Lewis definitely lived at a time in which people were more certain across the board that empirical, straight-line rationality was the way you decided what truth was, and there’s just not as much of a certainty now. Also, when Lewis was writing, people were able to follow sustained arguments that had a number of points that built on one another. I guess I should say we actually have a kind of rationality-attention-deficit disorder now. You can make a reasonable argument, you can use logic, but it really has to be relatively transparent. You have to get to your point pretty quickly.

I don’t think they’re irrational, they are as rational, but they want something of a mixture of logic and personal appeal.

On why believers should doubt:

Sacramone: You say early on in The Reason for God that a little doubt is necessary to test the integrity of your faith. Does this mean that Christians need to become amateur apologists to some extent, to be ready to give an answer for the hope that is within them?

Keller: I don’t mention it in [The Reason for God], but I think there are always doubts that, if you come to grips with them—I think there’s doubts that you have, that you always have, that you ought to be more forthright and address them, for two reasons. One is, then you’re a better apologist. Because now people are coming shootin’ stuff at you in a way they wouldn’t when I was growing up.

As I was reading [N. T. Wright’s The Resurrection of the Son of God], I realized I was coming to greater certainty, and that when I closed the book, I said, at a time when it was very important to me to feel this way, I said, “He really really really did rise from the dead.” And I said, “Well, didn’t I believe that before?” Of course I believed it before — I defended it, and I think before I certainly would have died for that belief. But actually, there were still doubts in there, and the doubts were taken down 50 percent or something. I didn’t even know they were there. And it was a wonderful experience It was both an intellectual and emotional experience: You’re facing death, you’re not sure you’re going to get over the cancer. And the rigorous intellectual process of going through all the alternative explanations for how the Christian Church started, except the resurrection—none of them are even tenable. It was quite an experience.

On dealing with creation and evolution:

How could there have been death before Adam and Eve fell? The answer is, I don’t know. But all I know is, didn’t animals eat bugs? Didn’t bugs eat plants? There must have been death. In other words, when you realize, “Oh wait, this is really complicated,” then you realize, “I don’t have to figure this out before I figure out is Jesus Christ raised from the dead.”

Tim Keller is taking the book tour to Veritas forums at various colleges throughout the U.S.

Posted by Susan Wunderink at February 26, 2008 2:43PM | Comments (0)

Christian music legend Larry Norman died Sunday of heart failure, according to his brother Charles Norman. He was 60.

Norman, a blonde, long-haired rocker who is often called the father of Christian rock music, was a giant in the Christian music industry, Chris Willman, senior music writer for Entertainment Weekly told Christianity Today.

Read the full obituary.

Posted by Sarah Pulliam at February 25, 2008 9:07PM | Comments (10)

In a CT article by Cindy Crosby published just over two years ago, novelist Anne Rice--famous for her dark stories about vampires--spoke of her return to her Catholic faith and said she would from now on write about Christ. While she did not repudiate her earlier work, saying it was a record of her spiritual journey, she said she was through with vampires:

I would never go back, not even if they say, 'You will be financially ruined; you've got to write another vampire book.' I would say no. I have no choice. I would be a fool for all eternity to turn my back on God like that.

And for a while, she was true to her word, writing the first two works in a series about the life of Christ. The second, Christ the Lord: The Road to Cana, is due out on March 4. After a planned third installment on Jesus, Rice plans to return to her vampire chronicling. But isn't that going back on her word? Rice answers Time this way: "I don't see it as a violation of my promise, because I won't be writing about vampires in the same way." And indeed, her new promise--to put the stories in a Christian framework with an accent on redemption--sounds interesting. But Time isn't buying, commenting: "Still, it is difficult to see it as anything but a change of heart."

I cannot pretend to see into Anne Rice's soul, but to me this is a troubling turn of events. Whatever the merits and drawbacks of writing one final vampire novel, her vow was all-encompassing, seemingly linking her eternal destiny to keeping it. I am reminded of the following verses:

When you vow a vow to God, do not delay paying it, for he has no pleasure in fools. Pay what you vow. It is better that you should not vow than that you should vow and not pay. Let not your mouth lead you into sin, and do not say before the messenger that it was a mistake. Why should God be angry at your voice and destroy the work of your hands?

UPDATE: For Anne Rice's explanation of her decision, see her official website.

Anne Rice responded to this blog post today:

Thank you for your gentle write-up of my casual remark in a Time interview regarding Christ the Lord, the Road to Cana. My vow to the Lord was that I would write for Him, and for Him alone from then on (2002). I will keep that vow. If this new vampire book, which is no more than an idea, cannot be entirely Christian and redemptive in content, if it cannot be for the Lord, I assure you, it will not be written.

My vocation is to continue the story of Our Lord's life on Earth and I am doing it. --- it's amazing how this small remark to Time's interviewers became something I never imagined. --- I've been flooded with emails for three years about having left my old characters, and more than once it has been suggested to me that they could be revisited in a redemptive or Christian framework. That was the idea.

And by the way, the book is no more than a dream. The consecration to Christ that I made in 2002 is rock solid, thank Heaven, and I pray for the faith and strength to maintain it.

- Anne Rice

Posted by Stan Guthrie at February 25, 2008 8:45AM | Comments (13)

"I'm not a math guy. I'm more of a miracle guy."

The words of Mike Huckabee a few minutes ago on "Saturday Night Live's" mock news show "Weekend Update." The former Arkansas governor was there to explain, in self-deprecating form, why he remains in the race for the Republican presidential nomination even though he'd still be trailing John McCain if he swept each and every remaining delegate.

"Mike Huckabee does not overstay his welcome," he said. "When it's time for me to go, I'll know. And I'll exit out with class and grace."

He then remained behind the anchors' desk, even after anchor Seth Meyers made it clear it was time to go.

This article was cross-posted at The God Blog.

Posted by Brad Greenberg at February 24, 2008 2:33AM | Comments (14)

While Bruce Gierson’s article, "An Atheist in the Pulpit," in the most recent issue of Psychology Today often devolves into a spiritual travelogue of clergy de-conversion, it does alert us to some of the personal and practical dilemmas raised when persons involved in professional ministry come to realize they doubt their beliefs.

Given that Gierson is writing for Psychology Today, it should come as no surprise that the story focuses on the "deeply inauthentic" feelings and accompanying "psychic stress" that results from a disconnect between a minister's public preaching, pastoral care, or performance of the liturgy, and his or her private doubts or disbelief. His clergy characters are often cast as heroes who live by Shakespeare's line--"to thine own self be true"--and uphold the "inviolability of the individual conscience." Better to be true to self than keep one's commitments, however far removed they now seem.

