My friend Warren Smith has a nice article on Walker Percy and why he is important:
The month of May is a propitious one for fans of Walker Percy.
To begin with, the novelist was born on May 28, 1916. Were he alive today, we would be celebrating his 94th birthday this week. But, alas, he is not alive. He died in 1990, also in May (the 10th). And at least one of his novels, Love in the Ruins, was published in May.
These coincidences of calendar are as good an excuse as any to remember Percy. This 1971 book is surely one of his most significant works, and it begins with one of the great opening lines in American literature: "Now in these dread latter days of the old violent beloved U.S.A. and of the Christ-forgetting Christ-haunted death-dealing Western world I came to myself in a grove of young pines and the question came to me: has it happened at last?" That this is a brilliant sentence is self evident. Or, rather, if it is not self-evident, there's no explaining it without explaining all of Western Civilization, since it summarizes Scripture, Dante, Gibbons, and Flannery O'Connor in one fell and confident swoop.
For all of the virtues of Love in the Ruins - some say it is Percy's best novel - the novel that is still read the most is his first: The Moviegoer, published in 1961 and winner of the National Book Award in 1962. Percy fans know the remarkable back-story: that Percy was a doctor before contracting tuberculosis, likely from his patients. During a long convalescence, he took up writing, and he published his first novel at the age of 45. It's a story to give late-bloomers courage -- and don't we all, in some way or another, bloom later than we think we should, "grow up" later than we ought? Or, to borrow the same line from Dante that Percy borrowed, can't we all say: "Now midway this life, having quite lost my way, I came to myself in the midst of a dark wood"?
Read the rest here.
Friday, May 28, 2010
Thursday, May 27, 2010
Lutherans in Search of a Church
Robert Benne has penned a very thoughtful article for First Things here.
It is a summary of what is happening among those unahppy with the decisions to allow gay clergy in the ELCA over the summer.
Well worth the read.
Here is are some snippets: (read it all here)
What had been the promise of a renewed and robust Lutheranism in the merger of the American Lutheran Church and the Lutheran Church in America was aborted before its birth, in 1988. The planners of the new Lutheran church saw to it that those who provided theological guidance to predecessor churches—then almost exclusively white and male—were marginalized from the real decision-making centers of church life.
One of their instruments was a quota system that insured that the more “progressive” elements of the church would be overrepresented. Every committee, task force, and voting body must be comprised of 60 percent laypeople of whom half must be female and 40 percent of clergy of whom half must be female. 10 percent must be people of color or people whose first language is other than English, of whom half must be female. This scheme dramatically reduced the role of white, male pastors in the church.
Other instruments were: making the Bishops merely advisory; categorizing theologians as only one interest group among others; and locating final authority in lay-dominated, semiannual assemblies that could vote even on doctrinal matters, as one fatefully did in August 2009. These bodies made sure there would be “many voices” in the life of the ELCA, and we now have “many voices,” but no authoritative ones. What is left of classical Lutheranism in the ELCA is a mere “aroma in the bottle.”
...
However, the most interesting fall-out is the organizational changes. The two organizations formed to resist the direction of the ELCA—the Word Alone Network and Lutheran CORE—have redefined themselves. Neither desires to continue organized resistance within the ELCA, which they regard as futile. Both have turned their attention to building new organizations independent of the ELCA, as they seek to provide harbors for those in search of a church beyond their congregations.
It is a summary of what is happening among those unahppy with the decisions to allow gay clergy in the ELCA over the summer.
Well worth the read.
Here is are some snippets: (read it all here)
What had been the promise of a renewed and robust Lutheranism in the merger of the American Lutheran Church and the Lutheran Church in America was aborted before its birth, in 1988. The planners of the new Lutheran church saw to it that those who provided theological guidance to predecessor churches—then almost exclusively white and male—were marginalized from the real decision-making centers of church life.
One of their instruments was a quota system that insured that the more “progressive” elements of the church would be overrepresented. Every committee, task force, and voting body must be comprised of 60 percent laypeople of whom half must be female and 40 percent of clergy of whom half must be female. 10 percent must be people of color or people whose first language is other than English, of whom half must be female. This scheme dramatically reduced the role of white, male pastors in the church.
Other instruments were: making the Bishops merely advisory; categorizing theologians as only one interest group among others; and locating final authority in lay-dominated, semiannual assemblies that could vote even on doctrinal matters, as one fatefully did in August 2009. These bodies made sure there would be “many voices” in the life of the ELCA, and we now have “many voices,” but no authoritative ones. What is left of classical Lutheranism in the ELCA is a mere “aroma in the bottle.”
...
However, the most interesting fall-out is the organizational changes. The two organizations formed to resist the direction of the ELCA—the Word Alone Network and Lutheran CORE—have redefined themselves. Neither desires to continue organized resistance within the ELCA, which they regard as futile. Both have turned their attention to building new organizations independent of the ELCA, as they seek to provide harbors for those in search of a church beyond their congregations.
Wednesday, May 26, 2010
From clergy shortage to clergy glut
From RNS (Religious News Service) ... posted here.
After a decade-long clergy shortage in America's pulpits, Christian denominations are now experiencing a clergy glut--with some denominations reporting two ministers for every vacant pulpit.
"We have a serious surplus of ministers and candidates seeking calls," said Marcia Myers, director of the vocation office for the Presbyterian Church (USA), which has four ministers for every opening.
The cause of the sudden turnaround: blame the bad economy.
According to PC(USA) data, there are 532 vacancies for 2,271 ministers seeking positions. The Assemblies of God, United Methodist Church, Church of the Nazarene and other Protestant denominations also report significant surpluses.
Cash-strapped parishioners--who were already aging and shrinking in number--have given less to their churches, resulting in staff cuts. Meanwhile, older clergy who saw their retirement funds evaporate are delaying retirement, leaving fewer positions available to younger ministers.
