The Cescence of Scientia with an Aim Toward Vital Enrichment

The University of Chicago's spring convocation is going on today and yesterday, and yesterday the M.Div. was awarded to most of this blogs contributors (not that anyone's contributed anything for a while now). Bret, Jackie, Ciahnan, Vy, Ben, April, Hailmary, John, and myself all received the degree, with others to follow at various points next year. Jennifer D. received the M.A. in the Humanities. An immodest congratulations to all of us.

Blogroll Updates

I've made some updates to the blogroll on the right. CQD has started blogging on his own over on Wordpress, and after seeing his blog, I decided to follow suit. I will be blogging here too (as, I suspect, will CQD), but I've been having some post ideas of late that aren't quite in character here, and I'll also graduate soon, and it just seems fitting. Anyway, I've added CQD to the blogroll, and changed my link from my livejournal (which is mostly friends only anyway) to my wordpress blog. While I was at it, I fixed the link to Sandalstraps' Sanctuary, which had an extra / in it.

Senior Ministry Presentations

Most of us here at the Watchpost have been busy working on our senior ministry projects, which is probably the main reason the place has been pretty dead for awhile. We're sorry about that. Again.

Anyway, those of you who are in (or choose to pass through) Chicago will soon have the opportunity to come see what (if anything) we've learned in our M.Div. programs as we present the findings of our projects (for some reason, there are two projects that aren't on the website. I assume they haven't been scheduled yet).

For the benefit of... well, whoever, I would like to invite my classmates to post a short description of their projects and maybe a little blurb about their presentations on the Watchpost sometime in the next week or so. That way, our local readers (if we still have any) will know that they don't want to miss your presentation, and everybody else can see what sorts of things we've been up to.

***
Since it was my idea, I'll go first.

My project, should I happen to finish it, is a foray into constructive theology using Latin patristic and medieval sources. Think of it as an attempt to answer either of two questions: why should a liberal Protestant care about the Trinity or what does Jesus mean in commanding us to love God and our neighbor? Beginning with Augustine's formulation of the doctrine of the Trinity (in particular, his doctrine of the Holy Spirit as the love of the Father and the Son) and his interpretation of the most famous verses in 1 John, I follow the good bishop's argument in De trinitate VIII that through loving our neighbor, we have access to the Triune God. Building on that, I argue that when the Trinity cannot be discovered in an instance of love, that it is not really love, but rather a destructive impostor. I endeavor to make the case that rightly ordered love in which the Trinity is manifested holds together the love of self, God, and neighbor (hence my title), each of which naturally leads to the others and back. I borrow two four-step programs from Bernard of Clairvaux and Richard of St. Victor to explain how that happens. Depending on the time/number of pages that remain, I may begin to sketch some ethical and soteriological implications.

My presentation is on Wednesday, April 18th at 4:30 p.m. in Bond Chapel. It will begin with worship (lasting approximately 30 minutes) in which I'll demonstrate the findings of my project in liturgy and preaching, and then I will present a very condensed version of my paper and take questions. Anyone is welcome to come to either the service or the presentation (or, of course, both). I'll see about refreshments, but don't count on it.

We become the energy of the stars.

A quotation for exam week:

Spirit merges with matter to sanctify the universe. Matter transcends to return to spirit. The interchangeability of matter and spirit means the starlit magic of the outermost life of our universe becomes the soul-light magic of the innermost life of our self. The energy of the stars becomes us. We become the energy of the stars. Stardust and spirit unite and we begin: One with the universe. Whole and holy. From one source, endless creative energy, bursting forth, kinetic, elemental. We, the earth, air, water and fire-source of nearly fifteen billion years of cosmic spiraling.

-- Dennis Kucinich, 2002.

(HT Kos, via John Cole.)

Christianity on Film

A new post on Sophie Scholl: The Final Days at Through a Glass Darkly.

Ministry Conference!

If there are two sexier words in the English language, I don't know them. This year's ministry conference, which has been gestating for some time now in the fevered heads of myself and the other organizers, is ready to drop in two short months. The name is "Through a Glass Darkly:" The Church and Popular Culture in the Media Age. It's on May 4 at Swift Hall. Drop a line to ministryconference at gmail to register. There's a free lunch in it for the first hundred who sign up. Whetstone--I'm expecting you.

Naturally we have a website and a blog with many more details. I'll be posting some at the blog for the next few weeks and will put up links here.

Blessed are the Peacemakers.

Hi, everybody. Thanks for your thoughts and prayers as we recovered from the fire. Our apartment is almost back to normal. There are a few books that will always have discoloration from the smoke, (and Kafka's selected stories, which was in the bathroom, still has a campfire smell about it) but all in all, everything is fine.

Anyway, there's this new Christian Peace Webring. Strapso signed on. Good for him. Webrings aren't really my thing, but if one of the other bloggers here with admin. privledges wants to, he can sign us up. I'm not much of a pacifist, but Jesus probably was, so God is with the peacemakers.

As an appeasement for my remaining separate from the webtrend, I point you towards this excellent interview with Douglas Johnston from npr's "Speaking of Faith." Johnson practices "religious diplomacy" -- he goes off to Muslim countries (usually) and talks with religious leaders about the importance of peaceful co-operation and critical thinking. I was inspired and amazed by Mr. Johnston.

Shut up and be like Jesus

A novel concept in church renewal programs.

Incredibly, almost all of our stuff is fine.

This is the entryway to our apartment. The really dark spot is where the smoke came in most heavily from the space between the walls.

Our neighbor's apartment burned out on Sunday. It was pretty bad, but all we got was a ton of smoke. Everyone's fine, but it'll be a while before we and a bunch of our neighbors will be able to move back in. We have wonderful friends who are keeping our cats (one of whom we'll probably call smokey when we get over the shock of her having survived for an hour in an apartment filled with black smoke) for an indefinate period of time and another family from church who live down the block and are, amazingly, letting us stay in their spare room until God knows when. We're waiting on the landlord to put in new windows and clean up our bathroom, which is covered in sticky black tar. They have to fix the roof over the apartment that is on the other side of the wall in the above photo.

I've swept up most of the broken glass in the living room, and my computer works fine, I'm typing this on it, and the living room is a little bit trashed and smelly, but comfortable enough for me to use the internet. We can't sleep here until the windows are put in and the bathtub isn't black anymore. I'll post some more ridiculous photos soon, but we're going out to the bar when Laura gets back from Choir. That's soon. Life goes on.

Please pray, if you're so inclined, for our neighbors. They got hit a lot harder by fire and/or water. We got off lucky, with just tons of smoke and over-eager firefighters to clean up after. In spite of that, I can't imagine that anyone had more support throughout all this than Laura and I, who are blessed with a remarkable network of family and friends, from school, church and elsewhere. I pray in thanksgiving for them.

