Disqus - Latest Comments for bmk

Re: Left-Wing Campus PC Strikes Again

bmk — Fri, 01 Jun 2018 08:04:50 -0000

"Now witness the firepower of this fully armed and operational CAMPUS SPEAKER SERIES!"– John Rice-Cameron, probably

Re: Hating Ross Douthat is Normal and Healthy but the Surgeon General Recommends You Hate Him for the Right Reason

bmk — Wed, 02 May 2018 20:35:03 -0000

Does the surgeon general also issue a warning if my hatred for Douthat lasts more than 4 hours? Asking for, uh, a friend.

Re: Who is my neighbor?

bmk — Tue, 04 Apr 2017 20:34:01 -0000

I can't help but be reminded of one of my favorite novels, Pär Lagerkvists's Barabbas. One of the running motifs has Barabbas ruminating again and again on the one concept of Jesus' he finds inscrutable:

"[And] if he encountered them he liked to stop and talk for a while and ask them about him and that queer doctrine which he couldn't make head or tail of. Love one another? . . ." (From the translation by Alan Blair)

Who is my neighbor?

Re: American Jesus Madness 2017 – 1st Round Voting

bmk — Thu, 16 Mar 2017 09:16:38 -0000

I'm calling "Franklin Graham vs The Least of These" as my new band name.

Re: Of, by, for

bmk — Wed, 26 Oct 2016 14:48:11 -0000

From Obama's commencement address at Michigan in 2010:

For when our government is spoken of as some menacing, threatening foreign entity, it conveniently ignores the fact in our democracy, government is us. We, the people, hold in our hands the power to choose our leaders, change our laws, and shape our own destiny.

Government is the police officers who are here protecting us and the service men and women who are defending us abroad. Government is the roads you drove in on and the speed limits that kept you safe. Government is what ensures that mines adhere to safety standards and that oil spills are cleaned up by the companies that caused them. Government is this extraordinary public university – a place that is doing life-saving research, catalyzing economic growth, and graduating students who will change the world around them in ways big and small.

Source: https://www.whitehouse.gov/...

Re: Mike Pence Set To Strengthen His ALEC Connections And Commitment To Corporate-Driven Education Reform

bmk — Fri, 29 Jul 2016 09:36:39 -0000

Pence's first big hire when he was running for governor was Chris Atkins, erstwhile director of "Tax & Fiscal Policy" for ALEC; he then named Atkins director of the state's Office of Management & Budget. Atkins had previously worked for Mitch Daniels' administration. Indiana has long been the sandbox for ALEC's experiments.

Re: The Fall of the House of Graham (ongoing)

bmk — Sun, 15 May 2016 07:45:44 -0000

Let's not forget Anne Graham Lotz, Franklin's older sister, who's a notable Culture Warrior™ in her own right. (She seems to specialize in End Times weather predicting.)

Re: GOOD GRIEF

bmk — Tue, 20 Oct 2015 10:16:27 -0000

I do some work in fundraising, and I've run into this idea over and over. I was surprised when a woman in one workshop suddenly started crying. She described that she and her husband -- who were quite wealthy -- felt used by the way people asked them for money. It was clear that this was a significant stress on her, and caused her to feel alienated and isolated. I think you're quite right to compare it to survivor's guilt. Luckily, in that case, it didn't turn into the garbage oppression olympics described in the article.

I think Xexyz is right that "they need to engage with the people around them." (Henri Nouwen also recommends this in his short pamphlet A Spirituality of Fundraising, which has a problematic section on "People Who Are Rich.") What bothers me is that the onus of making the first empathetic gesture still falls disproportionately on people who are already marginalized.

Re: You Won’t Believe The Cosmology

bmk — Sat, 01 Aug 2015 08:24:58 -0000

It's an interesting counterpoint to the devil-ish alien Overlords from Clarke's Childhood's End.