"With the employment prospects both in and out of the church being slim, those who are employed are not likely to leave"--at least not voluntarily, Myers said.
All that adds up to a clergy glut--a dramatic shift for denominations and seminaries that had once recruited young ministers to combat the "clergy shortage." Now seminary graduates struggle to find ministerial employment.
"There is just no place to go," said Patricia M.Y. Chang an associate professor of sociology at Stanford University who has studied clergy supply and demand for more than a decade.
In the 1950s there were roughly the same number of ministers as there were U.S. churches. Now there are almost two ministers for every church, according to the latest Yearbook of American and Canadian Churches--607,944 ministers and 338,713 congregations.
Not all those ministers are looking for employment; some are not working or are employed in other professions. Those who are looking--especially recent seminary graduates--say realistic offers are few.
Larger churches are eliminating vacant positions or terminating associate pastors, Myers said. Smaller congregations are shifting some ministers from full time to part time.
That's what happened to Stephen Farrar, 38, whose full-time music minister position was cut to part time, mostly because of finances. He resigned to look for another position, but has only found a part-time interim music job at Calvary Baptist Church in Mt. Airy, N.C.
"Things are kind of hard around here, and when there are openings it's very, very competitive," he said.
Most churches, he said, are looking for a jack-of-all-trades--music, administration, preaching, youth and children's work--things for which Farrar wasn't trained.
"It's been tough sometimes, but there's no doubt in my mind that God called me into this," he said.
Job hunting is toughest in churches that are autonomous and not connected to a denominational hierarchy. While United Methodists guarantee placement to every fully credentialed minister, Baptist pastors, for instance, are mostly on their own.
"It's a free market," said Ed Stetzer, a Southern Baptist researcher.
It's virtually impossible to track supply and demand among non-hierarchical churches, such as Baptists, Pentecostals and many evangelical groups. But researchers agree the clergy glut is even worse in loose-knit denominations that offer little job security.
In the Church of the Nazarene, 6 percent of U.S. congregations are currently without a pastor, said Nazarene researcher Rich Houseal. That's down from the typical 8-10 percent, he said, and is likely a reflection of the recession. The vacancy rate is higher, however, among ethnic churches and small congregations.
Small congregations--those with 100 members or fewer --make up the majority of U.S. Protestant churches, and in those pulpits, there's still a shortage of ministers. A 2008 study in the PC(USA) found 71 percent of churches with fewer than 100 members had no permanent pastors.
That's the reality at Sumner (Miss.) Presbyterian Church, which has relied on visiting preachers for the three years it's been without a pastor. The congregation had already shrunk from 100 members to about 30 and can't afford even a young pastor's salary and benefits, said Frank Mitchener, a lay elder and chair of the pastor search committee.
The church used to be a training ground for new seminary grads, Mitchener explained. Now most seminary students "come from the suburbs and can't conceive of living in a small town without a mall."
Even if a pastor was willing to come to tiny Sumner in the heart of cotton country, the family "can't survive without two incomes," Mitchener said, "and in a rural area, where is a spouse going to find a job?"
The two-pronged reality facing American congregations is actually a glut and a shortage at the same time, researchers said. "You have a shortage in small churches, but you have a glut in larger churches," said Chang.
In fact, there are indications that both the shortage and the glut are caused by the same factor--the difficulty of staffing small, struggling congregations.
"Everyone talked about a clergy shortage, but there never really was one," said Chang. There has long been a surplus of ministers, she said. They're simply not serving where they're needed--in small churches.
Whether there is a shortage or a surplus depends to a degree on perspective. If you're a denominational official responsible for filling empty pulpits, it can be difficult to find willing clergy. But if you're an unemployed minister looking for a church position with a livable wage, the prospects are bleak.
A recent PC(USA) study found only 9.5 percent of seminary grads are open to serving in a congregation with fewer than 100 members; only 7 percent are willing to serve in a rural setting.
It's not simply snobbery, but financial reality. A survey by the Association of Theological Schools found that 25 percent of 2009 graduates incurred more than $30,000 in seminary debt--often on top of undergraduate loans.
And ministers of all ages, especially in low-paying situations, usually depend on a spouse's income to make ends meet.
"We find more geographically bound ministers--those with spouses settled in careers or other family ties to a region--who actually stay longer in congregations than they might have decades ago, when spouses were not typically employed," said Myers.
"Many people who graduate from seminary think they're going to get a large church like the one they are from, but there just aren't that many large churches," Chang added.
Even if the clergy glut is real, most observers expect it to dissipate once the economy picks up. It could also be forced by another factor: baby boomer pastors will start retiring in large numbers. The first wave of boomers, born in 1946, turn 65 in 2011.
An official of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America estimated recently that when economic pressures recede, the "pent-up demand" could triple the number of retirements in the denomination--from about 300 to 1,000 a year.
Likewise, one seminary leader said the clergy glut is more of "a traffic jam at rush hour." When the economy starts flowing again--as churches hire and boomers retire--the resumes of clergy candidates will start to flow as well.
"In five to seven years, I think we are going to see a major turnover and experience a shortage again," said Dock Hollingsworth, assistant dean of Mercer University's McAfee School of Theology in Atlanta.
"We laugh around here that every pastor we know is 57 years old," he said. "The baby-boomer pastors are all going to retire the same weekend!"
After a decade-long clergy shortage in America's pulpits, Christian denominations are now experiencing a clergy glut--with some denominations reporting two ministers for every vacant pulpit.
"We have a serious surplus of ministers and candidates seeking calls," said Marcia Myers, director of the vocation office for the Presbyterian Church (USA), which has four ministers for every opening.
The cause of the sudden turnaround: blame the bad economy.
According to PC(USA) data, there are 532 vacancies for 2,271 ministers seeking positions. The Assemblies of God, United Methodist Church, Church of the Nazarene and other Protestant denominations also report significant surpluses.
