Podcast appearances and mentions of andrew delbanco

The start of the semester is a time to reflect on the question: What is this all about? What are we up to at Providence College and in higher education in general? What do we seek and why? Renowned social critic Andrew Delbanco, keynote speaker at this year's Academic Convocation, joined the Providence College Podcast to discuss these and other questions. Andrew Delbanco, Ph.D., is Alexander Hamilton Professor of American Studies at Columbia University and president of the Teagle Foundation, which advocates for education in the liberal arts. He recently delivered the 2022 Jefferson Lecture, considered the highest honor the federal government confers for distinguished intellectual achievement in the humanities. A National Humanities Medal winner, Delbanco's scholarship confronts existential questions posed in classic American literature and lived in the American experience. He studies the forces that, in their convergence, created and continue to create America as we know it: morality, economics, law, race, spirituality, hope, and more. His work bridges past and present, showing the genesis of present realities taken for granted and probing those realities with voices and ideas from the American literary tradition.Subscribe to the Providence College Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, Google Play, and YouTube.  Visit Providence College on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, Snapchat, and LinkedIn. 

Artificial intelligence's remarkable advances, along with the risks and opportunities the technology presents, have recently become a topic of feverish discussion. Along with contemplating the dangers AI poses to employment and information ecosystems, there are those who claim it endangers humanity as a whole. These concerns are in line with a long tradition of cautionary tales about human creations escaping their bounds to wreak havoc.   But several recent novels pose a more subtle, and in some ways more interesting, question: What does our interaction with artificial intelligence reveal about us and our society? In this episode, historian Deborah Poskanzer speaks with managing editor Jason Lloyd about three books that she recently reviewed for Issues: Machines Like Me by Ian McEwan, Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro, and The Employees by Olga Ravn (translated by Martin Aitken). She talks about the themes that unite these novels, the connections they draw with real-world politics and history, and what they reveal about our moral imagination.   Resources   Read Deborah Poskanzer's book reviews in Issues: ·     “Not Your Father's Turing Test”: review of Machines Like Me by Ian McEwan, Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro, and The Employees by Olga Ravn (translated by Martin Aitken). ·     “Exploring the Depths of Scientific Patronage”: review of Science on a Mission: How Military Spending Shaped What We Do and Don't Know About the Ocean by Naomi Oreskes. ·      “A Planet-Changing Idea”: review of The Environment: A History of the Idea by Paul Warde, Libby Robin, and Sverker Sörlin. ·      “Oh, the Humanities!”: review of Excellent Sheep: The Miseducation of the American Elite and the Way to a Meaningful Life by William Deresiewicz and College: What It Was, Is, and Should Be by Andrew Delbanco.   Transcript coming soon!

It's YOUR time to #EdUp In this episode,  YOUR guest is Dr. Andrew Delbanco, President of the Teagle Foundation YOUR guest cohost is Dr. Chuck Ambrose, Chancellor of Henderson State University YOUR host is Dr. Joe Sallustio & YOUR sponsor is Jenzabar's Annual Meeting (JAM) & Commencement: The Beginning of a New Era In Higher Education! What is Higher Ed's other obligation? What makes the U.S. society different from others? What does Andrew see as the future of Higher Ed? Listen in to #EdUp! Thank YOU so much for tuning in. Join us on the next episode for YOUR time to EdUp! Connect with YOUR EdUp Team - Elvin Freytes & Dr. Joe Sallustio ● Join YOUR EdUp community at The EdUp Experience! We make education YOUR business --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/edup/message

There's more emphasis in our culture on getting and spending money, on consuming goods, than in any culture in history. In his book, The Real American Dream: A Meditation on Hope, Andrew Delbanco says we've lost the sense that there's something beyond this world, so we use money to distract ourselves from the fear that our lives aren't going anywhere. Paul agrees with that, that what you believe your ultimate future to be will have a huge impact on how you use your money. In these two famous chapters in 2 Corinthians, Paul talks about money. He says there's a way to use your money that will make your life an exciting story. If you want to have that, you have to see three things: 1) there is a problem, 2) there is a key to the problem, and 3) there is a power to use the key. This sermon was preached by Dr. Timothy Keller at Redeemer Presbyterian Church on May 2, 2004. Series: Living in Hope. Scripture: 2 Corinthians 8:8-15, 9:6-12. Today's podcast is brought to you by Gospel in Life, the site for all sermons, books, study guides and resources from Timothy Keller and Redeemer Presbyterian Church. If you've enjoyed listening to this podcast and would like to support the ongoing efforts of this ministry, you can do so by visiting https://gospelinlife.com/give and making a one-time or recurring donation.

On International Women's Day, Russia's President Vladimir Putin handed out medals to women he called heroes, while Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky marked the day by celebrating the "strength and freedom" of Ukrainian women. Fiona Hill served as deputy assistant to the president for European and Russian affairs under President Trump. She joins the show to discuss.  Also on today's show: Mahnaz Afkhami, Former Iranian Minister of Women's Affairs; Andrew Delbanco, Alexander Hamilton Professor of American Studies, Columbia University To learn more about how CNN protects listener privacy, visit cnn.com/privacy

In part four of our episode on Abraham Lincoln and the Emancipation Proclamation we review the causes of the Civil War, and the momentous events of the 1850s, especially the Fugutive Slave Act and the Dred Scott decision, which rallied northern opinion against the expansion of slavery, and the southerners who insisted on that expansion--even into the North. Part 4: The War to Expand Slavery Audio Clips: Richard Blackett, “The 1850 Fugitive Slave Law,” talk given to the The Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition (2018): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FkzMFXlyjqo&t=164s   Musical Clips: “Early in the Mornin',” Prisoners of Parchman Farm, Louisiana (1947): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zsiYfk5RV_Q Bibliography: David M. Potter, The Impending Crisis (Harper, 1976) Eric Foner, Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men: The Ideology of the Republican Party before the Civil War (Oxford, 1970) Richard Blackett, The Captive's Quest for Freedom: Fugitive Slaves, 1850 Fugitive Slave Law, and Politics of Slavery (Cambridge Press, 2018) Andrew Delbanco,The War Before the War: Fugitive Slaves and the Struggle for America's Soul from the Revolution to the Civil War (Penguin, 2018)

How can a country built on the backs of enslaved people compensate for past wrongs? That is the question at the heart of Andrew Delbanco's upcoming Jefferson Lecture in the Humanities. Each year the National Endowment for the Humanities selects a scholar to give an address, an act the NEH calls “the highest honor the federal government confers for distinguished intellectual achievement in the humanities.” This year, on the program's 50th anniversary, Delbanco, a professor of American Studies at Columbia University, will explore “The Question of Reparations: Our Past, Our Present, Our Future.” He traces the history of the debate about reparations that began before the Civil War and stretches to today, and tells Diane he hopes understanding our history can help inform the country's choices about its future.

Andrew Delbanco (NHC Fellow, 2013–14), Alexander Hamilton Professor of American Studies at Columbia University; President, The Teagle Foundation For decades after its founding, the fact that enslaved black people repeatedly risked their lives to flee their masters in the South in search of freedom in the North proved that the “united” states was actually a lie. By awakening northerners to the true nature of slavery, and by enraging southerners who demanded the return of their human “property,” fugitive slaves forced the nation to confront the truth about itself, and led inexorably to civil war. Andrew Delbanco's masterful examination of the fugitive slave story illuminates what brought us to war with ourselves and the terrible legacies of slavery that are with us still. A New York Times Notable Book Selection, 2019; Winner of the Mark Lynton History Prize, 2019; Winner of the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, 2019; A New York Times Critics' Best Book, 2019 Watch the full video on YouTube: https://youtu.be/WAvI1YmZrTA https://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/virtual-book-club-the-war-before-the-war/

As a parent writing a whole lot of tuition checks, Kelly came to the conversation with a long list of questions. What's the best college can be? What's a typical experience? Who gets the most out of campus life? What's the link between education and democracy? What's fair to expect and why on Earth is it so damn expensive? Andy Delbanco of Columbia has thought, talked and written as much about the value of a liberal arts education as anyone. In addition to his work as a professor at Columbia University, Andrew Delbanco is the President of the Teagle Foundation. He has received the prestigious honor of being named the 2022 Jefferson Lecturer in the Humanities. You can register for free tickets for the in-person lecture event, “The Question of Reparations: Our Past, Our Present, Our Future,” taking place on Wed, Oct. 19 at 6:30pm or watch the livestream on NEH's website. This episode is the kick off to the Live From College Road Trip series where Kelly and her producer Tammy sit in on classes and talk to kids on 15 college campuses across the country. Hit subscribe to travel with the team from Yale to Harvey Mudd, Notre Dame to Tulane, UCSD to Georgetown. We'll do 8 over the course of the fall semester and be back in the spring with 7 more.

How do we balance personal freedom with responsibility to others? What is the shape of a meaningful life? Andrew Delbanco, president of The Teagle Foundation, talks about the importance of humanities in giving students the opportunity and skills to explore these questions and why that is essential for a democratic society.

Modern students are apt to see going to college as the way to earn a credential that will help them get a good job. But as Andrew Delbanco, Professor of American Studies at Columbia University, argues in his book College: What It Was, Is, and Should Be, higher education was developed for a different purpose — one it should fight to maintain.  Today on the show, Andrew shares how he decided to write his book to understand more about the history, nature, and value of an institution which has come under increasing pressure in the modern age. Andrew describes how America's earliest colleges were founded as places where students could learn from both their teachers and from each other, and thereby develop the capacity to grow in character, serve others, live a good life, and even face death. Andrew explains why colleges have largely abandoned this mission, and makes the case for why a broad, not-entirely-specialized, liberal arts education remains relevant in an age in which the ability to grapple with life's big questions is as crucial as ever. We also talk about the difference between colleges and universities (no, they're not synonyms), why a prospective student might choose the former over the latter, and what other things those contemplating where to go to school should consider when making their decision.  After the show is over, check out the show notes at aom.is/college See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Samuel Parris takes on the job as minister to Salem Village, a marginalized farming community split by rivalry and controversy. Salem Village is overshadowed by the larger and much more prosperous Salem Town, one of the two largest towns in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. The colony is ruled by the Puritans, who have broken away from the Church of England and colonized New England in hopes of creating a model Christian society, a "City on a Hill”. Crisis evolves as newer generations lack the religious enthusiasm of the founders. Hardship presses down on the colony on many fronts: war with Native tribes, disease epidemics, religious controversy, political and economic crisis. The entry of Parris into the powder keg that is Salem Village sets off a firestorm of persecution and retribution. Episode 1 Parts: Part I - The Parsonage - Parris, with his family and Tituba, come to Salem Village Part II - The City on the Hill - the story of the Puritans and New England (music - Psalm 119 from the Bay Psalm Book) Part III - The Great Migration (w/ some lyrics borrowed from Michael Wigglesworth’s poem: “God’s Controversy with New England”, 1662) Part IV - Village vs. Town Part V - The Parsonage Reprise (w/ text taken from the sermon book of Samuel Parris, 1690-1691) The Great Migration We have crossed the ocean of rebirthPlanted seeds in this God given earth Behold the pleasures of the fruitful fieldsFlowing full of all good things that they yield Realize his will Let the world see the city on the hillHis word shall be fulfilled, his kingdom we shall build*Search your soul and pray for holy graceConfess your sins let the tears baptize your face Only a very few are chosen to be savedThe Devil takes the rest for his own to be enslaved By searching deep withinYou might find a clue and then beginTo see the holy truth, to realize your sin* We brought ourselves to plant on the western shoreWhere none but beasts and warriors did swarm One wave another follow and one disease beginsBefore another cease because we turn not from our sins Our fruitful seasons cast in doubtThrough great pain and dry and parching droughtDefenders in a route, our hopes are all dashed out*The clouds gather as if we finally will see rainBut for our sinfulness are scattered round again We pray and fast as if to take a turnBut we turn not and our fields and fruits will burn Oh sinful land don’t think it strangeIf judgement comes down on you unless you changeThe Devil in a rage, affairs must rearrangeBrian O'Connell - voice, bass guitar, fretless bass, 8-string bass, piccolo bass (solo on The Great Migration), 6 and 12-string acoustic guitars, keyboards, moog synthesizers, bass drum Mike Harmon - drums, cymbals, percussion Recorded at Studio Vinniechops and Wachusett Recording Sources"A Storm of Witchcraft - The Salem Witch Trials and the American Experience“ by Emerson W. Baker, Oxford University Press, 2015 "Salem Possessed - The Social Origins of Witchcraft“ by Paul Boyer and Stephen Nissenbaum, Harvard University Press, 1974 "The Puritans in America - Narrative Anthology”edited by Alan Heimert and Andrew Delbanco, Harvard University Press, 1985Support the show (https://venmo.com/Brian-OConnell-74537)

