Tribalism

Last updated on: September 6, 2017 at 11:51 pm by Peter Leithart

Tribalism 2017-09-06T23:51:31+06:00 Peter Leithart

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

To grasp what Rosenstock-Huessy says about tribalism, we need to recognize that he sees the tribe as one moment in the development of ancient civilization. In The Fruit of Lips, he describes the origin of the tribe: “The ancient cycle began in the primitive tribe, among a little group of frantic and frightened, yelling and bouncing men, who took heart, spoke and danced, and proceeded from fright, yelling and bouncing to an inspired view of life.” Tribes look back to the ancestors for guidance, and worshiping the spirits of the ancestors. They mark their bodies with tattoos to identify themselves, and engage in rituals and dances.

The second phase in the development of ancient man was the temple civilization, which “lifted the heart of man into the universe.” Tattoos on the body gave way to markings on the temple, and instead of the ancestors in the past they began to look above them to the sky for guidance. They became astrologers, and their kings were associated with Sun, Moon, and Stars. After temples came poetic civilization, the civilization of Homer and the Greeks, which looked to Nature. Greeks lived in cities and organized themselves by laws.

Israel is a final stream in this development. The other forms of civilization and speech aimed to rid the world of panic, but Israel saw that the world was still full of panic: “Israel saw that ritual contradicted ritual, and that neither temples nor tattoos nor poems ever would get outside their own local and temporal boundaries. So the more rituals and temples were built, or the more poems imagined, the greater became the confusion of tongues, the higher the tower of Babel. Israel withdrew from the world of Tohu and Bohu, of locally restricted myths.”

The Old Testament both takes up and negates tribe, temple, and poetry: “Israel built a temple, it is true, but they added that God did not live in it. Israel voided the temple. Israel circumcised her young men, it is true; but they did it to the child in the cradle, not to the initiate adolescent. In the clan’s fertility rites the boy was meant to become inspired as a bisexual being, by circumcision. Israel voided this rite. Israel wrote poems but she denied that she ‘made’ them; no idols or pictures made by men could be worshiper. She insisted that she was told by the living voice of God and that she replied. Israel voided the arts.” In voiding temple, tribe, and arts, she cleansed them “of their lure and charm as absolutes.” And instead of looking back to the ancestors, up to the sky, or out to nature, Israel looked ahead: “The real speech, Israel insisted, was yet to come. It only was heard by him who could hear the future, who could live as the listener of the revolving Eon, as the prophet of the future.”

Rosenstock-Huessy summarizes what he has to say about the development of speech and civilization in four points:

“1. Listeners to the spirits of the dead created Ritual.
2. Listeners to the skyworld and the cosmic universe built the temples.
3. Listeners to laws and cities already achieved became poets and artists.
4. Listeners to the future became prophets.”

His essay on tribalism in I Am An Impure Thinker should be understood in the context of this development.

He makes several basic points about tribalism. He defines a tribe as an “institution to create marriages” and families. The tribe is the eternal source of marriages, the marriages and families are the temporary product of the tribe. Families are not, he insists, eternal and it is heresy to say so: “When a man comes of age, the family must be second-rate, when we have children, we must give our parents the privilege of being grandparents to them, and that is how they reconquer their family status.” Tribes are permanent institutes for the creation of families, necessary as “a spring to supply water.”

Tribes are historical achievements, not “natural” or “animal” organizations. And the purpose of the tribe is not mere reproduction or breeding. When the tribe is seen as a biological entity only, that “leads inevitably to mother-worship and ancestor-worship in the most primitive sense.” Rather, the tribe creates marriages in which “one man and one woman can belong so close together that their children treat them as one.”

This occurs only as a man and woman stay with one another through and after a birth: “In nature, animals mate and their young forget who their parents were.” Human reproduction occurs when the parents remain past the birth. Marriage thus, Rosenstock-Huessy says, creates a “body of time.” This requires that the couple be married in the name of ancestors and that their marriage be public. This is a great act of power on the part of the couple. Two people marrying for love, he says, are unimpressive; it’s impressive, though, that “they have forced the community to say that these people are married.”

