The Weekend Wanderer: 28 January 2023

January 28, 2023January 26, 2023 Matt EricksonLeave a comment

“The Weekend Wanderer” is a weekly curated selection of news, 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.

“After Shooting, California Churches’ Lunar New Year Celebrations Turned Solemn“ – Curtis Yes in Christianity Today: “Last weekend, pastor Jesse Chang had prepared to gather with his church in Monterey Park, California, for worship and a Lunar New Year potluck. Instead, his wife woke him up early Sunday to tell him a nearby shooting had killed nearly a dozen people. He quickly realized everything about the service would need to change. His predominantly Asian and Latino congregation, River of Life, meets in a building just four blocks from the crime scene. With a 65 percent Asian American population, Monterey Park in Los Angeles County is considered the nation’s first ‘suburban Chinatown.’ The shooting occurred Saturday night inside the Star Ballroom Dance Studio, just an hour after the conclusion of the city’s Lunar New Year festival blocks away. The suspected gunman, 72-year-old Huu Can Tran, then entered a second dance studio in the nearby city of Alhambra and was disarmed before fleeing the scene. Tran was found later the following day in a white van in nearby Torrance where he died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound. The mass shooting was the first of two to take place in California this week. At least 7 people were killed in two related shootings on Monday in Northern California’s Half Moon Bay. The suspect, 67-year-old Chunli Zhao, was apprehended shortly afterward by police.”

“AACC Statement on the Gun Violence in Monterey Park and Half Moon Bay” – At The Asian American Christian Collaborative website: “Have mercy on me, Lord, for I am faint; heal me, Lord, for my bones are in agony. My soul is in deep anguish. How long, Lord, how long? (Psalm 6:1-3) On January 21, 2023, 11 were shot and killed (and 9 wounded) in the deadliest mass shooting in the U.S. since the devastating massacre of innocent children in Uvalde, Texas on May 24, 2022. The shooting took place on the eve of the Lunar New Year in Monterey Park, California, a majority Asian city with over 60,000 residents, a suburban Chinatown that unapologetically embraced, celebrated, and served its majority Chinese immigrant community. While still processing the grief from the Monterey Park shooting, we were stunned by the news of another shooting impacting the Asian American community. On January 23, 2023, 7 farmworkers were shot and killed (and 1 critically wounded) in Half Moon Bay, California, a small coastal city close to San Francisco. Similar to the Laguna Woods church shooting in May of 2022, the suspected shooters in these incidents were also elderly men of Asian descent, suggesting the emergence of new pathologies of violence that we are only beginning to understand. There were 38 mass shootings in the first 23 days of 2023. What illusions that gun violence is not a problem the Asian American community needs to wrestle with have been tragically shattered. And the all too familiar cycle of ‘thoughts and prayers, time of mourning, moving toward healing, and repeating the process when the next shooting happens’ is an intolerable way to live.”

Screenshot 2023-01-25 at 8.05.14 AM “Two years after US recognized Uyghur genocide, rights groups warn time is running out” – Kathryn Post at Religion News Service: “Two years since then-U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo called China’s repression of the Uyghurs a genocide, rights groups and political leaders continue to demand an end to China’s human rights abuses. ‘Time is running out,’ said Salih Hudayar, prime minister of the East Turkistan Government in Exile and leader of the East Turkistan National Movement, at a news conference Thursday (Jan. 19). ‘If China’s genocidal policies and colonialism continue, Uyghurs and other Turkic peoples … will cease to exist as a people within 50 years.’ The ETGE is an exile government that sees itself as representing East Turkistan, a region China calls “Xinjiang,” meaning “New Territory.” It is the historic home of many Uyghurs, who are predominantly Sunni Muslim, and other ethnically Turkic people. Both the ETGE and East Turkistan National Movement advocate for the end of Chinese occupation in the region, which was most recently colonized by China in 1949. “