On the 244th birthday of the United States of America, the BXC brothers tackle some of their favorite biographies (excluding autobiographies, that's an episode for another day). Also discussed: what makes a compelling biography and how favorite biographies usually align with personal interests. BOOKS DISCUSSED/MENTIONED/RECOMMENDED IN THIS EPISODE: From John Current read: 'The Devil's Highway: A True Story,' Luis Alberto Urrea Recommended biographies: 'John Adams' by David McCullough; 'Wisdom and Innocence: A Life of G. K. Chesterton' by Joseph Pearce; 'Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare' by Stephen Greenblatt; Life of St. Columba by Adomnan of Iona; 'Truman' by David McCullough; 'The Man Who Went into the West: A Life of R. S. Thomas' by Byron Rodgers, 'Leadership in Turbulent Times,' Doris Kearns Goodwin Next read: 'Go Down, Moses,' William Faulkner From Jude Current read: 'Dancing in the Dark: A Cultural History of the Great Depression,' Morris Dickstein Recommended biographies: 'The Seven Mountains of Thomas Merton' by Michael Mott; 'Melville: His World and His Work' by Andrew Delbanco; 'Van Gogh: The Life' by Steven Naifeh and Gregory White Smith; 'One Matchless Time,' Jay Parini; 'The True Adventures of John Steinbeck, Writer' by Jackson Benson Next read: 'The Exorcist,' William Peter Blatty

