fundamentalism by blunt instrument
I noticed a link from DailyKos to Proclaim & Defend in our stats today. I thought… what in the world? How would anyone come to P&D from DailyKos?
Click here for the DailyKos article.
Click here to see where we were linked in a comment.
Not a surprise, but the attitude of many towards Christians is on display.
John 15:19 "If you were of the world, the world would love its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, because of this the world hates you.
Dave Doran on things that annoy him in blogging debates.
Just thought the world should know that I agree with every point in Dave’s post.
Over at Proclaim & Defend, I linked to this article by a seminary professor from Charlotte. I think it is well worth reading. While it may not be the only explanation for the results of the election, I think Michael Kruger is correct about the spiritual state of the USA. This doesn’t bode well for the politically conservative side in the future. The spiritual state of Canada is much worse, which is why we have NO abortion law and a nation-wide same-sex marriage law – and it is why, despite having a Conservative government with a professing Christian Prime Minister, we are very unlikely to see any change over these social concerns in Canada.
This state of affairs puts an imperative on the Christians of North America. We need to get out of our comfort zone and be concerned with evangelism. The people of our nations are sinking fast. Their only hope is Christ and we should be alarmed about the needs of our friends, neighbours, acquaintances and even our enemies.
On the outlook for the future… many of my friends appear to be well into the doom and gloom camp. As it happened, the Dow Jones average dropped by 2.36% the day after the election. Many cried that the so-called fiscal cliff was at hand. The next day, the DJIA dropped another .94%. The horror! Well, today it went up, by only .03%, but up is up, eh?
The fact is that the stock market does fluctuate every day. A 2 % drop on one day is not a really significant drop.
Over at Religious Affections, Jason Parker recommends reading books to children, especially books like Winnie the Pooh. I couldn’t agree more, and have a lot of affection for the fluff-stuffed bear. (The original Winnie was a bear from Canada, by the way – my Canadian insecurities compel me to get that info into the story.)
When we came to the last story of Pooh, where Christopher Robin is growing up and Pooh is destined for the toyshelf, I couldn’t make it through the story. I still am moved emotionally as I recall the experience. My wife asked what was wrong as I struggled to proceed. “It’s a coming of age story,” I replied. She offered to read it herself. As she read and thought of what I said, she, too, was strongly moved. So that reading became a tag-team affair. We each took turns reading as we were overcome by the emotion of the story and our crowd of little ones gathered around us. They, too, were growing up (and are now fully grown, alas!). They looked on at us in amazement.
I’m reading a series of books on the history of Britain. I picked them up at the British Museum in London last May. A very enjoyable read – usually accompanying my morning oatmeal! Currently I am in A Brief History of Britain, 1660-1851: The Making of the Nation, by William Gibson. This is volume three in the series; each volume has a separate author.
Came across this quote on the Enlightenment today… made me sit up and take notice!
The Enlightenment is one of those historical ideas that can easily give the impression of inevitability, methodically working towards some pre-determined event or goal. Folk practices and ancient customs, it suggests, irresistibly gave way to science and the laws of nature. This feeling of inevitability is partly because of the way in which historians approach it. The Enlightenment in Britain, and in Europe, was not a single monolithic phenomenon. It was a collection of processes and movements, some of which coincided, some of which were connected; others were disconnected and occurred haphazardly. These events and movements were as contingent and prone to reversal and failure as any other parts of history. The word ‘Enlightenment’ adds to the inevitability as it implies an emergence from darkness, and suggests a shedding of the light of reason on ignorance and superstition. In fact ‘Enlightenment’ was not used by people at the time and was only used much later to summarize all sorts of processes and trends in this period which were quite disparate. So we should restrain the tendency to see the Enlightenment as a victory of science over superstition.
