{"id":16108,"date":"2013-07-02T11:01:17","date_gmt":"2013-07-02T15:01:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/?p=16108"},"modified":"2013-07-05T19:06:42","modified_gmt":"2013-07-05T23:06:42","slug":"7-things-11-oclock-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2013\/07\/02\/7-things-11-oclock-2\/","title":{"rendered":"7 things @ 11 o’clock (7.2)"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

1.<\/strong>\u00a0This is what a hockey stick graph sounds like when played on the cello<\/a>.<\/p>\n

2.<\/strong> Pam\u2019s House Blend is closing shop<\/a>. Thank you, Pam Spaulding. Bravo for nine years of smart, funny, honest, courageous truth-telling. And I\u2019m looking forward to whatever it is you do next.<\/p>\n

3.<\/strong> Eric Metaxas is a silly, silly man. As Michael Sean Winters says<\/a>, the right-wing activist and professional moralist is: \u201cTwo parts politician, three parts marketing guru and one part evangelical Christian. A toxic mix.\u201d Metaxas is a wanna-be intellectual using a flawed biography of Dietrich Bonhoeffer as the pretext for playing dress-up in the German theologian\u2019s heroic courage. Just as Bonhoeffer stoof up against the Nazis, Metaxas says he is standing up against Teh Gay \u2014 and so, in his mind, we must defer to him as Bonhoeffer\u2019s heir and equivalent.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Well, this would-be heir to Bonhoeffer is also a Breitbart-fan, and based on the false claims he has \u201clearned\u201d from that epistemic circle-jerk, Metaxas recently broke ties with the Evangelical Immigration Roundtable<\/a> because he thinks it\u2019s a front-group funded by George Soros\u2019 global conspiracy.<\/p>\n

Or, in other words, the Man Who Would Be Bonhoeffer wants to restrict immigration because he fears a shadowy international conspiracy of Jewish bankers. Will any of that make the gatekeepers at Christianity Today<\/em> less likely to continue fawning over Metaxas as a Serious Man of Seriousness? It won\u2019t, but it should.<\/p>\n

4.<\/strong> \u201cAmerica\u2019s Worst Charities<\/a>\u201d is a terrific piece of reporting by the Tampa Bay Times. Read the list, avoid being taken in by these scam-tastic frauds. But note that these groups are just exactly that \u2014 frauds and scams. That may not be the same as the worst charities.<\/p>\n

The Times\u2019<\/em> main metric here is \u201ccash paid to solicitors in the past decade\u201d \u2014 comparing how much money these groups are taking in from donors to the tiny percentage they\u2019re actually giving out as charitable aid. That\u2019s one form of bad charity. Another form efficiently puts most of the donations it receives to work on its mission, but that mission does harm instead of benefiting the common good. Think of the anti-safety, anti-worker, anti-environment and anti-government \u201cClub for Growth.\u201d They\u2019d score pretty well according to the Times\u2019<\/em> criteria, but they\u2019re still flat-out evil. Club for Growth isn\u2019t the same kind<\/em> of scam. It\u2019s just evil, selfish rich people banding together to protect the interests of evil, selfish rich people no matter how much damage they do to everyone else.<\/p>\n

5.<\/strong> It\u2019s your June edition of the Biblical Studies Blog Carnival<\/a>. And Jim West seems to have noticed that the last few editions of the carnival have been mostly male, so here\u2019s his all-women supplemental\/alternative BSBC<\/a>.<\/p>\n

6.<\/strong> Fuller Seminary\u2019s Burner blog<\/a> looks at the prospects for more \u201cfaith-based\u201d and \u201cfamily friendly\u201d entertainment (noting that these are, in fact, separate<\/em> categories). It\u2019s an interesting discussion that includes some candid honesty \u2014 such as that evangelicals can\u2019t lament foul-mouthed entertainments like Seth MacFarlane\u2019s Ted<\/em> because we went to see it along with everybody else.<\/p>\n

But the post comes to a depressing conclusion: When Hollywood produces \u201ccontent that is family-friendly or faith-based, you\u2019re going to pay money to see it. Then buy it from the home entertainment division. Then buy the books and toys along with it.\u201d Even if you \u201chave little interest\u201d and even if it\u2019s not \u201ccompelling\u201d storytelling.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s bad advice and also, I think, bad theology. Settling for dull, safe, tepid storytelling is a kind of sin. If the only good thing that can be said about a piece of art is that it is unobjectionable, then it\u2019s still not worth anyone\u2019s time or money to produce or to endure. If you don\u2019t like the stories Hollywood is telling, tell better stories<\/em>. Subsidizing bad art doesn\u2019t glorify God, and patronizing bad art only makes us all less capable of producing better work.<\/p>\n

7.<\/strong>\u00a0and here\u2019s some e.e. cummings. because i like e.e. cummings<\/a>.<\/p>\n

dive for dreams
\nor a slogan may topple you
\n(trees are their roots
\nand wind is wind)
\ntrust your heart
\nif the seas catch fire
\n(and live by love
\nthough the stars walk backward)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This cello composition just keeps getting hotter and hotter. Thank you, Pam Spaulding, and well done. Eric Metaxas is scared of the conspiracy of international Jewish bankers. Scams, frauds and other bad charities. No, Christians do not have a duty to patronize and subsidize bad art.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":141,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16108","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n7 things @ 11 o'clock (7.2)<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"This cello composition just keeps getting hotter and hotter. Thank you, Pam Spaulding, and well done. Eric Metaxas is scared of the conspiracy of international Jewish bankers. Scams, frauds and other bad charities. 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A former managing editor of Prism magazine, Fred worked in the parachurch nonprofit world for a decade and then for a decade in the newspaper biz. He began blogging in 2002. In 2003 he began writing a review of the best-selling Left Behind series. Eight years later he still hasn\u2019t finished reviewing the second book of that series and the experience has left him a broken shell of a man. Fred knows the difference between the possessive \u201cits\u201d and the contraction \u201cit\u2019s,\u201d and he is acutely bothered when others mistakenly confuse the two, yet he himself just kind of instinctively types the apostrophe whether or not it belongs there. Some feel this is his greatest hypocrisy, but those who know him better know better. He\u2019s guilty of much greater hypocrisies. 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