[theou poiema]

How to Fight The Man

2012-02-03T19:48:00.003-05:00

From The New York Times: "This seems to be a moment when many people -- in religion, economics and politics -- are disgusted by current institutions, but then they are vague about what sorts of institutions should replace them. This seems to be a moment of fervent protest movements that are ultimately vague and ineffectual. We can all theorize why the intense desire for change has so far produced relatively few coherent recipes for change. Maybe people today are simply too deferential. Raised to get college recommendations, maybe they lack the oppositional mentality necessary for revolt. Maybe people are too distracted. My own theory revolves around a single bad idea. For generations people have been told: Think for yourself; come up with your own independent worldview. Unless your name is Nietzsche, that's probably a bad idea. Very few people have the genius or time to come up with a comprehensive and rigorous worldview. If you go out there armed only with your own observations and sentiments, you will surely find yourself on very weak ground. You'll lack the arguments, convictions and the coherent view of reality that you'll need when challenged by a self-confident opposition. ...The paradox of reform movements is that, if you want to defy authority, you probably shouldn't think entirely for yourself. You should attach yourself to a counter-tradition and school of thought that has been developed over the centuries and that seems true." Read the rest HERE.

b.

What Happened Before the Big Bang?

2012-01-31T18:19:00.003-05:00

From The Atlantic: "Last May, Stephen Hawking gave a talk at Google's Zeitgeist Conference in which he declared philosophy to be dead. In his book The Grand Design, Hawking went even further. 'How can we understand the world in which we find ourselves? How does the universe behave? What is the nature of reality? Where did all this come from? Traditionally these were questions for philosophy, but philosophy is dead,' Hawking wrote. 'Philosophy has not kept up with modern developments in science, particularly physics.' In December, a group of professors from America's top philosophy departments, including Rutgers, Columbia, Yale, and NYU, set out to establish the philosophy of cosmology as a new field of study within the philosophy of physics. The group aims to bring a philosophical approach to the basic questions at the heart of physics, including those concerning the nature, age and fate of the universe. This past week, a second group of scholars from Oxford and Cambridge announced their intention to launch a similar project in the United Kingdom. One of the founding members of the American group, Tim Maudlin, was recently hired by New York University, the top ranked philosophy department in the English-speaking world. Maudlin is a philosopher of physics whose interests range from the foundations of physics, to topics more firmly within the domain of philosophy, like metaphysics and logic. Yesterday I spoke with Maudlin by phone about cosmology, multiple universes, the nature of time, the odds of extraterrestrial life, and why Stephen Hawking is wrong about philosophy." Read the rest HERE.

b.

Philosophy: What's The Use?

2012-01-31T17:21:00.003-05:00

From The New York Times: "Almost every article that appears in The Stone provokes some comments from readers challenging the very idea that philosophy has anything relevant to say to non-philosophers. There are, in particular, complaints that philosophy is an irrelevant 'ivory-tower' exercise, useless to any except those interested in logic-chopping for its own sake. ...As soon as we stop thinking weird philosophical thoughts, we immediately go back to believing what skeptical arguments seem to call into question. And rightly so, since, as David Hume pointed out, we are human beings before we are philosophers. But what Hume and, by our day, virtually all philosophers are rejecting is only what I'm calling the foundationalist conception of philosophy. Rejecting foundationalism means accepting that we have every right to hold basic beliefs that are not legitimated by philosophical reflection. More recently, philosophers as different as Richard Rorty and Alvin Plantinga have cogently argued that such basic beliefs include not only the 'Humean' beliefs that no one can do without, but also substantive beliefs on controversial questions of ethics, politics and religion." Read the rest HERE.

b.

The New American Divide

2012-01-31T17:13:00.003-05:00

From The Wall Street Journal: "America is coming apart. For most of our nation's history, whatever the inequality in wealth between the richest and poorest citizens, we maintained a cultural equality known nowhere else in the world -- for whites, anyway. 'The more opulent citizens take great care not to stand aloof from the people,' wrote Alexis de Tocqueville, the great chronicler of American democracy, in the 1830s. 'On the contrary, they constantly keep on easy terms with the lower classes: They listen to them, they speak to them every day.' Americans love to see themselves this way. But there's a problem: It's not true anymore, and it has been progressively less true since the 1960s. ...When Americans used to brag about 'the American way of life' -- a phrase still in common use in 1960 -- they were talking about a civic culture that swept an extremely large proportion of Americans of all classes into its embrace. It was a culture encompassing shared experiences of daily life and shared assumptions about central American values involving marriage, honesty, hard work and religiosity. Over the past 50 years, that common civic culture has unraveled. We have developed a new upper class with advanced educations, often obtained at elite schools, sharing tastes and preferences that set them apart from mainstream America. At the same time, we have developed a new lower class, characterized not by poverty but by withdrawal from America's core cultural institutions." Read the rest HERE.

b.

Plantinga on Properly Basic Beliefs

2011-12-29T20:56:00.004-05:00

You can download related work by Plantinga here:

(1) Plantinga, Alvin. 1983. "Reason and Belief in God." Pp. 16-93 in Faith and Rationality: Reason and Belief in God. Edited by Alvin Plantinga and Nicholas Wolterstorff. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press.

(2) Plantinga, Alvin. 2000. Warranted Christian Belief. New York: Oxford University Press.

b.

What Literature Owes the Bible

2011-12-26T12:50:00.002-05:00

From The New York Times: "The Bible is the model for and subject of more art and thought than those of us who live within its influence, consciously or unconsciously, will ever know. Literatures are self-referential by nature, and even when references to Scripture in contemporary fiction and poetry are no more than ornamental or rhetorical -- indeed, even when they are unintentional -- they are still a natural consequence of the persistence of a powerful literary tradition. Biblical allusions can suggest a degree of seriousness or significance their context in a modern fiction does not always support. This is no cause for alarm. Every fiction is a leap in the dark, and a failed grasp at seriousness is to be respected for what it attempts. In any case, these references demonstrate that in the culture there is a well of special meaning to be drawn upon that can make an obscure death a martyrdom and a gesture of forgiveness an act of grace. Whatever the state of belief of a writer or reader, such resonances have meaning that is more than ornamental, since they acknowledge complexity of experience of a kind that is the substance of fiction. ...In its emphatic insistence that the burden of meaning is shared in every life, the Bible may only give expression to a truth most of us know intuitively. But as a literary heritage or memory it has strengthened the deepest impulse of our literature, and our civilization." Read the rest HERE.

b.

The Dark Side of Modern Individual Autonomy

2011-12-15T19:55:00.004-05:00

From American Psychologist: "Americans now live in a time and a place in which freedom and autonomy are valued above all else and in which expanded opportunities for self-determination are regarded as a sign of the psychological well-being of individuals and the moral well-being of the culture. This article argues that freedom, autonomy, and self-determination can become excessive, and that when that happens, freedom can be experienced as a kind of tyranny. The article further argues that unduly influenced by the ideology of economics and rational-choice theory, modern American society has created an excess of freedom, with resulting increases in people's dissatisfaction with their lives and in clinical depression. One significant task for a future psychology of optimal functioning is to deemphasize individual freedom and to determine which cultural constraints are necessary for people to live meaningful and satisfying lives." You can download and read the full article HERE.

b.

Coming Together on Culture

2011-12-15T14:49:00.003-05:00

From The Gospel Coalition: "I don't think you can tell it from reading on the internet, but among many younger leaders with Reformed and evangelical convictions there may be a slow convergence coming on the subject of the mission of the church and the relationship of Christ and culture. On the surface, the Reformed and evangelical world seems divided between 'Cultural Transformationists' and the 'Two Kingdoms' views. Transformationists fall into fairly different camps, including the neo-Calvinists who follow Abraham Kuyper, the Christian Right, and the theonomists. Though different in significant ways, they all believe Christians should be about redeeming and changing the culture along Christian lines. On the other hand, the Two Kingdoms view believes essentially the opposite -- that neither the church nor individual Christians should be in the business of changing the world or society. Again, there are very different camps within this stance. The Reformed and Lutheran proponents of the '2K' view believe that Christians do their work in the world alongside nonbelievers on the basis of commonly held moral standards 'written on the heart' by natural revelation. Christians do not, then, pursue their vocation in a 'distinctively Christian' way. ...However, over the last two or three years, several publications have been produced that critique both the Two Kingdoms and Transformationist views. And these books and articles are pointing in a similar direction and are being carefully read and discussed by a wide number of younger leaders." Read the rest HERE.

b.

Some Lessons for the Church from Apple (?)

2011-12-03T14:53:00.010-05:00

From Harvard Business Review: "In the lead up to today's release of the Steve Jobs biography, there's been an increasing stream of news surrounding its subject. As a business researcher, I was particularly interested in this recent article that referenced from his biography a list of Jobs's favorite books. There's one business book on this list, and it 'deeply influenced' Jobs. That book is The Innovator's Dilemma by HBS Professor Clay Christensen. But what's most interesting to me isn't that The Innovator's Dilemma was on that list. It's that Jobs solved the conundrum.

"When describing his period of exile from Apple -- when John Sculley took over -- Steve Jobs described one fundamental root cause of Apple's problems. That was to let profitability outweigh passion: 'My passion has been to build an enduring company where people were motivated to make great products. The products, not the profits, were the motivation. Sculley flipped these priorities to where the goal was to make money. It's a subtle difference, but it ends up meaning everything.'

..."When he returned, Jobs completely upended the company. There were thousands of layoffs. Scores of products were killed stone dead. He knew the company had to make money to stay alive, but he transitioned the focus of Apple away from profits. Profit was viewed as necessary, but not sufficient, to justify everything Apple did. That attitude resulted in a company that looks entirely different to almost any other modern Fortune 500 company. ...An executive who worked at both Apple and Microsoft described the differences this way: 'Microsoft tries to find pockets of unrealized revenue and then figures out what to make. Apple is just the opposite: It thinks of great products, then sells them. Prototypes and demos always come before spreadsheets.'

"Similarly, Apple talks a lot about its great people. But make no mistake -- they are there only in service of the mission. A headhunter describes it thus: 'It is a happy place in that it has true believers. People join and stay because they believe in the mission of the company.' It didn't matter how great you were, if you couldn't deliver to that mission -- you were out. ...Everything -- the business, the people -- are subservient to the mission: building great products. And rather than listening to, or asking their customers what they wanted; Apple would solve problems customers didn't know they had with products they didn't even realize they wanted."

Read the rest HERE.

b.

How and Why Christians Should Read Books

2011-12-02T20:58:00.003-05:00

From Books and Culture: "My initial response to a Christian how-to book on reading books is dismay: do we really need a book addressing such basic questions as why we should read books and how to do so well? Since the answer to that question, unfortunately, is yes, my second response to Tony Reinke's Lit: A Christian Guide to Reading Books is thank you -- followed by a mental list of all the people I know who need this book. Because I'm an English professor (and because I recently taught a literature survey to a class of 100 general education students), that list is depressingly long. But I'm a realist, so I go with what we've got. And what we've got, by most accounts, is what Marshall McLuhan described fifty years ago in The Gutenberg Galaxy as a postliterate culture. Not only the population at large, but even we putative 'People of the Book,' need a book that addresses questions like the ones that Reinke raises in Lit: (1) What do I lose if I don't read books? (2) Does the gospel really shape how I read books? How so? (3) What books should I read? (4) Where do I find all the time I need to read books?" Read the rest HERE.

b.

We Don't Invite Jesus Into Our Lives

2011-11-28T19:00:00.005-05:00

From Jason Clark: "After the first temple is built by Solomon and on the day of it's dedication by him, Solomon declares, 'Can it be that God will actually move into our neighborhood? Why, the cosmos itself isn't large enough to give you breathing room, let alone this Temple I've built.' (1 Kings 8:27). The absurdity that God could fit into the universe let alone a temple is immediately revealed. Yet the Advent hope of Christmas is that God has located himself in relationship and proximity to us, such that (John 1:14) 'The Word became flesh and blood, and moved into the neighbourhood.' If you are anything like me, I find that my life doesn't fit into my own life, let alone the creator of the universe moving in. Too often He is crowded out and left to fit in when I remember Him, need something from him, am in trouble or worried about others. But most of the time, it seems He is squeezed out of my life and neighbourhood. I've also noticed something about the Advent stories, that the people in them have lives that are at least as 'over-full' as mine. So how does Jesus move into their neighbourhood and how might he move into my over-packed life? Too often we think of inviting Jesus into our lives, the Christian cliche of thinking that we open our lives and let Jesus in, ask him in, when we can remember to. The problem, like the people in the Advent story, is that he just doesn't fit. Something else seems to take place in Advent, as Jesus moves into the neighbourhood and invites people into his life, rather dramatically. Mary and Joseph have their lives not just turned upside down by the arrival of a baby, but have their lives relocated around the agenda of the mission and identity of that baby. ...It seems that when Jesus moves into the neighbourhood, people have to fit into him. And maybe that's the solution to [my] problem today. I don't invite Jesus into my life, he arrives to invite me into his life." Read the rest HERE.

b.

On the Lack of Younger Public Intellectuals

2011-11-28T18:28:00.003-05:00

From The Hedgehog Review: "In the course of the twentieth century, intellectuals have made a progressive retreat from commitment to a public and critical prose. The transition from Lionel Trilling to Fred Jameson, or from Jane Jacobs to younger urbanists like David Harvey, or from William James to younger philosophers, illustrates the cultural shift. The previous generations of intellectuals could be read, and were read, by educated readers; the most recent intellectuals cannot be -- nor do they direct themselves to a public audience. They have settled into specialties and sub-specialties. Even as critics have become more sophisticated and daring, they have also become more private and complacent, which belies a critical discourse. A generational grid used in tracing this evolution -- or decline -- expresses the real dynamics of intellectual life in the last 50 years. In surveying current intellectual life, I find not a flat-out absence of public intellectuals, but an absence of younger ones -- and I am using 'younger' in its most expansive meaning: the few public intellectuals are almost all over the age of 50, usually 60. In other words, behind the erosion of public intellectuals, a generational flux is at work. An older generation of intellectuals is passing on, and a new one is not showing up. And this 'missing' generation is more or less the sixties generation; they may have been a force for change and ferment, but today they are scarcely present as an intellectual generation. Who are the younger successors to Edmund Wilson or Dwight Macdonald or Lewis Mumford or even Lionel Trilling?

"This absence can be explained by looking first at what might be called the cultural geography: the sharp increase in higher education in the post-World War II years and the corresponding increase in academic employment. What is decisive is not simply the growing academic environment but the decline of the alternative environments, and specifically, the decline of the urban bohemias. If the western frontier closed in the 1890s, the cultural frontier closed in the 1950s. For a young writer or artist, out of high school or college, to decide to move to New York City and live in Greenwich Village to begin his or her novel is no longer a possibility. The big cities, mainly New York, but also San Francisco and Chicago, get too difficult and too expensive. Café society gives rise to the essay and aphorism; colleges and colleagues spur the monograph and grant application. Socio-cultural environment gives a cast to intellectuals and ways of thinking and writing. The density and rhythms of thought itself register the environment. And if this environment is one of lectures, seminars, and conferences, it reveals itself in the prose, the approach, and perhaps the content of scholarship. The presupposition might be crudely characterized as materialistic: material circumstances do affect people, and insofar as intellectuals are people, they are affected by their surroundings." Read the rest HERE.

b.

Matt Chandler's First Book

2011-11-24T13:26:00.009-05:00

From Crossway Books: "Too few people attending church today, even those in evangelical churches, are exposed to the gospel explicitly. Sure, many will hear about Jesus, and about being good and avoiding bad, but the gospel message simply isn't there -- at least not in its specificity and its fullness. Inspired by the needs of both the overchurched and the unchurched, and bolstered by the common neglect of the explicit gospel within Christianity, Matt Chandler has written this punchy treatise. He begins with the specifics of the gospel -- outlining what it is and what it is not -- and then switches gears to focus on the fullness of the gospel and its massive implications on both personal and cosmic levels. Recognizing our tendency to fixate on either the micro or macro aspects of the gospel, Chandler also warns us of the dangers on either side -- of becoming overly individualistic or syncretistic. Here is a call to true Christianity, to know the gospel explicitly, and to unite the church on the amazing grounds of the good news of Jesus!" See more HERE and his posts on The Resurgence HERE.

b.

