“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.
“55 Maxims of the Christian Life” – Father Thomas Hopko: “Below is a series of short phrases, or maxims, that I have found to be very practical and helpful. We can often times think that the spiritual life is very complicated and and hard to live. Fr. Thomas was asked to come up with a simple and concise list of the essence of our Life in Christ as we struggle on the path towards salvation. He came up with these 55 maxims. I would encourage you to post them somewhere where you can see them often.”
“John Wesley: The Use of Money” – Dominic Roser at Effective Altruism for Christians: “My favourite sermon is the 18th century sermon on “The Use of Money” by John Wesley, the founder of the Methodist church. His words are passionate, radical, simple, and practical. The core message of Wesley’s sermon is: Earn all you can, Save all you can, Give all you can. This sermon might possibly be the most Effective Altruist thing that was written before Peter Singer came along. The sermon is posted below (in an abridged version). After the sermon, I’ve added some thoughts about filtering out how exactly Wesley’s sermon overlaps (or stands in tension with) Effective Altruism. At the end of the post, there is also a quote which sheds some light on how Wesley put his words into practice.”
“Why I Keep Teaching About Slavery” – Esau McCaulley at Holy Post Media: “President Trump recently complained about the focus on slavery in a particular D.C. museum. He said, ‘The Smithsonian is OUT OF CONTROL, where everything discussed is how horrible our Country is, how bad Slavery was, and how unaccomplished the downtrodden have been — Nothing about Success, nothing about Brightness, nothing about the Future. This Country cannot be WOKE.’ By describing the story of human bondage in America as ‘woke,’ he evoked a magical term that clouds all reason, and with it the capture and sale of my ancestors has once again entered the public debate. As Christians, however, we should ask whether we are better off downplaying the sins of the past. Is that the path towards a ‘bright future’ the President seems to prefer? I am currently writing a book about the Bible, slavery, and Christianity in America. I am also teaching a course on the same topic. I am not doing so because I want to make my students or readers feel guilty. Further, it cost me something to do this work. I do not enjoy reading about the capture, transportation, sale, and abuse of my ancestors. I take no pleasure in slogging through the intellectual and religious justifications that ring so hollow in my ears. I often have to stop and turn my attention to other things or simply pray for a while. I have to listen to a bit of gospel music or hum a spiritual that the old deacons in my church used to sing. I press on because the issue of slavery is revelatory.”
“The Rediscovery, And Re-Forgetting, Of The Lost Gospels” – Philip Jenkins at Anxious Bench: “I have been describing the abundant discovery of lost scriptures and gospels from the later nineteenth century, which is long before the time that most people think they became available. In fact, not only were such texts “found” after long periods of disappearance, but most were brought out in accessible vernacular translations. The pace of publication was deeply impressive, with scarcely a break from the 1880s through the 1930s. If you were interested in such matters, and had some middle-class disposable income, you could assemble a deeply impressive library, which told you a very great deal about the ancient sects and heresies that have attracted so much sensational attention in our own time. Beyond their availability in popular (translated) books, such ideas could now be accessed very widely through magazines and newspapers, in a massive opening or democratization of technical Biblical scholarship. People could, and did, use such materials as the basis for quite extensive theorizing about the nature of early Christianity (and Judaism) and they speculated about their secret or suppressed traditions. However much it contradicts our stereotypes, very little indeed of what we now know about such movements and ideas was not readily available back in that distant era.”
“It is time to prioritize children over guns” – Thomas Reese at Religion News Service: “Children are suffering and dying all over the world from hunger, disease, wars, crime and domestic violence. It’s a tragedy that cries out to heaven for a response that goes beyond verbal regrets, white papers and political posturing. Last week, we saw the slaughter of two children and the wounding of more than a dozen others at Annunciation Catholic Church in Minneapolis. Every child in that church has been traumatized for life. Parents should be able to send their children to church or school without fearing that they will not come home. Children should be able to walk the streets of their neighborhoods, go to a theater or concert, and play sports in a park without fear that someone will gun them down. Yet, about 3,500 American children died of gun-related causes in 2023, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Guns have been the leading cause of death for children 18 years and under in the United States since 2020, even exceeding deaths from car crashes.The U.S. not only has more guns than children, it has more guns than people. It is not surprising that the U.S. homicide rate was seven times higher than other high-income countries’, according to 2010 data from the World Health Organization. And for 15- to 24-year-olds, the gun homicide rate in the U.S. was 49 times higher.”
“AI Apocalypse? Why language surrounding tech is sounding increasingly religious” – Krysta Fauria at AP News: “t 77 years old, Geoffrey Hinton has a new calling in life. Like a modern-day prophet, the Nobel Prize winner is raising alarms about the dangers of uncontrolled and unregulated artificial intelligence. Frequently dubbed the ‘Godfather of AI,’ Hinton is known for his pioneering work on deep learning and neural networks which helped lay the foundation for the AI technology often used today. Feeling ‘somewhat responsible,’ he began speaking publicly about his concerns in 2023 after he left his job at Google, where he worked for more than a decade. As the technology — and investment dollars — powering AI have advanced in recent years, so too have the stakes behind it. ‘It really is godlike,’ Hinton said. Hinton is among a growing number of prominent tech figures who speak of AI using language once reserved for the divine. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has referred to his company’s technology as a ‘magic intelligence in the sky,’ while Peter Thiel, the co-founder of PayPal and Palantir, has even argued that AI could help bring about the Antichrist.”
Music: Gustav Holst, “Nunc dimittis, H. 127,” performed by VOCES8 at the VOCES8 Centre in London.
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Matthew Erickson 