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May 31, 2005

Fulfilled

As I promised, I’ve uploaded some images from the catalogue of the exhibition in which my mom’s, grandmother’s, and grandfather’s works appear. I don’t have the time, just this week, to work out high-quality scans — but the catalogue industry is probably just as happy. This is my mother’s photograph from the exhibition; you can find my grandfather’s etching, my grandmother’s painting, and the newspaper story at my Flickr site.

And Jeanne has been working on a Flickr archive for Kindred, where you can go to for a glimpse into her life with Jeanne and Gail.

Posted by AKMA at 09:10 PM | Comments (2)

May 30, 2005

Evidence Accumulates

For a variety of reasons I won’t spell out here, I’m becoming increasingly convinced that this is true: “[M]ost incompetent people have no idea they're incompetent. On the contrary, the researchers found that the incompetent are ‘usually supremely confident of their abilities, more confident, in fact, than people who do things well.’ ”

And given that, I’m inclined to suspect that AntiPixel is correct, too: “Their cunning is often inversely proportional to their talent, and it is this, sycophantically applied, upon which they rely.”

Posted by AKMA at 02:50 PM | Comments (5) | TrackBack

There Goes My Red Hat

Well, if Tripp is quoting him accurately, Benedict XVI will never appoint to the cardinalate an unreconstructed rocker such as I. “[R]ock music is. . . completely antithetical to the Christian concept of redemption and freedom, indeed its exact opposite.” Though I’m not hesitant to mull over the ethical implications of enjoying rock and roll (several students and I were discussing this very topic just Friday), I won’t back down from contending that rock and roll can bespeak God’s glory. So this is one mark against the Benedict’s theological position — unless you want to get into a question-begging game of “Well that isn’t ‘rock music’ in the sense in which he’s using the term.” Clearly, Benedict made this pronouncement long before he became infallible. . . .

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May 29, 2005

New Century

Today, a friend from church congratulated me on my article in the latest issue of the Christian Century. I know an editor there, and we’d been talking about my writing something for them, and someone there read what I posted a couple of weeks ago about when I wear clericals, and why. They liked it, edited it a little, slapped on the jazzy titled “Collared” (wish I’d thought of that), and wowie zowie, now it’s in print. The issue in question isn’t online yet, though there’s no urgency to checking there for it since my original version remains available here. If you like it, though, I suppose it wouldn’t hurt for you to drop ’em an email or something.

Posted by AKMA at 02:55 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack

Looking for David Koch

David Koch is missing, and Renee Blodgett hopes that if word spreads through Blogaria, some way will be found to keep the search for him going until it comes to a successful end by finding him.

Posted by AKMA at 02:31 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

May 28, 2005

Disgraceful

Earlier this week, Joi messaged me to call my attention to the article in New York magazine concerning Lawrence Lessig, John Hardwicke, and their experiences at the American Boychoir School — and the lawsuit that they’re conducting. It’s harrowing reading for any sentient human being, but all the more so for our family, since we used to live in Princeton, and our boys went to summer camp at ABS (and Nate was heavily recruited to join the regular Boychoir School program). We know people who’ve worked there, and who’ve worked closely with the ABS administration. (Si’s perspective on these reports appears on his blog, and Joi follows up with a blog post today.)

I don’t know the specifics of any of the case material, haven’t reviewed any of the evidence. Still, many sources and many individual stories make a weighty testimony against ABS and the way it was administered — especially if one has formed a positive assessment of the probity of any of the witnesses, as I have of Prof. Lessig. I’m sickened by the abuse (and by knowing one of those who endured it), by the proximity of that abuse to our family (it would have been easy to push Nate into the program despite his hesitancy), by the systemic effects that ensue from the sickness of a few. I’m disheartened that the New Jersey Catholic Conference has lobbied for continuing charitable institutions’ immunity to liability for negligence (a stand of which the NJCC is evidently not proud enough to acknowledge on their website).

I don’t live in New Jersey, so I have no traction with legislators there, and I’m not a Roman Catholic, so I have no sway with the Catholic Conference, and I’m not a donor or alumnus of the Boychoir School — and I recognize the complexities of beneficent institutions caught up in the effects of misconduct by former employees — but hiding and resistance and evasion are not the way to anyone’s well-being in these circumstances. What doth it profit to preserve the institution’s life, at the cost of its soul?

Posted by AKMA at 05:55 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

Cool Stuff

Doesn’t anyone know it’s end-of-term time at Seabury? I still have a help o’ papers to mark, and exams to grade next week, plenty of extra events (Awards Night, trustees meetings, and of course Graduation). But the other day people called four interesting sites to my attention in the span of a few hours. I was waiting for permission to link to some of them, but since I know it’s okay, I can’t rationalize stalling any longer.

Clay Shirky’s student Anh Dang has constructed a Gospel Spectrum, a Flash-powered visualization of relations among the four canonical gospels. It’s a lovely thing, full of promise for future directions in textual study. (I’ve complained a lot, in several articles, about the graphical aphasia of scholarship in the field of biblical studies; this shows the vast potential of using color and scale to render textual relationships.) Play with it a while, and be patient; some features take a while to load, at least on my Mac/Firefox combination.

It’s intensely impressive, though I have some wishes for further refinement. Dang has based this device on a Gospel Harmony, a convenient device for these purposes, but one that makes a significant interpretive decisions right at the outset (a Harmony gathers texts into a synthesized chronology of Jesus’ life that’s distinct from the particular sequence characteristic of any one gospel. To take but one example, the Harmony treats John’s narrative of Jesus’ confrontation with the Temple authorities (John 2:13-22) as “Jesus’ first cleansing of the temple,” without any parallel texts — the version in the other three gospels comes during the Passion Narrative (Matthew 21:12f; Mark 11:15-17; Luke 19:45f), where the Harmony describes it as “The Second Cleansing of the Temple,” obscuring the possibility that Jesus cleansed the Temple only once (no gospel after all suggests that Jeuss cleansed the Temple twice; only the supposition that neither John nor the Synoptics could have misplaced the event warrants inferring that the same thing must have happened twice). A more useful approach would permit a viewer to examine the narrative units as they appear in the sequence assigned by one of the gospel authors, with all the doublets and parallels (the folks behind the Jesus Seminar prepared treeware synopses that did just this). A harmony beclouds the data in question before it presents them.

