“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.
“Orthodoxy For Beginners: A Guide for the Perplexed” – Paul Kingsnorth at The Abbey of Misrule: “It’s been about three and a half years now since I was baptised in the River Shannon. This is a long time, and also no time at all. It’s certainly not long enough to learn how to be a Christian – but then that’s probably not something we ever have enough time for. Towards the end of his life, Saint Sophrony of Essex was approached by an excitable convert who had just been baptised. ‘Father!’ he said, ‘I’ve just become an Orthodox Christian! ‘How nice for you,’ the Saint is said to have replied, ‘I have not yet learned to become one myself.’ I wrote an essay about my unexpected journey to Christianity in 2021, called The Cross and the Machine, which has become probably my most widely-read essay ever. This might say something about currents in the culture. I’ve not yet written an equivalent essay about why I chose (or was directed to) the oldest, and the original, Christian Church, that of the Orthodox faithful. I’ve had a skeleton version of just such an essay sitting around for over a year, but I haven’t managed to complete it. Perhaps there’s too much to say, or perhaps I don’t know how to say it, or am not supposed to say it yet, or ever. Something isn’t working, anyway. In the meantime though, I’m often approached by people who, like me a few years back, are interested in Orthodoxy and want to find out more. They ask me what books they should read, or if there are any resources I recommend. So I’ve decided to put together a little package of what I consider to be useful resources for inquirers at the beginning of their journey.”
“Current’s 100 Books of the 21st Century” – Nadya Williams in Current: “Earlier this month, New York Times published its list of 100 Best Books of the 21st Century. If you do not have a subscription to the NYT, you can also find NYT’s list here—albeit rearranged according to Goodreads readers’ rankings. Such lists can be helpful in looking for a good book you might have overlooked. Still, they are hardly an objective science. Absences speak as loudly as inclusions. The NYT list was lower on nonfiction than fiction. Most noticeable, it did not include any works of theology or books published by Christian publishers. And so, we at Current asked our own in-house team to recommend books—and you can find the full list of those who sent in suggestions for this list at the bottom of this post. If the NYT’s list seemed less overtly concerned with matters of the soul, ours amply compensates for it.”
“Devices and Desires: Addressing the link between smartphones and mental illness among our children” – Philip D. Bunn in Comment: “I am, I have often said, a raging hypocrite when it comes to my relationship with technology. Since I began seriously thinking about it in my undergraduate studies, I have come to believe that much of our new technology is making us worse people. This is not an accidental feature, a quirk of use, a simple product of people using products badly. Instead, the tendencies baked into our devices foster our vices, and only a strong force can redirect the use of those devices away from these in-built tendencies. I am, despite this, an active user of Twitter, or X (though I will never call it that). More than any other platform, in my use of Twitter I feel the exacting pressure of all the things we so often complain about: the outrage fostered by the algorithm that serves hot-button content and encourages our responses, the neurochemical thrill of a like or a retweet from a prominent account, the excitement of vigorous debate that keeps me looking at my phone far longer than I would like to admit. While I fancy myself a critic of technology, many of these criticisms arise because I count myself among its victims. For this reason I eagerly awaited Jonathan Haidt’s latest book, The Anxious Generation, which aims at explaining just how extensively the advent of smartphones and social media has harmed us and, most troublingly, our children. Like Meletus before the Athenian court, Haidt has arrived to tell us that he truly knows who, in all our political community, is corrupting the youth: not Socrates but Silicon Valley.”
“How to Focus (In an Age of Distraction): A Guide by the Ancient Monastic John Cassian” – C. Christopher Smith in The Conversational Life: “How to Focus is a newly translated selection of passages from John Cassian’s classic work The Conferences. (And for the lover of languages, like myself, the book includes the Latin text on the left-hand pages with the English translation on the right-hand pages.) The curation and translation of these texts was done by historian Jamie Kreiner, who has written another book that would pair well with this one, The Wandering Mind: What Medieval Monks Tell Us About Distraction. Apart from a brief introduction that frames the key concepts in the book, the bulk of this volume is simply the selections from Cassian’s text in Latin and English. Kreiner does not try to reflect on Cassian’s work or to illuminate it for the contemporary reader (apart from a minimal number of footnotes that are mostly explanatory). It seems to me that the key word in the title is Monastic. Cassian’s The Conferences was a work written by and for monastics. For the Christian reader who has a little background on the monastic life and who shares the ancient monks’ desire to abide in God’s presence, this volume is an extraordinary work. Kreiner implies, however, in the introduction that the book will be broadly relevant to modern folks who struggle with distraction, and who do not necessarily share the monastic fervor for a relationship with God. After my initial read, I am not completely convinced of this broader relevance – and I wish Kreiner would have exerted a little more effort throughout the book in making her case for the book’s broader relevance.”
“Catholics, Vatican officials react to controversial Olympic ceremony: LGBTQ+ performers posed for what some Christians believe was a mock representation of the Last Supper” – at Religion News Service: “Catholic leaders along with a host of other Christian groups voiced outrage following the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games in Paris (July 26) over a scene starring drag performers and French entertainers that many interpreted as a parody of Jesus’ Last Supper. Organizers have since apologized for the ceremony, while the creative director of the controversial scene, Thomas Jolly, said the Last Supper was not among his inspirations and that it was meant to represent the Greek gods during a banquet. The tableau featured artists in drag, representing diverse cultural backgrounds, posed behind a long dining table while a woman wearing an ornate silver halo stood in the middle. Singer and actor Philippe Katerine emerged painted blue on a silver platter and adorned with grapes. Over the weekend, before Jolly’s clarification, social media was rife with arguments over whether the scene was meant to invoke paintings of the Greek gods gathered at Mount Olympus — such as the 1636 painting ‘The Feast of the Gods’ by Dutch artist Jan van Bijlert or the painting ‘Feast of the Gods’ by Johann Rottenhammer and Jan Brueghel, circa 1600 — or if its true similarity was to Leonardo DaVinci’s famous artistic depiction of Jesus’ Last Supper. Many Christians worldwide, including Vatican officials, saw the latter and took offense.
“Lost Early Christian Community Found as Possible Bishop’s Palace Unearthed” – Aristos Georgiou in Newsweek: “Archaeologists have uncovered evidence of a long-lost early Christian community, which sheds new light on the religion’s history. Excavations conducted in the village of Samahij, Bahrain, between 2019 and 2023 revealed the remains of a large building complex, the University of Exeter in the United Kingdom announced in a press release. Radiocarbon dating work undertaken at the site has indicated that this building was occupied between the mid-4th and mid-8th centuries. Based on the architecture and the associated material finds, researchers believe the building was home to a Christian community, perhaps as part of a monastery or, more likely, serving as an episcopal palace. Timothy Insoll, with the Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies at the University of Exeter, who co-led the project, told Newsweek that this structure represents the first, earliest, and only Christian building discovered to date in Bahrain. It is also among the earliest Christian buildings in the entire Persian Gulf region.”
Music: Charlie Peacock, “The Way of Love,” from West Coast Diaries, Vol. 2
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Matthew Erickson 