Habakkuk's Watchpost

The Cescence of Scientia with an Aim Toward Vital Enrichment

2007-06-09T09:28:00.000-05:00

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.

Senior Ministry Presentations

2007-03-21T23:53:00.000-05:00

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.

2007-03-13T14:55:00.000-05:00

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

2007-03-12T17:22:00.000-05:00

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

Ministry Conference!

2007-03-07T15:19:00.000-06:00

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.

2007-02-13T11:53:00.000-06:00

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.

2007-01-27T11:14:00.000-06:00

Shut up and be like Jesus

A novel concept in church renewal programs.

Incredibly, almost all of our stuff is fine.

2007-01-18T21:11:00.000-06:00

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

2007-01-13T17:52:00.000-06:00

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.

2007-01-07T23:12:00.000-06:00

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

2007-01-04T12:03:00.000-06:00

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!

2006-12-25T11:44:00.000-06:00

Fun on the internets

2006-12-18T01:05:00.000-06:00

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

2006-12-17T17:43:00.000-06:00

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

2006-12-17T14:51:00.000-06:00

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

2006-12-13T01:44:00.000-06:00

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."

2006-12-10T00:37:00.000-06:00

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

2006-12-07T21:48:00.000-06:00

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?

2006-12-07T14:43:00.000-06:00

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.

2006-11-27T18:50:00.000-06:00

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.

2006-11-18T12:44:00.000-06:00

[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:

[paste]

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.

2006-11-18T01:52:00.000-06:00

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

2006-11-17T14:35:00.000-06:00

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.

2006-11-15T16:15:00.000-06:00

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

2006-11-15T13:09:00.000-06:00

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

2006-11-14T00:47:00.000-06:00

Borat got his ass kicked.

(HT: Althouse.)

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

2006-11-13T22:36:00.000-06:00

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.

2006-11-11T03:25:00.000-06:00

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.)

2006-11-11T01:20:00.000-06:00

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

2006-11-10T00:59:00.000-06:00

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

2006-11-08T19:04:00.000-06:00

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!

2006-11-08T02:47:00.000-06:00

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

2006-11-07T18:25:00.000-06:00

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,"

2006-11-06T00:08:00.000-06:00

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.

Read between the lines.

2006-11-06T00:00:00.000-06:00

Ted Haggard:

"I am a deceiver and a liar,"

Translation: I've pretended to be a straight man my whole life and career. This is not true.

"There's a part of my life that is so repulsive and dark that I have been warring against it for all of my adult life."

This dark, repulsive place is called the closet.

Straps on the Haggard Mess

2006-11-05T15:41:00.000-06:00

Sandalstraps has a great post about the Ted Haggard scandal. It's a very full treatment, as we've come to expect from our most frequent commenter. However, as we've also come to expect, it justifies its length with its amount of insight. Take up and read!

Let the words in my mouth...

2006-11-02T22:00:00.000-06:00

Here's the sermon I preached for the feast of All Departed Souls. There were some last minute changes, but most of it's here. I think I adlibbed something about the "If you, LORD, were to note what is done amiss, O Lord, who could stand?" line from psalm 130. I think John appreciated that.

It was actually a pretty crazy event. Stacy, the priest, was held up because her kindergarten-aged daughter fell (or was pushed) on the playground and split her lip open. I had no idea; I'd changed the location of my cell phone power source two nights before and am still walking right by it in the morning. I wound up presiding over the beginning of the service, something I've never done before, and leading the meager congregation (~9 people, including Cate, who was holding a napkin to her lip and emitting occasional sobs) in an a capella version of "For All the Saints," something I should never do again.

After the service, I let Cate squish my nose with her finger and talked with a squishy-nose voice, and she thought it was the funniest thing ever. She just about forgot that her lip hurt, I think.

The story might have legs, too.

2006-11-02T16:09:00.001-06:00

So, it's looking like Barak Obama's shady land deal with an indicted political slimeball is a real shady land deal. The Chicago press is all over it, but as of a four o'clock check of google news, the national print media hasn't caught on. I don't watch tv, is this on Fox News yet? It probably will be soon. Both of the Trib's best known columnists are on the story today.

John Kass:I've got a great title for U.S. Sen. Barack Obama's next best seller:

"The Audacity of My Fence"

But surely he'll require a subtitle. So how's this?

"In which I, Barack of O'Bama, demonstrate my lack of presidential judgment by getting into a real estate deal with a radioactive political fixer who got himself indicted, making me look so, so audacious." ...

"I don't recall exactly what our conversations were or where I first learned, and I am not clear what the circumstances were where [Rezko] made a decision that he was interested in the property," Obama told the Tribune. "I may have mentioned to him the name of [a developer and] he may at that point have contacted that person. I'm not clear about that." ...

I wonder what Obama would pay for my house? If he uses the Let's Be Fair to Tony Rezko Formula, I could purchase the lot next door to Obama and he could holler at me through that nice Tony Rezko fence of his.

That's the other thing, the fence. Obama says his engineer and architect planned it, and then Rezko put it up for him.

In exchange, Obama gets a large yard left vacant by Tony, but Obama says he never uses it for barbecues and Frisbee throwing, because it's not his, though his gardeners cut the grass.

And the only way into that unused pasturage is through the fence that Tony built, and Obama is the only one with the key.
Eric Zorn:

An old saying goes, "The sooner I fall behind in my work, the longer I have to catch up."

Now, starry-eyed believers in the transformative nature of Illinois' junior senator have their own variation: "The sooner I grow disillusioned with Barack Obama, the longer I have to forgive him."

So, let's get started, shall we?

Well, Zorn's column isn't really about the land deal, it's about Obama's dumb endorsement letter for a really, really shitty candidate for Cook County Board president. Todd Stroger was nominated -- behind closed doors -- to take over for his crooked dad, John, who was incapacitated by a stroke a few days before his primary victory against someone probably a lot less crooked. There is no good way to write an endorsement letter for Todd Stroger, from what little I understand of local politics. We are to assume that Obama owes the Chicago Democratic machine some serious back-scratching.

Here we go!

2006-11-01T08:40:00.000-06:00

From the Trib:

Now the hows and whys of a real estate deal, and a train of subsequent transactions, are raising questions about the relationship between the two men, as Obama struggles to distance himself from Rezko, and Rezko strives to stay out of prison.

For those out-of-staters, it seems that every important Democratic politician in Illinois is under investigation for patronage crimes. The governer, the boss of Chicago, the boss of Cook County, they're all caught up in the shit right now. It's disappointing but not surprising that our golden boy's got some of the dirt on his hands.

Athens and Jerusalem and all that.

2006-11-01T00:36:00.000-06:00

Chris T. is getting a discussion going on proofs of God. Check it out. I'll have a few things to say about that when I get the time, as this is a part of philosophy and theology where I feel that I'm at least starting to understand what the important questions are. (Assuming, of course that there are important theological questions besides "Do you believe in Jesus Christ?")

Here's something from Rosenzweig's Star of Redemption that touches on the topic at hand:God has a nature of [her] own, quite apart from the relationship into which [she] enters, say, with the physical "world" outside [herself]. God has [her] nature, [her] naturalistic, existential essence. This is so far from going without saying that, on the contrary, philosophy up to and including Hegel always disputed this existence-of-[her]-own with [her]. The ontological proof of the existence of God -- another idea as old as philosophy -- is nothing but the sublimest form of this dispute. Whenever theologians annoyed philosophers with their insistence of the existence of God, the latter withdrew to the side track of this "proof." Philosophy fed theology on the identity of reasoning and being as a nurse might prop a pacifier into the mouth of a babe to keep him from crying. With Kant and Hegel this centuries-old deception reaches a twofold terminus, with Kant because he criticizes the proof to death with his sharp distinction of being and existence, while Hegel, who praises the proof, deals it a deathblow in the eyes of theology by the very naivete of his praise, although, philosopher that he is, he doesn't realize this.

Eww.

2006-10-31T12:20:00.000-06:00

Yesterday in Germany:

As the driver accelerated away from a traffic light, the door of his trailer opened, spilling the severed heads onto the road.

It took the fire service, helped by a fork-lift truck, an hour-and-a-half to load the heads back onto the truck.

New Iraq Tactic

2006-10-30T19:14:00.000-06:00

Buy the militias new weapons.

Does God have a penis or a vagina?

2006-10-30T02:02:00.000-06:00

I used to play this plastic kids game with my sister when I was a kid. I can't remember the name. L. doesn't know what I'm talking about, but we established that it's basically a cross between clue and battleship. There are about 20 or so human faces, varying by gender, eye color, hair color, etc., identified by first name, on cards attached to two little racks. Each player has an identical rack. The cards rotate, so you can see the face on one side and no face on the other. Each person picks a card with a face matching one of the cards on her rack. (heh heh) The players take turns asking yes or no questions to narrow down the possible cards the opponent has. The winner guesses the correct face and name first.

It might come as a surprise to some readers of this blog, but I used to be an annoying kid. My sister, two years younger, would, in all her childlike innocence, ask "Is it a boy or a girl."

"Yes," I would reply with certainty.

Anybody with any sense knows that the answer to the question in the title of this post, "Does God have a penis or a vagina?" is a question much like my sister's. The answer is no. (Or yes - Gen 1:27)

Anyway, it was with stories like those told by Kyle and AMB in mind that I was singing the final hymn at this evening's worship service at the campus ministry I'm interning at. I don't remember what number the hymn was, and you probably don't have the 1982 Episcopal Hymnal anyway, but it was the one where they talk about God and refer a bunch of times to "him" and "his" wonderful powers and attributes and how "he" does all sorts of good things. There were so many gendered pronouns that the idea of substituting "God" and "God's" for all of them, as liberal Christians who don't want to make a liturgical scene are wont to do, would have been a ridiculous proposition. (It was, fwiw, our amazing female pastor who picked the hymn, because she loves God and it was a tribute to Her magesty,) I was sharing a hymnal with Ben, a first year ministry student at the Div. School and I got sick of the masculine pronouns by the end of the first verse. I began throwing in "she"s and "her"s once in a while. Soon enough, Ben was throwing them in, too. Sometimes, we both did it at once, and it was cool. Sometimes we both used the masculine. Most of the time, we weren't in synch.

I thought it was really neat, and I think that having stuff like this happen in worship is a sign we're doing the right thing. The history of the oppression of women, in which Christianity is a key player, is very real, and forms of it remain to this day. The church needs to help its members muddle towards a just resolution, and it faces a lot of difficult soul-searching. It's not alone, of course, gender discrimination cuts across all religions and cultures.

Ignoring the difficult hymns, or rewriting them to fit contemporary times allows us to ignore the dark side of our own history. Confusion over pronoun genders during the singing of hymns witnesses to the ultimate unknowability of God.

Overheard in Hyde Park

2006-10-30T01:20:00.000-06:00

L: I made a pitcher of iced coffee.
T: I'm solving all of the world's problems on the internet.
L: All of them?
T: Just the important ones.
L: You can keep this place spotless and do all the dishes on the internet?

News Flash: "Christianity came out of the tremendous variety of the contemporary Jewish community."

2006-10-23T00:39:00.000-05:00

There's a fascinating article in today's Trib about a new paper that's making a big splash in the field of study that has developed around the Dead Sea Scrolls. Norman Golb is a professor of Jewish Civilization and Culture here at the UofC, and for a long time, he's been kind of a lone wolf in the field. He rejected the theory that the scrolls were the product of a monostary nesteled in the cliffs run by a single breakaway Jewish sect, the Essenes. There were too many divergant texts, he argued, and too many distinct handwritings for the collection to have come from the same sect at the same time period. He was largely ignored by the scholarly community. (We learned in intro to the New Testament that the scrolls were a product of the Essene community.)

The way the article puts it, the case against Golb was rather thin -- scholars knew of a breakaway sect called the Essenes that went off to the desert. They found the scrolls in the desert. Therefore the scrolls are probably Essene in origin. (Hopefully that argument is better than the Trib. makes it out to be!) As far as I remember, what we thought we knew about the Essenes came almost entirely from what we read in the scrolls. How much do we really know about them?

Golb thinks that the scrolls were shipped en masse from Jerusalem before the colonizing Romans could crush the rebellion in Judea. Different strains of Judaism are represented because (I'm adding my own speculation here) they were relatively united in the face of Roman oppression.

The final sentence of the story gave me pause:

"Christianity didn't come from one little sect, the Essenes," said Golb, a hint of triumph in his voice. "Christianity came out of the tremendous variety of the contemporary Jewish community."

Uh, nowhere else in the story do we hear of the theory that Christianity is somehow an offshoot of Essene Judaism. I certainly don't remember learning that in Intro. to the New Testament. This is the most interesting aspect to the whole story, from my perspective. I mean, debates about the character of a long-extinct obscure (even at the time) sect of Judaism seem to me to be rather less relevant to us today than debates about the origins of a still-very-active religion.

Take that, Richard Dawkins!

2006-10-21T17:22:00.000-05:00

Terry Eagleton, who, despite some political differences, is one of my favorite writers, has a piece in the London Review of Books taking anti-religious "thinker" par exellence Richard Dawkins to task for his utter ignorance of reflective religious thought and his blind faith in a (mind-numbingly stupid, imo) pseudo-Hegelian progressive concept of liberal history. I doubt we get too many readers unsympathetic to the anti-Dawkins cause, but this is a great sermon to hear, even for the folks in the choir:

Dawkins turns out to be an old-fashioned Hegelian when it comes to global politics, believing in a zeitgeist (his own term) involving ever increasing progress, with just the occasional ‘reversal’. ‘The whole wave,’ he rhapsodises in the finest Whiggish manner, ‘keeps moving.’ There are, he generously concedes, ‘local and temporary setbacks’ like the present US government – as though that regime were an electoral aberration, rather than the harbinger of a drastic transformation of the world order that we will probably have to live with for as long as we can foresee. Dawkins, by contrast, believes, in his Herbert Spencerish way, that ‘the progressive trend is unmistakable and it will continue.’ So there we are, then: we have it from the mouth of Mr. Public Science himself that aside from a few local, temporary hiccups like ecological disasters, famine, ethnic wars and nuclear wastelands, History is perpetually on the up.

