“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.
“Why Christians Fast During Lent” – Phoebe Farag Mikhail in Christianity Today: “Christians in the Coptic Orthodox Church prepare for Lent by feasting. For ten days before the Great Lent begins, we consume the food from which we’ll soon abstain. Barring those with health concerns, food allergies, or eating disorders, as well as those pregnant, nursing, or with other individual food-related concerns, we eat or distribute all the meat, fish, and dairy products in our homes to get ready for the fast ahead. The Arabic word for these days in the Coptic Orthodox Church (الرفاع) literally means ‘lifting up’ or ‘leave-taking.’ Not every Christian tradition has continued this abstinence from meat, fish, and dairy in its practice of Lent, of course. Nonetheless, it’s important for all of us to recognize the main purpose of this form of abstinence: almsgiving. Historically, those who could afford to eat meat and dairy on a regular basis were supposed to give the cost of that food as alms. Those who fasted further by abstaining from food till a specific hour were to give the cost of the skipped meal or two to the poor as well.”
“Stanley Hauerwas’s Provocations: America’s theologian isn’t worried about the death of cultural Christianity” – Tish Harrison Warren in Plough: “Stanley Hauerwas feels larger than life. He’s funny. He’s insightful. He grew up a blue-collar kid in small-town Texas, which lends a grit and plainspokenness to his theological work that keeps us all on the hook. For him, theology is not an abstract game, a jostle amid the experts with their jargon and fashionable truisms, a way to score points against others, or a way to bend the Christian story to fit our preferences. Instead, it is learning the story that teaches us to live.
Because of this, Hauerwas’s work has had an unusually important, even intimate, impact on people’s lives. I know more than one couple who decided to have children after reading Hauerwas (and I wonder how many men and women Hauerwas will meet in the resurrection who will thank him for inspiring their parents). I – a descendant of dyed-in-the-wool Texans whose ancestral home had an heirloom war rifle hung over the mantel – became a pacifist because of Hauerwas. I have friends who went to seminary to study theology because of Hauerwas’s work. His words change people. Hauerwas is provocative, but not for provocation’s sake. Instead, he calls us back to the disruptive words of Jesus, and to the church – to a community of ordinary people who are meant to learn to follow Jesus in the concreteness of our lives in a complex world. He is clear that following Jesus will always come at a cost and will disassemble most of our expectations about how our lives should turn out.”
“The Trash Compactor: Stuffing it all and calling it a life” – Stephen W. Smith at The Potter’s Inn Substack: “I’d so love a “one on one” with you about my poem, “The Trash Compactor.” But this is why I write on Substack—to try to have a conversation about what I’m thinking about. I’m thinking about all the trash I’m filling my soul with and what I can do about it. Now that I’ve raised the issue and given you an image to look at—the trash can overflowing with all of the stuff, let me keep going for a moment and see where this might lead. Let me tell you of a few things I’m stuffing at the moment… Well, just this week, I’ve put political trash into mine—the AI generated video of the President of the United States personal vision for the rebuilding of Gaza with the golden image of himself in front of the gold casino and the hue of a golden hotel; and money falling from heaven while sitting on the beach. Well, what is trash to me, might not be trash to you. I get that… But allow me to keep going for another moment. Stuffed. Crammed in. Not sure what to do with that. But, somehow, it doesn’t fit well with me. No time to really process that, because next came the Oval office meeting that went off the rails. The speed of all that is happening around us—who has time to even think about what all of this might mean. I keep reminding friends, with change happening so quickly, who has time for a personal problem like a new diagnosis or pain in your left side or news that came in to you in an email that rocked your world just now? Seems as if we stuff and move on. Then, today is the 10th anniversary of my grandson’s birth and death all within 10 seconds. Alive for less than a minute…but a pain that will not leave even after all these years. Our world got derailed when Tommy died—so did my theology. How is it that you try move on when a child dies? You don’t move on. You live through it. And anniversaries bring so much up—and anniversaries come every 365 days. We don’t forget. Much gets stuffed. Much of our lives –the feelings, events, crises get crammed inside.”
“I Was Strengthened at the Movies: Malick’s films focus on how to live” – Alan Jacobs in The Hedgehog Review: “Few filmmakers have inspired as much philosophical and theological commentary as Terrence Malick. He was, for a short time, a professional philosopher, but even if that fact were unknown, his films would still quite obviously provide a wealth of images, events, and experiences that invite philosophical or theological reflection. I have read most of these philosophical and theological treatments of Malick’s work, and they tend to have two things in common. First, they typically exhibit a deep knowledge of and enthusiasm for his work; but second—and here we run into problems—they tend to treat the films as a repository of helpful philosophical or theological illustrations. That is, Malick’s films are treated as an ancillary collection of material that allows professors of theology or philosophy to make arguments they could have made without reference to Malick’s films. All the movie stuff just makes those points more vivid. Because this tendency has been unfortunately widespread, I am greatly delighted by the publication of Martin Woessner’s new book, Terrence Malick and the Examined Life. Woessner is, in my experience anyway, the first academic writing about Malick to take fully seriously the possibility that Malick’s films are themselves philosophical projects—unique philosophical projects whose value cannot be replicated by the conventional discourse of academic philosophy or theology and cannot fully be translated into any terms other than their own.”
“Judge Blocks ICE Enforcement at Some Churches” – Mark Michael in The Living Church: “A federal court judge temporarily blocked Immigration and Customs Enforcement from conducting raids in and around some Baptist, Quaker, and Sikh houses of worship in a narrow ruling on February 24. Judge Theodore Chuang of the U.S. District Court of Maryland, an Obama appointee, sided with the plaintiffs in a lawsuit that is similar to one filed on February 11 in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, to which the Episcopal Church is a party. Both lawsuits challenge the Trump administration’s Inauguration Day decision to revoke the Homeland Security Administration’s ‘protected area policies,’ which date back to 2011 (though similar restrictions had been in place for decades). These policies had restricted immigration enforcement in schools, places of worship, and hospitals. The Biden administration widened the scope of the policies in 2021 to include additional sensitive areas and occasions like weddings, funerals, and parades. Chuang denied the plantiffs’ request for a temporary nationwide ban on enforcement at places of worship, and instead restricted the ruling’s scope to congregations represented in the lawsuit, about 1,700 places of worship in 35 states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico. Parties in the suit included several Quaker bodies, the theologically progressive Cooperative Baptist Fellowship (CBF), and Sikh Temple Sacramento. The groups were represented by Democracy Forward, a nonprofit legal firm based in the nation’s capital. The lawsuit challenged Homeland Security’s policy change on religious-freedom grounds, claiming that the new enforcement system presents a threat that deters congregants from attending services, a violation of constitutional protections for the free exercise of religion and association. Homeland Security’s new policy, unlike earlier policies, failed to acknowledge the significance of the free exercise of religion and to explain how the new enforcement provisions would protect the right, the plantiffs claimed.”
“Quick Facts About the 7 Ecumenical Councils” – From the website of St. John the Evangelist Orthodox Church: “An important part of understanding the teachings of the Orthodox Church stems from history. Throughout the time of the early Church, many heresies arose that taught incorrect beliefs about the nature of God, specifically of Christ. To fight against these heresies over the years, the Church convened what we call the Seven Ecumenical Councils, during which they clarified what the Church has always believed. In this post, we briefly cover the basics of these Councils and the teachings they protect.”
Music: Max Richter, “On the Nature of Daylight,” from The Blue Notebooks
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Matthew Erickson 