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  • Hold the Hit Squad, Pat

    At least one electorate in the Western Hemisphere is showing some common sense, namely Venezeula’s as Hugh Chavez loses constitutional vote:

    Opposition activists were ecstatic as the results were announced shortly after midnight – with 88 percent of the vote counted, the trend was declared irreversible by elections council chief Tibisay Lucena.

    Some shed tears. Others began chanting: "And now he’s going away!"

    Without the overhaul, Chavez will be barred from running again in 2012.

    The vote was 51-49%.  But consider the fraud that was doubtless in the process…

    Hopefully the voters in the U.S. will exercise the same common sense in the next twelve months.

  • Collect for the First Sunday in Advent

    ALMIGHTY God, give us grace that we may cast away the works of darkness, and put upon us the armour of light, now in the time of this mortal life, in which thy Son Jesus Christ came to visit us in great humility; that in the last day, when he shall come again in his glorious majesty to judge both the quick and the dead, we may rise to the life immortal, through him who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Ghost, now and ever. Amen.

    Don’t just light the candle.  Prepare for his return.

  • Book Review: The Gospel According to Starbucks

    Next August, the ministry I work for has invited Dr. Leonard Sweet to speak at our luncheon during our church’s General Assembly.  In looking forward to this, it occurred to me that it would be nice if I brush up on his work.  The most recent manifestation of that work in book form is The Gospel According to Starbucks, and it turned out to be more than just nice.

    Leonard Sweet is one of the most forward-thinking people in Evangelical Christianity today, and this book is yet another manifestation of that kind of thinking.  His basic idea is that Christianity, as currently practiced in the West, is too focused on being doctrinally correct and not focused enough on facilitating a) a real experience with God and b) community and connection, both with other Christians and with those in the world around them.  His model is Starbucks, not only for the properties of the coffee it sells (which he sets forth in loving detail,) but also for the atmosphere it creates for its clients that makes it easy for them to fulfil more than their need for coffee.

    Sweet organises his book around the acronym EPIC, which goes as follows:

    • Experiential
    • Participatory
    • Image-rich
    • Connective

    He interleaves the Starbucks corporate procedure and the environment that results with examples (positive and negative) from both the corporate and the church world.  Without adopting a fawning stance towards either the company or the coffee, Sweet shows that Starbucks’ success is the result of the EPIC nature of the company and the fact that it draws its customers into an experience rather than simply sell them a product.  His analogy for the church is that, in order to thrive in the modern/post-modern world, it needs to incorporate all of these into its life.

    In making this assertion, Sweet puts his finger on Christianity’s central dilemma in the West today.  Christian civilisation from the Renaissance forward has, in the face of advancing science and technology, emphasised the truth content of its message to the expense of the experiential nature of its worship and life.   Unfortunately the advent of modernity, with its own emphasis on self-actualisation and fantasy, has moved the goalposts once again, forcing Christianity to once again alter its game plan to keep up with a society more in touch with what it feels than with that it knows.  The advent of Pentecostal Christianity, with its experiential worship, has gone a long way to answer that problem, especially in the Global South, but Sweet’s critique is a salutary reminder even to Pentecostals that the pull of a Christian establishment rooted in respectability and “correct” doctrine will in the long run make the church’s outreach to the world around it progressively more ineffective.

    Sweet is a multifaceted author, who breezes from one pithy phrase and profound observation to another.  His “sidebars” are so thought provoking by themselves that, by the end of the book, one wonders why he included Edward Hammett’s questions for study.  Although he sticks to a decidedly “non-establishment” view of Christianity, at points one wonders which way he is going.  For example, it’s common practice to lampoon church people’s use of “Christianese” (as Steve Taylor did in the title track of “I Want To Be a Clone,”) but Sweet’s not afraid to admit to the power of lingo, as he himself found out in a verbal wrestling match with an Ohio Starbucks barista over what to call the drink he was trying to order.