(Sandalstraps, I was totally about to write a post about music and theology when our neighbor banged on the door and told me to call the fire department. It'll come soon.

Best Contemporary Meme

Sandalstraps has tagged all of us in the contemporary theology meme, which challenges us to name three contemporary theological works (in the last 25 years) which we would nominate for a top 25 list. Thinking about this, I realized how appallingly little contemporary theology I read (and how little of what I have read has stuck with me). I wish I could read a few of the things I've seen listed in various places before giving my own answers. Alas, my education is pretty much on hold until early June while I finish my schooling. However, never one to refuse a meme tag, I offer these three (in no particular order):

Tanner, Kathryn. Jesus, Humanity, and the Trinity: A Brief Systematic Theology.

This is the book that got me into christology and Trinitarian theology, as well as patristics, and the footnotes of this volume will greatly inform my reading list once I'm finished with school.

Tracy, David. The Analogical Imagination: Christian Theology and the Culture of Pluralism.

I'm kind of cheating by listing this one because I haven't finished it, however it is a foundational work in the Chicago school in which I have been trained. I'm becoming pretty post-Chicago school myself (I think a lot of people around here are, possibly including Tracy), but it's important to understand what we're moving beyond.

Robinson, Marylinne. Gilead.

Speaking of cheating, this is a novel. That said, I think it could be read as a sort of applied theology (Ciahnan would be better to talk to about that), which in many ways is the only kind that really matters. On a personal note, I would add that this book has been very influential in the gradual epiphany I've been having for the past two years or so that I have both the call and the desire to be a pastor. And now that I think of it, this gradual epiphany climaxed more or less on the feast of the Epiphany. And to think I skipped church that day!

Yay! Winter Quarter! Or, Naively blundering through the classics of Western thought, part one.

It's January, which traditionally ranks in my top three least favorite months. It's a horse race between it, February and March, which seems to last 40 days in Chicago. This might change this year. I saw a Robin on Cornell the other day. A robin. In Chicago. In January. That's ridiculous. The Canadian geese are still in Washington Park. Fresh turds and scary looking birds all over the place. There's a nasty black slush that forms in the streets and on the sidewalks within three hours of snowfall in Chicago. People track it into grocery stores, which try in vain to fight it by laying out collapsed corrogated cardboard boxes all over the floors. In time, these disintegrate and add to the Winter miasma.

If the weather doesn't get to me, I think I'm (like a crazy person) taking four classes. One is for my ministry project, which is, uh, developing. I might be taking a class on contemporary continental philisophical readings of Heidegger's notion of the "open" and the animal aspects of human nature. I'll get to read some great literature for that class -- Rilke, Kafka, Sebald, Coetzee. I'm also filling two gaping holes in my grasp of, umm, the basic figures of intellectual history by taking courses focused on Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics and Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. Eating more vegetables is one of my New Year's resolutions.

So, I haven't been posting much. I have an idea, though. I bet a lot of us could do with some brushing up on their Kant and Aristotle. I'll post some interesting tidbits over the next eleven weeks as I drag my lazy ass through two of the monuments of Western Civilization. Today's lesson is from Aristotle:

But perhaps it appears somewhat uncontroversial to say that happiness is the chief good, and a more distinct statement of what it is is still required. Well, perhaps this would come about if one established the function of human beings. For just as for a flute-player, or a scuptor, or any expert, and generally for all those who have some characteristic function or activity, the good -- their doing well -- seems to reside in their function, so too it would seem to be for the human being, if indeed there is some function that belongs to [her]. So does a carpenter or a shoemaker have certain functions and activities, while a human being has none, and is by nature a do-nothing?

...What, then, should we suppose [the human function] to be? For being alive is obviously shared by plants, too, and we are looking for what is particular to human beings... Next to consider would be some sort of perception, but this, too, is evidently shared, by horses, oxen, and every other animal. There remains a practical sort of life of what possesses reason; and of this, one element 'possesses reason' in so far as it actually has it, and itself thinks. Since this life, too, is spoken of in two ways, we must posit the active life; for this seems to be called a practical life in the more proper sense. If the function of a human being is activity of soul in accordance with reason, or not apart from reason, and the function, we say, of a given sort of practitioner of that sort is generically the same, as for example in the case of a cithara-player and a good cithara-player, and this is so without qualification in all cases, when a difference in respect of excellence is added to the function (for what belongs to the citharist is to play the cithara, to the good citharist to play it well) -- if all this is so, and a human being's function we posit as being a kind of life, and this life as being activity of soul and actions accompanied by reason, and it belongs to a good man to perform these well and finely, and each thing is completed well when it possesses its proper excellence: if all this is so, the human good turns out to be activity of soul in accordance with excellence (and if there are more excellences than one, in accordance with the best and the most complete). But furthermore, it will be this in a complete life. For a single swallow does not make spring, nor does a single day; in the same way, neither does a single day, or a short time, make a man blessed and happy. (NE, I.7)

I'm not sure what to make of all this. I bet Aristotle has more to say about how we can judge between human excellences in favor of those that are "best and most complete." I'm curious.

I don't have any idea what Aristotle's going for with this:

a practical sort of life of what possesses reason; and of this, one element 'possesses reason' in so far as it actually has it, and itself thinks.

The commentary says that we'll learn more of this distinction in chapter 13 of Book I. Maybe I'll read that tomorrow, but it's not on the syllabus. Stay tooned.

A Common Misconception

Andrew Sullivan says something I'd really like to believe sometimes:

My main critique of certainty in "The Conservative Soul" is with respect to the divine. Since God is definitionally beyond human understanding, certainty about God's will on specific matters is something to be treated with appropriate skepticism and humility. That especially applies to politics, as the apolitical message of Jesus and Paul insists. Moreover, Anglo-American conservatism, from Burke onward, has always emphasized the uncertainty of unexpected consequences, the need for empirical reasoning, and the indispensability of practical wisdom - all enemies of unyielding dogma and abstract ideology. But dogma and ideology are what now pass for Republican wisdom.

Well, to be honest, there's one thing that's just plain annoying about this: Sullivan's persistent and lazy sloshing-together of Christianity, Edmund Burke, and modern political conservatism into an amorphous but ultimately idiosyncratic Unified Theory of Goodness that happens to encompass everything Sullivan believes. Term he uses for this unified theory is "conservatism of doubt," a conservatism held almost exclusively by himself and a bunch of dead guys who can no longer speak for themselves. This is kind of fun, and we can all do it. Take a grand label, append to it a list of authors and figures you like and words that you approve of, and let 'er rip. My approach to religion and politics will be called "modern orthodoxy." Its forbears include Kierkegaard, Pascal, Maximus the Confessor, FDR, T.S. Eliot, and Marilynne Robinson, and it favors measured political commitment, doctrinal reverence, and literary classicism. Though most people don't know it, modern orthodoxy speaks to their most deeply held beliefs and their most decent political instincts. Barack Obama is a big fan.

