“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.

 

“Olaudah Equiano’s Argument Against Slavery Was His Life Experience” – Last summer I had the chance to participate in a study group with Dr. Willie James Jennings, walking through his book The Christian Imagination: Theology and the Origins of Race. It was a once in a lifetime experience, and it changed me in many ways. One of the key voices in Jennings’ work is Olaudah Equiano, a freed slave who wrote of his life experiences in The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano. Eric Washington recounts the life of Equiano in this biographical feature at Christianity Today. If you want to dig even deeper, read Jennings’ pivotal book.

 

“Preserving Real-Life Childhood” – Naomi Schaefer Riley reflects on the need for disconnection with childhood, but also the near impossibility of it in today’s world. “There is no doubt we have given away a lot more than privacy in the name of connecting people around the world. We’ve abandoned civility, trust, any sense of perspective, and we have lost a lot of sleep as well. In an effort to save their own hides, some social media heads have proposed technological and policy solutions to these problems….The only way around these problems is to remind ourselves continually of the tastes and temperaments that make real life enjoyable and meaningful, and to foster these experiences in our children, who would otherwise grow up with little memory of life off-screen. We can’t hope to improve our digital habits, including the way we talk online, if we don’t strengthen our capacity for non-digital interaction with the world around us. And if we don’t develop this capacity in childhood, perhaps we never will.”

 

“Students are increasingly turning to religious leaders for mental health support” – “High rates of mental ill health among students, including some tragic cases of suicide, have highlighted the vulnerability of many young people facing the pressures of higher education while away from home for the first time. University leaders have affirmed their commitment to strengthening student support, and counselling services are busier than ever. But one resource is often overlooked: chaplaincy. Chaplains are representatives of religion or belief organisations who work within universities to support the religious and pastoral needs of the communities.”

 

“Another Sunday Church Attack in Burkina Faso Kills Six” – From last week: “For the second time since Easter, a church in Burkina Faso has suffered a terrorism attack during Sunday services. This time, the target was a Catholic church in Dablo, where the priest and five worshipers were killed. This prompted a series of déjà vu headlines among global media outlets as the death toll matches last month’s attack on an Assemblies of God church in Sirgadji, where the pastor and five worshipers were killed.”

 

“If God Is Dead, Your Time Is Everything” – James Wood reviews Martin Hägglund’s This Life: Secular Faith and Spiritual Freedom as a valuable critique of religious faith and belief in eternity. It is worth knowing the arguments against our faith and being prepared to intelligently respond. “At a recent conference on belief and unbelief hosted by the journal Salmagundi, the novelist and essayist Marilynne Robinson confessed to knowing some good people who are atheists, but lamented that she has yet to hear ‘the good Atheist position articulated.’ She explained, ‘I cannot engage with an atheism that does not express itself.’ She who hath ears to hear, let her hear. One of the most beautifully succinct expressions of secular faith in our bounded life on earth was provided not long after Christ supposedly conquered death, by Pliny the Elder, who called down ‘a plague on this mad idea that life is renewed by death!'”

 

“David Brooks’s Journey Toward Faith” – Of course, not everyone thinks about this like Hägglund, Wood, or Pliny, so perhaps it’s worth reading about New York Times columnist, David Brooks, journey to faith. His column writing is exceeded in value by his recent full-length book efforts, first in The Road to Character and now in The Second Mountain. In The Atlantic, Peter Wehner tracks Brooks’ journey toward faith, which is well worth the read.

 

“Theology Matters” – All of this should help us see why Tozer’s famous statement is so true: “What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us.” Here is an interesting dialogue between Christian theologian Gerald McDermott and Jewish theologian Yitzchock Alderstein about why theology matters. “In all of this the formal intellectual work of theology can seem remote, even counterproductive. Until it matters. Perhaps good theology is a superadded benefit that true piety can do without. But bad theology surely matters, for it can have toxic effects.

 

“Liberal Arts Cuts, Evangelical Edition” – “Gordon College, an evangelical Christian college outside Boston, announced that it will eliminate 36 faculty and staff positions and consolidate and cut a number of majors in a budget-cutting move. Among the changes, Gordon is eliminating stand-alone majors in chemistry; French; physics; middle school and secondary education; recreation, sport and wellness; Spanish; and social work, and it is merging political science, history and philosophy into a single department.”

 

“This Could Be England’s Earliest Known Christian Burial” – “Live Science reports that researchers have now identified what they believe to be England’s earliest known Christian burial, at a tomb near Prittlewell in Essex. The tomb was first discovered in 2003, but it was mired in more than a millennium’s worth of earthen crust, which blocked researchers from performing a properly detailed assessment. In this absence of evidence, there was even some speculation that the tomb may have been Saeberht’s own, but now we know better: It predates his death by anywhere from about 10 to 35 years, with researchers dating the tomb to between the years 580 and 605.”

 

Music: Vulfpeck, “Dean Town,” from the album The Beautiful Game.

 

[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.]