AKMA’s Random Thoughts

Clued Planning

In the aftermath of the Moveable Type plug-in contest, and with the announcement of MT 3.1, may I state for the record what’s obvious to many, but still no persuasive to some? SixApart (I’m through saying “Ben and Mena,” since that’s no longer even approximately the right characterization of the 6A troupe) executed a fine stroke of strategic differentiation. Since a pair of the things that set MT apart from alternatives (“rivals”) in the blogging software field is the tandem of a capitalized business structure (which the OS candidates can’t call on) (yet) and its plug-in structure (for which developers had been producing modules for years), they brought the two together and offered prizes for developing useful plug-ins. They treated positive developer relations as an essential dimension of their plan, cultivated a core of excellent plug-ins, cultivated an array of good plug-ins that didn’t quite make the grade, cultivated an even greater number of developers with some experience working on plug-in customizations for MT (who therefore are already acquainted with the ins and outs of manipulating MT, and thus stand to work more effectively with MT with future clients), and gave their users another reason to adopt/stick with MT (access to all these plug-ins), for the price of some snazzy hardware.

Well done, SixApart!

Never Rains But

Passed through western New York today, on our way toward the East Coast, and were staggered by two successive torrents of water between Buffalo and Rochester. Liz, I know it snows a lot out here, but I had never heard about the rain!

Not Quite

Max Cleland put his life where others only put their big talk, and he lost a Senate race on the basis of outrageously groundless accusations. I respect and admire him immensely.

That doesn’t give him a free pass on theological claims, though. Last night, he quoted Jesus’ saying that “no one has greater love than to lay down their life for their friends” — true enough, although for Jesus that saying plays a different role from that which it plays in the lives of soldiers. Cleland then went on to say, “greater patriotism has no one than this” (I’m quoting from memory here, typing in the car without access to a source for direct quotation). Let’s keep matters clear: Jesus was not about patriotism. If anything, his life and words describe an anti-patriotic critique of national idolatry, and a consistent pacifism.

Margaret asked, “Isn’t it worse than Constantinianism [the pernicious merger of ecclesiastical and state power] when one claims to respect the separation of church and state, but then co-opts the church’s message for political purposes?”

Formal Observations

I had been hoping to share the results of some of Pippa and Jennifer’s fantastic clean-up efforts — that would be, photos of some old posters that have been hiding, curled-up, in a closet. There’s a poster for the Clash gig at the Stanley Theater in Pittsburgh (Combat Rock tour; I love the fact that the poster doesn’t mention the year of the concert), a poster for the Clash’s first album, a Who Are You poster, and various posters of Margaret’s heroes (and mine):Bruce Springsteen, Pete Townshend, David Bowie. But that’ll have to wait till I get back from my triumphant “All Over Heck and Back” summer tour.

Two other great things happened today. First, the local house-call bike-repair guy came around and spruced up the family bicycles, during which operation he refused (on more than one occasion) to perform more work on them than the bikes themselves warranted). Then he looked at the beat-up second-hand bike I’d picked up to replace my even-more-beat-up long-term bike, and he said it just wasn’t worth any work at all. My old long-term bike, though, was worth oiling, adjusting, and putting new tires on — so he fixed it up nicely, for little money, and told me that as much as I loved that old beater, he really wanted me to save up and buy a new bike rather than invest in repairs to a rusty old one. I got the sense that I might have to mug him to force him to accept my money.

Second, I crept up to our financial officer’s desk holding some intimidating forms from our new medical insurance plan (this is our third plan in four years), and asked her if she’d help me figure out how to answer the questions correctly. She took a cursory look at the sheaf of documents I offered, made a scornful face, and dropped them in the trash before my panic-stricken eyes. It turns out that these really were not my responsibility, that I had already provided the necessary information, and I was off the hook. Bless you, bless you, Lynn!

But that brings me to my outcry of protest for the evening: What sense does it make for medical and financial decisions to tremendous importance to be determined on the basis of forms, forms that are so obscure, tedious, simultaneously repetitive and subtly different, that a visually- and verbally-literate writer and thinker positively dreads filling them out? I know, Eric will jump up and start talking about the benefits of DigID for HIPAA; at moments such as this, I’m a soft touch for those arguments. I just want to go to the doctor, find out what’s up with my thumb, pay a bill moderated by insurnace for which I pay a reasonable premium, and live without fear that I’ll be bankrupted or killed for putting the wrong number in the wrong ambiguously-labelled space on a form. . . .

Hmmmmm

I don’t know, the new flickr theme song sounded more like the old Nestle’s Hot Chocolate Quik theme to me (turn down the volume before you click on the mp3 link). I have a vivid memory of the version that Danny O’Day sang, with Farfel the puppet dog snapping his mouth closed at the end of “Chocolate!”

