MSNBC - Religion as mainstream pop culture

Typical out of touch media response to an unavoidable intrusion of religion into areas where the media think it should not be or are surprised it is. Look! People read the Bible! People buy church stuff. We better explain this odd fact so that people can understand who these folk are. Of course, it is most Americans, but not the tiny minority we know. So they must be explained as if they are a marginal minority. Millions of Baptists are explained as if they are as obscure and odd as the Amish.

Quick question: Are there more homosexuals in American or Baptists?

Today I met a real hero. Here name is Baroness Carolyn Cox. She is deputy speaker of the House of Lords, who single handedly justifies the continuing existence of that august body. The Baroness framed the human rights situation around the globe from the point of view of someone who has risked her life to go to the places and see for herself what is happening. The Baroness has brought medical and food relief to suffering people around the world. She goes where mainstream aide agencies dare not go. As a result of her unflinching zeal for human rights, she has been condemned to prison in the Sudan in absentia. An entire nation has declared war on one woman. I pity the Sudan.

Baroness Cox is no extremist. In careful, scholarly, words she outlines the threat we face. Radical Islam is seeking to destroy Western civilization. In the Sudan it promotes human slavery. In Nigeria is it murdering thousands of Christians and seeking to overturn the freedoms of that country. In Indonesia, it has destroyed decades of peaceful cooperation between Christians and Muslims and murdered thousands of people. All over the world radical Islamic money fuels hatred of Israel, the United States, and liberty. In London, Muslim leaders preach hatred and terrorism techniques. Meanwhile civil libertarians protect these religious leaders who would destroy the civil liberties of the libertarians first. Conversion from Islam in most of the Islamic world means death.

Radical Islam is the enemy of the United States. It hates us for our virtues and not just our vices. Where it advances slavery and genocide flourish and medicine and science fail. To waver for one moment in our war against the terror of radical Islam is to invite more death and destruction. There is no possible compromise or dialog with the foe, because they are beyond reason.

For the United States to slacken in the War is beyond folly. Remind yourself of this fact: tonight thousands of Christians are in danger of slavery and death around the world from radical Islam. We have not yet lost the equivalent of one Indonesian village. There children are butchered before the eyes of their peers in the name of Jihad. Meanwhile, San Francisco Democrats march against the war, though they would be the first to die under a wave of Islamicist violence. Our patience with the war fails as oil prices rise and we begin to complain about the cost. In the Sudan, mothers will be killed and their children sold into slavery to become soldiers of the jihad.

God save America. God save the President of the United States.

At the Divinity School, passionate talk of ‘The Passion of the Christ’(Harvard Barf-caption time): “Although Gibson claimed ‘The Passion of the Christ’ remains true to the history of the Gospels, Bovon pointed out that this might be a hollow claim. ‘The Gospels are history and interpretation,’ he said. ‘The Gospels are not our best sources to the history of the passion of Jesus.’
‘The problem is that much of this stuff in the movie is in the Gospels,’ countered Cox. ‘It’s read every Good Friday in churches.’ The film may push Christians, he said, to scrutinize what he called ‘these terrible passages’ of canonical sources. “

Safe prediction:
In one hundred years, the Gospels will still be read. Harvey Cox won’t be.

Someone should point out to the Harvard Divinity School folk that they have become at best useful idiots for the secular left. No one takes a Divinity School of this sort seriously except when it is time for the annual Easter and Christmas denunciation of traditional Christianity. Then like clockwork out they come. Harvey Cox has reached the point of self-parody having drifted through every possible religious configuration except orthodoxy.

I was admitted and almost attended HDS. I am sorry I did not go. It would have fun to have been a dissident at such a place. Here is hoping we flood the school with traditionalist students very soon.

HughHewitt.com

Hugh Hewitt is engaged in finding out whom John Kerry most resembles. Let me provide the classicist answer: John Kerry is the American Alcibiades. Alcibiades was a child of privilege who was one of the brightest and best of his generation. He served his city with distinction. However, his personal narcissism and private immorality led him to betray Athens eventually. He was gifted enough that pragmatists were always willing to defend him, but he was a man without moorings or beliefs other than in himself. Superficially well educated, he was beloved by mainstream academics, but rejected Socrates. Alcibiades Kerry is loved in Harvard Yard and loves intellectual postures, but his thinking shows a rejection of real wisdom. In fact, the present Democrat leadership is the party of Alcibiades.

Christian academics are paid decent money to work at faith based institutions. Many of these institutions have statements of faith that they ask their faculty to sign. Others ask their faculty to agree to codes of conduct. Of course, both ideas would cause system crashes in the operation of secular universities. The idea that one could believe in anything is bad enough, but regulating conduct? Surely you jest.

Now worrying about secular colleagues is wrong headed if you are at a Christian school. Having invented the University, Christians need not worry about the folk busy turning the university into a multiversity. While showing respect for their scholarship, we are still called to be in the world, but not of it. We are often too good at the “in” and not so good at the “not of.” Christians should be encouraged knowing that their worldview is true and though it is always seemingly losing, this losing is always to some new ideology every century.

Still there is a certain sort of weak in the knees Christian professor, who wishes to deny the faith without losing his job. Often he views his calling as helping his poor students out grow the “simple” faith of the parents who pay his salary. This sort of academic is best recognized by his loathing of the actual people who pay his bills. He looks at Christendom and sees reactionaries. He looks at UCLA and sees the Promised Land.

CV is academic speak for a resume. Getting a good CV leads to good careers in the academy. This is the all consuming goal of the sell-out Christian academic. Papers. More paper. Add to the CV. He is the sort of kid who knew his SAT score and managed to tell you every day. CV, as we shall call this Christian academic, crushes the poor conservative student with his reading and accomplishments. CV will help them grow. No time for prayer. No time for devotions. CV must add to his CV.

CV believes he has many good traits. He is very, very brave. He speaks up boldly against James Dobson and loves to snort derisively at the Left Behind series. He never attacks Dr. Phil or feels superior to airport book rack novels. Those might be favored by his secular friends. Christian television disturbs him mightily, while he watches secular television. He sees nuance in everything and is “subtle” never simplistic. A typical comment in class might run like this, “Ah, yes. So it would seem. And yet the Bible is more subtle than such a simplistic reading would indicate. Nuance must not escape you. Things are rarely so black and white.”

CV wishes to be paid a great deal of Christian money while moaning about his sacrifice for the Kingdom. CV has an imaginary career at Yale that he is always inferring his job at Acme Christian College forced him to pass on. He is doing everyone a favor by being there. The standards at Acme cause him pain. CV is sadly “burned out” with his job which allows him to do less and less. His classes are still well attended. . . since his grading is fairly easy and he says “wild things” all the time that attack the Christian establishment. Like parasites, vermin, he lives off his host school and gives back nothing. Sadly such Christian vermin can be dangerous to the health of anyone who gets infected.

How to flush out CV? Ask the following:

1. Who is the last person in your profession to whom you shared the gospel?
2. What was the last stand you took in print at a professional meeting that cut against the grain of the profession but affirmed traditional Christian values?
3. Have any of your secular colleagues ever said, “Most Christians are idiots, but you are not?” If they did, were you disturbed or did you get a glow of satisfaction?
4. Does the Scandal of the Evangelical Mind describe your view of the church? Or did you think it might be bit, well, simplistic? Even once?
5. Do you read your Bible every day? What did you read today? What was God saying out of it?

How do I know this person so well? Ah, dear blog reader, if I am not careful such a man am I. Lord Jesus Christ, son of God, have mercy on me a sinner.