    Sweet draws from a number of sources.  He’s not afraid, for example, to cite the atheist Philip Pullman, whose work The Golden Compass has generated so much controversy, both in print and film.  He also draws from a number of Roman Catholic authors, especially St. Thomas Aquinas.  This last is still risky with many Evangelicals, but in doing this Sweet underscores his point that, in transitioning to the modern world, Christianity has lost much of the experiential and connective nature that it had in the ancient and medieval worlds.  (It would be very interesting to see what Sweet would do with a Jewish author like Moses Maimonides.)

    One of the thing that Christianity needs very badly is an intellectual life that does more than either pompously assert doctrine or analyse minutia.  In her introduction to the French translation of Origen’s Commentary on John, Cecile Blanc notes that Origen has “an elan that seduces.”   Unlike the verbose Egyptian, Sweet cannot claim to be “the greatest teacher since the Apostles,” but he gets to his point a lot more quickly, and has a profundity that is easy to grasp.  Leonard Sweet has a seductive elan of his own, and although The Gospel According to Starbucks isn’t the ultimate bridge between knowledge and experience, it can certainly serve as one of the girders.

    And I dare him to give his Kopi Luwak message at our meeting!

    Update, 29 January 2008: obviously one church takes Dr. Sweet very seriously!

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  • Hillary Clinton Adopts “Name It And Claim It”

    Hillarys Clinton adopted the famous prosperity Charismatic philosophy of "name it and claim it" in her interview with Katie Couric:

    When Couric inquired "how disappointed will you be" if she does not win, Clinton replied: "Well, it will be me." "Clearly," the CBS anchor persisted, "you have considered" the "possibility of losing"? "No, I haven’t," said the senator. "So you never even consider the possibility?" "I don’t. I don’t."

    The "old pro Democrats" who told Robert Novak that this was Hillary’s first serious blunder may well be right.

    Someone in the party of Andrew Jackson and FDR owes Robert Tilton an apology.

  • Terrorism on the Animals

    The Transportation Safety Administration linked to an article which detailed the arrest of two men trying to hunt on the Pittsburgh Airport’s property:

    A father and son — one of them decked out in full camouflage and carrying a 12-gauge shotgun — were caught trying to sneak onto the grounds of Pittsburgh International Airport on a botched hunting excursion, authorities said Thursday.

    Allegheny County Police and Pennsylvania Game Commission officers captured William Kuriger Jr. and his son, William, both of Sewickley, after the men were spotted late Tuesday near an airport gate off Route 60, according to court citations.

    Animal control is, in fact, an issue at many of our airports.  A plane taking off or landing that hit a deer could experience a disaster as great as an al-Qaeda sharpshooter with a heat-seeking missile.  Most airports, however, prefer to have a short list of people authorised to hunt on airport property.  After all, the philosophy of some hunters is to shoot at what moves first, ask questions later.

    I was amused at this article being linked from TSA because it implies that TSA had something to do with this arrest, which it did not.  But I’m sure that, in a country where PETA runs with few hindrances, sooner or later TSA or some agency will be empowered to arrest and incarcerate in a military prison those who "terriorise" the animals in this way.

    At that point taking off and landing will be a very dicey experience.

  • Ignorance is the Preferred Option of the Elites

    CBS is seeking an "irreverent, hip journalist for an environmental reporter: no knowledge required":

    “CBS is expanding its coverage of the environment,” the ad reads. “We seek a talented reporter/host for Internet video broadcast. We are looking for smart, creative, hard working up and comers, who can bring great energy, creativity and a dash of humor to our coverage…Knowledge of the enviro beat is a big plus, but not a requirement.”

    Keep in mind this is CBS, not a local station with fewer options and lower salary budget.

    One of the thing that our country’s elites love to represent about themselves is that they are so much more "knowledgeable" as opposed to the rampant ignorance of the unwashed in flyover country.  But it seems that the love of ignorance goes all the way to the top, and may be in fact the preferred option of our elites.

  • Republicans Report Much Better Mental Health Than Others

    A recent Gallup survey shows that Republicans report much better mental health than others.

    If the opposition knows their mental health is inferior, why should we vote for them?

  • The Trouble With Morality

    Time magzine is wading into deep waters with its article What Makes Us Moral.  Christians automatically assume that morality is their objective, as opposed to those who would "abolish" it.  But the truth is more complicated than that.