David Weinberger, Bon Mot Factory

I was just getting over “the main difference between seeing it live and seeing it at home is that at home you get better reception,” from yesterday’s blog and one of David’s radio interview segments, when, perusing Jeneane’s place over my wife’s shoulder (your hit counter should register twice for that one, Jeneane) I noticed his remark quoted in USAToday, “Objectivity is a worthwhile objective, but it needs to be recognized that it can't be reached.”

I’m working on a slightly tighter version — something like “The only people you can trust to be objective are the ones who know that objectivity can’t be reached,” something like that. Hmmmm. . . .

[Added later: The line is all David’s; I’m only in this as a touch-up artist. I am an incurable (my students would say, “insufferable”) editor. That is all.]

Important Linguistic Research

We’ve spent a lot of time reviewing these research results, and all I can say is, this is what makes scholarship exciting.

[Later: I’m supplying these illustration of Margaret’s comment to this post:]

Constructive Conformity

They’re he-e-e-e-ere (and Si has a bad case of counter-consumer lust).

And David says, “Googlenym,” and so say I. (My Googlenym is “AKMA,” nice and simple.)

Quotations Needed!

I got a solicitation from Jim Rafferty, a friend of mine who’s helping organize a conference on teaching, religion, and technology in a few weeks; Jim’s looking for pithy quotations to use as thought-provokers to stimulate theological pedagogues to imagine broadly the possibilities and practicalities of the relation between our work as teachers and the applications of internet technology. I’m passing along to him Dr. Weinberger’s “writing ourselves into existence” and Tfute’s “PowerPoint corrupts absolutely” (I had the sense someone else said it first and Prof. Tufte quoted it, but I can’t find an earlier source), but I was looking for some distilled wisdom from Searls, Lessig, Doctorow, Locke, and others to propose for him — and I’m having a hard time isolating gems from generally-useful observations. Does anyone have other suggestions?

On The Ground

In an example of the strength of weblogs as a source for feet-on-the-ground perspectives from outside the pre-packaged channels of information, Danya has posted her photo-essay on the ramifications for Bedouin of the authority of the Israeli state. As Danya points out, the problems that Bedouin face are not unique to Israel’s governance; the U.S. has been there, done that, and Canada, and numerous other states. The Bedouin autonomy and nomadic way of life constitute them as an antigen for the body politic of the modern centralized state (even apart from the religious tensions that affect the Mideast) — could any modern state tolerate the existence of a distinct, mobile, self-determined people within their borders?

Cheers

To Suw Charman, now an offical blogger with her own page at Corante — and to the fifteen churches of Australia who just signed an historic agreement toward the goal of mutual recognition and sharing (thanks to Jonathan for noticing and realizing I’d be interested).

And in a note unrelated to anything, I’m trying to puzzle out how to make Kung-Tunes work with my MT blog template. Not now, I mean — I’m working on my commentary now — but in stray moments. I’m not quite at the geek threshold required to make the bits I understand hang together into a functional interaction.

Pippa Against Carnivory

We weren’t planning on going to this picnic, but now that Pippa has had her way with the response form, it’s probably better that we lay low [or “lie low” and “ ‘lay low.’ ”[

Picnic Invitation Originally uploaded by AKMA.

Complicated

I’ll be leaving for a working vacation soon (two conferences, visits to family, a book deadline hanging over my head, and Margaret leaving for Durham halfway through, argh), but I’m going to try hard to pretend that it’s all pure vacation. I could use a few carefree days. I make myself dwell in the complication zone, but a little simplicity would make a relaxing break.

On the topic of ways that “simple” communication escapes the limits of our intention and signifies more than we would wish, consider the two entries on “clothing” from Danya, who dresses day by day with regard to what clothing might imperil her life, what clothing might misrepresent her faith, what clothing requires what explanation to whom. Danya is Danya, and probably ought not be near the top of anyone’s hit list of dangerous people (nothing personal, Danya), but her clothing choices always outrun whatever might be her intent to communicate in clothing. As one correspondent [OK, Laura has given me permission to identify her] observed to me, “I was especially struck by the reversal of being safer looking like a religious Israeli or being safer looking like a tourist (not a ‘settler’), depending where you are. There’s no safe identity. So then what, is there a place where might as well just be ourselves? or is there no true self w/o cultural context(s), etc. ? Is it more ‘authentic’ to be your Berkeley self in Jerusalem and in the territories? or to try to translate/ inculturate your ‘self’ expressed in the language of where you are?”

That’s not as extreme an example as some might think; the points my correspondent makes apply quite as much in the US as they do in Israel and Palestine. The stakes usually differ, but the same conflicts of culture, the vocabulary of apparel available to us, the messages that our clothes imply, all overwhelm any wish we might harbor to send a simple message such as “This is my favorite shirt” or “I like pink!” Women’s clothing especially entails this sort of interpretive overdetermination, since men in this culture tend to infer a lot about a woman’s sexual behavior from how she dresses. How many times, for example, does the sentence “She dresses like a. . . ” end with the description of a sexual professional as compared to any other figure of comparison?