Audio Transcript: This media has been made available by Mosaic Boston Church. If you'd like to check out more resources, learn about Mosaic Boston and our neighborhood churches, or donate to this ministry, please visit mosaicboston.com.Heavenly father, we have gathered here today to worship you, to worship you Holy Trinity: father, son and Holy Spirit, because you are worthy of worship. We don't do this because we have to, we do it because you are worthy. And Lord, I pray that you make us a people who are bold and fearless. You command us over and over, fear not for you are our God, for you are with us, you are a good shepherd. Lord, we pray for our city, we pray for our country, we pray for the world.In particular, we pray for your supernatural intervention in curbing the Corona virus COVID-19. We pray Lord, send healing. We pray, Lord, that you stop the growth of this virus. You can, you have healed in the past, you do heal today and we thank you in advance. And we do Lord, thank you for the reminder that life is short. It is temporary, we're not guaranteed tomorrow. Our life is but a breath. We're here and then we're gone. And Lord, your word tells us and experience confirms that there's a virus that is even more lethal and that's the virus of sin.And Lord, we thank you for coming and curating the medicine for this virus and that's the blood of Jesus Christ. Lord, if anyone's not yet a believer, not yet a Christian, not yet a child of yours, I pray, send the gift of repentance and the gift of faith. Lord, bless our time in the Holy scriptures. Holy spirit, we welcome you into the space. Speak to us, minister to us. We pray this in Christ's name. Amen.So we're in a sermon series that we are calling Stratagem Know Thy Enemy in which we are exposing and revealing the playbook of the evil one of Satan and the demonic and we're looking at different strategies that Satan uses to pull us away from God. Today we're looking at Satan, the deceiver. Kanye West, and a long time ago, he said, I know that Satan is alive. I can hear him breathing. And when Satan breathes, he breathes out lies. Satan is a liar. He is sly, he is sneaky. He is a schemer and he's shrewd in pulling us away from the Lord.Scripture teaches that Satan uses at least three forms in order to attack humans. He uses the form of the subtle serpent. He did that in the garden with Adam and Eve. He uses the form of the roaring lion and that's what pastor Shane talked about so compellingly last week. Today we're going to talk about Satan when he comes as an angel of light. He doesn't come with lies, his blatant lies, he covers them up. He masquerades his lies and presents them as truth with a capital T. He's a master of spiritual propaganda. He is a master of spiritual disinformation. He's a master at using the illusory truth effect.The illusory truth effect is when "facts seem so good", they taste so good and they're repeated so often that they become plausible. We begin to believe them and we believe them because we want to believe them. He comes to us and offers us trues that are so compelling. There is no God, there is no Satan, there is no sin. You are in control of your own life. Your life is your own. Enjoy, enjoy your life. And we end up bamboozled. Today we're looking at second Corinthians 11 verses one through four and second Corinthians 11 verses 13 through 15 in which St. Paul reveals to us that Satan when he comes, he comes off through people, people of reputation, people that we look up to, people who are authorities in our lives and behind these ideas of these false prophets is the evil one. Would you look at the text with me?Second Corinthians chapter 11 verses one through four. I wish you would bear with me in a little foolishness. Do bear with me for I feel a divine jealousy for you since I betrothed you to one husband to present you as a pure virgin to Christ. But I'm afraid that as the serpent deceived Eve by his cunning, your thoughts will be led astray from a sincere and pure devotion to Christ. For if someone comes and proclaims another Jesus than the one we proclaimed, or if you receive a different spirit from the one you received, or if you accept a different gospel from the one you accepted, you put up with it readily enough.Verse 13, for such men are false apostles, deceitful workmen disguising themselves as apostles of Christ and no wonder for even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light. So it is no surprise if his servants also disguise themselves as servants of righteousness, their end will correspond to their deeds. That's the reading of God's Holy infallible, authoritative word, may write these eternal truths upon our hearts. Three points to frame up our time together. First, we'll look at the fact that Satan is a liar. Second, we'll look at Satan's top 10 lies and third, Jesus is the truth.First, Satan is a liar. We're told over and over in scripture this is true. Revelation 12:9, Satan is the deceiver of the whole world. The words of Christ in John 8:44 he, Satan, was a murderer from the beginning and does not stand in the truth because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks out of his own character for he is a liar and the father of lies. Satan can't but lie. This is his very nature and he speaks out of his nature and his strategy in order to undermine God's word, God's truth is threefold.First of all, he comes in and he questions God's word. "Did God really say?" He asks Eve. After that, he denies God's word. No, no, no, you will surely not die on the day that you partake of this sin. And it doesn't stop there, he doesn't just deny, he doesn't just question, he also substitutes. He removes, supplants God's truth with a capital T with his own version, and he says, "For God knows that the day that you eat of it, you will be like God's. Your eyes will be open knowing good and evil." And here one of the things that we see, Satan's goal is to pull us away from a relationship with God.God is a source of love, light, of everything perfect, of true beauty, of truth itself, and Satan wants to disconnect us from God or keep us from connecting with God. His goal is to make sure that we do not desire God, that our hearts aren't connected to God, but he doesn't often, and especially in a place like Boston, he doesn't start with affections. He doesn't start with desires, he starts with the mind. He starts with lies. He starts with planting different versions of truth. And what we see from this text is that the battlefield for your soul is your mind.The battlefield for your soul is your mind. That's what St. Paul says in verse three, but I'm afraid that as a serpent deceived Eve by his cunning, your thoughts, your thoughts will be led astray from a sincere and pure devotion to Christ. And it begins with these fallacious thoughts, by which Satan pulls our devotion away from God. And what is this devotion that St. Paul is talking about? He says in verse two, I feel a divine jealousy for you since I betrothed you to one husband to present you as a pure virgin to Christ.And here he's using the metaphor of marriage and betrothal from the ancient world in which the father of the bride and the best man, the friend, the best friend of the groom, their job was to protect the bride during the season of betrothal. Betrothal was this important in that culture, it wasn't taken lightly and unfaithfulness during the time of betrothal was considered spiritual adultery. And Saint Paul says, I introduced you to Christ and I'm here during this betrothal period while Christ hasn't come as the true groom, he says, I'm the bride of Christ.I want to make sure that the bride of Christ, that her heart is continually connected to Christ. And he says, you're flirting with spiritual adultery because of these sinful thoughts, because of these lies that you are believing. And this is how Satan operates. Second Corinthians 4:4, in their case, the God of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel, the glory of Christ was the image of God. Satan blinds the truth with his own version of truth. He blinds the light with his own darkness so that people can't see that the gospel is true.It's true in its nature and its veracity. It's a fact, but also it's true in its preciousness. That this is the only way to salvation, that God is worthy of our worship. And what we see is in this tactic as he attacks the mind, he doesn't present a lie as a lie. He doesn't present evil as evil. He doesn't present unrighteousness as unrighteousness. He masquerades lies and presents them as truth. He masquerades darkness and presents it as light. He masquerades evil and presents it as good.That's why verse 13, for such men are false apostles, deceitful workmen disguising themselves as apostles of Christ and no wonder for even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light. So it is no surprise if his servants also disguise themselves as servants of righteousness, their end will correspond to their deeds. Now, how does this apply to us today? Sometimes, yes, Satan does come through religious authorities and they preach a different Christ, but he's not saying be careful that these people come with lies. It says, be careful, they actually preach something plausible. It's something that's truly desirable in our belief.And then also he says, these people are people that you respect. These are authority figures. These are people in your life that you look up to. These are people who are successful seemingly. And when they speak, their words resonate in our hearts because our hearts long to believe some of those lies. So he says, be careful. And the reason why Satan's lies are so plausible, so powerful is because they're always half truths. He presents this truth as a half truth, as a quasi truth, and presents it as the full truth.And whenever a half truth masquerades as the whole truth, it becomes a total lie. I swear that I will speak the half truth and nothing but the half truth and a little truth and anything besides the truth to make sure that we stop asking questions. The greatest lie is when it's presented as the full truth. It's almost true, therefore it's got to be the full truth. The poet Tennyson says, a lie that is all of a lie can be met with and fought outright, but a lie that is partly the truth, is a harder matter to fight. That's what makes it so attractive. There's just enough.He raps his lies in just a little truth. It's like putting bacon bits on a salad, just enough to make it palatable or digestible. If you're a vegan and vegetarian, the bacon is the evil. That's how he operates, it's just enough. And when he comes to us as a roaring lion and seeks to devour us, it's scary of course, but not nearly as dangerous as when he comes as an angel of light. He doesn't come knocking on our door and say, "Good morning, I'm Satan. I'm here to destroy your present and your future. I'm actually here to destroy your eternal life. I'm here to pull you away from God." Rarely does he act like that.Instead, he says, "Good morning. I'm your friend. I'm someone that you look up to. I'm an authority figure. Perhaps I'm someone that you want to emulate and I want to introduce you to something that's alluring, that's exciting, that's fulfilling. It's going to make your life less boring. It's going to give you that little thing, that little extra, that little buzz that you're looking for and can't afford to miss it." And he speaks lies about God, about reality and about our nature. So Satan is a liar. And what are some of the top lies that he speaks? I'll give you 10 of Satan's top lies, and particular in a place like Boston.First of all, there is no God who judges, there is no Satan. There is no sin. There is no truth. Stop thinking and enjoy yourself. Six is there is no afterlife, certainly no hell. Seven is you're good if you do more good than bad. Eight, Jesus died so that you can sin. Nine, you don't need the church and 10, and God doesn't have a mission for you. And the most effective way to battle Satan's lies is to expose them as lies and to counter them with the truth which we try to do here in rapid fashion.First of all, there is no God. In particular, there's no God who judges. Statistically, there's not that many atheists and particularly in the United States, not that many. You're talking about 1 to 2% of the population that are militant atheists confirmed in their atheistic worldview of their atheistic faith. Most people are agnostic or I would say just apathetic, ap-atheistic, I call them. Where it's like we don't know enough. I don't care enough. Perhaps there's God. We probably didn't come from nothing. Perhaps there's a God, but we don't know who he is. So there is no God. Or there is a God, but he's definitely not a God who judges.He's definitely not a God who's going to make me give an account for my life, for my decisions, for my actions. And this is how the lie starts. God is love, period. God loves you, period. And as I go through this list about these Satan's lies, there's just enough truth where you're like, "Yeah, but no. Yeah, but there's more. Yeah, but let me explain." And Satan puts the period where God puts a comma or a semi-colon. God loves you the way you are and then he keeps going. He says, "God loves you the way you are, so you don't need to change." And you keep going. You say, "God doesn't care about sin per se. God just wants you to be happy. God accommodates sin."This is the lie of tolerance. The God tolerates any single one of your decisions or your actions. Jesus talked about the way that leads to destruction's wide. It's tolerant, it's unchallenging, it's uncritical, it's uncaring. Jesus does love you, God does love you. But he loves you so much, he gave his one and only son to die on the cross for your sins. That's how much he loves you. God is a God who loves you so much that he wants the best for you, and the best for you is to be forgiven of sins and to be released from the power of sin.So yes, God loves you and yes, come as you are to the cross of Jesus Christ and receive his grace. Colossians says that Jesus Christ took our sins, the record of debt against God and he nailed it to the cross. Our sins need to be nailed to the cross. Yes, new life is a gift. Forgiveness is a gift, but it has to be received. You can't be born again without first dying to self, dying to sin, dying to your old life. Our sin needs to be brought to the cross, so come as you are and repent of your sin. All your sins will be forgiven because God is and God judges by his judgment, his mercy come together at the cross.Second is there is no Satan. And some of us, perhaps you're a little uncomfortable that we're talking about Satan and the devil in church today, especially in a place like Boston, and some of us were uncomfortable talking about transcendent evil or a personification of evil like Satan. Because when we think of Satan, we think of a guy in a red suit, pitchfork with horns and a tail. It's ridiculous, it's absolutely ridiculous, it's ludicrous to believe this on the one hand. On the other hand, if you are Satan and you've tried many of your strategies and you're like, "They're not that effective. I've demon possessed people. And then there's the Holocaust and then 30 million died during the Soviet Union, not that effective."And Satan hires someone to help him come up with a new strategy, Bain Consulting for example. And no offense if you work at Bain Consulting, there was a guy in the morning service that works there. Sorry, I'm not saying they're diabolic, but I'm saying if Satan were to hire someone who would hire them. So if Satan hires a consulting firm and you're like, "Please help me with a new strategy in 2020." Or in this new postmodern post postmodern era, you know what they would tell him? Convince the world that you don't exist by mocking yourself, by ridiculing even the idea that you exist.From the movie Unusual Suspects, the greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist and like that he's gone. If we can't even have a conversation about transcendent evil or personification of evil, how can we even understand the world? And this started with liberal new testament scholars. German new testament scholar, Rudolf Bultmann over a century ago emphatically denied the existence of anything supernatural. He said they're all myths in the new testament and we need to demythologize the new testament. He said we can only understand what our five senses show us and reveal to us about reality and there's nothing else. The material is all there is.And what happens is once we get rid of evil, personification of evil happens, we actually lose the resources to begin to understand the world as it is. Andrew Delbanco, Columbia University wrote a book called The Death of Satan: How Americans Have Lost the Sense of Evil. The first line in the book is, a gulf has opened in our culture between the visibility of evil and the intellectual resources to cope with it. We know that deep down and we know there's transcendent evil. If we get rid of this concept of personified transcendent evil, how do we begin to understand the world?If you don't believe in Satan, I challenge, you go to Auschwitz, go to the concentration camps and stand there. You feel it, that it's palpable there. If there is no safe, if there is no transcendent evil, how do we begin to understand true systemic evil, racism, sexual trafficking? It begins with lies. Porn is harmless. That's a diabolical lie. Abortion is healthcare, that's a lie. It all begins with the demonic. Hitler's Superman, that whole ideology, that's a diabolical lie that led to the death of millions. Satan is and Satan is a liar.The third lie is that there is no sin and similar to the first one, it begins with God loves you therefore, there is no sin. God loves you therefore, he wants you to be happy and happiness is whatever you define. God loves you and he doesn't discriminate against your life choices and it begins with a truth from scripture, God is inclusive. God's love is inclusive, he welcomes everybody. In Christ Jesus, there is no Jew, no Greek, no male, no female, slave nor free. The lie comes in when Satan begins to link clearly sinful lifestyles to that list and our hearts willingly accept that lie because we have a sinful flesh. And this poisonous lie that masquerades as liberating truth begins to slither into our hearts and causes destruction.In that same context, St. Paul says, "Yeah, there is no, in Christ Jesus, no Jew, no Greek, no slave, no free, no male, no female." And then in that context, those are things that we can't control, but there's things that we can't control. He says, "If a thief comes to faith, let him steal no more, but let him instead work with his hands." There's got to be a transformation. When we meet the God of the universe and he forgives us of our sins. He doesn't just long for us to keep sinning, he wants to release us from the power of sin, but also from the presence of sin.Richard Niebuhr in the book Kingdom of God in America, he said, a God without wrath brought man without sin into a kingdom without judgment through the administrations of Christ without a cross. Many, many modern churches, this is what they believe is false gospel. And it begins with getting rid of a God who judges, getting rid of Satan, getting rid of sin. Once you do all of those things, you don't need a God dying on a cross for sin, bearing the wrath of God and there is no more Christianity.Fourth is there is no truth. And this is where you could talk about this in the very beginning in Genesis three, he comes and he questions God's truth. He denies God's truth, but then there's no vacuum. There's no truth vacuum. This