The lines of the graph compare passages by their numbers of verses, but that’s a highly arbitrary measure; “a verse” can itself by very short or long, and may comprise quite variable contents. If one were going to make a length-of-line measure, the simplest approach could compare parallels by the number of words they use to narrate the pericope in question. Another approach might involve defining discursive units based on sound linguistic principles, and comparing the number of these, or perhaps comapring the number of finite verbs in a given context. Each of these would give a little more, clearer information than “number of verses.”

At the same time, Anh Dang has given us a glimpse of the power of rich-data analysis; whereas even the strongest analytical programs for biblical studies seem locked into a monochrome, two-dimensional frame of reference, she has used color, motion, and design to offer a more fluidly vivid representation of the data from which we work. I’d be thrilled to see what she could do in cooperation with a biblical-studies specialist. More feedback, please, colleagues?

At the same time, Dave and Kevin directed my attention to the United Religions Initiative, a project to “promot[e] enduring, daily interfaith cooperation and to ending religiously motivated violence.” That’s entirely admirable, and the project pursues its goal in part through encouraging people of differing faiths to work together toward shared goals, also a commendable end. I’m a little shy about interfaith projects, myself; it’s so easy to go awry by minimizing abiding religious differences. At the same time, I greatly appreciate the love that holds together friends from divergent traditions, and if serving vital projects together nurtures such friendships, then my own skittishness is revealed as too fastidious a fixation on the particulars of religious identity.

And in honor of Paul Ricoeur, how about this site? The architecture does a strong job, I think, of keeping in view both the particular topic of interest and its setting among other phenomenological topics.

Posted by AKMA at 04:32 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Don’t Tell Margaret —

but this morning there was a Seabury pick-up softball game (not one of the “against another institution” type), and I figured, well, my back’s been bothering me, and I’ve been over-eating and under-exercising, so why not go out and give it a try? I haven’t played softball in about twenty years, so it would be useful to find out how out-of-shape I really am.

I had a blast. I did not utterly mortify myself (made good contact, made a decent play or two), and if I don’t seem to be genuflecting as promptly tomorrow, then you’ll know why. But even the Anglo-Catholic in me thinks it was worth it.

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May 27, 2005

In The Family

You might think from my blog that Pippa is the only visual artist in the family, but she and Margaret are on Nantucket for the weekend to attend the opening of a retrospective show by the Artists’ Association of Nantucket, in the Egan Institute of Maritime Studies at Coffin School. Ordinarily, we wouldn’t go so far to catch a gallery opening, but this event draws on the Association’s permanent collection to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the Association, and includes works by my mother and grandmother (and maybe my grandfather — I’m not certain).

The story in the Inquirer and Mirror mentions my grandmother, Isabel Isabelle Hollister Tuttle; Margaret says there’s an offline article that features the family connections, and concentrates on my mom Nancy Adam, but I haven’t seen that yet. (When I do, I’ll get it online somehow.)

In the meantime, though, this placeholder between the generations of artists in the family applauds his mother and grandparents for the honor of being included in this remarkable occasion. Three Cheers!

Posted by AKMA at 03:38 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

All Along I Thought It Was St. Clement Danes

Don’t ask me how I wound up there, but if you ever wondered at all about the words to the English nursery rhyme “Oranges and Lemons,” you might want to check out this page in the H2G2 site.

Posted by AKMA at 03:20 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

May 26, 2005

More Pippa Art

I just uploaded a new set of scans of Pippa’s latest work — two oil paintings, a tempera painting, and a mixed-media Mother’s Day card. These include a couple of our favorites, though such judgments stand only for the short time until she composes another canvas.

Posted by AKMA at 09:32 AM | Comments (1)

Just Wondering

Why — when health-care costs so burden small and large businesses — is not all the force of corporate lobbying power of every industry marshaled to enact a national health care plan? Wouldn’t GM be better off without having to negotiate health plans? IBM? And certainly the small businesses that the U. S. President always claims to support would benefit tremendously — as would almost everyone.

Well, except the insurance and medical industries, of course.

Posted by AKMA at 07:43 AM | Comments (12) | TrackBack

May 25, 2005

Winslow Photo

Just this afternoon, I received from Seabury’s Director of Communications a series of photos she took during my Winslow Lecture last month. The photos are terrific; since I’m not very good-looking to start with (I have, as Halley might say, let myself go over the years, except to the extent that the phrase implies that I had anyplace to go from), it’s not often that pictures please me. I’m an especially bad subject when I’m painfully aware that someone’s taking my picture. But since I had other things on my mind while Connie was taking these pictures, I’m very much at ease, and I think it shows. Thanks very much Connie, and a toast to the other lecturers, who made the series such a success.

Now, if they send their manuscripts to me soon, we can get this puppy off to our editor. . . .

Posted by AKMA at 10:23 PM | Comments (2)

May 24, 2005

Labor Day (Late)

This morning’s Dilbert comic (it’s archived here, but there’s a dreadful wait-spam commercial before you get to the comic — so beware) and yesterday’s post from Accordion Guy make a strong combination. Knowledge workers of the world, unite!

Posted by AKMA at 09:42 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

May 23, 2005

Good and Faithful

Jeanne and Gail’s dog Kindred died this morning, at an undetermined — but quite advanced — age. Kindred was a precious friend, a trusted member of the family, whose body could not sustain her any longer.

Our sympathies go out to our sisters in Maine. When Pearl’s afflictions overbore her strength, nine years ago now, our hearts broke; Margaret especially missed the puppy she’d chosen fourteen years earlier, and had raised into a wonderful friend to our college and seminary communities. I didn’t know Kindred very well, but I know Jeanne and Gail, and I know their love for Kindred, and I didn’t want her life and death to pass by unmarked.