Where was I? Anyway, the problem with Sullivan's statement is that while it sounds good--theological and political liberals are all about doubt, ambiguity, and so on--it just doesn't hold up to much scrutiny. It is true, for instance, that "God is definitionally beyond human understanding," but then again it is also true that God is "definitionally" beyond birth, death, and bodily life, yet this is exactly what the Christian Church says has happened in the life of Christ. We are constitutionally incapable of knowing anything finally true about God by our own faculties, but God is in no way incapable of revealing God's self to us. Virtually the whole Christian tradition, at least what I have read of it, speaks to both sides of this statement--that we cannot know God ourselves, but that God can make, and has made, God known (through Scripture, Sacrament, the history of Israel, the life of Christ, the life of the Church). Sure, we can't know God in God's own essence, but it is preposterous to claim that God has revealed anything of great import to us without making it adequately clear for our own needs. While talk like Sullivan's is usually a cover for making God mushy and dribblingly benevolent behind all God's mystery, in fact it makes God into a kind of pretentious and impenetrable professor, someone who likes to lecture but prefers the class to be confused at the end.

Moreover, to call both Paul's and Jesus' messages "apolitical" is laughable. No wandering holy man who could lead crowds of thousands in a Roman province was apolitical, and Paul's own writing is sometimes explicitly political (see Romans 13 for only the most obvious example, though there are many others). And that's leaving aside the Old Testament, which knows no distinction between sacred and secular/"political" life.

This is by no means to defend all or most of the interventions in political life by "faith-based" groups in the name of Christ or any other ideology. The history of God in politics is a mixed one (though less bad than many secularists and self-hating Christians seem to think), testifying to the persistence of human sin. And the politics of doubt, as Sullivan has it, has no uncheckered history itself. The Roman Catholic Church took a measured and moderate position on slavery that no one today thinks was right or noble. The white clergy who appealed to Martin Luther King, Jr. to cease the protest movement for civil rights were appealing for caution and complexity--now they are naive footnotes to a history that passed them by.

It's true that sometimes uncertainty is the best a person can or should do, and a little more deliberateness on the part of America's public God-botherers would not be a bad thing. But we shouldn't transfer our own dim understanding onto God, who is after all not indifferent about anything and whose will will be done either with or against our own efforts.

Merry Christmas!

Fun on the internets

Nietzsche Family Circus:

There are no facts, only interpretations.

They take random Family Circus images and match them with random Nietzsche quotations. Fantastic. Hours of hilarity.

Then, to get you into the Christmas spirit, California slacker-rock style, here's Pavement's Gold Soundz, my favorite seasonal rock video ever:



Andrew Sullivan has been posting all sorts of 80s videos recently and commented on the problem that video directors face with coming up with something to do two minutes into the video, when the original idea is starting to wear thin. No one has ever handled this pivotal moment the way it's done in this high point of mid-90s alt-rock. Trust me. The climax actually hits at 1:37, but the shock hasn't worn off until the band is drinking from the milk carton next to the rental car beneath the highway and the video is over.

In other news, we decorated our apartment for the holidays:



White lights in the living room, colored lights in the dining room. Oh, dear. It wasn't until I typed that that the Jim Crow connotation presented itself. Oh dear.



Laura got every one of the ornaments on the tree! She has dozens. I have a few, and I bought a few last year, when we didn't have any. I got an elmo in pajamas and a Santa hat at Target, and I got a few little hanging trinkets from one of those cheapo stores in Chinatown. I also got a little wooden Buddha, who's tied to a ribbon and is near the top of the tree.



It took me forever to get this shot right. I don't really know how to work my camera; the flash totally makes me mad. It's far too powerful! I've never taken a picture with a digital flash setting that wasn't bathed in intense halogen harshness. No good! There wasn't nearly enough light to get much going without a flash. I was too lazy to come up with an improvised tripod and set the exposure length to, like, thirty seconds. So, I cupped my hand around the flash and tried to reflect the light upward. Viola! I mean, Voila! Happy Holidays, everyone!

Heaven and Hell P.2

At the risk of being redundant I thought I might broach the topic of heaven and hell a little more. Upon reading Kyle's wonderful post I was reminded of Roger Water's interesting line in Wish You Were Here, "So, so you think you can tell heaven from hell?" I think Roger raises a great question. After all, it seems to be quite a perplexing issue, and it is a question that one might take to heart.

The Bible, indeed, adds to much of the confusion about heaven and hell and one can find places to support universal salvation, double predestination, and/or the troubled phrase "works righteousness." Paul, for example, could maintain universal salvation (Rom. 11:32-36), double predestination (Rom. 9:14-21), and assert one's responsibility for responding to Jesus Christ (Gal. 5:6) while still affirming the free gift of absolute grace (Rom. 11:5-6)! Thus nobody more than Paul is more confusing about heaven and hell, and in a much wider extent, the Bible, which also raises many of the same perplexities found in Paul.

Nevertheless, I do think that Paul (and perahaps the Bible as a whole) does seem certain that heaven and hell ultimately rests in God's final judgment. Thus he says, "I am not aware of anything against myself, but I am not thereby acquitted. It is the Lord who judges me. Therefore do not pronounce judgment before the time, before the Lord comes" (I Corinth. 4:4). So to make my basic point, quickly and abruptly, it does not seem wise for the Church to try and become the judge about salvation whether it be universal salvation, double predestination, or "works righteousness" as all those seem to make the human the judge rather than God. Double predestination assumes to know the extent of God's predestination by stating that some, because they do not confess or live wickedly, have been excluded. Universal salvation seems to be the attempt to uphold God's mercy for God. Either way, the human becomes the judge of who is and isn't saved--a precarious power for any of us to have, if I may say so. Finally, being a "good" Protestant (an oxymoron!), I find it difficult to see how any kind of existential decision about Jesus or Christian living for salvation squares with the "free gift of grace." Moreover, in this so called "works righteousness" the human once again seems to become the judge about salvation over and against God, only at the individual and existential level.

So what are we left with? I would humbly suggest that the real task of the Church is to preach the kindess and goodness of God, i.e., that salvation comes for all despite sin. This does not mean that one reverts to a doctrine of universal salvation, but it only means that the commission is to share the good news that comes in Jesus Christ who is God's free grace, and that one can live in confidence and faith in this grace. To reject it does not mean that one goes to hell or to heaven, and nobody has the power to know who will and will not enter into the eternal kingdom of God (whatever that means...). To say who is and who is not a part of it, beyond oneself, is always outside of human judgment.