On a less interesting note, the question of when I wear my clerical attire comes up with wearying regularity. As I get older, I think differently about clericals from the ways I thought ten or fifteen years ago; on one hand, I don’t have a great investment in the statement that my black shirt and white collar make, while on the other hand I’m less inclined to care how anyone interprets my decision to wear black-and-white. It’s out of my control; I have my reasons, which may be as dull as “that’s what was clean,” and people can make of it what they will (as the man said, “people just love to jump up and down”).

If all this is true of so limited a rhetoric as the syntax and semiotics of clothing, how much more must we let go the illusion that we can control the flow of signification when we’re trading in words?

Doing Homework

This is what comes of not reading the comments.

Earlier today, I criticized Dave Winer for using a photo of a naked woman as attention-bait for his nifty new Convention-Blog-Image-Aggregator thingummybob. Dave wrote me to say that he had meant his pointer as a warning against clicking-through (for those who would be offended). I try to be fair-minded and responsive, and especially to apologize when I’ve gotten something wrong, so I edited my post to reflect what Dave told me about his intent. I err often enough that it behooves me to make amends as quickly as possible — particularly to do so publicly, lest people think I was reluctant ever to admit I was wrong, or that I was trying to rationalize and excuse my mistakes rather than coming out and admitting them.

Having gone back, now, to look at what’s on Dave’s site, and having gotten around to reading the comments he left here, I’m perplexed about his emailed protest to me. If I wanted to steer delicate sensibilities away from potentially offensive material, I wouldn’t make an link pointing directly to it, describing exactly what potentially offensive material to expect there.

“Meaning” and “intending” are elusive things, and (as I’ve argued here before) they always escape our control. Dave says he intended only to warn people away from material that might scandalize them, but in his comments he fixes attention on “nipples,” whereas my critique rests on his using sexual images to attract attention. If that wasn’t what he was doing, there’s no need for him to advise me to “loosen up.” I’m not fretful about the naked beauty of creation. I am concerned that as long as people want breezily to use the power of sexually-charged images of women to claim attention, but then to minimize the effects of that move, they perpetuate a dominant double-talking discourse and arrogate to themselves the authority to let themselves off the hook for insensitivity.

I have no interest in picking a fight with Dave; if I had, I wouldn’t have apologized right away, without even checking to make sure his explanations held up. But if he’s concerned to protect people from offense, he certainly has communicated that in a way that tends, I think, to confirm my original suggestion that his gender politics are somewhat tone-deaf. Whether that’s what he intends, or not.

Another Cool

Speaking of cool things, the iTunes Catalog app looks very attractive. It searches for album art, for lyrics, and it generates HTML catalogs so that you can post an online version of your recording collection (complete with Amazon Associates-aware links via which users can link to buy copies of your disks).

I probably won’t pony up the $10 to register it right away; I’ll stick with the now-OS Clutter (LazyWeb — how about making it search for album covers from Walmart instead of Amazon?), and see how badly I miss the bells and whistles of iTunes Catalog.

And Seth Godin’s new project, ChangeThis, is cool, too. (Thanks, Bob!)

Look At This

Dave Winer has cooked up a snappy new application for aggregating entries and images from bloggers at the political conferences, and has deployed it at a site powered by a high-speed server. All of this is very cool, and deserves all the link-love that Dave requests.

Using the prospect of seeing a picture of a naked woman to draw attention to his new site is would be not cool, but Dave has explained to me that he intended to give specific warning, so that people who might be offended wouldn’t follow his link. I would have constructed such a warning differently, but I was wrong to infer from Dave’s entry that he intended to encourage visitors to go and ogle.

Dave clearly cares that people not think ill of him on this kind of point, and although he and I certainly disagree about gender politics at a number of points, on this one I mistakenly concluded that Dave was up to something roughly the opposite of what he wanted to do — sorry, Dave, my mistake.

Q. E. D.

If the world needed any evidence that I’m an introvert, I think this morning proved the case. I had a final part of the interview process this morning, really quite a good conversation, but when I stumbled in from the car I curled up in a fetal position for an hour or so.

As you may imagine, I don’t type that well in a fetal position, so I’ve staggered downstairs to begin reintegrating myself with civilization.If someone has written something interesting online, I may find out about it over the weekend, because I’m now officially five days behind on Life, and only gradually regaining the capacity to read and think. So if you address me and I make a pained expression and withdraw into my pill-bug imitation, please be patient; it will pass, in a day or so.

Four In A Row

Days of non-stop exhaustion, that is.

