The sports section is still safe. It is, in some ways, the last bastion of reality-based journalism. Turn to the sports pages and there you can read the unambiguous results of a sporting event. You will find the final score and statistics for any given contest. Sports writers may inject into their stories a bit of personal opinion and local sympathy, but whatever biases they might have, the facts of the game are never in dispute. A sports writer may... Read more
Let me belatedly chime in on the discussion in response to Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia's comment last week. During consideration of the Ten Commandments case, Scalia said that their public display is "a symbol of the fact that government comes — derives its authority from God." Several folks have pointed out that this seems to conflict with the fact that, in America, government comes — derives its authority from the people. As Brad Delong put it: Scalia's views on... Read more
"Be virtuous and you will be eccentric." — Mark Twain "Hatred Is a Poison" — the wonderful essay by hilzoy at Obsidian Wings, was still kicking around in my head when I finally got around to reading this month's Harper's. That's where I encountered the following: From a calendar of satanic rituals inadvertently distributed last December by a police officer to seventh-graders in Pearland, Texas, during a presentation on gang activity. July 1. Demon Revels. Sexual, druidic. July 20-36. Grand... Read more
Our Text: So this gorilla walks into a bar. The gorilla slaps a $10 bill on the counter and says, "Give me a beer." Bartender figures what does a gorilla know? So he gives him the beer, but only gives him $1 in change. It's a slow night, though, so the bartender figures he should make some conversation. "We don't get many gorillas in here," he says. Gorilla says, "Yeah, well at $9 a beer I'm not surprised." The Fundamentalist... Read more
The Christian understanding of what constitutes "usury" has changed. What began as an absolute prohibition against lending at interest has evolved into a vague condemnation of lending at "excessive" interest. I've argued below that this change is defensible and rational — that economic ethics from the ancient world needed to be reinterpreted for our modern context, for a world and a marketplace that our forebears could never have imagined. The refusal or inability to adapt to a changing world can... Read more
I've spent the week mad as hell about the wretched bankruptcy bill the credit card companies are pushing through our Rent-a-Congress. It's encouraging to see how broad and bipartisan popular opposition to this bill seems to be. Anyway, to keep up to the minute on bankruptcy bill developments, check out the special edition of Talking Points Memo. Once this bill is signed into law, the following gains an added degree of urgency. – – – – – – – –... Read more
It's good to see Rich Cizik's picture in The New York Times. It's especially nice when it accompanies an article in which he says things like, "I don't think God is going to ask us how he created the earth, but he will ask us what we did with what he created." Cizik runs the National Association of Evangelicals' governmental affairs office in Washington. Laurie Goodstein's article describes the NAE's evolving stance on climate change: A core group of influential... Read more
Prayer of Confession We rotate through a series of prayers of confession at my church. Last Sunday, we came back around to my favorite one: Lord, we have sinned against you in seeking to serve ourselves and living as if you do not exist. We have neglected our first duty to love you and we have failed in your call to love our neighbor as ourselves. Lord, be merciful to me a sinner. That about covers it. * * *... Read more
Years ago I had the privilege of meeting Dr. Muhammad Yunus, the founder of the Grameen Bank in Bangladesh. I talked with him briefly after he spoke at a conference in Washington. Grameen is a famed success story of economic development among the very poor. The bank makes "microloans," providing capital that helps transform the lives of its borrowers. Since these customers have no collateral and very little income, they're considered too risky and the amounts too small to bother... Read more
In comments to this earlier post, Matthew asks: "Doesn't the usury condemned in the Bible refer to lending at interest — *any* interest, not just exorbitant interest?" That's how most early Christians understood it. That point of view makes a lot of sense, too, when you read passages from the Bible like Nehemiah 5:7-11, in which the prophet excoriates as "usury" the charging of 1 percent: "You are exacting usury from your own countrymen! … What you are doing is... Read more
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