He points out that this has weakened significantly today, where private weddings before JPs are common; they cannot “force upon the community the esteem, the dignity, and the distinction which two people need to have a house of their own, to bring up their children as their own, to bestow upon their children their own name, and to have the authority, for example, to make the religion of their children their own decision.” With marriage comes the right of the parents to influence their children, including their children’s deepest beliefs. And the erosion of marriage means the erosion of this authority: What gives the parents the right to impose their religion on poor, unsuspecting kids? Parents have lost the power to “consecrate” their children, to give them a direction.

Consecration is a tribal right, and usually a rite. Tribal parents consecrate their children. Christianity does the same, but to the tribal consecration adds a universal note. A baptized child is not merely a member of the tribe, following the path set by the parents, but shares a faith and a path with many outside his own tribe. Strikingly, Rosenstock-Huessy says that European use of biblical names was a brake on tribal nationalism, and that soon after this customary naming ceased Europe fell into massive World Wars.

Rosenstock-Huessy notes several of the typical tribal practices. Tattoos, he says, are “the first writing of the tribe.” The tattoo signifies several things: Because the tribe moves, the tattoo is a permanent marker of identity and tribal association; tattoos are painful, and thus tattoos emphasize that “pain [is] the great memorizer”; through the pain of the tattoo, which marked the ancestry and membership of the tribe member, he moves from nature to history.

Tattoos are also taboo: “One’s tattoo shows that he cannot marry those who have exactly the same tattoo, and in that way, inbreeding is excluded.” The tattoo thus is the marker of the great taboo of incest. Rosenstock-Huessy intriguingly defines incest as the “destruction of a sacred space inside of which the passions of sex shall not rage.” This is again a cultural, spiritual, and historical achievement, not a natural one. Incest is not taboo among chimps. But the taboo indicates that there are zones of life, relationships, that are not marked by sexual passion. In this “spare room” of incest-prohibition and chastity “man is unafraid of the other sex.” Chastity is “the creation or the division of the world of men into two spaces, one for sex, and the other for non-sex.”

He draws this out in several ways. With regard to families, this division of sexual and non-sexual relations is essential if the family is to remain a single body of time: &#8

220;Parents and children to each other form one body of time, and the consecration of the children makes it necessary that the father and mother remain to these children, father and mother.” Parents must leave their children to create a new generation: “We recognize in our daughter someone who must reach the future in freedom.” He notes that “It is no small matter, and quite unnatural, that for the last 8000 years parents have not slept with their children.” Even within a marriage, this division of sex/non-sex is necessary. A man’s wife must be a sister and mother as well as a bride: “A man has to have a sister and a bride in his heart before he can get married. If he is only expelling the sister or the mother by this woman, he can get a strumpet but not a wife.” Even if he gets married, he can still treat his wife as a strumpet, if he does know, and doesn’t let his wife know, that he knows the difference between sex and non-sex. Without that knowledge, a man may be physically potent, but he is not ready to get married; he is not ready to consecrate children.

In one of his provocative formulas, he says, “it is unimportant today whether people go to church or not, because everyone misunderstand the church anyway, but it is terribly important that people should rediscover their divinity in this power to be alternatingly a lover and a brother. It is the sovereignty of man, that by the simple word ‘sister,’ he can suddenly see in his sweetheart a human being who is not dependent on his lust.” Psychoanalysis undoes 8 millennia of history, telling us that it’s normal that “the mother is an object of lust.”

Rosenstock-Huessy also makes the suggestive comment that there is something odd and even perverse about first naming a woman “sister” and then desiring her sexually. It was the wisdom of the tribe to divide the tribe into marriage groups, so that men would marry when they love a woman they have seen for the first time. He comments on the suburban phenomenon of boys and girls growing up together and then falling inn love: “by marrying the girl with whom we went to school from our eighth to thirteenth year, we may already be making a mistake, because we have first called her as a fellow child, and as a classmate and a playmate, and such a prior relationship is not the true origin of marriage.” Inbreeding is a product of schools as much as of the family. We are lukewarm in loving our spouses because we are inbred; we all marry “sisters.”