One might propose that this becomes too much of a "fluff" type Gospel, that all one can do is preach God's kindness. But I am reminded of Paul's consideration that the kindness of God brings people to repentence (Rom. 2:4). It seems that problems only arise when one attempts at reversing that insight, not when one advances it; and reversing it, in my judgment, always seems to be some form of deciding about God's salvation for God. I leave heaven and hell to God, because in all honesty, I don't think I or anybody else can tell, and nor do we need to.

The Expert Opines: Not Clinton

We just finished one election, and now people are already starting to get excited about the next one. And there's lots to get excited about; one way or another, we'll have a new President. And as people get excited, they start to opine. And I'm joining the fray. I've got most of an M.Div. and am well on the way to getting ordained in the second largest Protestant denomination in the Unites States, so by anybody's reckoning, that makes me an expert on politics. Granted, not as much of an expert as if I'd skipped seminary (and perhaps college) and instead of worrying about ordination, just taken my Bible and started my own church with no affiliation and no accountability. Then I'd practically be infallible. But I haven't completed either my M.Div. or the ordination process yet, and three years ago I was a pastor without a college degree. And at any rate, I can provide biblical support for any statement I make. So accept me as an expert on politics in this Christian nation of ours and do what I say. What I have to say, of course, is based on a cursory perusal of recent headlines, gut feeling, hearsay, and perhaps (at least in this post) a rather provincial outlook. There will be no polls or statistics in this post or in any follow ups. I won't tolerate anybody trying to obfuscate the point with facts and figures, no matter how statistically significant or methodologically sound they may be. Remember, I'm an expert!

*****
And today the expert says: if you a Democrat (or any liberal or progressive sort of anti-Republican) and hope to see a non-Republican in the White House in January 2009, then it would be most unwise for you to support Hillary Clinton in the period leading up to the 2008 primary or vote for her in said primary, even if you like her a lot (which I don't). If she were somehow to win the Democratic primary, she would go down in flames in the general election. She might carry California, New York, most of New England, and maybe a state or two in the Great Lakes region (Michigan and Illinois come to mind), but it would be worse than an exercise in futility trying to sell her in the Midwest, South, and Western states that don't have a Pacific coastline. No Democrat's going to get Idaho or the deep south anyway, but just handing over the midwest would be electoral suicide. And she can't win this region for a very simple reason (and here's where the hearsay and provincial outlook come into play): people here hate her.

She probably doesn't deserve our contempt, and many of us are happy to admit it. It's not really her positions that bother us. How could they? We don't know what they are. But the impression we have of her is that her political agenda is not about a liberal Democratic platform or a conservative Democratic platform, but about getting herself elected President. We think that's all she's ever cared about since the day she married Bill (a lot of us actually like Bill, but that doesn't mean we like Hillary). This editorial by Dick Morris pretty much sums up how we feel about her, except he's wrong about the millions of female voters who will rise up and support her just for the sake of electing a woman.

If that were the case, then Claire McCaskill should have won the Missouri Senate election by a landslide. She did win (thank God), but only by 2.3% (okay, so maybe statistics are allowed, but only when they support my point). I guarantee you that more than the 49.6% of Missourians who voted for her are very unhappy with the Republican regime's policies, especially concerning the war. Most of them also know they're getting screwed over economically, as the last people Republicans actually care about are small farmers (what's the incentive to care about someone when their support is guaranteed as long as you happen to mention that your opponents are attacking marriage and murdering babies). Still, 47.3% of voters went for Talent, either because of marriages and fetuses or (and here's where the assumption that women will automatically vote for a woman dies a painful death) because they just didn't want to vote for Claire. I heard a suburban housewife (whom I happen to know that this woman greatly prefers what she knows of McCaskill's positions to what she knows of Talent's) give this justification: "I don't like her and I think she's ugly."

Were this entry not already getting too long, I would analyze the deep-seated sexism that fuels this mentality. Since it's a blog and not a book (and I've already excused myself from playing by any set of civilized rules), I'll just say that no, it's not fair, but it's the mess we're in. People will go to great lengths to avoid voting for a woman, though they'd never admit it and probably aren't even aware of it, and can always point to the exception that proves the rule. Claire managed to eek by with a small lead, mainly because we're really pissed at Bush and she's earned some respect through her long career in Missouri politics. And I think that as more women overcome the incredibly unfair odds against them and work their way up into prominent political offices, like McCaskill, Nancy Pelosi, and even Clinton, people will get used to having women in office and their opinions will change. The most that can be hoped from having Clinton on the general ballet in November is to get people used to seeing women on the ballet, which would be nice. But she can't win. If McCaskill barely managed a victory in Missouri, then Clinton, whom none of us like anyway, doesn't have a prayer. Obama or Edwards maybe, but not Clinton.

*******
If I have been true to my intent, I have argued this in such as way that it proves almost nothing, but effectively kills the conversation. If you want to change the world, that's the sort of thing you're up against, except I made a few too many concessions to fair argument.

Some Thoughts on Justice (and Hell) occasioned by the Death of Pinochet

You've probably heard by now that Augusto Pinochet is dead. Pinochet, for those of you just joining us, was the dictator of Chile from 1973 to 1990. He was installed by a military coup that overthrew the democratically elected President Salvador Allende. That this coup had the support of the American government is pretty incontrovertable; I do not believe the full extent of American involvement is known, but I'm open to correction.

In terms of the material circumstances of his death, it was a good way to go. He died of heart failure at 91 surrounded by family. If only the thousands of people who died or disappeared under his administration had been so fortunate.

Like most people, I don't know quite what to make of it. On the one hand, earth is certainly better off without him. He was a murderer and a tyrant, and even after he was forced to relinquish his dictatorial powers by the plebiscite of 1988, he had it written into the constitution that he be "senator for life." I believe that if I were Chilean, I would be relieved that the term of that office is expired, even though his immunity was finally taken away. On the other hand, it is unfortunate that he was never tried for his crimes. He got off scot free as far as human justice is concerned. Then again, I'm not sure what the Chilean justice system could have done to him, had they found him fit to stand trial once they got rid of his immunity. Executing him would just add one more to the death toll of the 1973 coup and its 27 year aftermath. And it's hard to imagine what good could really come from having a 91 year old man rotting in jail, though it is certainly unfair for him to have lived out his days in great comfort when his victims did not. I'm almost tempted to think that it's better that he died on his own, as I'm not sure there's any human punishment that fits the crime. But of course, this comes from someone who was not one of his victims.