is how truth works. If you nullify truth, you have to replace it with another truth. If you say there is no truth, that now becomes a truth statement. And this is where we are, there is no truth. Relativism is all there is. It's just your truth and my truth. I'm going to live my truth.Your opinion is valid as my opinion and that just keeps going and deepens where, "Well, my opinion is what I want and what I desire, what my feelings are and my feelings are reality. My feelings are truth. My life is my own." Jesus Christ comes and he says, "No, we are not God. We didn't create ourselves. We don't sustain ourselves. Our life is not our own. In creation, our life is not our own in redemption." If you're a Christian, you belong to Christ twice because he redeems us from our sins. Jesus said, I am the way, the truth, capital T, and the life. No one comes to the father except through me. He says I'm the, there's a definite article. I am the way, the only way. There's no other ways to God.If there were other ways to God Jesus, the son of God, the second person in the trinity would not have had to die. He would not have had to bear the wrath of God on the cross for our sins. It's an absolute statement and it's an exclusive statement. And we know about the living word of God, of Jesus and the written word of God in the Holy scriptures which have proven themselves to be efficacious and powerful and they've self authenticated themselves in our own experience and throughout the experience of church history by transforming people's lives.Number five is stop thinking, enjoy yourself. Usually Satan begins with these epistemological, existential questions one through four, but I think the most effective one in particular for young people is this one. Yet we can't know anything, so why even ask questions? Just stop thinking and enjoy yourself. Think about the things that you can control, don't think about the things that we don't know anything about and just enjoy yourself. And God wants you to be happy, right? If he exists and he's a good God and you define happiness as you want to define it, and usually that starts with happiness, but then it gets relegated to pleasure and says, "Just go, just enjoy yourself."And what happens is we begin to numb ourselves with things that we think causes pleasure short term. Be it intoxication or substances, entertainment, comfort, what have you. And this is perhaps one of the most convincing lies. I mean, everyone around us is pursuing this route. And he diverts our attention for the most important questions about God, about the universe, about life. And we believe it because often we want to feel so good in the short term. And then scripture comes in and says, "No."You never get from pleasure what you long to get from pleasure. In pursuit of happiness and pleasure, you never get what it promised you. It doesn't satisfy. C.S. Lewis in the Screwtape Letters... If you haven't read it, it's a phenomenal little fictional work about the strategies of Satan. In this chapter about pleasure, this one line stands out. He says, an increasing craving for an ever diminishing pleasure is the formula. Increasing craving for an ever diminishing pleasure is the formula. Whatever your thing is to get pleasure, you get a little pleasure and what it does, it increases your crave. You want more of it and you're chasing that first high, that first buzz and it gives you less and less, more diminishing pleasure.The lie within the lies that pleasures the path to satisfaction to ultimate fulfillment, it's not. Happiness is in the mind, pleasure's in the body, but there's something so much deeper. There's something in the soul that we're longing for and that's fullness of joy, that's satisfaction, that's fulfillment and nothing physical can give us spiritual satisfaction. Only God can, fellowship with Christ can. Aldous Huxley says, facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored. So even if you're just constantly pushing away these thoughts about God, these questions of where did I come from? What is my life? What is the meaning of life and where am I going? The facts remain, the questions remain.Six is there is no afterlife, certainly no hell. Seize the day, you only live once. Eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow we die. Check off your bucket list. While you're alive, just have fun, enjoy yourself and because there's nothing left. I remember I was trying to share the gospel with a coworker of mine back, I used to work in the FBI for a little bit and my office was in a closet thing, there were no windows and my coworker smoked two packs a day. He would just smoke all the time. So he reeked and I was like, "Bro, I think you're going to die soon. So I got to share the gospel with you." And then I'm like, "So what happens when we die? What do you believe about that?"And I'll never forget his answer. And he says, "You get buried and then you push up daisies." So there's nothing else. Most of us, we don't just believe in annihilationism, that everyone just disappears. Most people what they believe is, there is an afterlife, but it's only heaven. And the only thing you got to do to go to heaven is die. That's the only qualification. You die, you're going to heaven. Where do we get these ideas? You go to a friend's funeral, everybody says the same thing. They get up and they say, I know that this person is where? In a better place. How do we know this? What is that based on? Did someone come back and tell us?There's only one person that ever came back and told us about the afterlife and that was Jesus Christ when he came back from the dead. And what Jesus Christ told us is there's heaven and there's hell. Heaven is the presence of God, hell is the absence of the presence of God. And when we're disconnected with God because of our sin, this is where you spend all of eternity. A lot of people say, "Only God can judge me," and he will. Ecclesiastes 11:9 says, rejoice young man or young person in your youth and let your heart cheer you in the days of your youth. Walk in the ways of your heart and in the sight of your eyes, but know that for all these things, God will bring you into judgment.The words of Christ in Matthew 10:28, and do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul, rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell. Jesus said that in order to awaken us from our spiritual stupor. These are incredibly words, that we will die and we will stand before God and the question is will you spend eternity in God's presence or apart from God in a place called hell? Jesus Christ came and he said that the only way into heaven, into the presence of God is by faith in Jesus Christ. Repent and believe, and those who believe in Christ Jesus as Lord and savior have eternal life.You can either live once and die twice. Die physically, and then you spend eternity in a place called hell, that's eternal death. Death isn't just separation from... it's not cessation, it's separation from the body. You have an internal soul. It's either you live once or you die twice or you live twice. I'm born, I'm alive, but then I'm born again. I die to my former self. I'm born again. I live twice and I die once, and you do that by denying your sin, denying your former life and coming to Christ. C.S. Lewis in Till We Have Faces says, die before you die. There is no chance after die to sin, die to self reliance, selfishness, pride, and be alive to God.Seven is you're good if you do more good than bad. This is, works righteousness, self-righteousness. This is at the heart of every single religion except for Christianity, and a lot of Christians believe this too. They believe that the way that you can be made righteous before God is by helping yourself. God helps those who help themselves. We think of grace as just extra credit or a little fudge fact. I remember I had a teacher of chemistry in high school and on every test he would grade on a curve, but if you brought him chocolates, he would give you a little fudge factor. That's what he called it. I'll always finished with an A.That's what a lot of people, they think, "Okay, I'm going to try hard. I got a 70 on the test and thanks Jesus for the little grace, a little fudge fact." No, that's not how Christianity works. The Christianity says there's nothing that we can do to make ourselves righteous before God. We come to God. The only thing that we contribute to our salvation is the sin that made it necessary. We can't make ourselves righteous and we can never atone for our evil deeds or sinful deeds by doing good because even when we're doing good, we're just doing what was expected of us.Eight is Jesus died so you can sin and this is more for people who have accepted Christ and have had some kind of spiritual experience, but it's very shallow. They have an understanding of cheap grace, that Jesus died on the cross for your sins, past, present, and future. He forgives you of the penalty of sin. And if you sin again, he'll just keep forgiving you because that's his job so you can keep on living in sin. And this is a lie from the pit of hell. Romans 6:1 through 2, what shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? By no means how can we who died in sin still live in it?When Jesus saves us, he doesn't just save us from penalty of sin, he wants to save us from the very presence and power of sin and he does that by the power of the Holy Spirit. Nine is that you don't need the church. In our radical, individualistic society, this is a lot of people. I have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. Personal meaning private, it's just me and Jesus and that's all I need. And again, yes but no, right? All you need for salvation is a relationship with Jesus Christ. But Jesus Christ loves the church and gave himself for her and the church is the body of Christ. So if you want Christ, you cannot want to be part of the church, which is his body, which is the one whom he loves. It's his bride. That's number one.Number two, Satan wants to pull us away from the church because by doing so, he pulls us away from the means of God for our growth and our health. We grow when we push one another in the faith when we edify one another, when we hold each other accountable. We need community. A lone soldier is a dead soldier, and at best, a useless soldier. And this brings us to 10, God doesn't have a mission for you. If Satan can't get you to be faithless, he'll do everything he possibly can to get you to be fruitless and useless. Where, yeah, we're secure in our salvation with the Lord, but we make zero impact for eternity. We make zero impact for the kingdom of God.We just live for ourselves in a little waiting room until we go to heaven. And this isn't God's plan for us. God's plan for us once he gives us the Holy Spirit is to lock arms with brothers and sisters in a commitment to a church and further God's mission, build God's kingdom and God through us bears fruit. Finally, point three is that Jesus is the truth. This is how we counter the lies of the evil one. Second Corinthians 11:3, St. Paul says, I'm afraid that as the serpent deceived Eve by his cunning, your thoughts will be led astray from a sincere and pure devotion to Christ.And I love the word here for sincere, it's a word that means sincerity, authenticity, but also the primary definition of this word is simplicity. It's haplótēs which means simplicity, meaning purity. This is the unadulterated form of faith, simplicity and pure devotion to Christ. This is the main thing of Christianity. This is the heart of Christianity, the main thing of Christianity is to keep the main thing the main thing. And this is what Satan does. Satan complicates everything including religion, including Christianity. And this is how he operates. It begins with a lie.The lie is, "Well, because we're so complicated and life is so complicated. God is greater than us, so God has to be even more complicated. Greater in complication or complex." And this is the truth of scripture, that God is basically simple. And by simple I do not mean simplistic. It means that God is understandable. There are things about him that are absolutely clear, unadulterated, truth about God. And St. Paul says, I think Satan's pulling you away from the simplicity in Christ. The reason why he does that is because that's what transforms us and makes us effective.Thomas à Kempis says, by two wings, man is lifted from the things of earth, simplicity and purity. The truly godly life as a simple life. And this is why the reformation was so important. The reformation looked at the Catholic church and said, "It's gotten way too complicated, let's get back to the scriptures. Let's get back to the gospel." And it simplified not only religion, but all of life. And what is the simplicity? Simplicity and purity in Christ. He's talking about a daily companionship with the Lord Jesus Christ.Do you sense the Christ is yours all day long? If you're in love, you know that feeling of being in love? My wife and I are coming up on 14 years of being in love. And you know the feeling of being in love of you wake up in the morning and first thought is like, "Still got it." Still got the little buzz and the first thing is you want to contact that person. You want to send a text, you want to phone call, send a meme just to brighten up their day, something. There's something there where even if you're far apart, there's this connection. That's what he's talking about. This fellowship. He's talking about the simplicity and purity and devotion to Christ.A lot of Christians, they complicate this. By the way, this is what makes Mosaic Mosaic. Our values, are love Jesus and what? Simple. We're talking about this essential, the most important thing is our relationship with the Lord. Christianity isn't a creed, it's a relationship. And the danger for many Christians is you come and you start adding things to the relationship with the Lord. I need to grow in my faith therefore, I need another book. I need a course. I need a seminar. I need a conference. I need something else to supplement my faith because I don't feel like I'm growing. And the reason why we're not growing is because we're not deepening our relationship with the Lord, our fellowship with the Lord.First Corinthians 1:9, God is faithful by whom you were called into the fellowship of his son, Jesus Christ our Lord. He is a living Lord, he's not dead. He's not just for Sundays, he's for every single moment of every single day he is with us. If you're a Christian, you're in Christ, you're clothed in the righteousness of Christ. You have access to Christ. This is why St. Paul says, for me to live is what? Christ. For me to live is Christ and to die is gain. If I die, I just get more of Christ. Every single moment of every single day I have access to Christ.Karl Barth was a grateful theologian, wrote tremendously effective studies, in particular on the book of Romans, revolutionized theology for decades. And he was at a conference at Princeton Seminary and he was asked the following question, what is the greatest theological thought that has ever crossed your mind? And people are ready for some kind of abstract answer that you don't even understand what he's talking about and this is what he said. He said the greatest theological thought that's ever crossed my mind, Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so.It does not get deeper than that. That's the essence, that's the simplicity of our devotion to Christ. It's easy to lose, especially in the midst of the business of our life. We get pulled away by lies. We get pulled away by pressures and anxiety of daily life. Then we get pulled away by sin, et cetera. Second Corinthians 11:4 he says, if someone comes and proclaims another Jesus than we proclaim, or if you receive a different spirit from the one you received or if you accept a different gospel from the one you accepted, you put up with it readily. Just be careful.Another Jesus, another sphere, another different gospel... And the message of St. Paul, the message of the Holy scripture, the message of Christ is very simple. It was that Jesus was crucified for our sins and he rose from the dead and the Holy Spirit is given to whomever believes. And anyone who accepts the gospel of Jesus Christ, who receives this through simple repentance and simple faith is reconciled with God, becomes a child of God, becomes a Christian. Simple, but it's not easy.Repentance is simple, but repentance is extremely difficult for two reasons. Number one, because we like sin, sin feels good. Sin has an allure. And to die to sin, reject sin, that's painful. Number two, it's painful to admit that you have been wrong. It's painful to admit that you have been taken, that you have believed a lie, in particular, a lie about the most important fact of the universe. And there's something in our ego that would rather believe a lie than accept an uncomfortable truth, than accept the fact that God is God and God is in control and that we have to relinquish it and that we have to release it. But when we come to Christ, Christ gives us grace.Christ gives us this balm for our souls to remove that pain and replace it with peace and comfort. Satan is and he is a liar, but he will not win. And how do we fight Satan? We fight Satan by holding on to Jesus Christ, he is our only power. He's our only path to victory. First John 3:8, the reason the son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil. Hebrews 2:14, since therefore the children share in flesh and blood, he himself likewise partook of the same things that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is the devil.Colossians 2:15, he disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame by triumphing over them in him. Before I moved to Boston to plant Mosaic, I believed in Satan. After a decade of ministry, I really believed in Satan. And I really believed his lies are incredibly compelling. They're incredibly plausible, but they lead to death and destruction. And Jesus Christ said that you can know the truth and the truth will what? Will set you free. And the truth that he offers us isn't just an abstract theory. It's a person that we can have fellowship with.So how do we fight just practically here at the very end? Number one, he wants to pull you away from your devotion to Christ, and he does it through lies. So fortify your mind with the Holy scriptures, fortify your mind with the truth. Romans 12:2, do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind that by testing you may discern what is the will of God and what is good and acceptable and perfect. Philippians 4:8, finally brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever's just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable. If there's any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.And second Corinthians 10:4 and 5, I'll close with this. For the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh. I have divine power to destroy strongholds, destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God and take every thought captive to obey Christ. Satan is a liar and Jesus is the truth. Let's pray. Heavenly father, we thank you for the Holy scriptures, what a gift they are. And we feel Lord, that your word is powerful, that you would cut through the lies that are so plausible. And Lord I pray that you make us a people who are not outwitted by the enemy. I pray you make us a people who are not naive toward his schemes, will make us a people who know the truth and are transformed by the truth and give us the power of the Holy Spirit to live in a manner worthy of this truth. And we pray this in Christ's name. Amen.

