The Weekend Wanderer: 18 November 2023

November 18, 2023November 16, 2023 Matt EricksonLeave a comment

“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.

“Civic Revival: How to Be Christian During the Election” – The AND Campaign: “As we approach the 2024 elections, the atmosphere reverberates with heightened anticipation. It is clear that we’re entering a particularly passionate political season. In such tempestuous times, our nation needs anchors of stability. The AND Campaign believes the church can stand as the beacon of balance and clarity. Yet, we must remember, just as a baseball player doesn’t spontaneously hit a home run in a crucial moment without countless hours of preparation, Christians, too, require nurtured discipline to face pivotal political moments with grace and wisdom. That’s why we urge believers to embrace Christian Civic Disciplines and to take the pledge against political violence. We are helping christians prepare our hearts and minds for the challenges and opportunities ahead. Will you join us?”

“There’s another Christian movement that’s changing our politics. It has nothing to do with whiteness or nationalism” – John Blake at CNN: “Just days before he would lead an unprecedented strike against the Big Three automakers, Shawn Fain, the president of the United Auto Workers, did something extraordinary. Fain, a middle-aged, bespectacled man who could pass for a high school science teacher, was warning auto workers they would probably have to strike, citing resistance by automaker CEOs whose companies he said made ‘a quarter of a trillion dollars’ in profits while they ‘nickel and dime our members every day.’ He then paused before saying, ‘Now I’m going to get personal.’ Fain started talking about his Christian faith. He cited scripture, including Matthew 17:20–21, where Jesus told his disciples that if they have faith the size of a mustard seed they can move mountains because ‘nothing will be impossible for you.’ He said that for UAW members, organizing and making bold demands of automakers was ‘an act of faith in each other.'”

“Why Does God Allow the Innocent to Suffer?: Not all of life’s questions can be answered rationally. Dostoyevsky points to another way” – Peter Wehner in Plough: “From the start of my journey as a Christian I realized faith would not come easily to me. Even then, in my late teens, I was dogged by questions ranging from the narrow – just how reliable are the manuscript copies of Scripture – to the cosmic – how does a good God allow suffering in the world? Unanswered questions filled page after page of my dad’s work stationery as I attempted to reconcile my faith in God with the world I saw around me. As the years passed my faith came to define my life: nowadays, it’s impossible to understand me without taking it into account. But however anchored in Christianity I became, the questions never stopped coming. As an active member of different churches, I developed deep bonds of friendship and fellowship with other Christians. Those relationships have enriched my life. Yet within the communities in which I worshipped, many Christians had a tendency to talk as if the answers they offered to life’s hard questions were airtight, presuming there was a rational, logical and morally compelling response to every doubt and every query. Listening to Christian apologists handle objections on call-in shows, I couldn’t help but feel they spoke with far more assurance than their responses warranted. The same was true of some of books I read, conversations I had, and classes I attended over the decades. Too often there seemed to be no room for uncertainty or ambiguity, for shades of gray.”

“Milwaukee’s Bishop Sedgwick Daniels dies” – Nick Bohr at WISN 12: “Whether shepherding his flock through COVID-19 or presiding over the construction of a new school, Bishop Sedgwick Daniels of Holy Redeemer Institutional Church of God in Christ was front and center among Milwaukee’s religious leaders. He died over the weekend at 64. ‘You’re talking about a giant in the religious community, particularly in the Black community here in the city of Milwaukee, Milwaukee and frankly all across the Midwest,’ Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley said. ‘To learn about his passing was definitely heart-wrenching for me.’ ‘Bishop Daniels was a huge pillar in the Milwaukee community,’ Milwaukee Mayor Cavalier Johnson said. Daniels spoke at the Mayor’s inauguration. His work also included a health center, senior citizen housing and acting as counsel to community leaders. ‘It didn’t matter if it was in the faith community, it didn’t matter if it was in economics, it didn’t matter if it was in education, Bishop Daniels had his hands in all those sectors and affected the lives of so many people in our community and will be sorely, sorely missed,’ Johnson said. ‘My heart was broken when I saw the news.'”

