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Damning Words: The Life and Religious Times of H. L. Mencken
Recounts a famously outspoken agnostic's surprising relationship with Christianity
H. L. Mencken (1880–1956) was a reporter, literary critic, editor, author—and a famous American agnostic. From his role in the Scopes Trial to his advocacy of science and reason in public life, Mencken is generally regarded as one of the fiercest critics of Christianity in his day.
In this biography D. G. Hart presents a provocative, iconoclastic perspective on Mencken's life. Even as Mencken vividly debunked American religious ideals, says Hart, it was Christianity that largely framed his ideas, career, and fame. Mencken's relationship to the Christian faith was at once antagonistic and symbiotic.
Using plenty of Mencken's own words, Damning Words superbly portrays an influential figure in twentieth-century America and, at the same time, casts telling new light on his era.
H. L. Mencken (1880–1956) was a reporter, literary critic, editor, author—and a famous American agnostic. From his role in the Scopes Trial to his advocacy of science and reason in public life, Mencken is generally regarded as one of the fiercest critics of Christianity in his day.
In this biography D. G. Hart presents a provocative, iconoclastic perspective on Mencken's life. Even as Mencken vividly debunked American religious ideals, says Hart, it was Christianity that largely framed his ideas, career, and fame. Mencken's relationship to the Christian faith was at once antagonistic and symbiotic.
Using plenty of Mencken's own words, Damning Words superbly portrays an influential figure in twentieth-century America and, at the same time, casts telling new light on his era.
- GenresBiography
279 pages, Hardcover
Published December 2, 2016
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About the author
D.G. Hart
36 books31 followersDarryl G. Hart (Ph.D., Johns Hopkins University) directs the honors programs and faculty development at the Intercollegiate Studies Institute and serves Westminster Seminary California as adjunct professor of church history. He has written or edited more than fifteen books, including Defending the Faith, a biography of J. Gresham Machen. He is coeditor of the American Reformed Biographies series.
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
December 15, 2020
I have always been interested in H. L. Mencken ever since I read a reprint of his obituary of J. Gresham Machen in one of Gary North's books. Reading this religious life of a highly irreligious figure was useful both in terms of Mencken's valid critiques of the follies of his Christian contemporaries and, ultimately, in demonstrating the vanity of life without God. When Mencken lost his ability to write after a stroke, he could see nothing more logical than suicide. For him to live was words.
June 19, 2020
It may seem odd that a Christian publisher would commission a religious biography of one of the nation’s staunches and most pugnacious agnostics, but Mencken was well-acquainted with Christian thought, culture, and believers. He was far more insightful regarding the faith than many of its practitioners. As this book shows, there is much to learn from his perceptive criticisms.
Mencken was the implacable enemy of hypocrisy wherever he found it - whether in traditional Christians, utopian socialists, modernist theologians, or himself - and he found it everywhere, then exposed it with his acid wit. He was “against the sentimental, the obvious, the trite, the maudlin,” and was “opposed to all such ideas as come from the mob and are polluted by stupidity.”
He criticized in pungent terms American civil religion in which American ideals and Christian virtues are combined. As a result, Christians were blinded to the “many serious flaws, injustices, and inanities with which American civilization, like all civilizations, was rife.”
He could be especially caustic in his comments about Christian who embraced war. Mencken opined, with contemptuous sarcasm, that the atomic bombing of Hiroshima “crowns our Christian civilization. … [T]he firing of Japanese women and children was specifically ordained by our Redeemer.”
Mencken’s style is truly inimitable, so I won’t even try to summarize his thoughts. Some of my favorite Mencken quotes will have to suffice:
“Puritanism is the haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.”
Are You Ready for the Judgment Day is “a gay and even rollicking tune with a saving hint of brimstone.”
“Archbishop: a Christian ecclesiastic of a rank superior to that attained by Christ.”
“Theology is an effort to explain the unknowable by putting it into terms of the not worth knowing.”
Regarding one politician (and applicable to almost all of them): “The important thing is not that a popular orator should have uttered such grand and glittering phrases, but that they should have been gravely received, for many weary months, by a whole race of men, some of them intelligent.”
Mencken was the implacable enemy of hypocrisy wherever he found it - whether in traditional Christians, utopian socialists, modernist theologians, or himself - and he found it everywhere, then exposed it with his acid wit. He was “against the sentimental, the obvious, the trite, the maudlin,” and was “opposed to all such ideas as come from the mob and are polluted by stupidity.”
He criticized in pungent terms American civil religion in which American ideals and Christian virtues are combined. As a result, Christians were blinded to the “many serious flaws, injustices, and inanities with which American civilization, like all civilizations, was rife.”
He could be especially caustic in his comments about Christian who embraced war. Mencken opined, with contemptuous sarcasm, that the atomic bombing of Hiroshima “crowns our Christian civilization. … [T]he firing of Japanese women and children was specifically ordained by our Redeemer.”