Cash-strapped parishioners--who were already aging and shrinking in number--have given less to their churches, resulting in staff cuts. Meanwhile, older clergy who saw their retirement funds evaporate are delaying retirement, leaving fewer positions available to younger ministers.
"With the employment prospects both in and out of the church being slim, those who are employed are not likely to leave"--at least not voluntarily, Myers said.
All that adds up to a clergy glut--a dramatic shift for denominations and seminaries that had once recruited young ministers to combat the "clergy shortage." Now seminary graduates struggle to find ministerial employment.
"There is just no place to go," said Patricia M.Y. Chang an associate professor of sociology at Stanford University who has studied clergy supply and demand for more than a decade.
In the 1950s there were roughly the same number of ministers as there were U.S. churches. Now there are almost two ministers for every church, according to the latest Yearbook of American and Canadian Churches--607,944 ministers and 338,713 congregations.
Not all those ministers are looking for employment; some are not working or are employed in other professions. Those who are looking--especially recent seminary graduates--say realistic offers are few.
Larger churches are eliminating vacant positions or terminating associate pastors, Myers said. Smaller congregations are shifting some ministers from full time to part time.
That's what happened to Stephen Farrar, 38, whose full-time music minister position was cut to part time, mostly because of finances. He resigned to look for another position, but has only found a part-time interim music job at Calvary Baptist Church in Mt. Airy, N.C.
"Things are kind of hard around here, and when there are openings it's very, very competitive," he said.
Most churches, he said, are looking for a jack-of-all-trades--music, administration, preaching, youth and children's work--things for which Farrar wasn't trained.
"It's been tough sometimes, but there's no doubt in my mind that God called me into this," he said.
Job hunting is toughest in churches that are autonomous and not connected to a denominational hierarchy. While United Methodists guarantee placement to every fully credentialed minister, Baptist pastors, for instance, are mostly on their own.
"It's a free market," said Ed Stetzer, a Southern Baptist researcher.
It's virtually impossible to track supply and demand among non-hierarchical churches, such as Baptists, Pentecostals and many evangelical groups. But researchers agree the clergy glut is even worse in loose-knit denominations that offer little job security.
In the Church of the Nazarene, 6 percent of U.S. congregations are currently without a pastor, said Nazarene researcher Rich Houseal. That's down from the typical 8-10 percent, he said, and is likely a reflection of the recession. The vacancy rate is higher, however, among ethnic churches and small congregations.
Small congregations--those with 100 members or fewer --make up the majority of U.S. Protestant churches, and in those pulpits, there's still a shortage of ministers. A 2008 study in the PC(USA) found 71 percent of churches with fewer than 100 members had no permanent pastors.
That's the reality at Sumner (Miss.) Presbyterian Church, which has relied on visiting preachers for the three years it's been without a pastor. The congregation had already shrunk from 100 members to about 30 and can't afford even a young pastor's salary and benefits, said Frank Mitchener, a lay elder and chair of the pastor search committee.
The church used to be a training ground for new seminary grads, Mitchener explained. Now most seminary students "come from the suburbs and can't conceive of living in a small town without a mall."
Even if a pastor was willing to come to tiny Sumner in the heart of cotton country, the family "can't survive without two incomes," Mitchener said, "and in a rural area, where is a spouse going to find a job?"
The two-pronged reality facing American congregations is actually a glut and a shortage at the same time, researchers said. "You have a shortage in small churches, but you have a glut in larger churches," said Chang.
In fact, there are indications that both the shortage and the glut are caused by the same factor--the difficulty of staffing small, struggling congregations.
"Everyone talked about a clergy shortage, but there never really was one," said Chang. There has long been a surplus of ministers, she said. They're simply not serving where they're needed--in small churches.
Whether there is a shortage or a surplus depends to a degree on perspective. If you're a denominational official responsible for filling empty pulpits, it can be difficult to find willing clergy. But if you're an unemployed minister looking for a church position with a livable wage, the prospects are bleak.
A recent PC(USA) study found only 9.5 percent of seminary grads are open to serving in a congregation with fewer than 100 members; only 7 percent are willing to serve in a rural setting.
It's not simply snobbery, but financial reality. A survey by the Association of Theological Schools found that 25 percent of 2009 graduates incurred more than $30,000 in seminary debt--often on top of undergraduate loans.
And ministers of all ages, especially in low-paying situations, usually depend on a spouse's income to make ends meet.
"We find more geographically bound ministers--those with spouses settled in careers or other family ties to a region--who actually stay longer in congregations than they might have decades ago, when spouses were not typically employed," said Myers.
"Many people who graduate from seminary think they're going to get a large church like the one they are from, but there just aren't that many large churches," Chang added.
Even if the clergy glut is real, most observers expect it to dissipate once the economy picks up. It could also be forced by another factor: baby boomer pastors will start retiring in large numbers. The first wave of boomers, born in 1946, turn 65 in 2011.
An official of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America estimated recently that when economic pressures recede, the "pent-up demand" could triple the number of retirements in the denomination--from about 300 to 1,000 a year.
Likewise, one seminary leader said the clergy glut is more of "a traffic jam at rush hour." When the economy starts flowing again--as churches hire and boomers retire--the resumes of clergy candidates will start to flow as well.
"In five to seven years, I think we are going to see a major turnover and experience a shortage again," said Dock Hollingsworth, assistant dean of Mercer University's McAfee School of Theology in Atlanta.
"We laugh around here that every pastor we know is 57 years old," he said. "The baby-boomer pastors are all going to retire the same weekend!"
Sunday, May 23, 2010
The Virgin Mary and the Festival of Pentecost
Take a look at this blog post which collects nice paintings of Pentecost. Beautiful images.