This morning we drove down to Hyde Park; Margaret dropped me off and continued to O’Hare to deliver Phil Kenneson to his departing plane. I had a big schedule, but was early for my first appointment so I ducked into a Starbuck’s near my destination. As I contemplated my selection, a loud voice sang out from behind the latte machines, “Professor A. K. M. Adam!”

(Someone had blown my cover — uh-oh!)

“The Reverend Doctor A. K. M. Adam, whose weblog I read every day!”

I looked around, but I couldn’t tag a face to the voice. The Starbuckian leaned out from behind Latte Central and introduced himself: Tony, from a class I’d visited last year (and from this site, though he didn’t mention it at the time, nor did I say anything, since I wasn’t sure every blogger in the world advertised to their co-workers that they write online). It was spectacular to hear words of encouragement and praise first thing on a busy morning, and I set out for my day’s discussions heartened by Tony’s kindness.

The day went well; lots of intense conversation, and a serendipitous meeting with Alex, more intense conversation and a pleasant dinner out, and now I have to go to sleep to be better-rested for a breakfast meeting in Hyde Park tomorrow — after which I will come upstairs, crawl under the covers, curl up in a fetal position and zone out for the indefinite future.

Ekklesia Day Three

Amy Laura Hall gives this morning’s plenary; her talk is called,“The Irreproducible Gift and the Incalculable Gift of Life: Toward a Non-Teleological Theology of Procreation.”

She shows a collage of images that display the constructed distinction of “the well-planned family” as against the “merely accidental family.” She cites the Lilly Corporation’s advertising for their ADHD medication Strattera, the slogan of which is “Welcome to Ordinary.”; the American Museum of Natural History’s handout on the Genomic Revolution, “Get the right tests!”; a bipartisan congressional ad to prevent teen pregnancy that shows a pregnant girl with the word “Nobody” plastered across her in large red caps; advertisements for adoption agencies, complete with credit card icons, as love objects; an illustration of the American eugenics movement, including the “Fitter Family” movement; the atom as icon of the family, and the double helix as an icon for the healthy future; and advertisements for baby formula and appliances (she refers to the “factory-farming mother” who pumps her breast milk) and an ad that suggests “Physicans’ Babies Are Better Babies.”

What does she mean by the “Irreproducible Gift”? In Church Dogmatics 3/4, Barth says that the tension and pressure of the socially-instituted obligation to procreate has been removed by the Incarnation, but that now conception and birth now may be received as a true gift. She reads Barth through Kierkegaard; in Philosophical Fragments, the moment has decisive significance. The moment of the Incarnation, death, and resurrection has decisive significance; if the moment doesn’t have this significance, we are speaking merely Socratically. The decisive significance of this moment underlines the gratuity of the incarnation, the non-necessity of all that is, the non-necessity of Christ. Our existence in time is not the rolling out of the inevitable, but is a radical gift. Creation and eschatology cannot be teleological in the sense that the end is in any way a given.

What, then, of procreation? In Acts of Love, Kierkegaard suggests that there is no necessary narration of our identity; the child alone in the woods may be anything. Even more, the child in the womb may be anything. All our existence is radically contingent. But, by becoming receptive to Christ, we are incorporated into the narrative of Christ’s identity (I think; Amy Laura talks awfully fast).

Her concern about biotech is not Fukuyama’s worry that it will fragment society, will dissolve the sentimental ties that hold society together. She argues that biotech crafts serviceable others; we can narrate children in ways serviceable for teh purposes of a capitalist society. Kierkegaard doesn’t so much reject Kant’s Kingdom of Ends, but pushes deeper to ask what it would mean to go beyond Kant to ask what would it mean to see every other as an alter Christus. (I missing a lot; she does talk very fast, with little fluff.) She rejects the “primordial” critique that appeals to a pristine prior condition from which technology effects a division, that “enhancement” amounts to a meretricious artifice.

She does read biotech as a (not Thomistic) gratuitous normativity of grace, not of nature. It is possible to argue that the factory-farm mother is not natural, that the Fisher-Price aquarium in the crib with a remote control to put your child to sleep is not natural.

She wants to take a snapshot of a culture that is about crafting families and children to fit within a particular narration of children’s identity as those who will meet the demands of our present economy. The justification of biotech shifts as women enter the workspace. “The family that leads procreation up to chance risks a burdensome child; the family uses biotechnology to control conception and childbirth can expect to excel.”

The “atom” functions as an icon of the blessed future. As early as 1947, you can find images of the human nostalgic past dying and tangled up in red tape, contrasted with the restored well-beign of the human sphere blessed by the atom from the hand of God. The atom (according to this illustration) will revive agriculture, cities, the home, and human health (the nuclear family — modulating from the family that benefits from atomic power to the family members as the constituent subatomic particles).

