Contratimes Resurfaces

After some grueling undercover work, Contratimes has returned to blogostology.

I Can't Watch Glenn Beck Without Freaking Out

So I change channels.

Wrong Again

I made a mistake. I thought it was the Rally to Restore Hannity. No wonder I was confused. But when I made my correction I was still wrong: It wasn't the Rally to Restore Humanity, either. Asking for directions, I made my way elsewhere. After much effort I fell in frustration, as I had only found the Rally to Restore Profanity. 

It seems that rallies pretty much everyone. 

The Right To Free Dissembling

Jon Stewart may be right: These are "hard times, not end times." But what times are these when lampoonists beg for civility? 

Juan Williams' Unpardonable Sin: It's Not What You Think

On Friday, during his weekly stint on "Inside Washington", noted columnist Charles Krauthammer asked, while discussing the firing by National Public Radio of news analyst Juan Williams, "But where did Juan go over the line?"

Joining Mr. Krauthammer was Nina Totenberg, an NPR correspondent who has publicly expressed very strong opinions outside her role as a news correspondent. Mr. Krauthammer observed that Ms. Totenberg has not been fired for essentially committing the same sort of allegedly egregious sins that cost Mr. Williams his job. Mr. Krauthammer was seemingly so perplexed by the incongruous behavior of NPR administrators that he asked his question again: "Where did Juan go over the line?" 

It seems to me Mr. Krauthammer's question was not answered during his appearance on "Inside Washington." So I offer an answer here: NPR fired Juan Williams because he committed the unpardonable sin of forgetting the creed of identity politics.

Juan Williams would not have been fired if he had chosen his words only slightly more carefully; he would still be working at NPR if he had said the following on Fox's "The O'Reilly Factor" with Bill O'Reilly: 

"Look, Bill, let me be honest. Sometimes when I get on a plane and I see some passengers in traditional Muslim garb, I can't help but be a little nervous. I am not proud of this; I admit it is a visceral and even irrational reaction I've had since 9/11. I mean the horror of that day is still with me powerfully; and when I notice folks wearing traditional Muslim garb on a plane, I immediately return to the fears of that day."

Readers may snicker at my revision of what Mr. Williams said, noting that what I've written is virtually identical with what he really did say. And readers may snicker at me for believing such words would have kept Mr. Williams safely in the employ of NPR. Is it because my revision makes his tone sound more conciliatory, even self-deprecating? Is it because he admits his anxiety is irrational? 

The answer to these questions is no. It is all more subtle than that, and very much more political. And it all has to do with seven words I omitted. 

What Mr. Williams did is suggest that self-identification as a member of a certain group, race, sex or other category consistent with identity politics is problematic. Here are his exact words, and please observe what I've highlighted:

"I'm not a bigot. You know the kind of books I've written about the civil rights movement in this country. But when I get on the plane, I got to tell you, if I see people who are in Muslim garb and I think, you know, they are identifying themselves first and foremost as Muslims, I get worried. I get nervous. Now, I remember also that when the Times Square bomber was at court, I think this was just last week. He said the war with Muslims, America's war is just beginning, first drop of blood. I don't think there's any way to get away from these facts."

Note what Mr. Williams has implied, that there is some other option to self-identification than that done "first and foremost." He seems to think there is an alternative to identifying oneself as X, a softer, subtler, less offensive alternative. One can be a Muslim, or anything else really. But to identify as a Muslim "first and foremost" leaves Mr. Williams, and others like him, feeling anxious, and maybe even a little impatient.

Perhaps you've heard this sort of thing before. Maybe you've heard something like this: "I am not against gays. I just don't understand why they have to identify themselves first and foremost as gay. I mean, I don't go around identifying myself first and foremost as straight."

Or maybe you've heard this variation:

"I am not a bigot, but I just don't get why so many black players in the NBA have to identify themselves first and foremost as bling-wearing, gang-banging, hip-hop blacks." 

