Why am I a Baptist?

In "Is Jesus a Baptist?" Timothy George (who is a Baptist) explains why that is not the right question:

.... While I recognize myself as a Protestant, an Evangelical, and a Baptist, none of those labels defines my spiritual and ecclesial identity at the most basic level. Being an evangelical Protestant, a Baptist, indeed a Southern Baptist, are all important markers of my place within the community of faith, but there is a more primary confession I must make: I am a trinitarian Christian who by the grace of God belongs to the whole company of the redeemed through the ages, those who are “very members incorporate in the mystical body of Christ” (Book of Common Prayer).

Far from being a new construal, this way of putting things goes to the very heart of what it means to be a genuine Protestant, a true Evangelical, and an authentic Baptist. Central to each of these commitments is a desire to be faithful to the Scripture-based apostolic witness of the early church. When Polycarp of Smyrna, a disciple of the Apostle John, was brought before the Roman tribunal before being cast into the arena with wild beasts, he confessed publicly the faith which he knew would lead to his certain martyrdom. In that critical moment, Polycarp did not say: “I am a Paulinist. I am a Petrist. I am a Johannian.” Neither did he say, “I am an Ignatian” (after his great contemporary Ignatius of Antioch), nor “I am an Irenaean” (after his famous disciple Irenaeus of Lyon). Rather he confessed: Christianus sum. “I am a Christian.” ....

So why am I a Baptist? I am a Baptist because it was through the witness of a small Baptist church that I first heard the gospel of Jesus Christ. Many of the things I still believe in I first learned in that modest Baptist community of faith.... Through the loving nurture I received from that congregation, I confessed my personal faith in Jesus as Savior and Lord of my life. I was then baptized in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. ....

It is important to say that all of this came to me as a gift from beyond myself. It is not as though I had studied carefully and weighed objectively every religious possibility before committing myself to the Baptist cause. My experience was rather of a person who finds himself standing, wading, and eventually swimming in a flowing mountain stream. The Baptist formation I received as a young Christian was a gift, unbidden and undeserved, for which I can claim no credit. Later as I studied the Bible more deeply and became aware of many other church traditions, doctrines, and denominations, my Baptist convictions grew stronger. I gradually came to understand the meaning of what I believed: Fides quaerens intellectum, a quest that continues still. What I first intuitively grasped or only dimly glimpsed, I came to own with greater clarity and confidence. I came to see that being a Baptist was for me the most faithful way of being an Evangelical, a Protestant, and a Christian.

Being a Baptist is a blessing but also sometimes a burden. From time to time I have considered the possibility of becoming something else. I once prepared a talk called “The Confessions of a Catholic-friendly, Pentecostal-admiring, Reformed Baptist with a Hankering after Lutheranism and a Strong Affinity for the Book of Common Prayer.” Each of these ecclesial traditions, among others, has enriched my life and calling to serve the Body of Christ. Each brings distinctive treasures to our common labors—pro Christo et ecclesia. Being a Baptist gives me all the freedom I need to appropriate as fully as I can the gifts they offer without abandoning the Baptist principles and ways that I cherish. .... [more]

Is Jesus a Baptist? | First Things

I'll Fly Away

Via Mere Comments



Some bright morning when this life is over
I’ll fly away
To that home on God's celestial shore
I’ll fly away

I’ll fly away, oh glory
I’ll fly away in the morning
When I die hallelujah by and by
I’ll fly away ....
Lagniappe - Bill Monroe and Ralph Stanley - Mere Comments

When God spoke Greek

Timothy Michael Law is the author of When God Spoke Greek: The Septuagint and the Making of the Christian Bible. In this interview he suggests reasons that Greek translation might be preferred to the Hebrew texts then available to either Catholic or Protestant translators:

...[T]he Septuagint, and not the Hebrew Bible, explicitly shaped some early Christian theology. For example, it was the Septuagint version of Isaiah, not the Hebrew Bible’s version, that shaped the most theologically profound book in the history of Christianity, Paul’s Epistle to the Romans. The primacy of the Septuagint continues after the first century, and one could not imagine the development of orthodoxy without it. None of this would be terribly significant if the Septuagint were merely a translation of the Hebrew; however, the Septuagint in many places contains a different message. Sometimes the translators of the Septuagint created new meanings in their translations, but there is also another reason the Septuagint is often different.

