William Rodney Herring

It being Father's Day and me being directly asked (actually, it was anything other than direct, but that's as much a story for another day, as it is typical) to attend church with my parents, which I hadn't done in a few years, I agreed to go. Now there are all kinds of things to say about this church, but I'll bite my tongue. Except on this point: the sermon consisted of reasons fathers should provide support for their families. (In fact, the pastor is partial to alliteration and anagrams to help his listeners remember his points, so what a father should do is Love, Lead, and Lift his family.) But the point of my post is the story about how one father didn't, and disaster followed.

To wit: Many years ago a young man grew up in a small German town, a youth dedicated to his synagogue. His father, a merchant, moved the family to a larger town in a predominantly Christian region and joined a Christian church. When asked by his son why he had abandoned the religion of his past, the father answered that it was better for business. The boy gave up his commitment to Judaism and later moved to London and wrote Das Kapital [seriously, he said it in German]. He said, "Religion is the opiate of the masses. And my father showed me that true belief doesn't exist." The boy's name was Karl Marx, and he went on to found a philosophy that would grow to control half the world. It would lead to wars and oppression.

Now apart from the wildly inventive quote, there's some accuracy to this story that impressed me. What didn't impress me was (1) the all-too-easy conflation of Marxism with global war and destruction and (2) the attribution of weakness to a father who basically did lift and lead his family (not to mention [3] the careless slippery slope along which Heinrich Marx becomes responsible for global disaster--but that's just my rhetorical objection).

The problem with (1) is obvious: Karl Marx is not as responsible for Cold (and less-cold) War events--or totalitarian infelicities, if that's the reference--of the 20th Century as is capitalism itself. If his "philosophy" caught on, it was of course in large part because of the dissatisfaction of those oppressed by capitalist exploitation, making the structure and means of exploitation the cause of any violent response.

The problem with (2) has little to do with a defense of Heinrich Marx--or even an interest in his biography--than it does with the hypocrisy involved in the pastor's use of this father. For one thing, if we follow the logic to its conclusion, we see that this Christian pastor suggests that a better father would have remained Jewish, rather than convert to Christianity. Clearly, that's not what was meant--or if so, the pastor would have a hard time retaining membership at his own church! But not only that, in a sermon very much opposing what was regarded as a feminization of American households (feminization associated in part with laziness, in part with mere absence of a "man of the house"), there's a kind of act of bad faith in regarding the father who does provide for his family--both financially and in terms of a model of how to succeed in business--as improper.

I understand that the response among this pastor's supporters would be that Heinrich's conversion wasn't about true religious virtue--and that his willingness to sell out his religious beliefs set an empty example for his son, disillusioning him, etc., etc. But isn't there a serious act of willful ignorance on the part of the church who preaches Republican politics (even to the extent that they oppose taxes on the premise that government already regulates too much)--who, in other words, supports quite actively free-market capitalism--and simultaneously denounces someone who forthcomingly practices astute entrepreneurship?

Not that I don't realize that the real reason Heinrich Marx is villainized here is his son's influence. Still, there's an irony in using as a scapegoat someone who with just slightly different details to his story could be a hero to the Baptist church.