Entries from March 2008 ↓

Pope baptizes prominent Italian Muslim:

Italy’s most prominent Muslim commentator, a journalist with iconoclastic views such as support for Israel, converted to Roman Catholicism Saturday when the pope baptized him at an Easter service.

As a choir sang, Pope Benedict XVI poured holy water over Magdi Allam’s head and said a brief prayer in Latin.

“We no longer stand alongside or in opposition to one another,” Benedict said in a homily reflecting on the meaning of baptism. “Thus faith is a force for peace and reconciliation in the world: distances between people are overcome, in the Lord we have become close.”

Vatican television zoomed in on Allam, who sat in the front row of the basilica along with six other candidates for baptism. Allam later received his first Communion.

An Egyptian-born, non-practicing Muslim who is married to a Catholic, Allam often writes on Muslim and Arab affairs and has infuriated some Muslims with his criticism of extremism and support for the Jewish state.

OK, so he’s a “non-practicing Muslim” and a critic of the jihadists, who will doubtless target him for apostasy and the pope for performing the baptism. Still, this reminds us of the ultimate answer to the jihadists: not war but evangelism.

This blog has experienced a huge surge of visits, beginning on Monday, so that we are getting almost twice as many as we were getting the previous week. I don’t know why that is, but I’m very grateful and want to welcome one and all.

One new reader came to us out of curiosity about an article that I wrote, which struck him because I talked about “Beowulf, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Andy Warhol & Paris Hilton all in the same few short paragraphs.” That pretty much describes the scope of our topics on this blog. Well, those folks and Christ.

For new readers, I just want to point out that the best part of this particular blog is the discussions that we provoke. Read the comments and notice how illuminating the discussions back and forth can be. Note the high level of discourse, which sometimes gets heated but seldom degenerates into the nastiness of so many other blogs. We have different opinions here, but also genuine Christian charity for each other (at least most of the time–we keep working on that). This is to say, what you have come to in this blog is something like a virtual community, and we welcome you and encourage your participation.

So new readers, stick around, bookmark us, comment, and come back often. This is a weekday blog, so we make no new posts on the weekends. But when there aren’t any, browse the previous entries and the archives, where some of the discussions are still going on.

I have put together something of a sequence today, going from Good Friday, through some of our usual kinds of topics, to Easter.

MAY YOU ALL, NEW READERS AND OLD, HAVE BLESSED HOLY DAYS AS YOU CONTEMPLATE OUR LORD’S CROSS AND HIS EMPTY TOMB.

Grunewald’s “Crucifixion”

(Note how the same artist of this utterly dead Jesus renders Him at Easter, below. You may want to save that view, as well as the other posts on the Resurrection, for Easter day.)

Even the Washington Post, like Slate below, finds itself proclaiming the Gospel today! The very stones are crying out. Read Michael Gerson’s Reasons For Good Friday, which begins with a discussion of a new book by Timothy Keller (a pastor in Manhattan who IS reaching postmodernists and not by making Christianity seem more shallow but by plunging into its richness). (The reference to the Christian poem that converted Simone Weil SHOULD have mentioned the poem: Love III by George Herbert.) But get this conclusion:

Good Friday calls attention to a final argument as to why the God of the philosophers, however useful, may not be enough. In the end, the problem of human suffering cannot be minimized or explained away — but in the Christian story, that suffering has been shared. Perhaps, in our own darkness, we need the imprisoned God, the scarred God, the shamed God, the despairing God. The poet Jane Kenyon grasped at this mystery of Good Friday:

The God of curved space, the dry

God, is not going to help us, but the son

whose blood spattered

the hem of his mother’s robe.

As a meditation for this day read “The Sacrifice” by George Herbert.

Notice how Samuel Crossman alludes to this poem, as well as to Herbert’s Love Unknown in that haunting Lenten hymn My Song Is Love Unknown.

Enjoy the music that goes with these links.

