A majority of S.C. Republicans — 52 percent — said Trump was “godly.”
— Read on www.thestate.com/news/politics-government/article208990104.html
Category: Religion
What is real? Forking universes, equalities, and religion
When scientists search for meaning in quantum physics, they may be straying into a no-man’s-land between philosophy and religion. But they can’t help themselves. They’re only human. “If you were to watch me by day, you would see me sitting at my desk solving Schrödinger’s equation…exactly like my colleagues,” says Sir Anthony Leggett, a Nobel Prize winner and pioneer in superfluidity. “But occasionally at night, when the full moon is bright, I do what in the physics community is the intellectual equivalent of turning into a werewolf: I question whether quantum mechanics is the complete and ultimate truth about the physical universe.”
— Read on www.nytimes.com/2018/05/08/books/review/adam-becker-what-is-real.html
Siri and Incarnation
The theological lens through which we might view these questions is incarnation. In an age of increased engagement with disembodied digital assistants, what might it mean for the church to counterweight this with insisting on and facilitating in-person fellowship? In an era of disembodied conversation, my prayer is that the church might be a contrast society to model a more excellent way of fully-embodied community and in-person presence.
Source: Thanks for your help, Siri. But what about that human connection? – Baptist News Global
I fundamentally disagree with John Chandler here regarding the notion that smart assistants (such as Siri or Alexa or Google Assistant or Cortana or Bixby or M or… well, there are many more) lead to more antisocial behavior or the dangers of people not interacting with other people.
Chandler also invokes the (in)famous Nicholas Carr article Is Google Making Us Stupid? from 2008. One of my favorite rebukes to that article comes from a review of Carr’s subsequent book on the topic, The Shallows: How the Internet is Changing the Way We Think, Read, and Remember:
Perhaps what he needs are better strategies of self-control. Has he considered disconnecting his modem and Fedexing it to himself overnight, as some digital addicts say they have done? After all, as Steven Pinker noted a few months ago in the New York Times, ‘distraction is not a new phenomenon.’ Pinker scorns the notion that digital technologies pose a hazard to our intelligence or wellbeing. Aren’t the sciences doing well in the digital age, he asks? Aren’t philosophy, history and cultural criticism flourishing too? There is a reason the new media have caught on, Pinker observes: ‘Knowledge is increasing exponentially; human brainpower and waking hours are not.’ Without the internet, how can we possibly keep up with humanity’s ballooning intellectual output?
Socrates feared the same fears of antisocial behavior and intellectual laziness that we project onto television, music, and now the internet in regards to books and admonished Plato to stop writing them.
Smart assistants such as Siri or Alexa do pose a whole new world of possibilities for developers and companies and groups to interact with the connected world. In just a few short years, many of us (our household included) now use these assistants to do everything from schedule events on our cloud-based calendars to turn the lights off before bed. I also stream music, play audio books, ask questions, and crack riddles with Alexa, Siri, and Google Assistant on a daily basis.
While we fear the inevitability of a bleak future as depicted in the movie Her from 2013 in which human beings are completely subsumed into relationships and reality driven by their own personal digital assistants and rarely interact with others, I don’t think that’s the reality we’ll see. There’s a simple reason for that… antisocial behavior is a part of our own internal psychologies and neuropathies. Projecting these fears onto tools such as Siri is misplaced. I’d argue that positioning the church to be anti-tool to encourage incarnational relationships is misplaced as well.
This isn’t the same as arguing that “Guns don’t kill people; People kill people” although that’s an easy leap to make. But no, what I’m arguing here has to do with coming to terms with the ongoing revelation we are making and receiving about the very nature of human thought and how our brain and nervous systems work in tandem with our concept of consciousness. Understanding that newspapers, books, radio, TV, internet, and now Siri don’t make us any more or less lazy or antisocial is an important step in understanding that the core issue of incarnation relies on relationality between humans and the universe.
I do agree with Chandler that the church should be anti-cultural in the sense that it provides a way for exploration into the concept of incarnation. But positing that experience as anti-tool or anti-specific-technology seems to undercut the very notion of the incarnation’s theological and ongoing event in history (call that the kerygma or the Christ event or God Consciousness etc).
Yes, technology can be addictive or exacerbate issues. But let’s address the fundamental issues of culture and personal psychologies that the church is led to do with a healthy and holy notion of inter-personal and inner-personal relationships.
The Fable of the Dragon-Tyrant
CGP Grey has produced a thought-provoking adaptation of Nick Bostrom’s 2005 paper (available here Journal of Medical Ethics, 2005, Vol. 31, No. 5, pp 273-277). There are themes and ideas presented here that are deeper than they first appear, especially in regards to concepts such as ethics and mortality.