133022 “US Allows Individuals to Sponsor Refugees” – Emily Belz in Christianity Today: “Last year, Mark and Jackie Sawyer cosigned a lease for a couple they’d known for a short time—because the couple had recently arrived from a refugee camp overseas. The Sawyers didn’t realize the headaches and the friendship that would come with joining a group of friends from their Washington, DC, church to sponsor the resettlement of Afghan refugees. They ended up raising $30,000 for the couple, who were expecting their first baby, and staying in relationship with them beyond the initial three-month resettlement period. This week the pilot program the Sawyers took part in has officially launched through the US State Department, allowing individuals—rather than resettlement agencies alone—to commit to sponsor a refugee for resettlement. Through Welcome Corps, groups of at least five Americans can apply to sponsor a refugee together and commit to raising at least $2,275 per refugee. For 90 days they would help refugees transition by securing housing, finding jobs, and enrolling children in school. ‘You don’t have to have it all figured out,’ said Sawyer. ‘It’s certainly not easy, but it’s probably more doable than you think.'”

34herringtonsocial “Editors’ Picks: God Loves the Autistic Mind“ – Boze Herrington at Plough: “We need books like God Loves the Autistic Mind because, too often, autistic people of faith have been led to feel the opposite. Written by Matthew P. Schneider, a Catholic priest who was diagnosed with autism as an adult, the book takes seriously the unique challenges and gifts of the spiritual lives of people with autistm. Roughly the first half of the book attempts to correct widespread misperceptions about autism: that there’s something wrong with people with autism because of their condition; that they’re suffering from demonic oppression; that their tendency to be intellectual or introverted or independent thinkers (all personality traits that are common among people on the spectrum) prove maladaptive in a church climate that favors extroversion, obedience, and displays of emotional excess. This book lovingly and gently dismantles those misperceptions one by one, continually reassuring readers that the autistic brain is good and designed by God. Autistic people aren’t defective, they are simply wired differently, in ways that often work to the benefit of themselves and others. Schneider enumerates these potential benefits at some length: the tendency toward having logical minds that enjoy exploring aspects of the faith that don’t make rational sense; the propensity to honesty and having a knack for speaking uncomfortable truths; the cultivation of a sense of wonder that challenges others to see the glory in things. These traits, Schneider writes, are gifts to the world and gifts to the church. The most bracing and revelatory portions of the book are those in which Schneider challenges the conformist mindset that sees autism as something to be ashamed of. ‘Autism is a variation in brain structure, not a demonic influence,’ he writes. ‘It is not a spirit to be broken’ but a gift to cherish.”

“Ethan Hawke to Direct Daughter Maya Hawke in Flannery O’Connor Biopic ‘Wildcat'” – Samantha Bergeson at IndieWire: “Ethan Hawke is keeping it all in the family with his latest film, ‘Wildcat.’ Based on the life of novelist Flannery O’Connor, the biopic film stars Maya Hawke as the Southern writer. Ethan directs, produces, and co-wrote the script along with Shelby Gaines, as Variety first reported. ‘Maya has been working hard for years to put this project together, and we’re grateful for the opportunity to introduce a new generation of filmgoers to the genius of Flannery O’Connor,’ Ethan said, while also sharing a first look at the production on Instagram. ‘Her work explores themes important to all artists — the intersection of creativity and faith, the blurred relationship between imagination and reality.’ Ethan previously starred opposite Maya on limited series ‘The Good Lord Bird.’ Maya executive produces ‘Wildcat’ through her Under the Influence Productions. Principal photography for the film began January 10 in Louisville, Kentucky.”

Music: CityAlight, “Only a Holy God”

The Weekend Wanderer: 28 May 2022

May 28, 2022May 27, 2022 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.

SBC “This Is the Southern Baptist Apocalypse” – Russell Moore in Christianity Today: “They were right. I was wrong to call sexual abuse in the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) a crisis. Crisis is too small a word. It is an apocalypse. Someone asked me a few weeks ago what I expected from the third-party investigation into the handling of sexual abuse by the Southern Baptist Convention’s Executive Committee. I said I didn’t expect to be surprised at all. How could I be? I lived through years with that entity. I was the one who called for such an investigation in the first place. And yet, as I read the report, I found that I could not swipe the screen to the next page because my hands were shaking with rage. That’s because, as dark a view as I had of the SBC Executive Committee, the investigation uncovers a reality far more evil and systemic than I imagined it could be.”