To be fair, I have sometimes wondered, in my contemplation of ordained ministry, but what would I do when those desert seasons of doubt and despair come, as they regularly have, in my own life? Would it be OK for me to hide in and behind the liturgy, in and behind the text, in and behind the prayers of the saints gathered around me, at least for a time? I'm not sure I ever came up with good answers to those questions, or the basic question behind them: Is there room for doubt in the life of a minister of the Church? I'm not talking about settled or aggressive disbelief, but those dark periods that befall many Christians. In short, I'm sympathetic to the plight of ministers who find themselves unable to be for their flock what that flock often want them to be--a paragon of faith and hope.

It's a shame that Gierson never addresses this question from the other side of the pulpit, except through the perceptions of the clergy he interviewed. If a minister is bold enough to share his or her doubts with a congregation, what should the congregation do? Should they come alongside and pray for their minister? The answer to that seems obvious enough. Should they help him or her organize a sabbatical or leave of absence? If the minister is willing to continue, would the congregation mind knowing that their pastor was, for a time, working from obligation or a desire to keep a commitment, rather than from a living, burning, hearth of faith? (Would any marriage last were not a similar commitment in place?) And, if the minister did eventually come to a place of settled disbelief, how should that be handled?

These are by no means easy questions. It's good that Gierson is raising them, if only indirectly.

Posted by Derek Keefe at February 22, 2008 11:39AM | Comments (12)

The situation for Christians, their churches, and pastors has taken a turn for the worse as violence in Sri Lanka is on the rise. The cease-fire between the government and the main rebel group, the Tamil Tigers, is pretty much history

Compass Direct reports:

Late last Sunday (February 17) two men gunned down a Sri Lankan pastor, the Rev. Samson Neil Edirisinghe, 37, killing him instantly. They also shot his wife Shiromi, 31, leaving her in critical condition. The couple’s 2-year-old son received minor injuries and is still in shock after witnessing the shooting. Edirisinghe was buried today in Ampara, in eastern Sri Lanka, where he served as pastor of the House of the Lord Church. The church met in a local YMCA (Young Men’s Christian Association) hall where Edirisinghe taught English classes for the British Council. Shiromi was receiving treatment in the intensive care unit of Ampara Hospital at press time.

The Advocacy Desk of the National Christian Evangelical Alliance of Sri Lanka has released an important statement, condemning the killings and calling for the national police to do more. In their statement, the NCEASL said:

Organized attempts by any individual or group to breed religious tension and incite religious hatred - be it in Ampara or anywhere else, must be condemned by all right thinking people irrespective of religious affiliation and calls for urgent action by the Government to put a stop to this ugly trend.

It is disturbing to see the widening gulf between the ethnic groups in our country confounded by
the erosion of trust between religious communities. Recent media reports on the arrest of a Pastor for alleged involvement in LTTE activity has seen a veil of suspicion drawn over Christians. It is the sacred duty of the Government and the law enforcement authorities to conduct impartial investigations and deal with any guilty party under the law and release without
prejudice those who are found innocent.

We strongly condemn the murder of Pastor Neil Edirisinghe and the attack on his family. We call upon the IGP and the Police force in Ampara for immediate and impartial investigation whereby those responsible for this crime will be dealt with under the law.

We pray for the restoration of peace and understanding between communities and individuals in
our nation.

Christians in Sri Lanka in recent years have seen surges of violence, sometimes targeting them, and sometimes just as the result of the unresolved conflicts at the national level.

The highly regarded International Crisis Group on Feb. 22, 2008, released an important update on how Sri Lanka has returned to a climate of conflict.

Look here for a 2004 article in The Weekly Standard.

Posted by Tim Morgan at February 22, 2008 9:44AM | Comments (0)

The board that oversees New York's 71 remaining OTB (off-track betting) parlors has voted to close them, according to an article in the New York Times. Apparently, they are no longer profitable for the city of New York.

People are already mourning the demise of OTBs because of the unique social atmosphere they provide. (The article is strong on atmospherics.)

Here's the quote caught my eye in that article. A regular at the OTB on Seventh Avenue at 38th Street told the Times reporter:

“Wherever you have gambling, you’re going to have rich guys and beggars next to each other,” observed ... Eric Quinones, 40. “And that’s what makes these places unique.”

Oh, wait a minute. I thought that having "rich guys and beggars next to each other" was supposed to be the church. As a matter of fact, it is what the church is called to be.

And from what I read in Christianity Today, New York's churches are doing a pretty amazing job. (See this important article by Tony Carnes from December 2004.)

Cross-posted at the Ancient Evangelical Future blog.

Posted by David Neff at February 22, 2008 9:03AM | Comments (0)

Churches will be able to host big-screen Super Bowl parties in 2009 thanks to the NFL's reversed decision this week.

The NFL had received criticism for its decision, and the Washington Post reported that churches were canceling their Super Bowl parties out of fear of lawsuits. In a later Post story titled "Bill Would End Separation of Church and Super Bowl," three congressmen spoke with the Post about potential legislation.

The Post reports that the NFL will allow church showings as long as the showings are free and are on premises that the church uses on a "routine and customary" basis.

The NFL restricts TV screens to 55" at public viewings, except at bars and restaurants that regularly broadcast sporting events. Last year, the NFL sent letters to two churches advising them of the policy. The new policy will be set in place for 2009.

CT also wrote about NFL/church dispute in "Fumbling Religion" last fall.

Posted by Sarah Pulliam at February 22, 2008 6:49AM | Comments (0)

One scholar's answer makes that question seem like a trick. It can be found in the new issue of the Atlantic Monthly, which follows the November issue of The Economist and asks the question, "Which Religion Will Win?" Inside are articles on "The Contest for Africa," which Rob Moll discussed here, "America's Evangelical Future" and "The Coming Religious Peace."

The last piece is what really caught my attention. I wondered, How could this be? How could we be primed for religious peace after a history of warfare, from David collecting the foreskins of 200 slain Philistines to the 500-year-long and mostly bloody war between Catholics and Protestants to the hatred between Sunnis and Shiites (and Kurds for that matter) preventing Iraq from creating a cohesive society?

The answer, according to scholar and scribe Alan Wolfe, is simple: None.

