claiming certitude
• To seek wisdom without claiming to be wise
• To feel righteous indignation without becoming self-righteous

Christian, constitutional, and civic norms are tight ropes to walk, but I believe that with resolve our nation can do better than we're currently doing. 

Human Dignity

Eighteen months into Donald Trump's presidency, conservative columnist George Will described Trump as "this sad, embarrassing wreck of a man" and as "the most insecure human being I've ever seen."^3 I'm not proud to recall that upon hearing Will's words my reaction was a triumphal whoop. Another twenty-two months later, my glee has been chastened and subdued.

I have realized that George Will did not demonize President Trump, as I have sometimes tended to do. Will spoke of President Trump in human terms: "a man," a "human being," "sad" and "insecure." I find the tone of Will's characterization close to lamentation.

Again I find guidance in the Book of Common Prayer. In the Episcopal baptismal service the entire congregation joins parents and godparents in affirming "The Baptismal Covenant." The concluding sentences of the covenant are these:

Celebrant: Will you strive for justice and peace among all people, and respect the dignity of every human being?

People: I will, with God's help. (BCP p.305)

Scores of times, over many years, I have recited that pledge to respect the dignity of every human being. Now I need to abide by it.

In my view, all too many of President Trump's decisions and actions and attitudes deserve criticism. I believe that he is gravely damaging "justice and peace among all people." I shall oppose and try to counteract him in whatever ways I am able. But I shall try my best to remember that I am criticizing a person, and that Trump supporters are persons also.

Another friend has asked, "Should we pray, at least in private, that Donald Trump will be defeated in this fall's bid for re-election?"

To me this seems uncomfortably close to conditional praying (indeed, to magic). Yet President Trump's evident thoughtlessness in relation to moral norms gives urgency to our prayers. That our President might "do justice, and love mercy, and walk in the ways of truth" is certainly a prayer—whether normative or conditional— to which I can respond: "We beseech thee to hear us, good Lord."

Beseeching prayer, however, obliges me to take action in ways that I believe will protect and advance moral norms: communicating with members of Congress; working to unseat the President together with selected members of Congress; supporting principled political and charitable organizations; voting conscientiously.

I have compared following moral norms to walking a tight rope. I would say that deliberating about actions and performing them feels more like juggling.

Throughout, I shall try my best to respect President Trump as a person, a fellow human being, in accordance with this prayer—printed in The Book of Common Prayer with an underlined blank space that invites specific, up-to-date naming:

For those in positions of public trust, especially Donald, that they may serve justice and promote the dignity and freedom of every person, we pray to you, O Lord. (BCP p.550)

Again this seems a conditional prayer asking God for magic, but I'm unable to suppress a sincere Amen.

Demonic Risk

Once more from a friend, a final, trenchant question: Might respect for our President as a person blind us to the emergence of the demonic?

My answer is yes, this can certainly be the case. 

History gives all too many instances of once-respected leaders who have proved to be demonic. Once a culture becomes possessed, as with Soviet Communism and Nazism, the demonic becomes a black hole. Moral norms, constitutional law, civility, respect for personhood—all are sucked into the vortex and annihilated. It is too late.

So the key word in my friend's question is "emergence." We must not be blind to demonic emergence.

Historically, the first stage in demonic emergence is erasure of the difference between true and false, dismissal of any distinction between fact and fiction.^4 As President Trump is insensible to moral norms, so he is to truth.^5

My motivation for saying this is not disrespect for President Trump but alarm for our nation—alarm that so many Senators, Representatives, Cabinet members, White House staff, media commentators and fellow citizens share our President's obliviousness and continue to support him.

We must name emerging signs and symptoms of the demonic for what they are, devising measures to isolate the contagion, strengthening public resistance, seeking societal cures, administering national healing, bolstering each other against despair and cynicism—doing what we already know to do, but with intensified watchfulness and commitment.

We must nourish our nation's concern for moral norms and truth— clarifying them in our praying, enacting them in our living, always balancing and juggling. Surely it is fitting to pray "May it never come to pass," but only if we take action to resist demonic emergence.

And we must ever pray for our own personhood:

O God, from whom all good proceeds: Grant that by your inspiration we may think those things that are right, and by your merciful guiding may do them. Amen. (BCP, p.229)

_______________

^1 All Schleiermacher quotations are from his The Christian Faith (Der Christliche Glaube), Sections 146 and 147.

^2 The most concentrated presentations of Christ's norms are found in his Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5–7) and Sermon on the Plain (Luke 6:20–49).

^3  Interview on MSNBC, July 18, 2018 < https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GsgccOuZ0qg&t=588s > at 2.13–17 and 4.7–10.

^4 I recommend the brilliant and disturbing book by Michiko Kakutani, The Death of Truth: Notes on Falsehood in the Age of Trump (Tim Duggan Books, 2018). My thanks to Dr. Keller Freeman for acquainting me with Kakutani's book.

^5  See Glenn Kessler, Salvador Rizzo, and Meg Kelley, Donald Trump and His Assault on Truth (Scribner, 2020).

Heartfelt thanks to my readers, Drs. Anne and John Shelley, for their friendship, encouragement, and substantive suggestions.

***** 

Shakespeare on Heads of State

Macduff

Malcolm

During these months when citizens of the US, and of numerous other nations, are examining qualifications for heads of state, Shakespeare, who knew a thing or two about politics, expresses thoughts that might resonate with us.

In Macbeth (4, 3, 1–139), Macduff and Malcolm have a complicated argument about "king-becoming graces."

In the midst of what Malcolm calls their "warranted quarrel," he articulates a list of ideal virtues for a head of state:

           ...justice, verity, temp'rance, stableness,

Bounty, perseverance, mercy, lowliness,

Devotion, patience, courage, fortitude....

Earlier in the argument, however, Malcolm has lamented:

           I think our country sinks beneath the yoke;
           It weeps, it bleeds, and each new day a gash
           Is added to her wounds....

And Macduff has earlier confessed despair:

            I have lost my hopes.

In a list that contrasts radically with his enumeration of "king-becoming graces", Malcolm characterizes "the particulars of vice" in high places:

Luxurious, avaricious, false, deceitful,

Sudden, malicious, smacking of every sin

That has a name....

Macduff equates a sovereign's lack of self-restraint with "tyranny"*, which leads to downfall:

                      ...Boundless intemperance

            In nature is a tyranny. It hath been

            Th'untimely emptying of the happy throne

            And fall of many kings.

As their "warranted quarrel" subsides, Macduff complains that he is left conflicted:

Such welcome and unwelcome things at once
'Tis hard to reconcile.

He exclaims:

O nation miserable!...
When shalt thou see thy wholesome days again...?

Malcolm concludes the Scene with a dispirited couplet: 

                    Receive what cheer you may:

          The night is long that never finds the day.

__________

*See Stephen Greenblatt, Tyrant: Shakespeare on Politics (New York and London, W. W. Norton, 2018). I am grateful to Professor Stanley Crowe for calling my attention to this laudable book.

*****