It might serve us well to consider that Dawkin's neo-Idealism might be the mirror image of the neo-Idealism of some American Theocrats. I talked about them last week.

Ride the Fire Eagle!

2006-10-16T02:59:00.000-05:00

Y'all watch the show, right? That's the link to the latest episode. I recommend starting here. Then you gotta go here. (It’s all about the yellow star!) Maybe this all won’t make sense until you can see the earth as a sandwich. Then there’s the On the Media interview with Ze Frank himself.

If you really want to figure out what’s going on, there’s a wiki.

The Tiber looks inviting. It's the smell that gets to me.

2006-10-15T23:32:00.000-05:00

Sandalstraps (There. I said it!) took the theological worldview quiz. Being that this is such a bold and innovative blog, Kyle and I covered this ground last June. (Kyle's results are tucked away behind the live journal security blanket.)

There have been major changes in my theological worldview in the last sixteen months! Turns out I’m not a Methodist:

You scored as Roman Catholic. You are Roman Catholic. Church tradition and ecclesial authority are hugely important, and the most important part of worship for you is mass. As the Mother of God, Mary is important in your theology, and as the communion of saints includes the living and the dead, you can also ask the saints to intercede for you.

Roman Catholic

82%

Emergent/Postmodern

75%

Evangelical Holiness/Wesleyan

71%

Neo orthodox

71%

Classical Liberal

61%

Reformed Evangelical

50%

Modern Liberal

50%

Charismatic/Pentecostal

46%

Fundamentalist

What's your theological worldview?
created with QuizFarm.com

As you can see by comparing these results to last year's, my Fundamentalist score has dropped by more than half, to seven percent. Although I am, of course, rather proud of this achievement, I aspire to El Strapissimo's enviable zero percent. In this case, the superlative form of his nom de guerre is indisputably warranted. He’s too modest to draw attention to this statistical triumph and it must be praised.

A big part of the reason I turned up Catholic is because I’ve been going to church regularly (constantly, it seems sometimes) for most of the time since I took the quiz before. Church where the Eucharist is the big event at the end. When the question came up as to whether the Eucharist is the whole point of worship, I had to agree. The Orthodox students worship in the chapel of the campus ministry I’m working with this year, and they have a half-dozen or so beautiful icons. So when answering “Icons can be useful to help people meditate on the Christian faith,” I thought, duh, they do it in our basement all the time.

“Modern Liberal” is way down this year. It’s tied with “Reformed Evangelical,” (!) which got a slight bump. “Classical Liberal” is tending downward and “Neo-Orthodox” got a big bump. This may be another instance of my aforementioned Niebuhr reading. Or else I might be getting stodgy. Emergent/Postmodern is on the rise, as well. (A distant second, however, to the Mother Church.) Interesting. That fits in with my theory that Niebuhr is right in his rejections of classical/mystical thought, (Plato, Pseudo-Dionysius (one might imagine) and Buddhism) modernity (just about everything these days) and most forms of Romanticism, from Schelling and his heirs to the inevitable Nazi horrors. That is, he’s right insofar as forms of these schools of thought conform to his straw horses. Nietzsche, though, postmodernity’s big daddy, doesn’t really seem to fit into Niebuhr’s neat categories. At the end of the latter’s discussions of the former, whereas every thinker who isn’t exactly Niebuhr’s kind of Christian is dangerous, yet obviously incoherent, Nietzsche is just bad. Not even wrong, as they say under different circumstances.

When Nietzsche talked about making many noses sneeze, this is what he meant.

I place my faith with the Church (which, of course, includes parts of but is not limited to the Roman Catholic church) because I believe that the universe comes into existence and is sustained by a loving God. There is suffering in the world, a good amount of it caused by myself. The cross is there to remind us of that. Sometimes, though, the world appears like Nietzsche's void, and God does not speak to everyone from it.

Sometimes it seems that the whole world is built on the void, the deepest depth.

Nietzsche writes in "The Wanderer" beginning the third part of Zarathustra:

Whence come the highest mountains? I once asked. Then I learned that they come out of the sea. The evidence is written in their rocks and in the walls of their peaks. It is out of the deepest depth that the highest must come to its height.

The peaks of human attainment force Zarathustra "down deeper than ever I descended -- deeper into pain than I ever descended, down into its blackest flood."

(If you combine Nietzsche's vision of the world built upon a foundation of chaos, human civilization and morality being a pathetic defense against the void with a post-Marxist understanding of the towers of modern civilization as built on a foundation of the crushed bones of the poor, you've got what seems to me to pass for much of postmodernism today.)

Sometimes it seems to me that this is how the universe looks, and it's hard to hear God.

But even at the primordial ocean, the void, there is something more. The ocean is asleep when Zarathustra approaches. "Drunk with sleep and strange it looks at me. But its breath is warm, that I feel." Those who've studied with David Tracy, at this point, perk up when they see "breath" and "warm" in the same sentence. Ah, we say, the stoics. Marcus Aurelius teaches us in book twelve of his meditations that we "are composed of three parts: body, breath and mind." Breath is warm, and, as Tracy teaches this, it is the material embodiment of the logos, the providential reason that envelops the world and powers its history. Now, Nietzsche isn't really a stoic, and stoicism isn't really Christian, but I find it striking that there's a little glimmer of providence coming off of his dark sea.

At the end of this section, Zarathustra mocks love and his feelings of charity toward the monstrous sea and its warm breath...

Oh, you loving fool, Zarathustra, you are trust-overfull. But thus have you always been... You have wanted to pet every monster. A whiff of warm breath, a little soft tuft on the paw -- and at once you were ready to love and to lure it.

Love is the danger of the loneliest; love of everything if only it is alive. Laughable, verily, are my folly and my modesty in love.

...then, immediately, regrets it:

Thus spoke Zarathustra and laughed for the second time. But then he recalled his friends whom he had left; and, as if he had wronged them with his thoughts, he was angry with himself for his thoughts.

Surely Nietszche, the son of a Lutheran pastor, knew something of the truth in the cross of Christ.

I guess this is all to explain how I can score as a Catholic with Postmodern leanings. I don’t know what “emergent church” means, but every blogger I’ve ever read who called herself or himself that had a pretty vapid theology. Sandalstraps seems to have claimed the term for himself, though, so it can’t be all bad.

Superfluous erudition undermines intelligibility with negative results for academic performance evaluation

2006-10-14T11:05:00.000-05:00

So, you think your professor will be impressed that you think you know what "hermeneutic," "christology," and "philological" mean? Think again.

This year's Ig Noble prize for literature was awarded to Daniel M. Oppenheimer, professor of Psychology at Princeton. Mr. Oppenheimer studied the tendency many undergraduates (and graduate students, I assure you) have to pepper their work with fancy, jargony words they barely (at best) understand to make themselves look smarter. It doesn't work!

This is from the abstract of the lauded paper:

Most texts on writing style encourage authors to avoid overly-complex words. However, a majority of undergraduates admit to deliberately increasing the complexity of their vocabulary so as to give the impression of intelligence. This paper explores the extent to which this strategy is effective.

Apparently, trying to make yourself sound smarter backfires most of the time. "The effect has to do with "lowered processing fluency" on the part of the reader: apparently the reasoning is, if I can't understand what you're saying, you must not be very bright."

HT: Eric Rauchway, at TNR's Open University

Check Dale Tuggy Out

2006-10-11T22:03:00.000-05:00

So we like debates on God here. How about checking out Dale "The Tugboat" Tuggy over at trinities.org? And while you're at it, check out this mutha of all theology and philosophy links.

Turns out the gentleman is an analytic philosopher of religion, and also quite a good photographer. But he is a very subtle doctor.

Debating Theocracy

2006-10-11T20:41:00.000-05:00

Ross Douthat and Damon Linker are debating the nature and existence of American Theocracy at the New Republic. The first post is Douthat's, and you can read that here. (The series of shortish pieces is arranged in an annoying pseudo-bloggy style, so when you're done, scroll up to the next post. Better, go all the way to the top of the page and click on the link for the response from the following day.) I've had a few thoughts about Douthat's view on this issue before.

In today's response to Linker, Douthat points out something interesting. Linker argued yesterday that

The abolitionists and King may have been inspired by their faith, but the goals for which they worked--the emancipation of the slaves, the right to vote, economic opportunity for all citizens--were perfectly defensible in secular-civic terms.

Theocon ideology is very different. Yes, some of the policies it advocates (such as opposition to abortion) can be defended in secular terms, and, to that extent, it is a genuine successor to the civil rights movement. But theoconservatism was conjured into existence to do far more than fight legalized abortion. It was devised primarily (in Neuhaus's words) to provide a "religiously informed public philosophy" for the United States--a public philosophy that would decisively contribute to the nation as a whole fulfilling its divinely ordained end as a "sacred enterprise."

Douthat hammers on Linker's claim that the religious leaders in the American past he admires -- MLK, the abolitionists -- advocated positions that were justifiable rationally in "secular-civic terms." Douthat, I think is right in saying that no where does the constitution require that one's motives be justifiable in such terms to be valid in order to, for instance, formulate public policy. Linker is half right in the fact that the civil rights movement was successful because its principles made sense to both its religious leaders and its secularistic sympathizers.

This is why the civil rights movement was successful, why it was so popular, not why it was legal.

This idea that religious people must present rational, non-faith-based arguments for public discussion in order for their positions to be considered, I seem to have read, comes from (or is picked up by) the political philosopher John Rawls. I've only read criticisms of the idea (with one particularly pointed one coming from a very secular, emphatically democratic thinker) so I can't say for sure. I'm sure some of y'all can help me out. Does anyone buy this?

Linker should take note of one thing, though. Religious leaders in the civil rights movement were able to convince the more secular people to support and get excited about the movement because the movement made sense to them. It could be presented in appropriate secular terms. Today's opponents to the would-be-theocracy might want to consider that the appropriate response, in this day and age, is to engage the religious advocates of bad policy on terms the latter will understand. There are good theological arguments for being nice to gay people. There are fantastic theological arguments for not, like, trashing the planet. E.O. Wilson is onto what I'm talking about; his new book is addressed to a hypothetical Baptist preacher.

Linker does point to the biggest theological scandal in contemporary American Christianity, though, and the most dangerous. Insofar as there are Christian leaders who promote "a public philosophy that would decisively contribute to the nation as a whole fulfilling its divinely ordained end "sacred enterprise," today's situation should set off immediate alarm bells for anyone versed in the history of modern Christian thought. The combination of vague Christianity and nationalism which understands the nation of the believer or the thinker to be the holy vessel of a sacred progression toward a divinely ordained end accessible in history is the heresy of modern Christianity. From Hegel's sanctification of Northern Germany and all the trouble that may or may not have directly or indirectly led to in the early-middle 20th century to the watered down "Christian" social gospel or the dawning of the hippie age of Aquarius, this has been, according to many of our greatest theologians of the last seventy years, the sugar in the gas tank of the One True Church. Christianity, properly understood, should teach us something different than all of this. If Linker really wants to defeat this dangerous ideology, this is where the battle ultimately lies. He should read himself some Kierkegaard.

[Added -- it being Columbus day, we might want to think about how American Manifest Destiny may have been the result of an anachronistic drink from this Hegelian kool-aid. Hegelian kool-aid, sugar in the gas tank of Christianity. Can you tell I'm reading Reinhold Niebuhr? I don't even like him that much!]

That's just too much.

2006-10-09T01:57:00.000-05:00

Ok, so, in the last week or so I've spent time with a 20-something male named Casey, a terrier-mix (female) named Casey, fuzzy fuzzy cat (male) named Casey, and last night we met our downstairs neighbor who's starting at UofC for graduate school in photography. (!) Guess what her name is.

The Most Expensive Home in Massachusetts

2006-10-07T12:39:00.000-05:00

It's on Cape Cod, on the forearm near the elbo. That's the Lower Cape. My parents used to be Lower Capers, but now they're Outer Capers.

I have range envy.

A bowling alley and recording studion in the basement wouldn't be so bad either. I'm not so sure how I feel about the whole jacuzzi-flowing-into-the-pool thing.

College students gone wild.

2006-10-07T12:15:00.000-05:00

"It's not about his free speech, it's about our free speech."

Ok, you're angry at the Minutemen. They start to sound like white supremacists after a while, don't they. You'd rather their leader doesn't come speak at your campus. Or, better, you're glad to have the opportunity to voice your disaproval of his message when he comes. I can understand that. Whose brilliant idea was starting a riot on the stage? Here's a little advice. Forming an angry, screaming mob and rushing the speaker is not necessarily the best way to portray the moral superiority of our position. I'm telling you! The kids these days...

It don't stop until the wheels fall off.

2006-10-06T16:53:00.000-05:00

We got a link in a thoughtful post about the Hip Hop E-Mass while I was avoiding the blog over the summer. I thought it was worth pointing out, now that I'm trying to get things going again here. (I actually have an outline for one of my incomplete papers done now. Coincedence?) Shiny Ideas is an interesting blog, GG's written recently about a critical engagement between Zen and Christianity, which should really interest half of the six people who still might be checking over here.