The Cardinal Virtues

2011-11-23T22:32:00.005-05:00

From The Catechism of the Catholic Church: "Human virtues are firm attitudes, stable dispositions, habitual perfections of intellect and will that govern our actions, order our passions, and guide our conduct according to reason and faith. They make possible ease, self-mastery, and joy in leading a morally good life. The virtuous man is he who freely practices the good. The moral virtues are acquired by human effort. They are the fruit and seed of morally good acts; they dispose all the powers of the human being for communion with divine love. Four virtues play a pivotal role and accordingly are called 'cardinal'; all the others are grouped around them. They are: prudence, justice, fortitude, and temperance. 'If anyone loves righteousness, [Wisdom's] labors are virtues; for she teaches temperance and prudence, justice, and courage.' These virtues are praised under other names in many passages of Scripture.

(1) Prudence is the virtue that disposes practical reason to discern our true good in every circumstance and to choose the right means of achieving it; 'the prudent man looks where he is going.' 'Keep sane and sober for your prayers.' Prudence is 'right reason in action,' writes St. Thomas Aquinas, following Aristotle. It is not to be confused with timidity or fear, nor with duplicity or dissimulation. It is called auriga virtutum (the charioteer of the virtues); it guides the other virtues by setting rule and measure. It is prudence that immediately guides the judgment of conscience. The prudent man determines and directs his conduct in accordance with this judgment. With the help of this virtue we apply moral principles to particular cases without error and overcome doubts about the good to achieve and the evil to avoid.

(2) Justice is the moral virtue that consists in the constant and firm will to give their due to God and neighbor. Justice toward God is called the 'virtue of religion.' Justice toward men disposes one to respect the rights of each and to establish in human relationships the harmony that promotes equity with regard to persons and to the common good. The just man, often mentioned in the Sacred Scriptures, is distinguished by habitual right thinking and the uprightness of his conduct toward his neighbor. 'You shall not be partial to the poor or defer to the great, but in righteousness shall you judge your neighbor.' 'Masters, treat your slaves justly and fairly, knowing that you also have a Master in heaven.'

(3) Fortitude is the moral virtue that ensures firmness in difficulties and constancy in the pursuit of the good. It strengthens the resolve to resist temptations and to overcome obstacles in the moral life. The virtue of fortitude enables one to conquer fear, even fear of death, and to face trials and persecutions. It disposes one even to renounce and sacrifice his life in defense of a just cause. 'The Lord is my strength and my song.' 'In the world you have tribulation; but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world.'

(4) Temperance is the moral virtue that moderates the attraction of pleasures and provides balance in the use of created goods. It ensures the will's mastery over instincts and keeps desires within the limits of what is honorable. The temperate person directs the sensitive appetites toward what is good and maintains a healthy discretion: 'Do not follow your inclination and strength, walking according to the desires of your heart.' Temperance is often praised in the Old Testament: 'Do not follow your base desires, but restrain your appetites.' In the New Testament it is called 'moderation' or 'sobriety.' We ought 'to live sober, upright, and godly lives in this world.'"

b.

Hunter on Evangelical Cultural Production

2011-11-23T16:59:00.005-05:00

"...[C]ultural production in the Evangelical world is overwhelmingly oriented toward the popular. Very much like its retail politics, its music is popular music, its art tends to be popular (highly sentimentalized and commercialized) art, its theater is mega-church drama, its publishing is mainly mass-market book publishing with a heavy bent toward 'how-to' books, its magazines are mass-circulation monthlies, its television is either in the format of a worship service or the talk show, its recent forays into film are primarily into popular film, and much academic work is oriented toward translation -- making the difficult accessible to the largest possible number. While there are exceptions to the rule, overall, the populist orientation of Evangelical cultural production reflects the most kitschy expressions of consumerism and often the most crude forms of market instrumentalism.

"As it is with Catholics and mainline Protestants, individual Evangelicals can be found everywhere -- in elite research universities, university presses, think tanks and the like -- and there they make important contributions. But except for a few areas such as philosophy and American religious history, where they have had a significant presence and influence, their number tends to be very small and their broader impact of no great consequence. Likewise, in literature, there are some talented novelists, poets, and critics in these communities, but here again their number is few and they too tend to be fairly isolated in their respective fields. Much the same can be said about the Evangelical presence in architecture, the visual arts (painting, sculpture, etc.) and the performance arts (e.g., theater, film, dance, music, and the like). In all of these arenas and others (such as journalism and advertising), there are individual exceptions -- extraordinary, remarkable, talented exceptions -- but they are exceptions, rather than a normal occurrence. These individuals are present in these spheres, it would seem, more by accident than by design; certainly more as a statistical aberration than through the deliberate cultivation of the churches." Read more HERE.

James Davison Hunter. 2010. To Change The World: The Irony, Tragedy, and Possibility of Christianity in the Late Modern World. New York: Oxford University Press. pp. 87-88.

b.

Cornel West Leaving Princeton

2011-11-20T16:36:00.003-05:00

From The New York Times: "Cornel West, the peripatetic public intellectual and political activist, plans to finish out a teaching career that has taken him from Yale to Harvard to Princeton by moving back this coming summer to Union Theological Seminary in the City of New York, where he began as an assistant professor in 1977. Dr. West, the author of 19 books, including Race Matters, and a ubiquitous television and radio commentator, said he was taking a significant pay cut to become a professor of philosophy and Christian practices at Union. The school, where the eminent theologian Reinhold Niebuhr taught, is also known as the birthplace of black theology. James H. Cone, a foremost scholar in that tradition, is still on the faculty. In an interview from Seattle, on his way to visit Occupy protesters there, Dr. West said that his liberal politics were formed in Progressive Baptist churches, and that Union was 'the institutional expression of my core identity as a prophetic Christian.' 'I don't have that much time, and I want to be able to do precisely what I'm called to do,' Dr. West, 58, said. It will also be nice, he said, to be within walking distance of the Apollo Theater." Read the rest HERE.

b.

When Presidents Go to Church

2011-11-20T16:17:00.002-05:00

From The Huffington Post: "The Secret Service agents arrived at Shiloh Baptist Church on a reconnaissance mission just a few days before Easter Sunday. They swept through the sanctuary, eyeing every pew from the pulpit to the balcony. Not a Bible or hymnal was left unturned. Church leaders took a vow of secrecy. Even the most respected church members were kept in the dark until the very last minute. Easter service at any house of worship can be a painstaking affair, but this one had to go off without a hitch -- President Obama and the First Family were coming to church. For a sitting president, even the most routine activities become complicated logistical feats. Date nights can be impersonal affairs, with gawkers and special agents lurking around every corner. Sporting events and recitals are overshadowed by the spectacle of a POTUS appearance. Church services, which for many are a time for self-reflection and expressions of faith and fellowship, require the same planning and strategizing as any other presidential event: metal detectors and bomb-sniffing dogs, traffic snarls and spectators and media displacing regular attendees." Read the rest HERE.

b.

Leadership's New Direction

2011-11-17T14:08:00.003-05:00

From Harvard Business Review: "Young businesspeople are thinking about leadership in different ways, and a new leadership ethos is emerging. For starters, young leaders are creating opportunities across sectors -- and borders. One of our survey respondents argued, 'Business leaders will be forced to recognize and serve a broader community of stakeholders than in previous generations.' This 'broader community' transcends both sector and geographical boundaries. Furthermore, the fast-paced nature of globalization was summed up by another young leader: 'Simply understanding national surroundings will no longer be sufficient.' The world is becoming global, and these leaders plan to respond. What is striking, though, is the strong emphasis on the personal and ethical dimensions of leadership. Young businesspeople are viewing leadership with a sense of grace, humility, and serious responsibility. Emphasizing the nature of ethical leadership in the wake of the financial crisis, one respondent argued, 'Leaders will be forced to be more transparent about everything from their decision making to their personal lives.' On the importance of personal authenticity, another said, 'Leadership will be less about climbing a ladder within an established organization -- the 21st century is more about defining the ladder through one's actions.'" Read the rest HERE.

b.

Let's All Feel Superior

2011-11-16T22:55:00.003-05:00

From The New York Times: "People are really good at self-deception. We attend to the facts we like and suppress the ones we don't. We inflate our own virtues and predict we will behave more nobly than we actually do. As Max H. Bazerman and Ann E. Tenbrunsel write in their book, Blind Spots, 'When it comes time to make a decision, our thoughts are dominated by thoughts of how we want to behave; thoughts of how we should behave disappear.' In centuries past, people built moral systems that acknowledged this weakness. These systems emphasized our sinfulness. They reminded people of the evil within themselves. Life was seen as an inner struggle against the selfish forces inside. These vocabularies made people aware of how their weaknesses manifested themselves and how to exercise discipline over them. These systems gave people categories with which to process savagery and scripts to follow when they confronted it. They helped people make moral judgments and hold people responsible amidst our frailties. But we're not Puritans anymore. We live in a society oriented around our inner wonderfulness. So when something atrocious happens, people look for some artificial, outside force that must have caused it -- like the culture of college football, or some other favorite bogey." Read the rest HERE. This article reminds me of THIS.

b.

On My Way Back Home

2011-11-11T18:46:00.000-05:00

The Wrong Inequality

2011-11-11T15:58:00.002-05:00

From The New York Times: "We live in a polarizing society, so perhaps it's inevitable that our experience of inequality should be polarized, too. In the first place, there is what you might call Blue Inequality. This is the kind experienced in New York City, Los Angeles, Boston, San Francisco, Seattle, Dallas, Houston and the District of Columbia. In these places, you see the top 1 percent of earners zooming upward, amassing more income and wealth. The economists Jon Bakija, Adam Cole and Bradley Heim have done the most authoritative research on who these top 1 percenters are. ...Then there is what you might call Red Inequality. This is the kind experienced in Scranton, Des Moines, Naperville, Macon, Fresno, and almost everywhere else. In these places, the crucial inequality is not between the top 1 percent and the bottom 99 percent. It's between those with a college degree and those without. Over the past several decades, the economic benefits of education have steadily risen. In 1979, the average college graduate made 38 percent more than the average high school graduate, according to the Fed chairman, Ben Bernanke. Now the average college graduate makes more than 75 percent more." Read the rest HERE.

b.

Fulfill Your Ministry

2011-11-08T00:25:00.002-05:00

"I charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is to judge the living and the dead, and by his appearing and his kingdom: preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, and exhort, with complete patience and teaching. For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths. As for you, always be sober-minded, endure suffering, do the work of an evangelist, fulfill your ministry."

2 Timothy 4: 1-5

b.

Philosophy Is What It Eats

2011-11-03T16:19:00.003-04:00

From The Church and Postmodern Culture: "It is tough to still think, a hundred years into the linguistic turn, that philosophy is much in charge of anything: growing the food, overseeing the menu, preparing the meal, or even serving it up. But philosophy can still help us chew on things. It can be a second stomach that helps digest the kinds of ideas we're growing, the kinds of machines we're building, the kinds of societies we're composing, the kinds of poetry we're writing, the kinds of love we're making. Philosophy can, as Alain Badiou puts it, help us think the 'compossibility' of our ideas -- ideas that we can't predict, order, or control -- and then fashion concepts that 'weave a general space in which thought accedes to time, to its time.' If Continental philosophy of religion is headed someplace different in our time, it will be because we have begun to incorporate new and different kinds of materials. A steady and disciplined diet of Heidegger, Levinas, and Derrida has given us our current pallor and lean figure. For my part, I think the field should loosen its belt. It should eat more and with greater variety. In the future, I imagine it looking more like a rotund and laughing Buddha than a svelte European fashion model. What, in particular, will be different? I see the future of Continental philosophy of religion as shaped by a growing acknowledgement of four conditions: (1) that math thinks, (2) that science thinks, (3) that America thinks, and (4) that I think." Read the rest HERE.

b.

On Being a Conversational Ball Hog

2011-11-03T15:43:00.004-04:00

From The Chronicle of Higher Education: "It's hard to create something -- an idea, a sentence, a book. It's easier to pick away at the edges. It's hard to listen, to put aside one's own thoughts, to let the ego take a back seat to someone else's cleverness, observations, or argument. To interrupt is to show dominance and try to wrest control. To be on the receiving end can feel dismissive and disempowering. I've read studies that show doctors wait about 18 seconds before they interrupt their patients. No wonder we're so unhappy with our health care: Attending physicians have stopped attending to us. Sometimes, though, when academics are being conversational ball hogs -- a common tic among those whose job is to profess -- interruption is the only way to engage. Or you can surrender to it. ...When someone interrupts me, it may mean all of the things I tell myself it means: He's excited, he's impatient, he was raised by wolves. But it may also imply that the interrupter thinks his commentary is more important than my material, that he knows a bunch of stuff I don't, that he needs to make arguments he thinks I'm not taking into account, go down paths I've neglected to follow. Often, with a chronic interrupter, I have to say, 'Let me finish,' because I have in fact done all of those things, just not in the order -- or as fast -- as he would have liked." Read the rest HERE.

b.

On Bold Ambition, Organizationally

2011-11-03T15:12:00.006-04:00

From The Chronicle of Higher Education: "The problems that confront American higher education today are arguably the greatest in more than a generation. Both public and private institutions have faced significant budget cuts, decreased money for research from federal and state governments, and the specter of a decline in giving because of uncertainty in financial markets. One response, which unfortunately appears to be all too common, is to make modest across-the-board cuts, generally refrain from bold actions, and hope for better days. We suggest an alternative based on our belief that fiscal considerations should not be the sole determinant that drives an academic agenda. American higher education did not become second to none through a bias toward caution or low expectations. John Henry Newman in his 1852 epic, The Idea of a University, wrote of the university's singular ability to 'adjust views, and experiences, and habits of mind the most independent and dissimilar.' ...Such statements point to a vision of higher education in which those in the university have the freedom and courage to speak uncomfortable truths in the hope of creating a better world. The American research university flourished from such visions. What would such bold ambitions, which are so worthy of the American research university, mean to us today?" Read the rest HERE.

b.

Dude, Where's Your Bride?

2011-11-03T14:52:00.003-04:00

From The Gospel Coalition: "As I speak at different venues across the country, one of the recurring questions I get comes from women, young women in particular. Their question usually goes something like this: 'What is up with men?' These aren't angry women. Their question is more plaintive than petulant. I'm not quite sure why they ask me. Maybe because they've read Just Do Something and figure I'll be a sympathetic ear. Or maybe they think I can help. They often follow up their initial question by exhorting me, 'Please speak to the men in our generation and tell them to be men.' They're talking about marriage. I have met scores of godly young women nearby and far away who wonder 'Where have all the marriageable men gone?' More and more commentators -- Christian or otherwise -- are noticing a trend in young men; namely, that they don't seem to be growing up. ...Virtually every single single person I know wants to be married. And yet, it is taking couples longer and longer to get around to marriage. Education patterns have something to do with it. A bad economy doesn't help either. But there is something even more befuddling going on. Go to almost any church and you'll meet mature, intelligent, attractive Christian women who want to get married and virtually no men to pursue them." Read the rest HERE.

b.

The Men Behind "The War On Women"

2011-11-02T18:04:00.003-04:00

From The Huffington Post: "A group of men with no real background in law or medicine, but blessed with a strong personal interest in women's bodies, have quietly influenced all of the major anti-abortion legislation over the past several years. The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops may be one of the quietest, yet most powerful lobbies on Capitol Hill, with political allies that have enabled them to roll back decades of law and precedent. Over the past two years the GOP-controlled House of Representatives has launched one of the most extreme assaults on women's choice the U.S. has seen in decades. Republicans voted twice to slash federal family planning funds for low-income women, moved to prevent women from using their own money to buy insurance plans that cover abortion, introduced legislation that would force women to have ultrasounds before receiving an abortion and, most recently, passed a bill that will allow hospitals to refuse to perform emergency abortions for women with life-threatening pregnancy complications. But the erosion of women's rights didn't begin with the GOP takeover. President Barack Obama's health care reform law contained some of the most restrictive abortion language seen in decades. Lift the curtain, and behind the assault was the conference of bishops." Read the rest HERE.

b.

