Entries from May 2008 ↓

As for “American Idol” and its big showdown between the two left standing, I think David Cook is the superior talent, but David Archuleta did out-perform him last night and should be proclaimed the winner tonight.

I appreciate Archuleta for this: Although he sang the execrable John Lennon song “Imagine,” he left out the atheist verse (”Imagine no religion. . . Above us only sky”).

Jan Swafford in “Slate” has a fine discussion of Bach’s “Art of the Fugue,” a recording of which is topping the classical charts. The article shows just how wild, avant garde, and mind-blowing the piece is. But especially noteworthy is that the article shows what music criticism can do on the web: Swafford includes audio links of snippets of music to illustrate aurally what he is talking about. See The surprising popularity of Bach’s complex, esoteric The Art of Fugue.

We have seen something similar in our recent postings on the art of Lucas Cranach, as experts are realizing just how innovative he was.

Here is the point: these devoutly Christian, yea, Lutheran, artists were not stodgy. Their faith did not prevent them from being creative, original, and cutting-edged. Indeed, I would argue that their faith opened their imaginations up to complexity, depth, and aesthetics of the highest order.

I have noticed that in English literature, the most overtly pious authors are also the most innovative: George Herbert reinvented poetry by breaking it free from a dependence on set stanzaic forms, inventing a new form to reflect the meaning of each poem. Milton pursued things unattempted yet in prose or rhyme. Hopkins re-invented poetry again, on the level of the very line and metric foot. Eliot invented literary modernism, not just before his conversion but afterwards as well.

Christian artists today, in whatever genre, will have no cultural impact as long as they merely follow the culture and try to emulate non-Christian artists. The very culture is crying out for something different, a way out of the current aesthetic and philosophical dead-ends. Christians, who have a basis for art that secularists lack, can lead our civilization out of its wilderness. If, that is, Christian artists can get in touch with that basis in the creativity of God, if they can take their part in the Christian artistic tradition, and if they can recover art as a Christian vocation.

Barbara Walters , icon of TV journalism, has published an autobiography in which she boasts about all of her promiscuous and adulterous relationships. There was a time–in fact, it was Barbara Walters’ generation!–in which people, especially women, were ashamed of their sexual transgressions and didn’t want them to come out in the open. Now, they dish about them on talk shows, with no sense of losing respectability. This shift is culturally significant: it isn’t a matter of violating norms anymore. There are no norms to violate.

WORLD, 17 May 2008:

‘Issues’ no longer
Cancellation of LCMS radio show raises ruckus

The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod has 2.4 million members, a vigorous Christ-centered theology, and the largest Protestant network of Christian schools. And yet much of Christendom and the secular culture hardly knows it exists. So a hallmark of synodical president Gerald Kieschnick’s administration has been the “Ablaze” program, focusing on personal witnessing, church planting, and evangelism.

So why did that administration suddenly eliminate what may be its best known, most respected, and most effective vehicle for evangelizing the lost, interacting with other Christians, and bringing Lutheranism into the public square?

Issues, Etc. was a radio talk show hosted by Todd Wilken, a pastor who combined wit, charm, and theological substance. The show’s producer, Jeff Schwarz, arranged conversations with theological heavyweights (Alister McGrath, N.T. Wright) and lightweights (Bishop Spong, Jesus Seminar members). He also put together discussions of movies, politics, and contemporary cultural issues. (Disclosure: I belong to the LCMS and was a guest on the show.)

Much of the show’s content appealed to Christians of all stripes, but it was also distinctly Lutheran. Many people reported becoming converted to Christianity through Issues, Etc. Many listeners became Lutherans.

Then on March 18, Wilken and Schwarz were called to LCMS headquarters in St. Louis. David Strand, executive director of the Board for Communication Services, told them they were fired. According to an official statement from the LCMS, the show was canceled because it was too expensive to operate and did not reach a big enough audience.
Fans of the show suspected another reason: The mode of outreach the current LCMS administration favors comes from the church growth movement, which Issues, Etc. consistently criticized.

Under church growth methodology, traditional worship styles, theological rigor, and denominational distinctives can be “obstacles” to church growth. Being “negative,” as in theological polemics of the sort that Issues, Etc. was known for, “turns people off.”
Though Issues, Etc. was careful to avoid intra-LCMS controversies, recent programs included hard-hitting critiques of Islam, women’s ordination, and superstar preacher Joel Osteen. Such treatments could only be embarrassing for officials wanting to project a kinder, gentler Lutheranism.

But when news of the cancellation came out, the blogosphere erupted. An online petition to bring back the show collected over 7,000 signatures. Congregations and entire denominational districts registered their disapproval.