“Pastor and author Scott Sauls has resigned from Nashville megachurch” – Bob Smietana at Religion News Service: “Scott Sauls, an influential evangelical pastor and author, has resigned from the Nashville megachurch he had led for the past decade. Members of Christ Presbyterian Church voted to accept Saul’s resignation during a congregational meeting on Sunday night (Nov. 12). Sauls had been on an indefinite leave of absence since May after apologizing for an unhealthy leadership style. A group of church leaders known as the session had asked the congregation to accept Saul’s resignation. In addressing the congregation, Sauls apologized to those he had hurt and said that he and his family would continue to serve Jesus. ‘We had hoped to continue forward and help with CPC,’ Sauls told the congregation during the meeting, according to The Tennessean, which first reported the news of Saul’s resignation. ‘But we now believe the most merciful thing to do is step aside so the church can seek new leadership and we can seek the Lord’s will for whatever comes next as well.'”

“The Cool List 2024: the 30 most exciting destinations to visit in 2024” – Rory Goulding and Connor McGovern in National Geographic: “Ahead of the new year, we’ve crossed the world to find the 30 most exciting destinations for 2024. With landmark hotels opening, ambitious rewilding projects under way and new train routes making travel easier than ever, there’s a lot to choose from for your next trip — whether you’re looking to connect with nature in Norway, scale Himalayan peaks in Sikkim or savour the culinary stars of Lima.”

Music: Audrey Assad, “I Shall Not Want,” from Fortunate Fall

The Weekend Wanderer: 20 November 2021

November 20, 2021November 18, 2021 Matt EricksonLeave a comment

facing disagreement “Helping Believers Navigate the Difference Divide” – Todd Fisher at Churches for the Sake of Others blog: “On election night 2016 my family and I were living in London. When we heard the results the next day, I’m embarrassed to say I felt thankful to not be in the U.S. My response was less from a political opinion and more from a sense that contentious times were ahead. I thought we’d be at a safe distance from such divisions. When our time in England came to an earlier-than-expected conclusion in the summer of 2017, I knew we were headed back to a divided homeland. Of course, little did I know just how divided things would become. Like many, I’ve found myself at a loss in recent years. We are not just fractured as a nation, not merely divided in local churches, we are experiencing strife like never before in families, homes and the most intimate of relationships. And this was before March of 2020. The pandemic and ensuing unrest of the last 19 months has served to accentuate, highlight, make clearer the differences between us. So what to do? How can we as believers navigate the divide of difference? How do we embody a different way and work towards reconciliation? How to lead when the ‘two or more gathered’ seem increasingly far apart? Ultimately, how do we engage the person in front of us in the manner of our Jesus?”

Brest Bible Exposition “A Belarussian Bible exhibition in troubled times” – Johannes Reimer in Evangelical Focus – Europe: “Very few cities of Europe are so connected to the Bible translation as this is the case with Brest, a Belarusian city at the border to Poland. Brest is 1,000 years old and has been under different European rulers throughout her history. In Reformation times the city was ruled by the Lithuanian Grand Duke Mikolai Radzivill the Black (1515-1565), who became Reformed and ordered the second ever Protestant translation of the Bible into a European language – Polish. The Brest Bible was published in 1563 and became a foundation for several Bible translations in different Eastern European languages. Among others, the translation into modern Belarusian by the Baptist pastor and social reformer Lukash Dziekuc-Malei (1888-1955). Dziekuc-Malei lived and worked in Brest prior to World War II. The National Library of Belarus together with the regional Gorki Library in Brest organized a symposium in 2021 honoring his extraordinary contribution to the Bible translation into the modern Belarusian language and published the procedures of the conference.”

“The Riddle of Church Loneliness” – Susan Mettes in Christianity Today: “I can’t remember at what point I realized that I would probably go two years without a hug. Nobody knew how much worse the pandemic would get, but I knew I would be stuck in place for the duration. My friends felt a world away. Phone calls with my family had become strained. I couldn’t tell how they were really doing or articulate how I was handling the stress. (Not all that well: I had stopped showering altogether, and I was watching the Lord of the Rings movies repeatedly.) I believe winter was approaching when the realization about huglessness hit me. Holidays loomed in the near future, and I wondered if I could deal with a Thanksgiving by myself, with horse meat instead of turkey. I was in Central Asia. It was 2004, in the thick of the bird flu pandemic. That period, when I was a Peace Corps volunteer, was one of my deepest experiences of loneliness. I was in a community where only one person I knew spoke English well. I could talk on a pay phone with people in the United States—through a very bad connection where I could always hear a third person breathing on the line—once every two weeks. I got sick a lot. I didn’t bathe much since the Turkish bathhouse was open to women just one day a week, during a time when I was scheduled to teach. People I didn’t know would come to my house to ask me to help them cheat on their English tests. I started talking to myself.”