Bible Domains
When the society — which lists several conservative Christian “founding partners” on the get.bible website — first applied for the rights to .bible, it pledged to provide wide access to “all qualified parties” interested in Bible issues. Soon after acquiring the domain name, though, ABS barred publication of material it defined as “antithetical to New Testament principles” or promoting a secular worldview or “a non-Christian religion or set of religious beliefs.”
Source: Who owns the .bible? – Religion News ServiceReligion News Service
Thinking Religion 145: Thinking About the Term “Partners”
Dr. Thomas Whitley and The Rev. Sam Harrelson discuss the term “partners” in its modern context and whether or not it is performative for certain couples. That leads to a discussion about the role of social media in our lives if we could, in fact, delete Facebook.
Source: Thinking Religion Episode 145: Thinking About the Term Partners
What did Jesus look like?
I’ve taught a series on depictions of Jesus numerous times at churches and for Sunday Schools of all flavors. This is one of the best pieces I’ve ever read on the subject. Thorough, but approachable.
Plus, there’s a connection to my beloved Dura Europos…
However, there is one other place to look: to the synagogue Dura Europos, dating from the early 3rd century. The depiction of Moses on the walls of the synagogue of Dura-Europos is probably the closest fit, I think, since it shows how a Jewish sage was imagined in the Graeco-Roman world. Moses is shown in undyed clothing, appropriate to tastes of ascetic masculinity (eschewing color), and his one mantle is a tallith, since one can see tassels (tzitzith). This image is a far more correct as a basis for imagining the historical Jesus than the adaptations of the Byzantine Jesus that have become standard.
Changing Conceptions of Marriage and Church Marketing
Fascinating stats here for same-sex and different-sex marriages. To think of marriage as a trophy or celebration of what two people have accomplished in life that come together into a new stage directly flies in the face of so much of what churches of all stripes and sizes (but especially my beloved Baptist tradition) have supported:
According to the Census Bureau, the median age at first marriage—the age at which half of all marriages occur—was 27.4 for women and 29.5 for men in 2017. That’s higher than at any time since the Census began keeping records in 1890. It is six years higher than when I got married in 1972 (at the typical age of 24). In my era, a young couple usually got married first, then moved in together, then started their adult roles as workers or homemakers, and then had children. (I scandalized my parents by living with my future wife before I married her.) Now marriage tends to come after most of these markers are attained.
Source: Andrew Cherlin: Marriage Has Become a Trophy – The Atlantic
In an era where church attendance is declining and church donations aren’t keeping up with expenses, it’s interesting to ponder what something like the institution of marriage might mean for the future health of congregations based on their marketing and messaging.
“to queer the prophetic body”
Rather, she is interested in how queerness, in all of its polysemy, “works” in the prophetic texts. Her aim is to “trace the prophetic body as a queer object and to queer the prophetic body” (p. 7)—a project that is both queer and feminist. The result is an imaginative, illuminating investigation into the bodies of various Hebrew Bible prophets.
Source: Book Note | Are We Not Men? Unstable Masculinity in the Hebrew Prophets — ANCIENT JEW REVIEW
Interesting… will definitely read!
Churches Should Turn and Face the Strange
The “America” that Baby Boomers and my fellow Gen X’ers grew up with is rapidly changing, and Protestant churches are an example of community institutions that will be most affected… and made irrelevant or obsolete if they continue to operate as if it’s still 1985.
Of course, whites are a smaller share of the post-millennial generation than any other, so their views will be less dispositive in shaping its direction. Other changes cataloged in the poll underscore how great a change the post-millennials could bring. In the survey, 45% of these young people identified as religiously unaffiliated or non-Christian (compared with about 3 in 10 among all Americans), according to results provided to CNN. And about 1 in every 16 young men and 1 in 7 young women identified as gay or bisexual.
Sumer and the Modern Paradigm
Modern artists discovered Sumerian art between the world wars, at a time when British and American archaeological missions were working in southern Iraq. But archaeologists like Leonard Woolley, head of the mission in Ur were less fascinated by their finds. They considered Mesopotamian art inferior to Egyptian and to Graeco-Roman art and thought Mesopotamian iconography was an expression of a violent culture. Sacrificed bodies found at the Royal Tombs of Ur were the proof that the Bible was right about the Mesopotamian barbarism.
Source: – ANE TODAY – 201802 – Sumer and the Modern Paradigm
Baptist Fields
“Out beyond ideas of wrong-doing and right-doing,
there is a field. I’ll meet you there.
When the soul lies down in that grass,
the world is too full to talk about.
Ideas, language, even the phrase ‘each other’
doesn’t make any sense. The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you.
Don’t go back to sleep.”
Rumi
The painful truth the Illumination Project uncovered in their long discernment process is how silent our churches are when it comes to what is life and death for real people in our pews. The “don’t ask, don’t tell” approach of most of our churches toward LGBTQ Christians leaves them in the shadows, if not in the dark. If we want CBF to be a bright light on the spiritual equality of all Christians, that light must begin to shine more brightly from our CBF congregations. CBF would not have to parse its hiring policy so carefully if our churches did the hard but liberating work of the gospel where Baptists know it matters most.
