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Three chapters from what I can't bear losing
American Poetry Review, The, Nov/Dec 2003 by Stern, Gerald
The Christians got their Sabbath originally from the Jewish one but it was changed to Sunday to differentiate it and because that was the day of the Resurrection, although the Sabbath was altered, certainly by the Protestants, certainly especially by the Calvinists, into a day almost of mourning, and it is that mourning I remember, in which not only is every pleasure denied but punishment is positively engaged, even enjoyed. The causes can be found (partly) in theological theory, most especially the idea of total depravity, or original sin, and the notion of predestination, as well as in cultural history and economic conditions. I spent a year in Scotland and I deeply love the Scots, but I don't know enough about the Scottish character in the days preceding John Knox-or the centuries-to know what changes ensued when Presbyterianism became established there. I read with joy Robbie Burns' great poem attacking the Presbyters and I remember two men, Wee Frees, walking by my friend Beth McDonald in the country outside of Glasgow one Sunday morning while she was in the act of fiercely painting-of all things-the same Wee Frees, who had visited her the Sunday before in the same spot. The men's faces were murderous, and only in Jerusalem, walking with a woman in jeans, blouse, and sandals on some fundamentalist side street, did I encounter such looks.
I experienced head on the Calvinist Sabbath, but I didn't yet know about such things as double predestination and the outrage in the Garden. I just suffered their effects. Nor did I know much about the late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century religious justification of murderous economic profit and endless economic abuse by the panderers of wealth unlimited, who built their system on greed, hypocrisy, exploitation, and self-congratulation. Calvinism, in its heyday, taught that mankind was essentially doomed because of Adam's disobedience and is by itself incapable of goodness, nor could any of its "works" have any merit-as far as the election to eternal life-and all are in a state of ruin meriting only damnation; yet some men (and women) are undeservedly rescued from this helpless and hopeless condition through God's love. The reason some are saved and others are lost is beyond comprehension; it has to do with divine choice and that alone, and it is absurd to inquire into God's will. The word for this is "predestination." Simply, God's freedom seems to deny or override man's freedom (or responsibility), since God is completely free of any fate or external necessity-which would mean that the Christian gospel of love and forgiveness represents only an optimistic hope in the face of unknown odds and that God will save or damn without regard to what anyone thought was just under the circumstances. Why anyone would believe in such a God is hard for me to understand, unless such a person was convinced of the doctrine's truth and believed that any forgiveness was only a gift, or fudged it a bit the way we fudge the reality of death. Anyhow, modern Protestantism, by contrast, emphasizes the dual and concurrent contributions of God and man, and all through the five hundred or so years of its existence, Calvinism compromised God's "sovereignty," or at least his willfulness, in one way or another with its emphasis on repentance, forgiveness, and reconciliation. Catholicism at least was more pleasurable. After an hour or so of morning duty the Sabbath was given over to family gatherings and walks, no guilt attached. The very existence of the Protestant Sabbath was a protest against Catholic "paganism" and "hedonism."