The year was 1630. The location was the ship Arbella, which, like the Mayflower ten years earlier, was headed to what's now Massachusetts. Like the Pilgrims before them, the Arbella's passengers were devout Christians who came to the New World seeking to practice their faith as they believed God commanded.   Just prior to the Arbella's voyage, the group's leader, John Winthrop, delivered one of the great speeches in America's history: a sermon entitled “A Model of Christian Charity.” The sermon is best-known for Winthrop's use of the biblical phrase “a city upon a hill.”  For nearly four centuries, that one phrase has shaped our American sense of purpose and our sense of what is often called “American exceptionalism.” Yet, what many think Winthrop meant by “a city upon a hill” is, well, wrong.  In the sermon, Winthrop warned his fellow Puritans what was at stake in their attempt to create “a new godly community.” “For we must consider,” he said, “that we shall be as a city upon a hill. The eyes of all people are upon us. So that if we shall deal falsely with our God in this work we have undertaken, and so cause Him to withdraw His present help from us, we shall be made a story and a by-word through the world.”  As historian Andrew Delbanco put it, Winthrop used the phrase not out of a desire for this new experiment to bring fame and emulation, but out of “a fear of notoriety.”   Winthrop's concerns about not failing God have been lost over time. His message, which was intended for a group of devout Christians, has been “‘plucked out of Winthrop's context' by politicians and pundits . . . and re-imagined as something quite different—as a founding document for the nation itself.”  For example, President Reagan used the expression at least thirty times while in office, often adding the word “shining.” Then-Senator Barrack Obama used the expression to describe the world watching what he called “this improbable idea called America” to see if it would succeed. There are many other examples.   What these all have in common is the substitution of the nation for the Church. Winthrop's sermon was directed at a group of Christians who saw themselves as part of God's Elect, and their mission as an act of stewardship.   This stewardship included, as Winthrop put it, that “every man might have need of others, and from hence they might be all knit more nearly together in the bonds of brotherly affection.” The exceptionalism Winthrop had in mind was “to follow the counsel of Micah, ‘to do justly, to love mercy, to walk humbly with our God.'” This meant not “[embracing] this present world and [prosecuting] our carnal intentions, [or] seeking great things for ourselves and our posterity.” Instead, Winthrop urged, “we must be knit together in this work as one man . . . we must delight in each other, make others' conditions our own, rejoice together, mourn together, labor and suffer together.” Do this and others would see it. Fail to do it, and others would see it, too. Even more, if they failed, God would allow their name, as Moses told the Israelites, to become “a horror, a proverb, and a byword among all the peoples.”  Obviously, this is not the way “city upon a hill” or “American exceptionalism” is often understood today. Plucked out of their theological and historical context, Winthrop's words are used for either premature self-celebrations of national greatness or misunderstood mean to unfairly criticize the history of our nation. In context, it is an admonition to embrace responsibilities. Here's Winthrop's remarkable sermon—share it or even read it aloud with your family. As we gather to give thanks today to God for all His blessings, let all who are God's people re-commit ourselves to let our light shine before others, so that they may see our good works and give glory to our Father who is in heaven.  From all of us at the Colson Center, Happy Thanksgiving. 