_124912301_optimised_guns_per_country-nc “America’s gun culture – in seven charts” – From The BBC: “A school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, involving young children has reignited the national US debate about access to firearms. What does the data tell us about gun culture and its impact? Firearms deaths are a fixture in American life. There were 1.5 million of them between 1968 and 2017 – that’s higher than the number of soldiers killed in every US conflict since the American War for Independence in 1775. In 2020 alone, more than 45,000 Americans died at the end of a barrel of a gun, whether by homicide or suicide, more than any other year on record. The figure represents a 25% increase from five years prior, and a 43% increase from 2010. But the issue is a highly political one, pitting gun control advocates against sectors of the population fiercely protective of their constitutionally-enshrined right to bear arms.”

tree roots “Expect the End of the World” – Joy Clarkson interviews Paul Kingsnorth in Plough: “I didn’t expect to become a Christian. I didn’t want to become a Christian. I wrote an essay about that earlier in the year. It sort of crept up on me. I was doing sort of paganish things. I’ve always wanted to connect with the divine, whatever that quite meant. And I’ve always been looking for ways to do that through Buddhism or paganism. And if you’re a modern Western person, you look everywhere except Christianity because you just assume that that’s got nothing to do with you. I do think a lot of modern Western rebellion is a rebellion against Christianity disguised as something else. We’re in rebellion against our ancestral faith. But the story of Christianity is the story of rebellion against God. So the more we rebel against it, the more we’re replaying the story by accident. I ended up becoming an Eastern Orthodox Christian. There’s a great mysticism at the heart of that version of Christianity. There’s an emphasis on God, on the divine being immanent as well as transcendent.”

“Why Christ’s Ascension is Essential” – Matthew Burden in Christianity Today: “For a long time, I never really understood the Ascension. To me, the disciples’ question in Acts 1:6 seemed eminently reasonable. Why did Jesus have to go? Why not just usher in the fullness of the kingdom then and there, and start wrapping the whole thing up? Wouldn’t it be a great asset to our labors in missions and apologetics to have Jesus still around? As it stands, the Ascension plays right into the skeptic’s darkest doubts about the gospel narrative. How convenient that the supposedly risen Messiah should vanish without showing himself to anyone other than his friends and family! The Bible, however, stubbornly refuses to agree with my sensibilities. Far from treating the Ascension as a weird stage exit whose main function is to explain why Jesus isn’t around anymore, Scripture speaks of it as a necessary part of God’s plan. Not only is it necessary, but the disciples even refer to it as a primary proof of Jesus’ messianic identity. Rather than trying to explain away his absence, they tout it with vigor. The Ascension stands on equal footing with the Crucifixion and Resurrection in the earliest declarations of the gospel (Acts 2:33–36; 3:18–21; 5:30–31).”

5baa8e34-1b9c-4f51-b054-7e5c054b8e3e-Afghan_10468 “They fought for education in Afghanistan. Now in Milwaukee, these 9 young women hope to achieve the dreams they nearly lost” – So glad our church can be part of this effort in Milwaukee. Sophie Carson writes about it in The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: “The streets of Kabul were like a scene from a zombie movie. One young Afghan woman had never seen her city like this: deserted and eerily silent, not a soul daring to venture outside. Last August, the Taliban had taken over Afghanistan’s capital city, and this woman — who asked that the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel refer to her only by her last name, Panahi — was carrying out a dangerous errand. School representatives for a women’s university in Bangladesh had asked Panahi, a recent graduate, to retrieve nearly 150 students’ passports from a government office where they’d been sent for visa processing. Documents were being systematically destroyed around the city, and school leaders knew the students likely would be trapped in Afghanistan without their passports. The trip to the visa office was extraordinarily risky. Panahi believes if the Taliban caught her with stacks of passports belonging to young, educated women planning to flee, she could have been killed. But she also felt a huge sense of responsibility to the students, and their futures. ‘If I don’t take this chance, if I don’t do this right now, what if we (are) all stuck here?’ she thought. ‘That’s even more dangerous, to stay here.’ The trip was successful. She hid the passports in her basement when she got home and later returned them to each student. Panahi’s efforts allowed 148 women to begin what would become a days-long, harrowing escape from Afghanistan. They’d go from the gates of the Kabul airport to Fort McCoy in Wisconsin, leaving their families behind. The women since have been placed at universities around the U.S. Most have full-ride scholarships.”

