A Retirement Journal- Making sense of the times: Lent & Philip Rieff

“Remember, dust you are Jake, and to dust you will return.” Those words were spoken to me last week at the Ash Wednesday Service at Holy Trinity Silicon Valley Church near my Palo Alto home. The celebrant was the Reverend John Gorin, Rector of the church. He placed ashes on my forehead in the shape of a cross to punctuate his pronouncement. John is a new friend thanks to his occasional attendance at the monthly salons produced by the Oak Guild Institute, the little non-profit I helped found. Ash Wednesday is the beginning of Lent, the 40-day period of preparation to commemorate the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. 40 days is significant in Jewish and Christian tradition and Lent is practiced by many, but not all, Christian denominations and sects. In Lent, one is reminded that death comes for all of us, to repent, and to anticipate the renewal that comes with Jesus’ resurrection. ?I was coming to this year’s Lenten period with a troubled soul, troubled primarily by the state of the world as I saw it.

I grew up in immediate post British Raj Calcutta, India. I grew up in a predominantly Hindu population, but with a very pluralistic, open, and secular culture. Growing up in a Christian home, I certainly knew about Good Friday and Easter from the Bible stories my mother would tell me every night. My understanding of Good Friday and Easter was reinforced regularly at the Protestant Sunday School to which my parents shipped my brothers and me. My memories of Lent and Ash Wednesday however are much dimmer. I vaguely remember my Catholic classmates at Don Bosco School reappearing once a year after their daily mass with the sign of the cross on their foreheads. Likewise, my parents would occasionally return home with ashen cross marks as well after one of their infrequent visits to the Mar Thoma Eastern Orthodox Church, a longstanding ancestral heritage of our family.

What is much more vivid from my childhood is my remembrance of the world order that was shaping up post WW2. “Will Eisenhower win or will Khrushchev?” I distinctly remember asking my father at what most likely was my reaction to the shoe-pounding incident at the United Nations attributed to Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev. A few years later, I remember even more vividly the standoff between Kennedy and Khrushchev during the Cuban Missile Crisis. My family, particularly my father, was on the side of the United States. His dislike of the planned economy model of the Soviet Bloc adopted by India, and his eagerness to avoid “Godless Communists” taking over the country were major impetuses prompting my dad to emigrate to the United States.

My life and career since then have primarily been in these United States. I have lived for the most part in a period of Pax Americana and in The American Century. At the same time, I have continued in my faith journey. This included a better appreciation for Lent. ?All along in these dual journeys, I have felt that though church and state are separate, the “American Way” is closer to God’s way. I witnessed the fall of communism along with the amusing, in retrospect, pronouncements of the “death of history”. The moral arc of the earth, if not the universe, was indeed bending toward justice, or so I thought. Several of my fellow Americans disagreed with me on the moral arc bending in the right direction. For them, issues like abortion and same sex marriage were clear indicators that America was headed in the wrong moral direction. ?For me, the election of Donald Trump in 2016, but even more so in 2024, signaled an end to a world order I idealized. Instead of America, Canada and Western Europe against Russia, today it is the U.S. and Russia allied against Canada and Western Europe! ?Hence my angst going into Lent this year.

A few weeks ago, Phil EuBank , pastor at Menlo Church, my “home” community of faith preached a sermon where he introduced the congregation and me to Philip Rieff, a late 20th century scholar, sociologist and philosopher. Rieff was someone I hadn’t known of before. ?The long time Chicago and Penn professor’s philosophy is captured in his 3-volume work on Sacred Order/Social Order. Though a cultural Jew, Rieff was an agnostic in his personal faith. However, the prim and proper professor (picture above!) believed strongly that a sacred order, especially those emanating from mono-theistic religions with a codified established set of teachings (e.g., Judaism, Christianity, Islam…), provided for the best social structure and order. ?Rieff decried the permissiveness and attacks on authority that in the late 1960s were creeping into orderly institutions including his own beloved academia. The alternative to societies adhering to a sacred (but not theocratic) order was per Rieff, a return to the “might is right” philosophy of earlier civilizations along with their religious superstitions. This return would be preceded by an even darker period of anarchy caused by the breakdown of social and sacred orders and structures. ?Rieff posited this period of anarchy would nonetheless bring along artifacts from the just departed sacred order period. ?Though Rieff did his work in the 60s and 70s as many argue America was becoming post Christian, I immediately applied Rieff’s thinking to today’s world order and to America. I see the artifacts of Christianity being carried forward but not the spirit. Pastor Phil in his sermon captured it well when he intimated, “the left wants the kingdom without the king while the right wants “a” king but likely not the kind of kingdom that Jesus talked about.”

The late Philip Rieff is helping me make sense of my times!

At Ash Wednesday this year, I repented. I repented that though I am a person of faith, and though I believe in separation of church and state, I subconsciously was using the “American Way” to prop up my concept of God and his kingdom. How ridiculous! If there is a God, as I believe*, and that God is embodied in the form of Jesus Christ as I also believe*, then God needs absolutely no propping up.

Whatever the future holds for this world and me, thank you Phil Eubank, thank you John Gorin, and thank you Philip Rieff. Thank you for helping me remember I am returning to dust, and that God requires no assist from me, or the American Way, or anything or anyone else. Alleluia or Thank God for that!!

How about YOU, whatever your faith tradition? What do you think about Sacred Order and its relationship to Social Order?

Jake

*Happy to have coffee or a beer with anyone, anytime to share why I believe in God in the form of Jesus even though I cannot “prove” my faith scientifically beyond a shadow of a doubt!

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