It is a from a Roman Catholic site and one thing that may jump out at a non-RC viewer is the prominence of Mary in the pictures. She doesn't figure in the story of Acts 2 so it may seem puzzling at first.
However, Mary is mentioned as being present with the assembly in Acts 1. And the point of the paintings and icons is more theological than literal. The images make a nice connection between the descent of the Holy Spirit on Mary at the conception of Jesus and the descent of that same Spirit at Pentecost. Throw in the baptism of Jesus and you have a pretty fair picture of both pneumatology and ecclesiology, all revolving around the divine gift of faith, which is given in and through the ministry of the church.
The church is our mother who gives birth to Christians in the font of baptism where the fruitful Spirit descends now as he did at Pentecost and at the baptism of Jesus. Lutherans do not worship Mary but are able to see her as symbol and icon of the church and of the fecundity and fertility of that church.
Saturday, May 22, 2010
Best Elvis song ...
.. has got to be this live, 1968 "Comeback Special" version of "Tryin' to Get to You". The Sun recording from 1955 is good but this is great.
It is not about how smart you are, it is about how hard you work
That is the summary of this nice article on why students succeed.
My college Latin professor said the same thing:
Repititio mater studiorum est.
My college Latin professor said the same thing:
Repititio mater studiorum est.
Friday, May 14, 2010
Every pop song is a funeral song: Ridin' in my Car
Some pop songs strike a wonderful balance of longing and emptiness that still make us want to sing along.
We all feel this primeval need and so we can all add our voice to the memory or loss or heartbreak or whatever it is the singer is singing about. It doesn't matter what the song is "about". Lyrics are totally over analyzed in writing about pop music.
What matters is the feeling. You can sing about whiskey, railroads, your mother, your guitar, your girl, your car ... it is all the same.
Every pop song is a funeral song. It is a hymn to what we have lost. ( Look up Genesis 3). Great pop songs make us want to scream and shout and dance while we feel how messed up things really are.
"Rock won't eliminate your problems, but it will sort of let you dance all over them." -- Pete Townshend, guitarist for the Who.
All of this was brought on by this magnificent little gem of a song by NRBQ, Ridin' in my Car. It is, in my opinion, their best song. It has that quality of making us long for something, whatever it is. Below the original is a recent cover by the group, She and Him.
We all feel this primeval need and so we can all add our voice to the memory or loss or heartbreak or whatever it is the singer is singing about. It doesn't matter what the song is "about". Lyrics are totally over analyzed in writing about pop music.
What matters is the feeling. You can sing about whiskey, railroads, your mother, your guitar, your girl, your car ... it is all the same.
Every pop song is a funeral song. It is a hymn to what we have lost. ( Look up Genesis 3). Great pop songs make us want to scream and shout and dance while we feel how messed up things really are.
"Rock won't eliminate your problems, but it will sort of let you dance all over them." -- Pete Townshend, guitarist for the Who.
All of this was brought on by this magnificent little gem of a song by NRBQ, Ridin' in my Car. It is, in my opinion, their best song. It has that quality of making us long for something, whatever it is. Below the original is a recent cover by the group, She and Him.
Thursday, May 13, 2010
All right, then, have it your way
There are two kinds of people: those who say to God, Thy will be done, and those to whom God says, All right, then, have it your way. — C.S. Lewis
Wednesday, May 12, 2010
Whatever happened to embarrassment? Whatever happened to shame?
Here are some interesting thoughts on the decline of embarrassment in our culture. Read the entire essay here.
What ever happened to embarrassment? Why are an increasing number of us comfortable bringing our private activities - from personal hygiene to intimate conversation - into public view? Bernstein and others place some of the blame on the desensitization wrought by reality television and social networking sites like Facebook, both of which traffic in personal revelation. To be sure, television and Internet video sites such as YouTube have made all of us more comfortable in the role of everyday voyeurs. We watch others cook, work, shop, argue, sing, dance, stumble, and fall - all from a safe remove. The motley denizens of reality television regularly put themselves into questionable and embarrassing situations so that they can later discuss, for our viewing enjoyment, how questionable and embarrassing their conduct was. If we are less easily embarrassed, it must be in part from vicariously experiencing so much manufactured embarrassment on the screen.
...
But we haven't eliminated embarrassment; we have only upped the ante. "Your slip is showing" used to be the most embarrassing sartorial faux pas a lady could commit. Now we regularly witness "nip slip" from female celebrities whose shirts mysteriously migrate south during public appearances - or during Super Bowl halftime shows. As the boundary between public and private has dissolved, so too has our ability to distinguish between embarrassing and appropriate public behavior. The result is a society often bewildered by attempts to impose any standards at all.
...
No one enjoys being embarrassed. But it brings us all together as a community by reinforcing norms and policing the boundaries of propriety. Writing recently in Greater Good magazine, University of California-Berkeley psychologist Dacher Keltner argued that the subtle signals of embarrassment - averting one's eyes or pressing one's lips together -are "a sign of respect for others, our appreciation of their view of things, and our commitment to the moral and social order." Far from dividing people, embarrassment "can be a peacemaking force that brings people together - both during conflict and after breeches of the social contract, when there's otherwise great potential for violence and disorder." By expressing embarrassment we put others at ease by reinforcing our commitment to group norms. Keltner encourages us to see embarrassment as "a window into the ethical brain."
What ever happened to embarrassment? Why are an increasing number of us comfortable bringing our private activities - from personal hygiene to intimate conversation - into public view? Bernstein and others place some of the blame on the desensitization wrought by reality television and social networking sites like Facebook, both of which traffic in personal revelation. To be sure, television and Internet video sites such as YouTube have made all of us more comfortable in the role of everyday voyeurs. We watch others cook, work, shop, argue, sing, dance, stumble, and fall - all from a safe remove. The motley denizens of reality television regularly put themselves into questionable and embarrassing situations so that they can later discuss, for our viewing enjoyment, how questionable and embarrassing their conduct was. If we are less easily embarrassed, it must be in part from vicariously experiencing so much manufactured embarrassment on the screen.