ATR-Fireflies-1536x1024 “Billions of Fireflies Light Up an Indian Wildlife Reserve in Rare Footage Captured by Sriram Murali” – Kate Mothes in Colossal: “In many parts of the world, a warm summer evening sets the stage for a familiar sight: the lightning bug. Through a phenomenon called bioluminescence, these winged beetles generate chemical reactions in a part of their abdomen known as the lantern to produce flickers of light. Of more than 2,000 species found throughout the world, only a handful coordinate their flashes into patterns and are known as synchronous fireflies. Filmmaker Sriram Murali captured a rare gathering of billions of these insects at the Anamalai Tiger Reserve in western Tamil Nadu, India. Through a combination of moving image and time-lapse photography, Murali recorded countless specimens amidst the trees as they produce glowing pulses, which relay across the forest in expansive, wave-like signals. The color, brightness, and length of the light emitted is specific to each species, and as a part of the insects’ mating display, it helps males and females to recognize one another. Darkness is a necessary ingredient in the success of this ritual. For the past ten years, Murali has been working to raise awareness of light pollution through a series of documentaries. Focusing on the reserve and its nighttime fauna, he hopes to highlight the significant role that darkness plays in the natural world. He has been collaborating with scientists and forest officials at the wildlife reserve as part of a project spearheaded by Deputy Director M.G. Ganesan to study the ecology of the park and identify the different species of firefly present there.”

Music: U2, “40” (Live From Red Rocks Amphitheatre, Colorado, USA / 1983 / Remastered 2021)

The Weekend Wanderer: 30 October 2021

October 30, 2021November 10, 2021 Matt EricksonLeave a comment

“Christ’s Prayers Can Transform Ours” – Catherine J. Wright: “Alongside Jesus’ astonishing miracles and teachings, the Gospels depict something just as compelling: Jesus—who is himself fully God—prayed. In fact, he prayed a lot. Luke, the go-to
Gospel for a theology of prayer, includes more descriptions of Jesus’ own prayer habits than any other Gospel. When we look closely at how Jesus’ prayer life is depicted Luke, we discover how essential prayer is for the life of faith and our participation in God’s kingdom….Luke draws a vital connection between Jesus’ faithfulness in prayer and the inauguration of and empowerment for his earthly ministry. If we want to be used by God for God’s kingdom work, the preliminary step for us also is to be faithful in prayer.”

“The Evangelical Church Is Breaking Apart” – Peter Wehner in The Atlantic: “The election of the elders of an evangelical church is usually an uncontroversial, even unifying event. But this summer, at an influential megachurch in Northern Virginia, something went badly wrong. A trio of elders didn’t receive 75 percent of the vote, the threshold necessary to be installed. ‘A small group of people, inside and outside this church, coordinated a divisive effort to use disinformation in order to persuade others to vote these men down as part of a broader effort to take control of this church,’ David Platt, a 43-year-old minister at McLean Bible Church and a best-selling author, charged in a July 4 sermon….What happened at McLean Bible Church is happening all over the evangelical world. Influential figures such as the theologian Russell Moore and the Bible teacher Beth Moore felt compelled to leave the Southern Baptist Convention; both were targeted by right-wing elements within the SBC. The Christian Post, an online evangelical newspaper, published an op-ed by one of its contributors criticizing religious conservatives like Platt, Russell Moore, Beth Moore, and Ed Stetzer, the executive director of the Wheaton College Billy Graham Center, as “progressive Christian figures” who “commonly champion leftist ideology.” In a matter of months, four pastors resigned from Bethlehem Baptist Church, a flagship church in Minneapolis. One of those pastors, Bryan Pickering, cited mistreatment by elders, domineering leadership, bullying, and ‘spiritual abuse and a toxic culture.’ Political conflicts are hardly the whole reason for the turmoil, but according to news accounts, they played a significant role, particularly on matters having to do with race.”