Lewis H. Lapham speaks with Andrew Delbanco, author of “The War Before the War: Fugitive Slaves and the Struggle for America's Soul from the Revolution to the Civil War.”

. . .the question is never whether some kind of faith will reemerge. The question is what will it be. - Andrew Delbanco, The Real American Dream

. . .the question is never whether some kind of faith will reemerge. The question is what will it be. - Andrew Delbanco, The Real American Dream

For decades after its founding, America was really two nations–one slave, one free. There were many reasons why this composite nation ultimately broke apart, but the fact that enslaved black people repeatedly risked their lives to flee their masters in the South in search of freedom in the North proved that the “united” states was actually a lie. We talk about the history and role of the fugitive slaves with professor Andrew Delbanco author of the book The War Before the War: Fugitive Slaves and the Struggle for America's Soul from the Revolution to the Civil War. Guest: Andrew Delbanco is the Alexander Hamilton Professor of American Studies at Columbia University.  Author of many books including The Real American Dream, and The Puritan Ordeal. The post Fugitive Slaves and the Struggle for America's Soul From the Revolution to the Civil War appeared first on KPFA.

Sanctuary cities in United States are not new, in fact it can be argued that they existed during the era of slavery.  Today we will be in conversation with historian Andrew Delbanco, author of the book The War Before the War: Fugitive Slaves and the Struggle for America's Soul from the Revolution to the Civil War.  He calls undocumented immigrants today, the fugitives slaves of the past. Guest: Andrew Delbanco is the Alexander Hamilton Professor of American Studies at Columbia University.  Author of many notable books, including College, Melville, The Death of Satan, Required Reading, The Real American Dream, and The Puritan Ordeal, he was recently appointed president of the Teagle Foundation, which supports liberal education for college students of all backgrounds The post The War Before the War: Fugitive Slaves and the Struggle for America's Soul from the Revolution to the Civil War appeared first on KPFA.

For decades after its founding, America was really two nations – one slave, one free. There were many reasons why this nation ultimately broke apart in the Civil War, but the fact that enslaved black people repeatedly risked their lives to flee their masters in the South in search of freedom in the North proved that the “united” states was a lie. The problem of the 1850s - how (for southerners) to preserve slavery without destroying the Union, or (for northerners) how to destroy slavery while preserving the Union – was a political problem specific to a particular time and place. But the moral problem of how to reconcile irreconcilable values is a timeless one that, sooner or later, confronts us all.” My guest today, Andrew Delbanco, author of The War Before The War: Fugitive Slaves and the Struggle for America’s Soul from the Revolution to the Civil War discusses this topic at depth in this episode. We begin in 1850, with America on the verge of collapse, Congress reached what it hoped was a solution – the notorious Compromise of 1850, which required that fugitive slaves be returned to their masters. But the Fugitive Slave Act, intended to preserve the Union, instead set the nation on the path to civil war.

Andrew Delbanco discusses “The War Before the War,” and Rob Dunn talks about “Never Home Alone.”

''America's best social critic'' (Time), Andrew Delbanco is the author of numerous books that explore American history, character, and ideals, including The Real American Dream: A Meditation on Hope, The Puritan Ordeal, and Required Reading: Why Our American Classics Matter. His essays on history and culture are frequently featured in The New York Review of Books. President Obama awarded him the National Humanities Medal in 2012. The War Before the War tells the antebellum story of how two Americas-one enslaved and the other free-created an inexorable path toward the Civil War. Watch the video here. (recorded 11/27/2018)

Orange County, California, was the political starting point for Nixon, for the Barry Goldwater presidential campaign, and for Reagan—as Republican as any place in America. But starting in January, not a single Republican will represent Orange County in the House. It’s solid blue. Gustavo Arellano will explain how it happened – he’s a weekly columnist for the LA Times, and wrote the legendary column “Ask a Mexican.” Also: mass demonstrations in America, from the 1963 March on Washington to the 2017 Women’s March: what protests do when they work, and why: L.A. Kauffman explains. Her new book is "How to Read a Protest: The Art of Organizing and Resistance." Plus: cities providing sanctuary for people the federal government is trying to arrest and return to the oppression they had escaped-- today’s battles over Trump’s attacks on undocumented immigrants have some striking parallels with the battles over fugitive slaves in the decade before the Civil War. Andrew Delbanco comments--his new book is "The War Before the War: Fugitive Slaves and the Struggle for America’s Soul, from the Revolution to the Civil War."

This week on StoryWeb: Herman Melville’s novella Billy Budd, Sailor. While “Bartleby, the Scrivener” and Moby-Dick get a lot of attention (and are taught frequently in high school and college classes), fans of Herman Melville’s work think a lot about a piece he was writing at the end of his life. Though Melville had been working on the novella Billy Budd, Sailor for the last five years of his life, it appears that he may not have finished it when he died in 1891. It’s surprising that Melville had been working on the novella for such a long time. Earlier in his life, he was known for the extremely rapid pace at which he wrote. For example, he wrote the mammoth Moby-Dick in just eighteen months – an epic novel that was about six times longer than Billy Budd. So it’s odd that Melville would spend so much time on one piece – and still leave it unfinished. Also puzzling is Melville’s motivation in writing Billy Budd at all. After he published Moby-Dick in 1851, he went on to write three other novels – Pierre; or, The Ambiguities; Israel Potter; and The Confidence-Man. Each subsequent novel increased the public’s sense that Melville had lost his mind, that his books were the ravings of a lunatic mad man. Looking back after more than 150 years, we can see that Melville was not insane but was rather highly innovative and deeply cynical about the human psyche. Like Walt Whitman, Melville blew the lid off literary convention and, also like Whitman, was very much misunderstood and rejected by many in polite society. But unlike Whitman – and indeed unlike the whole band of Transcendentalists and their friends – Melville had a deeply pessimistic view of the world. When he saw Nathaniel Hawthorne in Europe in 1856, he told his friend that he had “pretty much made up [my] mind to be annihilated.” Hawthorne summed up Melville’s dilemma: “He can neither believe, nor be comfortable in his unbelief; and he is too honest and courageous not to try to do one or the other.” As he wrote novel after novel in the 1840s and ‘50s, Melville’s view of the human psyche became darker and darker, with the monomaniacal Captain Ahab epitomizing the terror of the human soul gone mad, consumed by evil. So intense was the public’s vitriolic reaction to Melville’s work that he quit writing entirely. He disappeared into a quiet career as a New York Customs House inspector. Indeed, he had become such an obscure figure that a New York newspaper, whose offices were located just two blocks from Melville’s home in Manhattan, wrote an article that wondered if Melville had died. So the question many Melville fans ask is: was the author of Billy Budd still cynical about the human soul and was his final novella thus a “testament of resistance”? Or had he made his peace with darkness, had he come to some kind of spiritual acceptance of the world – with the novella a “testament of acceptance”? And what of the fact that the manuscript was apparently unfinished? When Melville died, the manuscript had not been prepared for the printer – and much ink has been spilled since that time trying to determine Melville’s intentions as a writer. Given all the mystery surrounding this short piece of fiction, we must ask ourselves why Billy Budd is so ambiguous and what this ambiguity can tell us about Melville’s final message to his readers. When we look closely, I believe we’ll see that Billy Budd is ambiguous because Melville’s own ideas changed as he wrote it and because he wanted his readers to explore for themselves the profound questions the book asks. He wanted to challenge the intelligent and alert reader – the reader whom he so desperately wanted to find, the reader who would be waiting for him later in the twentieth century. When Melville died in September 1891, it had been five months since he had written “End of Book” on the last page of Billy Budd. Why, then, do scholars think the novella was unfinished? Fragments, repetitions, scraps of text compete with each other. In fact, even though the book was rediscovered in the 1920s, it wasn’t until the 1960s that a somewhat definitive version was published – but even that version feels unfinished and incomplete. Melville had a lifelong history of losing control of manuscripts. For example, he told a friend that Pierre had “got somewhat out of hand,” ending up much longer and much more complex than Melville had originally intended. And in the famous cetelogy chapter in Moby-Dick, the narrator, Ishmael, says he leave his “cetological system standing thus unfinished. . . . God keep me from ever completing anything.” The editors of the 1962 version conclude: Perhaps the “unfinished” Billy Budd should be regarded in this light. Melville’s often declared conception of the relation between reality and literature, between “truth” and the writer’s attempt to see and state it, involved both incompletion and formal imperfection as a necessity: a work that is faithful to reality must in the end be both incomplete and unshapely, since truth is both elusive and intractable. . . . When we look at Melville’s writing process, then, we should remember his wide-ranging, deep-diving psychological journeys. As he responded to Hawthorne’s letter on having read Moby-Dick, “The truth is ever incoherent. . . . Lord, when shall we be done growing? . . . Lord, when shall we be done changing?” Or as one critic said, Billy Budd “seems to chronicle a divided conscious; divided not by irony alone but by the reading and reflection and changing thoughts and attitudes of those five years of revisions and reconceptions.” But Billy Budd is not simply an unfinished manuscript. To the degree that it is finished, it is deliberately ambiguous. Throughout the novella, Melville uses a quite large number of “sliding” words, changes our perspectives on all the main characters frequently, and makes direct comments regarding ambiguity and the problems of definitively answering troublesome questions. Melville’s purpose, it seems to me, was to set up a book in which the reader asks questions along with the author and, instead of having the questions answered by the author, is forced to grapple with them herself. Take sliding words. Billy Budd is peppered with words that give the book an unfixed quality. Strange. Mysterious. Peculiar. Singular. Lurking. Secret. Obscure. Subtle. Questionable. Equivocal. Vague. Puzzle. Vex. Perplex. Wonder. Speculate. Ambiguous. These words are used in key scenes – scenes we often recall vividly. But when we reread these scenes, we find that any vividness we remember is but the vividness we have ourselves created. Similarly, the book’s image patterns put us in a world where the line between awake and asleep is thin and malleable, a world of dreaming and trances. And the main characters – Billy Budd, John Claggart, and Captain Vere – shift and shape-change not only throughout the book but also within individual scenes. The reader simply can’t get a grasp on who these characters are. Is Billy Budd an Adam, a Christ, and Claggart a devil? Not so fast, Melville seems to say. Truth is not so neat. Perhaps the most telling statement is one that appears late in the novella. The narrator says, The symmetry of form attainable in pure fiction cannot so readily be achieved in a narration essentially having less to do with fable than fact. Truth uncompromisingly told will always have its ragged edges; hence the conclusion of such a narration is apt to be less finished than an architectural finial. Melville urges us to take care with what we read, to be slow in casting judgment and in reaching conclusions, and to allow ourselves to fully enter into the ambiguous exploration of the labyrinth. One scholar says that Billy Budd trails off, “leaving endless reverberations in our minds. There is more mystery than we had thought, and we may agree with dying Gertrude Stein that answers are less important than questions. . . . Not the tidy discourse of our first impression, [Billy Budd] is almost as inexplicable as Moby-Dick.” If Melville had arrived at a well-defined set of answers, if this book was intended as his “testament of acceptance” or his “testament of resistance,” it is likely that he would not have carefully and neatly woven those answers into a story. Perhaps nothing underscores this more than the fact that readers and scholars have been finding their own individual answers to the problem of Billy Budd since the book was first published in 1924. While not all have followed Melville’s cues, each has at least tried to determine for himself what the book means. But the best defense for a purposefully ambiguous reading comes from Melville’s own lifelong struggle with truth, from his long and shifting writing process, and from a thorough and alert reading of the novella. Not the unfinished, disunified work of art that many have seen, Billy Budd is a triumph as a novella that lets the reader discover “truth” for herself. If you’re curious about the challenges Melville’s manuscript presented to scholars who rediscovered it in the 1920s, visit the University of Virginia’s outstanding American Studies website on Billy Budd. There you’ll also find a great list of online resources to help as you read the novella. If you want to own what many scholars believe to be the “best” version of the controversial manuscript, you’ll want the 1962 Hayford and Sealts edition. And finally, if you want to learn more about Melville’s life, check out Andrew Delbanco’s biography, Melville: His World and Work, or Hershel Parker’s famous two-volume biography. Visit thestoryweb.com/billybudd for links to all these resources. Listen now as I read Chapter 2 from the 1962 Hayford/Sealts edition. It provides our first full introduction to Billy Budd.