“Dostoyevsky Stricken: A God-possessed man reacts to suffering” – This several-decades-old article from Malcolm Muggeridge is found at Plough: “Like so many of my generation, I first read Dostoyevsky’s novel, Crime and Punishment, when I was very young. I read it like a thriller, with mounting excitement. Later, when I came to read Dostoyevsky’s other works, especially his great masterpiece, The Brothers Karamazov, I realized that he was not just a writer with a superlative gift for storytelling, but that he had a special insight into what life is about, into man’s relationship with his Creator, making him a prophetic voice looking into and illumining the future. I came to see that the essential theme of all his writing is good and evil, the two points round which the drama of our mortal existence is enacted.”

Barna Pastors Poll 2021 “38% of U.S. Pastors Have Thought About Quitting Full-Time Ministry in the Past Year” – From a recent study by the Barna Group: “Recent data collected from Barna’s pastor poll indicate that U.S. pastors are currently in crisis and at risk of burnout. Notably, in 2021 alone, there has been a dramatic increase in the number of pastors who are thinking about quitting ministry entirely. With pastors’ well-being on the line, and many on the brink of burnout, 38 percent indicate they have considered quitting full-time ministry within the past year. This percentage is up 9 full points (from 29%) since Barna asked church leaders this same question at the beginning of 2021. A deeper analysis of these data show that some groups are faring worse than others. One of the more alarming findings is that 46 percent of pastors under the age of 45 say they are considering quitting full-time ministry, compared to 34 percent of pastors 45 and older. Keeping the right younger leaders encouraged and in their ministry roles will be crucial to the next decade of congregational vitality in the U.S.”

library “Intermission: From The Library” – Paul Kingsnorth at The Abbey of Misrule: “If you are anything like me, you can sense on the breeze that things are accelerating out there. ‘Events, my dear boy, events’, as the last old-school British Prime Minister, Harold Macmillan, once put it, are moving in such a way as to force many hands. I’ve been saying for a year or two now that we are living in apocalyptic times, and I mean that literally. The Greek word Apokalypsis means unveiling – or, of course, revelation. In Apocalyptic times, things are revealed which were previously hidden. The world is shown to be a different shape to the one you thought you were living in. This is rarely comfortable. If you pay attention, it may change your life. We each have to decide what to do with what is revealed to us.”

Music: Shawn E. Okpebholo, Two Black Churches – “Movement 1: Ballad of Birmingham,” Performed by Will Liverman (baritone) and Paul Sanchez (piano).

The Weekend Wanderer: 8 June 2019

June 8, 2019June 7, 2019 Matt Erickson2 Comments

“Trump stops by evangelical church to pray for victims of Virginia Beach massacre“ – President Trump made a surprise visit to McLean Bible Church last weekend, where David Platt , author of Radical and Counter Culture, serves as pastor. Of course, this created a Twitter firestorm about whether Platt should or should not have prayed for Trump, whether it should have been on the main platform or in a back office, and many other things. You can read Platt’s written response in The Washington Post, “‘My aim was in no way to endorse the president’: Pastor explains why he prayed for Trump.” I also appreciated the comments by John Fea, a Christian historian who is not a Trump supporter, agreeing with Ed Stetzer on the difficult predicament Platt found himself in as a pastor in that moment. Also, here is Ruth Graham at Slate talking about Platt’s “assiduously non-partisan” ministry, while also wrestling with Platt inviting Trump on platform.

“Prophets for Our Age of Suicide” – Jessica Hooten Wilson reviews John F. Desmond’s recent book, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Walker Percy, and the Age of Suicide. “Every age needs prophets—whether or not they heed their cautions—because prophets stand out of and often against the current. They can reveal to those caught in its tide that we ought to chart another direction towards a more fitting destination. For Dostoevsky and Percy, their audience required them to create extreme characters and situations to see the unfortunate end we were all heading towards.”