Consider what is occurring within the growing American evangelical movement. It has built megachurches that meet the needs of time-pressed professionals by offering such things as day-care centers, self-help groups, and networking opportunities. Its music owes more to Janis Joplin than to Johann Sebastian Bach. Its church officials learn more from business-school case studies than from theological texts. And its young people—well, as the children of parents who have gone through a born-again experience, they are not likely to be as obedient as the evangelical leader James Dobson wants them to be. Having opted to grow on secular terms, American evangelicalism is becoming less hostile to liberal ideas such as tolerance and pluralism. New efforts to take it in directions sympathetic to environmentalism and social justice are a direct result of the maturing of the faith, which followed from earlier decisions to make the movement more appealing to large numbers of Americans, especially the young.

Does the pattern hold outside America? After all, it is often said that the promulgation of secular values and lifestyles, one result of globalization, is prompting a reactionary religious backlash. There is some truth to this argument, but it misses the bigger picture. Most of the religious revivals we are seeing throughout the world today complement, and ultimately reinforce, secular developments; they are more likely to encourage moderation than fanaticism.

Agree or disagree with the prediction, there is logic to Wolfe's argument, one he borrows from Marx and Freud and Weber.

Wolfe writes, "When God and Mammon collide, Mammon usually wins," which is a bit too broad but often rings true. Nowhere is there more Mammon for most than in the United States, and religion has responded to the many demands placed on our lives in the pursuit of Mammon by making participation more convenient and more entertaining.

But, at the same time, the churches that are hiring the MBA-carrying applicants, the churches that are growing, are also the churches less tolerant of the tenants of secularism. Whereas the churches that are more traditional, the churches that are dying, are on the liberal end of the Christian spectrum.

If you look at a graph produced by the magazine, based on data from Pew, it's incredibly clear that the United States is anomalous for the religious devotion of its denizens.

But does this mean American religion is destined for a "bubble burst," so to speak? I don't think so. The talk of the U.S. going the way of Europe -- of empty churches and godless worldviews -- is overblown. Especially when considering the fact that right now Mammon is becoming a lot harder to come by.

This article was cross-posted at The God Blog.

Posted by Brad Greenberg at February 22, 2008 3:45AM | Comments (4)

From Religion News Service's Adelle Banks:

Evangelist Billy Graham returned home Tuesday (Feb. 19) after undergoing a procedure to relieve pressure in his brain.

Graham, 89, underwent the elective procedure on Feb. 13 at Missions Hospitals in Asheville, N.C. Physicians said he was progressing well after they replaced a valve for a shunt that regulates the pressure within his brain.

Graham has hydrocephalus, or a buildup of fluid on the brain that can cause symptoms similar to Parkinson's disease. He recently had experienced more intense symptoms, which led to his hospital stay.

During his time in the hospital, Graham was visited by three of his children who live near his Montreat, N.C., home and received a phone call from President Bush.

Posted by Susan Wunderink at February 20, 2008 4:24PM | Comments (5)

The Jim Wallis road show pulled into the editorial officials of CT yesterday. Jim still turns out in fine form with his signature black jacket and turtleneck; and, this time, was accompanied by a surprisingly large entourage. Wallis, author of God's Politics, is talking about his new book, The Great Awakening: Reviving Faith & Politics in a Post-Religious Right America.

There are several core ideas resident in this book and (full disclosure) I'd much rather interact with Wallis than read his prose. (The Publishers Weekly reviewer observed: "As a cohesive book...this has a rough and clunky sensibility, with considerable repetition of ideas, examples and even phrasing.")

The ideas in Great Awakening include:
1. The Religious Right as we have understood it from the 1980 election of Ronald Reagan is dying out.

2. It is being replaced by a younger generation of evangelicals who are post-Religious Right, under age 30, progressive and holistic in bringing together faith, mission, and justice.

3. This new reality will reshape the American evangelical landscape and in turn have a lasting impact on changing the American nation-state into a more compassionate country with political leaders who link values and policy in what Wallis calls "non-violent realism."

4. These developments neatly fit into American religious history. Wallis enthusiastically places a headline-grabbing label "Great Awakening" on these socio-political developments, thereby linking them with historic Great Awakenings, dating all the way back to colonial America and the First Great Awakening.

But there's a fly in this ointment, I think.

One big problem is that there is sooo much rhetoric out there about revival, renewal, and the next awakening. These three terms do not have agreed-upon definitions or boundaries, nor are these words exclusively reserved for Christian use.

One significant perspective on awakenings is the book, Fourth Great Awakening and the Future of Egalitarianism. The Nobel Prize-winning economist Robert Fogel authored this title in 2002. It's been years since I looked at this book, but I don't believe you can fully understand changes happening in American society without this top economist's analysis.

Fogel notes:

To understand what is taking place today, we need to understand the nature of the recurring political-religious cycles called "Great Awakenings." Each lasting about 100 years, Great Awakenings consist of three phases, each about a generation long.

In this generation-long cycle, where are we today? Well, Fogel dates the start of the Fourth Great Awakening in 1960. By following Fogel's three-phase approach, Americans are now in the third phase of the Fourth Awakening. The first phase is religious revival. The second phase is rising political effect. The third phase is increasing challenge to the dominance of the political program.

If, indeed, we are in the Fourth Awakening, Phase III, in which the current political program is being challenged increasingly, it makes sense that Sen. Obama's mantra is "Change We Can Believe In."

"MO-bama-menum" seems to know no bounds and it may carry him into the White House in the November election.

Finally, let me put another card on the table for consideration. In a web commentary, titled "The Emerging Evangelical Center May Decide 2008 Election," Christian ethicist and author David Gushee notes:

It is quite possible that the votes of centrist evangelicals—perhaps representing as many as one-third of our nation’s massive evangelical community—will decide the election this fall.

I believe that the emerging evangelical center represents a maturing of the Christian public voice in American life. This is a more peaceable, forward-looking, holistic and independent approach to politics than what has come to carry the evangelical label. Its emergence is good for our nation and for evangelicals. Centrist evangelicals bear watching in this election and beyond.

Gushee shares the view with Wallis that the old-guard Christian Right is being eclipsed. That part makes sense to me. The evidence is all over.

The piece of the puzzle that I don't think any one has yet fully understood at the 50,000-foot level is the spiritual dynamic driving the change. My questions are:

* Is it a rebirth of historic Christian orthodoxy?

* Is it a third wave of the Holy Spirit?

* Is it a culture war-like reaction against globalizing pluralism and secularism?

Posted by Tim Morgan at February 20, 2008 9:45AM | Comments (26)

I wonder how the findings in this article--"Conservatives Just Aren't Into Academe, Study Finds:Divergent life choices may explain the dearth of right-wing scholars," (Chronicle of Higher Education)--apply to Christian higher education.