The idea of the Enlightenment as a period of reason is challenged by much of the emotionalism of the period. The evangelical revival, the understanding of the human mind and the growing sense of individualism are examples of the way in which the Enlightenment was also preoccupied with emotions and feelings. How people felt, as opposed to how they thought, forms an important part of the Enlightenment. So while much of this chapter refers to ‘reason’, we should not discount the impact of emotions. (pp. 92-93)
I thought this was a remarkable observation, especially coming as it appears from a secular writer. Gibson is Professor of Ecclesiastical History at Oxford Brookes University. He is also Director of the Oxford Centre for Methodism and Church History. So perhaps he is not as secular as I thought. In any case, he makes a very interesting observation.
The headline: Selective abortions prompt call for ultrasound rules
In a recent issue of the Canadian Medical Association Journal, its editor-in-chief issued a call for banning the disclosure of a baby’s gender before 30 weeks of pregnancy in a bid to end the practice of aborting female babies. This practice is especially prevalent among some South Asian cultures (the editor issuing the call is apparently from this culture himself).
The whole article has the pro-abortion side tied up in knots, as you can see from the comments following the article. You can also see the hard-heartedness of many Canadians who insist on their rebellion and sin.
The article is, overall, heartbreaking. The ramifications of the fall of man are constantly on display. May God help us reach some of our fellow citizens with the gospel.
In the New York Times today, there is an interesting article on the United States Christian Commission, an organization dedicated to ministering to the soldiers on both sides of the American Civil War.
Like the Y.M.C.A. movement in North America, the commission drew its force from the Second Great Awakening, a flowering of evangelicalism in the decades before the Civil War. As they offered religious services to soldiers, the commission’s staff also spread its version of Protestant Christianity, grounded in the doctrine of the Trinity, the authority of the Bible, the priesthood of all believers and justification by faith. The commission emphasized conversion, too, and excluded mainline Protestants from serving in its volunteer corps.
D. L. Moody served as a preacher in the work of the USCC.
The comments on revivalism in the article are much more positive than some bloggers offer lately!
When things aren’t going well with a team and the owner or general manager of the team issues a statement that includes the words, “Coach so-and-so has my full support”, what does that mean?
It means they haven’t found a replacement yet.
So when an institution offers a weakly worded statement of support for one of its adherents, what does that mean? It means that the adherent can see the handwriting on the wall. “No support here”, it says. And that’s the end of it.
A friend of mine posted an article to which I objected. I objected privately, so I’m not going to post a link. We had a brief and I think courteous exchange of views. But the whole discussion gets me thinking about the whole paradigm shift that the new media is. That is, I think we are still getting used to the internet (or, as one of my hockey bloggers calls it, “the AlGore”).
It is common practice in the blogosphere to link to other blogs or articles online. This is part of the ‘netiquette’ of blogging, especially when you are writing a contrary opinion. The link provides context, your readers can go to your online ‘opponent’ to see what they said in context in order to decide whether they will agree with you or him or neither.
It is also common practice to link to news items of interest with a brief comment suggesting why the link was interesting to you.
I have occasionally linked to Christianity Today when I see articles of interest there, or when I wish to take issue with something said there. Some of my fellow fundamentalists have commented when I have done that without much of a disclaimer. I guess I don’t think a disclaimer is all that necessary when I am critiquing an article. It is pretty clear that I am not agreeing! (Does anyone think I am ambiguous when I disagree?) And I don’t think a disclaimer is always necessary when I am just passing along a link to say: look at this, it’s interesting.
But what if I was writing an article listing a whole host of sites as “good resources for church planting” or “good resources for spiritual growth” or “good resources for theology”?
In my life time, that’s how much the radius of the earth has changed, according to NASA.
The scientists estimated the average change in Earth’s radius to be 0.004 inches (0.1 millimeters) per year, or about the thickness of a human hair, a rate considered statistically insignificant.
I am sure you were waiting with bated breath for that bit of news!
I’m just wondering if that means 108 hair-widths for the diameter??
The latest audio from the GBCvic
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