Steve Jobs and Entrepreneurial Church Leaders

2011-10-24T18:56:00.003-04:00

From Faith and Leadership: "When the media announced the passing of Steve Jobs, my twitter feed quickly filled with condolences from fans and admirers to the man they all revered as an icon. Hashtags like '#iSad' and '#thankyousteve' -- even a tiny graphic of the Apple logo -- choked the network's stream with a flood of posts coming in at nearly 10,000 tweets per second. Among the tributes were those from evangelical church leaders who I have come to know over the years, and who spend a lot of time keeping in touch with consumer culture. For them, the gospel involves a missionary imperative to reach people in their everyday lives. They actively orient their ministries to 'connect' with rhythms of mainstream culture. It was no surprise that within an hour of the announcement, these pastors and parachurch leaders had also posted their own brief, solemn tributes. Over time I have seen how Steve Jobs became the patron saint of non-denominational church leaders who value creativity, technology and persistent vision." Read the rest HERE.

b.

Youth Lagoon - Montana

2011-10-20T16:34:00.000-04:00

Si comprehendis, non est Deus

2011-10-19T17:11:00.000-04:00

"If you understand it, it is not God."

-Saint Augustine.

b.

Introduction to Critical Realism: Part IV

2011-10-18T22:09:00.053-04:00

What, then, is realism? To begin, I will ignore the "naïve" aspect of "naïve realism" and instead simply explain "realism" in all of its varieties. Realism is the position regarding ontology that the world (i.e., everything outside one's own mind) exists independently of human consciousness of it and knowledge about it. In other words, the world -- all that exists or is (except one's own mental states, of course) -- is one certain way whether or not you or I or anyone else is aware of it. That is realism. If a tree falls in the woods and no one is around to hear it, does it nevertheless make a sound? Realism answers that question with a resounding, yes! Realism, in other words, is the position regarding ontology which holds that there exists an ultimate reality regardless of however human persons --- whether individually or collectively --- think (or don't think), believe (or don't believe), and know (or don't know) about it.

You might be thinking, "Why are we even talking about this? I have eyes to see the world, ears to hear it, a nose to smell it, a tongue to taste it, and so on. We do not have to worry about whether or not the world is really 'out there' and to do so is of little worth beyond philosophical self-amusement." If that is your view, then you have just articulated a position in the philosophy of perception variously known as naïve realism, direct realism, or commonsense realism. As its names themselves suggest, naïve realism is the ontological and epistemological position that human persons can and, in normal cases, do in fact perceive the world (ultimate reality) directly -- without any need for considerations of interpretation, hermeneutics, conceptual schemata, the kantian "veil of perception," desires, or subjective biases. This position is called naïve realism because, at least in its contemporary form, it is unreflexive and uncritical about the nature of human knowledge, experience, interpretation, and perception of the world.

It is noteworthy that this view of perception and knowledge applies equally not only to the structure, nature, and existence of the external physical world (e.g., trees, stars) but also to those (potential) constituents of reality that are non-material and/or abstract (to be clear, being non-material and being abstract are not the same thing). These include the past, the future, causes, human minds other than one's own, meanings, mathematical truths, moral facts and values, the laws of logic, social structures and fields, aesthetics, and even God Himself. Commonsense or naïve realism is at root a philosophical rebuttal to the strict empiricism and skepticism that was epitomized by Scottish Enlightenment thinkers such as David Hume (1711–1776) and Irish philosopher George Berkeley (1685–1753). Empiricism and skepticism were unintended consequences of the Protestant Reformation, after which human knowledge (at least in the West) was liberated from any absolute religious authority (i.e., the Catholic Church).

In response to such an epistemic upheaval (i.e., What is true? What are humans? What is authoritative? What is real?), commonsense or naïve realism posited, first, that the triune God of the Bible is real and operative in the world, and, second, that this God, being the loving and compassionate Father that He is, designed human beings with the natural capacity to perceive the world in various ways directly and accurately (to "mirror nature"), and thus to form unproblematically knowledge based upon those direct observations. (One might even call this position uncritical realism.) Commonsense or naïve realism as an epistemological position is clearest in the writings of the Scottish philosopher and clergyman Thomas Reid (1710-1796), a contemporary of Hume. In the next post I will explain the philosophical tradition that emerged from Hume and others --- namely, positivist empiricism --- which in many ways remains the defining philosophy of the modern era, especially as it relates to what is real and how we know.

b.

PREVIOUS POSTS IN THIS SERIES

Part I
Part II
Part III

The Evangelical Rejection of Reason

2011-10-18T21:10:00.000-04:00

From The New York Times: "The Republican presidential field has become a showcase of evangelical anti-intellectualism. Herman Cain, Rick Perry and Michele Bachmann deny that climate change is real and caused by humans. Mr. Perry and Mrs. Bachmann dismiss evolution as an unproven theory. The two candidates who espouse the greatest support for science, Mitt Romney and Jon M. Huntsman Jr., happen to be Mormons, a faith regarded with mistrust by many Christians. The rejection of science seems to be part of a politically monolithic red-state fundamentalism, textbook evidence of an unyielding ignorance on the part of the religious. As one fundamentalist slogan puts it, 'The Bible says it, I believe it, that settles it.' But evangelical Christianity need not be defined by the simplistic theology, cultural isolationism and stubborn anti-intellectualism that most of the Republican candidates have embraced. Like other evangelicals, we accept the centrality of faith in Jesus Christ and look to the Bible as our sacred book, though we find it hard to recognize our religious tradition in the mainstream evangelical conversation. Evangelicalism at its best seeks a biblically grounded expression of Christianity that is intellectually engaged, humble and forward-looking. In contrast, fundamentalism is literalistic, overconfident and reactionary." Read the rest HERE.

b.

The Origins of the Word "Cult"

2011-10-18T21:05:00.003-04:00

From www.pastormark.tv: "The Oxford English Dictionary indicates that the English word 'cult' was first used in a theological controversy in the early 1600s that emerged out of King James I instituting the Oath of Allegiance (1606), which declared that the Pope of the Catholic Church had no authority over the King and his rule. In its earliest usages, though, the word 'cult' did not carry the negative connotation that it does today. Instead it simply meant 'worship; reverential homage rendered to a divine being or beings' and 'A particular form or system of religious worship; esp. in reference to its external rites and ceremonies.' (Etymologically, our word 'cult' is derived from the Latin cultus, which means worship, a form of the Latin verb colĕre, meaning to cultivate, attend to, or respect). This non-pejorative meaning of 'cult' is still present in most other dictionaries today.

"In sociology, the question of what exactly constitutes a cult started with 'the church-sect typology' by German Protestant theologian and sociologist Ernst Troeltsch in the early 20th century. In short, Troeltsch gave three fundamental types of religious behavior: (1) churchly, (2) sectarian, and (3) mystical. Troeltsch's work was not translated into English until 1931, and so the church-sect typology was actually introduced to English-speaking audiences not from Troeltsch, but from the work of another sociologically inclined theologian, H. Richard Niebuhr's The Social Sources of Denominationalism. In this work, Niebuhr revised Troeltsch's church-sect typology by treating 'church' and 'sect' as poles of a continuum. Unlike Troeltsch, Niebuhr's concern was not merely to classify religious groups but rather to analyze the process of religious history as groups moved along a continuum. (For example, Christianity was once considered a sect of Judaism).

"Howard Becker (1932) was the first American trained as a sociologist to use and extend church-sect theory. Aiming to make the continuum more specific, Becker divided 'church' into 'denomination' and 'ecclesia [church],' and he divided 'sect' into 'sect' and 'cult.' This resulted in the following continuum: cult-sect-denomination-ecclesia [church]. As Colin Campbell explains, Becker's use of the word 'cult' stressed 'the private, personal character of the adherents' beliefs and the amorphous nature of the organization.' This usage of 'cult' caught on in sociology and instead of reading it with reference to Troeltsch's original three-point typology, which basically equated to how well-established a religious group was, the term came to refer to any relatively small group 'whose beliefs and practices were merely deviant from the perspective of religious or secular orthodoxy,' along with 'a very loose organizational structure.' This, in short, is how the term 'cult' came to enter the discipline of sociology and began its trend toward indicating not just 'worship,' but negatively-connoted, deviant religious groups."

Read the rest HERE.

b.

Are Mormons Better Christians than are Evangelicals?

2011-10-16T23:03:00.004-04:00

From CNN: "The Rev. Robert Jeffress, a leading evangelical minister, claimed last Friday that Mormons are not Christians. Jeffress went on to declare that Mormonism is 'a cult,' meaning it's not a 'real' religion, and he implored his followers to reject Mitt Romney, a Mormon, as a candidate for president because as Jeffress sees it: 'As Christians, we have the duty to prefer and select Christians as our leaders.' ...Over the last four days I have spent a great deal of time with members of the LDS Church. I'm not saying that I'm an expert on their teachings... But I can now say without hesitation that the LDS Church members we met represented the best of Christianity. They were truly caring and compassionate people. ...While it probably doesn't matter to a person like Jeffress, the LDS members we met proudly consider themselves Christians. After all, the full name of their religion is 'The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.' If your religion has the words 'Jesus Christ' in its name, it's kind of a tip off that Christ's teachings are important to you. ...In comparing the hate-filled language of Jeffress with the words and good deeds of the Mormons we met, it is clear to me who is best following the teachings of Jesus Christ and truly deserves to be called a Christian." Read the rest HERE.

b.

Are Evangelicals Dangerous?

2011-10-16T22:03:00.003-04:00

From CNN: "Here we go again. Every four years, with every new presidential election cycle, public voices sound the alarm that the evangelicals are back. What is so scary about America's evangelical Christians? Just a few years ago, author Kevin Phillips told intellectual elites to run for cover, claiming that well-organized evangelicals were attempting to turn America into a theocratic state. In 'American Theocracy,' Phillips warned of the growing influence of Bible-believing, born-again, theologically conservative voters who were determined to create a theocracy. Writer Michelle Goldberg, meanwhile, has warned of a new Christian nationalism, based in 'dominion theology.' Chris Hedges topped that by calling conservative Christians 'American fascists.' And so-called New Atheists like Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris claim that conservative Christians are nothing less than a threat to democracy. They prescribe atheism and secularism as the antidotes. ...What stories like this really show is that the secular elites assume that their own institutions and leaders are normative." Read the rest HERE.

b.

Spurgeon on Study and Speaking

2011-10-10T17:40:00.002-04:00

From The Gospel Coalition: "If a man would speak without any present study, he must usually study much. This is a paradox perhaps, but its explanation lies upon the surface. If I am a miller, and I have a sack brought to my door, and am asked to fill that sack with good fine flour within the next five minutes, the only way in which I can do it, is by keeping the flour-bin of my mill always full, so that I can at once open the mouth of the sack, fill it, and deliver it. I do not happen to be grinding at that time, and so far the delivery is extemporary; but I have been grinding before, and so have the flour to serve out to the customer. So, brethren, you must have been grinding, or you will not have the flour. You will not be able to extemporise good thinking unless you have been in the habit of thinking and feeding your mind with abundant and nourishing food. Work hard at every available moment. Store your minds very richly, and then, like merchants with crowded warehouses, you will have goods ready for your customers, and having arranged your good things upon the shelves of your mind, you will be able to hand them down at any time without the laborious process of going to market, sorting, folding, and preparing. I do not believe that any man can be successful in continuously maintaining the gift of extemporaneous speech, except by ordinarily using far more labour than is usual with those who write and commit their discourses to memory. Take it as a rule without exception, that to be able to overflow spontaneously you must be full."

b.

A Life Update

2011-10-08T13:10:00.025-04:00

It has been more than a year since I have written one of my "life updates," so here it goes: First, since December I have been dating a young woman named Alex. She is from Roseville, MI (between Warren and St. Clair Shores), and is a fifth year undergraduate at the University of Michigan studying chemical engineering. We met two summers ago at the wedding reception of a mutual friend in Ann Arbor. Things are going very well. Second, in terms of academics, I am currently in a rather strange year that consists almost entirely of reading and thinking ---- having finished coursework but not yet started my doctoral dissertation. So here is what is on the calendar academically: (1) present at the annual meeting of the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion, which is in Milwaukee near the end of this month; (2) guest lecture in the Sociology of Religion course at the University of Michigan in mid-November; (3) prepare for and take my second (and last) comprehensive exam in mid-January, which is on sociological theory and the philosophy of (social) science; and (4) write and defend a (40-ish page) proposal on what I will do for my dissertation, which, if all goes according to plan, will end up being my first book. Third, I am working two part-time jobs. The first is as a research assistant for the Center for the Study of Religion and Society here at Notre Dame. The second position is with Docent Research Group, which provides various kinds of research (theology, sociology, history, creativity) for Evangelical churches throughout the country. My primary (weekly) client is Jud Wilhite, the lead pastor of Central Christian Church in Las Vegas, although I have had my voice in a couple of books by pastors at Mars Hill Church over the past year too. So in sum, over the coming months, I am looking forward to thinking through and writing my dissertation proposal and in so doing getting a clearer idea of what the next two years of my life might look like (but see James 4: 13-17) as I gather data for and write my first book, which will likely entail a good bit of traveling city to city. Despite all of that, it still feels for the most part like more of the same. I enjoy what I do and am honored to have the opportunity to help build the Church however I am able.

b.

The Church is Not Your Canvas

2011-10-05T12:55:00.003-04:00

From Patheos: "...[T]he church is not a playground for the pastor's talents. It is not the canvas on which the pastor creates his masterpiece. The church does not exist for the pastor, and the church is not about the pastor. The church is a work of God, through the gospel, and through the transformation the gospel works in our lives. If the church is a stage, then we are at best the supporting cast. If we focus upon ourselves when we're telling the stories of our churches, then we've lost the narrative -- because we've forgotten the identity of the protagonist. As Rick Warren famously said, 'It's not about you.' While God's intimate care for each individual is mind-shattering, the story of salvation is ultimately not about us. It's about God. The story of the church is not about us, either. And the story of an individual church is not about the pastor. There are all sorts of images we might use to communicate this. Perhaps it's best to say that the pastor is not the artist; the pastor is the brush, and the canvas. The pastor is an instrument in the hands of God, a vessel for God's creative and redemptive act, and then the pastor too is one of the re-created and redeemed. The Artist is always God, and we are blessed to be both an instrument in his hands and the object of his exquisite care." Read the rest HERE.

b.

If your right eye causes you to stumble...

2011-10-04T00:37:00.003-04:00

From NBC New York: "An Italian man tore both of his eyes out in the middle of the priest's homily at a church near Pisa, according to reports. Fellow parishioners watched in horror as Aldo Bianchini, 46, used his bare hands to pull out both eyeballs. Bianchini later told surgeons, who were unable to save his vision, he heard voices that told him to do it. 'He was in a great deal of agony and he was covered in blood,' Dr. Gino Barbacci told the Daily Mail. 'He said that he had used his bare hands to gouge out his eye balls after hearing voices telling him to do so -- to do something like that requires super human strength.' Father Lorenzo Tanganelli said he had just launched into his sermon when he saw a commotion in the back of the church, according to the Italian paper Corriere Fiorentino. 'This man at the back of the knave started tearing at his face and I realized he was gouging out his eyes,' Tanganelli told the paper. 'I called for assistance and the paramedics were quickly at the scene and he was taken away and then I carried on celebrating Mass but a lot of people had left because they were so shocked by what they had seen.'" Read the rest HERE.

b.