HT to Pastor Bryan Wolfmueller, whose district president Randal Golter, of the Rocky Mountain District, received this statement from synodical president Gerald Kieschnick and released it with his permission: “The KFUO decision transpired with my awareness but neither by my order nor at my direction.”

HT to the Wittenberg Trail for passing along this message from the fired host, Todd Wilken:

“My thanks to everyone who has been so generous and supportive. Thank you for demonstrating such brotherly concern toward me, Jeff and our families. We are encouraged by everyone’s Christian compassion and friendship. Everyone, go to church. Eat and drink the body and blood of Jesus. Celebrate His death for us. Await His resurrection. It’s Holy Week - the best week of the year.

Go here to sign an online petition urging the powers that be to put the show back on the air. I was #1,999 and the number of signers is soaring.

OK, OK, I know I was bad-mouthing “American Idol” this season when it first started, but nevertheless I have been watching and it has gotten interesting. The certain winner will be David Archuleta, who has all of the teeny-bopper votes of last season’s Sanjaya with the added advantage that he can actually sing well. The two best singers, however, in my opinion, are the Irish waitress with the unfortunate tattoos Carly Smithson and the rocker with Tulsa connections David Cook.

That doesn’t mean I LIKE them the best. In this ongoing seminar on aesthetics that we have been conducting, it is important to realize that there is a huge difference between saying “that is good” and “I like that.” The former is an objective statement. The latter is a subjective response. Most confusions about aesthetic matters come from mixing up the two kinds of judgments. Indeed, ignoring the first one, considering the objective merits, and thinking that LIKING something is that same as recognizing its beauty. We can LIKE all kinds of things–things that make us feel gooey inside, nostalgic associations, easy jolts of hedonism, things we agree with, appeals to our sinful nature (which is why Hollywood goes the way it does)–whereas discerning beauty requires knowledge of the art form and careful attention and reflection. Growing in taste involves learning to subjectively “like” what is objectively “good.”

Anyway, the two performers on Idol that I LIKE, though I’m not saying they are necessarily as good as the others, are Brook White, who sends forth such a positive and joyful vibe, and Michael Johns, the bloke from Australia, who sings with soul but who does not overdo the special effects like the others tend to.

Remember the aesthetic lesson of the day: DON’T GO BY WHAT YOU LIKE. GO BY WHAT IS GOOD.

The leader of the former Soviet Union Mikhail Gorbachev now says that he is a Christian. According to that link, Ronald Reagan suspected that he was a secret Christian, even back then. Now the former Communist kingpen is talking openly about his faith. Notice GOD’S role in smiting down the Evil Empire.

UPDATED THOUGHTS: We can certainly question this: as the head of the communist party, he had to publicly profess atheism, and since then he has been awfully New Agey. Still, no one can say Jesus is Lord without the Holy Spirit, so I’m willing to give him the benefit of the doubt, at least now. I’m curious, though, what Ronald Reagan was picking up on.

HT: Anthony Sacramone at First Things. (And read his comments.)

Read why Easter resists commercialization in this article from Slate Magazine, no less, not a forum known for “getting” what Christianity is all about!

HT: John Toppe

And here is a George Herbert poem for your Easter meditation entitled Easter.

Note what Herbert does with the grisly image of Christ’s sinews stretched upon the wooden Cross, transposing that Good Friday horror into the joy of Easter morning.

Grunewald’s “Resurrection”

(By the same artist who painted the Crucifixion, above. From the deadest Jesus to the most alive Jesus.)

We’ve been bragging about Lucas Cranach as an artist, but what about a contemporary artist from our very own Cranach community, Sarah Hempel Irani, a.k.a. Sarah from Maryland? She too is a very gifted artist who expresses her faith in her vocation. Check out her website, which includes information on how you or your church could have or even commission some of her portraits or sacred art: hempelstudios.com

Consider this example of her work, a sculpture of Mary at the Annunciation. Note how expressive Sarah has made this block of marble!