...
But we haven't eliminated embarrassment; we have only upped the ante. "Your slip is showing" used to be the most embarrassing sartorial faux pas a lady could commit. Now we regularly witness "nip slip" from female celebrities whose shirts mysteriously migrate south during public appearances - or during Super Bowl halftime shows. As the boundary between public and private has dissolved, so too has our ability to distinguish between embarrassing and appropriate public behavior. The result is a society often bewildered by attempts to impose any standards at all.
...
No one enjoys being embarrassed. But it brings us all together as a community by reinforcing norms and policing the boundaries of propriety. Writing recently in Greater Good magazine, University of California-Berkeley psychologist Dacher Keltner argued that the subtle signals of embarrassment - averting one's eyes or pressing one's lips together -are "a sign of respect for others, our appreciation of their view of things, and our commitment to the moral and social order." Far from dividing people, embarrassment "can be a peacemaking force that brings people together - both during conflict and after breeches of the social contract, when there's otherwise great potential for violence and disorder." By expressing embarrassment we put others at ease by reinforcing our commitment to group norms. Keltner encourages us to see embarrassment as "a window into the ethical brain."
There are no post-moderns in the electric chair
Joe Carter at First Thoughts passed along this gem:
Errol Morris:
It has become fashionable nowadays to speak of the subjectivity or the relativity of truth. I find such talk ridiculous at best. Let’s go back to Randall Dale Adams. He found himself within days of being executed in “Old Sparky,” the electric chair in Walls Unit, Huntsville Texas.
There is nothing post-modern about the electric chair. It takes a living human being and turns him into a piece of meat. Imagine you – you the young journalists of tomorrow – being strapped into an electric chair for a crime you didn’t commit. Would you take comfort from a witness telling you that it really doesn’t make any difference whether you are guilty or innocent? That there is no truth? “I think you’re guilty; you think you’re innocent. Can’t we work it all out?”
Well, the answer is: No. We can’t. There are facts. There is a world in which things happen and the journalist’s job is to figure out what those things are. Anything less, is giving up on the most important task around – separating truth from illusion, truth from fantasy, truth from wishful thinking.
Errol Morris:
It has become fashionable nowadays to speak of the subjectivity or the relativity of truth. I find such talk ridiculous at best. Let’s go back to Randall Dale Adams. He found himself within days of being executed in “Old Sparky,” the electric chair in Walls Unit, Huntsville Texas.
There is nothing post-modern about the electric chair. It takes a living human being and turns him into a piece of meat. Imagine you – you the young journalists of tomorrow – being strapped into an electric chair for a crime you didn’t commit. Would you take comfort from a witness telling you that it really doesn’t make any difference whether you are guilty or innocent? That there is no truth? “I think you’re guilty; you think you’re innocent. Can’t we work it all out?”
Well, the answer is: No. We can’t. There are facts. There is a world in which things happen and the journalist’s job is to figure out what those things are. Anything less, is giving up on the most important task around – separating truth from illusion, truth from fantasy, truth from wishful thinking.
Proud of your faith
The moment you're proud of your faith, you don't have any.
Attributed to Dr. David Scaer on Facebook.
Attributed to Dr. David Scaer on Facebook.
Monday, May 10, 2010
Siberian Evangelical Lutheran Church
As some of you may know I have been blessed to have gone to Siberia twice to assist the Siberian Evangelical Lutheran Church. There is ,in my experience, no group of more dedicated Christians than these folks. Their zeal for the Gospel and their willingness to sacrifice and care and just plain work for the sake of the church is humbling to someone like me to observe.
Here are three videos which are the online version of a very nicely done DVD which exsplains the situation and work of the Siberian Evagelical Lutheran Church.
Please watch them and pass them along. They are the work of the Siberian Lutheran Mission Society which has a new website here. This mission society supports the congregation and workers of the SELC. The mission society is more than worthy of your prayers and financial support.
Here are three videos which are the online version of a very nicely done DVD which exsplains the situation and work of the Siberian Evagelical Lutheran Church.
Please watch them and pass them along. They are the work of the Siberian Lutheran Mission Society which has a new website here. This mission society supports the congregation and workers of the SELC. The mission society is more than worthy of your prayers and financial support.
Sunday, May 09, 2010
Saint Ambrose gives good advice for pastors (or anyone) in the blogosphere
If any one takes heed to this, he will be mild, gentle, modest. For in guarding his mouth, and restraining his tongue, and in not speaking before examining, pondering, and weighing his words— as to whether this should be said, that should be answered, or whether it be a suitable time for this remark— he certainly is practising modesty, gentleness, patience.
So he will not burst out into speech through displeasure or anger, nor give sign of any passion in his words, nor proclaim that the flames of lust are burning in his language, or that the incentives of wrath are present in what he says. Let him act thus for fear that his words, which ought to grace his inner life, should at the last plainly show and prove that there is some vice in his morals.
Ambrose, On the Duties of the Clergy, 4, 14.
Saturday, May 08, 2010
Will Jesus Buy Me a Double-Wide?: ('Cause I Need More Room for My Plasma TV)
Here are some great book titles I have come across lately.
These first two I actually plan to read:
He Crashed Me So I Crashed Him Back ... The True Story of the Year the King, Jaws, Earnhardt, and the Rest of NASCAR's Feudin', Fightin' Good Ol' Boys Put Stock Car Racing on the Map.
Will Jesus Buy Me a Double-Wide?: ('Cause I Need More Room for My Plasma TV)
These others are winners of the Diagram Prize for Oddest Book Title.
What Kind of Bean Is This Chihuahua?”