Posted by AKMA at 08:56 PM | Comments (2)

Truth, Error, and Varieties of Dissent

Is it even possible to err, theologically? How would we know?

I see two prominent ways of addressing the possibility of theological error. The first depends on the premise that theological truth doesn’t involve any particular realities apart from our selves. If one speaks one’s heart, sincerely and authentically, one speaks the truth. On this account, the dangerous sort of theological error entails making claims on a basis other than one’s own personal understanding of the world; by the same token, any claim made authentically, from one’s heart, can’t be challenged. One can’t be right or wrong about God — one can only be inauthentic. Our intuitions and feelings provide the criteria for theological truth, and they can’t bind the consciences of anyone else.

I won’t pretend to see this as a sound alternative, but I acknowledge that very great minds have advocated a theology such as this one. One can see a powerful appeal to this approach; it obviates the point of religious arguments, and religious arguments have been implicated in some great horrors. (Those who advocate this approach frequently overestimate the specifically religious element of such sorrows, but even if religion only provided a fig leaf to conceal the nakedness of aggression, that’s too much.) Theological authority lies within our hearts.

If the “authenticity” approach truly identifies the ways we ought to speak and write about God, then the vast preponderance of Christian teachers have been quite wrong, for two thousand years (give or take a few). Most theologians have argued that our claims about God may be found true or false regardless of our dispositions or sentiments. Arguments over theology involve a complex array of factors, but they stand or fall to the extent that they appropriately express who God is, and how we best understand God. To that extent, then, church teachers justly endeavor to inculcate [what they take to be] correct theological claims, and to lay to rest [what they take to be] theological errors.

That doesn’t imply that everything in such theological discourse can be assigned a binary right/wrong value — rather, it acknowledges that sincerely-held suppositions about God can be erroneous, and that one is better off to adhere to a theological truth that makes one edgy or dissatisfied than to adhere authentically to what is false. It implies that the locus of theological truth lies not in me, but in some source beyond my own capacity to determine. I must rely on the pooled insights of others with whom I stand in solidarity, in order to arrive at a common sense of what might be true. Theological authority involves the informed and tested discernment of a broad community of wise teachers — a magisterium, whether formal or informal — and the wisdom of the theological community needs to be taught. One can err, through ignorance of the truth, or through informed denial of the truth, but the truth (as they say on TV) is out there.

The Episcopal Church has a long history of supporting theological latitude — a “big tabernacle” approach to theological truth — partly from its contested genealogy (and subsequent contested identity), partly from the exigencies of maintaining national unity in a state with an established church, partly from a stereotyped cultural distaste for fervor, partly from the insight that the faculties with which we reason about theology are themselves partial vehicles of fallible illumination, partly a bunch of other reasons. The stock figure of the dotty English clergyman who dreams up outré explanations (or dismissals) of theological propositions reflects a genuine sense that the church is better off enduring folly than enforcing conformity. At its best, this allows for a thoughtful theologian to challenge the church’s teaching without calling the church’s authority into question, or jeopardizing his or her loyalty to the church. That ecclesiastical endurance, though, relies on the aggregate soundness of the non-dotty leadership; if the community’s pooled sense of theological truth were to drift toward “dotty,” or if the church’s decision-making process itself obscured the church’s teaching authority, the community itself would have nothing left by which to orient itself. The very process of orientation would have come disordered.

As a result, many churchgoers have lost the capacity to disagree with one another. By that I mean (sorry, I’ve been reading Lemony Snicket books), because so many in the church now adhere to the dogma of authenticity instead of acknowledging an extrinsic truth that stands to judge them. That would not be a problem in small numbers, but when a sizable body of the church’s spokespeople adhere to theological premises that are only true-for-themselves, it’s difficult to figure out how the church will arrive at any sound decisions about where we are, and whither we should head.

Day by day in the church, I observe several different kinds of dissent from the church’s teaching and administration.

• Passive-aggressive dissent: This mode of disagreement admits the authority of the church, but sneaks to get its way behind the back of a bishop or commission. “I’ll do what I want and teach what I want, until you catch me at it — then I’ll pretend to go along with you until you lose sight of me again, when I’ll return to my ways.” This seems a very common trait in the church these days.
• Romantic dissent: This mode of disagreement allots itself the martyrs’ palm while at the same time it lays claim to the victorious sovereignty to do what it wants, regardless of what ecclesiastical authority would permit. Rebels claim the prerogative to set aside the church’s authority in the name of their own vision of the truth.
• Schismatic dissent: Not truly a matter of “dissent,” I suppose, but a vivid enough part of the controversies around us to merit acknowledgement here. One part of the body discovers that (contrary to what might have been supposed heretofore) it is itself a complete body, with no need of the organs it leaves behind.
• Conscientious dissent: a dissent that acknowledges the church’s authority, but vigorously presses the church to think yet more deeply about a particular problem.
• Personalist dissent: “I don’t know and don’t really care the reasons for the church’s teaching; I don’t feel like assenting to that, so I won’t.”

When debate about a particular topic reaches a certain temperature, a certain threshold, the significant differences among these sorts of dissent evanesce, leaving visible only the obvious labels of partisan allegiance (or epithets of disallegiance). The differences among these sorts of dissent, however, will inflect (perhaps even determine) any effort to resolve a conflict in the church, and they will haunt any effort to short-circuit conflict by declaring one side victorious.

What I hope for, what I pray for, is a church in which we can disagree, clearly and respectfully, with one another. What depresses me is the extent to which a disoriented church makes honest disagreement (as opposed to partisan polemics) difficult or impossible, and the extent to which the prospect of humble and careful deliberation seems more remote with each overstated, underargued, overweening press release.

Aquinas’ Summa is so long not because he was an especially voluble character, but because he took pains to give the most charitable and careful account of his interlocutors’ reasoning — and to offer an even more thorough and careful rationale for his own thoughts.

Posted by AKMA at 08:40 PM | Comments (7)

May 22, 2005

AARP Membership Next

My baby daughter, our youngest child by far — is babysitting tonight. I feel old.