What of divine justice then? I find that the Pinochets of the world challenge my liberal Protestant disbelief in hell (or at least my extreme skepticism). But I just can't let myself take comfort in the thought that if there is such a condition, Pinochet is in it. For one thing, I have no idea who is in it, if anyone is. And for another, my most fundamental belief when it comes to soteriology and eschatology is that the eternal life of the blessed is not a reward, but rather a gift. In spite of the fact that I'm a Methodist through and through, I am pretty much persuaded that grace is only grace when there are no conditions set on it. I refuse to think of the grace of God as a human carrot and stick routine. Grace is given to all creatures just because they are creatures, and whatever special grace is given to humans as those creatures made according to the image and likeness of God (whatever that means), is given to them just for being humans. And though Pinochet's crimes were great, I don't think it is possible to destroy the image of God, no matter how badly it is vandalized. It would be very costly to recreate hell just for Pinochet (and maybe Hitler, Stalin, and whoever canceled Firefly).

There is, of course, a much stronger formulation of/argument for belief in hell than what I am arguing against. That argument (and I have to give credit to my friend Ian for making this argument to me, and he in turn would wish to credit Dante, and all of us should credit John Scotus Eriugena) would be that hell, no less than heaven, is not only required by the love of God (that free will business that I take quite seriously), but that hell is a state of grace no less than heaven, that Dante spoke well when he attributed the making of hell to "the highest wisdom and primal love." Though all human beings are to eternally be the recipients of grace, some of them may have made themselves into such twisted, corrupt creatures that they would experience grace as horrific (not an unfamiliar idea to anyone who has read a Flannery O'Connor story). "And this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil" (John 3:19, KJV for archaic effect). I still don't believe in hell, of course, but that's the version that I would believe in if I did.

But this post was about Pinochet, wasn't it? I recommend that we consider all beliefs about hell provisional (and perhaps a waste of time), and trust that God possesses all three of the attributes Dante's inscription on the gate to hell ascribes to God, justice, love, and wisdom. And perhaps the best thing that human justice can do with regard to Pinochet is a suggestion at the end of Ariel Dorfman's book on Pinochet, Exorcising Terror, that for thousands of generations to come, the word "Pinochet" be "a reproach, an insult, a hideous slur." That would be a fitting tribute the General's memory.

Edit: The coherence of the ideas in this post seemed greater as I thought about them on I-55 somewhere in central Illinois.

"They surf in Cleveland because they must."

It's been really, really cold in the upper midwest the last few days. Today was nicer. These dudes were surfing during the hardcore shit. I'm impressed. I wasn't writing my Niebuhr paper because I was reading Cormac McCarthy's latest, which was absolutely incredible.

Anyway, I know I should be blogging. There's interesting stuff out there. Maybe you all would like to hear about Reinhold Niebuhr. Maybe another passage from Rosenzweig is in order.

Tomorrow, I'm going back to my own parish after two Sundays away. I've missed it. Two Sundays ago, I went to chuch at the Episcopal church in the town on which Nat Turner and his band of rebellious slaves marched in August of 1831. At the time, the town was called Jerusalem. They call it Cortland now. Bacl then, it was the only town in the middle of a bunch of plantations. I think of the Episcopalians that time and place as the landed, pseudo-aristocratic slaveholders. In the hundred or so years leading up to Turner's revolt, they had fought tooth and nail to keep the more radical protestants out of the colony/state. Eventually, the US's disestablishments opened the doors for the Methodists and Baptists, who dominate the area now. There was almost noone at St. Luke's in Cortland for the festival of Christ the King. It was pretty sad. Say what you will about the church I go on Sunday mornings, it's almost never sad.

Last Sunday, I went to an Uber-Catholic Ango-Catholic parish in a very ritzy neighborhood of Chicago. The liturgy was pretty overwhelming, with the Great Litany and the Exhortation before the Eucharist and everything. Threre were six middle aged male acolytes doting on the three priests. It was a little weird, I thought. The music was enchanting. The two junior priests spent large portions of the service holding apart the folds of the rector's extravagant vestments so his hands were free to hold the text of the Litany, Eucharistic Prayer, etc. It was beautiful, strange, and a little off-putting.

There are many ways, thousands or hundred thousands or millions of ways to worship the God revealed in Jesus Christ. I'm looking forward to going back to the way we do it back home tomorrow morning. It's advent. I'm going to try to quiet down and appreciate it, and see what else comes up.

I have a couple more papers to finish. I'll have more to say soon.

St. Paul's Tomb

Only a few hours after I speculated that our current blog silence would probably go on for a bit longer, I find myself unable resist breaking it again (however briefly) to pass along a news item that may be of some interest. Apparently they've found the tomb of St. Paul in Rome, right under the altar of St. Paul-outside-the-walls. Like the bones of St. Peter discovered under the basilica bearing his name, who knows if they're real? It's not really of any importance, but I think it's both kind of cool when something like this happens.

Advent at the Watchpost?

Alas, not much has been seen from the Watchpost for the past couple weeks. And since this is finals week for us here at the U of C, there's not much chance of that changing in the next couple of days. Fear not though. The Watchpost will not be silent forever. All of us will finish our papers, and we will then surely be inspired to add new content here. "Though it tarry, wait for it; it will surely come, it will not be delayed" (Hab. 2:3). I still intend to finish that series of posts responding to Bishop Whitaker I started three months ago, and who knows what Tyler's got up his sleeve. In the meantime, go read Chris' theology of Johnny Cash. Or perhaps this series in progress on our own Jean-Luc Marion. That should keep you occupied. And if you're really missing us at the Watchpost, you can always check out the Regenstein/Bartlett webcam. You never know when one of use will walk by.

Sorry about that.

I just got back from Virginia. I was away from a computer the whole time. Anything happen? Expect a post or two about Southampton County and the Shenandoah Valley soon.

Tyler thoughts on that Israel-Palestine thing.

[Update: I'm keeping the stupid grammar of the title. I find it to be an entertaining error.]

Matt Yglesias wrote a post that I thought was pretty off-base about Martin Peretz. I told him why, and he has a pretty good argument for his response. I think there's another, more generous way to look at Peretz, a (sort of?) liberal who is pretty infamous among certain sections of the policially-interested left. Anyway, check it out if you're interested. One of the commentors said something about Israel and Palestine that seemed to me to strike a weird and familiar chord:

I was taken to task by someone awhile back for asserting that the use of "moderate" by folks just like Bush and Peretz that it meant Zionist.