The US government sponsors a display for gentic technology whose theme is “what makes you you.” Genes are what make you who you are. At the same time, the display stresses that everyone is the same genetically (lest one infer a basis for racial discrimination). She demonstrates that the public face of biotech presents it as a means of depotentiating the threat of danger that correlates with racial difference, a medical panacea for human difference. Aggression, anxiety, and obesity are allegedly genetic disorders. (She cites advertising copy that sells Lilly ADHD medication as a means for re-incorporating Dad into family life.)

Her main point is a critique of the biotechnological management of contingency, the means for mastering the uncontrollable. It’s a powerful talk, but it would be even more impressive if its elements were more smoothly integrated.

Brian Volck responds by citing a poem, the epigraph of which begins “We wanted to confess our sins, but there were no takers. . . .” The wealthy live as if we can save ourselves; only the poor truly hope, since they have no alternative.

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Unfortunately, I hadn’t fully charged the computer before the session began, and I ran out of power partway into Brian’s response.

We spent the time after the conference’s official closing ceremony (Brent, saying “Go in peace!” hanging out with our out-of-town pals, and drifting back to Evanston. I walked several miles in the course of the day (John Utz, his daughter Rachel and I got lost looking for a bookstore anywhere near DePaul), I woke up early and didn’t sleep much last night, and I have a big interview tomorrow, so I’m going to bed.

The Ekklesia Project holds a great conference for subversive Christians — a pretty good one for other interested folk, too — and it’ll be back next year; I’d be tickled to see you there.

Ekklesia Day Two

Kate Wallace will post the text of her presentation on her website; she’s asked that we listen, without taking notes, so I won’t expatiate on her talk. She and her respondent, Thomas Finger, have walked us through close readings of the Magnificat in Luke’s Gospel, Kate in the RSV English version, Thomas from the Greek text.

And I missed the morning session of workshops, as I fell into a conversation with Brent Laytham, so I’m sitting down in the book display working on the James commentary.

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OK, it’s after lunch, and I’m at the session on “Echoes of Mary’s Song in Popular Culture,” led by Matt Gunter and Rodney Clapp. They’re concentrating on the ways that the vision that Mary expresses in the Magnificat come back to our attention in music. They highlight three motifs:

• Anticipation/Eschatology
• Anger/Reversal
• Inclusion/Exclusion
  (Beyond “us” and “them”
  
  (Israel and the Gentiles)

The theological themes don’t necessarily appear with the refined precision of classical orthodoxy (likewise, of course, many favorite hymns), but they called these songs to our attention (with my nominations after Rodney and Matt’s):

1. Anticipation
• Bruce Cockburn, “Cry of a Tiny Babe”
• Sister Rosetta Tharpe, “This Train (Gospel Train),” 1960 version
• Wilco, “Christ For President”
• The Call, “Become America”
  I might add
• Talking Heads, “City of Dreams”
• The Alarm, “Absolute Reality”
• Tom Verlaine, “Kingdom Come”
• The Reivers, “He Will Settle It”
• of course, Thunderclap Newman, “Something in the Air”
• The Housemartins, “Caravan of Love”
  maybe even
• John Lennon, “Number Nine Dream” (depending on how you define your terms)


2. Anger/Reversal
• Larry Norman, “The Great American Novel
• Iris Dement, “The Wasteland of the Free”
• Tracy Chapman, “Freedom Now”
  To which I nominate:
• The Housemartins,, “Get Up Off Our Knees” and “Freedom” (okaya, so I’m a Housemartins fan)
• Kirsty MacColl, “Walking Down Madison”
• Elvis Costello’s “Tramp the Dirt Down” expresses, I think, none of the graced hope of the Magnificat, but he sure is angry about injustice
• War, “The World Is a Ghetto” (does this count, I wonder?)




3. Inclusion/Exclusion
• Steve Earle, “Jerusalem”
• Rosanne Cash, “Western Wall”
• Johnny Cash, “Down There By the Train”
• Jim White, “If Jesus Drove a Motor Home”
  I’d add
• disappear fear, “Who’s So Scared?”
• Talking Heads, “Creatures of Love”
• Laurie Anderson, “Strange Angels”
• Toni Childs, “Zimbabwe”
• Of course, Nick Lowe’s “What’s So Funny ’Bout Peace, Love, and Understanding?” my favorite version of which is still Elvis Costello’s from Armed Forces

Now I’ve blown Matt & Rodney’s routine for any Chicago-area church groups, but it’s still worth sitting and listening and talking things over with them.

Ekklesia 2004 Part One

During registration, I ran into a man named Jeff Bullock. Our encounter very rapidly exemplified for me the strength of weak ties; he caught onto my vital commitment to the vision of the Disseminary. He and I had never met before, but we had been told to look out for one another, and when we ran into one another we feel right away into an animated conversation of mutual encouragement to brgin the Cluetrain to the life of the Episcopal Church.