To the truly politically correct who hold identity politics as sacrosanct, Juan Williams' words are an assault on those sacred cows the political left adores. Choosing one's identity for oneself is an existential necessity, or so it goes, and to flaunt that choice is well within the circle of rights contingent on that necessity. If you especially identify with a minority group prone to seemingly right-wing neglect or criticism -- groups like gays, illegal immigrants or apparently harassed and persecuted Muslims -- then by all means identify yourself FIRST AND FOREMOST as a member of that honored group. 

Moreover, Mr. Williams' comment raises the whole issue of multiculturalism, primarily the issue of assimilation. Mr. Williams does not (apparently) "first and foremost" identify himself as a black man; he does not constantly remind his listeners or viewers that he's a member of a black minority. He has, or so it appears, assimilated himself, finding equal footing with the apparently dominant white culture embodied by the likes of Bill O'Reilly and Fox News. He does not wear race on his sleeve; he keeps no obvious racial chip on his shoulder. But for him to suggest that others need not present their minority status first and foremost in everything they do is simply anathema to the left-wing of American politics. In this Mr. Williams stands in stark contrast to men like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton. (Williams, if memory serves me well, was quite offended by the likes of Rev. Jeremiah Wright; I believe Williams has even spoken in embarrassed and apologetic terms regarding figures that stand in the Wright/Sharpton tradition.)

Oddly, I am not of the opinion that Mr. Williams' firing has much to do with his position at Fox News; his status as a Fox contributor is not what got him in trouble at NPR. While various Muslim groups no doubt brought pressure on NPR to at least rebuke Mr. Williams, my sense is that the NPR ideologues took note of Williams' far-too-casual stance on identity politics, and they grew impatient with his failure to conform to the expectations of those politics. If, as NPR says, Mr. Williams had something of a record of offenses, I believe it was not his opinions per se that offended NPR. Rather it was Mr. Williams' expressions of impatience with minorities who fall prey to stereotypes, stereotypes that limit the liberation of those groups. Specifically Mr. Williams had strayed too close to being, as some have noted, a "Bill Cosby liberal," a black man who encourages other blacks to stop playing victim politics. Obviously, being a victim is a category of identity politics, and Mr. Williams' criticism of such, subtle as it was, was more than NPR could countenance. 

Lastly, let us not forget that Barack Obama wrote about his personal decision to self-identify as a black man, and this despite his largely and relatively privileged white upbringing and background. In many ways, Mr. Obama has chosen to present himself as "first and foremost" a black man, though his efforts to do so in public often seem rather forced (though I admit that here I may be judging him from my own prejudices about how an authentically black man would present himself). And let us not forget that some black liberals have dismissed the president as not being an "authentically" black man; and more than a few folks have noted that the president's handling of racial issues has often been more awkward than deft. But the sanctity of the president's personal choice of self-identifying as a black man is not to be questioned (and in the case of bi-racial children, I don't question it, as I can't imagine the difficulty).

In the end, Juan Williams, as a public figure and even a role model, committed the unpardonable sin of suggesting that identity politics is not a healthy game, that civilized people need not identify "first and foremost" as anything other than human.

©2010/Contratimes. All Rights Reserved. 

CONTRATIMES is REALLY BACK!

Greetings to my few and faithful readers. I have been absent for a number of reasons, not least of which is that I've been once again re-examining my role here and my 'place' in the blogosphere.

Some of you will remember that I wrote earlier this year that this site would no longer focus on politics. I am now retracting that statement. Allow me to explain why.

I've been doing a lot of reading and thinking over the past year and I've reached a conclusion. When this blog began it was specifically focused on religion, but not religion in and of itself, but religion as it is portrayed in Western culture and how a Christian specifically responds to that portrayal. My very first essay at Contratimes, "Krugman, that gnostic", was a criticism of New York Times columnist Paul Krugman and his understanding not just of Christian cosmology but Christian thought as a whole. But what Mr. Krugman essentially exemplified was the philosophy not of leftism per se but religious leftism. Thus Contratimes began as a critique of the religious left. 