Posted by AKMA at 07:46 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack

Remembering Paul Ricoeur

Of the various theorists of hermeneutics, Paul Ricoeur always frustrated me most. I would assent to roughly four-fifths of a point he makes, and then the remaining fifth would seem entirely off the mark. And in such frustrating prose! Give me a bracing, dense passage of Derrida any day, rather than the deadpan exposition of Ricoeur.

Yet I doubt that anyone has done more productive work, across the whole span of hermeneutical thought, in the twentieth century. Ricoeur affected everything; if you disagree with him, you still interact with him (whereas ideology fences off, say, Derrida from his dissenters). His reflections on time, identity, narrative, parables, interpretation, culture, all make a difference to participants in the discussion across the board. Dissent need not mean disrespect; all grace and peace be with Paul Ricoeur, now and forever.

Posted by AKMA at 09:34 AM | Comments (6) | TrackBack

This Got By Us

In the tumult surrounding Pope John Paul II’s death, the vaunted self-promotional network of web insiders failed miserably. If it were half the megaphone it’s supposed to be, everyone would have heard ad nauseam about the April 11 issue of Newsweek, which I picked up not as a JPII collectible (despite his beatific visage on the cover), but because it includes a section on “who’s prospering on the web these days,” and I’m acquainted with some of those named.

So here’s to Stewart and Caterina, to Joi, to Mena and Ben (why is “Ben and Mena” the canonical order?) — whom Newsweek deems “leaders of the pack” of “hi-tech’s new day.” That kind of acclaim can be embarrassing, and I’m intrigued that I couldn’t find a trace of anyone trumpeting the feature online (this, even before “Newsweek” became the journalistic scapegrace of the moment). And now there will perhaps be an easier-to-Google reference to this article. . . .

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May 21, 2005

Dream On

For some reason, people keep dreaming about me. Krista, Steve, a co-conferee at Freedom to Connect. . . .

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May 20, 2005

Guide to the Hitchhiker’s

The family trundled down to the local moving picture show this afternoon, after a curriculum committee meeting, to watch The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. I enjoyed it greatly — it’s light without being lite, and my main complaint was that I would gladly have stayed for a double feature with The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, which I hope is coming soon.

That’s partly because our house is a serious branch office of the Zooey Deschanel fan club, ever since Big Trouble. Margaret was delighted to see her as Trillian, and I second the motion.

The new plot elements worked moderately well; they skewed a little heavily toward Hollywood for my taste, but Douglas Adams skewed toward Hollywood still remains delightful and ingenious. They handled Zaphod’s extra body parts very well; the Vogons were appropriately repulsive; I love Bill Nighy as Slartibartfast, even though I wish he’d paced the name-revelation dialogue a little differently. Mos Def and Martin Freeman did very well, and I toast Sam Rockwell for moving from Guy Fleegman in Galaxy Quest to President of the Universe here.

Adams’s anti-religious tic, though, just gets wearisome for some of us against whom his barbs are directed. Perhaps I’m too touchy, perhaps I should find my life as risible as he would have, but I see in these scenes less of Adams’s outlandish wit and more predictable japery.

So, is Restaurant in production yet?

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May 19, 2005

Total Quality Ministry

If churches sense the importance of preparing high-quality managers for their organizational life, should they start Six Stigma programs? Any volunteers to take that on?

Posted by AKMA at 09:56 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

May 18, 2005

Power of Ideology

No, I’m not talking about the suppression of the Bush war memo from July 2002. I’m talking about the reason that a movie almost everyone agrees to be a disappointing special-effects reel with leaden dialogue, improbable plotting, and formulaic directing will nonetheless make zillions of dollars in gate receipts.

It occurred to me as Margaret was compiling another catena of continuity problems, contradictions, and confusions, that the reason the movies will do well has much to do with George Lucas’s capacity to propose a compelling ideology much more than a believable cosmos or a well-engineered motion-picture franchise. I’ve read several times that Lucas actually believes in the myth he’s telling, and that assent provides the only reason I can possibly acknowledge for being able to bear looking at the most recent three movies. For a true believer, there are good reasons that Darth Vader doesn’t recognize C3PO and R2-D2 when he sees them in The Empire Strikes Back; there are good reasons that the apparently “liberated” proletariat must be kept under constant heavily-armed surveillance; there are good reasons that “full employment” includes large numbers of long-term unemployed workers, or that the public rationale for a massively destructive war keeps changing.

If you buy the ideology, the contradictions dwindle to irrelevance, and the glories of the cause you espouse far outweigh the incoherences your cause engenders. Star Wars doesn’t need to make sense, because Luke Skywalker’s triumphant torpedo shot justifies it.

(Might this also apply to church politics?)

Posted by AKMA at 09:38 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

Death By Eraser

I’ve fallen behind my posting Pippa art; she’s been drawing cartoons such as this one, but also has begun experimenting with oils and mixed media. I’ll have more to post in a few days, as she gives me permission.

She has a canvas up in the Seabury community exhibition, and will be showing a ceramic piece in the Evanston Young Artists exhibition, in the home-schooled students’ area — but now she’s busy watching Attack of the Clones (she thinks that the closing wedding scene should have had me edited in as the officiant at the marriage of Anakin and Padme, though she points out that “Dad would forbid it” [the wedding]).

Posted by AKMA at 08:53 PM | Comments (3)

May 17, 2005

Pants Wars

It will take a long time for Margaret to forgive Micah for instroducing our family to “Pants Wars,” the foolish game of substituting the word “pants” for some other word in the dialogue of the Star Wars movies. It gets pretty stupid, pretty rapidly.

I located this site with examples, to call to Pippa’s attention; she responded by scouting out this site. I don’t understand using “pants” as a verb — maybe I missed that page of the lexicon.)

Posted by AKMA at 05:09 PM | Comments (7) | TrackBack

May 16, 2005

Power and Powerlessness of Stories

Beginning a couple of decades ago or so, a particular group of theologians bestirred themselves to recognize that an arid concentration on propositions and abstractions did much less to enhance our understanding of God than it desiccated people’s interest in the whole topic. They pressed the case for “narrative theology,” which takes manifold forms depending on whose understanding of “narrative” and “theology” we’re adopting — but which typically focuses on the extent to which our knowledge of God involves extension in time, in a way that narrative captures more adequately than propositions.