GG, sadly, neglected to mention Snoop Dogg's masterful rendering of the 23rd psalm in the blog post about translations that linked here. In case you missed it, here's a snippet:

Yea, though I walk through tha valley of tha shadow of death, I wizzy fear no evil fo' real: fo` thou art wit me; thy rod n thy stizzay they comfort me. It dont stop till the wheels fall off.

The Watchpost's Greatest Hits.

2006-10-06T16:06:00.000-05:00

I'm thinking of posting a link in the sidebar to some of the more interesting posts and threads we've had here at the watchpost. That way, when I'm evading blogging duties or when someone comes here for the first time, they'll have an opportunity to figure out what kinda stuff we're interested in here and what we have to say about it. Do any of the handful of people who might be reading this have any recommendations? Post them in the comment section. Don't worry about searching for the specific post; it's easier to find them with my admin. privledges. Just try to remember who wrote the post and what it was about. I'll start a digest in the next day or two.

The Chicago Tribune leaves it up to the imagination.

2006-10-06T13:17:00.000-05:00

The Trib., as we locals occasionally call it, has a piece about the fallout from a city ordinance banning nude dancing at venues selling alcohol:The city law that bars nude dancing at establishments that serve alcohol does not violate the U.S. Constitution, the Illinois Supreme Court ruled Thursday.

While nude dancing can sometimes constitute free expression protected by the 1st Amendment, the city has the right to address the social ills that can result from allowing nude dancing where alcohol is served, Justice Lloyd Karmeier wrote for the majority.
The city has, apparently, tried for years to revoke the liquor license of an establishment on the Near North Side. In 2001, apparently, a Cook County judge ruled that people have a right, under the free speech clause to take off their clothes in front of paying strangers.

The Tribune suggests that the joint, now called VIP's after a few name changes, (and which I've driven by a couple times -- it's weird, you're cutting through the industrial corridor because the streets aren't as busy and all of a sudden there's slick looking club with limos and expensive cars among the factories and warehouses) has foreseen the restriction of the possibly dangerous mix of alcohol and titillation. Their way around it seems to be by arguing that the women aren't really stripping at all. The city isn't buying it.

Under the club's rules, dancers wore thongs, latex and flesh-toned makeup. However, "testimony from investigating police officers indicated that, in person, one could sometimes see through the makeup and latex," Karmeier wrote.

It seems that the club's dancers use thongs, latex and makeup to maintain a state of non-nudeness and keep their alcohol sales intact. I wish that the Trib. piece was more specific, though! Now, I know what a thong is. That's easy. I've never been to a strip club, though, and I'm having a hard time figuring out the purpose of the latex and makeup. Are they the modern update of pasties?

(Which are, under no circumstances, to be confused with short-a sounding pasties, a fried dumpling-thing popular on Michigan's Upper Peninsula.)

Honestly, I was reading this article and when I got to the bit about makeup and latex, I came up short. I had to stop and think about this for a while to even guess about what was going on with latex, makeup and nipples (and maybe pubic hair?) in this club. I wonder why the Tribune neglected to go into more detail. Is the word nipple to hot for a family newspaper? Odd, though, I've though a lot more about nipples in the last twenty minutes, I think, than I would have if the newspaper had been more specific. Does the Trib. assume that its readers are pretty well versed in the Chicago stripping culture? Am I a total prude? I've never been and have never really wanted to go to a strip club, really. Now I'm a little curious, for technological reasons. Is that the secret intention of the Tribune News staff?

Feast of St. Francis of Assisi

2006-10-04T21:36:00.000-05:00

Religion is literary. If Jesus was the greatest of all storytellers, and St. John is the William Blake, the visionary of the Gospels, then Francis is Keats, the lyric genius of consciousness regarding the created world...

In pondering Francis, the Franciscans on the tour were not on a historic quest. Rather, they touched the two gushing sources of contemporary psychology: the family and the self. In Francis they encountered the self held in the communal embrace of family and Church, and the individual mind desperately seeking free flight away from that very clutch, seeking the Godhead, where all divisions are lost, where self, family, you, me, cease to exist, and everything becomes It.

-- Patricia Hampl, Virgin Time

Wait a second...

2006-10-02T22:20:00.000-05:00

I am a blogger?

Gilbert Live!

2006-09-20T10:46:00.000-05:00

And we knew him back when he was just a ministry student living in DDH! ~~Met her once too.~~ Oops, no I didn't. Different sister.

Lysistrata Recidiva

2006-09-13T14:34:00.000-05:00

BBC has a story on wives and girlfriends of Colombian gang members going on a "strike of crossed-legs" to get their male partners to disarm. Aristophanes would be proud.

Calvin

2006-09-11T13:58:00.000-05:00

This is for all you calvinists out there.

Response to Bishop Whitaker, Pt. 2

2006-08-25T23:19:00.000-05:00

This is the second post in a series. For what I'm doing, see the first post. I'll try to keep this one shorter. I'd apologize for filling up the Watchpost with Methodist stuff, but I just saw on sitemeter that someone had come here from a site listing this as an Anglican blog! It's about time we balanced it out some (though I'm sorry to be doing it all at once).

The first major section of Bishop Whitaker's article concerns the language used to frame the debate (and if you're going to read what I write, you really ought to read the article to which I'm responding). In my previous entry, I indicated that I believe the question of language must start a step before the place starts it. Is the whole controversy a "distraction" and a search for "settlement," as he says, or an urgent issue of central importance in our search for truth and justice, as I would rather say? The last entry was long enough, so I won't restate all of that (indeed, I already used many more words picking apart what he said than he did saying it). Instead, I would like to move on to two points the bishop makes in his section on language.

The first concerns the use of the term "homosexuality." Bishop Whitaker would prefer not to use this term. I too have reservations, though for a very different reason. The bishop prefers

the term "same-sex attraction" to describe the phenomenon usually called "homosexuality." This term describes the fact there are persons who are attracted to other persons of the same sex... I think the term "homosexuality" lacks the neutrality of "same-sex attraction," but I use it because of its common acceptance.

Because the bishop is arguing in good faith, I find myself wanting to accept his rewording for the sake of argument. At first glance, it gave me no pause. However, upon further consideration, I'm afraid I can't go along with it. Its purported neutraexaggeratedagerated. By reframing the debate in terms of same-sex attraction rather than homosexuality, the bishop is implying (perhaps unintentionally) that all same-sex attraction is basically the same. It puts someone who is heterosexual (or basically heterosexual) experiencing a passing attraction to someone of the same sex in the same category as someone who is homosexual (or basically homosexual) experiencing deep attraction exclusively (or almost exclusively) persons of the same sex of the course of his or her life. Since much hinges on this distinction for many of us who oppose the church's present position, I cannot adopt the bishop's language for the purposes of the conversation. It may or may not be accurate, but it is not neutral. That said, I do not claim that "homosexual" and "homosexuality" are neutral terms. I highly doubt that there are any neutral terms available in this debate (or at all, in any debate). Each person must use language that has integrity for himself or herself while being as open as possible to the language of others. I will not complain if the bishop andprefers perfer to speak of those who experience same-sex attraction, though I will protest if they continue to call such language neutral. Meanwhile, I will continue to use the language of homosexuality and heterosexuality.

However, the bishop has a more important reason for shying away from the term "homosexuality." He correctly states that

the church views our identity in terms of our relationship to God, not in terms of our sexual identity... This is not to say that our sexual being in unimportant, but it is to say that it is more appropriate for the church to first view people as persons who are created in the image of God before it says anything about their sexual identity.

This is very true and very essential. But if I understand it correctly, there is no reason why this need preclude the use of the term "homosexual." I assume that the bishop would not have any problem if I identified myself as an American, a Methodist, or a Cardinals fan (unless, being stationed in Florida, he's a Marlins fan) as long as I were not making the identification in a way that implied that these labels are more fundamental to who and what I am than that I am a human being created in the image of God and redeemed by the blood of Jesus. But if I have already affirmed that what is most fundamental to my identity, that I am created in the image of God, there is no reason I ought not go on to affirm that I am a United Methodist from the Missouri Conference, a ministry student at the University of Chicago Divinity School, a heterosexual, or were it the case, a homosexual.

There is a third thing in this section of Bishop Whitaker's article that I cannot let pass without comment, and that is this statement: "Where there is disagreement among Christians is whether or not the public teaching and pastoral guidance of the church should direct persons away from making same-sex attraction an erotic desire and then acting on that desire." I am not sure what the bishop means by this distinction between attraction and erotic desire. I can think of several things he might mean (none of which I buy). I will send him an email or leave a comment on the conference website asking for clarification, and should he respond, I will report his answer to you (however, bishops are in high demand, so I wouldn't hold it against him if he doesn't respond). In the meantime, we will proceed on through the article, coming back to this question in the section on sexuality.

There is much else that could be said about this section, and even much to commend. However, I have already failed in my attempt to keep this entry from blengthy lenghty, so it is probably best to stop here. The next section of the article is on theology, where we really start getting into the heart of the matter. I will be spending most of the day in transit tomorrow, so it'll probably be a couple of days before I post (read: write) the next installment of my response. In the meantime, Tyler will have a chancAnglicanizelicanize the blog.

By the way, the reason I have reservations about framing the debate in terms of homosexuals is that it rather ignores the existence of bisexuals.

Response to Bishop Whitaker, Pt. 1

2006-08-25T14:36:00.000-05:00

(Disclaimer: Post contains some United Methodist-specific content)

I just finished reading an article by Bishop Timothy Whitaker of the Florida Annual Conference supporting the United Methodist Church's position on homosexuality (HT: Blogging Methodists). The basic statement of the current position can be found here (last paragraph, to which it should be added that "self-avowed, practicing homosexuals," whatever that means, may not be ordained or appointed, that our clergy and churches are forbidden to perform or host any sort of ceremony celebrating same-sex union, and that church funds cannot be used to promote the acceptance of homosexuality). Bishop Whitaker's article is very thoughtfully written and is offered in a spirit of Christian charity as a contribution to the dialogue. He concludes by saying "what is needed now is an environment in the church for a calm consideration of all of the complex issues in this debate, civil discourse, responsible theological reflection, and above all, prayer for discernment of the illumination of the Holy Spirit.” I could not agree more with that, and I hope to respond to the bishop’s article in a spirit similar to that in which it is offered.

The article is divided into sections on language, theology, sexuality, ministry to homosexuals, and the church and culture. I disagree with important points in each of these sections, as well as with the bishop’s conclusion (and, of course, the church’s position). In this and several subsequent posts, I propose to respond to the more important points of the article with which I disagree. I realize that I have started several series of posts, both here and on my livejournal, and never finished one. I hope this will be a first, but I apologize in advance if I get distracted by trivial things like my schoolwork and do not end up completing this project. In the remainder of this entry, I will respond to a point in the introduction.

In his introduction, Bishop Whitaker says that the issue of homosexuality is the most divisive issue confronting Western Christianity today, but calls it a distraction: “At the level of the General Conference, the issue tends to dominate the interest of delegates to such an extent that it has been difficult to focus on the primary mission of church, which unites everyone.” As recently as last summer, I might have agreed with him. But after the Ed Johnson fiasco in Virginia and the ensuing Judicial Council ruling (to which Tyler and I responded here and here, respectively), I am afraid I just cannot continue to think of it in that way. I do not believe very many supporters of the church’s position mean for homosexuals to be denied church membership. Nevertheless, that is what it has come to in at least one case, and the Judicial Council has ruled that as long as out position is what it is, any other pastor who wishes to act in the manner of Rev. Johnson may do so with impunity. I would also point out that it is much easier to see the issue before us as a distraction if one is in agreement with the current stance than if one believes that the current policies are a grave injustice. Furthermore, as the bishop goes on to discuss, this issue touches upon our understanding of the most central Christian affirmations. When a discussion about the nature of sexuality naturally flows into a discussion of Christology and ecclesiology, that says to me that the matter is of some urgency.

Bishop Whitaker also says he thinks that “the church is searching for some settlement of the controversy,” though he acknowledges that no such settlement is likely in the near future. While no one of catholic spirit can desire controversy in the church for controversy’s sake, I do not think that settlement is what the church is seeking, nor what it needs. Part of the wisdom of United Methodism is that there is never any mandated end to any discussion. Every four years, everything in the Discipline not protected by the Restrictive Rules is subject to renegotiation. Nobody is required to agree with the Social Principles or any of the various points of polity. They are simply the rules the denomination agrees to abide by for the next four years. I and others like me seek a change, a change some perceive as rather drastic. I firmly believe that sooner or later, this change will occur, because it is the way the Holy Spirit is guiding us. However, even if the 2008 General Conference were to remove the language about homosexuality being incompatible with Christian teaching and rescind the prohibitions against ordination of homosexuals, homosexual unions, and the use of church funds to promote the acceptance of homosexuality (all of which is highly improbable), that would not be the end of the discussion. We have affirmed again and again that we are not a “confessional” church. We have high regard for the tradition of the church, but unlike the Word of God to which it bears witness, we do not hold that tradition to be infallible or perpetually binding.

Framing the discussion as a distraction or a search for a settlement biases the course it will take, and possibly also its conclusion. I would rather frame it as a search for truth, justice, and a nearer walk with our savior. Of course, this is hardly neutral either. In my next entry on the subject, where I will respond to Bishop Whitaker’s discussion of language, I will say more about neutral language (and the impossibility thereof). I do not criticize the bishop for not using neutral language, I merely point out the language he uses and its likely effect.

