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Weekly Meanderings

Weekly Meanderings

Last updated on: October 9, 2010 at 12:08 am by Scot McKnight

Weekly Meanderings 2010-10-08T19:55:01-05:00 Scot McKnight

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

Mustache Contest in Europe

John Byron interviews Jimmy Dunn… thanks John (and Jimmy). Speaking of interviews, Tim Dalrymple has a good interview with Bob Roberts. And Tim Dalrymple, at Patheos, now has a series of interviews on faith and national idolatry.

Good piece on a more open world.

Daniel Kirk on evangelicalism. Derek Leman on Christians and Jews on the Torah.

Don Johnson counsels us to get lost. Bill Donahue counsels to pay attention to signs of soul erosion.

Frank James, on the loss of his brother Kelly, and his faith: “One of the profoundly difficult lessons is that amid all the spiritual consternation in the shadow of Mount Hood, God has manifested himself in my grief. Somehow he is found in the disappointment, the confusion, and the raw emotions. This does not exactly make sense to me, and I’m quite sure I don’t like it. But I have felt the divine gravity pull me back toward God, even while I am dumbstruck by his hiddenness. My conception of faith has become Abrahamic—which is to say, I must trust God even though I do not understand him.”

Allan Bevere, on the faith of the founding fathers, with a link to the series at the bottom of the post.

Dan Reid explains what makes editors tick: “Here’s the deal. Many of us who became editors did not do so because we thought we would love the dull and boring routines of publishing. We became editors because we had the habit of snatching up books as soon as they were published. (To irrevocably date myself, I clearly remember doing this with Francis Schaeffer’s books from IVP in the very early 1970s.) And then, as barely employable prospective editor types, we got to thinking that it would be far cooler to read the books before they were published! What if we could just bypass this whole printing and purchasing thing and get to the source of this cataract of text? And so we did.”

I’m with Rob.

Blogging seems to have hit Fall stride again and there are so many blogs to link to that, if I did, this post would double in size. Now that’s just too long.

The New Perspective is only an issue among certain groups of evangelicals. And it is only an issue for those who (theologically) need a “degraded Judaism” to be the opponent of Paul when he wrote Romans and Galatians. Daniel Kirk’s very brief post on this nails it.

Meanderings in the News

1. Nick Kristof: “That study, published in 1989, provoked skepticism at first. But now an array of research confirms that the fetal period is a crucial stage of development that affects physiology decades later. Perhaps the most striking finding is that a stressful uterine environment may be a mechanism that allows poverty to replicate itself generation after generation. Pregnant women in low-income areas tend to be more exposed to anxiety, depression, chemicals and toxins from car exhaust to pesticides, and they’re more likely to drink or smoke and less likely to take vitamin supplements, eat healthy food and get meticulous pre-natal care.”

2. Spoil ’em: “Over the last several decades, more and more research has suggested that experiences in early life — even prenatal life — can have a disproportionate influence on the development of personality and physical and mental health. Now another group of studies, led by Notre Dame psychology professor Darcia Narvaez, confirms earlier work suggesting that children who get more positive touch and affection during infancy turn out to be kinder, more intelligent and to care more about others.”

3. Thomas Friedman: “Obama probably did the best he could do, and that’s the point. The best our current two parties can produce today — in the wake of the worst existential crisis in our economy and environment in a century — is suboptimal, even when one party had a huge majority. Suboptimal is O.K. for ordinary times, but these are not ordinary times. We need to stop waiting for Superman and start building a superconsensus to do the superhard stuff we must do now. Pretty good is not even close to good enough today.”

4. Robert Barnes, about Elena Kagan: “Kagan, 50, has recused herself from 25 of the 51 cases the court has accepted so far this term, all as a result of her 14-month tenure as solicitor general, the government’s chief legal representative in the Supreme Court and the nation’s lower appellate courts.”

5. Tax Receipt

6. Paul Krugman grousing about FoxNews: “Something else has changed, too: increasingly, Fox News has gone from merely supporting Republican candidates to anointing them. Christine O’Donnell, the upset winner of the G.O.P. Senate primary in Delaware, is often described as the Tea Party candidate, but given the publicity the network gave her, she could equally well be described as the Fox News candidate. Anyway, there’s not much difference: the Tea Party movement owes much of its rise to enthusiastic Fox coverage.”

7. Al Mohler attacks evangelicals on divorce, which is fine by me, but the problem can’t be reduced to divorce: the problem is a fundamental lack of clarity about Marriage and behind that a miserable perception of what Love is. When love means dopamine rush, we’ve got problems. When marriages break down because of the lack of dopamine rushes, we’ve got more problems.

8. George Weigel, defending Cardinal Newman: “The times being what they are, it was inevitable that gay activists and their allies among progressive Catholics would try to claim Newman as a patron-saint of gayness, citing letters he exchanged with his longtime friend Ambrose St. John, with whom he asked to be buried. As the pre-eminent Newman biographer, Father Ian Ker, pointed out, however, suggestions that Newman and St. John were homosexually involved (even if in a non-carnal way) testify to the ignorance that our culture exhibits about deep friendships, especially deep male friendships. He might have added that letters between such friends written in a 19th century literary style ought not be scrutinized through the foggy lens of twenty-first century homoeroticism, which saturates everything from Abercrombie & Fitch ads to prime-time banter these days.”

9. Warren Richey: “The US Supreme Court is set to hear a high-stakes battle over free speech on Wednesday in an appeal filed by the father of a US Marine killed in Iraq who claims his son’s funeral in 2006 was disrupted and ruined by an antigay protest. Albert Snyder had won a $5 million jury verdict against the Rev. Fred Phelps and members of his Westboro Baptist Church for intentional infliction of emotional distress and violating the sanctity of the funeral of his son, Lance Corporal Matthew Snyder. But the judgment was later reversed by a federal appeals court panel that ruled that despite the offensive nature of the protests conducted by the Westboro members, their activities were protected by the First Amendment.”

10. Are redheads Neanderthals? “Named after the Neanderthal, the German valley where their remains were first excavated in 1856, they evolved from the African hominid Homo erectus. They were stockier than Homo sapiens and had thicker bones and protruding foreheads. Early study of Neanderthals described them as very hairy, brutish, unable to talk or walk like more-modern humans. Later discoveries overturned those views, and recent finds suggest quite a few in central Europe were handsome redheads.”

Meanderings in Sports

Beware the broken flying bat.

Who will the next Cubs’ manager be?

Andy Reid, manager of the Eagles, on Michael Vick’s injury: “”He’s sore, he’s sore,” Reid said. “It’s up high in that second and third rib. And that’s what it is and you have ligaments and you have cartilage up there.” Sure do, coach.

A carping question on the Ryder Cup: why is it fair that we have one country and they get to have seven countries, plus another if you count Monte? I’m surprised they’ve not figured out how to wiggle former outposts, South Africa and Australia and New Zealand and Canada, into the European Ryder Cup team. And plus, probably half of them have a home here in the USA. Anyway, congrats to Monte and the Europeans — good team.

Weekly Meanderings

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October 8, 2010

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October 9, 2010 To Heal or Not To Heal?

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