Cultivating the Christian Mind

We need to cultivate Christian minds. We need thinkers like Chesterton, Tillich, Lewis, Merton, Watts, Chambers, and even Pope John Paul especially when we look at his writings on Genesis and the importance of the body to salvation. But if evangelicals believe that we have a Christian thinker in our newest Supreme Court nominee, I believe they are mistaken.  I don't think we have a Christian mind in regards to this new Supreme Court nominee. We have a pedantic Catholic mind. C.S. Lewis warned us of the pedant:

In a way I quite understand why some people are put off by Theology. I remember once when I had been giving a talk to the R.A.F., an old, hard-bitten officer got up and said, "I’ve no use for all that stuff. But, mind you, I’m a religious man too. I know there’s a God. I’ve felt Him: out alone in the desert at night: the tremendous mystery. And that’s just why I don’t believe all your neat little dogmas and formulas about Him. To anyone who’s met the real thing they all seem so petty and pedantic and unreal!” (Mere Christianity, p. 135)

We need to cultivate Christian minds. We need thinkers like Lewis "who's met the real thing." Pedants haven't met the real thing. They follow the dogmas and formulas. Their faith is based on ritual. It's what Bonhoeffer called cheap grace. It is a grace that makes us feel good about ourselves but leaves nothing for God.

I make the distinction between Catholic and Christian because I have heard both Catholics and Protestants distinguish themselves along liturgical lines. Both Catholics and Protestants can be Christian but Catholics can't be Protestants nor Protestants, Catholic. That doesn't mean however that their thinking can't cross the lines. Martin Buber for example is as important to Christian and Catholic discourse as any modern Christian or Catholic writer. Buber is Jewish.

In my opinion, there is nothing more out of sync with Western Rationalism, than a pedantic Catholic. They believe that works come before faith as long as those works benefit the Church or other Catholics, that is, the Catholic community. Yes, I know, the Church has officially stated that faith comes before works but that is how Catholic scholars write at the scholastic level not what the priests preach from the pulpit. 

The Vatican though minuscule exerts a great influence globally. Territoriality is even less important today as it was during the Victorian Period for a small island country like Great Britain. The sun never set on the British Empire and the same can be said of the Vatican.  Great Britain colonized the world by its commerce and military. The Vatican colonizes the world by its pedanticism. 

Liberation Theology is one example of the Catholic Church trying to win back the hearts and minds of the people after decades of being instrumental in supporting dictators in predominantly Catholic countries like Italy (Lateran Treaty) and Spain (Concordat of 1953) not to mention Latin America. 

Pedantic Catholics do not believe in contraception and believe that populating the earth with Catholics benefits the Church. They are very much like Masons favoring other Catholics in their daily lives. The Irish Catholics and Italians are infamous for this practice which has resulted in a generational influx of fresh members to organized crime. I am not sure which is worse ethnic centrism or religious centrism but when they are combined into a ethno-religious centrism, there are big problems. Northern Ireland is an example; Sicily another.

Amy Coney Barrett is one of the pedantic, out-of-sync Catholics of whom I speak. Seven kids in a non-agrarian culture is a bit much even with two adopted children. Is she more blesséd than the Catholic woman who chose to bear two children and use birth control? What were her motives for adopting two Black, Haitian children? Did she do it to relieve their suffering or did she do it to increase the Catholic population by two? If she adopted them to bring two souls to Christ, I am all in support, but if she did it to bring two children into the Church, I don't support her motives. Did she do it to give herself a more diverse public persona? 

If there is one act that I would use to vote against her being nominated, it would be her willingness to risk a pregnancy late in life. That is pedanticism at its purest. Of her own brood, she went for number five late in life around 43 years old, without any regard for the well-known risk of Down Syndrome and hence she conceived a Down Syndrome child. This in my opinion was poor judgement and it was linked to her pedantic religious beliefs. I hope she didn't take the pregnancy to full term  knowing that the child would be handicapped simply to make her family appear as with the adoption of the Haitian children...   more diverse. There is a pattern here, however. 