An alternative, sometimes older, form of the Hebrew text often lies behind the Greek. When the Reformers and their predecessors talked about returning to the original Hebrew (ad fontes!), and when modern Christians talk about studying the Hebrew because it is the “original text,” they are making several mistaken assumptions. The Hebrew Bible we now use is often not the oldest form of the Hebrew text, and sometimes the Septuagint provides the only access we have to that older form. ....

The Protestant Reformation in the sixteenth century put the final nails in the Septuagint’s coffin for the West. They followed Jerome’s logic, believing that the medieval text of the Hebrew Bible was indeed the most original text of Scripture. There were some exceptions—Zwingli, for example, had argued that the Septuagint version of Isaiah was superior to the Hebrew—but for the most part Jerome and the Reformers can be credited with burying the Septuagint in the West. .... [more]

When God Spoke Greek | First Things

Now the day is over, Night is drawing nigh

The Sabbath begins in Madison, Wisconsin:

The staff of life

I like bread. I'm conscious of my need to limit carbs, and consequently limit my consumption, but I do like good bread. I'm acquainted with people who can't eat wheat at all and so am grateful for the much greater availability of gluten-free foods. At the same time I don't get the avoidance of wheat by those who neither suffer from celiac disease nor from an allergy to wheat. I found a Slate article from last February helpful in making some distinctions:

According to USA Today, up to one-quarter of all consumers now want gluten-free food, even though only one person in 100 has celiac disease, the autoimmune disorder worsened by gluten ingestion. Going gluten-free seems somewhat faddish. ....

To understand the proper role of gluten-free diets requires untangling three separate and unrelated medical problems blamed on gluten: celiac disease, wheat allergy, and gluten intolerance. Here’s the thing: The first problem is almost certainly underdiagnosed, but the latter two are likely to be overdiagnosed. ....

...[T]he most confusing problems arise with the third problem blamed on gluten: so-called gluten intolerance. This condition is neither an autoimmune disorder, like celiac disease, nor an allergy, like true wheat allergy. There’s not even a mediocre blood test for gluten intolerance. The diagnosis simply relies on someone’s subjective feelings of bloating, bowel changes, or mental fogginess after eating gluten. This is a set-up for all manner of pseudo-scientific self-diagnoses, especially when you consider that 2 percent of people believe they have illnesses caused by magnetic fields. ....

...[T]he data suggest that almost two-thirds of people who think they are gluten-intolerant really aren’t. .... [more]

The avoidance of wheat by those who don't need to is particularly odd when it is remembered that people in western and African civilizations always ate bread [and often little else]. From "Bread in the Middle Ages":

...[I]t was the staple of life for the ancient Mesopotamians and Egyptians, and was eaten throughout the Roman Empire.  It was made by grinding cereal grains, such as wheat, millet or barley, into flour, then kneading it with a liquid, perhaps adding yeast to make the dough rise and lighten, and finally baking. Bread comes in all shapes and sizes, but in his book Bread: A Global History, William Rubel notes that Europe has had a “loaf-bread culture” for the last 2,000 years, while flat bread remained popular in the Middle East and Africa.

By the beginning of the Middle Ages the preference was to eat white bread made from wheat - medieval physicians also recommended it as being the healthiest – but poorer peoples would bake darker breads with oats or rye. If one needed too, people could also add rice, peas, lentils, chestnuts, acorns or other foods into the mixture. In medieval France, most people would eat a type of bread known as meslin, which was made from a mixture of wheat and rye. ....

Terrence Scully notes “that bread was the basis of the medieval diet” and the amount that people ate throughout Europe was remarkably similar. He finds that records from England, France and Italy that workmen, soldiers and even patients in hospitals were supposed to get about two pounds of bread per day.

Like today, breads made in the Middle Ages came in all shapes and sizes. For example, in the Polish city of Wroclaw the people could buy and eat breads such as common white bread, common rye bread, black rye bread, wheat rolls, bagels, crescent rolls and flat cakes. Besides using bread just for food, medieval people often used it as their plates: known as trenchers, these were breads that were cut into thick flat slices. Then other foods like meats or thick sauces would be served on top of them. Once the meal was finished, the bread could then be eaten, or, if you were wealthy or generous enough, was given to the poor or to animals. .... more]

And then there is John 6:35.