Around the same time, politicians showed increasing awareness that a well-publicized anecdote (however embellished and fictionalized) sways the polls more than a carefully-reasoned policy document. Legislative hearings and executive speeches piled up one heart-wrenching anecdote after another in support of initiatives that would have been much less popular had they been debated as matters of statistics, rights, and responsibilities.

Comparable patterns of debate have emerged in the Anglican Communion’s contortions over sexuality and its appropriate expression. The parties involved have done a certain amount of theological reasoning, and have buttressed their arguments by copious examples of how harshly their adversaries have treated kind, pious disciples, or of how wonderfully the church flourishes when their way prevails, or of their sides’ martyrs, orr the other side’s tyrants.

The Windsor Report took sides on this issue: it specifically indicated dissatisfaction with the paucity of theological reasoning that the Episcopal Church’s leadership had advanced in support of the changes in church life that it proposes. Not everyone agrees that the Episcopal leadership lacks theological backing, but it’s obvious that they haven’t satisfied the Communion outside North America. I haven’t seen the Episcopal Church’s spokespeople redoubling their efforts to address this explicit perceived lack, but the stories keep coming.

Everyone will continue to say a lot about most aspects of this situation, but I want to make a single point at this juncture: “Narrative theology” is not the same thing as “telling affecting stories.” The narrative dimension of theological truth may involve many different things, but it still involves questions of truth that engage more than simply the heart-rending experiences of the aggrieved. Whatever we say about theological truth, we need to connect those claims with the truth that the church has received over the centuries, with Scripture, in a way that constitutes a satisfactorily reasonable argument. Windsor says ECUSA has not done that. Telling more stories not only will not answer Windsor’s point, but will convey disrespect for the very specific point that the Report makes.

Posted by AKMA at 11:50 AM | Comments (10) | TrackBack

May 15, 2005

Calculator of the Beast

Since the Number of the Beast is obviously important, and since we now have a degree of uncertainty about whether that number is 666 or 616, what shall we do?

We could just split the difference: The Number of the Beast is 641. Of course, we don’t have any text that says it’s 641, so we’d be likely to be wrong either way. But whichever number turned out to be right, we’d be equally wrong.

Or we could note the margin of error in our Bibles. If we opt for 666, we could note “(with a 7.5% margin of error)”; if 616, “an 8.1% margin.”

At least, as David reckons, the forces of evil may have been diminished by fifty.

Posted by AKMA at 06:50 AM | Comments (6) | TrackBack

May 14, 2005

Structure and Theological Education

Before I followed Maggi’s link to Rachelle’s blog, I’d have thought that I was opposed to over-structuring theological education — but some of Rachelle’s commentors leave me in the dust.

Margaret and I have home-schooled the three kids we raised, partly on the basis of our commitment to their very distinct patterns of learning and interest, partly out of frustrating experiences in our own educational history, and partly from the conviction that they would learn well on their own terms, at their own time, what they really wanted to learn (and wouldn’t learn well what we tried to induce them to learn on our terms, at a time we chose). Our experience as learners, and our experience as home-school parents (“un-school” parents, to be more exact), places me squarely on the un-structured side of the discussion with Maggi and Rachelle and others. I wish there were some way I could choose to home-school the seminarians at Seabury.

If one were not going to junk the whole notion of “classes” and “degrees” (and I’m not unsympathetic with the temptation to dispence with them), I’d probably suggest that each area of the curriculum, or each professor, schedule one series of lectures to introduce the areas for which she or he is responsible. After that, students would have the responsibility of pursuing such independent studies and organizing such seminars in consultation with the relevant faculty as would prepare the students for their various ministries.

Seabury’s reviewing and revising its curriculum in conjunction with our upcoming shift to semesters; I’ll be pushing gently for as few requirements as possible, and as many electives as possible. Maybe one way to administer such a program, given Seabury’s student population and the size of the faculty, would be to allot each full-time faculty member one required course, two elective courses, and one advanced seminar each year. That would entail radically re-envisioning some areas of the curriculum (that operate with a fairly rigid sequence of required courses), but a more open curriculum would facilitate our cooperation with other seminaries (students often transfer into Seabury with credits that don’t match our curriculum at all), would benefit students by treating them as real adult learners, and would offer faculty the opportunity to teach students who’ve chosen to learn in a given area.

In most respects, I’m with Doc on education: The more formalized the process, the less education is happening, and the more we’re selling short our birthright of curiosity and ingenuity in order to cash in the mess of pottage of quantifiable outcomes. (Sorry for the brutally mixed metaphor.)

Posted by AKMA at 11:42 AM | Comments (6) | TrackBack

I Can Do That

With Carl Kassel as resident announcer; Don LaFontaine (“The Voice of God”) as a guest; and Gail, an employee of the San Diego Library system who records the announcements on their phone answering system, as a contestant — Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me had a full week of voice-over specialists. That made me think — and those of you who’ve heard me, check in — I could do that job. Unfortunately for Pippa and Margaret, I’ve been demonstrating my voiceover talent all morning.

“In a world with frozen waffles, would anyone like some breakfast?” “A fluffy white dog. . . An innocent young girl. . . Going out for an ordinary walk. . . .”

Posted by AKMA at 11:05 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

May 13, 2005

Anglo-Romanism

Kendall Harmon cites a paper by Aidan Nichols at Anglican-Use.org. It’s a forty-page PDF entitled “A Personal View of Anglican Uniatism,” and it’s well worth general attention. Nichols is a thoughtful and articulate Roman Catholic critic of Anglicanism, so he’s Roman-er than I’d be — but it’s a pragmatic, subtle piece on what the future might look like for Anglican-Use Roman Catholics.

Posted by AKMA at 05:40 PM | Comments (2)

Arrr! Belay That Business Model, Matey!