It has been my experience that Christian college professors are more liberal than their students and than Christians in general, and that politically conservative professors are an increasing minority. But my experience is limited to a handful of colleges, and I'm willing to be challenged on this.

The article shows its own subtle liberal bias, especially in the way it frames liberal and conservative motives, but the larger issue remains, and I suspect even for Christian colleges. If true, this has all manner of consequences when it comes to offering students a balanced and intellectually rigorous education.

(Cross-posted at Galliblog)

Posted by Mark Galli at February 19, 2008 7:24AM | Comments (19)

Controversial biblical scholar Bart Ehrman has a new book out, but this time he’s not bent on tackling issues of scriptural discrepancies, as he did in his most (in)famous work, Misquoting Jesus (see Books and Culture’s review from 2005). This time, Ehrman founds his agnosticism on the Bible’s seemingly equivocal answers to the question, How can a loving God allow terrible things to happen to people?

“I realized I couldn’t explain any longer why there could be such pain and misery in the world that was supposedly ruled by an all-powerful and loving God,” the religion professor at University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, told the San Diego Union-Tribune over the weekend. The problem of suffering “put me over the top," says Ehrman. "So, I became an agnostic.”

God’s Problem: How the Bible Fails to Answer Our Most Important Question—Why We Suffer (HarperOne) traces Ehrman’s change in convictions about God and Scripture based on his inability to reconcile the goodness of God with the suffering of man. Ehrman explores and ultimately disputes the way suffering is handled in biblical accounts: as punishment for wrongdoing (Genesis), as an outcome of others’ wrongdoing (throughout the Psalms), as part of redemption (the Gospels), or as part of the mystery of God (Job).

Ehrman finds these varied explanations problematic, as he does chalking the question of theodicy up to something beyond human knowledge: “If you say it’s a mystery, then what you’re saying is there’s no answer.” And having no answer is apparently insufficient for Ehrman.

For other agnostics, though, encountering believers who have profound hope and peace despite suffering is enough to at least crack a window open for belief. This is what happened to John Marks, a former 60 Minutes producer who traces his journey into and out of faith in his new spiritual memoir, Reasons to Believe: One Man’s Journey Among the Evangelicals and the Faith He Left Behind (Ecco). In a striking interview in this weekend’s Boston Globe, Marks tells of a close friendship with an evangelical couple, the McWhinneys, that emerged from Marks’s research for his book:

When I first met the McWhinneys, [I thought] they were almost walking caricatures of the evangelical Christian. They believe in the Rapture, that when the end time comes, people will be taken up into the air, and the nonbelievers will be left behind on earth to suffer. There was a cardboard quality, I thought, to their belief.

When I met them the second time, after we'd done the "60 Minutes" piece, they told me about their bipolar son, roughly my age, who had tried to kill himself [and] had disappeared and was believed to be living in a homeless shelter in Dallas and whom they had decided to commit. They spoke with great sorrow. They didn't say he was possessed by the devil. They resented that characterization - and remember, these are Christians who believe there is a living Satan. We agreed I would join them for church [the following] Sunday.

Five hours later, their son walked up the onramp of a highway and was killed by a car. On Sunday, I got in the car, we were having a chat, and then Don suddenly told me their son had been killed. [He said] his son was not gone - he was walking the streets of the heavenly city, and we know from Revelations that that city has walls made of pure jasper - describing this world that, for nonbelievers, is just pure fantasy. I became aware of the way this sense that God is real, that there is this heavenly kingdom - it is not window-dressing. In moments of grief and deep sorrow, people like the McWhinneys do reach for this, and it is the consolation.

While believers may not be able to give a thoroughly coherent reason for why God allows his followers to suffer—and debates about theodicy will likely continue among theologians until Judgment Day—we may at least be able to provide a glimpse into “the peace that passes all understanding” as we respond to crises in our own lives and come out praising the Creator for his unbounded goodness.

Posted by Katelyn Beaty at February 18, 2008 3:02PM | Comments (8)

Sometimes Americans United for Separation of Church and State is misguided in its zeal. But, in this case, the one lacking wisdom was Pastor Wiley S. Drake, who last week used First Baptist Church of Buena Park letterhead and an affiliated radio program to endorse Mike Huckabee for president. That's a violation of tax laws for nonprofits, and Americans United filed a complaint. Drake's response was a bit vengeful.

In an e-mail Thursday, Drake urged action against Americans United and the American Civil Liberties Union.

As he had in August, Drake quoted Psalm 109, which speaks of wicked and deceitful people and asks God to let such a person's days be few and let his children be fatherless and his wife a widow.

"In light of the recent attack from the enemies of God, I ask the children of God to go into action with imprecatory prayer," he wrote.

Imprecatory prayers have been defined as praying for someone's misfortune or as appeals to God for justice.

The Rev. Barry W. Lynn, Americans United executive director, called Drake's appeal to his supporters "reckless and repugnant."

"Introducing this kind of religious extremism into American life is reprehensible," he said.

This article was cross-posted at The God Blog.

Posted by Brad Greenberg at February 16, 2008 3:54PM | Comments (11)

Wolfe is the editor of Image: A Journal of the Arts and Religion, and author of Malcolm Muggeridge: A Biography.

Arts & Faith
The largest and most dynamic online bulletin board on the subject of the intersection between art and faith, this site covers all art forms, but its literary section alone contains over 500 illuminating discussions of every sort of writing.

Image
In nearly two decades of publication, Image has become one of America’s leading quarterlies, featuring original fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction, along with interviews, book reviews, and essays on other art forms. Contributors include Annie Dillard, Kathleen Norris, Bret Lott, and Mary Oliver. Its website offers exclusive features, an online forum, and blog.

The Master’s Artist
This site is an excellent example of a group blog, a true community of like-minded but highly individual writers. As they put it, they are “united by the blood of Christ and a love for language.” Topics range from the state of Christian publishing to craft issues to lyrical meditations on writing as a spiritual discipline.

Nimble Spirit Review
Nimble Spirit Review is the lengthened shadow of Michael Wilt, who has spent many years working in the publishing business. A voracious reader, Wilt has posted dozens of short, graceful reviews of classic and contemporary books in all literary genres, including children’s literature. On the site you can also find poems, essays, and interviews by a number of other writers, including Luci Shaw.

Stonework
Based at Houghton College and edited by poet John Leax, Stonework is an online literary magazine that publishes semiannually. Stonework has become a gathering place for such distinguished poets, essayists, and storywriters as Diane Glancy, Robert Siegel, and Julia Kasdorf.