I submit this and what will follow to whoever will read it in the sure confidence that whether the bishop is right, I am right, or (what is more likely by far) that because we know only in part, we have both failed to grasp many things, the church is founded on rock of Jesus Christ, and the gates of hell will not overcome it.

He could preach like Peter and pray like Paul

2006-08-21T13:30:00.000-05:00

Rev. Dr. Rhymes H. Moncure Jr., the United Methodist bishop of the Dallas episcopal area, died on Saturday night of complications from a brain surgery to remove a tumor.

Rhymes was my pastor at Missouri United Methodist Church in Columbia, MO from 1997 to 2000, just before he was elected bishop. I wish you all could have heard him preach. I remember his first sermon at my church. It was on the prologue to the fourth gospel, about the word becoming flesh and entering into our story, the story which he had started. When we tell our own stories, we are telling a part of the story of the Word. I now realized that I've preached this same message myself several times, and indeed, I hope to preach it many more, though it'll never be as good as when Rhymes preached it. Indeed, I'd never thought about it until now, but perhaps that sermon was always in the back of my mind when I chose to make the Trinity and the Incarnation the primary foci of my theological energies (then again, that's saying little more than that I am a Christian theologian).

When Rhymes preached, it was as though we were beholding the glory of the incarnate word, full of grace and truth (which, of course, we were). He always brought our hopes and our pain into sharp focus, and applied to them the gospel of the God unto whom all our hairs are numbered. Every week one of those epiphanic moments occured that most of us preachers live for but seldom experience. His sermons were always very well thought out, but we were usually all so caught up in the moment that we didn't realize until later that we had just been guided though some intricate theological maneuvering. He shared the vibrancy of the African-American homiletic tradition, with its passion for personal experience of grace overflowing into communal striving for social justice, with our mostly white congregation, and we have never been the same since.

It wasn't only in his preaching that we saw the grace and truth of the Word in him. Rhymes was our pastor, not just our preacher. It was often hard to contact him; he had many duties as pastor of a huge church (by midwestern United Methodist standards), and being in the running for the episcopacy often took him to the farthest reaches of the jurisdiction. He knew this, and it bothered him. But on Sunday after the service, it usually took an hour to get out the main door of the church because Rhymes would speak to every person who went out, often at some length, and he would never look over their shoulder to see how many more were left. He was an incurable hugger. And even with all his responsibilities, he knew when he needed to drop everything and be a shepherd for one of his sheep. He provided a lot of support and affirmation for me as I began to discern my call to ministry at a time when I wasn't getting much support from other people.

I had always hoped that I would see Rhymes again so that I could tell him how much his ministry meant to me, now that I'm able to begin to articulate it. It was Rhymes who showed me what a pastor can do. Now I will clearly not get that chance in this world, but I thank God that now he knows.

For Rhymes and for all the saints, lux æterna luceat eis, Domine, cum sanctis tuis in æternum, quia pius es. Requiem æternam dona eis, Domine; et lux perpetua luceat eis.

On the track of the dog-beast, or, Sirius Black is hit by a car on Route 4 near Lewiston

2006-08-16T22:57:00.000-05:00

AP:

Michelle O'Donnell of Turner spotted the animal near her yard about a week before it was killed. She called it a "hybrid mutant of something."

"It was evil, evil looking. And it had a horrible stench I will never forget," she told the Sun Journal of Lewiston. "We locked eyes for a few seconds and then it took off. I've lived in Maine my whole life and I've never seen anything like it."

For the past 15 years, residents across Androscoggin County have reported seeing and hearing a mysterious animal with chilling monstrous cries and eyes that glow in the night. The animal has been blamed for attacking and killing a Doberman pinscher and a Rottweiler the past couple of years.

People from Litchfield, Sabattus, Greene, Turner, Lewiston and Auburn have come forward to speak of a mystery monster that roams the woods. Nobody knows for sure what it is, and theories have ranged from a hyena or dingo to a fisher or coydog, an offspring of a coyote and a wild dog.

Now, people are asking if the mystery beast and the animal killed over the weekend are one and the same.

There is a precedent for mutant dog-beasts in the Maine woods:

After reviewing photos of the carcass, Coleman said he was bothered by the animal's ears and snout. It reminded him of a case years ago in northern Maine in which an animal shot by a hunter could not be identified. In the end, wildlife officials got a DNA analysis that showed the animal was a rare wolf-dog hybrid, he said.

(If you want to hunt responsibly, boys and girls, do remember that if you can't identify the animal, it's almost certain that you don't have a license to shoot it.)

HT:Ann Althouse, who captured the Wisconsin version of the beast on e-film this afternoon, and who gets to most of the nutty animal stories before I do.

"They believe that Being to be supreme and eternal, neither capable of representation, nor of decay."

2006-08-15T00:20:00.000-05:00

Ann Althouse asked asked about history books "that are written so well that one would want to read them as great literature." One of the commentors, pretty far down, said "I am "shocked--shoked" that no one as yet as mentioned Tacitus." Thankfully, Tacitus' estate has no problem with the free online distribution of his oeuvre, and we are treated to this nugget from Book V of his Histories.
The Egyptians worship many animals and images of monstrous form; the Jews have purely mental conceptions of Deity, as one in essence. They call those profane who make representations of God in human shape out of perishable materials. They believe that Being to be supreme and eternal, neither capable of representation, nor of decay. They therefore do not allow any images to stand in their cities, much less in their temples. This flattery is not paid to their kings, nor this honour to our Emperors. From the fact, however, that their priests used to chant to the music of flutes and cymbals, and to wear garlands of ivy, and that a golden vine was found in the temple, some have thought that they worshipped father Liber, the conqueror of the East, though their institutions do not by any means harmonize with the theory; for Liber established a festive and cheerful worship, while the Jewish religion is tasteless and mean. ...

Cneius Pompeius was the first of our countrymen to subdue the Jews. Availing himself of the right of conquest, he entered the temple. Thus it became commonly known that the place stood empty with no similitude of gods within, and that the shrine had nothing to reveal. The walls of Jerusalem were destroyed, the temple was left standing. After these provinces had fallen, in the course of our civil wars, into the hands of Marcus Antonius, Pacorus, king of the Parthians, seized Judaea. He was slain by Publius Ventidius, and the Parthians were driven back over the Euphrates. Caius Sosius reduced the Jews to subjection.

Why, thank you, blogger word verification.

2006-08-11T01:09:00.000-05:00

I got a special message from blogger's word verification anti-spam program:

Ooooh, yeah.

Killer Coke

2006-08-10T19:06:00.000-05:00

I was attending a conference this past weekend (Young Adult Ecumenical Forum on Globalization and Violence - a truly awesome event - everyone here needs to come to YAEF in 2007!!!) and one of the issues that was raised was the egregious violence committed by Coca-Cola towards unionized workers in Colombia. Union leaders at Coca-Cola bottling plants in Colombia have been tortured, kidnapped, and even murdered. This has been going on for over a decade now. I urge all of us to hold Coca-Cola responsible for these crimes against human rights and to boycott all Coca-Cola products until the violence stops. Take action and spread the word! For anyone looking for more information, you can visit Killer Coke's website.

UPDATE: Link added by Tyler

"You have something to learn here," he said. "You have something to learn here, and it's the Gospel."

2006-07-30T02:37:00.000-05:00

The ever-great Rocco points us to this Catholic New Service article about Tulsa R.C. Bishop Edward J. Slattery's akward meeting:

Many of the English-speaking parishioners -- some of whom were founding members of the 55-year-old parish in Tulsa -- said they have felt "a sense of disruption" since Father Tim Davison arrived as pastor two and a half years ago and intensified efforts to reach out to the growing Hispanic community within the parish.

As a result, some Anglo parishioners feel unappreciated and unloved...

Bishop Slattery provoked vigorous "No" responses when he suggested that just as the Spanish speakers need to learn English, perhaps the English speakers could try to pick up some Spanish.

At one point, he asked if the parishioners believed there should be any Spanish Masses in the diocese. When a couple of people said "No," the bishop appeared stunned.

"You cannot tell me that," he said. "Let me tell you as a bishop, we are about the salvation of souls, not Spanish or English."

He agreed the U.S. immigration system is broken and said the U.S. bishops have endorsed a sound package of reforms. But what about the 11 million to 12 million people who already are here? he asked. Should they all -- mothers and fathers and children -- be sent back? he asked.

"Yes, and I'll drive a bus," one man replied.

This prompted an admonition from the bishop that some of the remarks "show a definite prejudice."

"You have something to learn here," he said. "You have something to learn here, and it's the Gospel."

Da-amn!

Theocracy or something.

2006-07-26T16:13:00.000-05:00

Ross Douthat, who I really like in spite of some disagreements, has an interesting review of a whole bunch of books railing against the impending theocracy in America at (um) First Things. His first point is a good one. One author who plays up the fear of an impending Christian police state has his undies in a bunch about reconstructionists and rapture nuts. Douthat argues that these Christian wackos, outside of paranoid fantasies, really aren't that big of a deal:

Rudin’s book is thin on examples of significant political actors who are proposing taking any of these steps, let alone all of them. What he has instead are the Christian Reconstructionists—the acolytes of the late R.J. Rushdoony—who are genuine theocrats, of a sort, and who also rank somewhere between the Free Mumia movement and the Spartacist Youth League on the totem pole of political influence in America. Yet this doesn’t prevent them from figuring prominently in nearly all the anti-theocrat anthropologies, playing the same role that international communism played for right-wing paranoiacs in the 1950s.

...

When the evidence for Rushdoonian infiltration of the Religious Right grows thin for even the most diligent decoder, the subject is usually changed to the Rapture, another supposed pillar of the emerging theocratic edifice. Premillenarian dispensationalism’s emphasis on the imminent collapse of all institutions, foreign and domestic, would seem an odd fit with Reconstructionism’s idea of hastening Christ’s coming by building his (political) kingdom on Earth...

And the Rapture thesis has too much explanatory power to be ignored. Why did George W. Bush go to war in Iraq? The answers are all in the Book of Revelation—or perhaps on the “Christian fiction” aisle of your local Barnes and Noble. It is “eerie,” writes Phillips, “to see so many Bush administration foreign-policy qualities anticipated” in the Left Behind novels.

I'm inclined to agree with Douthat on all this. I'm not too worried about an outright Christian assault on the democratic process or intentional steps taken to hasten the rapture. A lot of people bought those Left Behind books (I bought one, too!) but turning the rapture into sensationalist fiction is a sign of the trivialization of the view, not its growing cultural dominance.

Douthat quotes Ramesh Ponnuru on conservative social values, where I think the real fight lies:

It may be instructive to think about the wish list of Christian-conservative organizations involved in politics. They would generally prohibit abortion, and perhaps research that destroys human embryos. They would have the government refuse to accord legal standing to homosexual relationships. They would restrict pornography in various ways. They would have more prayer in the schools, and less evolution. They think that religious groups should be able to participate in federal programs without compromising their beliefs. They would replace sex education with abstinence education. They want the government to promote marital stability. . . . Nearly every one of these policies—and all of the most conservative ones—would merely turn the clock back to the late 1950s. That may be a very bad idea, but the America of the 1950s was not a theocracy.

It is a very bad idea, of course. I'm sure all the folks writing about the scary theocracy agree. Trumpeting fears of anti-democratic, fanatical Christian wackos seems to me, though, to be an attempt to win people over to one's side in the argument by portraying one's opponents as unhinged, insanse. "Hey, they're all anti-democratic and planning on an immanent apocalypse. They must be wrong about abortion." It's a way of avoiding the real difficult questions we face about abortion, sexual morality and genetic and evolutionary science. It's the worst way to win the debate on these questions, people can tell when we're avoiding the issue.

“I sat for 25 years and watched my denomination become much more narrow and, in terms of education, much more interested in indoctrination.’’

2006-07-22T10:07:00.000-05:00

It seems, according to the New York Times, that Southern Baptist colleges and Universities are becomming too hot for the church higher-ups:

The issues vary from state to state. But many Southern Baptist colleges and their state conventions have been battling over money, control of boards of trustees, whether the Bible must be interpreted literally, how evolution is taught, the propriety of some books for college courses and of some plays for campus performances and whether cultural and religious diversity should be encouraged.

Odd, my sister's school Furman, in South Carolina is mentioned in the article. I had no idea it was affiliated with the Baptists.

Dude, let's worship the alligator.

2006-07-19T22:10:00.000-05:00

SALEM, Wis. -- Michael Wilk was tossing back a few beers with friends when he saw God on the side of his 4-foot-long pet alligator.

Without even squinting, Wilk noticed white markings pop out against a backdrop of black scales to form the letters G-O-D.

"When I first saw it, my jaw dropped," said Wilk, 25. "It's just sort of like a phenomenon on it."

I think the "D" looks more like a "K" -- the first two letters seem cut off at the top, and my mind wants to continue that with the third, assuming I'm objectively trying to figure out what's written on the side of this dude's alligator. Laura thought the "D" was most obvious.

How can anyone doubt the truth of our Lord after this? How lucky we are that this divine message wasn't sent to a non-English speaking pet alligator owner!

Catholic Bishop Tires of Crazy Mystics

2006-07-17T13:57:00.000-05:00

I have to say, this one really cracked me up. You know it's bad when the BISHOP is telling the visionaries to tone it down. But I guess they must get pretty irritating after awhile, with the thrashing and moaning and whatnot.

http://www.catholic.org/international/international_story.php?id=20431

Requiescat in Pace

2006-07-13T16:01:00.000-05:00

2004-2006.