Re: Experimental Theology: "The Lord's Will": Thoughts About Death, Stoicism and Progressive Christianity

bmk — Thu, 28 May 2015 21:41:06 -0000

Related to the personhood angle, I see the impact of the changing conception of "self" in 16th/17th century Europe. Not only is there the direct impact on personhood, but also in what it means to "will" something -- changing what we think of when "the Lord's will" is invoked. Thus, even if the Hebrews who wrote these Biblical texts had a "personal" view of God, they would have a fundamentally different epistemology of what that person-ness entailed and what God's will meant than, say, the Deists of the 1600s. (Of course, those same rationalist philosophers provide the link back to the Greek and Roman philosophies, including stoicism.)

And I can't help but be reminded of Elizabeth Sifton's The Serenity Prayer, about her father's famous words: "God, give us grace to accept with serenity the things that cannot be changed…"

Re: More To Life

bmk — Mon, 27 Apr 2015 08:23:07 -0000

"I just have trouble understanding how truth, all by itself, could be enough for a person."

I try to re-read Vonnegut's Cat's Cradle every so often, and this last time I decided that Naomi Faust (the secretary) was the real hero of the book.

Re: ‘I was homeless, and you chased me away …’

bmk — Fri, 20 Mar 2015 15:55:47 -0000

I think the New Living Translation's reading of Ezekiel 16:49 is appropriate here: "Sodom's sins were pride, gluttony, and laziness, while the poor and needy suffered outside her door."

Re: Why Republicans Don’t Think Obama Is Christian

bmk — Thu, 26 Feb 2015 20:33:29 -0000

I'm sorry I was unclear. I don't agree with that definition at all. I was merely using it as an example of how circumscribed the "definition" of Christianity is when defined by political Conservative Christianity -- sometimes even explicitly in these terms.

Re: Why Republicans Don’t Think Obama Is Christian

bmk — Thu, 26 Feb 2015 11:24:48 -0000

Christians are defined by (1) being anti-abortion, (2) being anti-gay, and (3) being anti-evolution. Obama is none of those things. Therefore, Obama is not a Christian.

But it's still unclear why that makes him a Muslim, as opposed to an Atheist or Buddhist or Pastafarian. The constant xenophobic fearmongering over Islamic terrorists is one possible explanation, but I don't find that convincing -- after all, we've had long-running scares over "secularists" and the Wars on Christmas and Easter, not to mention public crosses and nativity scenes and monuments to the Ten Commandments. So why not "other" Obama by linking him with those secular progressives, who are -- according to Bill O'Reilly -- trying to destroy America?

Sadly, I think that the only explanation that makes sense is race. The public face of atheism/secularism is predominantly white; the public face of Islam is predominantly brown. And Obama gets lumped in with the category that more-or-less fits his skin color.

Re: LOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOL F@#K YOU

bmk — Tue, 27 Jan 2015 20:24:24 -0000

Uh-oh. Now you'll never get to work for the Edwards campaign. ;)

Re: Reclaiming “Third Way”

bmk — Thu, 21 Aug 2014 08:21:30 -0000

As I was reading this, I kept thinking of the economist AO Hirschman's Exit, Voice, and Loyalty — specifically, how loyalty affects our decisions about Fight (Voice) and Flight (Exit). And even when your choices are limited, people inevitably find ways to withdraw or limit their participation.

I know several people have written about Exit… as it relates to church and faith communities, so now I know what I'll be reading the rest of the day.

Re: Experimental Theology: Visiting and Evolving in Monkey Town

bmk — Mon, 21 Jul 2014 09:21:31 -0000

Michael Kazin's sympathetic and revisionist biography of Bryan — A Godly Hero: The Life of William Jennings Bryan — tries to put into context Bryan's opposition to the "Social Darwinism" and related movements of the early 20th century. Kazin refutes the idea that Bryan's "real" motivation was opposing eugenics; instead, it was Bryan's consistent stance against any kind of "might-makes-right" morality.