    Back in seventeenth century France, there were two very prominent preachers, the Jesuit Louis Bordaloue and the bishop Jaques-Bénigne Bossuet.  Bordaloue’s main emphasis was morality, while Bossuet’s was that of theology and doctrine.  In his time Bordaloue was the more popular preacher (especially with Louis XIV) but in the long run Bossuet has a more secure place in French culture and literature.  Bossuet’s preaching and writing is of such a calibre that the Huguenots he helped to exile into places such as the Netherlands still read his works!

    The distinction between morality and doctrine is one that Christians seldom make.  When Christians in the US realised that the country had changed its bearings, didn’t they form the Moral Majority?  Isn’t the whole idea of Christianity to make people moral?  Aren’t we trying to bring back the morality we once knew?

    Before we attempt to answer these questions, let’s look at the other side.  Until recently secularism in general and Marxism in particular posited that morality was one thing that would disappear with religion.  In the new world order, morality would vanish.  For many on the left, the morality that needed to go away the fastest was and is sexual morality, and that’s certainly the case today, as those who visited Boulder High School last spring reminded us.

    But if you look at liberals in the US today, you will find some of the most moralistic and self-righteous rhetoric around.  It’s been that way for the last half century.  Liberals consistently use morally loaded terms such as "corruption," "hypocrisy," and the like.  Today people who are on the defensive about their behaviour come back with the inevitable "I’m not a bad person."  Really?  Wasn’t the purpose of all of the "advances" we were making to eliminate the separation of people into good and bad?

    The simple truth is that neither side–for better or worse–is trying to abolish morality.  The difference comes when we consider the ideas as to where morality comes from.

    Christians routinely think of morality as coming down from God.  How this actually plays out varies some, but the basic idea is there.  Christians thus consider what leftists and secularists come up with is a rejection of morality.  If you’re talking about a Marxist, this is true.  But there are very few Marxists out there these days.

    On the other side, secularists reject morality coming from God but cannot bring themselves to dispense with it.  The key to the dilemma on the left is contained in the article: one source of what people think is moral or not comes from community standards.  This is correct; people are socialised in to thinking that certain behaviour is correct and others isn’t, and that distinction is usually posited in moral terms.  If you can get the legal system to sync with what people think is right and wrong, all the better.

    That being the case, if your objective is to change society, a component of that is to change community standards, shared values, or whatever you would like to call these things.  In doing so you change what people think is moral or not, thus replacing one system of morality with another.  That’s the objective of much of what we see on the left, and if we end up with a bunch of pushy, self-righteous loudmouths to enforce this and make others miserable, so be it.

    My challenge is directed in two ways:

    To the Christians: Christians need to see that morality isn’t the objective; fidelity to the commandments of God, irrespective of what the community standards are, is.  Christians needs to also remember that it’s unrealistic to expect non-Christian people to exercise Christian morality.

    To the secularists: What’s scientific about defining and enforcing behaviour with community standards, other than it works?  If we change community standards, where do they come from?  Why are they legitimate?  Community standards go hand in hand with the famous excuse, "We’ve always done it this way?"  What’s scientific about that?

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  • The Internal Passport is One Step Closer

    The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) wants passengers to give the additional personal information — as well as their full names — so it can do more precise background checks that it says will result in fewer travelers being mistaken for terrorists. Travelers currently must provide only a last name and a first initial.

    Read It All

  • Is This Stupidity, or Is This Treason?

    When I was in my family business, we had quite an interesting customer base:

    As its main theatre of operations was the Gulf of Mexico, Vulcan had two principal customers: McDermott and Brown and Root [a Halliburton division at the time] (whose construction operation was first divested to OPI, then Horizon Offshore.) It also serviced the other offshore contractors in the region, including Santa Fe, Raymond International, Movible Offshore (first Teledyne, then Global), Ingram (which was purchased by McDermott) and Fluor.

    But Vulcan also had a wide variety of customers outside of the U.S. These included some of the major platform contractors, such as Heerema, ETPM, Micoperi (whose assets were purchaed by Saipem,) Uglands, Jardine and Nippon Steel. But these also included state owned (full or partial) oil companies which were doing their own platform installation: Aramco (Saudi Arabia), NPCC (UAE), ENAP (Chile), PDVSA (Venezuela), CMM (PEMEX), Brunei Shell, and CNOOC (China). [I have an entire presentation on our sales to the Chinese.]