Gluten-free diet: Distinguishing celiac disease, wheat allergy, and gluten intolerance. - Slate Magazine, Bread in the Middle Ages

"Praise should be the permanent pulsation of the soul"

From G.K. Chesterton's Orthodoxy:

Man is more himself, man is more manlike, when joy is the fundamental thing in him, and grief the superficial. Melancholy should be an innocent interlude, a tender and fugitive frame of mind; praise should be the permanent pulsation of the soul. Pessimism is at best an emotional half-holiday; joy is the uproarious labour by which all things live. (as quoted in Matthew Lee Anderson's introduction, and the book is available, free, here)

Orthodoxy (Moody Classics)

“An open mind, like an open mouth, should close on something”

George Weigel shares some quotations he collected but thus far has not used elsewhere:

• Getting the conversation started properly: “How doth truth prosper in thy parts?” (an old Quaker greeting).
• The evils of French revolutionary weights and measures:“If God had wanted us to use the metric system, he’d have given us 10 apostles” (an angry worker, struggling with metric tools).
• Rarely an argument lost: “He can persuade most people of most things, and above all he can persuade himself of almost anything” (W.E. Forster on William Gladstone).
• The limits of openness: “An open mind, like an open mouth, should close on something” (G.K. Chesterton [of course]).
• Social ineptness: “Bore. A person who talks when you wish him to listen” (Ambrose Bierce, The Devil’s Dictionary).
• Good government: “When Dr. Johnson defined patriotism as the last refuge of a scoundrel, he was unconscious of the then undeveloped capabilities and uses of the word ‘Reform’” (Senator Roscoe Conkling).
• A culture without reality contact: “We have now sunk to a depth at which the restatement of the obvious is the first duty of intelligent men” (George Orwell).
• The earthen vessel of the Church: “No merely human institution conducted with such knavish imbecility would have lasted a fortnight” (Hillaire Belloc on Catholicism).
• Our task: “The Gospel must be preached by men. The angels have other duties” (plaque found in an old church). [more]

Zingers, Previously Unused | First Things

Does the music serve the Word?

I suspect that my frequent links to posts like this one are annoying to at least some who visit this site. There are a great many people in evangelical churches — boomers and their children — who have seldom experienced worship that doesn't follow the pattern that Kevin DeYoung calls the "New Evangelical Liturgy" and a central part of that experience is a particular approach to worship music. Rather than simply following the pattern that has become the received way of doing things, pastors and worship leaders should seriously consider why they do what they do, and whether it best serves the purpose. In "On Whales and Worship Lyrics" Jen Wilken's concern is with the music. Her discussion group has been reading Bonhoeffer's Life Together.

.... The discussion centered around this quote concerning worship through corporate singing:

“All devotion, all attention should be concentrated upon the Word in the hymn…the music is completely the servant of the Word {Scripture}. It elucidates the Word in its mystery.”

We asked each other, is this true of church music today? Can we say of modern worship songs that the music serves the words of Scripture? Or do the words of our worship songs serve the music? Can we say that we, the worshipers love the words more than the melodies? How can we tell? ....

Bonhoeffer’s point is simple: When the words serve the music, we gratify self. When the music serves the words, we glorify God. In a culture that consumes music on an unprecedented scale, the church faces an uphill battle to maintain the high ground that the music must serve the words. Ten years ago, contemporary worship songs were plagued with the “I-Me-My-Mines”, every line filled with the knowledge of man. We have come some distance since then, praise God, with a shift back toward lyrics that extol the character of God. But we have further still to go.

If I supplied you with a copy of the lyrics to the 6500 hymns of Charles Wesley, two things would happen to you as you read it. First, you would be deeply moved by the truths the lyrics contained, whether you knew the melodies associated with them or not. Second, you would know your Bible better. Could the same be said if you read through the lyrics of our modern worship offerings?

Wesley composed his hymns during a time in church history when the music served the words, or more precisely, the Word. We live in a time when music, church or otherwise, serves our personal taste, and where lyrics are often an afterthought. Combine this with rampant Bible illiteracy, and we find congregational...shows so glutted on the wealth in their melodies that they ignore the poverty in their lyrics. A worship song is “anointed” if it moves us deeply, whether the words communicate anything coherent or not. Don’t make me give you a sloppy wet example.

