As many of you know, the Crocketts visited Maui last week for our vacation. As many of you also know, I went to high school in Hawaii. Each time I return, it is something of a homecoming for me. One of our delightful discoveries this time was the Episcopal Church in Kihei, Maui, Trinity by-the-Sea, which is pictured above.

In 1852, under the supervision of its architect and builder, David Malo, Kilolani Church, which was first built on this site, was completed. David Malo was the first native Hawaiian to be ordained in the Christian ministry. The building was constructed from hand-hewn coral blocks and river rock, with a wooden beam, thatched roof. The windows were hand-blown glass.

Within a year of the church's completion on October 3, 1853, David Malo died at his church and his body was taken by canoe to Lahaina for burial atop Mt. Ball which overlooked Lahainaluna High School, his alma mater. The congregation dissolved not long after that, partly a victim of the tumultuous times. About 1893, during the overthrow of the monarchy, the church was deliberately set on fire in rebellion against those who were believed to be sympathetic to the government take-over.

A little later, about 1900, a devastating flood from what Mauians call the "Upcountry" completed the destruction of the church.

The church in ruins sat vacant for more than 50 years. Only one attempt before 1976 was made to rebuild it and it failed. In the fall of 1976, the small Episcopal congregation of Trinity by-the-Sea bought the ruins and built an outdoor church. In a decision rich in imagery and grace, they took the ruins to be the right foundation for their church. Palm trees line the renewed sanctuary, sunshine pours in from the east, and a delightful breeze blows through the trees and the weathered Books of Common Prayer.

A conch shell signals the call to worship, in delightfully Hawaiian style. At the presentation of the offerings, the doxology is sung in Hawaiian and the "Queen's Prayer" is also sung in Hawaiian at the close of the service.

The new church, built atop the old, is a joy to use as it richly symbolizes a resurrection of the old into new life. A winding trail features the stations of the cross. Hawaiian blossums decorate the entire scene. I found a wooden splinter or two on the trail, and I wanted to believe they were from the original church.

The New Republic: Fire in the Academy

A recent article in the New Republic, by Simon Blackburn, lays out an exceptionally interesting review of what has been happening in the academy lately. It is a review of the work of Richard Rorty, a contemporary writer. As I read the article, it occurred to me that what has happened in the academy lately parallels what happened in Kilolani Church. The Enlightenment, which began about 1700 or so and parallels the fire in the church, began the process which largely did away with large talk about deity by academicians.

In the place of talk about God, came talk about Reason, Truth, Evidence, Justice, Education, Civility, and Education. Go to the University of Minnesota and look at the buildings--you will see such words prominently displayed on the facades of the buildings built early on. Interestingly, the new buildings generally do not include such words. They have largely disappeared from the reigning assumptions of the university. And therein lies a tale to be told.

Contemporary Pragmatism, whose leader more or less is Richard Rorty, has come along and washed away talk about reason, truth, evidence, justice, and education. These are only words that express agreement about how we view things. No age sees the truth any more clearly than any other. We can become freer as time passes, but not finally more knowledgable.

Like the flood on Maui which washed away most of the burned-out remains of Kilolani Church in 1900, the various modern pragmatist movements have washed away much of what remains of the view that we can know the truth as human beings in lonely isolation.

These struggles on campuses are sometimes called the "truth wars." Indeed, there is nothing approximating agreement on campuses today in terms of what is true and what we can know. If we sometimes feel confused, disoriented, lost, uncertain about what this all means--part of the reason is that the colleges and universities have degenerated into a rudderless cacophany, with a thousand voices shrilling pitching a thousand views. I am fond of saying, "Only an intellectual would say something that patently absurd"!

You might sense that I am denouncing this pragmatist movement and, indeed, I think it has gone too far in many ways. Yet it has something to teach us. Since the time of the Enlightenment, we have deified the Enlightenment's cherished words, such as truth, reason, justice, education, and, to press the metaphor, constructed a new altar and called it "science and mathematics." Agnostic professors have been genuflecting before this altar, not realizing they were practicing a new religion with at least as much intolerance as the Christians who went before that they routinely denounce for intolerance!

The new pragmatism has reigned in our pretensions, our arrogance about what we could know. While it goes too far in many ways, it reminds us that what we can know is relatively modest. We will never have, as the late Jacob Bronowski pointed out, a "God's eye point of view."

Radical Orthodoxy and a Splintered Truth

There is emerging in places such as Cambridge, England, and here and there in the Ivies what is called "radical orthodoxy," and younger writers are calling us back to our roots. Writers such as Catherine Pickstock, John Milbank and Graham Ward remind us that our final refuge is God and aside from God, our attempts at truth will finally fail. Rorty, no friend of religion, has ironically exposed the pretenses of the academy, preparing the way for a revival of religion. The radically orthodox writers have understood the implications of the pragmatist movement. Lest one think this is some kind of intellectual backwater, suitable only for "pointy headed intellectuals," as George Wallace used to call them, the pages of Time, Newsweek and U.S. News and World Report have written of this revolution in the making.

Like the winds in the Pacific west of Maui that sometimes blow into a hurricane, one senses that the winds are coming up over the old, dry world of the academy of the last 300 years. It seems about to pass away, to be replaced by a new academy where talk of God provides the foundation for talk of truth and justice. Just as Episcopalians on Maui took the ruins of Kilolani Church, gathered the ruined walls together, installed an altar, and made a beautiful church, much more beautiful than it had ever been, so a younger generation is calling for the resurrection of talk about the ground of all that is, the foundation of truth, the One indeed who calls resurrection from crucifixion.

Our psalm for this day is Psalm 46. It is the psalm that inspired Luther's A Mighty Fortress is Our God. Now lest one suppose that this is only a Protestant hymn, I have discovered it a number of times in Catholic hymnals! So it has become, in the broadest sense, a catholic hymn.

Psalm 46 is a good psalm for troubled times. Oh, our times are not particularly troubled politically or even economically. But as these developments indicate, our times are troubled intellectually. A fire burned out much of the medieval academy, a flood has washed away much that remained from the fire. Like the congregation in Maui, we are attempting to rebuild and make sense of what we can know. And it is starting to become fashionable again on college campuses to speak of a God who creates and cares.

Twice the psalmist writes, "The Lord of Hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our refuge." When the Bible repeats itself, we ought to listen. But what most powerfully speaks to the cacophany that is our age is the admonition, "Be still, and know that I am God." When we went early to Trinity by-the-Sea, we had a chance to sit in meditation for a time. The swaying palm trees, the winding path with the Stations of the Cross, the wind coming from the sea, all spoke powerfully of the Ancient of Days who had come to renew and reassure. We were still and understood much without hearing a word. As I soaked in this wonderful scene, rich in tragic history and overwhelming grace, as I remembered the splinters on the path, I understood both my own life and that of the academy better. "Splintered truth" perhaps appears oxymoronic; Christian wisdom suggests it is of God.