Salt

Books I bought at the SBL

I bought most of these books at the SBL/AAR convention, along with a few from the University of Chicago Press, which would send them to me later. I'm looking forward, especially to David Bentley Hart's book and to Bert Harrill's, although I've already finished Griffiths' book Lying, which I'll compare [eventually] to Frankfurter's On Bullshit and William's Truth and Truthfulness.

The Devil's Music

Dan Radosh has an article on Christian Rock and the Killer David Ludwig.

He writes: If your only association with contemporary Christian music (CCM) is Amy Grant or Stryper, you might be surprised at how popular, varied and artistically mature the genre has become in the last 15 years. By some estimates, Christian music sales topped $720 million last year, making it a bigger niche than jazz and classical combined. For every genre of mainstream music there is a Christian parallel: rock, punk, reggae, folk, dance pop, gangsta rap. Pillar, named for the biblical description of God's household as "the pillar and foundation of truth," plays rap-core, a furiously propulsive mash-up of hard rock and rap. Musically, they are as creditable as many of their top-40 counterparts. Their lyrics testify to their faith in Jesus, a faith that David and Kara publicly share.

It should go without saying that Pillar isn't even remotely responsible for David Ludwig's actions, any more than Marilyn Manson was responsible for Columbine. As CCM reaches an ever larger audience, the likelihood that some people in that audience will be deeply troubled increases proportionally. The CCM industry is already painfully aware that its fans are often no more virtuous than any other teenagers. A 2004 survey by the Barna Group found that "teen buyers of Christian music were just as likely as other teens to engage in music piracy." Nearly 80 percent of young people who purchase Christian music also download it illegally. Christian music is not just for goody-goodies anymore.

But Christian rock doesn't just happen to find troubled kids in its audience, it reaches out to them. At a Christian music festival in Neodesha, Kan., two months ago, I watched as the singer of Seventh Day Slumber called on the people there to look into the darkest depths of their souls, that they may seek forgiveness. "If you've ever thought about suicide, put your hand in the air," he said, and they did, tears streaming down their faces. "If you've gone so far as to write a suicide note, put your hand in the air. If you've thought about killing yourself just this week, put your hand in the air." The dark undercurrents of secular thrash and emo music are not absent from the Christian versions, just channeled differently.

Pillar ended its Oct. 6 set with a song called "Fireproof." It must have struck a chord in David. He posted the lyrics on his blog:

I know where I stand and what'll happen if you try it
I am FIREPROOF
I know my heart and I just can't deny it
I am FIREPROOF
I tried to tell you but you wouldn't be quiet
I am FIREPROOF
I'll never bow down and you won't buy it
I am FIREPROOF

Like many edgier evangelical bands, Pillar specializes in battle anthems, composed on the premise that Christians are under constant spiritual attack. The emotional effects are remarkably similar to those of any secular odes to alienation and rebellion, and the vast majority of Christian teens who are drawn to such music, like the vast majority of their non-Christian peers, find comfort in the roiling cacophony that mirrors their inner lives; it helps them get through some difficult years in one piece. Any Christian artist can share legitimate and profound stories of young people who found genuine grace through their music. But there will always be a small fringe of disturbed people who are looking for an excuse to go over the edge, and who will find it in angry and tormented lyrics -- even if those lyrics are supposed to be about eternal salvation.

As always, he is wry, accurate and precise.

This morning, a parishioner said, "I went to my son's parish in Oklahoma. They had lyrics on the stage; a band; lights; and it was packed." The theology? "Vaguely fundamentalist. I just remember the preacher had sneakers and sat on a stool. He talked about money."

SBL conference

Got here last night. The public transportation system is remarkably unfriendly for tourists. But I got where I needed to.

I saw Elaine Pagels walk down the hall, as well as J. Z. Smith. As he was walking by, looking for the totebags, my friend [who had been a student of his] asked him if he needed anything. I got a little flustered and excused myself. Not easy being in the presence of greatness.

Bert Harrill, who had been my Greek teacher, told me he has just come out with a book. Harrill has already begun making his name as a biblical scholar. I remember, especially fondly, a little note he wrote at the end of one of my papers, "This is satisfactory for a Ph.D student in the New Testament." He was exceptionally rigorous.

As I'm staying in a suburb, I couldn't get to the first panel I was interested in. I'll probably attend the seminar on homiletics and biblical Studies, or the early Jewish and Christian Mysticism section. then there is always Disputed Paulines....

Retreat

Although I have a lot to say about Roman Catholicism and Gay theology, the recent clergy scandal in Ireland [the church were lots of conservatives are considering running], the hostility of a handful of Southern Bishops to ECUSA, and a few other modestly interesting events in the religious world, I am going on retreat with the Cowley Fathers for a week.  Especially today, when, at our stewardship meeting I faced my first real round of resistance to church growth and generous giving.  ["Kids?  Who needs Kids?  We need a roof!"]