What Bonhoeffer and Wesley would say to us is that church music must do more than move the emotions: it must feed the understanding. In doing so, it accomplishes its purpose of preparing our hearts and minds for the pinnacle of the worship service, the proclamation of the Word. We wrongly believe that the worship set should fill our hearts and the sermon should fill our heads. Corporate worship should enliven both heart and head, preparing us for a sermon which does both as well.

So, to my fellow worshipers, let’s consider together whether our adoration is given to music or through music. And to those worship leaders composing church music today, God bless you — you endure enormous pressure to create “worship experiences”. Consider Bonhoeffer’s message: whether your gifting runs toward hymnody or poetry, write lyrics that teach so much truth they can stand on their own. And then set them to music that magnifies their beauty. .... [more]

On Whales and Worship Lyrics – TGC Worship

Thrillers

D.G. Myers, writing about thrillers, explains their appeal to readers:

A powerful work of fiction transports you into a different life, a different place and time, instilling in you the absolute conviction that what you are reading about, what you feel in the hairs on your skin, is real and is happening to real people.

A Commonplace Blog: Two thrillers

What is the chief end of man?

Bethany Blankley responds to a symposium about how to pass on the faith with "Learning Theology through Catechism, Imagination, and Song":

.... The first question of the Westminster Catechism runs through my mind often: What is the chief end of man? The answer: To glorify God and enjoy him forever. God should be at the center of my universe at all times. This truth, that I learned as a child, has stuck with me throughout my life—no matter what circumstances I have endured, I had the foundation, the knowledge, the conviction, that God was with me, he loved me, and that he created me for a purpose: to glorify him and enjoy him forever.

The catechisms formed a foundation, a structure, for me to formulate my beliefs and calm my soul. But the reading of literature reinforced what I knew by awakening my imagination to learn about character and virtues to which I could aspire.

Children can learn much from literature. As a child I learned who God was through the eyes of Christian as he battled various temptations in Pilgrim's Progress, and through the eyes of Princess Irene who held fast to her grandmother's admonition during difficult times in George MacDonald's masterpiece, The Princess and the Goblin, and through the eyes of Lucy, who walked side by side with Aslan, as he comforted her during her adventures in Narnia. My imagination and spirit were enlivened by these characters as I saw how their faith guided their lives throughout difficult and frightening circumstances. I also learned the virtues a child should aspire to have: honesty, hope, trust, faith, perseverance, and selfless love, which brought me much joy. I knew that God was good through the lives of these characters and that I needed to trust him. Many children can relate to the struggles the characters face and can apply lessons of character development to their own lives. .... [more]

Learning Theology through Catechism, Imagination, and Song

Chesterton, the Distributist

I like G.K. Chesterton: in particular his fiction and much of his Christian apologetics. He was also an advocate of an economic regime called "Distributism" that he considered a Christian alternative to both Socialism and Capitalism. It has some attractive elements summarized here by David Deavel:

Last week I outlined the views of distributists, identifying four areas of thought in which they offer some wisdom: 1) objections to the divorce of economics and ethics, 2) objections to the collusion of large business and government and the resultant concentration of power, 3) advocacy for entrepreneurism and widely distributed wealth, and 4) objections to the welfare state and its effects on the citizen’s relationship to government. Sadly, distributist thinkers don’t stop at these solid insights.

Deavel goes on to elaborate the deficiencies of Distributism, and they are serious deficiencies. The headings for the areas he addresses:

• Willful Ignorance of Economics
• Borrowed Infallibility
• A Secret Lust for Big Government, from which:

.... Founding distributist Hilaire Belloc did not propose that all property be taken and redistributed by the state—though he was not in principle opposed to this, which explains his and Chesterton’s defense of the French Revolution; he believed that it was essentially a seizure of property that was returned to the peasants. ....

...[T]he devotion of distributists to freedom is open to question. Belloc and Chesterton were beguiled by Mussolini and his promise of corporatism. ....

...Chesterton gradually woke up to the fact that Mussolini was merely using distributist rhetoric to mask a totalitarian state. Belloc and many of the other distributists were fooled for longer. And no surprise: to repose so much power in a central government to regulate and redistribute wealth and property is a dangerous game. ....