My Ken Paul Beard/Creative Communists t-shirt arrived yesterday, and I wore it today. Margaret observed that it typified my t-shirt repertoire, since almost no one would understand it.

(I think she’s a little too harsh on my t-shirts; I do wear my Apple Store t-shirts occasionally, and my Duke basketball t-shirts are pretty intelligible. My ΝΙΚΗ t-shirt, however, stumps some people, as does my μονον αναλυε αυτον shirt. And my SPU shirts. The “Uncle Sam [Seabury]” and Enmegabowh t-shirts are self-explanatory around campus. So I’m only partly unintelligible.)

I asked Si to take my picture, and it became clear that Pippa wanted to share the spotlight — entirely plausibly, especially since her t-shirt today bore a parallel theme.

Posted by AKMA at 05:17 PM | Comments (1)

Number of the Beast, Plus or Minus Fifty

A couple of readers prodded me to comment on the thrilling — ahem — revelation that the notorious “number of the beast” in Revelation 13:18 might actually not be 666 (thus putting a crimp in the Omen movie franchise), but 616. This makes the news because a few years ago, one of Oxford’s Oxyrhynchus Papyri turned up with the number 616, and it’s taken a long time for this bit of text-critical esoterica to catch the attention of mainstream media (go figure!) — which seem to have noticed only when MTV figured out that this news had implications for heavy metal bands.

The textual variant here isn’t news; we already knew that Codex Ephraemi Rescriptus (codex “C”) reads “616,” and Irenaeus shows knowledge of that variation in Against Heresies (Stephen Carlson cites the passage here). If you own a critical edition of the Greek New Testament, you should find a mark in the apparatus that cites this variant. Indeed, this particular papyrus was published in 1999. The fragment in question merits attention because it makes the earliest direct attestation for this variant; the Oxyrhynchus people seem to be dating P.Oxy. LXVI 4499 as later third/early fourth century. That’s after Irenaeus, who died around 202, but well before fifth-century Ephraemi.

It’s hard to displace the fairly strong evidence for 666, but this bit of papyrus strengthens the case that St. John may have ascribed the number 616 to the beast — whatever that number turns out to mean.

Posted by AKMA at 09:00 AM | Comments (11) | TrackBack

May 12, 2005

Al-Libbi Follow-up

Margaret won’t let go of an intriguing topic. She notes that Media Matters has taken up the question of Abu Faraj al-Libbi’s grade inflation; CNN has finally noticed that it’s a problem; and the Christian Science Monitor acknowledges the confusion. Atrios put it best, though: “ Apparently, he just said he was ‘Third in Command’ to impress the ladies. . . .”

Posted by AKMA at 11:17 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Baptism, Expulsion

Sorry for the delay — it’s been an intense week.

What I was thinking about the Baptist excommunication controversy was this: Public debates about religious groups frequently ignore the most decisive features of such communities, and frequently assess them as though they were voluntary associations of any familiar civic kind. Hence, some portion (not all) of the brouhaha about the unfortunate congregation in North Carolina teems with the outrage we would appropriately feel if some ostensibly apolitical entity had purged its ranks of Jews. [I should add: “And of course, no one has attempted the genocidal exttermination of Democrats.”]

But that superficial outrage is surely groundless; if voting for John Kerry is incompatible with the discipline of a given congregation, that congregation must be free to say so. The pastor did not, after all, clap Kerry voters into leg irons or confiscate their property — he said they could not be part of that congregation. Since the Democratic platform included some claims (about abortion, sexuality, and so on) that a Christian group can intelligibly deem incompatible with the faith, I’d say that — at first blush — the pastor was on firmer ground than his critics. Churches don’t owe Caesar neutrality at the cost of muting the Gospel.

Ah, but things are more complicated than that. After all, there’s established case law to the effect that if a tax-exempt religious group uses its place in the community to effect particular electoral results, they lose their tax-exempt standing. Now, I don’t suppose that’s the worst thing that can happen to a church (not really up there with “take up your cross and follow me”), but it’s a nuisance and puts a crimp in the budget. (If they’re going to play Caesar’s political game, they must pay Caesar’s tax.) If East Waynesborough Baptist Church figured that the gospel was at stake, why I’d positively commend them for forgoing their tax advantage in order to remain true to the church’s moral teaching.

On the third hand, though, there’s an ironic catch. If I recall correctly from the Baptist students who have labored so hard to teach me the truth about church polity and the state, one of the founding principles of the baptist movement involved the believer’s freedom on conscience (vividly expressed in Thomas Helwys’s A Short Declaration of the Mystery of Iniquity (8-meg downloadable PDF of scanned pages here; why hasn’t anyone transcribed and marked it up in HTML?). Having experienced the tyranny of imposed profession of belief, the baptist movement stood squarely for the uncoerced freedom of the individual conscience. To the extent that the pastor in question intended to sway his flock toward unanimous support of George W. Bush, he came awfully close to aligning himself with the early persecutors of baptists, over against the earliest baptists themselves.

All that being said, the pastor in question seems to have handled the situation badly; his most eloquent defenders offer a much more precisely-framed theological case than he seems to have done, and his assailants justly call him to task for expressing so unalloyed a partisan sentiment. The controversy illustrates yet again that church leaders need the skill of careful and measured communication more perhaps than any other — and they run into all kinds of trouble when they say important things in careless ways.

Posted by AKMA at 10:05 PM | Comments (6) | TrackBack

May 10, 2005

Baptists and Excommunication

I have a second consecutive all-day faculty meeting, so I won’t be free to blog right away, but in response to Tripp and some email correspondents, I’ll think of something to say about the Baptist brouhaha, later in the day. . . .

[Later: I meant to say, “tomorrow, after I get through the faculty meeting and work out tomorrow morning’s sermon.”]

Posted by AKMA at 08:47 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

May 09, 2005

Blogrolls, Lists, Bookmarks, and So On

While I’ve been concentrating on other obligations, various ructions have caught fire concerning links and ranking. I haven’t wrestled with this topic before, but sooner or later I may as well step in it.