Then convention, where I will give a short presentation, and then Philadelphia where I will be at the AAR and SBL conferences,  staying with some friends, who teach in the Political Science Department at Penn [both liberal Christians and smart scholars], and visiting others.  If you plan on going, let's meet up somewhere on Sunday for lunch or dinner.  I'll be in communicado until the 19th, but I'll try to pick up my email and find a place, which I may post here.

Krugman: Pride, Prejudice, Insurance

This is the one political issue of which Christians should be addressing immediately.  A single payer plan would be one of the greatest ways to establish justice and some semblance of equality in the country.  It would be hard work- but eventually one that would help everyone - from small businesses to the... sick.

General Motors is reducing retirees' medical benefits. Delphi has declared bankruptcy, and will probably reduce workers' benefits as well as their wages. An internal Wal-Mart memo describes plans to cut health costs by hiring temporary workers, who aren't entitled to health insurance, and screening out employees likely to have high medical bills.

The typical response to this is - why should we offer health insurance?  Noone has a right to health care.

These aren't isolated anecdotes. Employment-based health insurance is the only serious source of coverage for Americans too young to receive Medicare and insufficiently destitute to receive Medicaid, but it's an institution in decline. Between 2000 and 2004 the number of Americans under 65 rose by 10 million. Yet the number of nonelderly Americans covered by employment-based insurance fell by 4.9 million.

The funny thing is that the solution - national health insurance, available to everyone - is obvious. But to see the obvious we'll have to overcome pride - the unwarranted belief that America has nothing to learn from other countries - and prejudice - the equally unwarranted belief, driven by ideology, that private insurance is more efficient than public insurance.

Let's start with the fact that America's health care system spends more, for worse results, than that of any other advanced country.

In 2002 the United States spent $5,267 per person on health care. Canada spent $2,931; Germany spent $2,817; Britain spent only $2,160. Yet the United States has lower life expectancy and higher infant mortality than any of these countries.

...

Above all, Americans are far more likely than others to forgo treatment because they can't afford it. Forty percent of the Americans surveyed failed to fill a prescription because of cost. A third were deterred by cost from seeing a doctor when sick or from getting recommended tests or follow-up.

You see, Paul, medicine is generally quackery.  They should try vitamins. 

Why does American medicine cost so much yet achieve so little? Unlike other advanced countries, we treat access to health care as a privilege rather than a right. And this attitude turns out to be inefficient as well as cruel.

Isn't it possible to be cruel to be kind?  And besides, we don't want anyone to get anything for free.  offering health care to everyone would lead to fornication, bad hairstyles and dope peddling.  We might encourage a nation of hypchodriacs.  And that's much worse than having people who are really sick....

The U.S. system is much more bureaucratic, with much higher administrative costs, than those of other countries, because private insurers and other players work hard at trying not to pay for medical care. And our fragmented system is unable to bargain with drug companies and other suppliers for lower prices.

You mean that capitalism CREATES bureaucracies? 

Taiwan, which moved 10 years ago from a U.S.-style system to a Canadian-style single-payer system, offers an object lesson in the economic advantages of universal coverage. In 1995 less than 60 percent of Taiwan's residents had health insurance; by 2001 the number was 97 percent. Yet according to a careful study published in Health Affairs two years ago, this huge expansion in coverage came virtually free: it led to little if any increase in overall health care spending beyond normal growth due to rising population and incomes....

The economic and moral case for health care reform in America, reform that would make us less different from other advanced countries, is overwhelming. One of these days we'll realize that our semiprivatized system isn't just unfair, it's far less efficient than a straightforward system of guaranteed health insurance.

But who will care for the insurance companies?

The Overpraised American

Policy Review remembers Christopher Lasch. If only more liberals AND "reasserters" - the conservative sect of the church - would read him. He could be our common language on ethics.

Lasch described a culture that has “replaced character building with permissiveness, the cure of souls with the cure of the psyche, blind justice with therapeutic justice, philosophy with social science, personal authority with an equally irrational authority of professional experts. It has tempered competition with antagonistic cooperation . . . [I]t has surrounded people with ‘symbolically mediated information’ and has substituted images of reality for reality itself. Without intending to, it has created new forms of illiteracy.”