Blogging will probably be sporadic in the near future, as I wait my turn for the S.O.'s machine and will, hopefully, be working during more of her hours away from the homestead.

Today's Schism Update -- Roman Edition

2006-07-12T16:58:00.000-05:00

Pop Quiz!

Q: What do you get when you combine Emmanuel Milingo, a popular, charismatic Roman Catholic Archbishop, known for faith healing and exorcisms, a breakaway former priest, and the (pretty wacky) Rev. Sum Myung Moon?

A: Mega-schism! (Follow-up)In a seismic move, it's being said that Milingo and Stallings are moving toward joining with Moon to form a Unification-backed Catholic group. Given Milingo's valid episcopal orders (he was ordained a bishop by Paul VI) and Stallings' record on the ordination of women and married men, to call the prospect a "mega-schism" in the making would be an understatement.
Check this crew out! I though we had issues in the Anglican Communion! Everything's much grander with the Mother Church! Look at the vestments on the breakaway former priest, His Holiness, George Augustus Stallings, Jr:

Wow! That's pretty slick.

"Traditionalist Churches that want to "walk apart" should be cautious."

2006-07-10T17:52:00.000-05:00

From the salty vicar:"I lost 40 older families after +Gene, but in the next year I got 40 younger ones. The press was all over the new church - they had lots of photographs. But they were all greying. I wish they had taken a photo of ours - we are growing exponentially with families that never thought there was a church for them."
Read the whole thing.

New readers: Take note.

2006-07-10T15:34:00.000-05:00

In the last couple hours, a couple users have happened upon our little corner of the Church after blog-searching "oral sex," "girl friend sex" and "oral sex story." I'm not certain they stayed very long, but surely most will agree, regardless of theological perspective, that planting the seeds of the gospel (at the very least by means of links to titusonenine) in these wayward tech-surfers is in some way symbolic of God's mysterious grace active in our technologically-driven society. The distance between internet porn, the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the message of Peter Akinola and my naive rantings is exactly one mouse click.

See also the Habakkuk's Watchpost slogan at the top of the page.

Opposites attract.

2006-07-10T14:25:00.000-05:00

Some people might be sick of Anglican infighting. For these, I present an interesting diversion: a video of Jay-Z jamming with Phish! Enjoy! (Don't ask about those puffs of smoke billowing up from the audience.)

"Jane and Alice" and a response to a silly question.

2006-07-10T12:51:00.000-05:00

Connecticutian, in a comment at T19 asked me this:

WHY would it be wrong for a straight person to act gay? Is there a theological reason? If not, then let’s not even bother discussing it. If so, explain; and also show why it wouldn’t also apply more broadly. For example, if it’s wrong for a naturally straight person to act gay, why wouldn’t it also be wrong for a naturally male person to act female, as in the case of homosexuality?

This is a (mostly) great question! More about the "mostly" part later.

First of all, from my perspective, it isn't that important of a question because I don't really view scripture as a once-and-for-all list of the individual sins we are to avoid. I think the essence of the Christian Gospel is the emphasis on big-s Sin, the natural human state of being turned away from God and our ability to turn back to God through Christ. I think understandings of small-s sins have to remain context specific and ad hoc and that permanant prohibitions against specific behavior should be avoided.

I think there is scriptural backing for this kind of viewpoint -- Paul talking about the letter v. spirit of the law, Jesus' writing in the dust (John 8) of the temple in response to the stoners' following commandments written in stone, etc. When I read the list of things that good Christians just shouldn't do in Galatians, it really seems like Paul is exasperated that his point about Sin isn't understood properly: "For Christ's sake! You want a list of things you can't do? Fine. Here. Christianity doesn't mean anarchy, but if you're too dense to understand true Christianity, you can alway follow rules. Here are some decent ones." That makes me sound like more of a gnostic than I think I am, but it's easy to see Gal 5:19 as something of a defeat for Paul. The Galatians, his convertees missed the point about the abandonment of the life of the law in favor of the spiritual life.

From this perspective, the idea that I need to justify my opinion about the status of particular sins in light of what, in my eyes, were descriptions of sins particular to a very different historical situation doesn't hold a lot of water. But, I don't want to avoid your question.

WHY would it be wrong for a straight person to act gay? Is there a theological reason? If not, then let’s not even bother discussing it. If so, explain;

Well, operating under the assumption that God makes some people queer, (in the best sense of the term) there is one readily identifiable group of straight people who sinfully (I'm inclined to say) betray their God-given self and fool around with the same sex. There's even a clever acronym - LUGs. Lesbians until Graduation. There are plenty of college-age girls, especially at women's colleges like Smith or Mary Baldwin in Virginia, who experiment with lesbianism and bisexuality in college. Now, there's research that indicates most women are naturally, in some sense, bisexual, but let's assume that there are some naturally staight women. (That might not be so hard.)

Like I said, it's hard for me to make categorical distinctions about particular sins, (some times are harder than others -- killing a man is usually a sin, beating your wife is always a sin) so, like ++Rowan, I'll offer a hypothetical straw in the wind, assuming as I do, that it's okay for a lesbian to be a lesbian. I apologize in advance to our more liberal readers who might take offence to a thought or two in the following. I'm on your side and trying to plead your case to our opponents. Go easy.

Jane has been struggling with her sexuality since she was ten. A couple times in middle school she felt odd around a few of her close friends, like she was more invested in the relationship than her friend was. She'd never felt quite right during those conversations about boys that began around sixth grade. By sixteen she knew what a lesbian was and had thought about her sexuality, but she wasn't really sure what sexual attraction was, so how could she tell? The stories her friends told about the thrill of adolescent sexual fumblings seemed totally foreign. She got along just fine with boys, a bunch seemed to like her, but she'd never been tempted by them.

Jane went to a woman's college, because she got a scholarship and it was better than the state school, and, curious, she attended a few queer advocacy activities, where she met Alice. Alice was a junior who'd had boyfriends in high school. One of them was a pretty low character, a popular guy sophmore year who pressured her for months, first for oral sex, then for her virginity. She felt like she'd betrayed herself when she gave in on the evening of the last day of the school year. He stopped calling soon after that, and she was actually kind of glad about that.

Alice had a few more boyfriends the last two years of high school, and she slept with a couple of them, but she never trusted them. She thought they were endlessly trying to get something out of her, like they never actually saw her as she was.

Alice went to Mary Baldwin because she didn't like boys and wanted to get away from them. Confused by her mixed feelings for men, she did her share of experimenting in college, and her emotional identity became a little unmoored. She got drunk one night and went home with another woman, and it did feel pretty good. If felt safe, at least, to be vulnerable.

After that, Alice kinda thought she had it figured out and when she met Jane, who seemed confused and scared about her sexuality, took it upon herself to usher the younger girl into a whole new world. Jane fell in love quickly; Alice was beautiful and smart and fun. For the first time Jane felt the love, coupled with vulnerability and trust, in romantic relationships. This is the closest worldly analogue for the love that we receive through the grace of God in Christ. (Read Rowan Williams' TBG!)

When Jane was a junior, Alice was trying to make a go of it as a painter. She met a guy in art school who was nothing like the boys back home in high school. One thing led to another, and Jane was left in the cold. We've all been hurt by breakups. Imagine, in addition to the loss inherent with the fissure of a love affair, the feeling (reinforced by the wider church and society as a whole) that you are a sexual freak -- other lesbians are only playing a game. You might be the only one who is actually oriented toward women.

Like Alice in high school, Jane, during her final years of college found she couldn't trust the very towards whom she was romantically inclined. What's the difference? She wondered. I can't trust lesbians and I'm not that interested in men. She married a man who was very, very nice and who had pursued her relentlessly and sweetly (her parents were thrilled) and had a couple kids. (Her parents were beyond thrilled.)

Then, soon after the fifth anniversary of her increasingly boring marriage, she met Yvonne, her oldest daughter's ballet teacher. Her parents were shocked, disappointed, not entirely unsurprised and pretty supportive, considering. Her husband tried to take it in stride, but, for a long time he felt emasculated and incompetent. Everyone was worried to death about the kids, who were never quite the same. They're doing ok now. They love Yvonne, whom they've known for years. Their dad's second wife is wonderful. They're truely happy to see their the strength that comes from their mother's relationship. Although they feel a certain sadness sometimes when their parents are within sight of each other, now that they're older, they hate to think of what their mother's life would be like if she were still living a lie.

That's what I have to say about that.

---------------

Conn. again from the T19 comments:

and also show why it wouldn’t also apply more broadly. For example, if it’s wrong for a naturally straight person to act gay, why wouldn’t it also be wrong for a naturally male person to act female, as in the case of homosexuality?

That's a wrong question. As a straight guy, this might not be my place, but I'll go out on a limb, here. I'll try not to be crude, but your statement makes me a little angry and it's harder to control myself.

There can be butch/femme distinctions with queer couples, but they're a lot slippier than you think. It is a gross oversimplification to say that a naturally male person is acting like a female in the case of homosexuality. A homosexual relationship is one between two men, acting like men.

There are times (including but not limited to sex) where one partner might take the dominant (male-like) role while the other might take the submissive (female-like) role. I'll avoid the baseball position analogy. First, as I've heard, the more straight-acting partners tend to be bottoms as far as doing the nasty goes. Maybe you'd say that this is just evidence of the confused nature of the relationships, but I think you're operating under an un-thought-out, overly broad idea of what constitutes male behavior and what constitutes female.

There are some aspects of my relationship with my girlfriend where she is more agressive and opnionated and I'm more passive and consensus-seeking. There are others where we are more true to our expected gender roles. Following you line of questions would suggest that I'm sinning every time I let my girlfriend assume a more "masculine" stance. My understanding of the many ways God's grace can be received in the world and my experience of this grace in my own life convince me otherwise.

Radio Silence Pt. 2: Credit Where Credit is Due

2006-07-10T11:25:00.000-05:00

The essence of my post below was that I though Canon Kendall Harmon was avoiding posting the Nigerian communique because his radical commentors would respond overwhelmingly in favor of the African message. I wasn't entirely right about that. Here are some responses to the communique after it was posted by Richard in comment #62:

orthodox vs. orthodox Says:

#67: I share many of the Nigerian church’s doctrinal commitments; and I too believe that represent the center of Anglican life; and if it means eventually that the US church has to leave the Communion, so be it. But Nigeria seems willling to jettisone the whole reality of Communion altogether so as to be in the driver’s seat on this one. Wrong. They have a lot of problems themselves (and Brian’s pointing some of them out, whatever his motives, is perfectly just). Akinola pledged to work with the Primates as a whole. He is going back on his word. I don’t like that, and I don’t trust him or his church. His American defenders are simply going down the road of unilateral action they have rightly complained about against ECUSA.

---

GL+ Says:

I am an orthodox reasserter, but have to agree with many here that ++Akinola & the Nigerian HOB are just exacerbating an already volatile situation. The wording of the statement is inflammatory and then the communique says,

“It therefore calls on the leadership of the Global South and Council of Anglican Provinces in Africa (CAPA) to do everything necessary to put in place a Conference of all Anglican Bishops to hold in 2008 should all efforts to get the apostles of ‘revisionist agenda’ to repent and retrace their steps fail.”

This seems like threat or power play, both of which are counter-productive at this time. What happened to being peacemakers?

There are, of course, "orthodox" re-asserters who, in my opinion, fly off the handle in response to the communique, but GL+ and OvO are obviously clearheaded enough to grasp its significance. I made assumptions about a group of people that were proven wrong by a few. I apologize, particularly to these two individuals. I'd love to hear a similar response to the recent activities by the Synod of Nigeria from +Kendall himself.

Don't kill me.

2006-07-08T00:57:00.000-05:00

This is bad:

The report said that neo-Nazi groups like the National Alliance, whose founder, William Pierce, wrote "The Turner Diaries," the novel that was the inspiration and blueprint for Timothy J. McVeigh's bombing of the Oklahoma City federal building, sought to enroll followers in the Army to get training for a race war.

It goes without saying that members of militant white supremacist groups should be identified and removed. But is it possible to banish white supremacy in the American forces in Iraq or Afganistan? Are you gonna kick out every soldier who talks about "towel-heads"? Maybe there's a category difference between dangerous white supremicism and casual racism, but as long as everyone who's trying to kill you is the same color and everyone you need to kill is that color, too, you're going to start to dehumanize. That's the first step toward the race war, isn't it? War creates this kind of militant tribalism, it can't operate without it.

I'm not, though, terribly worried about a knock-down, drag-out race war in America, though. Our racial tensions have stiff competition for the market of our hatred and anger. We have shown repeatedly that it's even easier to antagonize people who are a lot like themselves -- witness the acrimony among privledged white Episcopalians, the Connecticut Democratic primary race, Yankees and Red Sox fans or the gunshots of the south side. David Tracy, I think, is right to stress the importance of an ethic of the other. He repeats Levinas' view of the primal human reaction to the face of the other: Don't kill me.

Radio Silence and the "Orthodox" Dilemma

2006-07-06T13:04:00.000-05:00

UPDATE (7/9): Goings on in the comments! Also at titusonenine, where confusion reigns! There are two different inflammatory documents! It's hard to keep them straight!

Titusonenine, the popular blog operated by Canon Kendall Harmon of the Episcopal Diocese of South Carolina -- that being a diocese that has appealed to Canterbury for a new source of pastoral care (In a sense of "pastoral care" that seems to be approaching something that sounds remarkably like a "chain of command." ) -- doesn't seem to have linked to Akinola's recent overtly schismatic sounding "communique."