Re: We Are Not “All The Same Inside” Our Wallets: A Response to Burger King’s Proud Whopper, From A Former BK Employee

bmk — Sat, 05 Jul 2014 14:37:13 -0000

Sarah, you wrote: "I want my differences as a queer person to be liberated and affirmed, not erased. Not dismissed with “We are all the same inside.” "

That got me thinking — what is the best way to talk about and celebrate our commonalities while not eliding or erasing different experiences and oppressions? As you point out, the exploitative nature of Burger King's practices certainly affects how their message will be perceived. And the clumsiness of the blanket statement "We are all the same inside" certainly doesn't help.

This is something I've been wondering about, especially since so many "public" discussions recently have seemed to revolve around this dynamic (PCUSA's General Assembly, Indiana's marriage laws, etc). Moving between the particular and the general, and celebrating both commonalities and diversities — I know that I too easily fall into a one-or-the-other mentality on these things. Clearly, "relationship" is part of the answer, but it seems incomplete.

Re: John Courtney Murray is still dead

bmk — Wed, 02 Jul 2014 15:58:01 -0000

Fred wrote, "Concern about abortion, however — even when that concern has no factual basis — is a legitimate religious scruple because, well, it’s Catholic. Just like Sam Alito. And just like John Roberts, Antonin Scalia, Anthony Kennedy and Clarence Thomas…"

But I think it's important to note that Sotomayor is Catholic, too. I don't think there's anything peculiarly *Catholic* about Alito's tribalism here — as I mentioned elsewhere, it's an ecumenical conservative misogyny.

Re: Bilgrimage: Quote for Day: "Concern about Abortion Is a Legitimate Religious Scruple Because, Well, It’s Catholic. Just Like Sam Alito."

bmk — Wed, 02 Jul 2014 15:53:16 -0000

The thing that bothered me about Fred's post is that it elides the fact that Sotomayor is Catholic, too. I don't think there's anything distinctly *Catholic* about Alito's tribalism — it's an ecumenical form of conservatism and misogyny.

Re: Five Reasons Churches Need to “Come Out” on LGBTQ Rights

bmk — Fri, 20 Jun 2014 10:00:22 -0000

"Much of the pain, and therefore, suspicion and resentment, lies at the institutional level." — I think you're onto something important here. As a Presbyterian, I watched my church (finally) take steps in the right direction on this yesterday. But many of the objections I heard were about the pain this would cause to the institution of the church. That is, we're still privileging the potential pain to institutions over the actual pain and harms being caused to individuals — and not just on this issue.

I know that those institutions often represent many individuals, and that it's not always an easy distinction to draw. But the fact remains that institutions are not people themselves, and we need to consistently remind ourselves of that.

Re: School Daze by D.R. Tucker | Political Animal | The Washington Monthly

bmk — Sun, 15 Jun 2014 12:20:20 -0000

I think today's SMBC comic had the best take on this: "The point of the speaker is to show how much money our university can afford to spend on 20 minutes of platitudes." (http://www.smbc-comics.com/...

Re: The Right’s Turn Away from Representative Government by Martin Longman | Political Animal | The Washington Monthly

bmk — Mon, 09 Jun 2014 11:19:14 -0000

I think it's also important to look at the surprisingly widespread movement to repeal the 17th Amendment, and return to the often-corrupt practice of choosing Senators by state legislatures.

But the global context seems to complicate this a bit, with the phenomenon of xenophobic right-wing "populist" movements across Europe.

Re: Bilgrimage: More Oh Happy Day: In Which I Tell the Rest of the Marriage Story

bmk — Mon, 12 May 2014 18:51:57 -0000

Congratulations!

Re: God and the Gay [Evangelical] Christian

bmk — Sun, 11 May 2014 19:13:43 -0000

I've only read the first couple chapters, so I can't weigh in on the book as a whole. But you've really nailed the nagging problem I had with the introduction (and beyond) — namely, his parroting of the idea that only theological conservatives hold a high view of Scripture, and his descriptions of what that entails. I think this is probably linked to his target audience for the book (ie, not affirming mainline church folks like me) and what he wants to accomplish, but I don't think that adopting this framing is ultimately helpful for the rest of the book.

I hope I can put that aside to find the rest of the things I like about this book, the way you did.