As a result of the time I've spent immersing myself in sundry books and articles, and reflecting on that reading, I return to a conviction I simply forgot I held: My friends on the left are far more likely to make a religion of politics and the state than my friends on the right. This conviction is reinforced in my life at every turn. I witness it on a daily basis: at the local recycling center this weekend, I heard two people I know rather well, two devout Democrats, speaking of their activism as an all-consuming religious duty. Their speech was about creating a leftist theocracy; the establishment of a utopian state the perfect fruition of their unflagging zeal. 

I have repeatedly turned to the idea of idols and idolatry at this site. I return to it now. My vision is perfectly clear and sharp: People of any political strain may fall into idolatry -- and often do. I understand a strange religious devotion to the state held by some of my conservative peers. But this idolatry is far less evident and pervasive in my life's experience. Granted, this is arguably due to where I live, steeped as New England is in a deep individualism with Unitarian-Universalist dreams that everything works together to the glory of humanity. Forgive the flippancy; I admit it readily. But there is indeed an effective influence the UU church has over New England religious and political thought, a controlling one. What is that influence in essence? Perhaps it is that there is nothing that is ultimately true other than what one chooses to be true. In other words, the idol to which we are to fall prostrate is Will.

Therefore, I am writing about politics because it is clear that politics is indeed a religion. 

Peace.

©2010/Contratimes. All Rights Reserved. 

Thus Far, Rejoicing

As of this writing, the news in Chile continues to warm the soul, gladden the heart, and lift the spirit. 

A holy vessel, life within; from light to dark -- and back again. 

Are You Afraid (Of Idols)?

I wonder how it is that those who are not afraid to burn a Koran are considered Islamophobic by those who are afraid of what Muslims will do if a Koran is burned. How is it that the latter -- who do live in abject fear -- are considered tolerant, inclusive, and courageous, while the former, who are not enslaved to fear, are described as exclusive, and exclusively phobic? 

What a sad world we live in; what a sad country in which we dwell, when the President of the United States, succumbing to religious anxiety, asks a man not to burn a book for fear that such an act will harm "our troops." Since when have the American people, particularly just one of them, been called on to protect soldiers -- soldiers trained to the teeth to defend themselves -- by not doing something within the allegedly safe borders of a free America? Aren't our soldiers fighting abroad to protect Americans' right to speak freely -- and even burn a book? 

The President of the United States, and many folks like him, take umbrage at the rumor -- the mere rumor -- that a man might burn a book. And then, as Muslims riot overseas and kill people in protest of that rumor -- a mere rumor -- the President of the United States, and many folks like him, say nothing. 

Who are the Islamophobes? 

Sadly, no one seems to care. So be it. 

On Knots And Faith Untying: A Postscript

[It is suggested that readers turn to On Knots And Faith Untying to fully appreciate what follows.]

I had an incredibly successful summer fly-fishing for small and largemouth bass. I went out many nights, mostly on the pond upstream from my home, paddling through lily pads in my little kayak. Some nights I stayed out until 11:00; I could determine the hour by counting the number of times the hammer struck the town clock in the church steeple at the south end of the pond. It was all just wonderful, idyllic; a seemingly quintessential New England life. 

There was one evening in particular however wherein I felt myself tempted toward abject atheism. Disbelief in a deity assaulted me like mosquitoes after sunset: there was no swatting away doubt. For a moment the death of God was undeniable. I was alone in the universe as surely I was alone on a pond. There was no anchor for my mind, or my hopes, just the drifting with the wind, the indifferent, chaotic wind. 

You see, I was casting my fly -- a green popper designed to look like a small frog -- in a warm, evening breeze, and I spotted a larger splash than usual when I finally let drop the lure 30 feet from me. Clearly something was not right; I noted a snarl in the leader and floating line I was using. Frustrated, I yanked the line into the cockpit of my kayak to determine the severity of the problem. 

What I discovered was a knot that took my breath away. This knot wasn't merely a snarl. No, this was a knot that had intentionality written all over it. This was a deliberate knot. It looked like it had been tied by some brilliant weaver; some sprite in the air adept at crochet. If you don't know, a fly line consists generally of two lines, the main one, the flyline, which, in this case, was a floating line which helped keep my lure on the water's surface, and a short transparent leader, a strong, durable filament designed to conceal that the lure is attached to something. The clear leader is about "presentation," about fooling the fish into seeing merely a bug or frog on the water, and not something tethered to an opaque floating line several feet away. 