I'm not a huge fan of Canon Harmon's "invisible hand" blogging style -- he takes a few paragraphs of items that appear on the net and posts them without comment, just a "read it all" link. He doesn't even post the source of the text unless that information is contained in the header. I prefer to give at least some sort of context to the links I post, but this is all stylistic and rather irrelevant. Different strokes, etc.

The thing is, titusonenine seems like the kind of blog that posts everything. That's the whole vibe. The Akinola document seems like the news in the Anglican world. It's a big deal! Canon Harmon is probably burned out -- his blog was updated fast and furious during the convention, and the server crashed repeatedly due to the heavy traffic, but he's posted 10 different items so far today, the 6th. The "communique" hit Tuesday, the 4th. Technorati shows no link from the Canon as of this writing. What gives?

Another popular "orthodox" destination, Stand Firm in Faith, on the other hand, links to Mark Harris' spot-on (imho) response to the Nigerian document. There is a pretty-much unabashed glee in the comments to SF's initial reaction to the "communique." "YES! YES! YES!" Rootbranch types, almost, we imagine, bouncing out of his chair.

I'd guess that some of the commentors at T19 might be inclined to react similarly. But, Canon Harmon, I think, must realize on some level that Harris has a point when he writes:

The Anglican Communion, "?a Fellowship within the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church, of those duly constituted Dioceses, Provinces, and regional Churches in communion with the See of Canterbury, upholding and propagating the historic Faith and Order as set forth in the Book of Common Prayer,"? is a GOOD IDEA.

Akinola is threatening to break communion with the See of Canterbury unless the cancer of liberalism is burned out. Harmon and the leaders of the traditionalist wing of American Anglicanism have again and again ignored the blatant excesses of Akinola. Now he's threatening to destroy the definitively Anglican element of his church. Something's gotta give. If Akinola really tries to play this hand, Harmon's attempt to kick liberal Episcopalians out of the communion can no longer be helped by an leader who has removed his church from the communion.

Is it a surprise that the marriage of convenience between conservative, well-off first-world congregations like Truro and post-colonial movements like Akinola's has lead to a smash-up? Things are happening so fast. It's really neat that all this internet stuff is here to document it. All these computers are speeding up the events, I think, too. Thirty years from now, if people are still reading books, there will be an anthology of the last month's Anglican blogposts, and it will become a classic of Church History. So far, a big chunk of the current chapter is noticeably absent.

UPDATE: David Virtue, about whom manners suggest I should say nothing, has contributed to the debate:The African Anglican Church will simply not compromise on Biblical faith and morals and neither will those who remain faithful to Scripture do the same either in North America or anywhere else. The CAPA bishops have fired the final warning shot across the bows of the Anglican Communion, the next shot they fire will be fatal.
A smaller Anglican Communion would certainly survive an exodus of Virtue's ilk. David has theological reasons for calling this kind of wound fatal, but there's a huge gap between his theological "death" and any other understanding of that word.

By the way...

2006-07-06T03:07:00.000-05:00

The Anglican Archbishop of Nigeria has gone too far as far as that whole Anglican Communion thing goes. Akinola has finally, as I've long joked, reached the ridiculous position of trying to kick the Church of England (or, at the very least, most of the English Church) out of the Anglican Communion. If it doesn't work, he's going to skip Lambeth, the big Anglican get-together and hold the real Anglican Convention in Africa or someplace. This is rather odd! Someone I respect noted the appearance of the colonized giving the finger to the colonizers. Anti-colonialism definately a source for some of the language used by Akinola's allies. But, what's in a name? The nut Akinola's got to crack is the nut of the anti-colonial attempt to reclaim the title of the colonizing power itself - Anglicanism. Doesn't that just reaffirm the reality of the former colonies' subordination?

One might ask the same question of Christianity, actually, the (often nominal) religion of the colonialists. I can understand non-European "orthodox" trying to reclaim the true Christianity. I'm a bit of a heretic, I'll admit it. But Akinola doesn't talk about the true Christians in the Anglican Communion as much as he talks about true Anglicans. I don't really get it, it seems like a mistake, like he's saying some imagined form of Anglicanism trumps Christianity itself. Isn't that the kind of idolatry the real Christians accuse us of?

[afterthought:] Pssst. Benedict. You better hope Akinola doesn't like to swim. Our little post-empire Communion isn't a big enough fish for someone who has a direct line to God. I'd be careful about returning his calls.

Kim Jong Nicholson

2006-07-06T02:28:00.000-05:00

North Korea: You're damn right I ordered the code red!

David Addington: This isn't Tom "Thetan" Cruise you're dealing with, friend.

University of Chicago Alumna of the Day: Heather Booth

2006-07-06T01:25:00.000-05:00

Heather Booth was a second year in the College at the University of Chicago. She probably had a few classes to make up from first year, though. "In 1964, at the end of my first semester of college, I went to Mississippi for the civil rights movement and the Freedom Summer Project." In 1965, a friend's sister asked Heather about a safe abortion, and Jane was born.

The organization took shape between 1969 and 1973.

Some members of Jane, many of whom were college students, housewives and mothers, eventually learned how to perform abortions themselves--despite having no formal medical training--and did them in the bedrooms of various secret apartments around the city. The idea was to decrease the cost and increase the availability and safety of the procedure for otherwise desperate women.

Considering their outlaw circumstances, they were understandably careful (and totally badass!):

Susan (who did not wish to be identified by her real name) was told an abortion would cost $300. She balked and was told that if she could scrape together $100, an abortion could be arranged.

Susan was directed to a house where a woman would counsel her on what to expect during the procedure. "While her kids were playing in the room, my counselor served me tea and told me what was going to happen," Susan remembers. "I was so impressed that someone with kids would help me have an abortion."

She was directed to go to what Jane members called "The Front," a dorm room at the University of Chicago in Hyde Park, where she found a dozen other women waiting for abortions. From there, the women were driven in groups--season's driver was a happily pregnant woman a month away from delivery--to an apartment, where each was blindfolded as she entered the bedroom, to protect the abortionist's identity. Jane members called the apartment "The Place." (The locations of The Front and The Place changed frequently.)

"The women there were so warm, and they explained everything," Susan recalls. "Even the doctor was nice. (Susan later found out he was not a real doctor). And a counselor was with me the whole time. Afterward, I felt queasy because I hadn't eaten anything and someone made me an egg. A few days later, my counselor called to make sure I was doing OK.

"It was the best medical experience I ever had," she says.

Regardless of anyone's personal opinion of abortion itself, it seems to me, just as sure as Christ died on the cross, there were illegal abortions just about everywhere in this country before they were made legal. I can't* see how anyone, even the staunchest abortion opponent, could prefer dangerous, potentially deadly illegal abortions to safe ones. Even the South Dakota bill up for statewide vote in November has an exception for instances when the life of the mother is at stake. You see where I'm going -- the life of the potential mothers is at stake in the fight to keep abortions safe.

One might want to make the argument that the prohibition of abortion might drive down the number of abortions and, therefore, is somehow still a good idea. Being more generous than I'm inclined to be to this position, (generosity, of course, is part of our calling as Christians) let's grant, for now, the theory that outlawing abortion might actually reduce abortions and get more infants to hopeful would-be-adoptive parents. You gotta admit, though, that even if abortion were illegal, groups like Jane are doing the right thing. Safe abortions, no matter the moral status of the patient, (or patients) are to be preferred to unsafe ones. Even abortion opponents should be concerned with keeping abortions as safe as possible. (Matthew 25:31-46)

On a side note, the link to the SD bill takes you to a Q&A with the, Cynthia Gorney, who wrote the recent New Yorker piece on the bill. In that article Gorney mentions that the mayor of Rapid City (I think) is the son of a doctor who provided underground abortions to a network operated by pastors. Anyone know anything about this?

*There is one somewhat reasonable justification for the anti-abortion camp's silence about abortion safety. The women who get abortions are bad. In a moral nation we must prohibit such evil behavior regardless of the "consequences" to the perpetuators of such a grave sin. In doing so we wash our hand of their suffering. If we say this, though, we cut ourselves off from these "least among us" and isolate them from the community. Pontius Pilate tried to do that once. Let's not repeat his sin.

[Sheepishly retreats from his high horse.]

PS: This is the first time in memory that I've stumped wikipedia with something pretty interesting that's all hot-button and stuff:

We don't have an article with this title, Jane (organization), but you can either search for it or create it if you log in or create an account. As an unregistered user, you may also submit the content that you wish to have created. Please read our introduction for more information about Wikipedia.

"A long legal battle for every scrap of property and every dime in every bank account."

2006-06-30T01:20:00.000-05:00

Big couple days in our lil' old denomination, kiddos. The Diocese -- That's how you spell both the singular and plural of Diocese. They sound different, though; the plural rhymes with "cheese" -- of San Antonio and Pittsburg and a couple others have applied to Archibishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams for Alternative Primatal Oversight (father Jake calls it ALPO) -- they don't want to be in the Episcopal Church any more and want their own American Anglican Church. "See y'all later," I say, pretenting to be all sad.

The Reverend Marty Minns, rector of Truro Church in Northern Virginia, which is really big apparently, was just ordained by Archbishop Peter Akinola to be the leader of the new African Anglican Church in America to cater to Nigerians living from abroad and white people who think that gay people are gay because a primordial woman was seduced into getting her husband to give himself over to idolatry or something. Minns thereby totally disregards any existing polity of the church that ordained him and stuff.

Rowan Williams also just wrote a letter to the Anglican Communion suggesting that people who think gayness isn't bad in and of itself (in other words, people who aren't tied to a ridiculous biblicism above all things maybe should be "associate" members of the Anglican communion.

Ruth Gledhill, who writes for the Times of London online, has the most interesting story about the whole thing. At least one member of the Bishops and deputies email list wants us to say, "Okay, bye," to the guys who leave and fight them tooth and nail afterward. God only knows we'll have to deal with "Anglican" missionaries trying to poach members of our churches: (my emphasis on the really juicy bits)

Any number of folks have suggested recently that we frame some sort of amicable divorce to let the disgruntled go peaceably and nicely That would be a terrible strategic error. First, we have no reason to believe that the harm and humiliation that groups like the ACN, etc have sought to perpetrate upon TEC would end.

In fact, if we let them leave with all their resources we have simply given them a platform to carry on their promised war against TEC. Remember, please, that they are collecting parish directories in order to allow their lay arm to continue to agitate among TEC's membership.

So step one is to promise them a long legal battle for every scrap of property and every dime in every bank account. We need to make it clear they will spend the next ten years litigating.

The standard is that if there is one person in a parish or one person in a Diocese who wish to remain in TEC they become the legitimate stewards of everything that is now TEC's

Second, let's remember that these folks have no constituency from which to draw for growth. Catholics will always pick Rome over Rome wannabes and in the evangelical-fundamentalist world the folks withdrawing from TEC are guppies among sharks.

Their fantasy life says that they will grow and grow and just show us all, but the reality is that apart from the Truros and Planos, they have lived sheltered lives as bible thumpers. Which means, again, that they can only hope to grow from trying to sew more discord in TEC.

Third, I certainly hope that in San Joachin, South Carolina, Pittsburgh and Fort Worth people are preparing Diocesan Conventions to replace those who are leaving. Whomever has the authority should declare those Sees vacant and support local folks as they re-organize. This same organizing should begin now in every other Diocese that has withdrawn it's accession to the Canons and Constitution.

Fourth, we are already an international church, spanning turf from Taiwan to France. We should offer alternative primatial oversight to any parish or Diocese anywhere in the world who would rather be associated with TEC than the curial-fundamentalist WWAC emerging under ++Rowan's mismanagement. Before he assigns us second class status, let's demonstrate the power of a participatory democratic church. We should be prepared to welcome as Sister and Brother Provinces those like Scotland, Ireland, Wales, South Africa, Brazil, etc who will not support the emerging shape of the WWAC.

Hopefully the Executive Council and the PB's office will take leadership in these matters, but if not, then instead of continuing to worry over the true impact of B033, we could instead become proactive in this full court press against the theo-terrorists of the ACN-IRD-AAC-NAG-ACI grouping.

Damn! "Theo-terrorists!" Da-amn! Not all Episcopalians, the new Presiding Bishop, for one, think this is the best way of going about things. Me, I'm kind of interested in a back-of-the-bus church that slowly gnaws away at the already weak foundations of a desparate gasp of Anglican biblicism. I think Jesus would hang out with the "associate" members of the church anyway, given his druthers. We'll see eventually, won't we?

Yay, Jesus!

2006-06-26T02:34:00.000-05:00

Today's top two reasons I'm glad that God has been revealed to be loving and forgiving:

1. Marriages of Convenience: (Washington Post)"Hi, I am looking for a lesbian girl for marriage. I am gay but I would like to get married because of pressure from parents and society. I would like this marriage to be a 'normal' marriage except for the sex part, please don't expect any sexual relationship from me.

"Being an Indian gay person, I believe it is so much worth it to give up sex and have a nice otherwise normal family. We can be good friends and don't have to repent all our life for being gay/lesbian."
2. Virginity ploys: (Salon, annoying commerical pops up before you can read the whole article)

Chastity can exact a painful price from young Muslim women, forced into lies or surgery to go to the marriage bed as virgins.

Hymen repair, fake virginity certificates and other deceptions, said to be commonplace in some Muslim countries, are practiced in France and elsewhere in Europe, where Muslim girls are more emancipated but still live under rigid codes of family honor.

Such ploys have saved many a young woman from scorn and worse. But they also clash with the more liberal social mores of France and Europe, where some decry it as an attack on human rights.

I don't know whether to take heart in the fact that chinks are showing in the veneer of petty holiness under which Muslims seem to be particularly good at smothering their women and that gay Indians and Muslims are poking their heads out from the brutal repression that retrograde factions of their faiths and traditions force on them or whether I should despair that the oppressions of their worlds continue to corrupt themselves with these tortuous medical procedures and marriages of deception and placation.

As I said, God in Christ is revealed to be loving; he loves his glbtaqwhatever children and wants them to be happy, too. God in Christ is forgiving, as should be his followers. The desire for pure virginity on the wedding night is a sign that the husband is looking for unspoilt property to hold dominion over. This is a misunderstanding of the truth of each of our natures. As the preachers and theologians tell us, we are all already broken. Marriage, like God, is about love and forgiveness, not heterosexuality and cherry popping. Those who have ears, let them hear.

End legal marriage.

2006-06-26T01:42:00.000-05:00

There's a fascinating piece on marriage at ekklesia. (via Thinking Anglicans) The problem, in England, with marriage as it is legally understood, is tied in with the unravelling of Christendom. (To this American's ears, the idea of a state church is incredibly weird and would be scary but for the fact that the state churches in Western Europe all seem kinda pathetic as far as their actual political power goes. Maybe the political power of some of the non-established churches on this side of the pond that's the really scary thing...) Anyway, apparently if you're getting married in Great Britain, you apparently have to do so in an Anglican church or something. This may well change soon. TA quotes the BBC:Under draft legislation to be debated by the church of England’s General Synod next month, couples should be able to marry in any church they like if they can show they have a connection with it.
Wow. The Church of England gets to decide whether or not British citizens can get married in different churches. As much as I dislike currents Episcopal Church here, I won't ever have to hear the wingbats argue that American citizens should be forced to register their marriages in the Church of America. That's assuming there are members of the General Synod who actually think that this Official National Church thing is a good idea. Right now I'm glad I'm not an Anglican Anglican. Anyway, the ekklesia article is fascinating and does have a good bit to say about the American marriage situation.
First, from the Christian perspective, how might we meaningfully recover the vocation of Christian marriage through the community of churches (long subsumed in the obligations of the Established church towards many sceptical of its identity and calling)?

Second, in broader social terms, how do we enable people who are choosing different ways of developing relationships in a post-modern setting to discover, celebrate (and find formal expressions which embody) values like faithfulness, nurture and commitment – as well as providing legal security?

That latter question includes long-term live-in relationships (cohabitation), lesbian and gay partnerships, and also partnerships not necessarily based on sex or romance – which are usually ignored altogether.

The difficulty at the moment is that these distinct matters are all viewed unhelpfully under one single framework – that established by legal, heterosexual marriage. And while this can be adapted and attenuated (as in civil partnerships) or extended (as in gay marriage) this is done awkwardly, with much disagreement, and with more than a few holes.

What is called ‘marriage’ today is essentially a civil contract which can be dissolved or re-entered as many times as necessary. Superimposed on that is a Christian ideal of lifelong fidelity which many accept as ‘a nice idea’, but which is not what they are really choosing, and whose basis in a community of faith they often do not understand or accept.
Ekklesia's suggestion, which I think is just as appropriate in our wayward colonies, is to get the government off our sacrament, as I put it last year.

The current definition of ‘legal marriage’ should be dissolved and replaced by a variety of recognised civil partnerships through which couples could specify the type of legal commitment they wished to make to one another.

That way, we could work out our inclusive theology of marriage (a serious task in itself) relatively undisturbed by a nasty politcal situation.

Worst case scenario.

2006-06-23T00:10:00.000-05:00

Kevin Drum:

I want to ask a question: Why are people like Andrew Sullivan so convinced that a carefully planned phased withdrawal would be such a disaster?

Because it would set off a civil war? Iraq is already in the middle of a civil war, and a public plan for withdrawal might actually make an expansion of the current civil war less likely. In the best case, the Sunni insurgency might become less violent once they know we're genuinely planning to leave. In the worst case, the Shiites will beat them once and for all after we're gone.(Emphasis added)

We ought to think more about that there worst case scenario. What would Iraqi Shiites beating the Sunnis once and for all look like? I'm worried that it'd look a lot like Rwanda in 1994. Things are awful in Iraq right now, but that would be far, far worse. I would hope that Democrats think about this along with any calls for a troop withdrawl. How can we extract ourselves without setting off the shitstorm to end all shitstorms? I don't hear much of a plan from the Democrats, and I think we'll need to if we have any hope of taking power. If we take power anyway, pull out, and the shitstorm hits, this will, pace Kevin Drum, hurt our international standing even more.

Lady Hittler and the Straw Man

2006-06-22T15:06:00.000-05:00

Here's a quiz where, given a quote, you guess whether it was said by Ann Coulter or Adolf Hittler. I got 9 out of 14 right. At first I thought that Hittler was complaining about "liberals" in more the classical sense and Coulter in a more contemporary sense. But when I saw the right answers, I realized that Coulter and Hittler have many things in common, but one in particular: they both group everyone they dislike together into a single bunch, and then hold each of them accountable for the errors of all of the others. So Coulter's enemy is the combination of all the worst traits of the classical liberal, the contemporary liberal, the socialist, and the communist. Very effective, and damn near impossible to argue with (pardon dangling preposition). Reminds me of the accusers of Socrates.

HT: Sullivan

Watch out, part 2.

2006-06-21T15:02:00.000-05:00

Interesting. The ECUSA GenCon just passed the following, reversing half of yesterday's decision. (via Sullivan and Fr. Jake) This is what passed the House of Deputies this afternoon, largely, I hear, on the recently elected Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori's urging.

Resolved, the House of Deputies concurring, that the 75th General Convention receive and embrace The Windsor Report's invitation to engage in a process of healing and reconcilation; and be it further

Resolved, that this Convention therefore call upon Standing Committees and bishops with jurisdiction to exercise restraint by not consenting to the consecration of any candidate to the episcopate whose manner of life presents a challenge to the wider church and will lead to further strains on communion.

Sullivan rightly sees this as a pause in our trend towards inclusiveness rather than a reversal. +Gene Robinson is still a bishop and will remain so for the foreseeable future. Jake is right in that this won't satisfy the opponents of queer bishops. The Network here, and Akinoa and others in Africa and elsewhere in the Global South won't be satisfied until Gene is defrocked and the church has begun a massive purge of all the gay and lesbians already ordained into the church. No one really thinks that's going to happen, I believe.

Some of the commentors at Jake's feel betrayed by +Schori on this one. I'm disappointed, but were I a deputy, I probably would have voted for the resolution, too. Militancy for radical inclusiveness seems appropriate for the blog, but acting as an official vote, representing the church as a whole, I think, would be different. If, at Lambeth, the worldwide Anglican meeting in 2008, other provinces don't try to meet us halfway in exchange, I, for one, wouldn't hesitate to repeal the moratorium. This resolution should be seen as a compromise in order to have a dialogue. If our opponents don't show us the same courtesy, our compromise should be retracted.

It doesn't surprise me all that much that +Jefferts Schori did what she did. In an interview back in May, she said this:

Q: Obviously the whole church wants us to move toward more unity, but there is also the question of how far we will get if we don't take a stand. It's a flip side.

Jefferts Schori: There is a piece of me that doesn't want Gene Robinson to be the next Li Tim Oi.

Li Tim Oi was the first woman ordained as an Anglican priest:In 1944, faced with a situation in the diocese of Hong Kong that called for pastoral care, Bishop Ronald Hall ordained Ms. Li to the priesthood. Although this action was well received in the diocese, it caused a storm of protest in the wider communion and pressure was brought to bear on the bishop, requesting that she relinquish the title and role of a priest.

When Ms. Li became aware of the concern of the wider church and of the pressure on Bishop Hall, she did not get angry and leave the church but made the decision to resign the exercise of her ministry in 1946. For the next 39 years, she served faithfully under very difficult circumstances, particularly after the Communists took over mainland China.

In 1983, arrangements were made for her to come to Canada where she was appointed as an honorary assistant at St. John's Chinese congregation and St. Matthew's parish in Toronto.

The Anglican Church of Canada had by this time approved the ordination of women to the priesthood and in 1984, the 40th anniversary of her ordination; Ms. Li was, with great joy and thanksgiving, reinstated as a priest.
Jefferts Schori is unclear as to what she means about +Gene being the next Reverend Li. It must have been tough for Li to resign her ministry. The question is, though, would women's ordination (known simply as WO on the Episcopalain blogs) have happened as soon as it did without Li Tim Oi? Was the response to her ordination inevitable, no longer how long we waited to begin ordaining women? Li's situation was extremely difficult, knowing that you are the focus of such widespread animosity can't but be overwhelming. The same is probably true for Robinson. If being the next Li Tim Oi means, though, being the first, to be followed, over the next few decades, by more and more following in your footsteps, as has happened with WO, I think that +Gene would be honored to hold that title. Jefferts Schori's compassion is no doubt sincere, but the fact remains that we might need another Li Tim Oi. Robinson might already have accepted that role. At any rate, we have a couple years to think about this now.

Watch out!

2006-06-20T15:22:00.000-05:00

The resolution at the Episcopalian General Convention that proposed declaring a moratorium on ordaining gay bishops and blessing same-sex unions failed. The shit may just be about to hit the fan. For what it's worth, I'd rather be in a church that doesn't discriminate against female priests and our queer brothers and sisters than in a backwards Anglican Communion.

Still, I think the odds of us being kicked out of the Anglican Communion are only about 50-50, seeing as how most English Anglicans are on our side. There may only be a couple dozen Christians left in the mother country, but they hold disproportionate power in the Communion. Besides, I'd guess that many in the Global South aren't as bigoted and irrational as the Diocese of Fort Worth and +Bishop Duncan think.

Permit me to changing the subject for a minute. For the love of God, can we stop with this "blessing of same sex unions" bullshit. Let's marry the queers, for Christ's sake. Tell it like it is. Who are we trying to placate by withholding the word "marriage"? The homophobes, who may only dislike homosexuality because of scripture and not some sort of repressed hatred of their own queerness or instinctive fear and hatred of those unlike themselves, (yeah, right) know that we want to marry them. Why can't we admit it?

The reactionaries may well be gone soon. Can we talk about gay marriage then?

Even a wingbat finds an acorn once in a while. This is the acorn of surprise.

2006-06-20T12:55:00.000-05:00

Let's make things clear. I might have a little conservative political streak, but I think Michelle Malkin is an unhinged wingbat. I don't think anyone who isn't an unhinged rightist wingbat and who knows who she is would disagree. I posted a link to her blog the other day, bemoaning her internet popularity relative to ours.

Last night, according to our Site Meter reports, our mystery reader in the Netherlands, who, I think, has left a couple mysterious comments but remains largely a lurker, (hint, hint) clicked on that link. I decided to follow him over to wingbat land to case things out. Malkin had posted a link to an interesting piece on 9/11 conspiracy theorists in the Chronicle of Higher Education. (WTF? Malkin reads the Chronicle of Higher Education?!)

An aside about 9-11 conspiracy theorists -- even the wingbats think they're a little nuts. My favorite argument against those who doubt that the official Islamic terror story is a hoax comes from none other than (nsfw) Ward Churchill:

Churchill: Maybe what I said, something's gonna stick in your mind.
Heckler: The people attacking you arranged 9/11! It was the same people.
Churchill: Which is to say the brown-skinned people couldn't come up with and carry this out on their own.
Audience: [Applause.]
Churchill: It served their interest and then they seized on it and that's unquestionably true but that's different than you gotta have a smart white guy thinkin' up everything you're gonna do if you happen to be [imbued] with a brown skin.

Now, Malkin and Churchill, the wingbats par excellence of the right and left respectively, both think that the conspiracy theorists are craaazy.

The Chronicle piece focuses on Steven E. Jones, a BYU physicist who was "a faithful supporter of George W. Bush" until he was convinced by his research that those airplanes couldn't possibly have caused the towers to collapse the way they did. That's not what I'm interested in right now, though. I was quite taken aback when I read the following passage:

"For a while there, people who wanted to dismiss us could say, 'Well, it's just a bunch of crazies on the Internet,'" says David Ray Griffin, a well-known theologian and philosopher and a prominent member of Scholars for 9/11 Truth. "The very existence of the organization has added credibility," he said.

By many accounts, scholarly contributions to the movement began with Mr. Griffin, who retired from the Claremont School of Theology in 2004. About a year and a half after September 11, Mr. Griffin began reading books and Web sites arguing that the U.S. government was complicit in the attacks. Eventually, they won him over.

That left him feeling a peculiar sense of obligation, he says. The official story had all the voices of authority on its side, and the case for government complicity in the attacks had no real standing. "It was not reaching a really wide audience," he says.

So Mr. Griffin wrote his own book, trading on his authority as an academic. He called it The New Pearl Harbor. It was mostly just a synthesis of all the material he had read, tidied up by a philosopher's rhetorical skills.

David Ray Griffin?! The co-author of the much read Process Theology: An Introductory Exposition ? The very same. I just bought Griffin's Deep Religious Pluralism and was really excited about it. Now, I find out that Griffin has donned the hat of foil. On this issue, Michelle Malkin and Ward Churchill are the voices of fucking reason. If you told me yesterday that I'd be attacking David Ray Griffin alongside Malkin and Churchill, I'd have thought that you were wearing the Aluminum Foil Deflector Beanie.

20,000!

2006-06-19T02:36:00.000-05:00

The 20,000th visit to the Watchpost since we got Site Meter was a Windows/IE user in Houston. Said user came to us after searching Google for blog posts about "katharine jefferts schori." The user stayed for 45 seconds.

20,000 seems like a lot to me. Thanks everyone. Still, Michelle Malkin gets more hits than that in the hour around lunchtime every weekday. We have our work cut out for us!

Women in the Church

2006-06-19T00:24:00.000-05:00

If you don't already know who the new Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church is, there's no point reading this post until you've read the post below this.

In case you don't pay attention to everything that happens here at the watchpost (or elsewhere in internet/news-land -- I'm not a particularly original blogger) you might have missed the Roman Catholic* Cardinal dissing the Episcopal Church (ECUSA) for ordaining women as bishops. Some Episcopalians, like those in the Diocese of San Antonio, tend to agree. The Diocese of San Antonio doesn't ordain women.

The Problem with +Katharine**, though, according to +Jack, Bishop of Fort Worth, isn't +Katharine's vagina, it's her theology:

When first nominated, she was widely regarded as a “dark horse candidate” and as “the token woman” on the slate. I for one never expected that she could be elected.

Her election signals a continuation of the policies of the outgoing Presiding Bishop, namely support for the ordination of practicing homosexuals and the blessing of same-sex unions, practices which have divided the Episcopal Church, impaired our relationship with a majority of other Provinces, and brought the Anglican Communion to the breaking point. The fact that her ordination as a bishop is not recognized or accepted by a large portion of the Communion introduces an additional element of division and impairment.

The only reference to her gender, aside from the "token woman" comment, is "the fact that her ordination as a bishop is not recognized or accepted by a large portion of the Communion." Iker takes pains to avoid criticizing the church directly for ordaining a woman, but I'd be surprised if he isn't rather disturbed by that specific fact.

All I can say is that Bishop Iker is damn lucky he disagrees with +Katharine's theology. That means he doesn't have to talk about her vagina. The crux of the issue for the "orthodox" Episcopalians is the split oppositions to her gender and her theology. +Robert Duncan, Bishop of Pittsburg*** posted a response to Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Scholi at the influential "orthodox" blog of Canon Kendal Harmon of the Diocese of South Carolina. Duncan is one of the leaders of "the Network," an "orthodox" Episcopalian group, and he's in a bind. "While many of us have supported women in holy orders," he writes, "This election puts three Network dioceses within the Episcopal Church in an untenable situation." I'm pretty sure he's talking about three Diocese that can't get with stoles and vaginas coexisting.

This isn't a small problem. Have a look at some of the comments to Canon Kendall's blog:

Jeff Thimsen: The time has clearly come for the Network bishops to leave ECUSA.

JLS: In everything, give thanks. The way forward could not be clearer or more urgent. The time for talking is over, the time for leaving is at hand.

St. Dogbert: Folks, the time has come when orthodox leaders are paralyzed and indecisive. The battle is at the local level; do not look for the ACN or ACC to be of any benefit. If our leaders won’t make decisions, we must. King Jesus is calling us. This will be my last post and concern with ECUSA. Faretheewell, forward into battle!

Now, I tend to think that the craziest of the reactionary Episcopalians find their way to the comments section of Kendall's blog, (his utter failure to even attempt to temper their fanaticism is a pastoral error of the first order) but I think they must represent a sizeable constituency. Unless an alternate route becomes available, soon, the Network and the Anglican Communion are going to lose these folks.

Paradoxically, the Network has to pray that the fact that Scholi put her hand on a gay bishop keeps those opposed to women's ordination from fleeing the church and moving (along with their checkbooks!) across the Tiber or join some fringe Anglican group (there are dozens of those to choose from!) while they wait and hope and pray that we get kicked out of the Church of England so they can join again. But, this also entails, in the end, the defrocking of all the female priests in England, doesn't it? I mean, why is it okay to be a priest and have a vagina but not a bishop? You'll never get all the women, gays and lesbians out of the Church of England; they're almost as bad as we are. They're about to ordain a woman bishop, mark my words. What will you do then? Try to throw the Church of England out of the Church of England?

Here's hoping that the Democrats find a wedge issue this effective over the next few years.

-------------------

*Do me a favor and go look at the post where I talk about the Roman Catholic Cardinal dissing the ECUSA. I never once mention that the Cardinal is Roman Catholic, but as far as I know, no other denomination has Cardinals, and the post is called "Anti-Papist tidbit." My question is: would it be as obvious to anyone who might read this blog that I'm talking about the Church of Rome? Is it reasonable to assume that anyone who might have the slightest interest in reading about the kind of stuff that we talk about here going to understand what I'm talking about there? I worry about this kind of thing. If I ever seem like I'm using too much insider-talk, let me know -- I think that's a problem. Sometimes, I think, I use that stuff just to show I understand it. If you don't know what the fuck I'm talking about, and have some desire to do so, let me know. Honestly, sometimes I don't know what the fuck I'm talking about either. Y'all have probably figured that out, already, though.

**Katharine -- two a's, one e. Isn't that odd?

***Bishop Duncan: "[I]t remains our analysis that the decisive moment in contemporary Anglican history was the confirmation vote on the [gay] Bishop of New Hampshire[, Gene Robinson] in August of 2003, the consequences of which continue to unfold." According to a recent New Yorker article, Duncan and Robinson were classmates at General Theological Seminary in New York. I wonder how they got along.

This promises to be interesting

2006-06-18T20:20:00.000-05:00

[Note: moved up and updated by Tyler. Don't forget Aaltje's great post about the night ministry! Sorry for bumping you, Aaltje.]

The bishops and deputies of the Episcopal Church are to be congratulated on their election of a new presiding bishop. It is particularly noteworthy that their choice, the Rt. Rev. Katharine Jefferts Schori, will be the first woman primate of the Anglican communion. Not bad.

Now does anybody know anything about her?

No, I'm not an Episcopalian, but I did go to an Episcopal Church this morning.

*Tyler's Update* Kick Ass! Here's an interview with +Katherine. Here's what Salty wrote yesterday, when no one expected +Schori to get the nod:As I was dozing last night, I had a mad vision.

You know, perhaps we should sign everything in the Windsor report. Why not?

In exchange, elect +Schori Presiding Bishop.

That would really screw up the system. Far more than signing the Windsor Report, because even if we were to sign a document, and formally agree to some kind of repentance, gay people would still be blessing. Hey, let the conservatives police the state. That's what they are good at, and good for. Policing. I'm all for policing. They have a place in our church, also.

But Electing Schori would really screw it up. For everybody.

No RC dialogue. No Orthodox Dialogue. And then immense pressure on the Anglican Communion which has agreed to let women be a "local" issue. It would be a local issue no more.

Really screw it up. Let's create chaos. Within chaos, God will do that separating thing.

A woman as head of the entire church?

Lets see how Akinola would deal with that! What rebellion that would inspire in his ladies.
Here's the response from Canon Martyn Minns, Rector of Truro Church, Fairfax, Virginia on behalf of the (homophobic) American Anglican Council:

We are grateful for the clarity that this vote demonstrates. But sad because it seems that Bishop Schori is against everything that Windsor is for.

She voted for Gene Robinson and supports same sex blessings. She will bring into sharp relief the difference between being an Episcopalian and being an Anglican.

It is not clear how she can do anything other than lead The Epispocal Church in walking apart from the rest of the Communion.

If the "orthodox" Episcopalians are this riled up, this must be good news! Aaltje met "An old man pleased that I wore a collar because it was about time that women started wearing collars." Fuck that. It's about time women start breaking into the highest positions in the church. Thanks be to God!

Stories from the Night Ministry

2006-06-18T17:44:00.000-05:00

Some of the stories that I have seen or heard this week:

A young man about late-teens told he has HIV/AIDS. While I am not supposed to know what the test results are unless I am told by the person, in this case, it was noticeable. As many people were being tested that night on the bus, the nurse came out to give him his results. You could see his face fall and his heart break, but he did not want to let his peer friend group know that it bothered him.

An armed robbery about 10 feet from the bus in a Family Dollar. As the robbers ran out, one flashing a gun, the group that had come to the bus parted to let them through. As soon as they were gone, the crowd started calling for someone to call the police. While they did not want crime in their area, they also did not want retribution.

A child telling me I can do anything (jump rope in this case), even if I'm white, because she can do anything too.

A homeless man starting to file a complaint against the city police for harassing homeless African-Americans in a park.

Someone told he doesn't have HIV/AIDS. Again, this was noticeable because of his joy as he left the bus, calling home to tell someone the news.

Someone rejoicing because he did have HIV/AIDS and can now get better housing and medical care than he could otherwise.

A eleven year old prostitute.

A young girl who has dropped out of school and sells the condoms from the bus to make money.

A boy who not only placed well in track for the Special Olympics, but received all A's but one B in school.

Someone cry because of cookies and lemonade.

An old wizened woman was so touched that people came out and cared enough to bring cookies and lemonade that she cried. As I talked with her, I found out that she has always been avoided and shunned, except for by the bus.

An old man pleased that I wore a collar because it was about time that women started wearing collars.

These are the stories of those whom I encounter in one short (but oh so long) week on the bus. Primarily, I listen reflectively. I give affirmation and sympathy when I can and when it is needed, but mostly these people have needed to talk and to have someone that will just sit with them and drink lemonade. Often, the bus has been the only company that they receive and the only people who will talk or listen to them. As I am a quiet person, so these people tend to talk to me, with or without the collar.

The stories I hear on the bus are mostly ones of loss, grief, and betrayal. Those stories of happiness and joy are stories long past, told in memory, as if to recall hot chocolate on a cold day to stay warm. Often, it leaves them colder than they were before. Missing that portion of happiness in their lives, they grieve, even if they are not sure why they do. Often, it is the system that has betrayed them. They were turned out of their homes with no support structure. They have been chased from their park bench. They were fired and lost all they had because they were deemed “expendable.”

As I listen, I also have compassion. Actually, the German word for compassion “mitgefühlen” is more accurate. I “feel with” them. I empathize, yes, drawing from my own experience, but I also feel portions of their emotions. I feel their despair and their loneliness. As we stand and talk, we look for light and hope despite the systems that keep them down. We talk about solutions and not just the obstacles. We move toward grieving and healing as best we can together.

What constantly amazes me is the faith in God of those who come to the bus. I do not know what their Theology is. I do not know if it is Orthodox or Doctrinal. I do know that it helps them love and survive. For a few, this faith becomes a crutch because they do not wish to interfere with God's work; they do not want to mess up the Plan by working or trying. For others, this faith has sustained them in the winter, has led them to work, has released them from addiction. For many, God is the hope the drives them onward. It is God that brings the bus. It is God that helps them find referrals and shelters. It is God that listens, God to whom they talk, God to whom they can can reach out for lemonade. Yet, I believe it is also God who talks to me from these dark and lonely places.

Who are the real colonialists in the Episcopal Church?

2006-06-18T12:11:00.000-05:00

Canon Kendall Harmon posted a ridiculous column from the American Anglican Council's General Convention propaganda outlet. The piece compares the ECUSA to colonial England:

Take yourself back to the 1770s. A message comes to the camp of the Revolutionary American forces. Its from the British Army commander in the field. He offers peace talks, and encloses a letter of invitation to some of the Revolutionary American leaders identifying those leaders the British would like to represent the Revolutionary Americans at the peace talks.

Fast forward to the 1900s. The British Empire is in toils in India and Ireland. The British Government through the Viceroy’s Council identifies respectively in India and in Ireland persons to represent the national communities on the Governing Council. These invitations were eventually rejected by national leaders as part of a necessary process of the emergence of genuine national leadership and a level playing field of discussion.

The British knew how to run an empire and succeeded for over 200 years. One important way was to identify those from outside who would represent their fellows in any consultations. It was an important exercise of patronage; it was a way to socialise and educate leaders of other nationalities in the ways of the British. It also offered the semblance of access to power to those who wanted to make some contribution to the exercise of it. However it retained firmly in the hands of the empire the control of who those representatives were...

[T]he [the Special Commission on Responses to the Windsor Report] redefined what interdependence would mean – to invite members from the rest of the communion to sit on their commissions, with voice not vote. Most of the discussion about the invitation was around which bodies in ECUSA had the right to issue the invitation for the simple reason that those members would be identified and invited by ECUSA.

What was being talked about gave expression to the exercise of imperial power. What needs to be clearly heard is that no self-respecting member of any Anglican province outside ECUSA would even open the letter of invitation.

What a load of crap! When England brought American, Indian and Irish folks over, they were hand-picking patsies to sell out their communities and make rules favorable to the colonizing power to govern American, Irish and Indian people. Is the Episcopal Church forcing Peter Akinola to ordain gay bishops in Nigeria? No. Are we bringing people over from Malaysia in order to plant the seeds of the ordination of women? No. Is the AAC trying to argue that the English should have brought over American colonists in the 1770s to influence local laws governing the taxes of the people of London? Should England have asked Irish and Indian immigrants to determine who is eligible for local administrative offices in Manchester? Should the US invite Iraqi and Afghan citizens over here to help decide what to do with the detainees at Guantanamo? Uh, maybe they should listen to the world on that count. If the AAC wants to make this case, I'm prepared to agree.

We should also remember that what the AAC wants, in the end, is for the Anglican Communion to decide that conservative Episcopalians are the true Anglicans in the States and they should represent the Communion here. This is far closer to what the English colonialists did -- the AAC and the Network want to become "those from outside [conservative Anglican areas] who would represent their fellows in any consultations." Unlike the colonialists, the ECUSA doesn't want to decide and enforce what we think is best for non-American Anglicans. Reactionary Episcopalians want to be the agents of those who oppose the direction the church is moving; they've pledged their allegiance to foreign bishops. The AAC got the analogy right; they're just applying it to the wrong faction.