Finally, Rosenstock-Huessy comments on the connection of tribalism and animals. Tribes take the names of animals, often dressing themselves as animals, and in this way they admit their “dependence on the universe, on the existing cosmic order.” This is not an abstract dependence: Paths through the wilderness were first traced by animals, and men followed in their steps. “The first five days of creation,” he suggests, “are much more with modern man than he cares to admit.”

“Path,” he says, summarizes the “political understanding of tribalism”: “The tribes tried to find paths in the jungle, paths in time, paths in the thicket, and that is why going upstream following the watercourses, or following the paths of the wild animals, was the first political power that enabled these groups to become a little larger than the small group of husband, wife and children.” Tribes honor animals for this reason, that the animals were fore-runners, greater than man, as expressed in the ancient belief in animal-like spiritual beings like sphinxes and cherubim.

The institutions of the tribe – tattoo, totem, incest rules – have one problem at their heart: “How do two people so fall in love, that their marriage means more than the satisfaction of their momentary lust?”

History

Previous Post

January 18, 2007

Marxism

Next Post

January 18, 2007 Holes

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category 1 Corinthians 1-2 Samuel 1968 Abelard Abortion Abraham Acedia AD 70 Adam Smith Addiction Advent Advertising Aeneid Aesthetics Africa African Christianity African Church African religion Age Aging Agriculture Airline industry Alabama Alasdair MacIntyre Albania Alcohol Allegory Alms Alternative Medicine Ambrose America American Christianity American culture American economy American Evangelicals American Foreign Policy American history American Literature American Military American Politics American Religion American Revolution Anagogy Analytic Philosophy Anamnesis Ancient Egypt Ancient Greece Ancient history Ancient Near East Ancient Religion Angels Anglican Church Anglicanism Animism Anointing of the Sick Anselm Anthropology Anthropomorphism anti-Catholicism Antiquities Antonio Lopez apocalypse Apocalyptic Apocalyptic language Apostles Creed Aquinas Archeology Architecture Arianism Aristotle Ark of the Covenant Art Art History Ascension Aseity Assurance Athanasius Atheism Athens atonement Attention Attributes Augustine Austin Farrer Authority autonomy Avant-garde Awe Bach Ballooning Balzac Banking Bankruptcy Baptism Baptists Baseball Basketball Bavinck Beatitudes Beauty Behavioral Economics Being Benedict XVI Benjamin Benjamin Franklin Beowulf Berkeley Bernie Sanders Bertrand Russell Bestiary Bible Bible - criticism Bible - NT Bible - NT - 1 Corinthians Bible - NT - 1 John Bible - NT - 1 Peter Bible - NT - 2 Corinthians Bible - NT - 2 Peter Bible - NT - Acts Bible - NT - Colossians Bible - NT - Ephesians Bible - NT - Galatians Bible - NT - Gospels Bible - NT - Hebrews Bible - NT - James Bible - NT - John Bible - NT - Jude Bible - NT - Luke Bible - NT - Mark Bible - NT - Matthew Bible - NT - Paul Bible - NT - Philippians Bible - NT - Revelation Bible - NT - Romans Bible - NT - Thessalonians Bible - NT - Timothy Bible - OT Bible - OT - Amos Bible - OT - Chronicles Bible - OT - Daniel Bible - OT - Deuteronomy Bible - OT - Ecclesiastes Bible - OT - Esther Bible - OT - Exodus Bible - OT - Ezekiel Bible - OT - Ezra-Nehemiah Bible - OT - Genesis Bible - OT - Habakkuk Bible - OT - Hosea Bible - OT - Isaiah Bible - OT - Jeremiah Bible - OT - Job Bible - OT - Joel Bible - OT - Jonah Bible - OT - Joshua Bible - OT - Judges Bible - OT - Kings Bible - OT - Lamentations Bible - OT - Leviticus Bible - OT - Malachi BIble - OT - Micah Bible - OT - Nehemiah Bible - OT - Numbers Bible - OT - Pentateuch Bible - OT - Proverbs Bible - OT - Psalms Bible - OT - Ruth Bible - OT - Samuel Bible - OT - Song of Songs Bible - OT - Torah Bible - OT - Zechariah Bible - OT - Zephaniah Biblical Law Biblicism Billy Graham biography Biology Biololgy Biotechnology Blasphemy Blindness Blog news Blogging Blogroll Bloomsbury Group Bob Dylan Body Body symbolism Boethius Boko Haram Bonhoeffer Book of Common Prayer Books Botany