Amazingly, this artful knot was indeed spun in the wind. My casting forward, backward, forward, backward, each stroke necessary for me to strip line to extend my cast in the typical rhythm of a fly-fisherman, along with the breeze coming across the pond, combined to create a knot that essentially wove the popper I was using into this dazzling web of flyline and leader. The rubber "feathers" of my lure were perfectly incorporated; they were tied elegantly into the lines in a way that suggested conspiracy, even magic: something had grabbed my line and lure, tied a perfect knot, all while the line and lure were airborne, and for no other reason than to thwart me. To torment me. My rod was for me a device for fishing; for the laughing cosmos, it was a knitting or crochet needle working toward an insane confusion that did not at all look confused. 

As my aggravation settled into awe, I began to think about the genesis not only of the knot, but of the whole cosmos. I had been taught in science, and by the atheistic philosophers allegedly informed by such science, that this cosmos was utterly random in its genesis: that there was no Designer, no external Initiator, that the "cosmos is all there is, all there was, or all there ever will be." No doubt there have been some, like Stephen Hawking, who suggest that the cosmos was born without God, but nonetheless came forth from a pre-existing amalgam of laws, energy, and potency and potentiality: the universe took shape according to constructs inherent to the nature of a universe taking shape, constructs that "just were."

I've long if not always balked at such assertions about an un-intended, un-designed universe. I particularly halted at the idea posited by atheists that this was an uncaused universe that inspired them to awe, and this for no other reason than that the same atheists could not find awe in the idea of an uncaused God. They were favorable to an uncaused universe, but an uncaused God was anathema to them; the one they permitted and accepted, and the other they rejected out of hand.

But as I beheld the knot before me, one seemingly born of nothing but chance, I could see the atheists' point. Given enough time, given enough "chance" to mix in the air in the random patterns of a fly-fisherman's cast, a knot of incredible, awe-inspiring beauty could be tied along the very edges of a fly-rod's arc. There was no Designer here; this was random, a once-in-infinity collision between nothing and Being. This knot just was; it just appeared, dynamic and interesting, and it would NEVER APPEAR AGAIN.

This latter admission invigorated the rush of atheism that swirled around me. I could not duplicate such a knot; it would never exist again, nor could another be created identical to it. There could not be a duplicate, an identical knot. Was this not true of everything? Was this not true of the universe? Surely if there was a God then duplication would be well within the bounds of His powers, no?

But as I untied the knot slowly, though not in silence as a few unfortunate expletives slipped out of my mouth, and as I began to cast my fly into the watery sunlight all around me, I began to recall my days as a philosophy student. Duplication, I remembered, was inherently impossible: two things could be identical in all matters but one -- number. What this meant is that this A and this A are only nearly identical, as they both are separate in number; in position, place, space and time. There is no such thing as a true clone, as the clone of the original is not the original. Duplication is thus intrinsically impossible, a contradiction in terms. God Himself could never duplicate anything exactly. For a duplicate to be a true duplicate it would have to be the original, and that is impossible. Such violates the law of non-contradiction.

Moreover, I began to realize that I was not in an unclosed system but a rather closed one. The wind around me was not infinite: it was constrained by laws of motion, gravity, density; wind was just the movement of trapped air on a planet. It was not an infinite system; there was a fixed amount of air and a potentially quantifiable number of ways the air could move. The universe itself was, according to the scientists and atheists, a closed system: Carl Sagan himself once came up with a number that he averred was the largest number that could ever be, claiming, I believe, that the number could not exceed the number of "things", the particles, of which the universe consisted. To Sagan the universe and number ray were limited, constrained.

On top of that I was using DESIGNED and WILLED things: fly-rod, fly line, and bait; a kayak; human hands, an arm, a shoulder, a spine, a brain; electrical impulses coursing through flesh, twitching muscles, pulling tendons, rocking bones, stretching ligaments. None of these was infinite; my body, the kayak and the fly-rod were not flitting about in chaos or randomness. They were each poised in time, as objects that behaved according to design and structure and certain laws; there was an architecture here that was undeniable, and a limitedness that made the architecture possible and even successful.