Source: Illuminations: Spiritual Equality of All Christians – EthicsDaily.com
Thinking Baptists: CBF’s Illumination Project Recap
Merianna and I released a new episode of our rebooted Thinking Baptists podcast last night reflecting on our own personal feelings about the CBF’s Illumination Project as well as our own viewpoints regarding church policies at the institutional and local levels…
The Rev. Merianna Neely Harrelson and The Rev. Sam Harrelson break down this week’s release of the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship’s Illumination Project report from their own perspectives.
“What is the spirit saying here?”
Good reflection by Julia Pennington-Russell here on the CBF’s Illumination Project work as well as moralism, legalism, and theopolitics regardless of denomination:
And many, maybe most, CBF churches are so anxious about jeopardizing a fragile harmony that they avoid even the mildest conversation about human sexuality, even as their LGBTQ brothers and sisters suffer outside the gate. What is the Spirit saying here?
Source: Illuminations: The Healing Space between “Good” and “Bad” | CBFblog
CBF’s New Hiring and Personnel Statement
Here are results from the 18-month long Illumination Project that the CBF launched to address its controversial anti-LGBTQ hiring policy back in 2016.
Thomas and I did an episode of Thinking Religion last night to share some thoughts if you’d like to know where I stand.
To reflect the practice of most of its congregations, the procedure states: “Among other qualifying factors, CBF will employ persons for leadership positions in ministry who exhibit the ideals set forth in our hiring policy, have gifts appropriate to the particular position and who practice a traditional Christian sexual ethic of celibacy in singleness or faithfulness in marriage between a woman and a man.” For other positions on the CBF staff in Decatur, applicants will be considered who meet the qualities set forth in the new hiring policy, including Christians who identify as LGBT.
James C. Scott’s New Book
James C. Scott is one of the scholars I always enjoy reading. I was introduced to his work Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts while in a (wonderful) seminary class on the Parables. The insightful connection that our beloved professor made between Jesus’ acts and words in his performance of the parables with the essence of what Scott described as “public” and “hidden” transcripts still resonates with me today anytime I read the Gospels.
I’m excited to read this work as well. Although it seems to have a similar topic as many scholarly takes on the how’s and why’s civilizations collapse, (anyone else notice how both academic works, as well as the entertainment world, is fascinated by dystopias and doom-and-gloom in this Age of Trump?) one of my ongoing fascinations and points of interests is the rise of civilization in Mesopotamia as well as the later “Sea Peoples” of Egyptian history. It looks like both of these topics make an appearance in Scott’s new work:
What if the origin of farming wasn’t a moment of liberation but of entrapment? Scott offers an alternative to the conventional narrative that is altogether more fascinating, not least in the way it omits any self-congratulation about human achievement. His account of the deep past doesn’t purport to be definitive, but it is surely more accurate than the one we’re used to, and it implicitly exposes the flaws in contemporary political ideas that ultimately rest on a narrative of human progress and on the ideal of the city/nation-state.
Source: Steven Mithen reviews ‘Against the Grain’ by James C. Scott · LRB 30 November 2017
Do We Really Want Our Government Run Like a Business? | Sojourners
In the Easter sermon at my own church, the priest commented that Jesus was killed by the 1 percent, in the form of an empire that exploited its citizenry for the sake of profit and growth. While this sentiment might not be surprising where I live in liberal Northern California, it’s also present throughout the Bible. President Trump, whose own religious beliefs remain puzzling, vague, and nearly impossible to parse even among theologians and religion journalists, has repeatedly pushed policies that are the opposite of many of Christ’s messages even in his short time in office.
Source: Do We Really Want Our Government Run Like a Business? | Sojourners
The Day the Music Died
We’re all suffering from something and we should all be able to admit that without feeling the need to keep on performing for people. It’s a serious deficiency of our American culture that we elevate fake stoicism.
But gosh, I do love some Tom Petty music. Sad read but maybe it’ll help at least one person seek some help:
ON THE DAY HE DIED HE WAS INFORMED HIS HIP HAD GRADUATED TO A FULL ON BREAK AND IT IS OUR FEELING THAT THE PAIN WAS SIMPLY UNBEARABLE AND WAS THE CAUSE FOR HIS OVER USE OF MEDICATION.
Source: The Official Website of Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers
Unnecessary nobility
When Adam dalf and Eve span,
Who was thanne a gentilman?
John Ball
Finding your column ain’t easy
“Symeon selected a three-metre-high column in the Syrian desert near Antioch, and there he stood day in, day out, eventually attracting such a crowd that the noise caused him to build his column higher, bringing him closer to God and 16 metres off the ground. Symeon managed to live like this for 30 years, and many other monks began to follow his example so that a whole stylite movement developed which was still going strong in the 11th century CE.”