Boundary Brexit Britain British History British Politics Bruce Springsteen Buddhism Bureaucracy Burial Business C. S. Lewis C. S. Peirce Calendars Caliphate Calvin calvinism Camille Paglia Canon Capitalism Cappadocians Carl Schmitt Catholic Social Teaching Catholicism Catholicity Causation cemeteries Cervantes Charism Charismata Charity Charles Dickens Charles Hodge Charles Simeon Charles Taylor Charles Williams Chaucer Chermistry Chess Chesterton Chiasm children China Chinese Exclusion Act Chivalry Chopin Chretien de Troyes Christendom Christian Democracy Christian reconstruction Christianity in Britain Christianization Christmas Christology Chronology Church church and state Church architecture Church Calendar Church history Church of England Church Year Cicero Circumcision Cities City of God Civil Religion Civil Society Civil War Civility Classical Theism Classics Climate Change Clothing Coleridge Colloquy of Marburg Colonialism Color Comedy Comenius Commodity Communio Communism Community Comparative religions Computer Science Confederacy Confessionalization Conflict Congregations consciousness Consecration Conservatism Constantine Constitution consumerism Contra Faustum Conversion Coriolanus Cormac McCarthy Cosmology Cosmopolitanism Council of Trent Counter-culture Counter-insurgency Courage Courtly love Covenants Crafts Craftsmanship Cranach Creation Creativity Creator-creature Credit Crime Crime and Punishment Crisis Critical scholarship Criticism Cross Cubism Cultural theory Culture Culture War Dance Daniel Dennett Dante Darwin Dave Eggers David David Foster Wallace David Hume David Jones Deadly sins Death Debt Dechristianization Decolonization Deconstruction Defoe Deja vu Democracy Denis de Rougemont Denominationalism Derrida Descartes Developmental psychology Devils Diocletian Discipleship Disenchantment Disgust Diversion Diversity Divine energies Divine Impassibility Divine Simplicity Divine Warrior Doctrine dogma Dominion Donald Trump Dostoevsky Douglas Campbell Douglas Farrow Dreams Dualism Durkheim Dystopia E.M. Forster Early Christianity Early Modern Europe Easter Eastern Europe Eastern Orthodoxy Ecclesiology Ecclesiology Economics Economy Ecumenism Eden Edgar Allan Poe Edmund Spenser Education Egypt Election Elites Emergence Emma Emotion Empire England English History English Reformation Enlightenment Entertainment Entrepreneur environmentalism Envy Epic Epiphany Episcopals Epistemology Epistles Equality Erasmus Ernst Kantorowicz Eros Eschatology Eternity Ethics Eucharist Europe Evangelicalism Evangelicals and Catholics Together Events Evil Evolution Exile Face Fairie Queene Fairy Tales Faith family Family and Marriage Fantasy Farming Fashion Fasting Fatherhood Fear Femininity Feminism Fertility Fetishization Feud Feudalism Feuerbach Fiction Figs Film Finance Finland Fire Flag Flags Flannery O'Connor Flood myths Folly Food football Foreign Affairs Foreign Policy Foreknowledge Forgiveness Foucault Fracking France Francois Mauriac Franz Rosenzweig free will Freedom Freedom of God French Revolution Freud Funerals Future G. K. Chesterton Gambling Gaming Gay Marriage Gender gender identity Genealogy Geography George Berkeley George Eliot George Herbert; Poetry George Romanes Gerald Manley Hopkins Germany Gethsemane Gift Gifts Giorgio Agamben Global Christianity Global economics Globalism Globalization Glorious Revolution Gnosticism God's sovereignty Gods Goethe Golf Good Friday Gospel Gospels Gothic Gothic architecture Grace Grammar Gramsci Gratitude Greek Literature Greek Philosophy Greek Religion Greek Science Gregory of Nyssa Guillermo del Toro H. Richard Niebuhr Haiku hair Hamann Hamlet Handicap Handles Hands Hans Urs von Balthasar Happiness Harold Bloom Harper Lee Harvest healing Heaven Heavenly treasure Heavenly treasure Hebrew Bible Hebrew language Hegel Heidegger Hell Hellenism; Judaism; Revelation Henri de Lubac heresy Herman Dooyeweerd Hermeneutics Herod Heroic Heroism Hesiod Hidegard of Bingen Hierarchy Hieronymus Bosch Historicism Historiography History History - Early Modern History - Middle Ages Hoaxes Hobbes Holiness Holy Saturday Holy Spirit Home Homeless Homer Homosexuality Honor hope Horror Hospitality Housing Hugh of St. Victor Human Rights Humanism Humor hylomorphism Hymns Hypocrisy. Iago Iconoclasm Identity Ideology Idleness Idolatry Iliad Images Imagination Immigrant churches Immigrant Religion Immigration Imperialism Improvization Imputation Incarnation Incest India Individualism Indonesia Inequality Inerrancy Infant Baptism Infant mortality Infanticide Ingratitude Innovation Inspiration Institutions Insult Intellectual History Intellectuals Intelligent Design International Politics Internet Intimacy IQ Iran Iran-Iraq War Iraq Ireland Irony Islam Islamic State Islamism Ismail Kadare Israel Ivan Illich J. Gresham Machen J.N. Figgis Jacob Jacques Lacan James Bond James Jordan James Joyce James KA Smith James Wood Jane Austen Jane Jacobs Jealousy Jed Perl Jeff Koons Jeroboam Jesus Jewish War 66-70 AD Jihad Johann Georg Hamann Johannine Epistles John Ashbery John Behr John Bunyan John Calvin John Donne John Frame John Howard Yoder John Knox John Milbank John Milton John Owen John Rawls John Ruskin John Stuart Mill John the Baptist John Webster John Wesley John Williamson Nevin Jonathan Edwards Jorge Luis Borges Joseph Conrad Joseph Ratzinger Journalism Joy Judaism Judaize Judgment Judith Butler Jurgen Moltmann Justice Justification Kalevala Kant Karl Barth Karl Marx Karl Polanyi Karl Rahner Kazakhstan Kazuo Ishiguro Kenneth Lonergan Kierkegaard King Lear Kingdom of God Kitsch Knighthood Knowledge Korea Labor movement Lactantius Lamech Lament Landscape Language Latin America Laughter Law Law and Punishment Leftism Lent Les Murray Levi-Strauss Levites Leviticus Liber Mundi Liberal arts Liberal Theology Liberalism Light Lighthouse Linguistics LIstening Literacy Literary structure Literature Liturgics Liturgy Locke Logic Love Luther Lutheran Lutheranism Lying Lytton Strachey Macbeth Machiavelli Machines Madness Mainline Manhattan Manicheanism Manners Manufacturing Manuscripts Mao Zedong Maps Marcion Marilynne Robinson Marketing Marriage Martha Nussbaum Martin Bucer Martin Chemnitz Martyrdom Marx Marxism Mary Mary Douglas masculinity Mass Materialism Mathematics Maundy Thursday Max Weber Media Mediation Medication Medicine Medieval Church Medieval exegesis Medieval Literature Medieval theology Medieval Thought Medievalism Memory Merchant of Venice Mesopotamian Religion Messianic Metaphor Metaphysics Methodist Mexican-American War Michel de Montaigne Michel Faber Middle Ages Middle East Midwifery Mikhail Bulgakov Military Millennium Mind Miracles Miscellaneous Mission missionaries Mixed constitution Modern self modernism Modernity monasticism Monotheism Monroe Doctrine Monsters Montaigne's Essays Moral philosophy Mormonism Moses Mother Teresa Motherhood Motive Mount of Olives Movies Multiculturalism Murder Music Musicals Mutability Mutability Mystery Mysticism myth N. T. Wright Narrative Nation-State Nationalism Natural Law Natural-Supernatural Nature Nature and culture Nature and Grace Nazi Nazirite Necrophilia Nero Nestorianism Neuroscience Nevin Lectures New Atheism New Testament New York City Newbigin News NGOs Nibelungenlied Nicholas of Cusa Nicholas of Lyra Nietzsche Nigeria Nihilism Nobel Prize Nobility Nominalism Norbert Elias Norman MacCaig nostalgia Novels Numerology Obama Objectivity and subjectivity Occasionalism Odysseus Oil Old Testament Oliver O'Donovan Ontology Origen original sin Orthodoxy Othello Owen Barfield Pacifism Pactum salutis Paedocommunion Paganism Pain Painting Paleoconservatism Palm Sunday Pannenberg Parenting Pascal Passions Passivity Pastoral Care Pastoral theology Patrick Modiano Patristics Patronage Paul Peace of God Peace of Westphalia Penal substitution Pentecost Pentecostalism Perichoresis Pericles Persecution Person Peter Peter Enns Petrarch Philip K. Dick Philip Melanchthon Philosophy Philosophy of Action Philosophy of History Philosophy of language Philosophy of science Phone booth Photography Physics Pictures Pierre Bourdieu Place Planned Parenthood Plants plato Play Plot Plotinus Pluralism Pneumatology Poetics poetry Poetry & Stories Poland police Political Philosophy Political theology Political Theory Politics Pop Culture Pope Francis Popular Culture Populism Pornography Porphyry Post-Colonial Theory Post-Structuralism Postmodernism Postmodernity Potential Poverty Power Practice Pragmatism Prayer