Lasch argued throughout The Culture of Narcissism that “The best defenses against the terrors of existence are the homely comforts of love, work, and family life, which connect us to a world that is independent of our wishes yet responsive to our needs.” These were the very things he saw the culture beginning to devalue. It is as true today as it was in Lasch’s day that society requires the creation of people who are capable of fulfilling their responsibilities to democratic culture. And yet Lasch had little hope that Americans would meet this challenge in the future. Writing in a later work, The Minimal Self, Lasch argued: “With the help of an elaborate network of therapeutic professions, which themselves have largely abandoned approaches stressing introspective insight in favor of ‘coping’ and behavior modification, men and women today are trying to piece together a technology of the self, the only apparent alternative to personal collapse.”

Read it all

Republicans worried about Bush

From Capitol Blue:

When a GOP strategist suggested last weekend that the President fire Rove, Bush exploded.

"You go to hell," he screamed at the strategist. "You can leave and you can take the rest of these lily-livered motherfuckers with you!" The President then stormed out of the room and refused to meet further with any other party leaders or strategists.

Bush's escalating temper tantrums and his intransigence on political issues increase Republican worries about the long term effects on both his presidency and the party's prospects in upcoming elections.

"Right now, George W. Bush is the Republican Party's chief liability," says a GOP strategist who has advised Presidential campaigns for 30 years. "The entire political future of the party and perhaps the nation now rests on the shoulders of a President that no one - Democrat or Republican - believes in or trusts."

Friday Itunes Blogging

Santiago Ozomatli
Hampmotized Susan Tedeschi
Micaela Sonora Carruseles
(What A) Wonderful World Sam Cooke
Burnin' for You Blue Öyster Cult
Lloraras Los Nemus del Pacifico
Oh Yeah Bryan Ferry & Roxy Music
What The World Needs Now Is Love Stacey Kent
Surrey With the Fringe On Top Laurie Allyn
You Make Me Feel Dag
Rosalita (Come Out Tonight) Bruce Springsteen

Gene Robinson and Ban the Prom

Gene Robinson interviewed by the BBC: "They serve as wardens and in leadership positions. People in America understand that to reverse that would be to say to a significant number of the faithful, 'you're no longer members of the body of Christ'.

"I can't imagine that happening."

He's right in part because the openness of homosexuality is linked with affluence and the loosening of social bonds. The connection between economic liberty and sexual liberty is close indeed.

And an interesting article: Ban the Prom. I'm sympathetic. "You are correct," Father Philip K. Eichner and Brother Kenneth M. Hoagland peremptorily begin. "The school calendar does not indicate the date for a senior prom. KMHS is no longer sponsoring a senior prom. As your own letter suggests, if parents and/or seniors want a senior prom, they will have a prom, no matter what the administration says or does. In fact, that is precisely the reason why we are no longer sponsoring a senior prom—it is so much beyond our control that it is mere tokenism to put our name on it."

The memo is notable for its anti-parent animus—it boldly deploys a Dr. Phil-style rhetoric—but even more for its anti-materialist message. "It is not primarily the sex/booze/drugs that surround this event, as problematic as they might be," that inspired the prom's cancellation, Eichner and Hoagland explain. "It is rather the flaunting of affluence, assuming exaggerated expenses, a pursuit of vanity for vanity's sake—in a word, financial decadence." Surprisingly, KMHS parents and students haven't kicked up much of a fuss. Maybe that's because they recognize the diatribe has useful lessons for cowed parents eager to regain the moral high ground with their debauched adolescents....

It takes Catholic moralists, not therapists, to put parents back in touch with their anti-materialist and nonconformist adolescent impulses, that old Puritan streak that ran through their otherwise hedonist youth. If they can't fight their teens' dissipation with fervor, they've got better ground to stand on in denouncing precocious conspicuous consumption. And if high-rolling parents can't pull it off, a screed from bold school administrators can give kids a defiant model to follow.

CIA has jails in europe

Evidence CIA has secret jails in Europe
By Demetri Sevastopulo, Guy Dinmore and Caroline Daniel in Washington, and Jan Cienski in Warsaw.

A leading human rights group on Wednesday identified Poland and Romania as the likely locations in eastern Europe of secret prisons where al-Qaeda suspects are interrogated by the Central Intelligence Agency.

The existence of the prisons in eight countries, including Thailand, Afghanistan and several eastern European democracies was reported in Wednesday's Washington Post.

Poland's role, if confirmed, would be especially controversial, given that it has recently joined the European Union.

Human Rights Watch, a US lobby group, on Wednesday said there was strong evidence - including the flight records of CIA aircraft transporting prisoners out of Afghanistan - that Poland and Romania were among countries allowing the agency to operate secret detention centres on their soil.

“We have a high degree of confidence that such facilities exist in at least Poland and Romania,” said Tom Malinowski, Washington advocacy director.

If the allegations were confirmed, they would be likely to provoke serious concern in the European Union.