“Showing Hospitality to Strangers: Texas Churches Welcome Afghan Refugees” – Heather Sells in CBN News: “As many as 50,000 Afghan refugees will soon be re-settling in US communities, most fleeing right after the Taliban takeover of their country in August. The regime change happened at breakneck speed, forcing many, like former US Army interpreter ‘Zaheer’ and his family, to flee with little more than a small bundle of personal items. Zaheer initially applied for his SIV visa in 2018 but admits he struggled in August when it became clear he and his family must go. ‘It’s very difficult to walk away,” he said. “I got only one small bag with me, a little bit of clothes.’ Thanks to the faith-based resettlement agency World Relief and church volunteers in the Ft. Worth area, Zaheer and his family were able to rent an apartment and find furniture. Zaheer’s priority now is to find a car and a job. He’s willing to take anything to provide for his family.”

“Wide Awoke at Wheaton?” – Vince Bacote in Current: “I experienced a range of emotions—including exasperation and anger—upon reading Gerald McDermott’s “Woke Theory at Evangelical Colleges” in First Things last week, an article written as an exposé of what is happening at my own institution, Wheaton College, and elsewhere. McDermott charges Wheaton, Baylor, and Samford, among others, with a compromising submission to standards and practices identified with the broader social justice movement in American higher education at large. The use of minimal evidence, anonymous voices, and suggestions of infidelity to the faith presented a genuine temptation to respond in anger and take the road of holy rage in reply to an ephemeral and thin article—ephemeral, because of the ongoing avalanche of media content; thin, because the article seems not to be the result of an effort to know what is really happening at institutions like my own and others. One wonders whether McDermott thought to go to the sources of purported wokeness at Wheaton, Baylor, and Samford, instead of merely to the voices of concern or worry. But rather than anger, I write from a place of lament.”

“Vision, Leadership & van Gogh” – Derek R. Nelson at Wabash Pastoral Leadership Program: “Before he was a great-but-not-much-appreciated painter, Vincent van Gogh was a lousy-but-very-much-appreciated pastor. The details of this little-known chapter in his life are of some interest, I think, to those who are wondering about how early career pastors find sources of resilience to sustain them in their ministries, and also how pastors seeking to exercise leadership in their communities can do so effectively….After some failings in love, work and art, van Gogh needed a new start. He hoped to become a preacher like his father. He was not considered a strong candidate by the theological faculty at Amsterdam because of his volatility and apparent mental instability. His refusal to learn Latin — he already was fluent in four “living” languages and did not wish to learn a dead one! — gave them the pretext they needed to deny him admission. Lacking a path to the usual credentials, Vincent volunteered to be a missionary preacher to the Borinage, a very impoverished mining region in Belgium. He went at the age of 25 and remained there two years.”

online radio concept — rivalry between old and new:laptop computer and retro radio on the table

“How to Fix Social Media” – Nicholas Carr in The New Atlantis: “Around two o’clock in the afternoon on October 30, 1973, a disc jockey at the New York City radio station WBAI played a track called ‘Filthy Words’ from comedian George Carlin’s latest album. ‘I was thinking one night about the words you couldn’t say on the public airwaves,’ Carlin began. He then rattled off seven choice examples — ‘f***’ was among the milder ones — and proceeded to riff on their origin, usage, and relative offensiveness for the next ten minutes. A Long Island man named John Douglas heard the broadcast as he was driving home from a trip to Connecticut with his teenaged son. He promptly filed a complaint with the Federal Communications Commission. ‘Whereas I can perhaps understand an “X-rated” phonograph record’s being sold for private use, I certainly cannot understand the broadcast of same over the air that, supposedly, you control,’ he wrote. ‘Can you say this is a responsible radio station, that demonstrates a responsibility to the public for its license?’…Today, mired as we are in partisan, bitter, and seemingly fruitless debates over the roles and responsibilities of social media companies, the controversy surrounding George Carlin’s naughty comedy routine can seem distant and even quaint. Thanks to the Internet’s dismantling of traditional barriers to broadcasting, companies such as Facebook, Google, and Twitter transmit a volume and variety of content that would have been unimaginable fifty years ago. What’s at issue now is far greater than the propriety of a few dirty words. Arguments over whether and how to control the information distributed through social media go to the heart of America’s democratic ideals.”