Posted by Susan Wunderink at February 15, 2008 2:15PM | Comments (3)

Southern Baptist Theological Seminary has the details here. Also keep an eye on his website.

Posted by Ted Olsen at February 14, 2008 12:52PM | Comments (1)

This is why I am so consistently wary of the role of religion in politics. JTA has a short story about Steve Cohen's opponent refusing to condemn this flier because she hadn't seen it, as if hearing those words weren't enough. It would be fair to say "Steve Cohen doesn't share the beliefs of black Christians" but what I don't understand is why the language has to be so inflammatory. Oh wait, that's right. This isn't about religion, at least in as much as it's not about racism. It's about politics.

This article was cross-posted at The God Blog.

Posted by Brad Greenberg at February 14, 2008 10:51AM | Comments (3)

Events in the global Anglican Communion are going from bad to worse. On Feb. 12, an official governing body of the Anglican Province of Uganda announced that they will not be attending the once-per-decade Lambeth gathering of Anglican bishops from around the world. (Nigeria and Rwanda have also indicated they will not attend. Kenya will decide in April.)

Ugandan Anglicans place the blame at the feet of revisionist and "unrepentant" American Episcopal Bishops and a compromised, ineffective Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, saying:

This decision has been made to protest the invitations extended by the Archbishop of Canterbury, The Most Rev. and Rt. Hon. Rowan Williams, to TEC Bishops whose stand and unrepentant actions created the current crisis of identity and authority in the Anglican Communion.

Look here for the full statement released late on Wednesday, Feb. 13.

Meanwhile, in the western suburbs of Chicago, I attended a Wednesday lunch meeting with a senior American Anglican leader who said in essence that the time may soon come for orthodox Anglicans to create some kind of new global structure because of repeated failures of ABC Williams to hold "revisionists" accountable for proceeding with gay ordinations and same-sex rites and for advocating a host of other non-orthodox revisionist teachings.

This leader who spoke at an invitation-only event anticipates creation of a new Anglican Province in North America that orthdox Anglican leaders would recognize. These leaders would then create some kind of new global entity.

Recent hopes that the Anglican Covenant would provide a means to hold revisionists accountable, he said, have been diminished severely because the redraft of the covenant, released in the last 10 days. "Everyone can sign it," he said. Which is a problem since conservatives viewed the drafting of an Anglican Covenant as an acceptable means to create a coherent orthodox majority within the global Anglican Communion anchored around orthodox/reformed theology.

Of course, there has been much speculation for months, if not years, about creation of a new global Anglican body. Now there is more than speculation among conservative Anglicans. They are beginning to strategize what it would look like to have global Anglicanism apart from Canterbury. It seems like those conservatives who have pursued the "inside strategy" of working within TEC and exisiting Anglican procedures (such as the Windsor process) are now reconsidering their strategy.

Finally, the statement from Uganda indicates that conservative Anglicans increasingly see the June event GAFCON, currently slated for Jerusalem, as the focal point for conservative action prior to the Lambeth gathering, starting in mid-July.

Posted by Tim Morgan at February 13, 2008 9:52PM | Comments (8)

Religion, he feels, is the main source of his strength, and because he realizes not everybody shares that feeling today, he sometimes refers to "the challenge of being in the minority in the world." ... "I don't try to be overbearing in what I believe, but, given a chance, I will express my beliefs."

If I told you that line was in reference to a star athlete, I wouldn't imagine you could guess whom. A number of sports stars, and journeymen, come to mind when I think of faith and basketball or baseball or football. And afflicted-minority syndrome is increasingly popular with Christians in America today.

But, surprisingly, I came across those lines last night in John McPhee's "A Sense of Where You Are," the profile he wrote more than 40 years ago of basketball great Bill Bradley, a white man of not-so-humble means who was educated at Princeton, the citadel of the American Presbytery. Hardly a typical minority.

This article was cross-posted at The God Blog.

Posted by Brad Greenberg at February 13, 2008 10:38AM | Comments (0)

The New York magazine article, "Learning to Lie: Kids lie early, often, and for all sorts of reasons—to avoid punishment, to bond with friends, to gain a sense of control. But now there’s a singular theory for one way this habit develops: They are just copying their parents," by Po Bronson is full of insights about the subject.

The author, and the researchers he quotes assume that that many social graces (like complementing a host for meal that I didn’t particularly like, or telling a telemarketer that one is too busy to talk) are also lies, if white lies. I disagree, and the author’s views in this case surely raise the stats on lying. But that is to quibble. Lying remains much more common, deliberate, and conscious among children and teens than we are likely to acknowledge sometimes–and I have no reason to think that this isn’t a phenomenon in Christian families.

Two passages I found particularly interesting:

Most parents hear their child lie and assume he’s too young to understand what lies are or that lying’s wrong. They presume their child will stop when he gets older and learns those distinctions. Talwar has found the opposite to be true—kids who grasp early the nuances between lies and truth use this knowledge to their advantage, making them more prone to lie when given the chance.

Many parenting Websites and books advise parents to just let lies go—they’ll grow out of it. The truth, according to Talwar, is that kids grow into it. In studies where children are observed in their natural environment, a 4-year-old will lie once every two hours, while a 6-year-old will lie about once every hour and a half. Few kids are exceptions….

And one more intriguing passage:

… In her study of teenage students, Darling also mailed survey questionnaires to the parents of the teenagers interviewed, and it was interesting how the two sets of data reflected on each other. First, she was struck by parents’ vivid fear of pushing their teens into outright hostile rebellion. “Many parents today believe the best way to get teens to disclose is to be more permissive and not set rules,” Darling says. Parents imagine a trade-off between being informed and being strict. Better to hear the truth and be able to help than be kept in the dark.

Darling found that permissive parents don’t actually learn more about their children’s lives. “Kids who go wild and get in trouble mostly have parents who don’t set rules or standards. Their parents are loving and accepting no matter what the kids do. But the kids take the lack of rules as a sign their parents don’t care—that their parent doesn’t really want this job of being the parent.”

Pushing a teen into rebellion by having too many rules was a sort of statistical myth. “That actually doesn’t happen,” remarks Darling. She found that most rules-heavy parents don’t actually enforce them. “It’s too much work,” says Darling. “It’s a lot harder to enforce three rules than to set twenty rules.”

A few parents managed to live up to the stereotype of the oppressive parent, with lots of psychological intrusion, but those teens weren’t rebelling. They were obedient. And depressed.

“Ironically, the type of parents who are actually most consistent in enforcing rules are the same parents who are most warm and have the most conversations with their kids,” Darling observes. They’ve set a few rules over certain key spheres of influence, and they’ve explained why the rules are there. They expect the child to obey them. Over life’s other spheres, they supported the child’s autonomy, allowing them freedom to make their own decisions.