Hudge and Gudge, the names by which Chesterton called big government and big business, are not twins, but perhaps they are brothers. The trick is to keep big business, or any business, from using the coercive power of its big brother, big government, to win, or even survive. ....

• Are You a Price Slave?
• Free Will Distributism in which Deavel explains that Distributism is fine if not politically coerced:

If you agree with distributism’s goals, you should spend your money that way and encourage others to do so. If enough people make those choices, that will help support an ample, thriving sector of independent farms and businesses....

The last thing that people who oppose concentrations of power, and who seek to keep alive the vital freedoms we cherish as Americans, should favor is a government that interferes in every decision we make as workers and consumers. Experience tells us that power does not elevate fallen men; it tends to corrupt them. .... (more)

What’s Wrong with Distributism | Intercollegiate Review

Forgive us our debts

Commenting on a post about Pope Francis's emphasis on mercy, KC Mulville:

Mercy has two sides, i.e., two perspectives, that we shouldn't mix. The first Christians, following their Jewish backgrounds, portrayed sin as a debt. From the debtor's point of view, no matter what the debt-holder does, he still owes the debt. On the other side, whether the debt-holder chooses to demand full repayment is entirely up to him.

Mercy is in the hands of the debt-holder. The debtor has no right to demand it. And, more importantly, if the debt-holder chooses to release it, the debtor cannot say that he never owed anything. That's why mercy doesn't contradict justice; the debtor can't deny his indebtedness. Whether the debt-holder forces him to repay is another matter.

On the other side, I disagree with those who say that Christ's attitude was to demand repentance before he would forgive. If anything, Jesus frequently reminds us that our own debt is enormous, and urges us to remember our own debt while we're deciding whether to squeeze others to repay theirs.

When Jesus said, "turn the other cheek," nowhere does it say "after he apologizes to you."

Teach us to feel the importance of every hour

Via Trevin Wax, an evening prayer from Jane Austen:

Father of Heaven! whose goodness has brought us in safety to the close of this day, dispose our hearts in fervent prayer. Another day is now gone, and added to those, for which we were before accountable.

Teach us almighty Father, to consider this solemn truth, as we should do, that we may feel the importance of every day, and every hour as it passes, and earnestly strive to make a better use of what Thy goodness may yet bestow on us, than we have done of the time past.

Give us grace to endeavour after a truly Christian spirit to seek to attain that temper of forbearance and patience of which our blessed Saviour has set us the highest example; and which, while it prepares us for the spiritual happiness of the life to come, will secure to us the best enjoyment of what this world can give.

Incline us, O God, to think humbly of ourselves, to be severe only in the examination of our own conduct, to consider our fellow-creatures with kindness, and to judge of all they say and do with that charity which we would desire from them ourselves.

We thank Thee with all our hearts for every gracious dispensation, for all the blessings that have attended our lives, for every hour of safety, health and peace, of domestic comfort and innocent enjoyment.

We feel that we have been blessed far beyond any thing that we have deserved; and though we cannot but pray for a continuance of all these mercies, we acknowledge our unworthiness of them and implore Thee to pardon the presumption of our desires.

Keep us O Heavenly Father from evil this night. Bring us in safety to the beginning of another day and grant that we may rise again with every serious and religious feeling which now directs us.

Incline us, O God, to Think Humbly of Ourselves: A Prayer of Jane Austen – Trevin Wax

"I Want You"

Apparently the famous World War I British recruiting poster "Your Country Needs You" never existed in that form until after the Great War.

But it did inspire this one, which was used in the United States in 1917:

The freedom of the press

A reference at "In Which I Read Vintage Novels" sent me to a 1946 collection of essays by Dorothy L. Sayers where, after reading the ones about feminism to which that post referred, I found "How Free is the Press?" from 1941 that, although the war started in 1939 is not about the censorship of the wartime press, but about its limitations in peacetime. I think this passage applies almost equally well today:

When we speak of "the freedom of the Press," we usually mean freedom in a very technical and restricted sense—namely, freedom from direction or censorship by the Government. In this respect, the British Press is, under ordinary conditions, singularly free. It can attack the policy and political character of ministers, interfere in the delicate machinery of foreign diplomacy, conduct campaigns to subvert the Constitution, incite citizens to discontent and rebellion, expose scandals and foment grievances, and generally harry and belabour the servants of the State, with almost perfect liberty. On occasion, it can become a weapon to coerce the Government to conform to what it asserts to be the will of the people.

