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  • South Korea: The Occasional Cloud Won’t Hurt

    I was amused when Sunny Lee made the following statement about South Korea’s most Christian president, Lee Myung-bak:

    South Korea’s Sunshine policy towards the North has been in a virtual coma for the two months since the inauguration of conservative Lee Myung-bak asof the South. Lee wants to act tough and teach Pyongyang a lesson on a Confucian golden rule: reciprocity.

    Lee believes Pyongyang failed to learn from the carrots Seoul patiently dangled during over the past 10 years. South Korea, in Lee’s mind, held onto a naive belief that such goodwill gestures would eventually be reciprocated by Pyongyang. Now, it’s time for a reality check, hardliners are clamoring, and many are describing the time spent on the Sunshine policy as the "lost 10 years".

    Lee’s tactics, of course, are reminiscent of Ronald Reagan’s stance toward the Soviets.  It’s a high stakes game, to be sure.  But if Lee will keep his cool, he can make progress.

  • Can Islam be Changed?

    Evidently Spengler doesn’t think so:

    How, then, should one make sense of the joint statement signed April 30 between the Vatican and a group of visiting Iranian clerics, attesting to the benefits of reason? According the May 1 L’Osservatore Romano, Pope Benedict XVI and the Iranians agreed that "Faith and reason do not contradict each other; although faith can in some cases be above reason, it never can be against it", and that "Faith and reason are intrinsically nonviolent".

    In his September 2006 address in Regensburg, Pope Benedict XVI challenged elements of manifest irrationality in Muslim theology, for example, the view of some Islamic theologians that "God is not bound even by his own word, and that nothing would oblige him to reveal the truth to us. Were it God’s will, we would even have to practice – idolatry." Outrage erupted against the pope throughout the Islamic world.

    But perhaps Spengler jumped the gun on this one, on a theoretical level at least.

    This topic came up a few weeks back on Abu Daoud’s blog.  The concept of "changing Islam" (or more accurately redefining it) is called ijtihad, and he says the following about it:

    One interesting aspect of the conversation going on today in this area has to do with the "gates of ijtihad". Ijtihad–and this is not a simple topic–is a sort of authoritative interpretation of the Quran which provides a hermeneutical foundation wherefrom one can embark upon the issuance of new verdicts and legal opinions. The question is this: can original ijtihad (that is, novel ijtihad) be produced today? I would say no, that since the 10th C. or so it has been forbidden by Islamic orthodoxy.

    But I think Hallaq wants to suggest that there is at least a theoretical opening for novel ijtihad. I am interested in hearing his arguments, though I suspect that it will remain just that, theoretical. Just as it is theoretically possible to have a new ecumenical council that is both Orthodox and Catholic which will issue a new Creed. In theory it could happen. In practice? Almost impossible.

    But such a change is simpler in Sh’ia Islam–the Islam of the Iranian religious establishment–than in Sunni Islam.  The reason is because Sh’ia Muslims ascribe broader powers of inspiration and interpretation to their imams–their ayatollahs–than their Sunni counterparts, much as Roman Catholics do as opposed to their Protestant counterparts.  The Pope is probably armed with this understanding, which would explain his reception of the Iranian clerics.

    Whether it will actually come to pass is another matter altogether.  To do this would require the acquiescence of Sh’ia Muslims in Iran at large, and I don’t see that happening any time soon.  Such major changes along these lines could also damage the hard-won credibility the Iranians currently have in the (Sunni) Arab street.  Many Sunni Muslims (especially the Salafis) consider Sh’ia Muslims as outside of Islam to start with; to add this to the mix would be a geopolitical setback for Iran.

    Spengler’s dismissal of this change makes more sense when applied to Sunni Islam and especially the Salafi/Wahhabi version the Saudi practice.  Such a change would degenerate into a war of duelling fatwas and imams, and the reformers would be quickly overwhelmed by the counterassault of the traditionalists.

    My guess is that the Pope is attempting to drive a wedge between those who think that Islam is fine as it is and those who see the weaknesses of a system whose insistence of Allah’s absolute sovereignty creates inconsistencies that people find hard to deal with.  From a structural standpoint, he’s picked the weakest spot he cound find to start with.  Will it work?  Only time will tell.

  • Expelled, the Movie, Enjoined. Imagine It!

    The news that Yoko Ono et. al. have filed suit to enjoin Ben Stein’s movie Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed (documented here and here) is a battle fought on two levels.