No, this was not a moment for atheism but theism. The knot before me was created by orderliness, by the very design of the cosmos, the man in the boat, and the things made by men. Design and intent were all around me; I was as intentional as the fakery of the fly I was using. The knot hadn't "just happened." It was, without a doubt, created; I had, in concert with the wind and the dynamics of pole and line, tied this knot according to a set of quantifiable strokes of my arm, wrist, fingers.

All this finally opened my heart and mind to the Christian assertion that the universe is not really closed; that God inheres in His creation -- it is His idea, after all -- and that He is nonetheless outside of it, standing as Creator, Maker, Designer, and that He can enter His creation at any time. In our very thoughts and reflections on things like chaos and beginnings our minds invariably and necessarily bring qualities of order, sequence and time to those thoughts. We cannot know or perceive chaos: it does not exist to us, even, really, as an abstraction. It is to us nothingness. It is the unknowable.

And that is the point, really. It is unknowable to those within the universe. We cannot see the outside of the box because we are not only in the box, but of it, the very dust of it. There is no possibility of what is inside the box ever gaining a position that is itself outside the box: we cannot ever be objects to ourselves. Nor can we escape time, order or place to see what is outside of, or before, all that is All.

So a knot that threatened my faith served to tie me more fully to the God Who Is. I am not alone on the surface of a sunset-filled nothingness, casting about willy-nilly for a nothingness to hook myself into. I am connected already; there is a hook that pierces my side. I float in a space that is brimming with wonders -- a space so full of the lovely Intent of God it's hardly a space at all. I splash, I leap, I fight and pull; I tie myself in knots.

I paddle my way home through lily pads, towards the God Who catches and releases, the God Who untangles and sets us free, to float, to dream. To become fishers of men. This I affirm, accept. Believe.

God is out there, and never far away.

Peace.

©2010/Contratimes. All Rights Reserved.

On Knots And Faith Untying

As a mere child, C. S. Lewis lost his faith in God and the whole of the Christian story. There were several reasons for this, all of which he describes in his lovely autobiography Surprised By Joy. But one reason particularly speaks to me; it is indeed the only thing I share in common with the young Mr. Lewis. In short, Mr. Lewis came to believe the universe was thwarting his simplest ambitions. He describes the cosmos' stubborn resistance as one of the "seeds of pessimism" that found fertile soil in his mind, a pessimism that grew till he became "an apostate, dropping my faith with no sense of loss but with the greatest relief." Permit me to quote Mr. Lewis at length:

As to the sources of my pessimism ... I am now inclined to think that the seeds of pessimism were sown before my mother's death. Ridiculous as it may sound, I believe that the clumsiness of my hands [Lewis and his brother were both born missing the first joints in their thumbs. -- Ed.] was at the root of the matter. How could this be? Not, certainly, that a child says, "I can't cut a straight line with a pair of scissors, therefore the universe is evil." Childhood has no such power of generalization and is not (to do it justice) so silly. Nor did my clumsiness produce what is ordinarily called an Inferiority Complex. I was not comparing myself with other boys; my defeats occurred in solitude. What they really bred in me was a deep (and, of course, inarticulate) sense of resistance or opposition on the part of inanimate things. Even that makes it too abstract and adult. Perhaps I had better call it a settled expectation that everything would do what you did not want it to do. Whatever you wanted to remain straight, would bend; whatever you tried to bend would fly back to the straight; all knots which you wished to be firm would come untied; all knots you wanted to untie would remain firm.

It is important to note that Mr. Lewis does not argue his public life was thwarted by the body politic or by his family. He does not suggest teachers inhibited his creative progress or some nemesis intimidated him to such a degree he fell back in retreat. Instead, what Mr. Lewis tells us is that this sense of "resistance or opposition on the part of inanimate things ... occurred in solitude." [emphasis mine] He was privately thwarted; when alone, he felt that something stood against him.