You may feel that there is no universal human right not to be ethnically cleansed, robbed of your property and chased off into a garbage dump. You may feel that Palestinians are unique in their lack of this universal right, but I do not think such a view is "moderate" at all. I think it's loopy-doopy you-are-out-of-your-mind crazy and I don't think you are ever going to convince Arabs or even Muslims that it's not. If it wasn't for some serious Western world conceits about Arabs everyone would instantly see how crazy the idea is here.

This Ed prompted a rather long, naive but hopefully somewhat coherent pontification on my part. I don't feel completely embarassed sharing it with the group:

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Now, of course, he has an important point. The foundation of the modern state of Israel was a bloody, unjust process. Palestinians have a good reason to be really, really pissed. On the other hand, I doubt anyone can find a founding of a political order that isn't accompanied by serious strife. The question is, what do we do now? Correct me if I'm wrong, but Ed seems to suggest that saying that, in the end, it should be a desired goal for a comprimise where Israel continues to exist as a Jewish state is equivalent to endorsing the horrific acts against the Palestinians. I think this is a blind alley, leading to relentless, ineffectual criticism of Israel. You'll have a point, but you won't be able to get anything done with it.

I'm a little creeped out by this line of thought, too, for two reasons. First, an instinctive opposition to Israel, or a too-simple image of Israel as the evil Imperial overlord and the Palestinians as the helpless, oppressed other could be seen as as treading close to anti-semitism. I'm not jewish, but I wouldn't entirely blame a Jewish person for being a little creeped out by this tendency insofar as it is perceived to exist. Martin Peretz is a bit unhinged, but the answer is not to assume the opposite position.

Because, of course, Israelis have some legitimate beefs with the Palestinians. Suicide bombs are really bad. The form of Islam that legitimates them, you gotta admit, is downright creepy, regardless of the understandable political influence that makes it possible. Is Peretz really so off base to claim that there doesn't seem to be a readily apparent, viable political trend in Palestine and the Arab world in general that emphasizes some form of reconciliation between neighbors instead of, for ideological or political reasons, reflexively treating Israel as an enemy to be destroyed? At the end of the day, I believe that the majority of Israelis would rather just be left alone on some amount of the land they're on. If Israelis had to vote whether or not they'd be happy with the '67 borders in exchange for a lasting, secure peace, they'd go for it. I'd bet five dollars that Marty Peretz would, too.

Secondly, I think that there's a hint of hypocracy in the constant accusations of racism against Peretz. Sometimes I feel like the people who can't say anything nice about Israel are selling their Arab neighbors short as actual human beings. This depends on my naive belief that reconciliation and forgiveness as a response to strife are universal human goods. I don't think that, after all is said and done, American lefties, Israeli government officials, or Hamas supporters in Gaza have an excuse for escalating the situation. People need to put aside aggresion and work towards what is relatively satisfactory for the most people possible. I think that assuming or implying that no good solution is possible as long as Israel doesn't conceed everything asked for by the Palestinians, that Israel has no legitimate claim on land for some kind of mostly Jewish state in the middle east implies that the urge toward reconciliation and peaceful interaction with the neighbor is absent from Arabs. From this perspective, which might be crazy, Peretz actually has more respect for the Arabs than do the American or European left. Or the politicians and radical Imams of the Arab world, for that matter.

Now, to bring an already long comment to a close, I'm well aware that it's painting with too broad a brush to say anything with certainty about "the Arab world." It might be anti-arab to do so, anyway. There's a lot of nuance to the cultures in question and to the issue at hand. How much nuance is there in Arab opinion towards Israel, though? I'm sure there are some public advocates for peaceful reconciliation and social justice to be found, but why doesn't the American left show as much interest in championing their causes as attacking the perceived opponents to peace and justice? Is it totally of base to assume that life would be really dangerous for most justice and reconciliation oriented Arabs? What about that? Would life be easier for truth and justice oriented Arabs were allowed to operate outside of the Western media spotlight in order to avoid the impression that they're American goons? That's a valid question, too, but I think it's a sad one.

[/paste]

The Conservative elites rise in anger.

Recently, some of the conservative Americans who, like, tried hard in school and read philosophy and stuff have really been getting sick of George W, Bush. (Big surprise!) I'd like to point to a particularly angry piece by Jeffry Hart, an editor at the National Review, published in a recent American Conservative. (Thanks to the dude who edits aldaily.) Here's my favorite part:

Is Bush a conservative? Of course not. When all the evidence is in, I think historians will agree with Princeton’s Sean Wilentz, who wrote a carefully argued article judging Bush to have been the worst president in American history. The problem is that he is generally called a conservative, perhaps because he obviously is not a liberal. It may be that Bush, in the magnitude of his failure, defies conventional categories.

Remember, they're publishing this in the American Conservative. Do you think that the Republicans can come up with a new conservative philosophy in time to convince enough swing voters to ignore the after taste of the worst president ever in the next two (or four or six) years? The Democrats might, of course give them a good shot. We'll see!

Blogiversaries

I missed this, but on Wednesday, the Watchpost celebrated it's second birthday. (Here's Kyle's introductory post.) Thanks, everyone, for participating, and especially for sticking around while I avoided blogging without excuse or explanation this past summer. We're just about back to the traffic level we had before I disappeared. Go us! I only know this because, it turns out, we have the same blogiversary as Even the Devils Believe. Isn't that special!

I didn't actually post to the blog until December 2, 2004, which was, incidentially, the five year anniversary of the best non-festival Phish show I ever saw.

Any ideas as to how I should celebrate my blogiversary?

The reactionary press doesn't get religion either.

Some right wing blogger posted a Fox News clip of some libertarian pundit that got the former's panties all in a bunch on account of the latter's worries about big-government evangelicals. (I happened upon the right wing blog in question because Andrew Sullivan nominated the post for his reactionary wingbat award.)

Anyway, the whole Fox report is on the relationship between the GOP and evangelicals. Throughout the whole interview, though, Fox producers decided to intersperse stock footage of churchgoers worshipping. There's some video of Ted Haggerdy preaching. This makes sense. He's in the news, he's an evangelical Christian. Most of the footage, though, was shot at a Roman Catholic Church. There's an old lady praying in front of one of those racks of votive candles, (I'm sure there's a fancy name for it) there's a procession of robed priests and acolytes, people kneeling at the altar for communion, some guy crossing himself, the whole nine yards. While some Roman Catholics are evangelical in that they actively spread the word of God and hope to convert the heathens to the One True Church, the whole story is about voting demographics, and Catholics always get their own subheading in the political analyses.

The story is about evangelical protestants, but Fox News chose to show images from a Roman church. I read GetReligion everyday, where I learn about how stupid the atheist, liberal press apparently is about religion. It turns out the problem is a lot worse than mollie and tmatt think! The conservative press doesn't seem to be much better.

(The video in question is here.)