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Jonathan Wilson began the conference by proposing that we think of our topic not so much as “the upside-down kingdom of God,” so much as the right-side up; refusing to concede the reality of the disordered cosmos, and asserting the greater reality of the rectified world. The Grain of the Universe flows with Jesus’ way, not against it. That contextualizes our discourse as a proclamation of Good News, of a positive Christology (as opposed to messages that the world and faith are uniformly grim and frightening) — otherwise, Christians internalize and reproduce the assumption that the temporal world is the only world that counts, that the temporal world sets the agenda for our lives; that the bondage to decay and frustration that characterize temporality are not the last word. Christian theology is about the good news that entropy does not govern the cosmos.

I Cor 1:18-25 expounds the right-side-up-ness of the theological message in the face of an upside-down world. The celebratory element of play bespeaks the vision that Mary’s word invokes. Playful interrogation of the world’s foolishness stands to accomplish a great deal more than solemn, detailed critiques of the economy, the state, and the idols that captivate us. Stan H observes it’s too easy to let our critiques of the world become more interesting than the Gospel.

Similarly, disciples are not obligated to effect change in the world, but to stand in the way of the right-side-up world, among people who see only the upside-down world. Jonathan described his vision of “standing in the way” in the sense of “getting in the way of,” or “interposing ourselves,” but I’d want to stretch his usage to include “getting ourselves into the Way” of Christian discipleship — even when all the apparent paths diverge from that Way.

Stan proposed several playful slogan-critiques of the world’'s practices, such as “Greed — its good for the economy,” “Vanity is only for the beautiful” or “Vanity — not for you,“ “Satiety is for the dead,” He notes that one reason Christians get so upset about sex is that we have fairly clear lines of demarcation for knowing when we’re doing it wrong, whereas there aren’t such bright lines that tell us when we’re being greedy. “How can you tell?” Stanley asks; “When you have two SUVs? One isn’t enough?”

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The session on “Ekklesia and Emergent Church” is being led by Scott Bader-Saye of the University of Scranton, and blogger Geoff Holsclaw of up/Rooted and Life on the Vine Christian Community. Scott and Geoff are devoting some of the workshop time to defining the emergent church (“the emerging church conversation,” as Geoff emphasizes). He sets the emergent church in the context of varying generations of evangelicalism and its instrumentalist outlook, and in the context of the church’s relation to temporality (where evangelicalism has tended toward an atemporal “me and Jesus” worldview, where many mainstream traditions have succumbed to the weight of their traditions).

Scott proposes that the Ekklesia Project may have put too much emphasis on the “counter” of our counter-cultural identity, and acknowledges that the positive theological vision of the emergent movement, and its self-consciously rich and critical celebration of contemporary cultural make its discourse an edifying complement to EP’s intellectual and ethical spirituality.

Scott suggests four vectors of interest from EP to emergent:

• Pragmatic ecumenism


• Ancient-future worship


• Generous orthodoxy


• Recovery of missional identity

Scott notes that “mission” tends to refer either to “converting people to be church members” or to “good deeds on behalf of others,” but for both Ekklesia and emergent, “mission” refers mostly to a way of being in the world that bespeaks the Gospel in action. Both Ekklesia and emergent derive a great deal of the energy toward self-identification from the matter of integrity, on the Ekklesia side with regard to the ways that the churches have compromised themselves through their dalliances with the state, with modernity, with capitalism — and on the emergent side, through the lived experience of the vacuity of the churches’ discourses, the distractions and busy-ness with which churches preoccupy themselves as a way to keep the radical demands of discipleship at bay.

Geoff suggests forgoing the construction of our neighbors as objects-of-evangelization (“Gen-X-ers,” “postmoderns”), and forgoing the spatial metaphors that tie the church to immobile geographic dimensionality (such metaphors as contrast-culture, resident aliens), but putting into play a sense of the church as culture of fulfillment. By this he means that Ekklesia could productively develop a sense of making the very best of the best that the world offers.

Scott problematizes the notion of “relevance,” but notes the need of a term to do the work of relevance; he proposes emphasizing the incarnational mode of the church’s identity, the manifestation of God’s presence in human activity. That entails both the churches’ very humanness and activity, and also its calling to make the God’s ways perceptible in the human sphere. Scott also cites Rowan Williams’s advocacy of the mixed-economy church, where the church honors the growth at its fringes (here Scott is thinking especially of the emergent church, of intentional communities and cell-based churches, pub church and café church). On one hand, you can say, “That’s not really church,” exclude and isolate them; or on the other hand, one can recognize these stirrings and affirm them and welcome them.