I said above that this is the only thing Mr. Lewis and I share in common, but even this commonality is distinguished in two ways. First, I do not conclude, as Mr. Lewis seems to, that the universe is poorly designed (he playfully refers to his accepting the "Argument from Undesign" as the strongest argument for atheism). I do not conclude that either the universe or God is deficient, but that I am. My inabilities and limitations tempt me to self-condemnation: I should be better; I am not good enough. Second, my pessimism is unlike Mr. Lewis' not only because mine is directed inward, but because it is something I have not outgrown. He would describe, or so I bet, his pessimism as rather adolescent. I am sure he would even see it as part of his adolescent "passion" or "lust" for the Occult. I am sure he discovered in himself a naïveté, formed in the imaginative play common to boys in solitude, that the universe was a magical place where young boys could attain mastery ("maistry", as Lewis suggests) as magicians, wizards, knights. In fact, I am quite confident he did discover that very thing, at least unconsciously, and that he would agree with what I've just written.

I, too, accepted this view of myself as a boy. I expected great things, even superpowers, of myself. In solitude I believed my knots would hold and that my aim was straight. I recall even believing I could will by sheer force of mind a heavy snowstorm resulting in a "snow day" in which school was canceled. Child that I was, there was just enough success to reinforce my illusions and just enough failure to ensure I'd delude myself that willpower and pride could attain perfection.

Interestingly, when I became a Christian; when I fully poured myself into the Faith, I brought with me this sense of the superman. Maybe it was not so much a sense of being a superman as it was of being a super sage, a sort of Christian wizard. I would attain and achieve. I would prosper. I would possess "maistry." Indeed, I really did believe that I could attain a level of spiritual invincibility where God -- my benevolent Father -- and my deep faith in His benevolence, could clear a path for my faithful feet broader than the dry lands the Israelites marched upon through the parted Red Sea.

And somehow, as St. Paul might argue, sin seized an opportunity. The fruits of faith for me began to turn sour. When thwarted I abused myself. When I stumbled I became my greatest scold. Pride cast its aspersions: What sort of fool have you become? This struggle is beneath you, you worthless clod. Look at how you flounder. Look at how others do not. See with what ease they live their lives? But you. You disgrace me.

This is not God or the universe speaking so unlovingly. It is my own soul. God is not shaking His head or wagging His finger. The universe is not out to get me; it is not, as Mr. Lewis suggested, "a menacing and unfriendly place." I am out to get me; I am an unfriendly place to myself.

I shall follow this installment of Contratimes with a tale of a knot. I intend to share this tale tomorrow. It is a fine tale about an extraordinary knot and the moment of atheism such a marvelous knot inspired. Of course I may not get to my tale as planned, since plans, especially as summer wanes, have a way of changing. But the hope is there, and where there is hope, well, there is everything.

Peace.

Part II begins here.

©2010/All Rights Reserved. 

Let Others Speak 8.12.10

"Maturity: among other things -- not to hide one's strength out of fear and, consequently, live below one's best." -- Dag Hammarskjöld, Markings

Let Others Speak 8.11.10: On Faith

"Below even the sunniest and most secure human relationship, the abyss lies waiting -- because our lack of faith is fascinated by the possibilities of the night side of life." -- Dag Hammarskjöld, Markings

Let Others Speak: On Irony

"Where did all the irony come from? What pole sent this glacier that has pinned modern culture under its massive arrogance? Irony asserts implicitly that you are superior to the thing you are ironizing over, or to its maker. Ordinarily it is a useful, important color in our emotional paintboxes. But when we paint everything this color, its character changes. Irony is quintessentially the attitude of someone at a dinner party who wants you to know that he can't leave but would rather be anyplace else. The educated elite of America and the West have been feeling mighty ironical ever since the cultural revolution: They have denounced and forsworn Western culture but never had any intention of leaving the table while the feed was underway. So they have had to settle for letting everyone know how much smarter they are than the other guests, how little they are enjoying themselves, and how superior they are to the culture they themselves superintend. ...