This Bitter Earth: 2011 Emmy Award Winner

2011-09-27T01:19:00.003-04:00

But, for what it's worth, I think that THIS piece by Travis Wall should have won.

b.

Rob Bell to Leave Mars Hill Church

2011-09-25T22:51:00.003-04:00

From Christianity Today: "Rob Bell has decided to leave Mars Hill Church, the Grandville, Michigan, megachurch he and his wife founded 12 years ago, to focus on a broader audience, the church announced today. Flickering Pixels author Shane Hipps will take over for Bell during spring 2012 after Bell finishes his series on Acts in December. Update 9/25/2011: Rob Bell told Mars Hill today that he will leave for Los Angeles to follow a 'calling to share God's love' in new ways, WZZM reports from Grand Rapids. He will move with his family to California to continue writing books and speaking on national and international tours, but he will not start a new church, he said. Bell will launch his 'Fit to Smash Ice Tour' in Canada in November and continue the tour in the U.S. 'We serve a big God and none of this is shocking to him,' WZZM reports Bell said during his sermon. 'All we can do is embrace a future that is going to be brilliant.'" Read the rest HERE.

b.

Wittgenstein on Renewed Thinking

2011-09-18T21:19:00.004-04:00

"Getting hold of difficulty deep down is what is hard. Because if it is grasped near the surface it simply remains the difficulty it was. It has to be pulled out by the roots; and that involves our beginning to think about these things in a new way. The change is as decisive as, for example, that from the alchemical to the chemical way of thinking. The new way of thinking is what is so hard to establish. Once the new way of thinking has been established, the old problems vanish; indeed they become hard to recapture. For they go with our way of expressing ourselves and, if we clothe ourselves in a new form of expression, the old problems are discarded along with the garment."

Ludwig Wittgenstein. 1980. Culture and Value. Translated by Peter Winch. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. p. 48.

b.

Keller Corrects a Misstep

2011-09-13T16:08:00.003-04:00

From The Gospel Coalition: "This interview from three and a half years ago was the first public event like this I had ever done, and a number of my responses were less than skillful. One in particular -- the one about whether there is any way of salvation outside of faith in Christ -- was misleading and unhelpful. Then and now, when people struggle with something the Bible says, I sometimes invoke the principle of Deuteronomy 29:29: 'The secret things belong to the LORD our God, but the things revealed belong to us and to our children forever, that we may follow all the words of this law.' The thought that God doesn't tell us everything there is to know, and that if he doesn't we don't need to know it, is helpful at a number of points in life. It's helpful when people are struggling with the difficult doctrines -- of the Trinity, or how God can be sovereign and yet human beings be responsible for their decisions, or over why God allows suffering to continue. ...What I did that night, however, was to bring up that Deuteronomy 29:29 principle (though not quoting the text) when I felt people struggling with the teaching that all are lost if they don't believe in Christ." Read the rest HERE.

b.

If It Feels Right...

2011-09-13T15:39:00.003-04:00

From The New York Times: "During the summer of 2008, the eminent Notre Dame sociologist Christian Smith led a research team that conducted in-depth interviews with 230 young adults from across America. The interviews were part of a larger study that Smith, Kari Christoffersen, Hilary Davidson, Patricia Snell Herzog and others have been conducting on the state of America's youth. Smith and company asked about the young people's moral lives, and the results are depressing. It's not so much that these young Americans are living lives of sin and debauchery, at least no more than you'd expect from 18- to 23-year-olds. What's disheartening is how bad they are at thinking and talking about moral issues. The interviewers asked open-ended questions about right and wrong, moral dilemmas and the meaning of life. In the rambling answers, which Smith and company recount in a new book, Lost in Transition, you see the young people groping to say anything sensible on these matters. But they just don't have the categories or vocabulary to do so." Read the rest HERE.

b.

Rembrandt and the Face of Jesus

2011-09-09T19:47:00.003-04:00

From Philadelphia Museum of Art: "Rembrandt van Rijn (1606-1669) is universally acclaimed as the greatest master painter of the Dutch Golden Age, the 17th-century efflorescence of art in the Netherlands. Thanks to an inventory of his home and studio conducted in July 1656, we know that Rembrandt kept in his bedroom two of his own paintings called Head of Christ. A third painting -- identified as a 'Head of Christ, from life' -- was found in a bin in Rembrandt's studio, awaiting use as a model for a New Testament composition. Today, seven paintings survive (from what was likely eight originally) that fit this description, all painted by Rembrandt and his pupils between 1643 and 1655. Bust-length portraits, they show the same young man familiar from traditional artistic conceptions of Christ, yet each figure also bears a slightly different expression. In posing an ethnographically correct model and using a human face to depict Jesus, Rembrandt overturned the entire history of Christian art, which had previously relied on rigidly copied prototypes for Christ. This exhibition, the first Rembrandt exhibition in Philadelphia since 1932 and the first ever in the city to include paintings by the Dutch master, reunites the seven paintings of this exceedingly rare and singular series for the first time since 1656." Read the rest HERE.

b.

Rebuilding Ground Zero

2011-09-08T18:05:00.002-04:00

Your Attention Please

2011-09-08T15:38:00.003-04:00

From 37signals: "I used to think time was the most limited resource. It's so limited that you can't even save it for later. Every day you spend more time, and tomorrow you have less than you had yesterday. You can't make more, and you can't really buy more, so it's limited and fleeting and those are the rules. But there's something even more limited than time. It's your attention. Attention is a subset of time, therefore it's more limited. How you spend your attention is more important than how you spend your time. Attention is about focus and careful, thoughtful consideration. Unlike time -- which can be broken into convenient chunks of 15 minutes -- attention doesn't divide quite so neatly or easily. You hear a lot about 'quality time' being valuable, but I think quality attention is invaluable. Giving someone your attention is giving more than just giving your time. The greatest things you make and do are the ones that get your full attention. It's helpful to take an inventory of what you're doing and then ask yourself where you're spending your best attention. You can fill your time, but you have to spend your attention. How you spend it is probably a better measure of priority than anything else." Read the rest HERE.

b.

The World's First Interfaith College

2011-09-08T14:01:00.003-04:00

From The Huffington Post: "A rabbi, a minister, and an imam meet together for a year and something amazing happens... In June of 2010, the three of us, Rev. Jerry Campbell, Imam Jihad Turk and Rabbi Mel Gottlieb, announced an agreement for our respective institutions to co-create the world's first inter-religious university -- a place where rabbis, ministers, imams and other religious leaders would each be educated in their own traditions, side by side, but also with classes in common. The new university would include academic schools for students who wanted to do world-healing work in non-religious fields as well. The purpose of this new concept was not to water down the beliefs of each of the different traditions, but rather to create understanding, promote mutual respect and learn how to cooperate across religious boundaries to address the world's greatest problems. This Sept. 6, 2011, with the help of a $50 million gift from Joan and David Lincoln, our vision is becoming a reality in the form of the launch of Claremont Lincoln University. We are very excited about the history-making potential of this new institution and the caliber of students it is attracting." Read the rest HERE.

b.

Wife Sues Husband For Refusing Sex (And Wins)

2011-09-08T13:33:00.003-04:00

From The Huffington Post: "Should you be obligated to have sex with your spouse? A judge in Nice, France thinks so. He fined a 51-year-old man 8,500 pounds for not having sex with his now ex-wife. The judge's decision was based on French civil code article 215, which holds that married couples must agree to a 'shared communal life.' In the judge's eyes, this means: 'sexual relations must form part of a marriage.' In an age when countries' legal systems are finally changing their books to recognize spousal rape and sexual assault as crimes, this interpretation should be considered alarming. While people typically marry with the expectation that sexual activity will be a part of 'til death do us part,' if even just for procreation, sex isn't necessarily a guarantee. It's not a contractual obligation. It's certainly not part of the vows people declare on their wedding day. So to be faulted for failing to have sex with your husband or wife seems not only antiquated, but also barbaric, especially when you consider sexuality throughout the lifespan." Read the rest HERE.

b.

The Problem Is: You Write Too Well

2011-09-08T13:22:00.004-04:00

From The Chronicle of Higher Education: "I was reminded of the conflict between what people hear and what is actually being said last spring, when I spent a day talking with untenured professors about revising their dissertations into book manuscripts. All of the faculty members I met had managed to score a great teaching job right out of graduate school. They had impressive pedigrees and a lot of enthusiasm. But many of them kept making the same strange remark -- one that tends to pop up whenever I speak with folks who are hard at work massaging their dissertations into book manuscripts. 'People on my dissertation committee,' explained several young scholars, 'said that I write too well.' At first those remarks made me wonder what kinds of idiots are overseeing the process of doling out Ph.D.'s. Are there really academics who spout such nonsense? If so, those people should be sued for scholarly malpractice. The only thing that kept me from dismissing the claim outright is that there seems to be a general sense in academe -- usually expressed only verbally -- that if you write too clearly or too well, you will be punished. You have to prove that you're a member of the club, that you've been initiated into the guild. That can mean conforming to models, even if they're not good models." Read the rest HERE.

b.

Four Ways 9/11 Changed Attitudes Toward Religion

2011-09-04T22:04:00.003-04:00

From CNN: "David O'Brien couldn't help himself. After the September 11 terrorist attacks, he became obsessed. O'Brien read the stories of 9/11 victims over and over, stunned by what he was discovering. He read about the firefighters who marched up the smoke-choked stairwells of the World Trade Center, though many knew they could die; the beloved priest killed while giving last rites as the twin towers collapsed; the passengers on hijacked planes who called their families one last time to say, 'I love you.' 'I was obsessed with these stories,' says O'Brien, a Catholic historian at the University of Dayton in Ohio. 'There were so many stories of self-sacrifice, not just by the first responders, but by people fleeing the building. There was this revelation of goodness.' O'Brien saw an Easter message in 9/11 -- good rising out of the ashes of evil. Yet there were other religious messages sent that day, and afterward, that are more troubling, religious leaders and scholars say. September 11 didn't just change America, they say. It changed the nation's attitude toward religion. Here are four ways: (1) A chosen nation becomes a humbled one. (2) The re-emergence of 'Christo-Americanism.' (3) Interfaith becomes cool. (4) Atheists come out of the closet." Read the rest HERE.

b.

Dating After Divorce in a City of Sluts

2011-09-04T14:55:00.002-04:00

From The Huffington Post: "Since I left my husband I have been unable to do a number of things -- the most frustrating lost skill is the ability to date. After nine years in a committed relationship, I have extreme difficulty navigating the nuanced dance that is dating. I have learned I can't be too direct, eager, needy, desperate, clingy, emotional, commitment pressuring, or baby daddy seeking. I also have to avoid looking cold, aloof, bitchy, mean, shallow, negative or distant. And of course I can't even talk about my ex, even if the past nine years of my life was living and working with him! Then there are the crazy games of when to text, email or call, when to answer immediately, when to act interested or disinterested and when to completely blow them off. As a person who is by nature very direct and to the point, dating is a mystery trapped in a puzzle, tucked in a fireproof safe thrown down a mineshaft. I just can't figure it out. But the most distressing behavior is the casual sex hook-up mating habits that dominate New York City, a city that I adore and call my home." Read the rest HERE.

b.

Irish Prime Minister Criticizes Vatican on Sex Abuse

2011-09-03T15:18:00.006-04:00

From The Huffington Post: "The Vatican on Saturday vigorously rejected claims it sabotaged efforts by Irish bishops to report priests who sexually abused children to police and accused the Irish prime minister of making an 'unfounded' attack against the Holy See. Irish officials defended their claims that the Vatican exacerbated the abuse crisis and criticized the Holy See for offering an overly 'legalistic' justification of its actions in dealing with priests who rape and molest children. The Vatican issued a 24-page response to the Irish government following Prime Minister Enda Kenny's unprecedented July 20 denunciation of the Vatican's handling of abuse -- a speech that cheered abuse-weary Irish Catholics but stunned the Vatican and prompted it to recall its ambassador. Kenny's speech was inspired by the publication of a government-mandated independent report into the County Cork diocese of Cloyne in southwest Ireland, which found that the Vatican had undermined attempts by Irish bishops to protect children by suggesting that their policy requiring abuse to be reported to police might violate church law." Read the rest HERE.

b.

Ed Stetzer on Nuance and Hope in Church Decline

2011-08-31T22:24:00.003-04:00

From Christianity Today: "Reports of Christianity's demise in America have been greatly exaggerated. While the main thrust of good research does indicate that the percentage of Americans who self-identify as Christians is declining, these data are not necessarily a bad thing. If three out of four Americans call themselves Christians, we are in big trouble. Three out of four Americans certainly do not live like Christians. Christianity becomes confused when everyone is a Christian but no one is following Christ. We evangelicals believe that most Americans do not have a relationship with Jesus Christ. There is little doubt in my mind that the cultural expression of Christianity in America is declining. True, Christianity is losing its 'home-field advantage' in North America. At the same time, some trends tell us we are seeing the growth of a more robust Christian faith and commitment. We are seeing some abandon nominal Christianity, and many others retain an authentic Christian faith. Christianity in North America is not going to die out in this generation or any other, even though it is going through an identity crisis of sorts." Read the rest HERE.

b.

On The Barna Group and Bad, Alarmist Statistics

2011-08-26T22:43:00.004-04:00

From The Wall Street Journal: "...[W]hen a study by the Barna Research Group claimed that young people under 30 are deserting the church in droves, it made headlines and newscasts across the nation -- even though it was a false alarm. Surveys always find that younger people are less likely to attend church, yet this has never resulted in the decline of the churches. It merely reflects the fact that, having left home, many single young adults choose to sleep in on Sunday mornings. Once they marry, though, and especially once they have children, their attendance rates recover. Unfortunately, because the press tends not to publicize this correction, many church leaders continue unnecessarily fretting about regaining the lost young people.

In similar fashion, major media hailed another Barna report that young evangelicals are increasingly embracing liberal politics. But only religious periodicals carried the news that national surveys offer no support for this claim, and that younger evangelicals actually remain as conservative as their parents. Given this track record, it was no surprise this month to see the prominent headlines announcing another finding from Barna that American women are rapidly falling away from religion. The basis for this was a comparison between a poll they conducted in 1991 and one they conducted in January of this year. The reporters who ran with this story ought to have wondered why this change wasn't picked up sooner if it was going on for 20 years. Many national surveys have been conducted during this period -- in fact the Barna Group has been doing them all along. Did the organization check to see if its new results were consistent with its own previous data or with the many other national surveys widely available? There is no sign that it did. If it had, it would have found that its findings about women are as unfounded as previous claims about young people deserting the church and young evangelicals becoming liberals." Read the rest HERE.

b.

A Short Debate on Prayer in Light of God's Sovereignty

2011-08-25T19:32:00.026-04:00

Last night on facebook a friend of mine, who has recently converted from Evangelicalism to atheism, approached me with an argument about prayer and how it relates to the sovereignty of God. Here is how the dialogue/debate went (slightly edited):

Friend: It seems to me that prayer is morally wrong if the person who prays understands himself or herself to be submitting to divine omnipotence. If god is sovereign, that means everything that happens is his will. So asking him to change what happens would be against his will, which is the very definition of sin. I do not think that any sort of petition-like prayer to god is consistent with the idea or conviction that he is sovereign. In other words, if god is omnipotent (all-powerful), omniscient (all-knowing), and omnibenevolent (all-good), then prayer is immoral because the goal would be that he changes his will -- and sin is anything that goes against god's will, and specifically in this case, desiring and asking for something that is not god's will.

"The purpose of prayer is not to try to change God's will, but rather that His will be done on Earth as it is in Heaven."