The kids of these parents lied the least….

Posted by Mark Galli at February 13, 2008 10:30AM | Comments (1)

Not so long ago, the average mid-twentysomething had achieved most of adulthood’s milestones—high school degree, financial independence, marriage, and children. These days, he lingers—happily—in a new hybrid state of semi-hormonal adolescence and responsible self-reliance. Decades in unfolding, this limbo may not seem like news to many, but in fact it is to the early twenty-first century what adolescence was to the early twentieth: a momentous sociological development of profound economic and cultural import. Some call this new period “emerging adulthood,” others “extended adolescence”; David Brooks recently took a stab with the “Odyssey Years,” a “decade of wandering.”

But while we grapple with the name, it’s time to state what is now obvious to legions of frustrated young women: the limbo doesn’t bring out the best in young men. With women, you could argue that adulthood is in fact emergent. Single women in their twenties and early thirties are joining an international New Girl Order, hyperachieving in both school and an increasingly female-friendly workplace, while packing leisure hours with shopping, traveling, and dining with friends [see “The New Girl Order,” Autumn 2007]. Single Young Males, or SYMs, by contrast, often seem to hang out in a playground of drinking, hooking up, playing Halo 3, and, in many cases, underachieving. With them, adulthood looks as though it’s receding.

So begins an article by Kay S. Hymowitz, "Child-Man in the Promised Land: Today’s single young men hang out in a hormonal limbo between adolescence and adulthood," published in City Journal.

I've had a few conversations recently with 20-something women about 20-something men. The women, to say the least, are not impressed with their counterparts. This article explains, in part, why that might be so--even in the Christian community. While some of the behavior described does not fit the Christian subculture, the larger picture seems to.

I'm not sure what "the answer" is, but Hymowitz does us a service by simply naming the problem.

(Cross posted on Galliblog)

Posted by Mark Galli at February 12, 2008 4:24PM | Comments (22)

Michael Lindsay has, through extensive interviewing, tapped into a feature of American evangelicalism that’s both fascinating and frustrating: two distinct social tiers. He identified these as the “populist” and "cosmopolitan” groups, which he wrote about in Faith in the Halls of Power. But there’s another way of looking at evangelicals that divides them — much along the same lines — into elite and non-elite Christians.

The separation is fairly deep, it seems. So deep that they don’t really go to church together. In fact, Lindsay writes in Monday’s USA Today, many of the evangelical elite (including George W. Bush) hardly go to church at all:

I spent the past five years interviewing some of the country's top leaders — two U.S. presidents (George H.W. Bush and Carter), 100 CEOs and senior business executives, Hollywood icons, celebrated artists and world-class athletes. All were chosen because of their widely known faith. Yet I was shocked to find that more than half — 60% — had low levels of commitment to their denominations and congregations. Some were members in name only; others had actively disengaged from church life.

Everybody loses out, Lindsay says: “Community is a virtue for most religious traditions, but evangelicals have excelled at it. Declining church commitment among these leaders, therefore, is ripping at the very fabric that has distinguished American evangelicalism.”

He addresses the reasons for this (frustration with the way churches are run) and the issue of where these elites do have Christian fellowship (exclusive Bible studies, parachurch ministry boards), and takes them gently to task for elitism.

But he doesn’t give them the assignment of solving the problem — in this article, that’s meted out to clergy.

Organized religion is perhaps the one factor that could motivate people to bridge the gap between rich and poor, especially now as more of the faithful move into the halls of power. To turn the tide, clergy around the country must engage and draw in these leaders. Otherwise, affluent believers will continue to leave their congregations — and their fellow believers — behind in their ascent, creating a gated community of the soul.

Posted by Susan Wunderink at February 12, 2008 10:30AM | Comments (16)

Religious freedom in the Middle East moves three steps forward, two steps back in a judicial ruling in Egypt on Saturday.

Compass Direct News Service reports:

Egypt’s top administrative court has ruled in favor of 12 converts to Islam seeking to return to Christianity but has left the group vulnerable to discrimination by mandating their former religion be noted on official documents. In his ruling Saturday (February 9), Judge El-Sayeed Noufal ordered Egypt’s Interior Ministry to issue the converts “Christian documents” noting their “ex-Muslim” status. Human rights activists heralded the decision as a breakthrough for religious freedom in Egypt, where conversion away from Islam, though not illegal, has been forbidden in practice. But human rights advocates remained wary, saying that listing the converts’ former religion on their documents would make them vulnerable to discrimination. “It’s obviously a stigmatization to have [“ex-Muslim”] on your ID card,” a representative for the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights told Compass.

Look here for the full story.

Posted by Tim Morgan at February 11, 2008 5:39PM | Comments (4)

Zogby International conducted a survey for Faith in Public Life on how evangelicals voted in Missouri and Tennessee, but the polling firm has been asking the evangelical/born-again question of Democrats since the January 19 Nevada caucuses. PBS’s Religion and Ethics Newsweekly scored the data, and it’s Hillary across the board on the Democratic side.

In every contest, Hillary Clinton bests Barack Obama among white evangelicals, and her support is significantly higher among evangelicals than among white Protestants in general. It was closest in California, where 40 percent of white evangelicals likely to vote in the Democratic primary said they’d vote for Clinton and 38 percent said they’d vote for Obama (among white Protestants, the numbers were 38 percent and 43 percent respectively). White evangelical Democrats went 43/24 for Clinton in Georgia, 59/24 in Missouri (FPL’s post-election survey put it at 54/37), and 59/27 in New Jersey.

But the Zogby data also has numbers for non-whites who identified as evangelical or born again (that’s a rare thing in these kinds of surveys), and while Obama is overwhelmingly winning this group (often by a 2-to-1 margin or better), Hillary is doing significantly better with this group than she is with non-white Protestants in general.

Unfortunately, the Zogby data at the Religion and Ethics Newsweekly site doesn’t give us the broad breakdowns, so we don’t know how many evangelicals said they were likely to vote in a Democratic primary or caucus compared to those who said they were likely to vote in a Republican one. We don’t know how many Democratic voters identified as evangelical, or how many of these were non-white.

But what we do know is that Hillary is doing better among evangelicals than she is among Protestants in general. And that’s a surprise, especially since most pundits have assumed that Obama, not Clinton, is the evangelical favorite on the Democratic side.

See, pollsters? Asking the evangelical question gets you surprising data that news organizations like to talk about!