"What did we accomplish in that great cultural revolution that created the new ice age, the Sterile Age, the Age of Irony? We manfully whacked down virginity and, crashing to earth while we celebrated it, crushed the idea of purity in the mud. And then we toppled art, which fell backwards and smashed sanctity to splinters. And then spitting on our hands we shouldered loveless sex and paraded it in triumph, which had the unplanned consequence of exalting sterility and grinding out passion among the cigarette butts. And our dry ironic laughter, which has always been joyless, has come to sound like labored breathing on a deathbed." [emphasis mine] -- David Gelernter, "Dead in the Water"

Let Others Speak 8.9.10

"The flat soul is what the sexual wisdom of our time conspires to make universal... Are we lovers anymore?" -- Allan Bloom, The Closing of the American Mind

I Bid You...

A Happy 8.9.10!

Freed Believers (In Chains)

[What follows was written in early July. I did not publish it then. In fact, I forgot all about it until I spotted it in my queue of un-posted work just a few minutes ago. I present it as is, unfinished. -- Ed.]

OK. So you've had a hard faith. You were raised in a tough church. Your conception of God was all wrong. You've been living under a cloud of fear, judgment, wrath. You were told the gospel was free, full of grace, and then you were told to follow a bunch of rules. You followed those rules; you swallowed the idea that grace was a legal term. You fell short -- always. You could not live up to expectations. You failed to gain mastery and the plaudits such mastery allegedly merits.

And now you're wounded -- and mad.

I went this morning to the "Free Believers Network," a website for the disheartened who still have faith; for the disenfranchised who still want to belong. Those who find their way to FBN are greeted with this:

We are a growing network of Christians committed to returning Christianity to its natural habitat. As you browse through this site, open your heart; ask yourself one question: What if?

I can't resist: What does Christianity's natural habitat look like? Does it look at all like a web-based social network? Is that Christianity's natural habitat?

Perhaps you are not like me. Perhaps you'd like to see Christianity return to its roots, its roots in the dust of Palestine, watered by the Spirit under the brutal sun of Roman occupation. Maybe you believe this is the period of Christianity at its purest, its most authentic.

I, however, do not hold such a time in high regard. I am not one to wish for Roman occupation, nor am I one to romanticize walking about in sandals, with a tunic, a staff; a donkey for a friend. But many of my more "emergent church-type" peers strike me as longing for the "old ways," ways, if they just thought about it, that would be lived without any scriptures at all (the early church almost exclusively drew from a comprehensive and beloved oral tradition). The early church, formed in the natural habitat of Palestine under Roman tyranny, was rife with power struggles, idolatry, apostasy, heresy, sexual immorality and corruption.

In short, the natural habitat of Christianity is like any other time or place. Indeed, it IS any time or place.

But note that the faithful at FBN believe something I don't. They believe they know not only where the true habitat of Christianity is, they know where it is not, and they can lead us from the artificial habitat in which Christianity is largely lived today to the real, authentic, genuine habitat that was lost, abandoned, rejected.

They are wrong. 

©2010. All Rights Reserved. 

Let Others Speak 8.7.10

"Rebellion for me is articulating my views, trying to be honest about what I see. I don't think a lot of people in the public arena do that ..." -- Michelle Obama, Vogue interview (2007)

[Indeed.]

Let Others Speak 8.5.10

"When citizens do act in their public selves as though their faith matters, they risk not only ridicule, but actual punishment." -- Stephen Carter, The Culture of Disbelief 

Let Others Speak, Part 2 8.4.10

"Christianity has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and not tried." -- G. K. Chesterton

Anne Rice Was A Christian? Who Knew?

I guess in certain circles, really small circles, the big news is that author Anne Rice has "quit being a Christian." Her thoughtful announcement was tactfully posted on her Facebook page, which, apparently, is in accordance with the rigid expectations of the newest decorum. 

Admittedly the circle in which I exist is even smaller than I thought. Ms. Rice has "quit being a Christian"? I had no idea she had even started playing. 

What, pray tell, will the Church do now? Maybe Bono can stand in the gap. 

©2010/All Rights Reserved.