So far, this is all to the good. Occasionally, this freedom may produce disastrous hesitations and inconsistencies in public policy, or tend to hamper the swift execution of emergency measures; but, generally speaking, it works to secure and sustain that central doctrine of Democracy as we understand it—that the State is not the master but the servant of the people.

The Press, as a whole, and in this technical and restricted sense, is thus pretty free in a peaceful Britain. There is no shade of political opinion that does not somehow contrive to express itself. But if we go on to imagine that any particular organ of the Press enjoys the larger liberty of being a "forum of public opinion," we are gravely mistaken. Every newspaper is shackled to its own set of overlords and, in its turn, like the Unmerciful Servant, exercises a powerful bondage upon its readers and on the public generally. Indeed, we may say that the heaviest restriction upon the freedom of public opinion is not the official censorship of the Press, but the unofficial censorship by a Press which exists not so much to express opinion as to manufacture it. (Dorothy L. Sayers, Unpopular Opinions: Twenty-One Essays, Victor Gollancz, London, 1946, pp. 127-128.)

In our time it is, of course, not just newspapers but also the television networks, whose selective narrative is today, I'm happy to say, subverted by cable and internet.

Knowing things

E.D. Hirsch has long been one of the most sensible critics of our public educational system. He sees some reason to be optimistic in aspects of the Common Core but there can be no quick fix. Nevertheless, if the most disadvantaged students are to have a chance, change must happen. Vocabulary and content are key. Hirsch's "A Wealth of Words" explains:

...[V]ocabulary size is a convenient proxy for a whole range of educational attainments and abilities—not just skill in reading, writing, listening, and speaking but also general knowledge of science, history, and the arts. If we want to reduce economic inequality in America, a good place to start is the language-arts classroom.

Early in the twentieth century, a well-meant but inadequate conception of education became dominant in the United States. It included optimism about children’s natural development, a belief in the unimportance of factual knowledge and book learning, and a corresponding belief in the importance of training the mind through hands-on practical experience. ....

Why should vocabulary size be related to achieved intelligence and real-world competence? Though the intricate details of cognitive abilities are under constant study and refinement, it’s possible to give a rough answer. The space where we solve our problems is called “working memory.” For everyone, even geniuses, it’s a small space that can hold only a few items in suspension for only a few seconds. If one doesn’t make the right connections within that space, one has to start over again. ....

.... Suppose you put a single item into your working memory—say, “Pasteur.” So long as you hold in your long-term memory a lot of associations with that name, you don’t need to dredge them up and try to cram them into your working memory. The name serves as a brief proxy for whatever aspects will turn out to be needed to cope with your problem. The more readily available such proxies are for you, the better you will be at dealing with various problems. Extend this example to whole spheres of knowledge and experience, and you’ll realize that a large vocabulary is a powerful coping device that enhances one’s general cognitive ability. ....

To make the necessary school changes in the United States, an intellectual revolution needs to occur to undo the vast anti-intellectual revolution that took place in the 1930s. We can’t afford to victimize ourselves further by continued loyalty to outworn and mistaken ideas. Of these, the idea that most requires overturning is how-to-ism—the notion that schooling should concern itself not with mere factual knowledge, which is constantly changing, but rather with giving students the intellectual tools to assimilate new knowledge. These tools typically include the ability to look things up, to think critically, and to accommodate oneself flexibly to the world of the unknowable future.

.... In English class, young children are now practicing soul-deadening how-to exercises like “finding the main idea” in a passage and “questioning the author.” These exercises usurp students’ mental capacity for understanding what is written by forcing them to think self-consciously about the reading process itself. The exercises also waste time that ought to be spent gaining knowledge and vocabulary. The increasingly desperate pursuit of this empty, formalistic misconception of reading explains why our schools’ intense focus on reading skills has produced students who, by grade 12, can’t read well enough to flourish at college or take a good job.

Another mistaken idea that must be scrapped is that curricula don’t need to build knowledge coherently and cumulatively. ....