“Collectible Spoons of the Third Reich”
"The Joy of Chickens"
These first two I actually plan to read:
He Crashed Me So I Crashed Him Back ... The True Story of the Year the King, Jaws, Earnhardt, and the Rest of NASCAR's Feudin', Fightin' Good Ol' Boys Put Stock Car Racing on the Map.
Will Jesus Buy Me a Double-Wide?: ('Cause I Need More Room for My Plasma TV)
These others are winners of the Diagram Prize for Oddest Book Title.
What Kind of Bean Is This Chihuahua?”
“Collectible Spoons of the Third Reich”
"The Joy of Chickens"
Wednesday, May 05, 2010
Advice from Mr. Bonaparte
Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake.
- Napoleon Bonaparte
- Napoleon Bonaparte
Tuesday, May 04, 2010
The secret of appreciating church
A post from Hunter Baker:
Don’t go (to church) with a consumer mindset. Don’t go thinking that you have to be entertained or amazingly taught or lifted into a higher plane by an ultra-talented worship team. Don’t sit back and judge the person teaching Sunday school as though you are Simon Cowell and the teacher is a performer. Pay attention. Look for opportunities to contribute. I am teaching now and have no illusions that I am a great authority on the gospel of John. I am grateful every time the other members of the class help me out.
Just go, week in and week out, and get to know the people in your church. It may take a while, but eventually you will form relationships and the people in your church will become to you what the people in Intervarsity were to me. Then, when you go to church you will be going to a reunion that happens once or twice a week. It will be an occasion for joy.
The secret of the church is not that it is some business to be run or a show designed to catch curious onlookers. The secret of the church is that is a community. It is a place where you belong and where people know you. In other words, it is a lot like the old bar on the television show Cheers. And it helps you to live the Christian life. In the church, you will become aware of what is going on in other people’s lives and they will learn about your life. You will pray with each other and minister to needs. Christianity is not meant to be practiced in isolation.
Don’t go (to church) with a consumer mindset. Don’t go thinking that you have to be entertained or amazingly taught or lifted into a higher plane by an ultra-talented worship team. Don’t sit back and judge the person teaching Sunday school as though you are Simon Cowell and the teacher is a performer. Pay attention. Look for opportunities to contribute. I am teaching now and have no illusions that I am a great authority on the gospel of John. I am grateful every time the other members of the class help me out.
Just go, week in and week out, and get to know the people in your church. It may take a while, but eventually you will form relationships and the people in your church will become to you what the people in Intervarsity were to me. Then, when you go to church you will be going to a reunion that happens once or twice a week. It will be an occasion for joy.
The secret of the church is not that it is some business to be run or a show designed to catch curious onlookers. The secret of the church is that is a community. It is a place where you belong and where people know you. In other words, it is a lot like the old bar on the television show Cheers. And it helps you to live the Christian life. In the church, you will become aware of what is going on in other people’s lives and they will learn about your life. You will pray with each other and minister to needs. Christianity is not meant to be practiced in isolation.
Sunday, May 02, 2010
Hey, rational "footballers"
I know some folks who actually enjoy watching soccer.
They may find this article of interest: (from here)
The social rationality of footballers
Are footballers rational? It all depends on what their goals are (no pun intended). We will not be talking here about behavior outside the field, as it's not entirely clear what norms of rationality one should use in this case (as George Best put it: "I spent a lot of money on booze, birds and fast cars. The rest I just squandered."). However, when playing, footballers seem to have a very clear incentive: winning the game. After all, the indecent salaries of many professional footballers depend on their team winning as many games as possible. Nowhere is the situation as clear-cut as in penalty kicks. The kicker must put the ball into the nets while the goalkeeper must stop him from achieving his goal, period. Surely, the combination of huge stakes and intensive training should produce optimal behavior on both sides of a penalty kick. This is what Michael Bar-Eli and his colleagues have tried to find out in research reported here.
After having watched hundreds of games (or hundreds of penalty kicks at least), the team was able to compute what was the best strategy, both for the goalkeeper and for the kicker. Let's start with the goalkeeper. He has basically three choices: staying where he is, in the center, or diving to the left or to the right. In the sample of penalty kicks analyzed, his chances of stopping the ball were one out of three if he stayed put (very good odds indeed!), and below 15% if he chose to dive right or left. Is this how goalkeepers behave? Not at all. Even though the best bet is to stay in the center, the goalkeepers only did that in 6% of the penalty kicks. How is such an apparently irrational behavior to be explained?
According to the authors, who have conducted interviews of several goalkeepers, the explanation is to be found in the "action bias". Goalkeepers feel a pressure to act because they would feel guiltier missing a ball while staying in the center than missing it while trying to do something. From the perspective of someone watching the game, this is not surprising: everybody knows that stopping a penalty kick is very hard, so we would not think ill of a goalkeeper who fails while powerfully throwing himself to the side, whereas we are likely to think that one who hasn't budged didn't put much of an effort. If this is right, then the goalkeeper's behavior may very well be optimal, not in terms of stopping the ball, but in terms of avoiding blame from his coach, teammates, or other spectators.
What of the penalty kickers? Are they more ‘rational' in their choices than the goalies? According to the observation of the Bar-Eli team, the optimal behavior for a penalty kicker is to target the upper third of the goal. In the sample they analyzed, not a single kick in this part of the goal was stopped, as compared to 30% in the central third and 57% in the lower third. So, do the kickers consistently aim at the higher third? No. Why? Because the way of failing varies, and seems to be more important than the actual rate of failure. When the kicker targets the lower third, most failures will come from the goalkeeper having stopped the ball, an ‘honorable' defeat, brought about by the goalie's skills. On the other hand, when the kick is aimed at the upper third, most failures will come from kicks that miss the goal altogether. In such cases, the kicker only has himself to blame. And everybody else only has the kicker to blame. In this light, it makes sense that the kickers should act in a way that is going to minimize reproach rather than only the chances of missing.