So, relative to blogrolls, I’ve got one, and I’ll keep it — not out of any militancy or point-making, but because Margaret uses it to navigate to recently-updated blogs from people she knows. I hardly ever look at it at all, so I’m very slow to make changes to it (I usually change it only when Margaret has reminded me that someone’s address has changed, or that there’s someone whose blog she wants to keep up with). I go to other blogs mostly from my bookmarks.

I see interesting arguments for and against having blogrolls, but none seems more immediate than the pragmatic criterion. There’s something blank about a blogroll link (as opposed to a topical, direct link). To draw on my favorite overburdened terminology, a blogroll link signifies a lot less; a link that persists on every page, regardless of context, and that points to an index paged rather than a particular post, lacks the rich texture of a topical link. Add the occasional social pressure for reciprocity, add the awareness that search bots index and rank links, and you can see reasonable grounds for opting out of the whole blogroll matter. As I say, I wouldn’t miss mine if it were gone; when blogrolling.com goes down for a while (and my bogroll blogroll vanishes), I don’t even notice.

On the other hand, blogrolls do serve some useful purposes. Mine provides Margaret with information about which of her favorite sites has been updated recently. They might direct first-time visitors to other sites they haven’t seen yet (the most frequent defense of blogrolls). In that the blogroll typically combines more-familiar, more-prominent names with less-familiar, less-well-known names, blogrolls can serve a leveling function; through my blogroll, only one degree separates Dave Winer from Reverend Ref — the keynoter, bon vivant, and inventor of blogging from a parish priest in rural Montana. Few if any other sites mediate that connection.

Moreover, a blogroll attests to a set of affiliations — the convergence of particular circles of acquaintance. (Research project: find a threshold of common links that productively marks out “communities of online discourse,” particularly tightly-joined small pieces whose link patterns suggests a neighborhood hangout where denizens share conversation, interests, and demonstrated commitment to mutual attention.) Those links don’t reflect such patterns infallibily, but as a rough guide, they’re a lot better than a wet finger in the wind. When we attest to such social loyalties, we re-bind our attention to one another, and that’s not an empty gesture. (It may be a nearly empty gesture, it’s a highly ambiguous gesture, but it’s not entirely empty.) If I were to advance a reason other than Margaret’s convenience for me to keep a blogroll, it would be the community-signaling aspect of a blogroll (which I exemplify only very imperfectly).

Now, once you have an advanced network of links, you won’t be able to stop people from compiling and analyzing the patterns; no way. That information is too richly interesting, too easily available, for motivated geeks to ignore. One of the most obvious interesting things to do with that data would be ranking blogs by a nuanced algorithm for authority; hence, we see bloggers fretting about their Technorati authority or their Google PageRank. We can opt out of contributing to that system by banishing blogrolls (or, I suppose, ultimately by not linking to other bloggers), but there’s no escape from being linked-to short of trying to keep all bots at bay.

So I don’t so much see any of the AOTechnorati100 or PageRank, best-of lists, annual awards, whatever, as a problem for Blogaria as I see them as a predictable concomitant of measurably-linked human interactions. They bother me precisely to the extent that I pay attention to all the politicking, begging, exulting and weeping — that is, “not much.” It’s pretty much the same with these barometric representations of popularity as with pay-for-blogging: some folks won’t be changed by the recognition, some will, some are only in it to gratify their narcissism, and some stand for a popularity-neutral policy of saying what they want to. If we take away commercial (or attention-economic) motivators, a certain constituency of bloggers would find some other way to clutch the spotlight. Even ranking engines, though, serve the useful function of signaling that someone else’s blog interests a lot of other people, whether I’ve heard of it or not.

I don’t blame anyone for resisting the star-maker machinery behind the popular blog. I don’t feel guilt-stricken about keeping a blogroll. I’m not wounded that I’ll never win an award or make the Top XXX list. If by a weird quirk of voting or categorization (“New category: Best Theological/Technological Blog by an Episcopal Priest Named ‘AKMA’ ”), I did win something, I might well be tickled. I’m very impressed at how rigorously my neighbors are thinking through the complexities of these phenomena, but I don’t have enough time, energy, or indignation to lend to a movement for or against.

(Oh, and I don’t have any non-obvious nominees for Dave’s list. Does the world need my testimony to affirm that the names you already know are famous, got there first, wrote the software, and supply the capital? I know, respect, and like the bearers of the names of those who show up in everyone else’s ballots — but so do many other people, and my word can’t possibly matter much in ascertaining who should be recognized.)

Posted by AKMA at 07:18 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

May 08, 2005

Odd, That

It seems as though flickr’s been down all day, but no-one’s said anything about it on the flickr blog. . . .

[Later: It’s 9:53, and flickr’s back!]

Posted by AKMA at 09:22 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

Homiletical Warning

Sermon coming up next Wednesday — the readings will be Acts 20:28-38 and John 17:11b-19. For now, I don’t have the vaguest idea what I’ll say, but I’ve opened a file within which to include my half-baked notions.

Posted by AKMA at 04:40 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Qualified Endorsement

I’m a Firefox advocate, no question — but my browser regularly hangs with a even few tabs open. I suspect a glitch with Java or pop-ups or something, but so far I’m just force-quitting and restarting it.

Posted by AKMA at 10:07 AM | Comments (6) | TrackBack

Curiouser

The Times says that Abu Faraj al-Libbi is not such a high-ranking Dread Terrorist after all, but U. S. news sources haven’t affirmed or repudiated (or, so far as I’ve yet been able to determine, even picked up) the story. What’s with this?

Posted by AKMA at 09:21 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

May 07, 2005

Milestone In Cultural History

Toronto: This afternoon, it was announced that an anonymous donor has established the Cluetrain Foundation to provide opportunities for reflection, research, analysis, writing, podcasting, travel, teaching, and productive goofing-off. The first recipient of a Cluetrain Grant is Michael O’Connor Clarke, better known in some quarters as “Ruari’s dad” (no disrespect to Charlie and Lily, and of course not to Leona).

