Jesus Creed
I like all parts of the USA — well not all — but
nothing, and I mean nothing, beats good old Fall colors!
Is this about to be your first winter in winterlands like Chicago? Read this. And if you are Swedish, or Covenant, you might want to read Abby’s post and browse her pictures of Sweden.
J. Kameron Carter: “Or put differently one more time and much more succinctly: “post-racial” racism is now working in the register of religion.” Justin Topp’s four models for relating faith and science. Andy Rowell is among the many who illustrate how to read Karl Barth.
Karen‘s got a new Friday series going; bookmark it. It will be serious and fun at the same time.
Eugene Cho’s whatchamacallit. Ted ponders Veterans Day for a pacifist. Roger Olson sums up the differences between NT Wright and his critics on justification. Olson nails it, though I would add one more feature: deep in the heart of Tom’s critics is the necessity of an Augustinian anthropology shaping the problem that needs resolution.
This post appears on a morning when I will be having breakfast with my friend Jacob who teaches at Irish Bible Institute — and to make this post officially Irish, I link to my friend Patrick Mitchel who is posting on Blue Parakeet women in ministry passages. Speaking of women in ministry, iMonk’s site posted this by Angie Gage.
Tamara Buchan on the spirit of adoption.
An interview with former captive, Ingrid Betancourt, on her faith. An interview with former President George W. Bush.
Great post by Fr Rob — a must read for pastors: “I do not write this about myself, though this is what I aspire to. I write it as I think about the teaching we heard this past weekend by a man who has been a pastor pastor for 42 years. I have heard people who are widely regarded as some of the best speakers in the world, and for good reason. I have benefited immensely from what they have said. But I don’t know that I have ever heard better teaching than this. And I guess if I am completely honest, I am a little bit saddened by the way so many of the masses will flock to the glamour of the one, failing to appreciate the real treasure that may be found in the small, aging building just down the street.”
JR Briggs on the importance of listening. Gottareadthisone!
Don Johnson: Is it teaching or preaching? I say “preaching!” (Don, good to see Luke the other day.)
Traveling to speak in churches creates opportunities to meet worship leaders but more often simply listening in and observing them, and I can’t say enough about them. Here’s one to meet and listen to: Michael Boggs.
My own take on this picture is that Santa’s radar got messed up, he didn’t know how high he was flying, and the FAA is looking into it.
Meanderings in the News
1. Self-immolation as a form of attempted liberation in Afghanistan: “It is shameful here to admit to troubles at home, and mental illness often goes undiagnosed or untreated. Ms. Zada, the hospital staff said, probably suffered from depression. The choices for Afghan women are extraordinarily restricted: Their family is their fate. There is little chance for education, little choice about whom a woman marries, no choice at all about her role in her own house. Her primary job is to serve her husband’s family. Outside that world, she is an outcast.”
2. Theodore Vail, at Slate (by Tim Wu), in a series on information technology; this one on AT&T: “It may sound strange to our ears, but Vail, a full-throated capitalist, rejected the idea of “competition.” He judged monopoly, when held in the right hands, to be the superior arrangement. “Competition,” Vail had written, “means strife, industrial warfare; it means contention; it oftentimes means taking advantage of or resorting to any means that the conscience of the contestants … will permit.” His reasoning was moralistic: Competition was giving American business a bad name. “The vicious acts associated with aggressive competition are responsible for much, if not all, of the present antagonism in the public mind to business, particularly to large business.”
3. It’s about having the right story at the right time. This applies from the Left, as with Frank Rich: “The president’s travails are not merely a “communications problem.” They’re also a governance problem — which makes them a gift to opponents who prefer no governance at all. You can’t govern if you can’t tell the country where you are taking it. The plot of Obama’s presidency has been harder to follow than “Inception.”” And from the Right, with Sarah Palin: “The first lesson is simple: Set the narrative. This year it wasn’t too difficult to tell the story of the election: It was about stopping an out-of-control Congress and an out-of-touch White House. In races across the country, Republican candidates ran on the message that the Left was bankrupting America with budget-busting spending bills that mortgage our children’s future, burden the private sector with uncertainty, and cripple our much-needed job growth. The story of the next cycle, though, remains to be written.” And one more time from the Left, with Ross Douthat: “The modest Mr. Boehner leads a party with much to be modest about. Gingrich could brandish an agenda because he had an agenda — a raft of conservative policy proposals, on welfare and crime and taxes, that couldn’t get any traction in a Democratic-controlled Congress. Today’s Republicans, by contrast, know what they’re against (the health care bill, tax increases, cap and trade) but have a world of trouble saying what they might actually be for.” The simplest truths of politics don’t attract votes, so politicians make promises.
4. Back to the Right, with Michael Novak, articulating the inner fabric of the rise of social (and moral) conservatives: “What is most striking about this election is the rising up of a huge popular movement with virtually no visible national leader — a movement spontaneously arising out of the refusal to lose the country our Founding Fathers (Washington, Adams, Jefferson, and the others) built solidly on certain fixed, eternal principles: firm principles about the dignity and responsibility before God of every woman and man, about the freedom of the economy from State management (but not from necessary State regulation), and about the universal opportunity of every citizen to rise as far as their talents and hard work will take them.”
A clear sign of evolution:
5. Smoking in America: “Fewer than 13 percent of Americans now smoke cigarettes every day. While this represents a dramatic decline from the Mad Men-era of ubiquitous ash trays, the drop in smokers isn’t happening everywhere at the same rate, and it isn’t necessarily happening among the people you’d expect. Slate decided to map the latest data about cigarette smoking by state and county, and the trends it reveals are fascinating. In most of the counties around the border of Kentucky and West Virginia, for example, as much as 40 percent of the population regularly lights up.”
6. Leslie Leyland Fields on the Food Crisis: “Where does the news begin? Most of the authors trace our crisis in food conduct and conscience to the events following World War II, when the federal government led a shift from family-operated agrarian economies to corporatized agribusinesses. In agribusiness, efficiency and mass production have, more often than not, overruled fair treatment of farmers, humane treatment of animals, and proper care of the land.”
8. This could be big, good news for many: “Researchers at Canada’s McMaster University report that they’ve figured out how to make blood out of human skin. The breakthrough could eventually mean that patients needing blood for surgery, cancer treatment or treatment of blood conditions like anemia will be able to have blood created from a patch of their own skin to provide transfusions, the university said. Skin cells that are removed from the patient can be multiplied in a petri dish and converted into a large quantity of blood cells, which themselves can be multiplied, lead researcher Mick Bhatia told CNN.”
9. Serious: “Only 12 percent of black fourth-grade boys are proficient in reading, compared with 38 percent of white boys, and only 12 percent of black eighth-grade boys are proficient in math, compared with 44 percent of white boys. Poverty alone does not seem to explain the differences: poor white boys do just as well as African-American boys who do not live in poverty, measured by whether they qualify for subsidized school lunches.”
10. The question about the thuggish behavior the protesters in London is what impact such behavior will have on the tuition fees, or on how the authorities reporting the next tuition changes? “London, England (CNN) — At least 51 people have been arrested, authorities said Thursday, after students stormed the headquarters of Britain’s ruling party to protest plans to raise tuition fees. The students spray-painted anarchy symbols and set off flares before being forced out of the Conservative Party building in London. They broke large windows, painted obscenities on the walls, and later climbed onto the roof and hurled objects down. Some set fires and shot off firecrackers outside the building.”
Meanderings in Sports
I’m sorry, but if George Steinbrenner is elected to the Hall of Fame … well, I don’t know what I will do but … How can an owner be part of the Hall of Fame? No way! Ryno, don’t vote for him.
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