“The Weekend Wanderer” is a weekly curated selection of news, stories, resources, and media on the intersection of faith and culture for you to explore through your weekend. Wander through these links however you like and in any order you like. Disclaimer: I do not necessarily agree with all the views expressed within these articles but have found them thought-provoking.
“Advent’s surprise for us” – Emily Lund at Faith & Leadership: “Shouldn’t we get it by now? From the inside looking out, we’re aware of the dimming daylight even as we’re typing away, chasing children, on another Zoom. And then we check the time: only 5:15. Whoa. We’ve observed ‘spring forward, fall back’ our whole lives. We’ve made it through our share of winters. We understand the shortening of days and lengthening of nights. We know how this works. Don’t we? And yet here we are, year after year, still surprised, still looking outside and saying, ‘Can you believe how dark it is already?!’ (Or, in the words of a TikTok I still think about, ‘Bro, it’s 5:15! What?’) When we think of Advent, the themes of darkness, expectation and (im)patient anticipation often come to mind. ’Tis the season to watch and wait. But there’s another element of this time of year that I want to dwell in: the element of surprise.”
“In Praise of Repair Culture: Modern life depends on the habit of discarding things. What if we fixed them instead?” – Peter Mommsen in Plough: “Do farmers have a right to repair their own tractors? The American Farm Bureau Federation thinks so. That’s why this year it reached an agreement with John Deere in which the manufacturer promised to enable farmers, as well as third-party mechanics, to fix their own green-and-yellow machinery, for example by providing service manuals and diagnostic tools that earlier only licensed shops could access. For many farmers, this change could be economically transformative, enabling older tractors to be used longer rather than being replaced because of the high repair costs. The farmers’ federation is now working to reach similar agreements with other manufacturers. The John Deere agreement is one more small but significant victory for the right to repair movement, which has been taking aim at practices in industries ranging from automotive to consumer electronics that restrict the ability to fix things, driving up costs for users and (often deliberately) forcing them to replace items that might still work. Targets include nonreplaceable laptop batteries, software updates that disable video game consoles, and toner cartridges programmed to stop printing even when they still contain ink.”
“That’s Just, Like, Your Opinion, Man” – Mike Cosper and Nicole Martin in The Bulletin: “This week on The Bulletin hosts Mike Cosper and Nicole Martin invite atmospheric scientist Katharine Hayhoe to discuss the world’s changing climate and the case for hope rather than doom and gloom….Katharine Hayhoe is an atmospheric scientist who studies climate change, one of the most pressing issues facing humanity today. But Katharine may be best-known to many because of how she’s bridging the broad, deep gap between scientists and Christians— work she does primarily because she’s a Christian herself. She’s been named by Christianity Today as one of their 50 Women to Watch and the United Nations as a Champion of the Earth. She serves as the World Evangelical Alliance’s Climate Ambassador and as the science advisor to organizations from Young Evangelicals for Climate Action to the Faraday Institute for Science and Religion. She’s the author of Saving Us: A Climate Scientist’s Case for Hope and Healing in a Divided World, has a weekly newsletter, Talking Climate, and hosted the PBS digital series, Global Weirding: Climate, Politics and Religion. She is the Chief Scientist for The Nature Conservancy and a Distinguished Professor and Chair at Texas Tech University.”
“The Island With No Words” – Paul J. Pastor in Ekstasis: “I have, at various times in my life, found myself in conditions of what felt like considerable desolation; weighty periods of emptiness. During the formative years of high school, when ‘a young man’s fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love,’ I found myself in the midst of such a time. I was uncommonly lonely, and routinely bored, living with my family of seven in a 600-square-foot shack in a small town in the somewhat isolated Coast Range of Oregon. To call it a shack is not much of an exaggeration; it was set on rounds of old-growth lumber, down around which the floors above would bow. When it was cold (it was usually cold), one lit the grimacing furnace in the front room by turning a knob to flood a cast-iron firebox with translucent red fuel oil, then igniting it (you had to be quick) with a long lighter. When we moved in, you could see daylight through a hole in the wall above the bathtub. It was cramped. It was unstylish. My friends all lived an hour or more away and none of us would have cars or cell phones or internet in our houses for several years. Consequently, my social life was limited mostly to church people, dead authors, and Nancy the librarian. But there were benefits. Daily, I would ride my bike for miles into the deep woods down an abandoned railroad grade, explore the mossy ruins of a vast lumber mill or walk to the river that ran at the foot of our property, where I would take a little flat-bottomed boat out upon the water. I fished there, and wrote many pages of terrible poetry, and taught myself to play a sunburst Epiphone guitar, and thought my thoughts—and they were deep thoughts—and, in my way, made peace with it all. I watched and I waited.”
“Algerian pastor sentenced to one year in prison” – Evangelical Focus Europe: “Algerian pastor and vicepresident of the Algerian Protestant Church (EPA), Youssef Ourahmane, recently lost an appeal hearing and was sentenced to one year in prison and a fine of 100.000 DZD (around 665€). Ourahmane was accused of holding an unauthorised religious worship last March, in a building not permitted for that, according to the Law 03/06, which regulates non-Muslim worship by preventing any public gathering in places that do not have a licence granted by the government. The accusations are based on allegations that he supervised several Christian families staying in a church compound that includes a chapel sealed off by the authorities. The pastor was not informed of the court hearing until mid September, and will now appeal to a higher provincial court, Middle East Concern reported.”
“The Christian Invention of Art: Take heart, gallerygoers. Museums are not temples to false gods.” – Matthew J. Milliner at Comment: “‘Art raises its head where religions decline,’ pronounced Nietzsche in Human, All Too Human. ‘Feeling, forced out of the religious sphere by enlightenment, throws itself into art.’ Nietzsche was not alone. ‘Let us love one another “in Art,”‘ gushed the French novelist Gustave Flaubert, ‘as the mystics love one another “in God.”‘ In his 2003 book The Invention of Art, Larry Shiner confirmed these observations, going so far as to explain that ‘Art’ (capital A) as we know it today is an invention of the nineteenth century meant to serve as a secular faith. And even if Pop Art desecrated the new religion, for many it is still going strong. Contemporary art is ‘an alternate religion for atheists,’ claimed Sarah Thornton in her 2009 book Seven Days in the Art World. ‘Museums,’ announced one enthusiast at LACMA’s fiftieth-anniversary gala, ‘are the temples and the churches of today.’ Admittedly this puts religiously faithful people in a strange position. Considering that artifacts from their traditions are what constitute the most beloved objects in most global museums, why should theirtreasures be continually exhibited as trophies for this rival god? As discussions about repatriating artifacts to their countries of origin rock modern institutions to the breaking point, should people of faith demand that their artifacts be returned as well? Should those of us who have not foolishly delegated our souls to the Smithsonian be shaking down museums today? Which is to say, should we cheer on Vladimir Putin when he liberates Andrei Rublev’s famous Trinity from its curatorial captivity to restore it to the church?”
Music: Georg Friedrich Händel, “Glory to God,” from Messiah as performed by the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra.
Discover more from Matthew Erickson
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Matthew Erickson 