Posted by Ted Olsen at February 11, 2008 12:40PM | Comments (15)

Faith in Public Life has been complaining that exit polls have asked only Republicans whether they’re evangelical or born again. Last week, they decided to do something about it, and surveyed voters in Missouri and Tennessee to see how evangelicals were really voting.

In both states, one-third of voters who identified as evangelical or born again voted in the Democratic primaries.

"Comparatively, only one in four white evangelical voters in Missouri and Tennessee supported Senator John Kerry in the 2004 general election," the organization noted in its press release. In a press conference announcing its poll data, Faith in Public Life’s panelists similarly suggested that the number reflects something new.

"The presumed lock on evangelical voters by the Republican Party is breaking down," Robert P. Jones said.

Sojourners head Jim Wallis likewise proclaimed, "The media is operating with an outdated script. … Things are changing. Evangelicals are leaving the religious right in droves."

But many political scientists have noted that evangelical support for Bush, particularly in the 2004 election, was probably an anomaly. Evangelicals have for the past several decades largely split two-thirds for Republicans, one-third for Democrats. Bill Clinton did particularly well among evangelicals, especially in 1992, drawing between 35 percent and 40 percent of the evangelical vote. If the evangelical vote is shifting, it’s probably more accurate to say it’s shifting back to pre-Bush levels.

(The good stuff after the jump...)

When asked about this, Jones insisted that the numbers do not represent a return to form, and said that young evangelicals in particular are less likely to identify with the Republican Party. He pointed to a recent survey he co-authored from Third Way, which showed one-fifth of evangelicals are progressives (i.e. liberal), one-third are moderates, and one-half are conservatives.

Evangelicals made up a sizable block in the Democratic primaries surveyed: 19 percent in Missouri (where 55 percent of the Republican primary voters were evangelical) and 29 percent in Tennessee (where 73 percent of the Republican voters were evangelical).

In Tennessee, the evangelical percentage in the Democratic primary was the same as white men and all black voters, and nearly three times that of union members. In Missouri, the evangelical vote for Democrats was the same as the senior citizen vote and larger than the black vote and union-member vote. (I’m comparing the FPL numbers on evangelicals with exit poll data for the other groups, which is not quite apples and oranges but a bit like comparing Fujis and Granny Smiths.)

Hillary Clinton triumphed in both states among evangelical Democrats. That’s a bit of a surprise, especially since CT’s informal online polling showed Obama way ahead among our readers. But in both states surveyed, the numbers for white evangelicals look an awful lot like the white vote in general. In Tennessee, Obama actually did worse among white evangelicals (12%) than among all whites (20%; the exit poll data had Obama’s white support at 26%).

In Missouri, Obama’s support was the same among white evangelicals and all whites, but Clinton’s support was slightly lower among evangelicals than with all whites. Still, the 54 percent of the evangelical vote that Clinton won in that state is considerably more than the support she got from all Democratic voters. Obama won the state by about 10,000 votes of more than 820,000 cast, but he and Clinton received the same number of convention delegates.

Zogby International conducted the survey, which has a margin of error of +/- 5 percentage points. Faith in Public Life and the Center for American Progress Action Fund paid for the survey.

Posted by Ted Olsen at February 11, 2008 11:43AM | Comments (0)

The Bible is the most read, translated, and packaged book in history. There are Bibles for soldiers, teens, dispensationalists, the reformed, golfers, and on and on. The latest effort to contextualize and target the Scriptures is The Manga Bible, just out from Doubleday.

Manga, a Japanese-inspired form of the graphic novel, is a big seller right now, so many will see its marriage with Scripture as a match made in heaven. However, this is not your father's (or mother's) Bible, according to a story in The New York Times.

The medium shapes the message. Manga often focuses on action and epic. Much of the Bible, as a result, ends up on the cutting room floor, and what remains is darker.

“It is the end of the Word as we know it, and the end of a certain cultural idea of the Scriptures as a book, as the Book,” Timothy Beal, professor of religion at Case Western Reserve University, said of the reworking of the Bible in new forms, including manga. “It opens up new ways of understanding Scripture and ends up breaking the idols a bit.”

While known for characters with big eyes and catwalk poses, manga is also defined by a laconic, cinematic style, with characters often doing more than talking.

In a blurb for the Manga Bible, which is published by Doubleday, the archbishop of Canterbury, the Most Rev. Rowan Williams, is quoted as saying, “It will convey the shock and freshness of the Bible in a unique way.”

No doubt. In the Manga Bible, whose heroes look and sound like skateboarders in Bedouin gear, Noah gets tripped up counting the animals in the Ark: “That’s 11,344 animals? Arggh! I’ve lost count again. I’m going to have to start from scratch!”

Posted by Stan Guthrie at February 11, 2008 11:19AM | Comments (4)

Religion coverage in The Atlantic is typically well done. The magazine's coverage of the neutering of religion from The Golden Compass was interesting for the way it treated both Hollywood and the anti-religious themes of the book on which the movie was based. Though the magazine retains the secular, above the fray, attitude toward faith of its New England founding, it also put Philip Jenkin's article on the New Christendom on the cover in October, 2002, when his book describing the phenomenal growth of non-Western Christianity debuted.

So, the magazine's March cover story (not yet online) on the literal battle between Christianity and Islam in Nigeria is equally well done, despite some mistakes.

Eliza Griswold—daughter of the former presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church—writes from the town of Yelwa, where an attack that killed Christians in church in 2004 brought on a more gruesome response against Muslims killing hundreds. Yelwa is in Nigeria's Middle Belt, which, Griswold writes,

marks the fault line between Christianity and Islam not only in Nigeria, but across the entire continent. A satellite image from Google Earth shows the Middle Belt as a gray-green strip between the equator and the 10th parallel, dividing the fawn-colored dry land from the vibrant sub-Saharan jungle canopy. It also separates most of the continents 67 million Muslims to the north from 417 million Christians to the south.

Because of the 20th century explosion of Christianity in Africa, by the year 2050, Griswold writes, the demographic and geographic center of Christianity will be in northern Nigeria, where the country's Muslims live. This fact makes any tensions in the country religious ones. With 140 million people, oil revenues that never seem to help the people (half of whom live on less than a dollar a day) thanks to government corruption, and a changing regional climate that has wiped out many traditional livelihoods, the country has plenty of tensions.

“Every crisis is automatically interpreted as a religious crisis,” an Anglican archbishop says. “But we all know that, scratch the surface and it's got nothing to do with religion. It's power.”

