Moriah Balingit, on teaching<\/strong><\/a>:<\/p>\n McGranaghan now teaches environmental science at Loudoun Valley High School, and his un\u00ador\u00adtho\u00addox class gets his teen students into the wild as much as possible. They take field trips in canoes and hike to the woods nearby to study trees and wildlife. Students even suit up in galoshes to wade into a nearby stream to measure its water quality.<\/p>\n McGranaghan was one of 15 winners of the Presidential Innovation Award for Environmental Educators, an honor given jointly by the U.S. Department of Education and the Environmental Protection Agency. The award recognizes teachers who employ innovative approaches to environmental education.<\/p>\n \u201cI often remind my students that they can learn the academic book version of environmental science, but if they don\u2019t recognize the world around them to which it applies, they are still environmentally illiterate,\u201d McGranaghan wrote in his application essay.<\/p>\n McGranaghan, a 26-year veteran of teaching, said he gets his students outside as much as possible.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Camille Paglia, oh my!<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n You\u2019re an atheist, and yet I don\u2019t ever see you sneer at religion in the way that the very aggressive atheist class right now often will. What do you make of Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens and the religion critics who seem not to have respect for religions for faith?<\/span><\/p>\n I regard them as adolescents. I say in the introduction to my last book, \u201cGlittering Images\u201d, that \u201cSneering at religion is juvenile, symptomatic of a stunted imagination.\u201d\u00a0 It exposes a state of perpetual adolescence that has something to do with their parents\u2013 they\u2019re still sneering at dad in some way. Richard Dawkins was the only high-profile atheist out there when I began publicly saying \u201cI am an atheist,\u201d on my book tours in the early 1990s. I started the fad for it in the U.S, because all of a sudden people, including leftist journalists, started coming out of the closet to publicly claim their atheist identities, which they weren\u2019t bold enough to do before. But the point is that I felt it was perfectly legitimate for me to do that because of my great respect for religion in general\u2013from the iconography to the sacred architecture and so forth. I was arguing that religion should be put at the center of any kind of multicultural curriculum.<\/p>\n I\u2019m speaking here as an atheist. I don\u2019t believe there is a God, but I respect\u00a0every<\/em>\u00a0religion deeply. All the great world religions contain a complex system of beliefs regarding the nature of the universe and human life that is far more profound than anything that liberalism has produced. We have a whole generation of young people who are clinging to politics and to politicized visions of sexuality for their belief system.\u00a0\u00a0They see nothing but politics, but politics is tiny.\u00a0\u00a0Politics applies only to society. There is a huge metaphysical realm out there that involves the eternal principles of life and death. The great tragic texts, including the plays of Aeschylus and Sophocles, no longer have the central status they once had in education, because we have steadily moved away from the heritage of western civilization.<\/p>\n The real problem is a lack of knowledge of religion as well as a lack of respect for religion. I find it completely hypocritical for people in academe or the media to demand understanding of Muslim beliefs and yet be so derisive and dismissive of the devout Christian beliefs of Southern conservatives.<\/p>\n [You gotta read the whole thing, amazingly honest and insightful.]<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n John Smoltz<\/strong><\/a>, on the lack of sandlot baseball and over throwing the arms of our youth:<\/p>\n Until, that is, the last five minutes. The loudest and longest ovation Smoltz received was for the most passionate point he made near the end of his time on the podium at Cooperstown on Sunday.<\/p>\n It was when he tried to talk some sense into all the parents who are relentlessly driving their kids through the nonstop treadmill that is travel baseball. He was speaking of all the kids whose arms are worn out and even damaged by their mid-teens. Whose passion for the game has long since been replaced by a hollow expression, whose onetime thrill in competition has dissolved into some vague sense of duty to their parents\u2019 commitment.<\/p>\n Smoltz prefaced his remarks early on when he spoke of an idyllic childhood playing all sorts of sports and games in Lansing:<\/p>\n \u201cThankfully, we didn\u2019t grow up in Florida or warm weather where you fall prey to playing every day or all year. Two months in Michigan is long enough.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Olga Khazan, and the number here is 30%<\/strong><\/a>!<\/p>\n We \u00a0are fans of St Roger Abbey<\/strong><\/a>:<\/p>\n On a sweltering afternoon this month, a nun in a full habit cut the grass at a convent in rural McHenry County while neighbors mowed their lawns in a subdivision across the street, the roar of their engines blending in the country air.<\/p>\n But lately, something else has been disturbing the peace: The Catholic order that runs the convent wants to embark on a large-scale building expansion on the 95 acres of mostly farmland it owns, prompting a nasty dispute between the nuns and some nearby residents.<\/p>\n The sisters want to expand their monastery to include a school, nursing home, brewery, winery and gift shop. Opponents worry it would ruin the pastoral nature of the area.<\/p>\n Some detractors have raised questions about the background and intentions of the nuns, who in turn have accused residents of religious discrimination and racism.