Ekklesia Blogging

Margaret and I venture forth today to take part in the Ekklesia Project’s annual meeting, where we’ll work on a richer understanding of our discipleship and gather with old friends. I’ll blog if they have wifi. . . .

“Those who choose the lesser evil forget quickly they chose evil.”

- Hannah Arendt

Maybe, Maybe Not

“I trust God speaks through me. Without that, I couldn’t do my job.“ [all emphasis mine]

There are many things President Bush might have meant by that; some of them aren’t scary. [Link from the Lancaster New Era (registration required, sorry and puzzled), via The Revealer]

R is For Rosen — and For Religion

Jay Rosen, of The Revealer, asked his readers to think about what might happen if the population of the journalistic campaign bus included not only the seasoned political reporters, but also journalists on the religion beat: “If a religion writer covered the presidential campaign, how would campaign coverage be different?”

As a theologically-interested observer, this is how I’d answer Jay’s question:

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First, Jay, may I rephrase your question? I hate to fulfill a destiny to become increasingly pedantic as I get older, but you asked “If Religion Writers Rode the Campaign Bus... what would be different?” That’s one I can’t answer, not only because of deficient mantic capacities, but because the term “religion” covers so much terrain that I can’t presume to address its range. Each of us speaks from a particular location within a particular tradition of construing reality’s texture; we all do better to acknowledge the horizons of our claims rather than pretending to privileged access to some presumably universal vantage point.

Instead, what if we asked what might happen? That permits me to imagine myself (or a like-minded journalist) on the trail, and that option better fits my capacities.

Among the first things that might happen could be articles, interviews if possible, actually probing the candidates’ theology. Sound-bite answers that identify denominational allegiances, favorite philosophers, or attitude to church-state issues don’t get at the substance of a person’s convictions about God, the human condition, and the ways in which a candidate’s understandings of God and humanity issue in judgments about social and political behavior. Why could not a congenial, fair-minded interviewer plumb the souls of these candidates to learn not simply what they say about God and faith, but also how they think about such topics? One might learn about the formative influences, authorities, practices, and ultimate convictions that shape the candidate’s behavior; and one might ascertain the depth of understanding with which the candidate speaks about these topics.

Another difference might derive from such a journalist’s alertness to inconsistencies and ironies relative to the political scene’s construction of religious topics. For instance, although the press tuned in to questions about whether the conquest and occupation of Iraq constituted a justified war, I have observed no attention to whether subsequent developments (relative to the presence or absence of WMDs, the international consensus or lack thereof, and the effects of the invasion) bear out or undermine the case for having regarded this as a justified war. I haven’t seen stories that analyze the divergent approaches to evaluating war as an instrument for foreign policy that have characterized Christians from the Catholic tradition (itself internally contested and heterogeneous), which has explicitly pursued and articulated the grounds for regarding war as justified, to the historic small-“b” baptist tradition (including Mennonites, Hutterites, and Church of the Brethren), within which a great proportion of Christian pacifists have found their home — let alone the manifold ways that Hindu, Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, and other traditions of reflection have treated these topics. Where political journalists often treat “religion” or “Christianity” or “The Church” as essentially homogeneous, a more religiously-alert writer might focus on the widely-divergent specific traditions that constitute the Big Category Names, enriching her or his material not only with awareness of the differences among and within theological traditions, but also with the themes that distinct religions share, albeit in different ways. When politicians deploy Big Vacuous Terms such as “religion,” or “the Church,” or “Judaeo-Christian values” to plaster over the constitutive theological disagreements among American citizens, the religiously-attuned journalist could be in a position to identify the narrower positions slant to which the politician is appealing.

Of course, it’s hard to see politicians offering any great detail on these topics when vagueness fits so well into the privatization and trivialization of religion. Any detail, any specific point to which a politician confesses adherence risks alienating votes. The religion reporter on the campaign bus who probes for ambitious answers to searching questions expends precious time and goodwill in an endeavor that stands to embarrass her or his source; better, perhaps, for all concerned to settle for anodyne rote responses to superficial religious questions.

A campaign journalist whose religious roots run deep could be in a position to explore the candidates’ positions on “life” positions such as abortion, war, stem cell research, health care, physician-assisted death, and the death penalty. On what basis would a “pro-life” candidate abolish legal abortion, but send troops to war and execute convicts? On what basis would someone who supports abortion rights hesitate to condone euthanasia or capital punishment? Moreover, deeply-held theological beliefs ought to shape our responses not simply to obvious questions of life or death, but to questions on the conduct of life in all it spheres. Numerous observers were surprised when Susan Pace Hamill's masters thesis on the Alabama Tax Code excoriated the laws enacted by legislators who make hay of their Christian commitments, but hers was only an isolated example of the application of theological reason to political process.