By any rational Western opinion, her choice to get pregnant at that age was a bad choice. Her choice to keep the child however was not a bad choice. Adhering to either a ProLife or ProChoice position is rational. That's what makes the abortion issue insolvable. When there is a conflict between two goods, as in the case of abortion, a person's bodily right versus the rights of the unborn and innocent, to have an abortion must be left to the individual's decision as long as all prerequisites are met. 

The abortion issue does not come into play here when considering Coney Barrett's aptitude for the position. What comes into play is her poor judgement based upon her pedantic religious views. Her choice to have a child at 43 years of age is as poor a choice as an ignorant teenager's choice to have sex without protection. In both cases neither accepted the consequences of their actions for the child or for the people around them. For Coney Barrett burdening us with her pedantic Catholicism is as self-righteous as the teenager feeling entitled to share her burden with parents, grandparents, and the state.

The Education of Richard Beck 1978-1988

 The Education of Richard Beck 1978-1988

Back in 1988, I was hired by the WCASD to be the ESL (English as a Second Language) Coordinator. ESL programs help non-English speaking kids learn English. At the time, I was 33 years old and had about ten years experience teaching ESL from the elementary to the adult level. I had taught adults for an organization called Farmworkers Opportunity in Kennett Square. Farmworkers Opportunity was out of Rochester, New York. I had also been an ESL Tutor for the Coatesville School District. Ann Oldsey was my supervisor. Her husband, Bernard Oldsey, was one of my professors at West Chester University. I credit him for giving me a deep understanding of how to critique literature. With this knowledge, I was able to transfer what I knew of literary criticism to social and political criticism. Working for the Migrant Education Program I had worked in the Kennett Square, Oxford, Avon Grove and Unionville. Marta Velasquez Loescher was my supervisor. I gained a great amount of knowledge about Puerto Rican culture by working with Marta.

Dr. Hewlett, the WCASD Human Resources Director (back then known as the Personnel Director) approached me at Immaculata College and told me that he needed someone to organize the ESL program by defining what an ESL student was. Hewlett and I sat on the HEOP Board. HEOP stood for the Higher Education Opportunity Program. It was a program at Immaculata that assisted minority girls and girls from low income families get into Immaculata. I had actually met Dr. Hewlett for the first time at Marta Velasquez Loescher home in West Chester.

According to Hewlett, too many kids because they were Hispanic were being excluded from the regular classroom and placed in ESL even though they were proficient in English. One real bad thing for the kids and for the reputation of the school district was that the kids weren't earning enough credits to graduate and hence dropping out. Some were even being bused to what was called ESL schools. Some parents objected to this.

Hewlett needed a gatekeeper. My philosophy had always been that the ultimate success of any student comes from being in the regular classroom not from a special program. I would have rather erred on the side of inclusion rather than exclusion. Many regular classroom teachers where I had taught didn't agree with me. They felt that students with limited English proficiency were a burden to them. The problem was that as soon as they saw a Hispanic kid they would label them as limited English speaking. These kids were being instrumentalized by both the school districts and the ESL/Bilingual programs that served them. The more kids in ESL/Bilingual programs the greater the perceived need hence this justified greater funding for the special program.

I had come to the WCASD from the Migrant Education Program, an Intermediate Unit program. I had taught in Southern Chester County for Migrant Education up until November 1987. I resigned after having an incident with a building principal and enrolled at Temple in a doctoral program. Dr. Hewlett knew the principal with whom I had had difficulty having been with him in the same cadre of doctoral students at Penn. He told me he was aware of what happened and he was aware of my reputation. He said he needed someone who would stand up for kids. At the time I was being courted by the Lancaster City school district as well. I had already interviewed for a high school position there and been hired accept for signing a contract. They too needed a strong person, preferably a White man who could be a positive example for the other White teachers, to stand up for kids against the "old guard." That's how it was framed to me.