Mencken’s style is truly inimitable, so I won’t even try to summarize his thoughts. Some of my favorite Mencken quotes will have to suffice:
“Puritanism is the haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.”
Are You Ready for the Judgment Day is “a gay and even rollicking tune with a saving hint of brimstone.”
“Archbishop: a Christian ecclesiastic of a rank superior to that attained by Christ.”
“Theology is an effort to explain the unknowable by putting it into terms of the not worth knowing.”
Regarding one politician (and applicable to almost all of them): “The important thing is not that a popular orator should have uttered such grand and glittering phrases, but that they should have been gravely received, for many weary months, by a whole race of men, some of them intelligent.”
May 26, 2020
Haven't read all of H.L. Mencken's writings to see the full context of his positions, but the little I have read was actually necessary since many prominent Christians of the time had a penchant for hypocrisy and meddling in the lives of others which Mr. Mencken was critical of. This criticism is much needed since so many "Christians" major in the minors (worried about dancing, drinking, etc over moderation/temperance and using the coercive power of the state to impose a morality on unbelievers). Prohibition was unconstitutional despite the meddling groups that pushed it through.
When I have read H.L. Mencken's writings as collected in the two volume Library of America set, I will return to this book and give a detailed analysis of where Mr. Hart has gone wrong.
When I have read H.L. Mencken's writings as collected in the two volume Library of America set, I will return to this book and give a detailed analysis of where Mr. Hart has gone wrong.
March 2, 2017
Fascinating account of H. L. Mencken. Mencken was a disciple of Nietzsche and saw himself as the German "superman" which explains much of his intolerance for religious faith although he was quite civil toward its adherents unlike today's new atheists. Mencken would see through their fundamentalism as well. Mencken was a cynic and a skeptic until the end.
August 16, 2016
D.G. Hart writes tremendous biographies and H.L. Mencken is a man worth knowing. I am tempted to end my review there, but I won't. However, if you decide that that statement is all you need to grab a copy of the book and enjoy, then have at it. For the rest of you, I'll try to offer some support of those initial points.
H.L. Mencken is not a man that you would expect to see in a series of religious biographies. Mencken did not consider himself "religious" and did much to counter the pernicious (as he saw it) influence of religion on American society. In writing on this purposefully secular man, Hart does not counter by seeking to spiritualize every aspect of the man's life. But he does expend much time and energy to dig beneath the surface of Mencken's claims into the heart and reasoning that lies below. In doing so, Hart presents a robust portrait of a man who would be far too easy and quite tempting to caricature.
Hart makes the bold assertion that the Christian culture and ideology "framed" Mencken and the time in which he lived and proceeds to support this assertion throughout his work. Simply said, there is no understanding Mencken the man without understanding the faith and culture by which he was surrounded and to which he directed such furious guile and vitriol. And, again, this man is a man of influence and import who should be known and studied by many more than he is. His writing was prolific and his influence on journalism, writing, and culture in general underrated.
What makes Hart's religious biography of Mencken stand out is that he does not turn Mencken into an object lesson. Hart presents the life of Mencken, good and bad, with an objectivity that has to be difficult to muster as a Christian reporting on a man who openly and derisively despised the Christian faith. But, in doing so, Hart is able to remind the reader that Mencken was a man, a brilliant man, and an image bearer of the one true God, whether Mencken chose to acknowledge this final fact or not.
D.G. Hart's biography of H.L. Mencken is insightful, entertaining, and heartbreaking...pretty much just like H.L. Mencken the man.
I received an ARC from the publisher.
H.L. Mencken is not a man that you would expect to see in a series of religious biographies. Mencken did not consider himself "religious" and did much to counter the pernicious (as he saw it) influence of religion on American society. In writing on this purposefully secular man, Hart does not counter by seeking to spiritualize every aspect of the man's life. But he does expend much time and energy to dig beneath the surface of Mencken's claims into the heart and reasoning that lies below. In doing so, Hart presents a robust portrait of a man who would be far too easy and quite tempting to caricature.
Hart makes the bold assertion that the Christian culture and ideology "framed" Mencken and the time in which he lived and proceeds to support this assertion throughout his work. Simply said, there is no understanding Mencken the man without understanding the faith and culture by which he was surrounded and to which he directed such furious guile and vitriol. And, again, this man is a man of influence and import who should be known and studied by many more than he is. His writing was prolific and his influence on journalism, writing, and culture in general underrated.
What makes Hart's religious biography of Mencken stand out is that he does not turn Mencken into an object lesson. Hart presents the life of Mencken, good and bad, with an objectivity that has to be difficult to muster as a Christian reporting on a man who openly and derisively despised the Christian faith. But, in doing so, Hart is able to remind the reader that Mencken was a man, a brilliant man, and an image bearer of the one true God, whether Mencken chose to acknowledge this final fact or not.
D.G. Hart's biography of H.L. Mencken is insightful, entertaining, and heartbreaking...pretty much just like H.L. Mencken the man.
I received an ARC from the publisher.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews