1. A Christian fundamentalist hermeneutic in the hands of someone who is not a Christian fundamentalist will yield vastly different results. This is one of many reasons that a Christian fundamentalist hermeneutic cannot be trusted, no matter who wields it.
2. News you can use: Matt Yglesias on how to avoid lines at Penn Station. “what you actually want to do is go down the staircase that’s just sitting there in the middle of the holding pen, where you’ll find some very old CRT screens displaying track information. This puts you on an intermediate level between the tracks and platforms and the mainstream waiting area. And if you wait here for your track to be announced, you’ll find that you can proceed directly to a platform entrance with no crowds and no line.”
3. Scot McKnight reviews John Barry’s Roger Williams and the Creation of the American Soul, concluding with this: “[American] Christian politics today can be seen through the options: Is it Winthrop or is it Williams?” Yep. (I’m in the Williams camp, myself. But then you probably knew that.)
4. Personal testimonies from the Other America: “Wal-Mart Is Scared of These True Stories From Its Own Employees.”
5. It’s August, so let’s hear again from Al Aronowitz:
August is the month when wars start. It’s when the water dries up and the spirit begins to wither. Insomniacs pull down their shades and lock themselves in their rooms in August. Lifelong friends have fist fights. People feel like they’re going to burst. Sometimes they do.
World War I started in August, or just about. The Austro-Hungarian Army began bombarding Belgrade on July 29, 1914, not quite August, but then August sometimes begins early. World War II didn’t quite start in August either. A German pocket battleship anchored alongside the harbor fortifications while on a good will call to the Polish port of Gdynia let loose with a broadside at dawn of Sept.1, 1939, but then August sometimes lasts for weeks after you’ve ripped it off the calendar. It drags on and on like some kind of insanity that can only be snapped away by the first crisp shock of autumn. …
6. Richard Beck, “Power and Gender: Among Us It Shall Be Different”
The problem, as I see it, is less about what men and woman can or can’t do than with a group of men in the church exerting power over another group–women. In short, men are “lording over” women in the church, exercising top-down power via a hierarchy. More, this group of men is prohibiting another group (women) from having access and input into the very power structure that is being used against them and excluding them. That’s lording over. And gender aside, that sort of lording over is prohibited by Jesus. “But among you it shall be different.”
For example, what rankles in my own local church context is that women have to ask men for permission. Women have to be allowed to do things. And it is this concentration, use and gatekeeping of power that is sinful.
7. Adventus recently posted the lyrics to this song, recommending the Judy Collins version. It’s certainly timely, but since I prefer doo-wop to that style of folk music, here’s the same song by Barbara Dane and the Chambers Brothers.
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