Preaching Predestination Prediction Prehistory Premillennialism Presbyterian Priesthood Prince Charles Prison Reform privacy Private Prodigal Son Progress Progressivism Property Prophecy Prophet Propitiation Prosperity gospel Prostitution Protectionism Protestantism Providence Prudentius psalms Pseudo-Dionysus Psychological Warfare Psychology Public intellectual Public Life Public Philosophy Public Theology Publishing Punk Rock Pure nature Puritanism Purity Pushkin Putin Pythagoreanism R.J. Rushdoony Race Racism Radical Orthodoxy Rape Rationality Reactionary reading Realism Reason Red State Blue State Reformation Reformational Catholicism Reformational Philosophy Reformed theology refugees reinhold niebuhr Relationality Relativism Relics Religion Religion and science Religions Religious Freedom Religious Liberty Religious Right Renaissance Rene Girard Republican Party Resurrection Resurrection. Revelation Revelations Revenge Revivalism Revolution rhetoric Richard Flannagan Richard II Richard III Richard Wagner Richard Wilbur Righteousness Ritual Robert Frost Robert Herrick Robert Jenson Robert Mugabe Robert Spaemann Robinson Crusoe Rock n' Roll Rod Dreher Rodin Roman Catholicism Roman Empire Roman Religion Romance Romanticism Rome Rootedness Rosenstock-Huessy Rousseau Rowan Williams Rural America Russia Russian literature Russian Orthodoxy Rusty Reno Rwanda S. Y. Agnon Sabbath Sacrament Sacramental theology Sacraments Sacred Sacred Space Sacrifice saints Salt Sam Harris Same-sex marriage Sanctuary Satan Satire Saudi Arabia Scapegoat Scarcity Schism Schleiermacher Scholarship Science Science and Theology Science Fiction Scopes trial Scotland Scott Adams Scott Cairns Scottish Reformation Scotus Scripture and tradition sculpture Sea Second temple Secularism Secularization Self-Help Self-trust Semiotics Semper reformanda separation of church and state Sermon on the Mount Sex Sex Trafficking Sexual abuse Sexual Politics Sexual Revolution Sexuality Shakespeare Shame Culture Shema Sherlock Shopping Silence Simone Weil Simplicity Simpsons Sin Sincerity Sixties Skepticism Slavery Slavoj Zizek Sleep Sloth Social capital Social change Social Imaginary Social Science Socialism Socialization Sociology Sociology of Knowledge Sociology of Religion Sola scriptura Sonnets Sophocles Soteriology Soviet Union Space Spain Speculation Spinoza Spirit Sport Sports Star Trek State State-formation Stephen Masty Steven Bannon Strangers Structuralism structure Subject-object Substitution Suburbs Suffering Suicide Super-Rich Superheroes Supersessionism Supplication Supreme Court Surveillance Symbol Synagogue Taberancle Tabernacle Tax Taxes Tears Technology Teens Teleology Television Temple Ten Commandments Terence Terrence Malick Terrorism Thanksgiving The South The West Theodore Roosevelt Theogony Theological Education Theological Language Theology Theology - Anthropology Theology - Christology Theology - Covenant Theology - Creation Theology - Ecclesiology Theology - Eschatology Theology - Liturgical Theology - Pneumatology Theology - Soteriology Theology - Trinity Theology proper Theopolis Theopolis Institute Theosis Theresa May Thomas A. Clark Thomas Aquinas Thomas Carlyle Thomas Mann Threshing Thucydides Time Tocqueville Tolerance Toleration Tolstoy Tom Wolfe Tools Torah Torture Toscanini Totalitarianism Trade Tradition Tragedy Transhumanism Translation Transubstantiation Travel Trees Trinitarianism Trinity Trinity House Tristan Troilus and Creysede Trump Trump Truth Turkey Twelfth Night Two Kingdoms Typology Ukraine Ulysses Uncanny Uncategorized Uniform Union with Christ United States Unity University Usury Utilitarianism Utopia Value Vatican II Vengeance Vico Victorian Age Victorian Literature Vienna Violence Virgil Virgin Birth Virginia Woolf Vladimir Nabokov Vladimir Solovyev Vladimir Solovyov W.H. Auden Walls Walt Disney Walt Whitman Walter Benjamin Walter Lippmann War Wars of Religion Washington DC Wealth Weddings Will William Carlos Williams William Gilpin William Golding Wine Wisdom wonder Word of God Wordsworth Work Works World Council of Churches World History World War I World War II Worldview Worship Wrath Writing Youth Youth Ministry Yuja Wang Yves Congar Zimbabwe Zwingli Zygmunt Bauman