A religiously-informed journalist might know enough of religious history to be able readily to cite ways that the terms and practices of particular groups have changed over the years, to note that dogmas and rites inform their traditions in different ways under different conditions. Such a journalist might spot, and address on-the-spot oversimplifications, distortions, and blind spots that impoverish politicians’ statements and reporters’ coverage thereof.

Finally, a religiously-grounded journalist could be in a position to hold in suspension the primacy that virtually all culturally-prominent voices ascribe to pragmatic considerations, to political premises indigenous to American liberal democracy, to the postulate that “citizenship” (with its obligations and benefits) is an unproblematic characteristic for Christians, to the confinement of religion to the category of private sentiment rather than reflective discernment, and to the cornucopia of incoherent rituals, dogmas, offices, and rhetorical flourishes that the American political system substitutes for an explicitly theological account of life, the universe, and everything.

Thanks for asking --

Grace and peace,
AKMA

Auf der Suche nach der verlorenen Zeit

As I browsed through the image stream at flickr, I saw this neat shot, which in turn reminded me of a sight I had to spend a half hour trying to track down. As I recall, when I visited the Cathedral in Cologne while on a faculty tour of Germany, I found myself wandering around the courtyard, some of the paving-stones of which had been inscribed with various messages. I had been in Germany a day and a half and was getting acclimated to seeing the world in German, when at my feet was a stone that read, “This might be a site of historic significance.” I couldn’t find any reference to it on Google, though, more's the pity. Maybe I just imagined it.

sidewalk stencil Originally uploaded by vÃcÃpinta.

Personal Pangrams

As a type enthusiast — and laborer in the mills of digital typography back in the day when everything was bit-mapped, before even personal computing — I harbor more typefaces on my computer than I actually use day-to-day.

My type management software (Extensis Suitcase, which isn’t perfect, but good enough) permits me to view non-installed faces in a sample window, for which I determine the text. Since I want to see all the letters, I have until recently used generic pangrams familiar from typing class (“The quick brown fox” or “Sphinx of black quartz”) — but the other day I noticed Mark Simonson’s fabulous Pangrammer Helper, Now, instead of seeing sphinxes and lazy dogs, I see type display itself in personalized pangrams: Hazy “Margaret backs down jive flax quip” and “Queer jowly AKMA dupes zaftig beach vixen.” It’s a simple pleasure, but satisfying nonetheless.

This is Great

Just wish the images got poster-sized. . . .

More Flailing About Copyright

By title:

The New York Times (registration required, sorry) bemoans the sale of used books on the internet, leading with a misguided comparison of used-book sales online to Napster (great line: “There aren't any easy answers, especially as no one is breaking any laws here”).

And megastars U2 agonize over the loss of an unfinished draft of their next CD. I enjoy U2’s work, and I sympathize viscerally with their frustration that someone stole a copy of their unfinished work — oooh, that would upset me. But after what Wilco showed the world with Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, it’s hard for me to get on board with reported fears that “illegal downloads of the music could cost the band and the record company millions of dollars in lost revenue.“

Wouldn’t Have Thought of That

Somehow, a mystery soft-drink cup has relocated to our home. Margaret and I noticed it on the dining room table the other day; it bore the proud inscription, “Kum & Go” in big red letters. Each of us looked at the cup, realized that we had never seen that cup before, and gazed at the cup in puzzlement. “When did that get here?” say I. “I don’t know,” Margaret answers. “I put it there,” Pippa tells us; “I’m having a drink of water.” When we indicated that we wondered how she had obtained it, she told us that she’d gotten it out of the cupboard. (Parents can be so very dense.)

After we explained that we were more interested in the question of how that particular cup arrived in our kitchen, the whole table went silent. None of us had ever been to a Kum & Go, so far as we knew, nor were we aware that we knew anyone who had been to a Kum & Go.

So we had to Google it — whereupon we learned a great deal, primarily that we weren’t the only ones who found that business name outlandishly absurd. If Kevin Smith had incorporated it into a Jay and Silent Bob movie, we’d have moaned and rolled out eyes at what a dumb gag he’d just inflicted on his audience. But it’s real, and it’s the subject of serious concern.

And we still don’t know how that cup got here — though we have our suspicions . . .

Tell the Truth and Shame the Devil

I’m very eager to see Sy Hersh’s next major report. I hope it come soon; I hope it’s not soft-pedalled.

This is George W. Bush administration policy in action — we’ve read the memos.

Really, It’s An Improvement

I followed the links to All Music’s page for feedback on the new design, to leave them my observations on the way the site falls short of adequacy, when I noticed a link to a defense of their redesign.

That was yesterday, though; today, the defense of their redesign seems to be gone. (Whoops! Thanks, Waxy, for capturing and posting it.). I’m curious to see what develops next, but so far I haven’t seen anything vaguely approaching a positive response to the new design, and plenty of hostile responses.