Is Elijah too harsh? Bishop Barron thinks so

Simply because he reaches many people as a trusted, putatively orthodox guide, Bishop Robert Barron gets pushback from little old me. I don't like to see people misled. So I have to say something.

In 2020 I had stumbled upon Bishop Barron's commentary on the Prophet Elijah*. In this podcast: The Best and Worst of Religion (in the category "Sermons" -- evidently meant to provide material for homilists), he returns to a theme he had already covered quite a while before. Basically, the title sums it up: in Barron's view, Elijah represents the worst of religion in his harsh response to the prophets of Baal, dramatically killing 450 of them for their false worship (see 1 Kings chapter 9). For Barron, only the Spirit speaking in a whisper is "good religion"; all else is "the worst."

Previously, Barron had given the title "Elijah, You're Fired!" to his first podcast on the subject. Ignoring the teaching of the Church Fathers on the question and apparently unaware of Elijah's status as Pillar of the Prophets**, place of high honor (especially in the East), harbinger of Christ's Second Coming, and appearance in the New Testament at the Transfiguration along with the great Patriarch Moses, Barron trivializes the account in the Book of Kings, representing it as a sort of cardboard show in which God, exasperated with Elijah's exhibition of Worst-ness in Religion, "fires" him and replaces him with Elisha. 

Passing over further comment on the superficiality of this analysis, hardly worthy of a man of Barron's education and erudition, not to mention ecclesiastical position as guardian of the faith, I want to put on the record the response given to me by Fr. Mankowski, when I emailed him about my astonishment at the sheer arrogance of the man, doubling down after many years on his truly bad take.

Fr. Mankowski replied:

Painfully ironic, in view of the fact that Baal worship (in Palestine and in Canaanite colonies) included infant sacrifice in which babies were burned alive, as ancient authors attested and modern archaeology confirms***. 

One site alone turns up the remains of 20,000 sacrificed infants. Elijah might have been somewhat old-fashioned in his notions of ecumenical dialogue, but in terms of "the worst of religion" his putting the Baalites out of business is an odd choice."

Yesterday, Micah Meadowcroft over at The American Conservative posted a good, heartfelt piece connecting the impending Supreme Court decision on Dobbs, if it goes as we expect in overturning Roe and subsequent rulings on abortion, and the striving of Elijah over the prophets of Baal: Dobbs as a Little Cloud.

He rightly observes:

And it came to pass after many days…” So starts the triumph of Elijah over the priests of Baal, and the return of rain to a desert land. Many days here is a matter of years, and the kingdom of Israel has suffered under a famine. 

In the nearly 50 years since Roe v. Wade was handed down in 1973, more than 62 million human babies, each made in the image of God, have been slaughtered on the altar of convenience. 

“I have not troubled Israel; but you, and your father’s house, in that you have forsaken the commandments of the Lord, and have followed Baalim.” So answered Elijah when the king, Ahab husband of Jezebel, blamed the prophet of God for the dryness of the land. And he challenged Ahab, and the Baalimites, and the people of Israel, to come to Mount Carmel and see there what the Lord might do. 

But even Mr. Meadowcroft does not quite make the connection. Yes, the immediate point of contention was the immolation of a bull on the altar. However, the followers of Baal, when not being challenged by Elijah, worshipped their idol, as Fr. Mankowski pointed out, precisely in sacrificing their infants. It was that abomination that provoked the prophet to his response, so shocking to our modern sensibilities. So Meadowcroft is closer than even he knows in drawing the parallel. And closer than Bishop Barron, that's for sure.

 

*Actually, I did post most of this on Facebook a couple of years ago, but one purpose of this blog is to move some of my ramblings from over there to here, so that they are more searchable and don't get lost in the feed. For my own satisfaction, mainly, and in this case, to be sure to share that remark of my dear departed friend, Fr. Paul Mankowski. (Scroll down on that link for my memorial and that of my husband, linked within.)

** I'm not exaggerating, and trust me I rarely have mystical or even interesting things happen to me at Adoration, but one day while before the Blessed Sacrament I was thinking about this approach of Bishop Barron's and wondering whether I could have been so wrong about Elijah. I hadn't known where to start my research to find out where he erred. 

I have a habit of sticking pamphlets and random pieces of paper into books, and I kid you not when I tell you that I looked at the book I had brought as my spiritual reading, and there was a little handout from years before, information from the Melkite church that my husband's father had served as deacon. I suppose I had picked it up at a Liturgy at some point. At the time it had made little or no impression on me, but there it was: Elijah, The Pillar of the Prophets. I hope you click and read. It is true that Elijah hands his spirit to Elisha (who asks for a double portion, and why would he do that if it were bad?), and Elisha thus represents a turn towards the coming of Christ. But, mysteriously, "Christians also believe that Elijah is “the herald of the Second Coming of Christ” (aposticha): the coming in power at the end of the age. In 2 Kings 2:11 we read “And it came to pass while they [Elijah and Elisha] were walking, speaking together as they walked, behold, a chariot of fire came between the two of them and Elijah was swept up in a whirlwind…” 

We must retain our sense of wonder and humility before these mysteries. I don't know where the impulse to belittle the Biblical heroes comes from -- the urge to take them down a notch and somehow "debunk" what Scripture tells us -- but I think it must be resisted.

***Here: Did the Canaanites Really Sacrifice Their Children?