Power, in this democracy (despite massive corruption) is a numbers game. Christians and Muslims compete for numbers—converts. And to do that, they not only use intimidation (Griswold quotes Archbishop Peter Akinola saying that Muslims do not have a monopoly on violence), Christians and Muslims appeal to want what Nigerians need most—prosperity.

Pentecostalism has brought along American prosperity theology. (Griswold doesn't seem able to separate Pentecostalism from prosperity theology.) And, in the competition for souls, Nigeria's Muslims have come up with an Islamic approach to making people wealthy.

Griswold suggests that, while violence between Christians and Muslims is still a threat, this sort of competition—non-violent pursuit of winning hearts and minds—is growing.

Hopefully she's right. The stories of murder, rape, and intimidation (all justified by either side's scripture) are horrifying. Yet, Griswold doesn't offer much to hang that hope on other than the story of an imam and a pastor who gave up leading militias to work together for peace. It's inspiring, but she gives little evidence of their effectiveness. And Griswold, despite her father's Christian leadership, doesn't seem to fully understand the Christianity she's reporting on, much less Islam. For example, she says Pentecostals “share an experience of the Holy Spirit, or the numinous, that offers the gift of salvation and success in everyday life.” (italics are mine. At least she didn't spell it like Rob Bell.) And Muslims have yet to show that they can treat minorities as equals, instead of "protected" classes or worse.

Still, the article, and it's companions by Alan Wolfe (on how religiosity really is decreasing with modernization) and Walter Russell Mead (on American evangelical political moderation) are worth reading.

Posted by Rob Moll at February 10, 2008 10:51AM | Comments (2)

Lithuanian Catholics have an incredibly odd, and I would say bigoted, Lent tradition of dressing up as heavily stereotyped, grotesque Jews -- haggling peddlers with big noses, sidelocks and hideous features. The Forward has the story and reports that Jews in Vilna don't complain because they don't want to cause conflict.

During Carnival — or Uzgavenes, as it is known in Lithuania — Catholics from around the world congregate for a feast of foods prohibited during Lent. The festival usually involves a parade or circus, with attendees in masks and costumes. But in Vilnius — commonly known to Jews as Vilna — participants traditionally dress and act “as Jews,” a feat that generally calls for masks with grotesque features, beards and visible ear locks and that is often accompanied by peddling and by stereotypically Jewish speech.

And I thought Mardi Gras was a strange, unholy tradition.

This article was cross-posted at The God Blog.

Posted by Brad Greenberg at February 10, 2008 1:45AM | Comments (5)

In a recent speech, Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, said that England should make room for Sharia law to solve certain types of issues. Though it was a nuanced lecture, it was widely sensationalized in the British dailies on Friday, and still the lead story in The Times today. See the BBC link for the current state of the story, and lots of supplementary material, including the text of his lecture, "Islam and English Law," given at Lambeth Palace.

Coming from the head of the world's third largest church communion in the context of one of the world's most vibrant democracies, it is, to say the least, a provocative suggestion, even when nuanced. In an increasingly pluralistic world, where religion remains a vital component of most people's lives, it is something the U.S. will have to face into at some point.

Posted by Mark Galli at February 9, 2008 3:45AM | Comments (13)

Lost in the media storm preceding and following Super Tuesday, and the actual storms that debilitated or devastated much of the US that same day, was media coverage of the start of Lent, arguably the most recognized of the exclusively Christian seasons on the Church's liturgical calendar. In reviewing English-speaking coverage of this turning of the seasons, I was struck by the difference between US media reports and those issuing from across the pond in the UK.

US stories were generally conventional—though sometimes oddly technical or whimsical—and documented an approach to the season that was consistently pious, yet often private in scope, focusing on interior spiritual attitudes or individual struggles of the will in forgoing chocolate, coffee, alcohol, or insert-your-weakness-of-the-flesh-here for the 40-day period. (Jane Hawes's article is notable in its attempt to balance both the private-public and negative-positive dimensions of the season.)

Stories from the UK, on the other hand, conveyed a theological posture toward Lent that emphasized the public dimension of Christian commitment. Most notable is the Tearfund carbon fast mentioned by Tim Morgan in an earlier blog, which was launched by the Anglican bishops of London and Liverpool, and backed by Archbishop Rowan Williams, as well as scientist Sir John Houghton, an evangelical who formerly chaired the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s scientific assessment. The proposal received considerable coverage in UK press (Daily Telegraph; The Guardian; BBC News; New Consumer), though its only mentions in the US were on one or two blogs, a university newspaper, and an ezine.

Also worth mentioning is the Lent Endurance Challenge issued by the UK organization Church Action on Poverty, and backed by several Anglican bishops, as well as Catholic, Methodist, and Baptist church leaders in the UK. The Challenge is to live the life of a refused asylum seeker for one week, which involves donating one’s normal weekly food budget in exchange for £3.50 and the typical food parcel supplied to the homeless by local charities. The hope is to give participants a glimpse into the life of these “living ghosts,” who are “essentially airbrushed out of existence as ‘failed’ asylum seekers,” but, lacking money to return home, remain in the UK, unnoticed or ignored by society at large.

These constructive and creative public applications of Christian theological commitments make my own internal ruminations about whether I should give up coffee or fried foods for Lent seem, if not entirely inconsequential, unimaginative and blatantly disengaged from my neighbor and the world. If Lent is about submitting to suffering for the sake of identification with our Lord, whose own suffering was always for the sake of carrying forward God’s redemptive intent for the whole world, navel-gazing US Christians like me may want to look across the seas to spark our flickering theological imaginations.

Posted by Derek Keefe at February 8, 2008 4:16PM | Comments (1)

In Washington this week, conservatives held a press conference on Thursday to call public attention to efforts in Congress to "radically" rewrite PEPFAR, President Bush's signature program to fight HIV/AIDS globally.

In his 2008 State of the Union, President Bush said:
"Our Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief is treating 1.4 million people. We can bring healing and hope to many more. So I ask you to maintain the principles that have changed behavior and made this program a success." Instead, the Democrats have decided to radically change or abandon the principles of this widely successful program. Their radical rewrite will pour billions into the hands of abortion providers with little or no regard for the pro-life, pro-family cultures of recipient countries. It also strips provisions that ensure priority funding for the highly effective abstinence and fidelity programs, which have reduced HIV rates in African nations that have implemented it. The Democrat proposal also strips the provision that forbids grants to groups that do not have a policy explicitly opposing prostitution and sex trafficking--a provision designed to combat exploitation of women in recipient countries.

In addition to members of Congress, Saddleback church's senior pastor Rick Warren and author Chuck Colson attended