St. Paul, Father Richard, and Pastor Ted

I think I find Richard John Neuhaus objectionable in part because he isn't always 100% wrong; indeed, there's often enough Gospel truth in his work to sugar over his solecisms, arrogance, and utter foolery. Remember your Luther: if false religion presented itself as wicked and contrary to God, you would never be tempted by it. The authentic trappings of truth (the Bible, sage references to patristic moral reasoning, somber word choice) are always at hand to aid error.

So it is with some grudging agreement that I direct those interested in dwelling further on the sad story of Ted Haggard to Neuhaus's brief comment. He cites the relevant passage on the question of doing what one believes to be evil--Romans 7. The conflict that St. Paul describes in this most psychologically piercing of all his writings--between the Law of God in his inmost spirit in the Law of Sin in his "members," here broadly understood as his human nature--is part of why I remain less than convinced of the bright and straightforward argument for normalization of gay and lesbian relationships in the church. The point seems to be that if a pattern of behavior can be located deeply enough in a person's "nature" or inherent being, it is therefore from God and OK with God. But what St. Paul says is clearly contrary: our very nature is sinful; we by nature love what we should not. Inherency is no argument against Paul's position.

It seems to me, then, that the conflict must be respected. For Neuhaus and the like-minded, the conflict is between Haggard's explicit, conscious commitments to God and to God's law, which he presumably loves and delights in, and his behavior, which he loathes but is powerless to resist. Liberals argue, as I infer Tyler does below, that the true, inner Ted Haggard is a gay man who is at war with the law of sin which, in their view, is the closet. I'm not prepared to try to adjudicate that difference of opinion here. Either way, it's important to acknowledge the tragic dimension of Haggard's behavior. If you haven't at some point delighted in something that you knew to be contrary to God's will, you either are a much better person than I am or you aren't much of a Christian. Christians have an obligation not to overuse the charge of hypocrisy when what they are really seeing is a sinful human who is not so fallen as to cut his morality to fit his actions.

In all of this, I agree to some extent with Father Neuhaus. But it wouldn't be RJN without the pivot from defense of the lapsed believer to outright hostility against gays. Having some compassion for a conflicted Ted Haggard is all fine and well with me, but how does it follow that adult men and women with stable relationships--disordered though they may be in your view--who have never tried to ruin or marginalize your lifestyle must be, as a category, calumniated?

But what do [most Americans] know about the gay world? Largely the sleaze that comes to the surface in public scandals. There was an op-ed in Wednesday’s New York Times asserting that 70 percent of Americans personally know someone who is gay. That seems statistically improbable. Somewhere between 2 and 4 percent of American males identify themselves as gay. (The figure is much lower for women.) Most of them are congregated in cities, and in those parts of cities known to be gay-friendly. Chelsea and the West Village, along with the Castro district of San Francisco and counterparts in other larger cities, are not America. Gays live in such places precisely because they are not America.

On what grounds, I wonder, does Neuhuas find this statistic improbable? And on what grounds does he hold that "most" gay people live in urban gay ghettos? Where has he been for the last 35 years? His bitter and unaccountable dismissal of these places and their (decreasingly concentrated, I would add) gay residents as not America and not Americans shows Neuhaus' public theology for the witches' brew of the worst aspects of Catholic triumphalism and American civic piety that it is. Who the f*ck are you to decide who's America and who's not, you arrogant and self-satisfied prick?

Even here, though, Neuhaus's offensive bigotry has gotten me to miss the mark. He moves from defending a deviant of some kind (Haggard, Fr. Maciel) to attacking those anonymous many who live relatively uncomplicated and honest lives and have never done anything to him. How does he do this? It would strike me as brilliant, in a way, if it weren't so robotic. It's not the theology so much as the utter lack of decency and respect Neuhaus shows in discussing it that bothers me so much. It's an attempt to harness hostility and revulsion to do the job that theological reasoning alone just can't accomplish.

Maybe this post amounts to no more than another tired plea to be careful and respectful when making judgments about a public person like Ted Haggard or a public question like the social acceptance of homosexuality. Whatever else, just look at how Richard John Neuhaus argues and do the exact opposite. You can't go far wrong there.

Can't say I'm surprised

Borat got his ass kicked.

(HT: Althouse.)

Must... push down... awful Santorum post...

I have a ton of work to do, but I need to get something good up here. So, here's what I just read from the Star:

[I]t is hard to admit that one was without love in the past. And yet -- love would not be the moving, gripping, the searing experience that it is if the moved, gripped, seared soul were not conscious of the fact that up to this moment it had not been moved nor gripped. Thus a shock was necessary before the self could become beloved soul. And the soul is ashamed of its former self, and that it did not, under its own power, break this spell in which it was confined. This is the shame which blocks the beloved mouth that wishes to make acknowledgment. The mouth has to acknowledge its past and still present weakness by wishing to acknowledge its already present and future bliss. And thus the soul which God summons with the command to love is ashamed to acknowledge to him its love, for it can only acknowledge its love by acknowledging its weakness at the same time, and by responding to God's "Thou shalt love" with an "I have sinned."

Franz Rosenzweig, The Star of Redemption. Part II, Chapter 2. (p. 179) (All subsequent quotations come from the Star as well.)

Rosenzweig talks here about God's love for us with specific reference to revelation. For Rosenzweig, the core of revelation, its "root-word," is I, the divine I, the voice of God identifying Herself. (R. most certainly is not the source of the gender-friendly language here.) Before, or, better, concurrent to the content and the commandment of revelation comes the revelation of God's voice as God's voice. "God's "I" remains the keyword," Rosenzweig writes, "transversing revelation like a single sustained organ note; it resists any translation into a "he"; it is an "I" and an "I" it must remain. Only an "I," not a "he," can pronounce the imperative of love, which may never be anything other than "love me!"" This "love me!" of God's is nothing other than the great commandment, "You shall love the Lord thy God with all your heart and all your soul and all your might."

The heart of revelation, for Rosenzweig, it the singling out of the individual by God. God calls to us by name and identifies Herself. Revelation is the echo, the fulfillment of creation. Whereas the root word of revelation is I, the root word of creation is "Good." The rhythm of Genesis 1 is structured around the word "good." "The entire chapter which reports on the work in the beginning is traversed by a phrase, a phrase which recurs six times, only a single word in length, introduced only by a colon. The phrase says "Good!" -- it was and is and will be -- "Good."" In creation, as Rosenzweig understands it, God bestows blessing on the multiplicity of particular things in creation, and calls them good, each after their own kind.