Me: Good question. The fundamental error in your account is your view that the purpose of (at least "petition-like") prayer is to change God's will. The purpose of prayer, at least theologically (i.e., this is often not the case in practice), is not to try to change God's will, but rather (as Jesus taught us to pray) that His will be done on Earth as it is in Heaven (Matthew 6:9-13; cf. Luke 11:1-4). Prayer is a fundamental part of God's will and design for how human persons relate to the divine Persons, and so its primary purpose is not to change His mind and will (He is sovereign, after all), but for us to relate to Him and gradually over time to change our characters and wills to express and to be in alignment with His/Theirs. Can persons pray (for) things that go against God's will (I would use the words character and nature instead)? Of course. But God's answer to those prayers is always "no." In your view, is it a contradiction to believe that the only prayers that God answers "yes" are those that already reflect both His moral will and sovereign will? That is my position. (Note that there is more than one variety of "the" will of God -- namely, the crucial distinction between God's moral will and His sovereign will.)

Friend: Now that I think about it, if he is sovereign, he wants people to sin (because they do, but he is in control of everything) so it is not actually against his will to sin. Hmmm...

Me: Not exactly. As I noted above, there is an important distinction to be made between God's moral will and His sovereign will. His moral will (i.e., how He wants humans to live morally) can be (and oftentimes is) disobeyed (even though He doesn't want it to be), while His sovereign will (i.e., His perfect control over history) is unavoidable. This seems like a contradiction at face value, but it isn't. Instead, I would argue that human sin (i.e., disobedience to His moral will) is, somewhat ironically, a part of His sovereign will (i.e., how He has unavoidably decreed and designed human history to unfold).

Friend: Yes, that does seem like a contradiction.

Me: I would say that it is more of an irony than a logical contradiction.

Friend: If god were truly sovereign, how could his sovereign will be separate from his moral will?

"Human sin (i.e., disobedience to God's moral will) is an element of His sovereign will (i.e., how He has decreed human history to unfold)."

Me: That question sounds like a good topic for a doctoral dissertation at a seminary, but here is one possible answer (which I have already stated briefly above): Human sin (i.e., disobedience to God's moral will) is an element of His sovereign will (i.e., how He has decreed human history to unfold). More specifically, it seems possible to me (in the broadly logical sense) that God could have written the unavoidable story of human history such that humans come along, they never sin (i.e., they never do or think anything that runs counter to the nature and character of God), and then everything is fine and everyone can go to Heaven (or "be with God," or "enter the Kingdom," or however you conceive of "the goal.") In other words, God (at least logically) could have created the world such that human sin never entered the picture, and there was never any conflict between the nature of God and the condition of humanity.

...But that seems like a pretty lame story that in fact does not reflect the nature and character of God. Instead, it seems to me that the kind of ultimate cosmic story that the triune God, by His very nature, would write (i.e., His sovereign will) is one that allows for humans to reject Him, one that doesn't treat us as some kind of automata, and one that reflects the moral virtues of grace, compassion, love, and forgiveness (e.g., through the atoning work of Jesus on the cross on our behalf). So, to answer your question in short, God's sovereign will can be (and is) separated from His moral will because of the very nature and character of God Himself. Such a cosmic story is, as far as I can see, the best (or only?) one that reflects not only God's "hard side" (His justice, power, might, and holiness), but also His "soft side" (His love, grace, mercy, and compassion).

Friend: None of this gets around the fact that if he actually wanted people to not sin, they wouldn't.

Me: I am repeating myself here, but it is still my response to your claim. Your claim is that: If God actually wanted people not to sin, then they would not sin. I disagree with that claim, and here is why: God indeed wants people not to sin (i.e., His moral will), and yet they do. The theological explanation that I offered for that scenario is that the violation of His moral will (i.e., human sin) is itself a crucial element of His sovereign will -- because that scenario (i.e., a world in which all persons sin) writes a cosmic story (i.e., His sovereign will) that best reflects His own character and nature. In other words, a world in which God wants no one to sin and yet everyone does sin is a world that allows for and, in fact, makes necessary God's love, grace, and mercy (His "soft side"). In short, part of God's sovereign will is that His moral will is able to be violated so that His full nature -- both His "hard side" (e.g., justice and holiness) and His "soft side" (e.g., love and grace) -- can be manifested, understood, and enjoyed.

Here is a related video from Dr. Bruce Ware:

What are your thoughts?

b.

Thinking someone is wrong doesn't mean you hate them.

2011-08-22T23:43:00.004-04:00

From The Huffington Post: "The wordsmithing Brits behind the Oxford Dictionary define 'hate' as 'hostile actions motivated by intense dislike or prejudice.' But words take on new meanings as people speak them, often deriving more from the context of their usage than from their actual definitions. The word 'hate' has become one of many such grammatical casualties as some now use it to describe the positions of any who vary from emerging cultural norms.   Among offenders are gay activists who increasingly define anyone who believes that marriage should be applied only in the context of monogamous, heterosexual union as anti-gay and hateful. But is a belief in traditional marriage an inherently hateful posture? ...The rhythm of crossfire over marital law has become a staple in America's culture wars. But it does raise questions about the prudence of applying emotional labels to those who disagree with one's position. Are organizations that oppose same sex marriage, and people who associate with them, hate-mongers? Should we assume those who support the traditional definition of marriage are 'motivated by intense dislike or prejudice?'" Read the rest HERE.

b.

Is Pluralism More Tolerant Than Christianity?

2011-08-22T00:19:00.004-04:00

From The Resurgence: "Very often people hold to religious pluralism because they think it is more tolerant than Christianity. I'll be the first to say that we need tolerance, but what does it mean to be tolerant? To be tolerant is to accommodate differences, which can be very noble. I believe that Christians should be some of the most accommodating kinds of people, giving everyone the dignity to believe whatever they want and not enforcing their beliefs on others through politics or preaching. We should winsomely tolerate different beliefs. Interestingly, religious pluralism doesn't really allow for this kind of tolerance. Instead of accommodating spiritual differences, religious pluralism blunts them. ...The claim that all paths lead to the same God actually minimizes other religions by asserting a new religious claim. When someone says all paths lead to the same God, they blunt the distinctives between religions, throwing them all in one pot, saying: 'See, they all get us to God so the differences don't really matter.' This isn't tolerance; it's a power play." Read the rest HERE.

b.

Would you like Nietzsche with that?

2011-08-13T15:56:00.003-04:00

From The Village Voice: "With the academic job market in free fall, career services at many universities and colleges are working harder than ever to market Ph.D.'s outside the academy. And Ph.D.'s looking for a way out of the 'jobless market' are lining up for advice. 'There were alternative career workshops 10 years ago,' says Trudy Steinfeld, assistant vice president of the Wasserman Center for Career Development at NYU, which provides career-building workshops for both undergraduate and graduate students. 'But not with the same frequency and certainly not with the same number of students in attendance. Students are definitely more interested in this.' The staff at the Wasserman Center meets with 7,000 graduate students each year, up from half that number 10 years ago, Steinfeld estimates. There are fewer jobs out there for everyone, of course, not just for academics. But for the jobs that are available, Ph.D.'s, with their intensive training in research and writing, have a leg up on the competition. Still, they need guidance that department faculty, who may have never worked outside of academia, are not always equipped to provide." Read the rest HERE.

b.

Everyone feels like a monster sometimes.

2011-08-12T00:02:00.001-04:00

Spurgeon to Young Men on Patience and Perseverance

2011-08-12T00:01:00.000-04:00

"We ought not to be put out of heart by difficulties; they are sent on purpose to try the stuff we are made of -- and depend upon it -- they do us a world of good. There's a sound reason why there are bones in our meat and stones in our land. A world where everything was easy would be a nursery for babies, but not at all a fit place for men. Celery is not sweet till it has felt a frost, and men don't come to their perfection till disappointment has dropped a half-hundred weight or two on their toes. Who would know good horses if there were no heavy loads? ...Work is always healthier for us than idleness; it is always better to wear out shoes than sheets. I sometimes think, when I put on my considering cap, that success in life is something like getting married: there's a very great deal of pleasure in the courting, and it is not a bad thing when it is a moderate time on the road. Therefore, young man, learn to wait, and work on. Don't throw away your rod, the fish will bite some time or other. The cat watches long at the hole, but catches the mouse at last. The spider mends her broken web, and the flies are taken before long. Stick to your calling, plod on, and be content; for, make sure, if you can undergo you shall overcome."

Charles Haddon Spurgeon. 1896. John Ploughman's Pictures. Philadelphia, PA: Henry Altemus. pp. 172-174.

b.

On Therapeuticism in the Church

2011-08-11T18:25:00.004-04:00

From SoMA Review: "I had joined the Episcopal Church to worship at the high altar of God. Now I found out that the Episcopal Church was worshipping at the high altar of psychotherapy! I was disgusted. Or, in psychotherapeutic lingo, my scores in the anger category were significantly elevated. But please do not mistake this anger for a general aversion to therapists. As one who has been helped by therapy before, I recognize that psychology has a legitimate place in the church. However, when therapy and not spiritual direction becomes the preferred vehicle of discernment, psychology has overstepped its bounds and the church runs the risk of becoming little more than a therapeutic support group, forsaking her one, defining mark, namely, the Gospel of Jesus Christ. 'Good News,' which used to be the Gospel, becomes self-actualization on a couch. 'Redemption' disintegrates into regular sessions with a shrink, and our savior becomes not Christ but Freud, who viewed religion as nothing more than the projection of deep-seated fears and desires -- the 'universal, obsessional neurosis of humanity.' What if we were to read Scripture through these therapeutic lenses?" Read the rest HERE.

b.

The Downward Mobility of (Nonprofessional) Men

2011-08-10T18:28:00.004-04:00

From The Atlantic: "The troubles of the nonprofessional middle class are inseparable from the economic troubles of men. Consistently, men without higher education have been the biggest losers in the economy's long transformation (according to Michael Greenstone, an economist at MIT, real median wages of men have fallen by 32 percent since their peak in 1973, once you account for the men who have washed out of the workforce altogether). And the struggles of men have amplified the many problems -- not just economic, but social and cultural -- facing the country today. Just as the housing bubble papered over the troubles of the middle class, it also hid, for a time, the declining prospects of many men. According to the Harvard economist Lawrence Katz, since the mid-1980s, the labor market has been placing a higher premium on creative, analytic, and interpersonal skills, and the wages of men without a college degree have been under particular pressure...

"One of the great puzzles of the past 30 years has been the way that men, as a group, have responded to the declining market for blue-collar jobs. Opportunities have expanded for college graduates over that span, and for nongraduates, jobs have proliferated within the service sector (at wages ranging from rock-bottom to middling). Yet in the main, men have pursued neither higher education nor service jobs. The proportion of young men with a bachelor's degree today is about the same as it was in 1980. And as the sociologists Maria Charles and David Grusky noted in their 2004 book, Occupational Ghettos, while men and women now mix more easily on different rungs of the career ladder, many industries and occupations have remained astonishingly segregated, with men continuing to seek work in a dwindling number of manual jobs, and women 'crowding into nonmanual occupations that, on average, confer more pay and prestige.'" Read the rest HERE.

b.

Can the Middle Class Be Saved?

2011-08-10T17:46:00.004-04:00

From The Atlantic: "In October 2005, three Citigroup analysts released a report describing the pattern of growth in the U.S. economy. To really understand the future of the economy and the stock market, they wrote, you first needed to recognize that there was 'no such animal as the U.S. consumer,' and that concepts such as 'average' consumer debt and 'average' consumer spending were highly misleading. In fact, they said, America was composed of two distinct groups: the rich and the rest. And for the purposes of investment decisions, the second group didn't matter; tracking its spending habits or worrying over its savings rate was a waste of time. All the action in the American economy was at the top: the richest 1 percent of households earned as much each year as the bottom 60 percent put together; they possessed as much wealth as the bottom 90 percent; and with each passing year, a greater share of the nation's treasure was flowing through their hands and into their pockets. It was this segment of the population, almost exclusively, that held the key to future growth and future returns. The analysts, Ajay Kapur, Niall Macleod, and Narendra Singh, had coined a term for this state of affairs: plutonomy. ...Income inequality usually shrinks during a recession, but in the Great Recession, it didn't. From 2007 to 2009, the most-recent years for which data are available, it widened a little." Read the rest HERE.

b.

Secularism and Its Discontents

2011-08-08T17:43:00.003-04:00

From The New Yorker: "I have a friend, an analytic philosopher and convinced atheist, who told me that she sometimes wakes in the middle of the night, anxiously turning over a series of ultimate questions: 'How can it be that this world is the result of an accidental big bang? How could there be no design, no metaphysical purpose? Can it be that every life -- beginning with my own, my husband's, my child's, and spreading outward -- is cosmically irrelevant?' In the current intellectual climate, atheists are not supposed to have such thoughts. We are locked into our rival certainties -- religiosity on one side, secularism on the other -- and to confess to weakness on this order is like a registered Democrat wondering if she is really a Republican, or vice versa. These are theological questions without theological answers, and, if the atheist is not supposed to entertain them, then, for slightly different reasons, neither is the religious believer. Religion assumes that they are not valid questions because it has already answered them; atheism assumes that they are not valid questions because it cannot answer them." Read the rest HERE.

b.

An Excellent Review of The Tree of Life

2011-08-07T23:54:00.002-04:00

From The Gospel Coalition: "In the world of cinema, there are two basic kinds of people: those who 'go to the movies,' and those who love the art of film itself. For the latter group, the release date of Terrence Malick's The Tree of Life in their respective city was tantamount to a high holy day. Malick -- the reclusive director -- has only made four films in the past 40 years before this current release. Each piece has in turn been critically acclaimed. The Tree of Life was certainly no exception to the rule, receiving the Palme d'Or at Cannes, the festival's most prestigious award. This all took place despite the fact that Malick did not personally appear in support of the film at Cannes (although he was there), and refuses to do any publicity. Confession: I believe that The Tree of Life is a masterpiece and a deeply important film. As someone who teaches courses in philosophy of film, and having seen the film multiple times myself, I have repeatedly told all interested parties that this is not a film for the folks who like to 'go to the movies.'" Read the rest HERE.

b.

Does Philosophy Matter? (Stanley Fish Says No.)

2011-08-07T23:08:00.006-04:00

From The New York Times: "There are (at least) two ways of denying moral absolutes. You can say 'I don't believe there are any' or you can say 'I believe there are moral absolutes, but (a) there are too many candidates for membership in that category and (b) there is no device, mechanical test, algorithm or knock-down argument for determining which candidates are the true ones.' The person (and I am one) who takes this second position denies nothing except the possibility (short of force or torture and they don't count) of securing universal assent. You might say that he or she is a moral absolutist but an epistemological relativist -- someone who doesn't think that there is a trump-card that, when played, will bring your interlocutor over to your side, but does think that there are any number of cards (propositions, appeals, examples, etc.) that might, in particular circumstances and given the history and interests of those in the conversation, produce a change of mind. But does any of this matter outside the esoteric arena of philosophical disputation?" Read the rest HERE. (And for the record, he is wrong.)

b.

A New Terrence Malick Film: The Tree of Life

2011-08-03T00:09:00.003-04:00

College Students Are Selling Sex To Pay Loan Debt.

2011-08-01T17:02:00.005-04:00

From The Huffington Post: "Saddled with piles of student debt and a job-scarce, lackluster economy, current college students and recent graduates are selling themselves to pursue a diploma or pay down their loans. An increasing number, according to the the owners of websites that broker such hook-ups, have taken to the web in search of online suitors or wealthy benefactors who, in exchange for sex, companionship, or both, might help with the bills. The past few years have taken an especially brutal toll on the plans and expectations of 20-somethings. ...Besides moving back home, many 20-somethings are beginning their adult lives shouldering substantial amounts of student loan debt. According to Mark Kantrowitz, who publishes the financial aid websites Fastweb.com and Finaid.org, while the average 2011 graduate finished school with about $27,200 in debt, many are straining to pay off significantly greater loans. Enter the sugar daddy, sugar baby phenomenon. This particular dynamic preceded the economic meltdown, of course. Rich guys well past their prime have been plunking down money for thousands of years in search of a tryst or something more with women half their age -- and women, willingly or not, have made themselves available. With the whole process going digital, women passing through a system of higher education that fosters indebtedness are using the anonymity of the web to sell their wares and pay down their college loans. 'Over the past few years, the number of college students using our site has exploded,' says Brandon Wade, the 41-year-old founder of Seeking Arrangement. Of the site's approximately 800,000 members, Wade estimates that 35 percent are students. 'College students are one of the biggest segments of our sugar babies and the numbers are growing all the time.'" Read the rest HERE.

b.