The last time grassroots Missouri Synod Lutherans got this angry was in the “Battle for the Bible” of the 1970s. Then the issue was whether the LCMS would reject biblical authority to join mainline liberal Protestantism. Now the issue is whether the denomination will reject its theological identity to join generic megachurch Protestantism.

And those are “Issues” not just for Lutherans, but for the Reformed, Baptists, Wesleyans, Pentecostals, and every other Christian tradition.

Thanks to Ball Point Blog for alerting me to the fact that my Table Talk columns are available online. I did not know that. I like writing for that magazine, since each issue has a special theme, and I, in effect, get assigned a topic. That forces me to think about things I otherwise would not. The topic for this month was “The Seven Deadly Sins.” Here is what I did with it.

I’ve been traveling, commencing, and grading papers, so I haven’t been able to see the “Prince Caspian” movie. Have any of you seen it? If so, how was it?

People in Burma, a.k.a. Myanmar, a predominantly Buddhist country, are blaming the cyclone that killed untold numbers, on bad karma: specifically, their brutal government (which is still blocking aid from reaching its desperate survivors) for killing protesting monks.

In thisthis Western story on the subject, notice how the reporter and those he interviews, including a Westernized Buddhist, keep confounding that wholly impersonal religion of law alone with the Christian God. They do not realize that theodicy–why would a good deity allow such things–hardly comes up in other religions, whose gods are often not personal at all, or if they are, they are not even assumed to be righteous:

After a natural disaster strikes in the United States, the question almost immediately arises: Where was God? Or, did God allow this to happen?

Half a world away, as Burma digs out from a devastating cyclone that experts say could claim 100,000 lives or more, the question — and answer — are quite different.

About 80 percent of Burma’s estimated 52 million people are Buddhist, and many there rely on the principle of karma to explain the storm, scholars say.

Specifically, many of Burma’s people believe Cyclone Nargis is a karmic consequence of military rulers’ brutal crackdown on Buddhist monks last fall, said Ingrid Jordt, an anthropology professor at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee who was once a Buddhist nun in Burma and maintains ties there.

“The immediate explanation was: This is retribution for killing monks,” Jordt said. “In any cataclysm, human beings seek to make sense of something that completely destroys the continuity of life. It’s an attempt to bring the world back into harmony.”

The word “karma” is often misunderstood by Westerners as one’s inescapable destiny, scholars say. In Sanskrit, the word means “action” and refers to the act that creates one’s fate, not fate itself. For Buddhists, particularly those in Southeast Asia, karma regulates morality as firmly as Newton’s law rules motion: To every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. . . .

A distant echo of such ideas can perhaps be heard in Christian leaders who tied the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and Hurricane Katrina to sexual immorality in New York City and New Orleans.

American Zen Buddhist and author Brad Warner said blaming Burma’s cyclone on bad karma hews uncomfortably close to those ideas.

“To me it sounds like we’re just substituting karma for God,” he said.

And with so many innocent victims, karma seems a harsh and indiscriminate explanation, Warner said.

Friends, I’m just getting ready to leave for Ft. Wayne, Indiana, to attend our daughter’s graduation from the Deaconness program at Concordia Theological Seminary. And I’m not even going to bring my computer.

I’ll be back Saturday for our graduation ceremonies at Patrick Henry College. I’ll be blogging again on Monday. So farewell for now.

Eddy Arnold, one of the most successful country artists of all time–having 28 number one records–has died. Here he is, performing his masterpiece, one of the greatest songs in American popular music, “Make the World Go Away”:

The economy grew .6%, contrary to the perception that we are in a recession. See Economy Improves, Old Media Ignores. Some are saying that this represents the first time that we have had a recession while experiencing economic growth! Even though a recession MEANS subsequent quarters of no growth.

So is the economy stronger than the doomsayers have been saying it is? I suspect what we have is a paradox in a vast economy, with some sectors in bad shape–unfortunately, those that impact average Americans the most, with high prices for food and fuel and a loss of equity in home values–and other sectors doing quite well (such as oil companies and the farmers who are enjoying record prices).

In my travels in Oklahoma, I came across a gas station that sold an 85% ethanol fuel for just over $2 per gallon. Does anybody know anything about this? Can any car burn that, or does a car have to be specially adapted to burn that stuff? (Not that I approve of using food for fuel, but still. . . .)

An earthquake registering 7.9 on the Richter scale struck China, with great loss of life. See China quake death toll rises to nearly 10,000.

My daughters just went through a minor earthquake in St. Louis, no less. And my wife–who fears going to California because of its earthquakes (though she herself thinks nothing of Oklahoma tornadoes)–felt a small one the other day in Alexandria, Virginia.

It’s frightening when one’s very ground proves unstable.