It isn’t overstating the case to say that the most secure way to predict whether an educational policy is likely to help restore the middle class is to focus on the question: Is this policy likely to expand the vocabularies of 12th-graders? .... Educators and policymakers should inform themselves about the critical importance of factual knowledge and about the need for a specific and coherent yearly curriculum to impart that knowledge and language effectively. That won’t just improve students’ vocabularies; it will help restore the Jeffersonian ideal of equality of opportunity. [the full argument, including some of the research]

A Wealth of Words by E. D. Hirsch, Jr., City Journal Winter 2013

"When it gets this hot..."

In Body Heat, Ned Racine, talking to a cop friend:

Ned: How's the cop business, Oscar?

Oscar: Real good. Always starts hopping in weather like this. When it gets this hot, people try to kill each other.

Researchers quoted in a BBC story substantiate the premise:

The researchers looked at 60 studies from around the world, with data spanning hundreds of years.

They report a "substantial" correlation between climate and conflict.

Their examples include an increase in domestic violence in India during recent droughts, and a spike in assaults, rapes and murders during heatwaves in the US.

Later in the story a spoilsport is quoted:

"I was surprised to see not a single reference to a real-world conflict that plausibly would not have occurred in the absence of observed climatic extremes. If the authors wish to claim a strong causal link, providing some form of case validation is critical."

BBC News - Rise in violence 'linked to climate change'

"No one can refute me. Tastes are relative!”

Mollie Hemingway links to a selection of Amazon buyer one-star reviews of books that were on Time's list of the "100 Best Novels Since 1923." I'm not sure what it says about me that I agreed with many of them. On the other hand:

The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis (1950)
“I bought these books to have something nice to read to my grandkids. I had to stop, however, because the books are nothing more than advertisements for “Turkish Delight,” a candy popular in the U.K. The whole point of buying books for my grandkids was to give them a break from advertising, and here (throughout) are ads for this “Turkish Delight”! How much money is this Mr. Lewis getting from the Cadbury’s chocolate company anyway? This man must be laughing to the bank.”

Lord of the Flies by William Golding (1955)
“I am obsessed with Survivor, so I thought it would be fun. WRONG!!! It is incredibly boring and disgusting. I was very much disturbed when I found young children killing each other. I think that anyone with a conscience would agree with me.”

The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien (1954)
“The book is not readable because of the overuse of adverbs."

1984 by George Orwell (1948)
“Don’t listen to anyone who tries to distinguish between “serious” works of literature like this one and allegedly “lesser” novels. The distinction is entirely illusory, because no novels are “better” than any others, and the concept of a “great novel” is an intellectual hoax. This book isn’t as good as Harry Potter in MY opinion, and no one can refute me. Tastes are relative!” (more)

Lone Star Statements - The Morning News

"The crooked timber of humanity"

I have enjoyed watching Breaking Bad simply to see how Walter is going to get out of this situation or that—and there is humor, too. But perhaps there is more. Rich Lizardo writes "In Defense of the Antihero" about Walter White, among others:

For fans of the hit show Breaking Bad like myself, the premiere of its final season (well, technically, its second half of the final season), scheduled for August 11, can’t come soon enough. The show centers on the slow but sure downward spiral and moral decay of a former high school chemistry teacher turned meth kingpin. ....

In the case of Breaking Bad, we see all the rationalizations as well as all the irrationality that bring Walt to make bad decisions. And we see those decisions becoming worse and worse with bigger and bigger consequences.

Sure, I don’t know how the series will end, but I have a hunch it won’t end well for Walt. That being said...these shows still provide us with a moral compass. That moral compass might not show us virtue and what to emulate, but it clearly shows us vice as vice and as something not to emulate. ....

And Jonah Goldberg in the current National Review (behind a subscription wall) explains:

When we meet Walter, he is a wildly overqualified high-school chemistry teacher who works part time at a car wash for extra money. (In what becomes a crucial plot device, Walter worked for a tech startup but took a stupid buyout for $5,000. The company went on to be worth billions.) In the first 20 minutes of the first episode, he is diagnosed with terminal lung cancer. Impeccably decent and upright, Walter is confronted with the horror of leaving his wife, teenage son (who has cerebral palsy), and unborn daughter destitute. This medical and financial crisis leads Walter to a moral crisis. He gets the idea that he could use his skills as a scientist to cook methamphetamine, a.k.a. crystal meth. And not just any crystal meth: The once-promising professional chemist knows how to make meth better than anyone else. ....