Evangelicals Without Blowhards

2011-08-01T16:45:00.003-04:00

From The New York Times: "In these polarized times, few words conjure as much distaste in liberal circles as 'evangelical Christian.' That's partly because evangelicals came to be associated over the last 25 years with blowhard scolds. When the Rev. Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson discussed on television whether the 9/11 attacks were God's punishment on feminists, gays and secularists, God should have sued them for defamation. ...Partly because of such self-righteousness, the entire evangelical movement often has been pilloried among progressives as reactionary, myopic, anti-intellectual and, if anything, immoral. Yet that casual dismissal is profoundly unfair of the movement as a whole. It reflects a kind of reverse intolerance, sometimes a reverse bigotry, directed at tens of millions of people who have actually become increasingly engaged in issues of global poverty and justice. This compassionate strain of evangelicalism was powerfully shaped by the Rev. John Stott, a gentle British scholar who had far more impact on Christianity than media stars like Mr. Robertson or Mr. Falwell." Read the rest HERE.

b.

We Can't Teach Students to Love Reading

2011-08-01T16:22:00.004-04:00

From The Chronicle of Higher Education: "While virtually anyone who wants to do so can train his or her brain to the habits of long-form reading, in any given culture, few people will want to. And that's to be expected. Serious 'deep attention' reading has always been and will always be a minority pursuit, a fact that has been obscured in the past half-century, especially in the United States, by the dramatic increase in the percentage of the population attending college, and by the idea (only about 150 years old) that modern literature in vernacular languages should be taught at the university level. ...In 2005, Wendy Griswold, Terry McDonnell, and Nathan Wright, sociologists from Northwestern University, published a paper concluding that while there was a period in which extraordinarily many Americans practiced long-form reading, whether they liked it or not, that period was indeed extraordinary and not sustainable in the long run. 'We are now seeing such reading return to its former social base: a self-perpetuating minority that we shall call the reading class.'" Read the rest HERE, if you want.

b.

The First Academic Journal on Secularism

2011-07-31T11:38:00.004-04:00

From CNN: "It's turning out to be a banner year for nonbelievers. First came the publication of a secular Bible. Then we saw the birth of the first American college major in secularism. This week, it's the launch of the world's first academic journal dedicated to the themes of secularism and nonreligion. The journal, to be called Secularism and Nonreligion, will begin publishing in January as a joint project of Trinity College in Connecticut and the Non-religion and Secularity Research Network, an international interdisciplinary network of researchers. 'Submissions should explore all aspects of what it means to be secular... what the lives of nonreligious individuals are like, and the interaction between secularity, nonreligion and other aspects of the world,' according to a Wednesday press release from Trinity College that called for submissions to the journal. 'Articles will explore the ideology and philosophy of the secular, secularism, nonreligion and atheism,' the release continued." Read the rest HERE.

b.

The Left-Leaning Tower

2011-07-26T13:41:00.003-04:00

From The New York Times: "Why are conservatives such a minority at so many graduate schools? Conservatives like to blame liberal bias. Liberals like other explanations. One -- the most tactful hypothesis -- is that conservatives just aren't interested in academic careers. Another -- the most smug hypothesis -- is that conservatives are just too close-minded and dimwitted. Now, fortunately, we have something beyond hypotheses, courtesy of scholars who have been taking a close look at their colleagues. Some even conducted a small sting operation that they believe is the first field experiment on political bias in academia. The perpetrators include Neil Gross, a professor of sociology at the University of British Columbia, whose previous work showed that Democrats outnumber Republicans by about 4 to 1 among professors, by at least 6 to 1 at elite universities, and by still higher ratios in departments of the humanities and social sciences. ...If you were a conservative undergraduate, would you risk spending at least four years in graduate school in the hope of getting a job offer from a committee dominated by people who don't share your views? You might well select another career for yourself -- but you wouldn't exactly call it self-selection." Read the rest HERE.

b.

Does Biological Darwinism Imply Social Darwinism?

2011-07-20T13:48:00.004-04:00

From The Huffington Post: "The celebrated Scopes 'monkey trial' was an intriguing, convoluted affair, only generally reminiscent of Lawrence and Lee's famous stage play 'Inherit the Wind.' As popular mythology, it rightly highlights the folly of outlawing the teaching of legitimate scientific theories because they are perceived as threatening to religion (or any other influential social institution, for that matter). However, in his book Saving Darwin: How to be a Christian and Believe in Evolution (2008, HarperCollins, pp. 73-74), physicist Karl Giberson points out a small, often overlooked fact about that case with troubling implications. ...As Giberson shows, over the last 150 years, Haeckel had more scientific company than we'd like to admit. Evolution's supposed moral implications are a major part of the creationist's case against the theory. If creationists' literature becomes the general public's most common source for the role of science in the history of social Darwinism then that can only strengthen their hand. Creationism should be weakened at every turn. If that means evolutionists need to be purposefully more self-critical on social Darwinism, then so be it. Looking squarely at things builds credibility and integrity, and that wins in the long run." Read the rest HERE.

b.

The Divorce Generation

2011-07-15T20:53:00.003-04:00

From The Wall Street Journal: "Every generation has its life-defining moments. If you want to find out what it was for a member of the Greatest Generation, you ask: 'Where were you on D-Day?' For baby boomers, the questions are: 'Where were you when Kennedy was shot?' or 'What were you doing when Nixon resigned?' For much of my generation -- Generation X, born between 1965 and 1980 -- there is only one question: 'When did your parents get divorced?' Our lives have been framed by the answer. Ask us. We remember everything... 'Whatever happens, we're never going to get divorced.' Over the course of 16 years, I said that often to my husband, especially after our children were born. Apparently, much of my generation feels at least roughly the same way: Divorce rates, which peaked around 1980, are now at their lowest level since 1970. In fact, the often-cited statistic that half of all marriages end in divorce was true only in the 1970s -- in other words, our parents' marriages. Not ours. According to U.S. Census data released this May, 77% of couples who married since 1990 have reached their 10-year anniversaries. We're also marrying later in life, if at all. The average marrying age in 1950 was 23 for men and 20 for women; in 2009, it was 28 for men and 26 for women." Read the rest HERE.

b.

California Now Requires Teaching Gay History

2011-07-14T23:07:00.004-04:00

From The Los Angeles Times: "Gov. Jerry Brown signed legislation Thursday that makes California the first state in the nation to require the inclusion of the contributions of gay, lesbian and transgender Americans in school history lessons and textbooks. The legislation addresses omissions in history books, according to Gil Duran, a spokesman for the governor... The bill by state Sen. Mark Leno (D-San Francisco) had sparked hot debate in the Legislature where it was pushed through by the Democratic majority. Republicans argued it forces a 'gay agenda' on students, but Leno said it would reduce bullying by educating young people about the accomplishments of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender, or LGBT, community... The governor's decision was criticized by Benjamin Lopez of the Anaheim-based Traditional Values Coalition, who said the schools should be focusing on doing better on important skills such as reading, writing and math. 'It's a sad day for the state of California,' said Lopez, legislative analyst and advocate for the group. 'We have failed at our core educational mission and yet we are now going to inject gay studies into the classrooms. It's absurd and offensive.'" Read the rest HERE.

b.

Andy Crouch Reviews David Brooks' New Book

2011-07-12T17:30:00.004-04:00

From Christianity Today: "The center of moral authority is shifting in Western culture. In the 20th century it shifted from clergy to psychiatrists, from Jonathan Edwards's followers to Freud's. Now the ground is shifting again, to neuroscientists, cognitive psychologists, and behavioral economists: the high priests of the brain. Try browsing any major news site without encountering a story about how our brains are primed for insider trading, serial monogamy, or Chipotle burritos. These stories reflect real and remarkable progress. We understand more of the brain's biochemistry, the neurotransmitters and synapses that make it the most complex system known in the universe. Researchers have designed ever more clever experiments that tease out the complexities of human behavior. (Did you know that men who have just walked across a rickety bridge find a young woman more attractive than do men who have just been sitting on a bench?) The results have reaffirmed what the wise have always known: We know very little about ourselves -- the habits and hunches that shape our choices before we know we are choosing. But can neuroscience offer insight into not just the way we are, but the way we ought to be?" Read the rest HERE.

b.

Nicholas Wolterstorff on Being a Christian Scholar

2011-06-29T00:02:00.003-04:00

From Emerging Scholars Network: "The mode of the Christian's participation in these on-going, ever-changing, social practices [i.e., various academic disciplines] is to think with a Christian mind and to speak with a Christian voice. When engaging in, say, sociology with a Christian mind, one will sometimes find oneself critical of what is going on in some part of sociology: one will find the assumptions being made about human nature mistaken, one will find the emphasis skewed, one will find the issues discussed unimportant, and so forth. One will then find oneself launching a critique of this part of sociology, and beyond that, trying to do it differently and better. At other times, when thinking with a Christian mind one will find what is going on in some part of one's discipline quite okay. Being a Christian scholar requires this sort of discernment. I mentioned that many different things contribute to those social practices which are the academic disciplines taking the form they do take -- new technological developments, for example. Among the most important things shaping the academic disciplines are worldviews. I think the Christian scholar will be especially attentive to those worldviews, and will be especially alert to those points where the discipline-shaping worldview conflicts with the worldview embedded in Christianity." Read the rest HERE.

b.

A Eucharistic Flash Mob in the United Kingdom

2011-06-28T14:22:00.001-04:00

Female Priests Defy Catholic Church

2011-06-13T18:59:00.003-04:00

From NPR: "In 2002, seven women were secretly ordained as priests by two Roman Catholic bishops in Germany. After their ordination, a kind of domino effect ensued. Those seven women went on to ordain other women, and a movement to ordain female priests all around the world was born. The movement, named Roman Catholic Womenpriests, says more than a hundred women have been ordained since 2002, and two-thirds of them are in the U.S. On a recent June day in Maryland, four more women were ordained as priests. The gallery at St. John's United Church of Christ was filled with Catholic priests and nuns, there to support the women and the ordination movement -- though visitors were asked not to photograph them. Witnessing the ceremony was enough to risk excommunication. The audience turned to watch as the women made their way down the aisle, beaming like brides. The two-and-a-half-hour ceremony ended with Holy Communion -- the moment they'd been waiting for. Each woman performed the rites for the first time as a priest, breaking bread and serving wine as tears of joy flowed down their faces." Read the rest HERE.

b.

Does Being a Faith Minority Cause Brain Shrinkage?

2011-06-13T14:00:00.004-04:00

From PLoS ONE: "Despite a growing interest in the ways spiritual beliefs and practices are reflected in brain activity, there have been relatively few studies using neuroimaging data to assess potential relationships between religious factors and structural neuroanatomy. This study examined prospective relationships between religious factors and hippocampal volume change using high-resolution MRI data of a sample of 268 older adults. Religious factors assessed included life-changing religious experiences, spiritual practices, and religious group membership. ...Significantly greater hippocampal atrophy was observed for participants reporting a life-changing religious experience. Significantly greater hippocampal atrophy was also observed from baseline to final assessment among born-again Protestants, Catholics, and those with no religious affiliation, compared with Protestants not identifying as born-again. These associations were not explained by psychosocial or demographic factors, or baseline cerebral volume. Hippocampal volume has been linked to clinical outcomes, such as depression, dementia, and Alzheimer's Disease. The findings of this study indicate that hippocampal atrophy in late life may be uniquely influenced by certain types of religious factors." Read more HERE.

b.

Ten Things CNN's Belief Blog Learned in its First Year

2011-06-13T13:02:00.003-04:00

From CNN: "In case you were wondering about all the balloons and cake: CNN's Belief Blog has just marked its first birthday. After publishing 1,840 posts and sifting through 452,603 comments (OK, we may have missed one or two) the Belief Blog feels older than its 12 months would suggest. But it also feels wiser, having followed the faith angles of big news stories, commissioned lots of commentary and, yes, paid attention to all those reader comments for a solid year. 10 things we've learned: (1) Every big news story has a faith angle. (2) Atheists are the most fervent commenters on matters religious. (3) People are still intensely curious about the Bible, its meaning and its origins. (4) Most Americans are religiously illiterate. (5) It's impossible to understand much of the news without knowing something about religion. (6) Regardless of where they fit on the spectrum, people want others to understand what they believe. (7) Americans still have an uneasy relationship with Islam. (8) God may not prevent natural disasters, but religion is always a big part of the response. (9) Apocalyptic movements come and go. (10) Most Americans don't know that President Barack Obama is a Christian." Read the rest HERE.

b.

Female Muslim Weightlifter Sparks Controversy

2011-06-13T12:46:00.004-04:00

From CNN: "Kulsoom Abdullah is a 35-year-old with a doctorate in electrical and computer engineering. But it's her passion outside of work that has put her at the center of a debate -- one that could affect athletic competitions worldwide, even the Olympics. Later this month, the International Weightlifting Federation will take up the question of whether Abdullah may take part in officially sanctioned tournaments while keeping her entire body covered, aside from her hands and face, in keeping with her Muslim faith. 'It's what I believe in. It's what I've chosen to do,' Abdullah tells CNN of her decision to wear modest garb. 'I've always dressed this way publicly.' Abdullah is not an Olympic athlete, but enjoys lifting weights. She can deadlift 245 pounds (111 kg) and get up 105 pounds (47.5 kg) in the snatch, in which the competitor lifts the barbell from the floor to over her head in a single motion. She likes to compete with other women in her weight class -- she generally weighs in the 106-pound (48 kg) or 117-pound (53 kg) classifications. 'I guess it's empowering,' she says." Read the rest HERE.

b.

Cohabitation as Contemporary Concubinage

2011-06-10T22:36:00.004-04:00

From Salvo Magazine: "In ancient times, there was an option for a man who desired a regular sex partner but did not wish to marry her. He could take a low-status woman as a concubine. He could enjoy her company as long as it pleased him, and he could dismiss her at any time. The man made no promises and signed no contract; consequently, the concubine had few legal protections. Any children that she bore would have an inferior legal status. The early Church fought long and hard against concubinage. It insisted that such a sexual relationship, without the permanent and total commitment expressed in marriage vows, was immoral and unjust. Over the course of a thousand years, concubinage retreated into the shadows of social disapproval. In the past 40 years, it seems, concubinage has come to light again under a different name. Like ancient concubinage, contemporary cohabitation is a deliberately ambiguous relationship. The partners make no promises and have no legal obligations to one another. The arrangement has no specified duration and can be terminated at a moment's notice. Those who cohabit tend to be of lower social status. Their children, on average, do not fare as well as children born to married couples." Read the rest HERE.

b.

Don't Judge a Wine by its Label?

2011-06-09T14:37:00.003-04:00

From New York Magazine: "Like plenty of normal people, I buy wine mostly based on the label. Sure, price is important -- and those little cards with the scores help, too -- but, frankly, if I do not like the label, I will not buy the wine, simple as that. You know that wine with the three moose wearing sunglasses? It's called 3 Blind Moose? Yeah: I hate that label. I will never buy that wine. This is actually reasonable, I think. Unless you have an extensive knowledge of regions and grapes, the wine you choose is simply not going to matter all that much. What's the worst that can happen? Unless it literally tastes like those sweat socks that wine people insist on using as a flavor comparison, you still end up with a bottle of wine you can drink. And last time I checked, a bottle of wine will get you nicely buzzed with your friends over the course of an evening no matter what you choose. So why not choose based on the label?" Read the rest HERE.

b.