This week on StoryWeb: Herman Melville’s novel Moby-Dick. This episode is dedicated to the memory of Tim Kamer. Here is a book whose fortunes have gone down and up, down and maybe up again. When Herman Melville’s epic novel Moby-Dick was published in 1851, much (if not most) of the reading public began to suspect that he had gone insane. The popular author of best-selling travel books seemed to have gone off the deep end (as it were). Dedicated to Nathaniel Hawthorne, whose friendship had inspired Melville throughout the writing of the novel, Moby-Dick sold only about 3,200 copies during Melville’s lifetime. To Melville’s way of thinking – and to subsequent generations of American literary scholars in the 20th century – he had found his true calling with the psychologically and philosophically complex Moby-Dick. The year 1919 saw the centennial of Melville’s birth, igniting the “Melville Revival.” In the 1920s and following, Melville became an established part of the literary “canon,” and it seemed that his literary genius was finally getting the acclaim it deserved.   But in later decades of the 20th century, long, ponderous, 19th-century novels lost their appeal. No one (fortunately) read James Fenimore Cooper’s The Last of the Mohicans anymore, and while some people claimed to have read Moby-Dick, it was more likely that most of them had not actually read the tome. I have read, studied, and taught Moby-Dick several times – and my estimation of it deepens and grows every time I do. By no means is every part of the novel a page turner (parts of the long, drawn-out quest to find and kill the infamous white whale could serve as an insomnia aid). By no means is it all narrative, all story (the cetology chapters come to mind). And by absolutely no means is it clear what Melville wants us to think about this loose and baggy monster of a book. But there is so very much about the book that is amazing, even breath-taking. First, there are the marvelous opening chapters, in which Ishmael (for so he tells us to call him) goes to New Bedford, Massachusetts, to look for employment on a whaling ship, work Melville himself had done for some years (hence the popularity of his South Sea travel books). The third chapter – “The Spouter Inn” – tells of his night spent with the cannibal Queequeg. To my mind, these chapters represent the best storytelling in the book. Second, there is Melville’s literally encyclopedic knowledge of whales and the study of whales (cetology). While many readers are tempted to skim (or even skip) the cetology chapters so they can “get back to the story,” Melville includes meaty, essential material here, as well as in the justly famous chapter titled “The Whiteness of the Whale.” In short, you’ll learn a lot about whales from reading this book, though at a slower pace than you might fancy. A third fascinating facet of Moby-Dick is the exposé it offers of the whale oil industry, which is quite akin to the oil industry today. Melville describes the dangerous working conditions, shows the greed of the captains of industry, not just Ahab’s monomaniacal pursuit of Moby-Dick but the greed of the entire industry. Directed by Ric Burns, the PBS series Into the Deep: America, Whaling, and the World provides careful insight into the largest global industry of the 19th century. The series’ biography of Melville shows how skillfully Melville washed the gum from his readers’ eyes as to what was going on in this destructive industry. Another good, basic overview of the whaling industry can be found at the Awesome Stories website. And you might also find it fun to explore the New Bedford Whaling Museum website, including information about the museum’s Melville-related workshop, tours, and lecture. Need another reason to read Moby-Dick? Read it as a postmodern novel! Yes, you heard that right. Though modernist scholars loved it back in the 1920s, ‘30s, ’40, and ‘50s, it’s more a postmodern novel than it is a modern one. It blends genres, defies rules, goes all “meta” on us, as when Ishmael tries to interpret the painting in the New Bedford bar. But it’s “The Doubloon” chapter near the end of the novel that shows us the pre-postmodern tricks Melville was up to. Pip, the black cabin boy, has gone mad, having fallen overboard and been rescued from the depths of the ocean. Though he has physically survived his near-drowning, he has been changed forever mentally. But in Chapter 99, “The Doubloon,” Melville shows us that Pip does make some sense if you know how to listen to him. Ahab has nailed a golden doubloon to the ship’s mast. It’s worth a fortune. The first man to spot Moby-Dick can have the coin. In this chapter, Ahab, Starbuck, Stubb, Flask, and other characters walk up to the doubloon, give their explanations of what the coin’s engraving means, and walk away. The explanations range from the astrological to the very practical (the coin is worth $16, which would buy 960 cigars). But it is Pip, who in his topsy-turvy mental state, truly sees what is going on. “I look, you look, he looks; we look, ye look, they look,” he says. “I look, you look, he looks; we look, ye look, they look.” In other words, we all have a piece of the truth, and we all try to make sense of the world from our particular vantage point. This subjectivity is a hallmark of the postmodern enterprise. Now of course, Melville wasn’t a postmodernist. After all, Moby-Dick precedes the postmodern movement by more than a century. But maybe Melville was that far ahead of his contemporaries. Maybe he could see and embrace radical subjectivity – and maybe that it is a key reason why American readers thought Melville, like Pip, had lost his mind. When you look at Moby-Dick from all these angles, it’s hard not to appreciate and applaud Melville for his stunning achievement. Yes, the novel is hard to read. Yes, it’s long and dense. And yes, some of its lengthier passages are boring. But taken in its totality, it is a masterwork. Though Melville was immensely popular at the beginning of his writing career with the publication of several travelogues, he ultimately fell into utter obscurity. Deeply disappointed over the failure of American readers to embrace his more complex work, Melville quit writing by the end of the 1850s and spent the rest of his life working as a customs inspector in Manhattan. By 1876, all of his books were out of print, and near the end of his life, a New York newspaper – located just a few blocks from Melville’s residence – speculated about whether the now-minor figure in American literature was still alive! When Melville died in 1891, he was working on a new story, Billy Budd: Sailor. It would not be published until 1924. In all, Melville earned just over $10,000 for his writing during his lifetime. There’s so much more to say about Melville, about Moby-Dick, and about his other novels and short stories – but I’ll leave it there for now. Suffice it to say that Moby-Dick rewards careful reading. It’s not for the faint of heart or for those who like their fiction to be short and sweet. In fact, if you work up the courage to dive into this leviathan of a book, you may find it helpful to have Robert A. diCurcio’s chapter-by-chapter companion reader at your side. Titled “Nantucket’s Tried-Out Moby-Dick,” it’s available for free online. The novel itself is also available for free online, but for this hefty volume, you might be better off with a hard copy. Multiple editions are available, but I like the Modern Library edition. Finally, if you want to learn more about Melville’s life, check out Andrew Delbanco’s biography, Melville: His World and Work, or Hershel Parker’s famous two-volume biography. And when you have the time, indulge yourself in the rare treat of listening to more than 140 individuals as they read the novel’s 135 chapters and the epilogue. Titled “The Moby-Dick Big Read,” the project features such luminaries as Mary Oliver, Sir David Attenborough, Tony Kushner, and Benedict Cumberbatch. Each reading is accompanied by an original work of art that illustrates the chapter. What a great way to experience this American epic! Visit thestoryweb.com/mobydick for links to all these resources. Listen now as I read Chapter 3, “The Spouter Inn.” The chapter describes Ishmael’s attempts to understand the inn’s inscrutable painting and relates the tale of Ishmael and Queequeg’s night together in the inn. You can follow along with Chapter 3 at Project Gutenberg.   Entering that gable-ended Spouter-Inn, you found yourself in a wide, low, straggling entry with old-fashioned wainscots, reminding one of the bulwarks of some condemned old craft. On one side hung a very large oilpainting so thoroughly besmoked, and every way defaced, that in the unequal crosslights by which you viewed it, it was only by diligent study and a series of systematic visits to it, and careful inquiry of the neighbors, that you could any way arrive at an understanding of its purpose. Such unaccountable masses of shades and shadows, that at first you almost thought some ambitious young artist, in the time of the New England hags, had endeavored to delineate chaos bewitched. But by dint of much and earnest contemplation, and oft repeated ponderings, and especially by throwing open the little window towards the back of the entry, you at last come to the conclusion that such an idea, however wild, might not be altogether unwarranted. But what most puzzled and confounded you was a long, limber, portentous, black mass of something hovering in the centre of the picture over three blue, dim, perpendicular lines floating in a nameless yeast. A boggy, soggy, squitchy picture truly, enough to drive a nervous man distracted. Yet was there a sort of indefinite, half-attained, unimaginable sublimity about it that fairly froze you to it, till you involuntarily took an oath with yourself to find out what that marvellous painting meant. Ever and anon a bright, but, alas, deceptive idea would dart you through.—It's the Black Sea in a midnight gale.—It's the unnatural combat of the four primal elements.—It's a blasted heath.—It's a Hyperborean winter scene.—It's the breaking-up of the icebound stream of Time. But at last all these fancies yielded to that one portentous something in the picture's midst. That once found out, and all the rest were plain. But stop; does it not bear a faint resemblance to a gigantic fish? even the great leviathan himself? In fact, the artist's design seemed this: a final theory of my own, partly based upon the aggregated opinions of many aged persons with whom I conversed upon the subject. The picture represents a Cape-Horner in a great hurricane; the half-foundered ship weltering there with its three dismantled masts alone visible; and an exasperated whale, purposing to spring clean over the craft, is in the enormous act of impaling himself upon the three mast-heads. The opposite wall of this entry was hung all over with a heathenish array of monstrous clubs and spears. Some were thickly set with glittering teeth resembling ivory saws; others were tufted with knots of human hair; and one was sickle-shaped, with a vast handle sweeping round like the segment made in the new-mown grass by a long-armed mower. You shuddered as you gazed, and wondered what monstrous cannibal and savage could ever have gone a death-harvesting with such a hacking, horrifying implement. Mixed with these were rusty old whaling lances and harpoons all broken and deformed. Some were storied weapons. With this once long lance, now wildly elbowed, fifty years ago did Nathan Swain kill fifteen whales between a sunrise and a sunset. And that harpoon—so like a corkscrew now—was flung in Javan seas, and run away with by a whale, years afterwards slain off the Cape of Blanco. The original iron entered nigh the tail, and, like a restless needle sojourning in the body of a man, travelled full forty feet, and at last was found imbedded in the hump. Crossing this dusky entry, and on through yon low-arched way—cut through what in old times must have been a great central chimney with fireplaces all round—you enter the public room. A still duskier place is this, with such low ponderous beams above, and such old wrinkled planks beneath, that you would almost fancy you trod some old craft's cockpits, especially of such a howling night, when this corner-anchored old ark rocked so furiously. On one side stood a long, low, shelf-like table covered with cracked glass cases, filled with dusty rarities gathered from this wide world's remotest nooks. Projecting from the further angle of the room stands a dark-looking den—the bar—a rude attempt at a right whale's head. Be that how it may, there stands the vast arched bone of the whale's jaw, so wide, a coach might almost drive beneath it. Within are shabby shelves, ranged round with old decanters, bottles, flasks; and in those jaws of swift destruction, like another cursed Jonah (by which name indeed they called him), bustles a little withered old man, who, for their money, dearly sells the sailors deliriums and death. Abominable are the tumblers into which he pours his poison. Though true cylinders without—within, the villanous green goggling glasses deceitfully tapered downwards to a cheating bottom. Parallel meridians rudely pecked into the glass, surround these footpads' goblets. Fill to this mark, and your charge is but a penny; to this a penny more; and so on to the full glass—the Cape Horn measure, which you may gulp down for a shilling. Upon entering the place I found a number of young seamen gathered about a table, examining by a dim light divers specimens of skrimshander. I sought the landlord, and telling him I desired to be accommodated with a room, received for answer that his house was full—not a bed unoccupied. "But avast," he added, tapping his forehead, "you haint no objections to sharing a harpooneer's blanket, have ye? I s'pose you are goin' a-whalin', so you'd better get used to that sort of thing." I told him that I never liked to sleep two in a bed; that if I should ever do so, it would depend upon who the harpooneer might be, and that if he (the landlord) really had no other place for me, and the harpooneer was not decidedly objectionable, why rather than wander further about a strange town on so bitter a night, I would put up with the half of any decent man's blanket. "I thought so. All right; take a seat. Supper?—you want supper? Supper'll be ready directly." I sat down on an old wooden settle, carved all over like a bench on the Battery. At one end a ruminating tar was still further adorning it with his jack-knife, stooping over and diligently working away at the space between his legs. He was trying his hand at a ship under full sail, but he didn't make much headway, I thought. At last some four or five of us were summoned to our meal in an adjoining room. It was cold as Iceland—no fire at all—the landlord said he couldn't afford it. Nothing but two dismal tallow candles, each in a winding sheet. We were fain to button up our monkey jackets, and hold to our lips cups of scalding tea with our half frozen fingers. But the fare was of the most substantial kind—not only meat and potatoes, but dumplings; good heavens! dumplings for supper! One young fellow in a green box coat, addressed himself to these dumplings in a most direful manner. "My boy," said the landlord, "you'll have the nightmare to a dead sartainty." "Landlord," I whispered, "that aint the harpooneer is it?" "Oh, no," said he, looking a sort of diabolically funny, "the harpooneer is a dark complexioned chap. He never eats dumplings, he don't—he eats nothing but steaks, and he likes 'em rare." "The devil he does," says I. "Where is that harpooneer? Is he here?" "He'll be here afore long," was the answer. I could not help it, but I began to feel suspicious of this "dark complexioned" harpooneer. At any rate, I made up my mind that if it so turned out that we should sleep together, he must undress and get into bed before I did. Supper over, the company went back to the bar-room, when, knowing not what else to do with myself, I resolved to spend the rest of the evening as a looker on. Presently a rioting noise was heard without. Starting up, the landlord cried, "That's the Grampus's crew. I seed her reported in the offing this morning; a three years' voyage, and a full ship. Hurrah, boys; now we'll have the latest news from the Feegees." A tramping of sea boots was heard in the entry; the door was flung open, and in rolled a wild set of mariners enough. Enveloped in their shaggy watch coats, and with their heads muffled in woollen comforters, all bedarned and ragged, and their beards stiff with icicles, they seemed an eruption of bears from Labrador. They had just landed from their boat, and this was the first house they entered. No wonder, then, that they made a straight wake for the whale's mouth—the bar—when the wrinkled little old Jonah, there officiating, soon poured them out brimmers all round. One complained of a bad cold in his head, upon which Jonah mixed him a pitch-like potion of gin and molasses, which he swore was a sovereign cure for all colds and catarrhs whatsoever, never mind of how long standing, or whether caught off the coast of Labrador, or on the weather side of an ice-island. The liquor soon mounted into their heads, as it generally does even with the arrantest topers newly landed from sea, and they began capering about most obstreperously. I observed, however, that one of them held somewhat aloof, and though he seemed desirous not to spoil the hilarity of his shipmates by his own sober face, yet upon the whole he refrained from making as much noise as the rest. This man interested me at once; and since the sea-gods had ordained that he should soon become my shipmate (though but a sleeping-partner one, so far as this narrative is concerned), I will here venture upon a little description of him. He stood full six feet in height, with noble shoulders, and a chest like a coffer-dam. I have seldom seen such brawn in a man. His face was deeply brown and burnt, making his white teeth dazzling by the contrast; while in the deep shadows of his eyes floated some reminiscences that did not seem to give him much joy. His voice at once announced that he was a Southerner, and from his fine stature, I thought he must be one of those tall mountaineers from the Alleghanian Ridge in Virginia. When the revelry of his companions had mounted to its height, this man slipped away unobserved, and I saw no more of him till he became my comrade on the sea. In a few minutes, however, he was missed by his shipmates, and being, it seems, for some reason a huge favourite with them, they raised a cry of "Bulkington! Bulkington! where's Bulkington?" and darted out of the house in pursuit of him. It was now about nine o'clock, and the room seeming almost supernaturally quiet after these orgies, I began to congratulate myself upon a little plan that had occurred to me just previous to the entrance of the seamen. No man prefers to sleep two in a bed. In fact, you would a good deal rather not sleep with your own brother. I don't know how it is, but people like to be private when they are sleeping. And when it comes to sleeping with an unknown stranger, in a strange inn, in a strange town, and that stranger a harpooneer, then your objections indefinitely multiply. Nor was there any earthly reason why I as a sailor should sleep two in a bed, more than anybody else; for sailors no more sleep two in a bed at sea, than bachelor Kings do ashore. To be sure they all sleep together in one apartment, but you have your own hammock, and cover yourself with your own blanket, and sleep in your own skin. The more I pondered over this harpooneer, the more I abominated the thought of sleeping with him. It was fair to presume that being a harpooneer, his linen or woollen, as the case might be, would not be of the tidiest, certainly none of the finest. I began to twitch all over. Besides, it was getting late, and my decent harpooneer ought to be home and going bedwards. Suppose now, he should tumble in upon me at midnight—how could I tell from what vile hole he had been coming? "Landlord! I've changed my mind about that harpooneer.