Music: Jpk., “Some Days.”

The Weekend Wanderer: 16 October 2021

October 16, 2021October 14, 2021 Matt EricksonLeave a comment

“India’s Christians living in fear as claims of ‘forced conversions’ swirl” – Hannah Ellis-Petersen in The Guardian: “It was a stifling July afternoon when the crowd moved into the small district of Lakholi, in the Indian state of Chhattisgarh, and gathered outside the house of Tamesh War Sahu. Sahu, a 55-year-old volunteer with the Home Guard who had begun following Christianity more than five years previously, had never before had issues with his neighbours. But now, more than 100 people had descended from surrounding villages and were shouting Hindu nationalist slogans outside his front door. Sahu’s son Moses, who had come out to investigate the noise, was beaten by the mob, who then charged inside. As the men entered the house, they shouted death threats at Sahu’s wife and began tearing posters bearing Bible quotes down from the walls. Bibles were seized from the shelves and brought outside where they were set alight, doused in water and the ashes thrown in the gutter. ‘We will teach you a lesson,’ some people were heard to shout. ‘This is what you get for forcing people into Christianity.’ Sahu’s family was not the only one attacked that day. Four other local Christian households were also targeted by mobs, led by the Hindu nationalist vigilante group Bajrang Dal, known for their aggressive and hardline approach to ‘defending’ Hinduism. ‘We had never had any issue before but now our local community has turned against us,’ said Sahu.”

“How one Chicago church is stepping up to help Afghan evacuees” – Emily McFarlan Miller at Religion News Today: “When Afghanistan’s capital, Kabul, fell to the Taliban in August, it didn’t take long for the ripple effects to be felt halfway around the globe in Amy Treier’s home in the Chicago suburbs. By mid-August, the local office of evangelical aid group World Relief was so overwhelmed by contributions to help Afghans arriving in the Chicago area it didn’t have the capacity to store them. Neither did Immanuel Presbyterian Church in Warrenville, Illinois, which Treier and her family attend. So Treier, a professor of political science at nearby evangelical Wheaton College, and others at Immanuel stepped up to sort and hold onto the donations until Afghans who need them arrive. Within weeks, her guest room had become a storage room. By late September, her living and dining room were starting to look more like storage as well. The donations in Treier’s home will be packaged into three welcome kits for evacuees who are being resettled by World Relief, one of nine agencies that contracts with the United States government to work with refugees in the U.S.”

“G.K. Chesterton and the Art of the First Nations” – Matthew J. Milliner in The Hedgehog Review: “A century ago this year the British journalist G.K. Chesterton (1874-1936) first visited North America, where he was received like a celebrity. He lectured to packed venues in the major cities of the East Coast, Canada, the Midwest, Oklahoma, and Tennessee. Along the way he critiqued H.G. Wells’s naively optimistic view of progress as expressed in his Outline of History, which had been published the previous year in 1920. Wells saw humanity advancing beyond primitive cavemen toward a universal brotherhood (the ‘nascent Federal world State’) that surpassed traditional religion. Wells sought ‘religious emotion—stripped of corruptions and freed from its last priestly entanglements.’ Chesterton saw in such utopianism a ‘dangerously optimist’ view of history, which he believed remains ‘the first cry of Imperialism.’ So-called cavemen, for Chesterton, were not a waystation en route to modernity but were themselves a wonder, as evidenced by the inexplicable creative activity of rock art. These paintings didn’t need to be ‘explained’ with reductive theories (as they were in Chesterton’s day or ours); instead they testified to the inexplicable mystery of human consciousness itself. A century later, Chesterton’s vogue has been somewhat refreshed through the admiration of the philosopher Slavoj Žižek, but it would be hard to imagine his being received like a celebrity today by anyone but select admiring Catholics.”