Christ in the City

2011-06-08T14:23:00.004-04:00

From Books and Culture: "A while back I was speaking with a man new to New York from Ethiopia. Describing his Harlem neighborhood, with an expression of amazement, he observed, 'There are churches everywhere!' He saw what few seem able to see -- a religious life intricately woven into the urban fabric. Helping us all to see something of the vibrant and diverse world of Christian faith in America's cities is Camilo José Vergara's How the Other Half Worships. A work of both documentary photography and sociological reflection on inner-city churches, How the Other Half Worships is a major study of urban religion and Christianity in America. With more than 300 photographs, Vergara helps visualize a determined and vibrant life of Christian faith. He is informing us about an ecclesiastical world few outside the churches themselves know much about." Read the rest HERE.

b.

The Promise of Catholic Calvinism?

2011-05-27T18:47:00.002-04:00

From Perspectives: "In our day, the Reformed tradition is in dire need of recovering the Catholic dimension of our heritage. Calvin and other Reformers did not, in fact, seek radical revision of a Nicene doctrine of the Trinity and a Chalcedonian Christology; moreover, the sacramental theology of Luther, Calvin, and even Zwingli was much closer to the patristic theology of Augustine, for example, than the highly cognitive memorialism that takes place in many of today's Reformed churches. ...[W]hy speak of a 'Catholic Calvinism?' I choose to speak this way because it highlights what is missing in many understandings of Reformed Christianity: the Trinitarian, Christological and sacramental theology about which classical Reformed theology owes great debts to patristic reflection. The term 'Catholic' captures some of what has been lost by Reformed churches on the 'left' and 'right' that have fallen into a 'mere Christianity' that is a reduced Christianity. If Reformed Christianity in America is to recover from the paralyzing reductionisms of the Enlightenment, it must retrieve riches from the premodern Reformed tradition -- from the patristic theological tradition that Calvin and many later Reformed theologians so admired." Read the rest HERE.

b.

Civil Unions versus Holy Matrimony

2011-05-27T17:37:00.004-04:00

From Patheos.com: "The institution of marriage has been in trouble for a long time, and the greatest threat it faces is not gay marriage. It is the careless attitude with which marriage is regarded by modern westerners. For many, marriage is merely a matter of personal convenience, susceptible to termination for just about any reason, including a simple waning of interest in your spouse. Making binding promises before God has nothing to do with it. No wonder that many in our culture imagine that a 'marriage' could be between people of the same sex. If marriage is all about individual preference, why not define it however you want? It it's just about two people making a temporary agreement, then why should consenting adults not be allowed to define the terms of their agreement however they please? I want to propose a radical solution to this problem. Churches should stop performing marriages. Let me explain. Pastors should consider no longer performing the civil ceremonies of weddings; instead, they could explain to prospective brides and grooms that if they want a state marriage certificate, then they should go see the judge. But if they also want a biblical marriage -- let's use the old-fashioned term matrimony, to distinguish it from our nearly meaningless legal concept of 'marriage' -- then the church can help them." Read the rest HERE.

b.

Did Religion Create Civilization?

2011-05-25T19:16:00.005-04:00

From The Huffington Post: "For years, historians, archeologists, anthropologists and pretty much all of the other 'ologists' have agreed that agriculture created civilization, including religion, as we have known it for the past 12,000 to 15,000 years. The assumption was that settling down to lives of farming, people built cities, created art and made up organized religions to suit the new needs they faced in the transition from hunter-gathers to farmers. Or not. New evidence suggests that it was not agriculture which created civilization, but religion. The June issue of National Geographic offers a brief and provocative story from a place in Turkey known as Göbekli Tepe, site of the world's oldest example of monumental architecture, i.e., a temple. While the interpretation of archeological remains is often as much art as it is science, there is plenty of reason to believe that in Göbekli Tepe people's need/desire to gather for worship is what created civilization, not the reverse, as was previously assumed. ...[T]he assumption that something cannot be both deeply religious and deeply rooted in human impulse and capacity may be one of the idols which need to be smashed." Read the rest HERE.

b.

"I don't believe in God, but if it works for you..."

2011-05-17T16:12:00.004-04:00

"There is something wholly self-defeating, so it seems to me, in [this] posture. If we take this position, then we can't say, for example, that Christianity is right and Buddhism wrong; as Christians, we don't disagree with the Buddhists; and we take this stance in an effort to avoid self-exultation and imperialism. But we do something from the point of view of intellectual imperialism and self-exultation that is much worse: we now declare that everyone is mistaken here, everyone except for ourselves and a few other enlightened souls. We and our graduate students know the truth; everyone else is sadly mistaken. Isn't this to exult ourselves at the expense of nearly everyone else? Those who think there really is such a person as God are benighted, unsophisticated, unaware of the real truth of the matter, which is that there isn't any such person (even if thinking there is can lead to practical fruits). We see Christians as deeply mistaken; of course we pay the same compliment to the practitioners of the other great religions; we are equal-opportunity animadverters. We benevolently regard the rest of humanity as misguided; no doubt their hearts are in the right place; still, they are sadly mistaken about what they take to be most important and precious. I find it hard to see how this attitude is a manifestation of tolerance or intellectual humility: it looks more like patronizing condescension."

Alvin Plantinga. 2000. Warranted Christian Belief. New York: Oxford University Press. p. 62.

b.

Can Someone Please Explain Faith?

2011-05-16T15:39:00.004-04:00

From Patheos.com: "Christian readers, are you honestly just as sure that the Son of God rose from the dead as you are that the sun will rise in the east tomorrow? For the safety of those around you, I sure hope not. If you do think both events are equally probable, please carry a pair of earplugs in your back pocket at all times. If a theologian ever starts ranting about God's desire for you to fly a plane into a building, or His need to see you gut your son in an act of unflinching faith, please promptly insert the earplugs and walk away. Faith lacking reason is dangerous, but what about reason lacking faith? Again, it's a game of probabilities, and, as an atheist, I have yet to find a religion or an argument that convinces me a theistic God is more probable than no God. Atheists do not make any radical claims about reality; we don't stray far from the path of probabilities revealed by science. ...If the same tool [faith] is used to construct all religions, then how can we assert one religion's claim to Truth over another? If Muslims, for example, use faith to claim Muhammad is the last prophet of God and Christians use faith to claim Jesus is the Son of God, how can either side claim Truth with a straight face and a clear conscience?" Read the rest HERE.

b.

Presbyterian Church Votes to Ordain LGBTQ Pastors

2011-05-12T15:53:00.001-04:00

From The New York Times: "After 33 years of debate, the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) has voted to change its constitution and allow openly gay people in same-sex relationships to be ordained as ministers, elders and deacons. The outcome is a reversal from only two years ago, when a majority of the church's regions, known as presbyteries, voted against ordaining openly gay candidates. This time, 19 of the church's 173 presbyteries switched their votes from no to yes in recent months. The Twin Cities presbytery, which covers Minneapolis and St. Paul, cast the deciding vote at its meeting on Tuesday. The vote was 205 to 56, with 3 abstentions. Cynthia Bolbach, moderator of the church's General Assembly, its highest legislative body, said in a phone interview from Minneapolis after the vote: 'Everyone was civil. There was no applause, no cheering. It was just reflective of the fact that we are moving forward one other step.' ...'All of us are surprised,' said the Rev. Gradye Parsons, the church's stated clerk, its highest elected official. He attributed the turnabout in the votes to both the growing acceptance of homosexuality in the larger culture, and to church members simply wearying of the conflict." Read the rest HERE.

b.

What Young Men Really Need

2011-05-09T21:42:00.047-04:00

A recent trend in journalism and even academic publishing seems to be to disparage twenty-something men in the United States. To offer only a few of several possible examples: In 2010 alone, we saw an article in The Atlantic proclaim "The End of Men" (Rosin 2010), which was recommended on facebook by more than 36,000 people. (For the sake of comparison, this is about one-third the number of people who shared the original CNN article announcing Bin Laden's death.); In The New York Times one writer asked, "What Is It About 20-Somethings" (Marantz Henig 2010), and proceeded to reflect on the apparent inability and unwillingness for so many young men (and women, actually) to "grow up"; The cover of the May 24th issue of The New Yorker depicted a young man (with no wedding ring) proudly hanging his freshly minted Ph.D. on the wall of his childhood bedroom while his parents looked on with concern. Examples of such publications disparaging young men could be multiplied from 2010 alone. [1]

Looking slightly prior to 2010, one will find even more analyses of the life-course and moral character of young men in the United States. In an article published in City Journal, Kay S. Hymowitz (2008) analyzed the role of commercial media in constructing a kind of "Child-Man in the Promised Land." David Brooks (2007) wrote in The New York Times about "The Odyssey Years" and "the decade of wandering" in which young men struggle to attain university degrees and to make more money than women of the same age range. Michael Kimmel (2008) wrote of "Guyland" as "the perilous world where boys become men." Leonard Sax (2007) drew from his experience as a clinical psychologist to explain five sociological factors that he thinks are driving "the growing epidemic of unmotivated boys and underachieving young men." Guy Garcia (2008) highlights and explains "The Decline of Men," and, as his book's subtitle suggests, "How the American Male Is Getting Axed, Giving Up, and Flipping Off His Future." Again, examples could be multiplied. [2]

Just in the first two months of 2011, this trend has continued. Hannah Rosin, for example, asked, "Are Women Leaving Men Behind?" in the new global economy in a popular TED talk which was featured in an article on CNN online. Kay S. Hymowitz (2011) wrote an article for The Wall Street Journal, liked on facebook by more than 121,000 people (more than the news of Bin Laden's death from CNN), posing the question: "Where have the good men gone?" She concluded that we "shouldn't be surprised" by the unprecedented level of immaturity embodied by men in their twenties today, and that "No one needs them anyway. There's nothing they have to do. They might as well just have another beer." This article was only a precursor to her book (2011) entitled, Manning Up: How the Rise of Women Has Turned Men into Boys. In Slate Magazine, Regnerus (2011) argued that the rules of supply and demand in today's "sexual market" have generated a self-perpetuating causal loop among young men in the United States of underachievement and premarital sex. NPR featured a spot entitled, "'Pre-Adulthood' Separates The Men From The Boys." And all of these were published in the first two months of 2011. [3]

That seems like a lot to me, and I think they all make a good point. At least with me, as a 24-year-old unmarried male, you have accomplished your goal. You have taught me something. I have read all of your articles and I have heard your messages. Thank you. I agree with you and I really do appreciate it. I have even passed your concerns along to many of my fellow twenty-something male friends. We needed publications such as these to draw our attention to this sociological and economic phenomenon and its very real consequences. So now what? I am convinced that what men (and women) do not need is more alarmist books and articles that criticize, disparage, sneer at, and belittle the moral character and personal capacities of an entire cohort of young men in the United States. Such publications might well point out legitimate areas of sociological, moral, religious, and economic concern, but they will not solve a cultural problem. We need something altogether different -- something more demanding and difficult. What, then, do young men really need? I recommend the following five points to start with.

WHAT YOUNG MEN REALLY NEED

First, we need good male role models. Emerging into flourishing and responsible male adulthood is not something that just happens naturally with time. It inevitably requires the constant attention, teaching, instruction, care, and interest of good responsible adult men who have journeyed the path that we desire to go down to teach us how to be the men we ought to be. Young emerging adult "guys" in their late-teens and twenties need older, experienced, and successful men from our communities, from our churches, from our universities, and (here's a crazy idea) our own fathers to teach and model for us how (and why) to get where we want and need to go as young men. Tell us. Instruct us. Show us. We're listening and open to suggestions. We are not a lost cause. If you want young men to earn a degree, take responsibility for their own actions, marry a woman, nurture a lifelong marriage, raise godly children, provide for their families, and flourish as human persons, then we need older, mature, adult, high-quality men in our lives as role models to teach and show us how to do it and to tell us why.

Second, we need to be called out and convicted. It is certainly easy and oftentimes even fun to live a life of immaturity, immorality, recklessness, and irresponsibility as a young man in the United States. It isn't that bad. In fact, it can be quite good and rewarding. And that is part of the problem. In my view, then, what young men need is not more popular media articles pointing out that we are living this way ("So what? It has been working just fine for me," we'll say). Such a perspective is consistent with the individualistic, relativistic, and utilitarian ethic that colors so much of American life today, especially among emerging adults. [4] "So what?" "Whatever," "True for me," and "Who's to say?" are the mottos of my generation. What young men need, instead, is a higher and objective moral standard that stands above and thus serves as a benchmark against which to judge and measure our own desires, decisions, choices, and preferences. [5] What young men today think or believe to be morally good or acceptable ("for them") may not in reality be morally good, as a way of life, and when we are living in error, we need to be corrected and personally convicted. The best way to proceed in this regard is to readopt an essentially Aristotelian virtue ethic [6] that proscribes the notion of a human life objectively well lived, that emphasizes personal moral character rather than obligation, rules, or anticipated consequences, and that is directed toward human life's ontologically real and thus unavoidable teleological end.

Third, we need to be courageous, take risks, and give up on certainty. I personally know a small number of young men (and women) who, immediately after completing an undergraduate degree, have decided to do nothing with their lives other than to "wait on the Lord" and to "sense His calling on my life." They literally sit around and play video games (and presumably pray and wait for a powerful feeling) for a year or two. In the Evangelical community in the United States, and especially among well-intentioned and devout young men, such a theological perspective on life, personal decision-making, God's nature and revelation, and the way that He directs the lives of His followers is crippling a generation. As far as I can figure, the triune God of the Bible does not work that way when it comes to making any personal decisions, including those about dating, courtship, marriage, graduate education, and career. Do what is wise and within the moral will of God as revealed in the Bible, and trust that God is sovereignly working all things together for our good and His glory. "We must renounce our sinful desire to know the future and to be in control. We are not gods. We walk by faith, not by sight. We risk because God does not risk." [7]

Fourth, we need a mission, something for which to live and strive. Too many young men that I know are living for and pursuing absolutely nothing -- or at least nothing that is of worthwhile and lasting value. Shiny rims on their car, a pleasurable albeit fleeting sexual experience, getting drunk or stoned, the far- off chance of becoming a famous musician -- it is as if they have made a chorus from Cypress Hill the theme song of their life ("So you wanna be a rock superstar, and live large; a big house, five cars…"). I have found that if you actually ask them, the majority of young men in the United States today cannot articulate or in some cases even imagine a coherent, consistent, deeply considered, and meaningful direction, purpose, or mission for life toward which they have committed themselves and are therefore actively striving. We need more. The global consumerist economy and the taken-for-granted organizing principle of modern atomistic individualism seem together in many cases to have created some kind of self-focused, sexually charged animal who is disconnected from and incapable of considering any larger sense of self-transcendence, meaning, purpose, mission, direction, drive, proper end, or the common good. We need a mission.

Fifth, we need mature, responsible, high-quality young women. This is a packaged deal. It is impossible to have mature, responsible, godly, adult young men without also having mature, responsible, godly young women. For as long as marriage, parenthood, and family formation are marks of what it means to have entered full-fledged male adulthood, the mark of respectable and morally good manhood will inescapably hinge upon the presence and availability of respectable and morally good womanhood. Genesis 2:18: "The Lord God said, 'It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him.'" We need suitable female helpers. As long as the man is alone, on average (i.e., not in every case), the moral character of young men in the United States will continue to decline. My intention here is not to blame young women for the problems with young men. I simply want to make clear that as long as what it means to be an adult man of godly character includes the ways we relate to women -- in terms of sexuality, finances, marriage, career, etc. -- a lack of young women of godly character will both produce and sustain the lack of young men of godly character.

CONCLUSION

What do young men really need? To start, young men do not need any more alarmist books and articles that criticize, disparage, sneer at, and belittle our moral character and personal capacities. Instead, we need (1) older, mature, adult male role models to teach and show us what to do and why; (2) to be called out and convicted away from a life of immaturity, immorality, recklessness, and irresponsibility and instead toward the higher standard of a life objectively well lived; (3) to be courageous, take risks, give up on certainty, and do what is wise rather than passively waiting to feel called by God one way or another; (4) a mission -- something higher for which to live and strive; and (5) mature young women of godly character to help us and with whom to get married and form families. It is my hope that as we move on into unchartered cultural waters, "emerging adulthood" for young men in the United States today will live up to the name and, in the end, be a period of life that forms us and prepares us actually to emerge fully as the men that we ought to be. As the cultural problem of young "guys," rather than men, has spilled over into the church, I hope that these needs and others are recognized and met.

b.