—I shan't sleep with him. I'll try the bench here." "Just as you please; I'm sorry I can't spare ye a tablecloth for a mattress, and it's a plaguy rough board here"—feeling of the knots and notches. "But wait a bit, Skrimshander; I've got a carpenter's plane there in the bar—wait, I say, and I'll make ye snug enough." So saying he procured the plane; and with his old silk handkerchief first dusting the bench, vigorously set to planing away at my bed, the while grinning like an ape. The shavings flew right and left; till at last the plane-iron came bump against an indestructible knot. The landlord was near spraining his wrist, and I told him for heaven's sake to quit—the bed was soft enough to suit me, and I did not know how all the planing in the world could make eider down of a pine plank. So gathering up the shavings with another grin, and throwing them into the great stove in the middle of the room, he went about his business, and left me in a brown study. I now took the measure of the bench, and found that it was a foot too short; but that could be mended with a chair. But it was a foot too narrow, and the other bench in the room was about four inches higher than the planed one—so there was no yoking them. I then placed the first bench lengthwise along the only clear space against the wall, leaving a little interval between, for my back to settle down in. But I soon found that there came such a draught of cold air over me from under the sill of the window, that this plan would never do at all, especially as another current from the rickety door met the one from the window, and both together formed a series of small whirlwinds in the immediate vicinity of the spot where I had thought to spend the night. The devil fetch that harpooneer, thought I, but stop, couldn't I steal a march on him—bolt his door inside, and jump into his bed, not to be wakened by the most violent knockings? It seemed no bad idea; but upon second thoughts I dismissed it. For who could tell but what the next morning, so soon as I popped out of the room, the harpooneer might be standing in the entry, all ready to knock me down! Still, looking round me again, and seeing no possible chance of spending a sufferable night unless in some other person's bed, I began to think that after all I might be cherishing unwarrantable prejudices against this unknown harpooneer. Thinks I, I'll wait awhile; he must be dropping in before long. I'll have a good look at him then, and perhaps we may become jolly good bedfellows after all—there's no telling. But though the other boarders kept coming in by ones, twos, and threes, and going to bed, yet no sign of my harpooneer. "Landlord!" said I, "what sort of a chap is he—does he always keep such late hours?" It was now hard upon twelve o'clock. The landlord chuckled again with his lean chuckle, and seemed to be mightily tickled at something beyond my comprehension. "No," he answered, "generally he's an early bird—airley to bed and airley to rise—yes, he's the bird what catches the worm. But to-night he went out a peddling, you see, and I don't see what on airth keeps him so late, unless, may be, he can't sell his head." "Can't sell his head?—What sort of a bamboozingly story is this you are telling me?" getting into a towering rage. "Do you pretend to say, landlord, that this harpooneer is actually engaged this blessed Saturday night, or rather Sunday morning, in peddling his head around this town?" "That's precisely it," said the landlord, "and I told him he couldn't sell it here, the market's overstocked." "With what?" shouted I. "With heads to be sure; ain't there too many heads in the world?" "I tell you what it is, landlord," said I quite calmly, "you'd better stop spinning that yarn to me—I'm not green." "May be not," taking out a stick and whittling a toothpick, "but I rayther guess you'll be done brown if that ere harpooneer hears you a slanderin' his head." "I'll break it for him," said I, now flying into a passion again at this unaccountable farrago of the landlord's. "It's broke a'ready," said he. "Broke," said I—"broke, do you mean?" "Sartain, and that's the very reason he can't sell it, I guess." "Landlord," said I, going up to him as cool as Mt. Hecla in a snow-storm—"landlord, stop whittling. You and I must understand one another, and that too without delay. I come to your house and want a bed; you tell me you can only give me half a one; that the other half belongs to a certain harpooneer. And about this harpooneer, whom I have not yet seen, you persist in telling me the most mystifying and exasperating stories tending to beget in me an uncomfortable feeling towards the man whom you design for my bedfellow—a sort of connexion, landlord, which is an intimate and confidential one in the highest degree. I now demand of you to speak out and tell me who and what this harpooneer is, and whether I shall be in all respects safe to spend the night with him. And in the first place, you will be so good as to unsay that story about selling his head, which if true I take to be good evidence that this harpooneer is stark mad, and I've no idea of sleeping with a madman; and you, sir, you I mean, landlord, you, sir, by trying to induce me to do so knowingly, would thereby render yourself liable to a criminal prosecution." "Wall," said the landlord, fetching a long breath, "that's a purty long sarmon for a chap that rips a little now and then. But be easy, be easy, this here harpooneer I have been tellin' you of has just arrived from the south seas, where he bought up a lot of 'balmed New Zealand heads (great curios, you know), and he's sold all on 'em but one, and that one he's trying to sell to-night, cause to-morrow's Sunday, and it would not do to be sellin' human heads about the streets when folks is goin' to churches. He wanted to, last Sunday, but I stopped him just as he was goin' out of the door with four heads strung on a string, for all the airth like a string of inions." This account cleared up the otherwise unaccountable mystery, and showed that the landlord, after all, had had no idea of fooling me—but at the same time what could I think of a harpooneer who stayed out of a Saturday night clean into the holy Sabbath, engaged in such a cannibal business as selling the heads of dead idolators? "Depend upon it, landlord, that harpooneer is a dangerous man." "He pays reg'lar," was the rejoinder. "But come, it's getting dreadful late, you had better be turning flukes—it's a nice bed; Sal and me slept in that ere bed the night we were spliced. There's plenty of room for two to kick about in that bed; it's an almighty big bed that. Why, afore we give it up, Sal used to put our Sam and little Johnny in the foot of it. But I got a dreaming and sprawling about one night, and somehow, Sam got pitched on the floor, and came near breaking his arm. Arter that, Sal said it wouldn't do. Come along here, I'll give ye a glim in a jiffy;" and so saying he lighted a candle and held it towards me, offering to lead the way. But I stood irresolute; when looking at a clock in the corner, he exclaimed "I vum it's Sunday—you won't see that harpooneer to-night; he's come to anchor somewhere—come along then; do come; won't ye come?" I considered the matter a moment, and then up stairs we went, and I was ushered into a small room, cold as a clam, and furnished, sure enough, with a prodigious bed, almost big enough indeed for any four harpooneers to sleep abreast. "There," said the landlord, placing the candle on a crazy old sea chest that did double duty as a wash-stand and centre table; "there, make yourself comfortable now, and good night to ye." I turned round from eyeing the bed, but he had disappeared. Folding back the counterpane, I stooped over the bed. Though none of the most elegant, it yet stood the scrutiny tolerably well. I then glanced round the room; and besides the bedstead and centre table, could see no other furniture belonging to the place, but a rude shelf, the four walls, and a papered fireboard representing a man striking a whale. Of things not properly belonging to the room, there was a hammock lashed up, and thrown upon the floor in one corner; also a large seaman's bag, containing the harpooneer's wardrobe, no doubt in lieu of a land trunk. Likewise, there was a parcel of outlandish bone fish hooks on the shelf over the fire-place, and a tall harpoon standing at the head of the bed. But what is this on the chest? I took it up, and held it close to the light, and felt it, and smelt it, and tried every way possible to arrive at some satisfactory conclusion concerning it. I can compare it to nothing but a large door mat, ornamented at the edges with little tinkling tags something like the stained porcupine quills round an Indian moccasin. There was a hole or slit in the middle of this mat, as you see the same in South American ponchos. But could it be possible that any sober harpooneer would get into a door mat, and parade the streets of any Christian town in that sort of guise? I put it on, to try it, and it weighed me down like a hamper, being uncommonly shaggy and thick, and I thought a little damp, as though this mysterious harpooneer had been wearing it of a rainy day. I went up in it to a bit of glass stuck against the wall, and I never saw such a sight in my life. I tore myself out of it in such a hurry that I gave myself a kink in the neck. I sat down on the side of the bed, and commenced thinking about this head-peddling harpooneer, and his door mat. After thinking some time on the bed-side, I got up and took off my monkey jacket, and then stood in the middle of the room thinking. I then took off my coat, and thought a little more in my shirt sleeves. But beginning to feel very cold now, half undressed as I was, and remembering what the landlord said about the harpooneer's not coming home at all that night, it being so very late, I made no more ado, but jumped out of my pantaloons and boots, and then blowing out the light tumbled into bed, and commended myself to the care of heaven. Whether that mattress was stuffed with corn-cobs or broken crockery, there is no telling, but I rolled about a good deal, and could not sleep for a long time. At last I slid off into a light doze, and had pretty nearly made a good offing towards the land of Nod, when I heard a heavy footfall in the passage, and saw a glimmer of light come into the room from under the door. Lord save me, thinks I, that must be the harpooneer, the infernal head-peddler. But I lay perfectly still, and resolved not to say a word till spoken to. Holding a light in one hand, and that identical New Zealand head in the other, the stranger entered the room, and without looking towards the bed, placed his candle a good way off from me on the floor in one corner, and then began working away at the knotted cords of the large bag I before spoke of as being in the room. I was all eagerness to see his face, but he kept it averted for some time while employed in unlacing the bag's mouth. This accomplished, however, he turned round—when, good heavens! what a sight! Such a face! It was of a dark, purplish, yellow colour, here and there stuck over with large blackish looking squares. Yes, it's just as I thought, he's a terrible bedfellow; he's been in a fight, got dreadfully cut, and here he is, just from the surgeon. But at that moment he chanced to turn his face so towards the light, that I plainly saw they could not be sticking-plasters at all, those black squares on his cheeks. They were stains of some sort or other. At first I knew not what to make of this; but soon an inkling of the truth occurred to me. I remembered a story of a white man—a whaleman too—who, falling among the cannibals, had been tattooed by them. I concluded that this harpooneer, in the course of his distant voyages, must have met with a similar adventure. And what is it, thought I, after all! It's only his outside; a man can be honest in any sort of skin. But then, what to make of his unearthly complexion, that part of it, I mean, lying round about, and completely independent of the squares of tattooing. To be sure, it might be nothing but a good coat of tropical tanning; but I never heard of a hot sun's tanning a white man into a purplish yellow one. However, I had never been in the South Seas; and perhaps the sun there produced these extraordinary effects upon the skin. Now, while all these ideas were passing through me like lightning, this harpooneer never noticed me at all. But, after some difficulty having opened his bag, he commenced fumbling in it, and presently pulled out a sort of tomahawk, and a seal-skin wallet with the hair on. Placing these on the old chest in the middle of the room, he then took the New Zealand head—a ghastly thing enough—and crammed it down into the bag. He now took off his hat—a new beaver hat—when I came nigh singing out with fresh surprise. There was no hair on his head—none to speak of at least—nothing but a small scalp-knot twisted up on his forehead. His bald purplish head now looked for all the world like a mildewed skull. Had not the stranger stood between me and the door, I would have bolted out of it quicker than ever I bolted a dinner. Even as it was, I thought something of slipping out of the window, but it was the second floor back. I am no coward, but what to make of this head-peddling purple rascal altogether passed my comprehension. Ignorance is the parent of fear, and being completely nonplussed and confounded about the stranger, I confess I was now as much afraid of him as if it was the devil himself who had thus broken into my room at the dead of night. In fact, I was so afraid of him that I was not game enough just then to address him, and demand a satisfactory answer concerning what seemed inexplicable in him. Meanwhile, he continued the business of undressing, and at last showed his chest and arms. As I live, these covered parts of him were checkered with the same squares as his face; his back, too, was all over the same dark squares; he seemed to have been in a Thirty Years' War, and just escaped from it with a sticking-plaster shirt. Still more, his very legs were marked, as if a parcel of dark green frogs were running up the trunks of young palms. It was now quite plain that he must be some abominable savage or other shipped aboard of a whaleman in the South Seas, and so landed in this Christian country. I quaked to think of it. A peddler of heads too—perhaps the heads of his own brothers. He might take a fancy to mine—heavens! look at that tomahawk! But there was no time for shuddering, for now the savage went about something that completely fascinated my attention, and convinced me that he must indeed be a heathen. Going to his heavy grego, or wrapall, or dreadnaught, which he had previously hung on a chair, he fumbled in the pockets, and produced at length a curious little deformed image with a hunch on its back, and exactly the colour of a three days' old Congo baby. Remembering the embalmed head, at first I almost thought that this black manikin was a real baby preserved in some similar manner. But seeing that it was not at all limber, and that it glistened a good deal like polished ebony, I concluded that it must be nothing but a wooden idol, which indeed it proved to be. For now the savage goes up to the empty fire-place, and removing the papered fire-board, sets up this little hunch-backed image, like a tenpin, between the andirons. The chimney jambs and all the bricks inside were very sooty, so that I thought this fire-place made a very appropriate little shrine or chapel for his Congo idol. I now screwed my eyes hard towards the half hidden image, feeling but ill at ease meantime—to see what was next to follow. First he takes about a double handful of shavings out of his grego pocket, and places them carefully before the idol; then laying a bit of ship biscuit on top and applying the flame from the lamp, he kindled the shavings into a sacrificial blaze. Presently, after many hasty snatches into the fire, and still hastier withdrawals of his fingers (whereby he seemed to be scorching them badly), he at last succeeded in drawing out the biscuit; then blowing off the heat and ashes a little, he made a polite offer of it to the little negro. But the little devil did not seem to fancy such dry sort of fare at all; he never moved his lips. All these strange antics were accompanied by still stranger guttural noises from the devotee, who seemed to be praying in a sing-song or else singing some pagan psalmody or other, during which his face twitched about in the most unnatural manner. At last extinguishing the fire, he took the idol up very unceremoniously, and bagged it again in his grego pocket as carelessly as if he were a sportsman bagging a dead woodcock. All these queer proceedings increased my uncomfortableness, and seeing him now exhibiting strong symptoms of concluding his business operations, and jumping into bed with me, I thought it was high time, now or never, before the light was put out, to break the spell in which I had so long been bound. But the interval I spent in deliberating what to say, was a fatal one. Taking up his tomahawk from the table, he examined the head of it for an instant, and then holding it to the light, with his mouth at the handle, he puffed out great clouds of tobacco smoke. The next moment the light was extinguished, and this wild cannibal, tomahawk between his teeth, sprang into bed with me. I sang out, I could not help it now; and giving a sudden grunt of astonishment he began feeling me. Stammering out something, I knew not what, I rolled away from him against the wall, and then conjured him, whoever or whatever he might be, to keep quiet, and let me get up and light the lamp again. But his guttural responses satisfied me at once that he but ill comprehended my meaning. "Who-e debel you?"—he at last said—"you no speak-e, dam-me, I kill-e." And so saying the lighted tomahawk began flourishing about me in the dark. "Landlord, for God's sake, Peter Coffin!" shouted I. "Landlord! Watch! Coffin! Angels! save me!" "Speak-e! tell-ee me who-ee be, or dam-me, I kill-e!" again growled the cannibal, while his horrid flourishings of the tomahawk scattered the hot tobacco ashes about me till I thought my linen would get on fire. But thank heaven, at that moment the landlord came into the room light in hand, and leaping from the bed I ran up to him. "Don't be afraid now," said he, grinning again, "Queequeg here wouldn't harm a hair of your head." "Stop your grinning," shouted I, "and why didn't you tell me that that infernal harpooneer was a cannibal?" "I thought ye know'd it;—didn't I tell ye, he was a peddlin' heads around town?—but turn flukes again and go to sleep. Queequeg, look here—you sabbee me, I sabbee—you this man sleepe you—you sabbee?" "Me sabbee plenty"—grunted Queequeg, puffing away at his pipe and sitting up in bed. "You gettee in," he added, motioning to me with his tomahawk, and throwing the clothes to one side. He really did this in not only a civil but a really kind and charitable way. I stood looking at him a moment. For all his tattooings he was on the whole a clean, comely looking cannibal. What's all this fuss I have been making about, thought I to myself—the man's a human being just as I am: he has just as much reason to fear me, as I have to be afraid of him. Better sleep with a sober cannibal than a drunken Christian. "Landlord," said I, "tell him to stash his tomahawk there, or pipe, or whatever you call it; tell him to stop smoking, in short, and I will turn in with him. But I don't fancy having a man smoking in bed with me. It's dangerous. Besides, I ain't insured." This being told to Queequeg, he at once complied, and again politely motioned me to get into bed—rolling over to one side as much as to say—"I won't touch a leg of ye." "Good night, landlord," said I, "you may go." I turned in, and never slept better in my life.

Introduced by Peter Donaldson, Recorded by Thanks to Ben Delbanco, Edited and Mixed at dBs Music'I have written a blasphemous book', said Melville when his novel was first published in 1851, 'and I feel as spotless as the lamb'. Deeply subversive, in almost every way imaginable, Moby-Dick is a virtual, alternative bible - and as such, ripe for reinterpretation in this new world of new media. Out of Dominion was born its bastard child - or perhaps its immaculate conception - the Moby-Dick Big Read: an online version of Melville's magisterial tome: each of its 135 chapters read out aloud, by a mixture of the celebrated and the unknown, to be broadcast online, one new chapter each day, in a sequence of 135 downloads, publicly and freely accessible.Starting 16 September 2012!For more info please go to: www.mobydickbigread.com