Select a Month January 2019 December 2018 November 2018 October 2018 September 2018 August 2018 July 2018 June 2018 May 2018 April 2018 March 2018 February 2018 January 2018 December 2017 November 2017 October 2017 September 2017 August 2017 July 2017 June 2017 May 2017 April 2017 March 2017 February 2017 January 2017 December 2016 November 2016 October 2016 September 2016 August 2016 July 2016 June 2016 May 2016 April 2016 March 2016 February 2016 January 2016 December 2015 November 2015 October 2015 September 2015 August 2015 July 2015 June 2015 May 2015 April 2015 March 2015 February 2015 January 2015 December 2014 November 2014 October 2014 September 2014 August 2014 July 2014 June 2014 May 2014 April 2014 March 2014 February 2014 January 2014 June 2013 May 2013 April 2013 March 2013 February 2013 January 2013 December 2012 November 2012 October 2012 September 2012 August 2012 July 2012 June 2012 May 2012 April 2012 March 2012 February 2012 January 2012 December 2011 November 2011 October 2011 September 2011 August 2011 July 2011 June 2011 May 2011 April 2011 March 2011 February 2011 January 2011 December 2010 November 2010 October 2010 September 2010 August 2010 July 2010 June 2010 May 2010 April 2010 March 2010 February 2010 January 2010 December 2009 November 2009 October 2009 September 2009 August 2009 July 2009 June 2009 May 2009 April 2009 March 2009 February 2009 January 2009 December 2008 November 2008 October 2008 September 2008 August 2008 July 2008 June 2008 May 2008 April 2008 March 2008 February 2008 January 2008 December 2007 November 2007 October 2007 September 2007 August 2007 July 2007 June 2007 May 2007 April 2007 March 2007 February 2007 January 2007 December 2006 November 2006 October 2006 September 2006 August 2006 July 2006 June 2006 May 2006 April 2006 March 2006 February 2006 January 2006 December 2005 November 2005 October 2005 September 2005 August 2005 July 2005 June 2005 May 2005 April 2005 March 2005 February 2005 January 2005 December 2004 November 2004 October 2004 September 2004 August 2004 July 2004 June 2004 May 2004 April 2004 March 2004 February 2004 January 2004 December 2003 November 2003 October 2003 September 2003 August 2003

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz

Which city did the Philistines give David as a base during his exile?

Select your answer to see how you score.

Gibeah Ziklag Hebron Bethlehem