“It’s Time for a Better and Smarter Alliance Against Porn” – David French in The Dispatch: “Last month I read a story that gave me a surge of cultural hope. No, strike that. It gave me another surge of cultural hope. And it made me ask a key question that afflicts more homes and more hearts than virtually any political issue that dominates the news. Is America ready for a culture change on pornography? And that leads to a second question. Is America ready for a new alliance between feminists and Evangelicals, between left and right, to achieve that change? The story that gave me hope came last month from New York Times columnist Michelle Goldberg….Goldberg’s piece comes on the heels of a series of shattering reports that have exposed grotesque practices in the porn industry and grotesque recklessness from porn outlets.”

“Remnant of one of the oldest Black churches in US is unveiled in Virginia” – Adelle M. Banks in Religion News Service: “Archaeologists believe they have discovered the foundation of the original building of the First Baptist Church in Williamsburg, Virginia, one of the nation’s oldest Black churches. The announcement, shared first with descendants of First Baptist Church members, was officially made on Thursday (Oct. 7) by Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, which runs the well-known outdoor living museum and historic district in Williamsburg. ‘The early history of our congregation, beginning with enslaved and free Blacks gathering outdoors in secret in 1776, has always been a part of who we are as a community,’ said the Rev. Reginald F. Davis, pastor of First Baptist Church, in a statement.”

“10 Beatitudes for the Use of Social Media” – W. David O. Taylor at Churches for the Sake of Others website: “In October 2020, less than a month away from the polarizing presidential election that haunts us still, Bishop Todd wrote me to see if I might craft a policy to offer guidance to pastors, ministry leaders and lay people around the ‘good’ use of social media. He had witnessed enough petty, cantankerous, inflammatory and divisive rhetoric across our respective communities—around topics like Christian nationalism, Critical Race Theory, Covid-19 protocols and school board policies—to feel the need to point us in a better direction. After a few initial attempts, however, I found myself giving up on the task. On the one hand, I struggled to find the right language, both surgical and sensitive, to address every possible concern and every possible context in a way that might be felt faithful for any given person’s or congregation’s ‘right’ use of social media. On the other hand, I couldn’t quite see how a policy qua policy would do much good to dissuade someone from doing whatever they pleased on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and the rest. Letting it sit for a few weeks, I suddenly (perhaps Spirit-edly!) landed on what seemed to be a much better approach: a series of beatitudes.”

“Wrinkles in Spacetime: The Warped Astrophysics of Interstellar“ – Adam Rogers in Wired: “Kip Thorne looks into the black hole he helped create and thinks, ‘Why, of course. That’s what it would do.’ This particular black hole is a simulation of unprecedented accuracy. It appears to spin at nearly the speed of light, dragging bits of the universe along with it. (That’s gravity for you; relativity is superweird.) In theory it was once a star, but instead of fading or exploding, it collapsed like a failed soufflé into a tiny point of inescapable singularity. A glowing ring orbiting the spheroidal maelstrom seems to curve over the top and below the bottom simultaneously.”

Music: Hans Zimmer, “Day One,” from Interstellar: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack.

The Weekend Wanderer: 21 August 2021

August 21, 2021August 26, 2021 Matt EricksonLeave a comment

“Evangelical Leaders Insist the Biden Administration Stand with Afghan Allies” – From The Evangelical Immigration Table: “Today [August 17, 2021] evangelical leaders sent a letter to President Joe Biden, urging him to follow through on his pledge to offer refuge to Afghan individuals and their families at risk due to their service to the U.S. government in Afghanistan. ‘It is of utmost moral urgency that the U.S. government keeps our commitment, ensuring that those who qualify for Special Immigrant Visas as a result of their service to the United States are safely evacuated from Afghanistan and to a safe location for processing, along with their immediate families. We recognize and lament that it has become increasingly difficult to safely evacuate our allies. However, giving up on these brave individuals is simply not an option,’ the letter reads.”

