In the preface to my new book, Ruminata, recently released, I remark upon the unfortunate circumstance of the young generation's dismissiveness of the old, expressing my hope that some among them may read my essays with a more open mind. In the tribal societies, through which we evolved over the great expanse of our history and prehistory, a great strength of the small kinship group was the reverence for elders, precisely because they were the store of knowledge and experience needed for survival. The unbecoming arrogance of many young people today, so obvious in the media which they dominate, is not only graceless but dangerous. By no means do I disparage the entire cohort, among whom are as many who are thoughtful, worthy people. May they be the ones to stand for public office in the near future!

In his monthly reflection, which appears in the Parish Magazine, the Reverend Mark Bratton, rector of Saint John the Baptist Church in Berkswell, England, wrote recently in defense of certain Biblical passages that seem to justify the practice of slavery. In the piece he uses the term "presentism," an attitude toward the past dominated by present day ideas. This is the very pitfall for a young generation that I would characterize as dangerous, when ignorant of history they have not its context, causing them to condemn the primitive past for being primitive and weighing it against their own righteous views. Should we not rather celebrate the progress of mankind toward greater tolerance and humanity?

What is lost in such a blinkered view is a legitimate appreciation of what in modern times we yet owe the past, even the primitive past. The Reverend Doctor Bratton points to Apostle Paul's letter to the Ephesians, which addresses common relationships including master and slave, advising obedience. In other writings, Paul strongly decries slavery, but in the context of Imperial Rome the fate of a disobedient slave could well have been crucifixion. Do we condemn Saint Paul, and change the name of that London cathedral? Do we banish the name of Christopher Columbus, who sailed across the Atlantic Ocean with three small wooden boats expecting to find India? Ridiculous, yet an ironic victory for all those who still believe the earth is flat.