The change that then takes place in Walter is so gradual, so human, that viewers are hard pressed to relinquish their fondness for him, even as he inexorably grows — transforms is probably the better word — into a monster. Gilligan calls it a “slow-motion wolfman story”: The Dr. Jekyll of Walter White slowly turns into the Mr. Hyde of his street name “Heisenberg” (not coincidentally, an homage to the author of the uncertainty principle). ....

What begins as a kind of play on the Thomistic principle that it is moral for a man to steal bread to feed his starving child grows into a painfully realistic tale of how a good man becomes evil. .... Once you step outside the borders of morality and the law, self-interest becomes self-justifying. Indeed, this is how pragmatism unchained from moral principles simply becomes a Nietzschean will to power. ....

...[W]hat is evil if not the ability to delude yourself into believing you are the sole arbiter of what is right and wrong based on your self-interest? Freedom itself is not evil, but freedom devoid of conscience — rightly formed conscience — is very close to the definition of evil. The bully is free to do what he likes simply because he is stronger and it pleases him to do so. It does not matter that he tells himself his cruelty is warranted. ....

Long before one gets into the partisan or ideological precepts and dogmas, there is at the irreducible core of conservatism the idea that human nature is what it is. Nation-states, technologies, cultures, even religions come and go, but what remains is humanity. Breaking Bad is one of the great novels of our age because it grapples with the crooked timber of humanity as it is, and painfully demonstrates that, once you choose to break out of the cage of civilization, you are not so much free as lost.

The first four seasons are available on Netflix.

The American Spectator : The Spectacle Blog : In Defense of the Antihero, Life and Death on Basic Cable | National Review Online

Liturgies

Kevin DeYoung asks the right question, "Is the New Evangelical Liturgy Really an Improvement?":

Every church has a liturgy. Traditional congregations have a general order to worship. So do contemporary congregations. So do funky, artistic ones. Church leaders do not have time to reinvent their services every week. ....

If I’m not mistaken, there is a New Evangelical Liturgy which is increasingly common in our churches. You find it in Baptist churches, Presbyterian churches, Reformed churches, free churches, and non-denominational churches. It’s familiar in rural churches and city churches. It can be found in tiny churches and megachurches. No one has written it down in a service book. No council or denomination is demanding that it be done. No pastor is taught this liturgy in seminary (um, probably not). But it has become the default liturgy nonetheless. It looks like this:

Casual welcome and announcements
Stand up for 4-5 songs
During the set, or at the very end, add a short prayer
Sermon
Closing song
Dismissal

I don’t think I’m exaggerating when I say this is the basic liturgy from which most evangelical churches operate. To be sure, there are slight variations. The announcement may go after the praise set. There may be an offering in there somewhere, possibly with a special music number. The service may be tweaked a bit when there is communion or a baptism. But overall, if I were to visit 50 different evangelical churches over the next year, this is what I expect to find most of the time.

The simple question I want to ask is this: Is this New Evangelical Liturgy really an improvement?

Please hear me. I’m not talking about instrumentation or worship style (though form is not irrelevant). And I’m not suggesting God doesn’t take pleasure when his people worship him in Spirit and in truth from all sorts of templates. I’m not saying people won’t be saved or edified in churches that use the New Evangelical Liturgy. I’m certainly not saying they won’t like it. What I am suggesting is that by no biblical or historical consideration can we conclude that the New Evangelical Liturgy is an improvement on the old liturgy. ....

For whatever appeal the New Evangelical Liturgy may have in American culture, and for whatever abuses or doldrums may be associated with a more traditional liturgy, I don’t believe it can be argued, by objective measures, that the new is superior to the old. Which liturgy has more prayer? What one has more Scripture? Which one does more to accent sin and forgiveness? Which ones anchors us better in the ancient creeds and confessions of the church? Which one is the product of more sustained theological reflection? Which is more shaped by the gospel? ....

.... Wherever it came from, I encourage pastors, worship leaders, and churches to consider whether this New Evangelical Liturgy is the best we can do. It may be familiar. It may be simple. It may even be popular. And it may still not be an improvement. (more)

Is the New Evangelical Liturgy Really an Improvement? – Kevin DeYoung