Future grants may include research grants into eugenics and marketing, swinoculture and hamster husbandry, journalism and Joyce, photography and open-source blogging software, satire and philanthropy, librarianship and RPG, talking bears and lobsters, rhetoric and intellectual property and visual communication, and perhaps even technology and theological hermeneutics (among others).

In the meantime, the Foundation will gladly put inquirers into contact with grant-holder[s], particularly if said inquirer has an attractive job offer. Or would like to donate to the Worthy Blogger Support Fund of the Cluetrain Foundation.

Posted by AKMA at 11:40 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

May 06, 2005

Still Working On It

In response to Dr. Holly’s query, I’ve been mulling over my sense that there’s an effective formal distinction to be drawn between the Church of England’s separation from the Church of Rome at the English Reformation (on one hand) and the Episcopal Church’s hypothetical removal from the Anglican Communion.

Could this make a difference? The separation at the Reformation took place in an essentially Erastian environment, where the transition from Roman Catholicism to Anglicanism involved the [mandatory] change of allegiance from one source of governance to another, but with the infrastructure largely intact (except, of course, the monasteries) — such that an English believer who did not want to be an Anglican had few options for articulating that resistance. Emigration and treason were the main alternatives. One could presumably be an Anglican with catholic allegiance, within a largely reformed church, as there was no other above-the-table alternative expression of the Church in England. The continuing identification of citizenship with a positive relation to Anglicanism well into the nineteenth century constitutes an environment that obliges the church to incorporate a broad range of dissent within its self-definition.

That’s part of my puzzlement about the current retrospective “This is true Anglicanism” impulse in some quarters. I had always thought that true Anglicanism bore with the potty vicar who was sure that Jesus was really an astral traveller, or that theological doctrine was a pointless appendix to the finer points of fox-hunting. Such people come, they occupy seats of greater or lesser prominence and authority, then they retire or die, and the church itself doesn’t change much. The point isn’t that we don’t care about error or try to correct error, but that the Truth is stronger, lasts longer, and eventually renders error moot. Truth counteracts error from within the church. (And that also provides us with the opportunity for learning the ways in the church may need correction — from within.)

In a world wherein the difference between being an Episcopalian (U.S.-style) and being an alphabet-soup Anglican-Communion recognized Anglican, a catholic-minded person can remain in fellowship with the trans-national church she or he recognizes by driving a little further to the congregation of choice. One is almost obliged to exercise private judgment (horrors, John Henry!) in ascertaining to which body one might belong.

That’s my present best shot at articulating the difference I sense — but I’m venturing this as a trial balloon, not as a forceful claim about the nature of Truth and catholicity.

Posted by AKMA at 06:07 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

May 05, 2005

Arrival

For those keeping track of the location of various delegates from the Adam family, Margaret returned from Durham this morning, and is resting up from her year of academic exertion. We’re intensely pleased that she’s home with her family, and we’ll be doing everything we can to recharge her for another go-round with academia in the fall.

Pippa and I will exhibit an image each at Seabury’s Community Art Exhibit from todaay to early June. Pippa’s hanging a painting entitled ’The Purple Dress,” and I one of my photographic representations of problems in hermeneutics. I’ll post her painting to flickr once she clears it — but she’s stern about my releasing any of her work before she decides it’s appropriate.

Posted by AKMA at 12:04 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

May 04, 2005

Again, Why?

I followed a link from the Tofu Hut to a page that points to dozens of online music videos, and nostalgia impelled me to click on a couple, then to wonder about several others (such as, for instance, the u2 “Gloria” video). Why is it so hard to find these online, and why are so many of them low-res, or pixellated-streamed, tiny frames?

These are promotional devices — commercials — and there’s an eager audience for them. Why do the record companies make it hard for me to amplify my desire to buy their products?

Posted by AKMA at 01:49 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

May 03, 2005

I Bought One

After I wished for the t-shirt, how could I not order a print of Paul Beard’s “Your Failed Business Model” design? Yes, now the shirt is all red, with the printing in yellow: perfect!

(Again, props to meg for having said it first, so far as I know.)

Posted by AKMA at 01:35 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Read Before Midnight Tonight

So I went to Amazon to test the new concordance feature about which David blogged (to no avail, alas) (I mean, “I went to Amazon to no avail,” not “he blogged about it to no avail”), when I noticed that not only were the regular books I’ve written available from Amazon, but also the reviews and articles I published in Interpretation.

I’m proud of “Walk This Way”; I think it segues nicely into the lecture I gave a couple of weeks ago, and someday maybe they’ll mate and give birth to a book. But $6 is a little much even for a very good article by itself. I’d understand if you held out for the complete issue of Interpretation for just a little more. But the mini-reviews for $6? That’s just absurd. My review of Lohse’s Theological Ethics of the New Testament is just 300 words or so. Email me, and I’ll send you the Word file for a buck.

It’s cool that Interpretation has ventured into electronic distribution. I just wish they’d done it a little more generously.

Posted by AKMA at 08:28 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

May 02, 2005

Marek Made Me Go There

It’s Kombinat’s fault.

All I can say is, we’re vegetarians here — we’re in solidarity with you, sisters and brudders.

Posted by AKMA at 09:36 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Possibility

In musing about the possible outcomes of impending decisions in the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Communion, it occurred to me that I might appeal to a diocesan bishop I’ve met, whose public theological statements match mine almost exactly. Maybe he’d admit me to his diocese.

He’s the Archbishop of Canterbury.

Posted by AKMA at 07:30 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

May 01, 2005

Joys of Randomness

I’m not one of the iPod Conspiracy Theorists who’s convinced that Steve Jobs invested extra developer work-hours to make the “shuffle” playlist favor certain songs rather than others; “random” (or “pseudo-random,” to be precise) makes the most sense to me. That doesn’t prevent my taking delight in the juxtapositions that the iPod can produce, powered by impartial algorithms.

For instance, my iPod just played El-P (feat. Cage)’s “Oxycontin Part 2,” then followed it with the Temptations singing “Cloud Nine.” Apple can’t teach it to do that!

Posted by AKMA at 05:29 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack