From a Claphamite

After the peaceful pro-life demonstration I talked to my husband Scott about people who substitute attitude, like shaking their heads, for intelligent response to your position. These would be the people who drove by yesterday just shaking their heads. Part of it is that they don't think we had an intelligent position, and they feel that no response is necessary.

I read a little bit of Hannah More when I got home. She was a member of the Clapham sect. You might remember her from the film as the woman with crazy hair who sat at the table when the friends convinced Wilberforce to run for office. Anyway, I studied her a bit last Spring and am still reading her stuff. In a treatise called An estimate of the religion of the fashionable world she talks about how it has become popular to scoff, and to disbelieve. She also talks about how both real philosophy and real christianity require a level of intellectual dedication that was out of fashion. The continuity to our times is refreshing, really. She talks about how the modern skepticism of her time (the 1790's) "adopted sarcasm instead of reasoning, and preferred a sneer to a judgment" (213). More points out that men of her time will avoid Christian thinking because they are lazy and undisciplined, while "the evidences of Christianity require attention to be comprehended, no less than its doctrines require humility to be received, and its precepts self-denial to be obeyed" (214). Consideration of Christianity requires more thought than most people are willing to put forth for anything, she's saying. Finding this is a not a new tendency under the sun is comforting to me.

On the other hand, it is convicting. I know I hardly ever practice kind of dedication or self-denial the gospel deserves, and I believe in it. I'm grateful for the Academy because while I'm participating it encourages me to think and live more carefully.