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Ron Sider, a better approach to homosexuality, the Bible, and the church today<\/strong><\/a>:<\/p>\n However, simply repeating biblical truth (no matter how strong our exegesis or how sound our theology), listening to two millennia of church history, and dialoguing carefully with other Christians everywhere are not enough. We need a substantially new approach. \u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n For starters, we must do whatever it takes to nurture a generation of Christian men and women who keep their marriage vows and model healthy family life. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Second, we need to find ways to love and listen to gay people, especially gay Christians, in a way that most of us have not done. \u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n In addition to living faithful marriages and engaging in loving conversation, I believe evangelicals must take the lead in a cluster of additional vigorous activities related to gay people. \u00a0 We ought to take the lead in condemning and combating verbal or physical abuse of gay people. \u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n We need much better teaching on how evangelical parents should respond if children say they are gay. Christian families should never reject a child, throw her out of their home, or refuse to see him if a child announces that he is gay. One can and should disapprove of unbiblical behavior without refusing to love and cherish a child who engages in it. Christian families should be the most loving places for children\u2014even when they disagree with and act contrary to what parents believe. Please, God, may we never hear another story of evangelical parents rejecting children who \u201ccome out of the closet.\u201d \u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n We ought to develop model programs so that our congregations are known as the best place in the world for gay and questioning youth (and adults) to seek God\u2019s will in a context that embraces, loves, and listens rather than shames, denounces, and excludes. Surely, we can ask the Holy Spirit to show us how to teach and nurture biblical sexual practice without ignoring, marginalizing, and driving away from Christ those who struggle with biblical norms. \u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n Our evangelical churches should be widely known as places where people with a gay orientation can be open about their orientation and feel truly welcomed and embraced. Of course, Christians who engage in unbiblical sexual practices (whether heterosexual or gay Christians) should be discipled (and disciplined) by the church and not allowed to be leaders or members in good standing if they persist in their sin. (The same should be said for those who engage in unbiblical practices of any kind, including greed and racism.) However, Christians who openly acknowledge a gay orientation but commit themselves to celibacy should be eligible for any role in the church that their spiritual gifts suggest. Imagine the impact if evangelical churches were widely known to be the best place in the world to find love, support, and full affirmation of gifts if one is an openly, unabashedly gay, celibate Christian. \u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n I have no illusions that this approach will be easy. To live this way will be highly countercultural\u2014contrasting both with our society at large and our own past history. Above all, it will require patience. Restoring our compromised witness on the biblical vision for marriage will be a matter of generations, not a few years. But if evangelicals can choose this countercultural, biblical way for several generations, we may regain our credibility to speak to the larger society. <\/span><\/p>\n I hope and pray that the Lord of the church and the world will weave love, truth, and fidelity out of the tangled strands of tragedy, tradition, and failure we have inherited\u2014and that the next generation will be wise and faithful leaders in that task.\u00a0 <\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n What\u2019s wrong with this<\/strong><\/a>?<\/p>\n Q: Some American Catholics say they are\u00a0tired of being scolded by the Pope<\/a>\u00a0about doing more for the poor and the disenfranchised. What would you say to them?<\/span><\/p>\n A: The project of the Pope is to come back to the Gospel, particularly Christ\u2019s first sermon,\u00a0the Sermon on the Mount.\u00a0<\/a>It is very clear in that speech that Christ expects us to help those who suffer, especially the poor.<\/p>\n So, the best attitude to receive the Pope\u2019s teachings is to understand that he is a religious leader and the essence of his message comes from the Gospel, not from one ideology or another.<\/p>\n And so, if our economic systems are not oriented toward the human person but only concerned with profits, he wants to confront the system and change it. This, by the way, is common to all the popes, it comes directly from the so-called social teachings of the church.<\/p>\n [Does the Sermon on the Mount\u2019s beatitudes tell us to \u201chelp those who suffer\u201d? Of course Jesus \u2014 with Moses, the Prophets, and the NT \u2014 teaches compassion for the poor and a radical justice, but does one anchor helping those who suffer in the beatitudes? Or does that say, unlike the opposites [the rich] \u2014 Luke\u2019s version, the poor and those in need of mercy are favored by God? I find this claim by the Pope\u2019s spokesperson fascinating in his appeal to the beatitudes. And I don\u2019t think I\u2019m being picky. In fact, the Sermon on the Mount is understood in the most general of terms as a kind of social manifesto, with all kinds of ideas assumed in what it is doing. In other words, the beatitudes don\u2019t say \u201cHelp the poor\u201d they say \u201cThe kingdom is made up of the poor.\u201d]<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Sad and true<\/strong><\/a>.<\/p>\n\n
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