“Terumi Echols Named President and Publisher of IVP” – From InterVarsity Press: “InterVarsity/USA has named Terumi Echols as president and publisher of InterVarsity Press (IVP). Echols succeeds Jeff Crosby who recently became president and chief executive officer of the Evangelical Christian Publishers Association (ECPA), the trade association of Christian publishing. Before coming to IVP, Echols worked for nearly two decades at Christianity Today International, with roles including chief publishing officer and publisher of Christianity Today. ‘Terumi Echols was a key contributor and visionary to many, if not most, of the advances InterVarsity Press made during my time as its publisher,’ Crosby said. ‘As IVP’s new president and publisher, she brings vision, a passion for sustained growth, and a deep understanding of the Press’s mission to the university, the church, and the world. I believe very bright days are ahead for IVP under Echols’s leadership.'”

“The U.S. Should Not Ignore the Plight of Nigeria’s Christians” – Nina Shea in National Review: “Nigeria’s long plague of jihadist violence and mayhem has reached new heights. Earlier this month, armed bands of ethnic Fulani herdsmen assaulted the mainly Christian areas along the border of the Plateau and Kaduna states of central Nigeria. Units of several hundred Muslim Fulani militiamen, along with their herds, entered villages along with war cries of ‘Allahu akbar’ and fired AK assault rifles randomly through the streets and into homes, reportedly killing scores of civilians and burning hundreds of houses and acres of surrounding cropland.”

“Archaeologists surprised by discovery of 6th century Christian town in Egypt” – Abdulla Kadry in AL-Monitor: “A team of Polish researchers has discovered evidence of a well-planned Christian settlement dating to the sixth century in the ancient Egyptian port city of Marea. The discovery was made along Lake Mariout about 40 kilometers (25 miles) southwest of Alexandria just a few miles south of the Mediterranean Sea near the present-day village of Hawwariya. Archaeologists said the settlement also has a building that was used by Christians on pilgrimage to Abu Mena and the tomb of St. Mena, a Coptic martyr associated with healing who died in the late third or early fourth century when Christians were still being persecuted.”

“A Different Sense of Privilege: Privilege today still comes with strings attached, but they are different now” – Steve Lagerfeld in The Hedgehog Review: “In the 1980s, I got to know a man who seemed to be the walking embodiment of privilege. He was an elderly but vigorous WASP, tall and lean, with ancestry in this country that reached back to the seventeenth century. A Princeton man, he had gone into finance and risen to become CEO and chairman of a major regional bank. He had one of those WASP names one can barely resist satirizing, but he had been known all his life by his childhood nickname, Curly. This was just the first hint that this man was something of an anomaly. (Curly was also, inevitably, almost entirely bald.) Long retired by the time I met him, he had chalked up the expected array of civic and charitable activities during his career. But in retirement he was pursuing with characteristic energy an assortment of more hands-on volunteer jobs. One of them in particular struck me. He was a hospital orderly, pushing carts here and there, assisting patients’ families, and doing various tasks too small or tedious for the nursing staff. ‘A candy striper,’ he joked. As far as I know, he was never asked to empty bedpans, but I’m pretty sure he would have done it. Where, I have often wondered, does such a spirit of service come from? How could it be revived?”

“The three-or-four-hours rule for getting creative work done” – Oliver Burkeman at his blog: “There aren’t many hard-and-fast rules of time management that apply to everyone, always, regardless of situation or personality (which is why I tend to emphasise general principles instead). But I think there might be one: you almost certainly can’t consistently do the kind of work that demands serious mental focus for more than about three or four hours a day. As I’ve written before, it’s positively spooky how frequently this three-to-four hour range crops up in accounts of the habits of the famously creative.”

Music: Vikingur Ólafsson, “Badzura: Muse d’eau,” from Reflections Pt. 3 / RWKS.

Renovate

Invigorating life with God's grace and truth

Tag: refugees

The Weekend Wanderer: 28 January 2023

The Weekend Wanderer: 28 May 2022

The Weekend Wanderer: 21 August 2021

	“Healing for the Ear… on “Fractured” (Genesis, part 2)…
	“The Need for Cleans… on “Fractured” (Genesis, part 2)…
	deborah w. farris on A Prayer of Julian of Nor…