Weekly Meanderings, 23 May 2015

Last updated on: May 23, 2015 at 12:07 am by Scot McKnight

Weekly Meanderings, 23 May 2015 2015-05-22T13:58:19-05:00 Scot McKnight

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James Ernest to Eerdmans to succeed Jon Pott:

Eerdmans announced today that it has hired James Ernest as Editor in Chief. He will also join the Board of Directors as a Vice President.

Ernest brings to Eerdmans more than two decades of experience in acquiring and editing academic books in biblical studies and related fields, most recently at Baker Publishing Group, where he was Executive Editor for Baker Academic and Brazos Press. He also worked previously at Hendrickson Publishers (as Acquisitions Editor and Associate Editorial Director) and at H. W. Wilson Company. Ernest holds a doctorate from Boston College, a master’s degree from Boston University, and a Master of Divinity from Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary.

“I will see my role as stewardship of a remarkable heritage,” says Ernest. “I am humbled and delighted to be invited to lead the efforts of an excellent editorial team to consolidate and extend what many regard as one of the strongest academic theological publishing programs in the English-speaking world today.”

“It’s a reassuring joy to be succeeded by so able an editor as I know James to be,” says Jon Pott, who will retire at the end of June after having served as Editor in Chief since 1983. “He has the background and the vision to help carry the Eerdmans program in the way all of us here have hoped.”

Anita Eerdmans, President and Publisher for Eerdmans, concurs: “We are delighted to have found someone for this very important role who is exceptionally qualified to lead our editorial program into the next chapter of our company’s life and who has a sterling reputation in the world in which and for which we publish.”

Ernest will begin work for Eerdmans in June, shortly prior to Pott’s retirement.

Speaking of editors (and authors), here’s a splendid piece about William Zinsser. I bought and read the 1st edition when it was fresh out, and then I did the same for the 2d and 3d editions, and then I quit reading the new editions… but one of the truly great books for students to read about writing.

And another story that has meaning to many of us, Phyllis Tickle’s battle with cancer:

LUCY, Tenn. (RNS) Over the past generation, no one has written more deeply and spoken more widely about the contours of American faith and spirituality than Phyllis Tickle.

And now, at 81, she’s working on her final chapter: her own.

On Jan. 2, the very day her husband, Sam, succumbed to a long and debilitating illness, Tickle found herself flat on her back with a high fever, “as sick as I’ve ever been” and racked by “the cough from hell.”

The fever eventually subsided, but the cough wouldn’t let go. When she finally visited the doctor last month, the diagnosis was quick, and grim: Stage IV lung cancer that had already spread to her spine. The doctors told her she has four months to live, maybe six.

“And then they added: ‘But you’re very healthy so it may take longer.’ Which I just loved!” she says with her characteristic sharp laugh.

James as a poem.

Good for France!

Leave it to France to lead the way again in the food world.

In an effort to curb food waste, which accounts for roughly one-third of all food produced worldwide, France is making it illegal for supermarkets to throw away any food that is considered edible. The European country’s parliament voted unanimously for the new law, which will force grocers to either donate the food to charity or make sure that it is used as animal feed.

“It’s scandalous to see bleach being poured into supermarket dustbins along with edible foods,” Guillaume Garot, a former food minister who introduced the bill, told the legislature Thursday evening.

Ross Douthat’s scintillating observation that far too much of “charity” is “benevolence” that creates paternalism and dependency than genuine relations. When the church channels its energies through the public sector the church loses and the poor lose.

There is a case that churches are failing poorer Americans. But the problem isn’t how they spend money or play politics. It’s a more basic failure to reach out, integrate, and keep them in the pews.

This is the striking story of the last 30 years: Despite the stereotype of religion as something that people “cling to” (to quote a different moment of condescension from this president) in desperate circumstances, actual religious practice has collapsed more quickly among Americans with weaker economic prospects than it has among the college-educated upper class.

Mere religious affiliation has weakened for the poor and working class as well. The much-discussed rise of the “nones” — Americans with no religious affiliation — has been happening in blue -collar America as well as among the hyper-educated.

From a religious perspective, this a signal failure: A church that pays out to help the poor, but doesn’t pray with them, looks less like a church than what Pope Francis has described, unfavorably, as merely another N.G.O.

But even from a secular perspective it’s a problem, because (as Putnam’s work stresses) the social benefits of religion are stronger further down the socioeconomic ladder, and these benefits are delivered through community, practice, and belonging. So churches that spend or lobby effectively for the poor but are stratified come Sunday morning offer less to the common good than if they won a more diverse array of souls.

This critique actually lays a heavier burden on believers than the one Obama and Putnam offered. Their unjust accusation is easily answered by citing what religious Americans do already. The just one, though, requires doing something new.

Do you have a Dad-Bod? A flow chart tells you.

These Illinois schools don’t need auditors; they need some sense.

Fitbit and numbers addiction:

But here’s the truth: Once I started with either tracker I couldn’t stop. I’m trapped. The graphs, the goals, the virtual rewards, the buzzes on my wrist when I hit my goal all became addicting.

How else would I know if I had a good enough day of activity were it not presented back to me in a bright green bar graph? (How in the world do other people know if they’re doing okay?) And how could I possibly throw away a year’s worth of data by taking one of them off? I won’t do it.

I’m stuck. Shackled by these blue and black bands of rubbery plastic on my wrist….

There were dark days, though. The worst days were spent frozen in fear after getting a low battery warning. On days when I was hours away from being reunited with the Fitbit’s charger, I’d worry that every step taken would be the last one logged.

Important thing I learned here: How does one spend the hour that it takes to charge your Fitbit? You spend it on the couch, trying not to move, lest you waste any untracked steps.

European countries have a problem with replacing themselves because of population decline, so some countries are designing incentives to have more babies.

A house for $150 + $1 + an essay, at a profit:

This house in Houston is for sale and it’ll cost you $151— and a really good essay.

That’s basically the arrangement that a Houston Realtor came up with to part ways with the bungalow that he, his wife and their daughter have owned since 2013.

Michael Wachs set up a Web site this week and laid out the terms: Pay $150 to submit your application to buy his house for $1. To qualify, you’ll also need to pen a 200-word essay — a “heartstrings letter” — about why you deserve to have the house.

If it sounds too good to be true, well, it depends on who you ask.

The house isn’t free. Whoever wins pays the $1 sale price (on top of the $150 application fee) plus closing costs and future property taxes. It is a “black Friday” deal of sorts, Wachs says.

Daniel Kirk kicks off LectioCast (for you lectionary preachers).

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