Revelation is the fulfillment of creation in that the individual is reminded of the initial divine blessing of all things and ensured that God's love is directed at him or her. Rosenzweig insists that revelation, or miracle, rather than a being a magical, unexpected contradiction of natural law, is specifically revelation, miracle because it is a sign, a confirmation of earlier prophecy:

Under the love of God, the mute self came of age as eloquent soul. This occurence we had recognized as revelation. If language is more than only an analogy, if it is truly analogue -- and therefore more than analogue -- then that which we hear as a living word in our I and which resounds toward us out of our Thou must be "as it is written" in that great historical testament of revelation whose essentiality we recognized precisely from the presentness of our experience. (erlebnis) Once more we seek the word of man in the word of God.

Okay, that's all I've got for you. Have a good day.

Umm, that doesn't mean what you think it means.

The folks at the National Review's Corner blog are still coming to grips with the sudden defeat of rightist politics. Andy McCarthy opines:

If we're gonna win, we need more Santorum.

I doubt he was thinking of Dan Savage when he hit the "publish post" button, but maybe he should have:

While I agree with the spirit of naming something objectionable (to him) after Rick Santorum, I think it should be a substance, not an act. I would never want to "santorum" anyone I liked. What a turnoff. Instead, I think it would be better to name some kind of sexual byproduct after him. After all, ending up with idiots like Santorum in elected office is a byproduct of the otherwise desirable practice of letting any old yokel vote. Specifically, I nominate the frothy mixture of lube and fecal matter that is sometimes the byproduct of anal sex. As in, "We had a great time, but we got santorum all over the sheets." Or better yet, "Before I sodomize my gay, unmarried dog, I like to give him an enema so there won't be any santorum."

Pumping more Santorum into the Republican Party may help with some constituencies, but I'm not sure that it will have the consequences the NRO folks are looking for.

The politics of sin. (Not as exciting as it sounds.)

You can't get Bell's beers in Chicago anymore:

Larry Bell, 48, considered one of the mavericks of the microbrew industry since he began selling beer in 1985, said his troubles began when his longtime distributor in Illinois, National Wine and Spirits Inc., sold the rights to his beer. The buyer, according to Bell and others, is Chicago Beverage Systems, one of the Midwest's largest, which includes Miller beers among its products.

Bell said he worried that Chicago Beverage would ignore most of his brews and limit its interest to the two or three that could make the most money without competing against the distributor's other beers.

Bell said he was even less impressed with Chicago Beverage after a one-hour meeting at its headquarters in the middle of August. He said officials were unfamiliar with the names of his beers and didn't know the history of his brewery.

Representatives of Chicago Beverage and National Wine and Spirits did not return several telephone calls for comment.

"They're box counters and don't have any passion for good beer," Bell said. "My choice was to be sold to [Chicago Beverage], to be sued or pull out. I saw the lesser evil as pulling out."

One of the great things about living in a state with such sleazy politicians is that we get crazy laws that entrench relatively powerful business interests. (I hear this problem isn't limited to our fair state.) Once an alcohol maker hooks up with a distributor, without which it is illegal to sell liquor in the state, the distributor has a permanent hold on the manufacturor's contract. The distributors have a decent amount of money and energy to devote to lobbying Springfield, more, at least than the beer/wine afficionados. Hence, nothing gets done. There've been a few attempts to allow microbrewers and small wineries to sell directly to retail outlets. Those never get very far.

Tom at Fermentation, a wine guy and a Californian, can and does kvetch over Illinois politics, on this specific issue, as well as any of us.

Links for friends

Hey, Kyle,

There's a Patristics carnival manifesting itself over here. Thought you might be interested.

I can think of at least two other people (among, like, five total) who read this blog who would probably be interested in reading the interesting blog of Patrik Hagman, an aspiring Sweedish theologian. He's posting periodic reflections on his push through Tillich's Systematics. The Strappers will note that Patrik's is a much more inviting blog than those of certain redneck anarcho-jerkoffs best left unlinked.

Did y'all hear the freaky story on ATC this afternoon about violent attacks on gay pride rallies in Jerusalem? I was creeped out.

Science and Faith

Money quote:

"The images, appearing in the current issue of the journal Psychiatry Research: Neuroimaging, pinpoint the most active areas of the brain. The images are the first of their kind taken during this spoken religious practice, which has roots in the Old and New Testaments and in charismatic churches established in the United States around the turn of the 19th century. The women in the study were healthy, active churchgoers.

“The amazing thing was how the images supported people’s interpretation of what was happening,” said Dr. Andrew B. Newberg, leader of the study team, which included Donna Morgan, Nancy Wintering and Mark Waldman. “The way they describe it, and what they believe, is that God is talking through them,” he said."

Not that I believe that science can uncover evidence of the Holy Spirit. Do I?

A Drop in the Bucket -- The Bucket Of Victory!

The envelope containing Laura's absentee ballot. One of 1,168,918 votes (and counting) for Jim Webb.

(Note the P.O. Box number!)

Last minute endorsement

I voted about an hour ago and discovered the current and future Official Political Candidate of Habakkuk's Watchpost. His name, as it appears on the ballot, is Jerry "The Iceman" Butler. I had no choice but to pull the lever (or draw the line, as this year's low-tech Chicago procedure dictates) for him, based only on the published nickname. Here's the Iceman's official webpage. Here's an interview from 1999. You can buy the Iceman's music here. Chicagoans still have about an hour to make it to the polling places. I urge you to support the Iceman. It's not like a Republican is going to win on the South Side anyway. I actually voted for the Republican candidate for the US House, which I hope to God the Democrats take over. Bobby Rush, the Democrat who will be reelected without much of a contest, doesn't seem to have bothered to campaign. I didn't see one sign.

"If you stop at the cross, you're just preaching pain,"

Chicago Tribune:

Central United Community Church stands on Chicago's South Side as a storefront sanctuary, serving the needy and spiritually hungry who pass through its doors. The modest church has worn wooden pews and a fiery pastor preaching from a pulpit, but missing is Christianity's most powerful symbol: the cross.

Rev. Joseph McAfee took down the cross and buried it, inspired by the teachings of Rev. Sun Myung Moon, the controversial Korean spiritual leader. "If you stop at the cross, you're just preaching pain," said McAfee, who keeps an autographed picture of the Unification Church founder in his office.

The cross may be a symbol of pain to McAfee, but its removal from his church is emblematic of something more--a growing and potent alliance between Moon and black religious leaders across the country.

The unlikely partnership, known as the American Clergy Leadership Conference (ACLC), represents the latest chapter in Moon's remarkable evolution from convicted felon and alleged cult leader to influential religious and political figure with ties to Rev. Jerry Falwell and former President George H.W. Bush.

The authors of this piece have a guess as to what's facilitating this trend:

For the black pastors, the benefits include prestige, a powerful ally and gifts, including watches worth $12,000.