[1] Rosin, Hanna. 2010. "The End of Men." The Atlantic. July/August 2010; Marantz Henig, Robin. 2010. "What Is It About 20-Somethings?" The New York Times, August 18, 2010; Cover of The New Yorker, May 24, 2010. See also Ludwig, Devin. 2010. "Challenges of the Young Adult Generation." The Huffington Post, August 23, 2010; Cohen, Patricia. 2010. "Long Road to Adulthood Is Growing Even Longer." The New York Times, June 12, 2010; Mohler, Jr., R. Albert. 2010. "Why Aren't 'Emerging Adults' Emerging as Adults?" The Christian Post, August 23, 2010. All the while, professors of developmental psychology and human development argued that the delay of adulthood in the United States could in fact be a good thing (e.g., Arnett, Jeffrey Jensen. 2010. "Oh, Grow Up! Generational Grumbling and the New Life Stage of Emerging Adulthood -- Commentary on Trzesniewski & Donnellan." Perspectives on Psychological Science 5: 89-92; Settersten, Richard, and Barbara E. Ray. 2010. Not Quite Adults: Why 20-Somethings Are Choosing a Slower Path to Adulthood, and Why It's Good for Everyone. New York: Bantam Books.) For a broader handling of this issue, see Arnett, Jeffrey Jensen. 2010. Adolescence and Emerging Adulthood: A Cultural Approach, fourth edition. Boston: Prentice Hall. Notice that all of these were published in 2010.

[2] Hymowitz, Kay S. 2008. "Child-Man in the Promised Land." City Journal (Winter) 18:1; Brooks, David. 2007. "The Odyssey Years." The New York Times, October 9, 2007; Kimmel, Michael. 2008. Guyland: The Perilous World Where Boys Become Men. New York: Harper Collins Publishers; Sax, Leonard. 2007. Boys Adrift: The Five Factors Driving the Growing Epidemic of Unmotivated Boys and Underachieving Young Men. New York: Basic Books; Garcia, Guy. 2008. The Decline of Men: How the American Male Is Getting Axed, Giving Up, and Flipping Off His Future. New York: Harper-Collins Publishers. See also West, Diana. 2007. The Death of the Grown-Up: How America's Arrested Development is Bringing Down Western Civilization. New York: St. Martin's Griffin. For less normatively charged and non-gender-specific scholarly analyses of the "emerging adulthood" phenomenon in the last few years, see Andrew, Megan, Jennifer Eggerling-Boeck, Gary Sandefur, and Buffy Smith. 2007. "The 'Inner Side' of the Transition to Adulthood: How Young Adults See the Process of Becoming an Adult." Pp. 225-251 in Advances in Life Course Research: Constructing Adulthood: Agency and Subjectivity in Adolescence and Adulthood, Volume 11. Ross Macmillan (ed.). JAI Press; Arnett, Jeffrey Jensen, and Jennifer Lynn Tanner (Eds.). 2006. Emerging Adults in America: Coming of Age in the 21st Century. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association; Arnett, Jeffrey Jensen. 2007a. "Emerging Adulthood: What Is It, and What Is It Good For?" Child Development Perspectives 1: 68-73; Arnett, Jeffrey Jensen. 2007b. "Suffering, Selfish, Slackers? Myth and Reality on Emerging Adults." Journal of Youth and Adolescence 36: 23-29; Carroll, J.S., Willoughby, B., Badger, S., Nelson, L.J., Barry, C.M., and Madsen, S.D. 2007. "So Close, Yet So Far Away: The Impact of Varying Marital Horizons on Emerging Adulthood." Journal of Adolescent Research 22: 219-247; Neighmond, Patti. 2007. "'Generation Next' in the Slow Lane to Adulthood." National Public Radio, December 20, 2007; Nelson, L.J., Padilla-Walker, L.M., Carroll, J.S., Madsen, S., Barry, C.M., and Badger, S. 2007. "'If you want me to treat you like an adult, start acting like one!' Comparing the Criteria That Emerging Adults and Their Parents Have for Adulthood." Journal of Family Psychology 21: 665-674; Smith, Christian. 2007. "Getting a Life: The Challenge of Emerging Adulthood." Books & Culture: A Christian Review. November/December. pp. 10-13. Smith, Christian, with Patricia Snell. 2009. Souls in Transition: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of Emerging Adults. New York: Oxford University Press; Twenge, Jean M. 2006. Generation Me: Why Today's Young Americans Are More Confident, Assertive, Entitled -- and More Miserable Than Ever Before. New York: Free Press. And less directly: Wuthnow, Robert. 2007. After the Baby Boomers: How Twenty- and Thirty-Somethings Are Shaping the Future of American Religion. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

[3] Rosin, Hanna. 2011. "Are Women Leaving Men Behind?" CNN, January 11. TED Talk; Hymowitz, Kay S. 2011. "Where Have The Good Men Gone?" The Wall Street Journal, February 19, 2011; Hymowitz, Kay S. 2011. Manning Up: How the Rise of Women Has Turned Men into Boys. New York: Basic Books. In academia, also see Barry, C.M., Nelson, L.J., Davarya, S., and Urry, S. (in press) "Religiosity and Spirituality during the Transition to Adulthood." International Journal of Behavioral Development; Nelson, L.J., Padilla-Walker, L.M., and Carroll, J.S. (in press). "'I Believe It Is Wrong But I Still Do It': A Comparison of Religious Young Men Who Do Versus Do Not Use Pornography." Psychology of Religion and Spirituality.

[4] Bellah, Robert N., Richard Madsen, William M. Sullivan, Ann Swidler, and Steven M. Tipton. 1985. Habits of the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in American Life. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press; Putnam, Robert D. 2000. Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community. New York: Simon and Schuster; Smith, Christian, with Patricia Snell. 2009. Souls in Transition: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of Emerging Adults. New York: Oxford University Press.

[5] Taylor, Charles. 1989. Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity. Cambridge: Harvard University Press; Smith, Christian. 2003. Moral, Believing Animals: Human Personhood and Culture. New York: Oxford University Press.

[6] For more information on virtue ethics, and how it relates to competing ethical systems, see Alasdair MacIntyre. 1981. After Virtue. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press; Rosalind Hursthouse. 2002. On Virtue Ethics. New York: Oxford University Press; Philippa Foot. 2001. Natural Goodness. New York: Oxford University Press; Richard Kraut. 2007. What Is Good and Why: The Ethics of Well-Being. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press; Stephen Gardiner (ed.). 2005. Virtue Ethics, Old and New. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press; Roger Crisp and Michael Slote (eds.). 1997. Virtue Ethics. New York: Oxford University Press; Roger Crisp. 1996. How Should One Live? Essays on the Virtues. New York: Oxford University Press; Christine Swanton. 2003. Virtue Ethics: A Pluralistic View. New York: Oxford University Press; Daniel Statman (ed.). 1997. Virtue Ethics: A Critical Reader. Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press; Stan Van Hooft. 2006. Understanding Virtue Ethics. Montreal: McGill-Queens University Press; Richard Taylor and John Donnelley. 2002. Virtue Ethics. Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books; Raymond Devettere. 2002. Introduction to Virtue Ethics: Insights of the Ancient Greeks. Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press; Aristotle. [ca. 350 BC] 2009. The Nicomachean Ethics. New York: Oxford University Press; G.E.M. Anscombe. 1958. "Modern Moral Philosophy." Philosophy 33: 1-19; Philippa Foot. 1978. Virtues and Vices. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.

[7] DeYoung, Kevin. 2009. Just Do Something: A Liberating Approach to Finding God's Will, or, How to Make a Decision Without Dreams, Visions, Fleeces, Impressions, Open Doors, Random Bible Verses, Casting Lots, Liver Shivers, Writing in the Sky, Etc. Chicago, IL: Moody Publishers. p. 48. For more on this theological perspective, see Garry Friesen with J. Robin Maxson. [1980] 2004. Decision Making and the Will of God. 25th Anniversary Edition. Colorado Springs, CO: Multnomah Books; Henry and Richard Blackaby, Garry Friesen, and Gordon T. Smith. 2009. How Then Should We Choose? Three Views on God's Will and Decision Making. Douglas S. Huffman (ed.). Grand Rapids, MI: Kregel Publications. In terms of how the rules of the "manhood" game remain uncertain and oftentimes change as we play, see Calvin-ball, from the famous Calvin and Hobbes cartoon: "Other kids' games are all such a bore! They've gotta have rules and they gotta keep score! Calvin-ball is better by far! It's never the same! It's always bizarre! You don't need a team or a referee! You know that it's great, 'cause it's named after me!" Or again: "The only permanent rule in Calvin-ball is that you can't play it the same way twice!" Once again: "This is a poem! Please do what you're told! And here is a bucket, of water, ice-cold! Please take this water, and dump it on me! Don't hesitate! Do it A.S.A.P.!"

You Are A Tourist

2011-05-06T23:49:00.000-04:00

Pierre Bourdieu was a Horrible Writer

2011-05-05T15:26:00.006-04:00

Aside from the opaqueness, notice that this is all one sentence: "The conjuncture capable of transforming practices objectively coordinated because subordinated to partially or wholly identical objective necessities, into collective action (e.g., revolutionary action) is constituted in the dialectical relationship between, on the one hand, a habitus, understood as a system of lasting, transposable dispositions which, integrating past experiences, functions at every moment as a matrix of perceptions, appreciations, and actions and makes possible the achievement of infinitely diversified tasks, thanks to analogical transfers of schemes permitting the solution of similarly shaped problems, and thanks to the unceasing corrections of the results obtained, dialectically produced by those results, and on the other hand, an objective event which exerts its action of conditional stimulation calling for or demanding a determinate response, only on those who are disposed to constitute it as such because they are endowed with a determinate type of dispositions (which are amenable to reduplication and reinforcement by the 'awakening of class consciousness,' that is, by the direct or indirect possession of a discourse capable of securing symbolic mastery of the practically mastered principles of the class habitus)."

Bourdieu, Pierre. [1972] 1977. Outline of a Theory of Practice. Translated by Richard Nice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp. 82-83.

b.

From Participant Observation to Observant Participation

2011-05-01T14:04:00.004-04:00

"The idea that guided me here was to push the logic of participant observation to the point where it becomes inverted and turns into observant participation. In the Anglo-American tradition, when anthropology students first go into the field, they are cautioned, 'Don't go native.' In the French tradition, radical immersion is admissible -- think of Jeanne Favret-Saada's ([1978] 1980) Deadly Words -- but only on condition that it be coupled with a subjectivist epistemology which gets us lost in the inner depths of the anthropologist-subject. My position, on the contrary, is to say, 'go native' but 'go native armed,' that is, equipped with your theoretical and methodological tools, with the full store of problematics inherited from your discipline, with your capacity for reflexivity and analysis, and guided by a constant effort, once you have passed the ordeal of initiation, to objectivize this experience and construct the object, instead of allowing yourself to be naively embraced and constructed by it. Go ahead, go native, but come back a sociologist!"

Wacquant, Loïc. 2009. "Habitus as Topic and Tool: Reflections on Becoming a Prizefighter." Pp. 137-151 in Ethnographies Revisited: Constructing Theory in the Field. Antony J. Puddephatt, William Shaffir, and Steven W. Kleinknecht (eds.). New York: Routledge.

b.

New LGBTQ Group Forms at Wheaton College

2011-04-30T15:14:00.003-04:00

"OneWheaton is an alumni group reaching out to the student body to tell them our stories -- that there is hope for a life fully lived by embracing both yourself and your neighbor. For LGBTQ and questioning students our lives are witness to the fact that outside the Wheaton bubble things get better. Yet, we remember the limited or one-sided debates we heard as students and believe our stories often get lost, marginalized or discredited in Wheaton's conversations about sexuality. The prevailing ideas about homosexuality in the evangelical community don't take into account our stories of joy, faith and wholeness. Our letter to the students was written with the intent of making audible our voices so that a new conversation may develop. ...From our viewpoint, the message spoken in chapel and on Wheaton's campus that homosexuality is a tragic expression of our sinful nature and thus needs to be 'treated' or abstained from is not only ignorant of the nature of love but deeply injuring to those it attempts to love. We do not believe there is anything wrong with being gay. We don't just believe otherwise, we live happily, and even faithfully, otherwise. We are joining the conversation at Wheaton to show students that they have the option to live without shame and self-hatred." Visit OneWheaton HERE and download the press release HERE.

b.

LGBTQ Groups at Evangelical Universities

2011-04-30T14:45:00.004-04:00

From The New York Times: "Battles for acceptance by gay and lesbian students have erupted in the places that expect it the least: the scores of Bible colleges and evangelical Christian universities that, in their founding beliefs, see homosexuality as a sin. Decades after the gay rights movement swept the country’s secular schools, more gays and lesbians at Christian colleges are starting to come out of the closet, demanding a right to proclaim their identities and form campus clubs, and rejecting suggestions to seek help in suppressing homosexual desires. Many of the newly assertive students grew up as Christians and developed a sense of their sexual identities only after starting college, and after years of inner torment. They spring from a new generation of evangelical youths that, over all, holds far less harsh views of homosexuality than its elders. But in their efforts to assert themselves, whether in campus clubs or more publicly on Facebook, gay students are running up against administrators who defend what they describe as God's law on sexual morality, and who must also answer to conservative trustees and alumni." Read the rest HERE.

b.

When Research Is Too Big To Fail

2011-04-26T14:35:00.005-04:00

From The Chronicle of Higher Education: "I was a member of the National Research Council's Committee to evaluate American Ph.D. programs, which released its long-anticipated assessment last fall. In the 1990s, I also served on a committee studying the same subject. After more than seven years trying to improve the quality of the data in the recent study, I was alone in refusing to sign off on it. Rather than write a dissent, which would have further delayed an already late report, I resigned from the committee before the assessment's publication. The report's quality was not worthy of publication, nor, I believe, did it live up to the standards that the National Academy of Sciences, which sponsored it, should set. With the evaluations continuing to generate interest and controversy -- indeed, the committee has just announced that it is releasing new data tables because of four 'substantive errors' -- it is time for me to say why I believe that the NRC study failed. More important, why was it not allowed to be seen as having failed? These questions raise a generic set of issues: How is politically relevant and multidisciplinary research derailed by social pressures? Why are unreliable results declared 'better than none?'" Read the rest HERE.

b.

It's Not About The Bunnies

2011-04-24T00:07:00.003-04:00

From The Washington Post: "It's not about bunnies. It's not about coloring eggs. It's not about chocolate. It's not about flowers. It's not even about spring or signs of 'new life' in nature after a long winter. So what is Easter about? It's about something almost terrifyingly serious: Jesus rose from the dead. That's one reason why Easter hasn't been completely subsumed by the consumer culture. (Though department stores and cheesy movies like 'Hop' try their best to do so.) Christmas, which can be cast as the cozy story of Mary and Joseph and their little baby Jesus surrounded by cuddly animals in a manger, is easily domesticated. Easily tamed. More easily sold to the masses. Easter, on the other hand, is untameable. The man whose followers imagined him to be the Messiah, the one who would forcefully, even violently, deliver them from the hands of their oppressors (For isn't that what the Baptist said?) was tried, beaten and executed like a common thug. What's more, after the crucifixion the Gospels portray the disciples not as stalwart stewards of their master's legacy, but as abject cowards, cowering behind locked doors for fear of someone trying to arrest them. Then on Easter Sunday everything changes. It changes so much that it's hard for them to take it in. In one of his first of Jesus's many 'appearances,' one of the women doesn't even recognize him. Several disciples refuse to believe the story -- one until he actually touches the man. But Christians believe, and I believe, that it's true: Christ has risen from the dead." Read the rest HERE.

b.