    Our international customers were, on the whole, good to do business with.  They paid well and came back to us for the spare parts.  In the years when Vulcan was active offshore, we routinely exported a third of our output.

    This week one of those customers (or a related entity) spent their sinking US Dollars on something other than pile driving equipment:  the purchase by Abu Dhabi of a significant share of Citibank, one of the US’ premier financial institutions.  This is entirely sensible from the buyer’s standpoint.  What else is there to do with depreciating dollars?  What’s shocking from an American standpoint is the giddy reaction the whole transaction is getting from the “Americans” themselves.  People in this country are, to use an old Pentecostal phrase, “running the aisles” about this.  As Julian Delasantellis points out:

    For me, the most surprising, and possibly the most upsetting thing about the Citigroup news was the absolutely orgiastic reaction to it. The general media, of course, saw this only in the context of something that would cause the stock market to go up, so it must be good. (Dead white American suburban young women = bad, rising stock prices = good; it’s not that hard to be a US TV news producer these days.) The Dow Jones Industrial Average opened strong, gave up most of its gains midday, then was rallying into the close to finish up 215, a fairly average price change these days.

    If the electronic media are now history’s first draft, then, to judge by the reaction of the on-air personnel on business cable channel CNBC, America has just had its best day since the famous New York City Times Square victory celebrations at the end of World War II.

    What a difference two years makes!  After all of the bawling and squalling over the CNOOC/Chevron and the Dubai Ports deal, our media is ecstatic over this, which (coupled with the Saudis’ own substantial state in the bank) will arguably give more substantial control of the US economy to foreign entities than either of those transactions.

    Why is this?  The first is that this deal is part and parcel with bailing out our current ruling class from the mess it’s gotten itself into with the subprime mortgage fiasco.  (The Fed’s excessive dropping of the interest rates is in this too.)  Ruling class happy, media happy, everyone’s happy.

    The second is the generally myopic view Americans take of their lives and country.  As Delasantellis goes on to say:

    As has been proven so many times in the recent past, from America’s budget and trade deficits to its crumbling infrastructure, its appallingly dysfunctional primary and secondary school system, its non-existent savings rate, and the total diffidence with which it approaches the global environmental impact of its prosperity, this is a country that looks at the prospect of any pain or inconvenience in the present with such boundless levels of abhorrence that it is more than willing to satisfy its heroin-like addiction to immediate gratification with sales of any or all of its national heirlooms.

    A comparable absurdity would be Americans selling their houses and forever being renters in order to gain the requisite funds to, in the newly sacrosanct modern tradition, line up at big box electronic retailers in the cold early hours of the morning after Thanksgiving.

    As I’ve said before, the basic problem we have here is that this country has gone on for so long, has been so successful, and has so few rivals currently out there, that Americans simply think that they (individually and collectively) are invincible, that no amount of blundering will have any adverse impact on our future.

    But such is not the case.  Unlike the Persians at the end of Herodotus, Americans have forgotten that it’s better to live in rugged places (literally or figuratively) and rule than to live in rich plains and be subject to others.  Some of us are already looking abroad for shelter.  Like the Anglicans who place themselves under provinces in the Global South, we implicitly or explicitly feel that those who direct our doings have abandoned us for their own selfish interests.  Allowed to continue, the US will not be the country it was; in fact, in many ways it isn’t the country our ancestors fought to preserve (and in some cases, to separate.)

    This kind of scenario invites conspiracy theorists.  And I’m sure there are people out there (such as George Soros) who are pleased with this weakening.  It’s the same question that Pavel Miliukov asked the Russian Duma in 1916 over a litany of Tsar Nicholas II’s mistakes (one of which actually buoyed the stock market:) “Is this stupidity, or is this treason?”  In the case of Imperial Russia, it was mostly the former, and I suspect that it is also the case here.  But, as Miliukov went on to say, “Choose either one, the consequences are the same.”

    And those consequences aren’t pleasant to contemplate.

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