    First: Ben Stein is obviously attacking the ideological content of the song, and by extension not only those who agree with it but also those who would use Darwinism to advance social and political agendas.  Obviously the attacked aren’t going to care for this; if legal remedies can be found, they’re going to use them.

    But that leads to the second point: what Lennon’s heirs and assigns are trying to do is to use intellectual property laws to stifle political and ideological dissent.  This isn’t new either, but the use of copyright to do this is really scary if you think about it.  It’s something that each and every one of us who expresses themselves on this and other media–especially on controversial topics–have to think about all the time.  Fortunately the Stanford Law School’s Fair Use Project is going to bat for Stein.  (I find it hard to believe that he didn’t consult his attorneys before inserting "Imagine" into the movie.)

    It’s also intriguing to speculate whether or not this suit would have been brought if a movie more favourable to Lennon’s idea had used a portion of the song.

  • The Strange Position of Carl Hiaasen

    It’s hard to know where to begin in responding to Carl Hiaasen’s latest rant in the Miami Herald White politicos have their own pulpit gasbags, but let me begin by making a few observations:

    • Jeremiah Wright has certainly prospered financially off of his ministry activities, as his US$10,000,000 house will attest.  (And he’s done it without prosperity teaching, I might add.)
    • Anyone who is familiar at all with Christian television knows that it is a multiracial business.  Doesn’t he know, for example, that two of the "Grassley Six" are black?  Jeremiah Wright isn’t on TBN or Daystar for theological, not racial, reasons.
    • The Republicans have managed to pick the least religious candidate in the field, and that field includes the remaining Democrats.  Barack Obama’s relationship with Wright is far closer than McCain’s is with any of the ministers he has been "tied" to, although I will admit that Obama’s relationship with his former pastor is more complicated than has been depicted in the press.  (Probably more complicated than Obama thought too!)

    Hiaasen’s position is consistent with the position that most "Miami Herald liberals" have taken for a long time.  But let’s juxtapose that with his other passion of life, namely the overdevelopment of South Florida.

    Anyone familiar with his life and work knows that one of Carl Hiaasen’s leitmotifs is his venom against those who have transformed South Florida from a subtropical paradise to an asphalt and concrete jungle.  And, to be honest, that’s one place where I’m in sympathy with him.  Having been raised just up the coast (and around the same time) as Hiaasen, it grieves me to see what has happened to the place.  As I noted in The Tree That Grows in Heaven:

    Unfortunately the lignum vitae has had a hard history in South Florida with the coming of large populations. It is an endangered tree. Its most famous habitat, the Lignumvitae Key, is protected. Such a state is a reminder that God created a paradise in South Florida, but man has largely ruined it, and not only from an environmental standpoint as well. In addition to the damage to the surroundings, living in South Florida is a sure cure for universalism, reminding one that, if there’s a default option in eternity, it’s not heaven.

    One of the things that drove me to write my fiction was to relive, in a virtual and imaginary sense, in a world before this kind of spoilation became the norm.  Hiaasen gets away to the Keys to enjoy what’s left, but for those of us who have left altogether (and thus ceased being part of the problem,) we have to find other ways.  The interesting point, however, is that the "progressives" and the overdevelopment came hand in hand.

    The "crackers" who made up the first Anglo settlement of the place came with their desultory ways and their fundementalist religion, both of which have been regular subjects of derision by Miami Herald liberals.  What they didn’t come (with few exceptions) with was the enterprise and the capital to develop the place.  That came from more northern latitudes.  The latter not only separated South Florida from the South; they launched a campaign for "progressive" government, all the while building one development after another.  That’s the way of proactive progress.

    Unintended consequences are a hoot, aren’t they, Carl?

  • Opening Sentence for Ascensiontide

    From the opening sentences from the 1928 Book of Common Prayer, the one for the Ascension season:

    Seeing then that we have a great high priest, that is passed into the heavens, Jesus the Son of God…Let us therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need. (Hebrews 4:14,16)

     

  • They May Bomb and Gouge, But At Least They’re Sober

    Ping, the well-known manufacturer of golf equipment, has earned a place in Golf Digest’s "Bomb and Gouge" (Mike Johnson and Mike Stachura) blog for an unusual reason:

    Just prior to last week’s Safeway International, Stacy Prammanasudh and her equipment sponsor, Ping, parted ways and Prammanasudh played the event with just one Ping club in her bag (her Rapture driver). A new set of Tour Edge Exotics irons as well as TaylorMade wedges and putter were pressed into service.

    The reason for the split? Prammanasudh–a Thai-American–signed an endorsement deal with Singha Beer and Ping’s company policy does not allow for any alcohol-related logos on their staff bags. It’s unclear as to whether Prammanasudh knew of this before inking the pact with Singha, but regardless, I give the Solheims and Ping a big, healthy round of applause. Not because I don’t like Prammanasudh. The two times I’ve spoken to her she has been nothing short of cooperative and pleasant and she is a fine player. Not because I have anything against booze, as I personally enjoy a lovely beverage as much as the next person. No, my admiration comes because I find it absolutely refreshing that a business entity simply did not sell out its principles for a change.

    Make no mistake. Prammanasudh is an asset. She’s currently 15th on the Rolex Rankings. But Ping has a policy, they’re sticking to it and I say good for them.

    You have to admire a company which sticks with its principles in this way.  It’s something we need to emulate.

    And it makes me feel good that I was able to obtain Ping clubs (always a favourite, even before this) for the LifeBuilders Golf Tournament on 19 May 2008.

  • Book Review: Sex God

    Rob Bell has become a major voice in "post-modern" Evangelicalism with books such as Velvet Elvis and the NOOMA series of videos.  He likes to travel on the edge, and so when he came out with a book entitled Sex God, it’s tempting to think that he’s gone over it.  But before I explore the book itself a little background is in order.

    The subject of sex and Christianity isn’t the oxymoron that our liberal opponents would like to suggest.  It’s true that both Judaism and Christianity are explicit rejections of the "fertility cults" that dominated the ancient world, and the "wide open" attitude that went with it.  It’s also interesting that the ancient world got tired of this "wide openness" and moved to monotheism.  But it’s also natural that people, sexual beings that they are, would relate that to their relationship with God.  How that comes out in the history of Christianity varies from one time and church to the next.  It’s an undertow, for example, in the mysticism of Roman Catholics such as Hildegard von Bingen and Teresa of Avila, and on the flip side in the emergence of the veneration of Mary.

    Reformed and Protestant Christianity, however, swept all of this away.  (It also swept away many of the reasons for sublimation, such as an unmarried clergy and monasticism.)  In its clean-scrubbed view of itself and the world around it, it set up the Victorian Era, which has become the "Golden Era" of Protestantism.  That era is long gone, but still permeates a great deal of the Protestant and Evangelical world view.

    As was the case with Velvet Elvis, Reformed Christianity is Bell’s starting point in both a positive and negative way.  His purpose in Sex God is, as the subtitle suggests, to explore "the endless connections between sexuality and spirituality."  He does this in nine chapters plus an epilogue.

    Unfortunately, he waits until the fifth chapter to really kick into gear.  Most of what comes before that pretty much states the obvious: that we are sexual beings and that the Bible has something both positive and negative to say about that.  (Then again, we should remember that Rick Warren made millions stating the obvious in The Purpose Driven Life.)  At the fifth chapter–"She Ran Into the Girls’ Bathroom"–he makes the analogy that, just as it’s risky for a boy to ask a girl to dance or date with the possibility of rejection out there, so also did God take risks in sending his Son Jesus Christ to risk rejection by people.  From there the rest of the book is an interesting exploration of the analogy between the relationship of a man and a woman and of Christ and his church, with emphasis on the Biblical use of Jewish marriage language to describe God’s relationship with his people.  It’s interesting because he weaves back and forth between the two sets of relationships in a seamless way, making points about each (and mercifully defending the traditional Christian sexual ethic in a very sophisticated way) in the process.

    Bell always has one statement in his books that catches attention.  In this one it comes here (p. 157):

    Sex, in the ancient world, was marriage.  If you had sex, you were married.  All that needed to be worked out was the legal and financial consequences of what this man and this woman had just done.  The physical union was what, in the eyes of society, made them man and wife.  At the wedding, then, the party didn’t start until they had sex.

    So much for the iron connection between civil and real marriage!

    His chapter of "Forever Whoopee," where he projects the pleasure of the act of marriage into our eternity with God, will doubtless offend some.  But a man who ministers to a generation which has been indoctrinated with the proposition that whoopee is the defining experience of life is wise to make this point.

    I’m sure that many will find this book novel and revealing (pun intended) in many ways.  But somehow for me it fell flat.  This subject is explored in more artistic and theologically impactful ways elsewhere.  But for those who find Bell’s own artistry applealing, Sex God is a decent treatment of a subject that all too often get the short shrift.

    ,

  • Another Step Downward for Dollar Hegemony

    The Gulf states’ trend towards floating their own currencies relative to the U.S. dollar is a major step downward for the U.S.:

    On Thursday (May 1), the finance minister of Kuwait, Mustafa al-Shiwali, suggested that Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries were considering an idea to abandon their long-standing US dollar pegs. This is a minor news item to be tucked away in page 20 of the financial press, which it has been – but rather emblematic of a systemic shift.

    For years, Gulf countries have held US dollars as an article of faith, with an almost religious fervor. These were the same countries that considered the same action in the 1970s, and indeed it was the Kuwaiti finance minister of that time who famously asked, "Why should we sell our black gold in exchange for unguaranteed currency notes [US dollars]"?

    The aftermath of the crisis in the 1970s was greater US meddling in the region, propping up friendly dictators around the region and stoking the flames of war in Iran-Iraq that culminated in Saddam Hussein marching his forces into Kuwait in 1990. Perhaps that was America’s idea of punishing the Kuwaitis, but we would never know that for sure.

    Despite owing a debt of gratitude for getting their country back, it is interesting that Kuwait today is concerned more about domestic inflation that has run away to absurd levels, and less about kicking the US when it is down. Call that the new world, if you will.

    The decline of dollar hegemony is the single most imporant issue facing the U.S. today, and it’s symptomatic of the unreal nature of our political system that it is never discussed, even in the presidential campaign.

  • I Feel I Want to Fly

    Today is Ascension Day, when we celebrate Our Lord’s bodily rise to heaven after his resurrection from the dead.  For this one wants something ethereal and light, and this week’s podcast is certainly that: I Feel I Want to Fly, from the British group Cloud and their album Free to Fly.  This album is a delight; it’s very Scriptural in lyrics and soaring in music.

    It’s worthwhile, as we approach Whitsunday/Pentecost, to remember the following:

    But you shall receive power, when the Holy Spirit shall have descended upon you, and shall be witnesses for me not only in Jerusalem, but throughout Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth." No sooner had Jesus said this than he was caught up before their eyes, and a cloud received him from their sight. While they were still gazing up into the heavens, as he went, suddenly two men, clothed in white, stood beside them, And said: "Men of Galilee, why are you standing here looking up into the heavens? This very Jesus, who has been taken from you into the heavens, will come in the very way in which you have seen him go into the heavens." (Acts 1:8-11)

    The rest of this great album is at The Ancient Star-Song.

  • The Other Sheep of Jeremiah Wright

    Now we can discuss something really important about Jeremiah Wright:

    On Monday, Pastor Jeremiah Wright had the following exchange with the moderator at the National Press Club (transcript):

    MODERATOR: “Jesus said, ‘I am the way, the truth, and the life. No man cometh unto the father but through me.’ Do you believe this? And do you think Islam is a way to salvation?”

    WRIGHT: “Jesus also said, ‘Other sheep have I who are not of this fold.’”

    To which Baptist commentator Denny Burk replies as follows:

    Wright’s response clearly implies that Muslims are among the “other sheep” to which Jesus refers in John 10:16. Thus Wright affirms that people who do not have conscious faith in Christ can nevertheless have the hope of salvation — an inclusivist position that argues there are many paths to God…

    Here’s the real import of what Wright said. Many people who hear Jeremiah Wright are likely to get the impression that Jesus is one of many paths that people might take to get to God. Jesus never taught any such thing. In fact, he always challenged His hearers with a stark choice. “No one can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will hold to one and despise the other” (Matthew 6:24). Jesus would brook no rivals, and He only made salvation available to those who would “honor the son” (John 5:23).

    The Jeremiah Wrights of the world mislead people into thinking that Jesus Christ is one path among many that people might take to get to God. Jesus taught just the opposite. There is only one path that leads people to salvation, and it’s Jesus. “I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father, but through Me” (John 14:6). To miss that path means forfeiting eternal life. The stakes couldn’t get any higher than that.

    That’s unsurprising considering the denomination that Wright is in (United Church of Christ.)  But, as always, eternity is still what matters.

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