At that time, language minority students were not embraced in schools and my efforts to provide them an education were often met with hostility. IEP's and 504's introduced in 1975 were just taking hold in school districts and teachers were feeling overwhelmed. I was familiar with the difficult task I would be undertaking if I accepted either Hewlett's offer or Lancaster's. When I worked in Southern Chester County, I was asked more than once what my motives were since I was a White man helping "those" people. I never mentioned to them that my mother never finished sixth grade and was functionally illiterate. I had first hand knowledge of what it was like for someone to have no voice. My experience in Southern Chester County tempered my metal in preparation for my job in West Chester.

I was introduced to identity politics before there was such a thing as identity politics. I never imagined that I would receive the same hostility from the people for whom I was advocating as the people gave me who were placing obstacles in my way for providing an education to primarily Puerto Rican and Mexican kids in Southern Chester County. I was naive. Not all so-called community leaders have the best interest of their people in mind.

I was hired by a Black man, Dr. John Hewlett who always reminded me that he hired the best person for any job. Prior to Dr. Hewlett becoming the Human Resources Director, the ESL Coordinator position had been a pigeon-hole for a Hispanic. The majority of the kids in the program were Hispanic, but the district demographics were changing rapidly as affordable housing was becoming scarce in the Borough. The language minority population in the district was becoming more diverse. When I left the ESL program in 2000, there were well over 100 languages spoken in the district.

After about two months as coordinator, I met my future wife and my stepdaughter at a community meeting at El Centro Guayacan on Matlack Street. We began dating. She lived with her sister in Bolmar Street Apartments; low income housing. I still lived at home on our family tree farm in East Fallowfield Township outside of Coatesville. I was 33 years old, had plenty of space, and never thought about launching. I had a rural perspective on family and what it meant to be independent. Launching was not one of my constructs. In this way I had much the same worldview as Hispanic males who tend to remain with their parents until they marry. I would work on the family tree farm until 1993.

My future wife was from Puerto Rico and had fled an abusive husband. She was still married when we began dating; a point that many made sure was made public. Some professionals in the school district and the "community" who resented me for "taking" the ESL Coordinator position met with the school district superintendent while I was out of the district at a conference in Milwaukee. They told him that I was seeing a "young" married woman from "the community"; and living with her.

When I returned from Milwaukee, I was called into Bob Fithian's office, the assistant to the superintendent and my boss. Bob Fithian was a legendary football coach from Sun Valley High School. He had followed his assistant coach Tom Kent to West Chester to become his assistant. Bob Fithian taught me more about human nature than any philosopher I had ever read. Bob was fair and forgiving. I can say that he was the best boss I have ever had.

My future wife at the time was 35 years old. The superintendent had the conception that my future wife was much, much younger based upon the comments from the "coup" group, my boss's words; and I was not living with her but rather I had rented her an apartment at Hillside Apartments in Caln Township in order to move her and her daughter out of La Loma, Everhart Apartments where she had moved with her brother. La Loma was an apartment complex that was not a place you wanted to live unless you had to.

Bob Fithian said, "While you were away there was a coup. They claim you are living with a young, married Puerto Rican woman from the community."

I said, "I am living with a woman." His eyebrows lifted. "I'm not sure if she's Puerto Rican. I've never asked her. You know, but I've always had my doubts."

Bob looked at me puzzled and asked, "What do you mean?"

"It's my mother," I said. "I live with my mother. I've always had my suspicions about her. As soon as I get home, I'll ask her."

Bob and I had a good laugh as if we were from the old boys' club. The superintendent, Tom Kent, came into Bob's office saying something about a cabinet meeting that afternoon. I've always suspected that he was listening. I saw Bob as riding shotgun for Tom.

Bob said, "You know, he, referring to the superintendent Tom Kent, stood up for you. He said that he didn't care if Richard Beck tied wine bottles around his neck and laid in the gutter. As long as he does his job, I don't care."

I said, "Wow. That's great."

Bob said, "Don't get the wrong idea. Neither of us think you are the right person for the job. However, John [Hewlett] seems to think you are so we have to go along with him."

"Then why did he defend me?" I asked.

"Because if we let them get rid of you, who will they want to get rid of next?" Bob said.