Author: AKMA

I beg your pardon, but today was a very full day and its outcome involves several tasks for me to execute carefully and sequentially. As I get these squared away, I’ll be in a position to say more. Thank you for your patience.

On a walk back to the Center from Small World, the “Pruit Igoe” section of Koyaanisqatsi played on my iPod. I can sort of understand not enjoying Einstein on the Beach or some other Glass works, but even twenty-plus years after Margaret and I were first captivated by the film and music in a small theater in New Haven, these compositions still knock me out.

“That was depressing, even for a Finn.” — Olli-Pekka Vainio, author of Justification and Participation in Christ

• Obama has not shown that he can’t win over white blue-collar voters — he has shown that he’s not as popular as Clinton is among them. “Obama hasn’t proved he can win… white working-class voters“ — yes he has, he just hasn’t won as many of them as has Clinton. There’s a very significant difference between Obama running against McCain in a general election and Obama running against Clinton in a series of primaries whose main function is to determine the Democratic Party’s nominee. It’s possible that white working-class Democrats will support a pro-war Republican in the general election, but the strongest sponsors of the “Obama can’t win” refrain belong to the Clinton campaign’s spin factory. It would be interesting to see how many of them pontificated four years ago about how “electable” John Kerry was. Oh, and Obama didn’t suffer a “big loss” in Pennsylvania — last I saw, Clinton’s margin came in at about 9%, which (if that counts as a “big loss”) would make Obama’s win in North Carolina a “crushing demolition.” In fact, Obama seems to have made much greater gains among Clinton-favoring Pennsylvanians than Clinton made among Obama-favoring North Carolinians.
• Speaking of political figures, it was good of the New York Times to notice that Jeremiah Wright is not the only bombastic preacher who’s aligned with a presidential candidate. Of the two, I find, Wright vastly more plausible than Hagee, but the dominant media culture has defined Wright as “unpatriotic” and “controversial,” whereas Hagee has not been scrutinized and characterized with nearly the fierce (and, in effect, partisan and I dare say racist) attention. Thanks, Jennifer, for catching that.
• Cheers for the Open Humanities Press! I would wish that their numbers increase, but that’s practically inevitable; perhaps, “May your rise to prominence be swift and expansive!”
• A propos of nothing in particular, I wondered yesterday how Washington would react if the 1977 Hanafi Muslim siege took place today. Same cast of characters, same behavior — just a more intensely-charged atmosphere of fear and anti-Muslim anxiety.
• Three theological notes worth remarking. First, Jason links to Stephanie Paulsell’s apologia for academic preparation for ministry. I’m on board with both sets of observations, but I’d probably put it more strongly. A particular anti-intellectual bias has crept into church life, and those who venture to name it will be labeled “eliltists” — but I can’t escape the conclusion that if the gospel matters at all, it matters in ways that benefit from knowledge understanding, and critical reflection. To repeat myself: if you were having heart trouble, you probably would not go to a doctor just because she had a pleasant bedside manner and was open to ideas from lots of different approaches to medical treatment. Ministry involves the cure of wounded souls, with far-reaching consequences, but people deprecate learned preparation for that vocation. Sigh.
  Second, Jason points to Doug Chapin’s pointer to a survey that suggests that “fundamentalists” don”t know their biblical content as well as those whom the report’s author calls “critical” readers. The labels don’t matter much, though this comes as no surprise to me. What matters most is that “Even within highly secularized nations such as France, the U.K. and Holland, broad majorities report a positive attitude towards the Bible, describing it as ‘interesting’ and expressing a desire to know more about it” and “Broad majorities also describe the Bible as ‘difficult’ and express a need for help in understanding it – suggesting, according to the authors of the study, a ‘teaching moment’ for the churches.” This corresponds to what I’ve experienced in every situation — except those where parish or institutional leadership has inculcated the anti-intellectual mediocratism I alluded to above. The vital point isn’t that so-called fundamentalists don’t know the Bible well, but that the vast preponderance of people sense that they don’t know the Bible well, find it difficult to learn about, and want to know more.
  Third, Tripp pointed me to this post about “what the church can learn from Wikipedia,” a premise about which I’d be more positive if I didn’t see so overwhelming an anti-intellectual bias to so many quarters in church life (Left Behind and da Vinci Code, anyone?). I’d just as soon not rely primarily on ground-up Jesusphilia as nuritional guide for healthy faith.

I just received word from Seabury’s email newsletter that my [former] colleague Frank Yamada has accepted a position as Director of Asian American Ministries and Associate Professor of Hebrew Bible at McCormick Theological Seminary in the Hyde Park consortium of seminaries on the South Side of Chicago.
 
Frank will be a tremendous catch for McCormick, and his departure from Seabury will sadden everyone who continues under the Seabury banner. Congratulations, Frank (and Michelle, and Steven and Adam)!

We seem to be approaching resolution. There are ways it will be fine and good, and ways it will be hard and wearying. I expect I’ll be in a position to write about it within a week.
 

 
Margaret and Pippa spotted this luna moth on their morning walk (Pippa nearly ran into it, which would have been pretty unnerving). I’d never seen a luna moth before; it ranks up there with having seen a pileated woodpecker as exciting nature events in my life. I’m taking it as a good sign.

I just got a very bogus email purporting to be from the Internal Revenue Service. Ordinarily I just delete such emails; if I were to forward each one I get to the appropriate corporate anti-phishing address, I’d have a full-time job of it (hmmm).
 
But this seemed to belong to a different category, and I thought it worth alerting the IRS to this effort to impersonate a federal agency. So I went to the IRS fraud page to find the email address to which to forward the message, and — lo and behold — it seems that if you want to report (apparently) fraudulent activity, you have to download and print out Form 3949-A and send it by postal mail to the IRS.
 
So, I deleted the message.

When we went out to go to Evensong to hear Pippa, the car wouldn’t start. (We borrowed a neighbor’s, and I expect we’ll have the car towed tomorrow.)

There are lots of reasons I oughtn’t to say much about looking for work — so I won’t. I have been the addressee of a number of deeply touching letters, emails, and visits, for all of which I’m intensely thankful. I struggle with the up-in-the-air-ness of the job scene, but that may clarify itself in the next week or so. In the meantime, please forgive me if occasionally the clouds obscure the sunshine around here.

I’m working on what I want to say about the function of “literal” in interpretive/theological discourse; as part of that think I recalled that most people come to hermeneutics as they do to politics and religion and design, with partially-formed intuitions about what must be and what ought to be. I was wondering how to get at the relation of those under-theorized premises, when it occurred to me that the SongMeanings website provides some helpful illustrations.
 
If I teach a hermeneutics course again, I may direct students to a song each, with the assignment to examine the kinds of claim that commenters make about what the song “means,” and the sort of evidence they adduce for their claims. It may be easier to recognize some exaggerated errors in this open website than to catch them in play when arguing out a theological issue.

I would have a difficult time giving a deep account of why, but I was greatly saddened by the report that Deborah Jeane Palfrey seems to have hanged herself yesterday. I don’t know enough about the charges to take a stance relative to her innocence or culpability on the specific counts of which she had been convicted; I (not surprisingly) take a dim view of commercializing sexuality, though the penal system seems an awkward implement for discouraging those practices. Phil cites sources that suggest she was murdered. That possibility, and the likelihood that the question won’t be resolved, intensify the baleful gloom that envelopes the principals in this very sad story. I pray that all these lost sheep be brought to relief, to peace, to forgiveness and truth, under better circumstances than prevail here below.