In the end, I think that the behavior of the footballers in this case is quite rational. As long as no one knows about this study that is, because if these results were to become widely known, then goalkeepers who do not move and kickers who miss the goal might not be blamed anymore. But then their behavior would be likely to change and to align itself with these new norms.
They may find this article of interest: (from here)
The social rationality of footballers
Are footballers rational? It all depends on what their goals are (no pun intended). We will not be talking here about behavior outside the field, as it's not entirely clear what norms of rationality one should use in this case (as George Best put it: "I spent a lot of money on booze, birds and fast cars. The rest I just squandered."). However, when playing, footballers seem to have a very clear incentive: winning the game. After all, the indecent salaries of many professional footballers depend on their team winning as many games as possible. Nowhere is the situation as clear-cut as in penalty kicks. The kicker must put the ball into the nets while the goalkeeper must stop him from achieving his goal, period. Surely, the combination of huge stakes and intensive training should produce optimal behavior on both sides of a penalty kick. This is what Michael Bar-Eli and his colleagues have tried to find out in research reported here.
After having watched hundreds of games (or hundreds of penalty kicks at least), the team was able to compute what was the best strategy, both for the goalkeeper and for the kicker. Let's start with the goalkeeper. He has basically three choices: staying where he is, in the center, or diving to the left or to the right. In the sample of penalty kicks analyzed, his chances of stopping the ball were one out of three if he stayed put (very good odds indeed!), and below 15% if he chose to dive right or left. Is this how goalkeepers behave? Not at all. Even though the best bet is to stay in the center, the goalkeepers only did that in 6% of the penalty kicks. How is such an apparently irrational behavior to be explained?
According to the authors, who have conducted interviews of several goalkeepers, the explanation is to be found in the "action bias". Goalkeepers feel a pressure to act because they would feel guiltier missing a ball while staying in the center than missing it while trying to do something. From the perspective of someone watching the game, this is not surprising: everybody knows that stopping a penalty kick is very hard, so we would not think ill of a goalkeeper who fails while powerfully throwing himself to the side, whereas we are likely to think that one who hasn't budged didn't put much of an effort. If this is right, then the goalkeeper's behavior may very well be optimal, not in terms of stopping the ball, but in terms of avoiding blame from his coach, teammates, or other spectators.
What of the penalty kickers? Are they more ‘rational' in their choices than the goalies? According to the observation of the Bar-Eli team, the optimal behavior for a penalty kicker is to target the upper third of the goal. In the sample they analyzed, not a single kick in this part of the goal was stopped, as compared to 30% in the central third and 57% in the lower third. So, do the kickers consistently aim at the higher third? No. Why? Because the way of failing varies, and seems to be more important than the actual rate of failure. When the kicker targets the lower third, most failures will come from the goalkeeper having stopped the ball, an ‘honorable' defeat, brought about by the goalie's skills. On the other hand, when the kick is aimed at the upper third, most failures will come from kicks that miss the goal altogether. In such cases, the kicker only has himself to blame. And everybody else only has the kicker to blame. In this light, it makes sense that the kickers should act in a way that is going to minimize reproach rather than only the chances of missing.
In the end, I think that the behavior of the footballers in this case is quite rational. As long as no one knows about this study that is, because if these results were to become widely known, then goalkeepers who do not move and kickers who miss the goal might not be blamed anymore. But then their behavior would be likely to change and to align itself with these new norms.
Saturday, May 01, 2010
Rev. Matt Harrison's Sermon at Concordia Theological Seminary in Fort Wayne
A very nice sermon.
There are twenty some candidates at the Fort Wayne sem who are without calls. This sermon was preached at the seminary, April 30. Rev. Matt Harrison is the Executive Director of the LCMS World Relief and Human Care. He also being promoted for president of the LCMS. I think he would make a fine president from all I have seen and heard of the man.
When I graduated from FW in 1992 I was one of 32 who did not receive calls. It was a very nervous time, very uncertain, very worrisome. This sermon sermon speaks directly to what those candidates are feeling.
Here is the sermon.
May God give peace and confidence to those await calls into the ministry.
There are twenty some candidates at the Fort Wayne sem who are without calls. This sermon was preached at the seminary, April 30. Rev. Matt Harrison is the Executive Director of the LCMS World Relief and Human Care. He also being promoted for president of the LCMS. I think he would make a fine president from all I have seen and heard of the man.
When I graduated from FW in 1992 I was one of 32 who did not receive calls. It was a very nervous time, very uncertain, very worrisome. This sermon sermon speaks directly to what those candidates are feeling.
Here is the sermon.
May God give peace and confidence to those await calls into the ministry.
The simple life versus the poor life.
Here is a skewering of the "simplicity" movement and how it takes a ton of money to live "simple".
Samples:
Hunting is usually taboo in the simplicity movement because it involves guns (hated by the professionally simple) and exploitation of animals (ditto). However, if you're hunting boar in the upscale hills ringing the San Francisco Bay so as to furnish yourself a "locally grown" boar paté, as does Berkeley professor and simplicity movement guru Michael (The Omnivore's Dilemma) Pollan, or perhaps to experience an "epiphany," as another well-fixed Bay Area boar hunter recently told the New York Times, you're doing a fine job of returning to the simple life.
Indeed, the Times article was replete with quotations from portfolio managers, systems analysts, and graphic designers who have taken up shooting boar, deer, and bison in their spare time because it affords them a "primal connection" with the food on their plates and is also "carbon-neutral" (zero "food miles" if the deer you slay happened to have been munching the tulips in your backyard). But if you're a laid-off lumber mill worker bagging possums in Eutaw Springs, S.C., because your main primal connection with food is that you don't have much money to spend on it, you're an unsophisticated redneck.
Samples:
Hunting is usually taboo in the simplicity movement because it involves guns (hated by the professionally simple) and exploitation of animals (ditto). However, if you're hunting boar in the upscale hills ringing the San Francisco Bay so as to furnish yourself a "locally grown" boar paté, as does Berkeley professor and simplicity movement guru Michael (The Omnivore's Dilemma) Pollan, or perhaps to experience an "epiphany," as another well-fixed Bay Area boar hunter recently told the New York Times, you're doing a fine job of returning to the simple life.
Indeed, the Times article was replete with quotations from portfolio managers, systems analysts, and graphic designers who have taken up shooting boar, deer, and bison in their spare time because it affords them a "primal connection" with the food on their plates and is also "carbon-neutral" (zero "food miles" if the deer you slay happened to have been munching the tulips in your backyard). But if you're a laid-off lumber mill worker bagging possums in Eutaw Springs, S.C., because your main primal connection with food is that you don't have much money to spend on it, you're an unsophisticated redneck.
All religions the same? Just comforting, sentimental bilge
Stephen Prothero has a very nice article detailing why it is inaccurate and dangerous to say that all religions are the same.
Read it all here.
Below are some tidbits.
At least since the first petals of the counterculture bloomed across Europe and the United States in the 1960s, it has been fashionable to affirm that all religions are beautiful and all are true. This claim, which reaches back to “All Religions Are One” (1795) by the English poet, printmaker, and prophet William Blake, is as odd as it is intriguing. No one argues that different economic systems or political regimes are one and the same. Capitalism and socialism are so self-evidently at odds that their differences hardly bear mentioning. The same goes for democracy and monarchy. Yet scholars continue to claim that religious rivals such as Hinduism and Islam, Judaism and Christianity are, by some miracle of the imagination, both essentially the same and basically good.
This view resounds in the echo chamber of popular culture, not least on the “Oprah Winfrey Show” and in Elizabeth Gilbert’s bestseller, “Eat Pray Love,” where the world’s religions are described as rivers emptying into the ocean of God. Karen Armstrong, author of “A History of God,” has made a career out of emphasizing the commonalities of religion while eliding their differences. Even the Dalai Lama, who should know better, has gotten into the act, claiming that “all major religious traditions carry basically the same message.”
Of course, those who claim that the world’s religions are different paths up the same mountain do not deny the undeniable fact that they differ in some particulars. Obviously, Christians do not go on pilgrimage to Mecca, and Muslims do not practice baptism. Religious paths do diverge in dogma, rites, and institutions. To claim that all religions are basically the same, therefore, is not to deny the differences between a Buddhist who believes in no god, a Jew who believes in one God, and a Hindu who believes in many gods. It is to deny that those differences matter, however. From this perspective, whether God has a body (yes, say Mormons; no, say Muslims) or whether human beings have souls (yes, say Hindus; no, say Buddhists) is of no account because, as Hindu teacher Swami Sivananda writes, “The fundamentals or essentials of all religions are the same. There is difference only in the nonessentials.”
This is a lovely sentiment but it is untrue, disrespectful, and dangerous.
...
But this lumping of the world’s religions into one megareligion is not just false and condescending, it is also a threat. How can we make sense of the ongoing conflict in Kashmir if we pretend that Hinduism and Islam are one and the same? Or of the impasse in the Middle East, if we pretend that there are no fundamental disagreements between Judaism, Christianity, and Islam?
...
What the world’s religions share is not so much a finish line as a starting point. And where they begin is with this simple observation: Something is wrong with the world.
Read it all here.
Below are some tidbits.
At least since the first petals of the counterculture bloomed across Europe and the United States in the 1960s, it has been fashionable to affirm that all religions are beautiful and all are true. This claim, which reaches back to “All Religions Are One” (1795) by the English poet, printmaker, and prophet William Blake, is as odd as it is intriguing. No one argues that different economic systems or political regimes are one and the same. Capitalism and socialism are so self-evidently at odds that their differences hardly bear mentioning. The same goes for democracy and monarchy. Yet scholars continue to claim that religious rivals such as Hinduism and Islam, Judaism and Christianity are, by some miracle of the imagination, both essentially the same and basically good.
This view resounds in the echo chamber of popular culture, not least on the “Oprah Winfrey Show” and in Elizabeth Gilbert’s bestseller, “Eat Pray Love,” where the world’s religions are described as rivers emptying into the ocean of God. Karen Armstrong, author of “A History of God,” has made a career out of emphasizing the commonalities of religion while eliding their differences. Even the Dalai Lama, who should know better, has gotten into the act, claiming that “all major religious traditions carry basically the same message.”
Of course, those who claim that the world’s religions are different paths up the same mountain do not deny the undeniable fact that they differ in some particulars. Obviously, Christians do not go on pilgrimage to Mecca, and Muslims do not practice baptism. Religious paths do diverge in dogma, rites, and institutions. To claim that all religions are basically the same, therefore, is not to deny the differences between a Buddhist who believes in no god, a Jew who believes in one God, and a Hindu who believes in many gods. It is to deny that those differences matter, however. From this perspective, whether God has a body (yes, say Mormons; no, say Muslims) or whether human beings have souls (yes, say Hindus; no, say Buddhists) is of no account because, as Hindu teacher Swami Sivananda writes, “The fundamentals or essentials of all religions are the same. There is difference only in the nonessentials.”
This is a lovely sentiment but it is untrue, disrespectful, and dangerous.
...
But this lumping of the world’s religions into one megareligion is not just false and condescending, it is also a threat. How can we make sense of the ongoing conflict in Kashmir if we pretend that Hinduism and Islam are one and the same? Or of the impasse in the Middle East, if we pretend that there are no fundamental disagreements between Judaism, Christianity, and Islam?
...
What the world’s religions share is not so much a finish line as a starting point. And where they begin is with this simple observation: Something is wrong with the world.
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