“11 reasons to stop looking at your smartphone” – Believe it or not, this article is from Mashable, a resource site for tech, digital culture and entertainment content. I have a love-hate relationship with my smartphone and have been taking the summer to turn my smartphone into a dumbphone. More on that later, but you should definitely read this list of reasons to stop looking at your smartphone, which run from relational to physical to mental and more.

“What a Clash Between Conservatives Reveals” – Alan Jacobs on a recent conservative clash of cultures, specifically between David French and Sohrab Ahmari. “It’s important to note that Ahmari sees the differences between him and French as rooted, ultimately, in their different Christian traditions: Catholicism for Ahmari—who recently published a memoir of his conversion—and evangelical Protestantism. But whether this is indeed the heart of the matter, the dispute so far hasn’t fallen out that way. Some Catholics are with French, some Protestants with Ahmari. And in any case, I’m more interested in the ways this dispute illuminates questions that all Christians involved in public life need to reckon with than in choosing sides. How Christians choose to reckon with these questions will have consequences for all Americans, whether religious or not.”

“Frederick Douglass Is Not Dead!” – Allis Radosh reflecting on three new books about Frederick Douglass and the contest to define his legacy. “The effort to pigeonhole Douglass is nothing new. A giant in the 19^th century, Douglass’s stature was receding in the 20^th. It was black writers like Booker T. Washington, who wrote his biography in 1906, and Benjamin Quarles, who published one in 1948, who kept his story alive. This changed when the Left claimed Douglass as a hero, concentrating on his antebellum abolitionist activities. American Communists of the 1930s and 1940s argued that Douglass was their predecessor, while historian Eric Foner claimed that his uncle Philip S. Foner rescued him from “undeserved obscurity” when in the 1950s he edited four volumes of his speeches and writings. More recently, he has been claimed by Republicans, libertarians, and conservatives. When a statue of Douglass was unveiled at the U.S. Capitol in 2013, GOP attendees proudly wore buttons that read ‘Frederick Douglass was a Republican.’ All of these claims on Douglass have some grounding in reality. But if Frederick Douglass can be all things to all people, it is paradoxically because his life was so complex—and his full legacy so impossible to circumscribe.”

“Billy Graham Archives Begin Move from Wheaton to Charlotte” – Maybe this is just of interest to a few people, like me, who have a connection to Wheaton College or the Billy Graham Center. However, it does seem like big news that the Billy Graham Center on Wheaton’s campus is no longer host to the Billy Graham Archives, which are on their way to the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association (BGEA) in Charlotte, North Carolina, Graham’s hometown.

“Quentin Tarantino on how spaghetti westerns shaped modern cinema” – Well, this one isn’t really about faith and art, but as a great lover of the works of Sergio Leone, I couldn’t help but share this piece by Quentin Tarantino. “When Elvis Mitchell [the critic, scholar and broadcaster] shows a film to his young students — this movie from the 1950s, this movie from the 1960s, this movie from the 1940s — it’s only when he shows them a Sergio Leone, if they haven’t seen it before, that they pick up. That’s when they start recognising the elements. That’s when they’re not just ‘I’m looking at an older movie now.’ It’s the use of music, the use of the set piece, the ironic sense of humour. They appreciate the surrealism, the craziness, and they appreciate the cutting to music. So it is the true beginning of what filmmaking had evolved to by the 1990s. You don’t go past Leone, you start with Leone.”

“An enemy of envy” – Here’s Austin Kleon reflecting on Jerry Saltz’s words, “You’ve got to make an enemy of envy.” “I agree with him: it will eat you alive if you keep it inside. I think one thing you can do is spit it out, cut it out, or get it out by whatever means available — write it down or draw it out on paper — and take a hard look at it so it might actually teach you something.” This is good advice for artists, but for all of us. After all, there might be a reason that envy is one of the seven deadly sins.

Music: Ali Farka Touré and Ry Cooder, “Ai Du,” from Talking Timbuktu.

[I do not necessarily agree with all the views expressed within the articles linked from this page, but I have read them myself in order to make me think more deeply.]