New Project: After Hours

I've been busy building/posting at this site: After Hours, which is a new project being soft-launched in the last quarter of 2009 by Cardus staffers and associates. It will hard launch (with hope) in January 2010, but in the meantime it's an interesting space to play in. You're all welcome to check it :)

Thesis

Justice, for the victim of a murder, is a misnomer.

Discuss.

Finding Meaningful Work

The Facebook update of a friend of mine today reminds me of the perennial struggle of young people (like me): how do you get paid (lots of) money for doing things you love?

Many of my peers are engaged in this challenge and - as one privileged to have found both meaningful work and compensation for said work - it has led me to a few reflections.

First, the young especially can struggle to find meaningful work because they don't know what they find meaningful. To get paid to do what one loves one must know what one loves and - further - acknowledge that no career, skill or vocation comes without serious challenges and, if it's something worth doing, a high and long learning curve. There is the old principle of dedicating 10,000 hours but what that principle doesn't always suggest is that many of those hours can suck. Finding meaning, like finding what we love, is a process filled with the virtue of patience. And it is aided, I might add, to no small end by tough minded thinking and thorough-going prayer, such as that facilitated by friends like Steve Garber. Wisdom, as Gideon Strauss loves to recall, cannot be taught - but it can be caught; it's contagious.

Second, I am reminded continuously that my generation - and I mean myself particularly here - have hard lessons to learn from Brother Lawrence. The apprenticing curve for my own work in policy and academia is pretty high, but it's also pretty unpleasant at the start (and I count myself still on that curve). As Ecclesiastes admonishes, it is good for a young man to bear his burden in his youth - I can't imagine the first 2000 hours of developing expertise are nearly as pleasant as the last 2000.

Maybe part of finding meaningful work - work that we love - is about finding work we come to love, rather than expect to find excellent from Day 1. Maybe instead of coming in with our skills, ideas and preferences we let the work we do find shape those things, and take - as Brother Lawrence did - each day as a gift of grace, to learn to find the divine in new and unexpected ways; ways that at times defy what we consider our gifts, strengths and loves.

Aids, Africa, Religion

It is natural for anyone facing a terminal disease to ask, Why me? This is an
exasperated, unanswerable cri de coeur in the rational West—one of the steps of
the grieving process, we are told, that we all just need to get through. But
many Africans have their own kind of answer to that question.
African tribes
are not a homogenous, undifferentiated mass, but the vast majority traditionally
held in common a worldview of causation very different from our own. With
reference to illness, it is called the personalistic theory of disease. Even
today, most Africans believe that any major occurrence, good or bad, has two
causes. The first might be called physical: for instance, that a retrovirus
causes AIDS by destroying the cells of the immune system. The second is a
spiritual, less tangible cause, but is perceived to be no less real. Edward
Evans-Pritchard, whose ethnography of the Nuer people of Sudan is a foundational
work of anthropology, put Africans’ cosmological outlook this way: One might
understand that a house collapsed because termites damaged it. But the more
important question is, Who sent the termites?

and

As an evangelical Christian, Dahlman believes that the witch doctor’s
powers may well be real but that Christ’s are potent above all others. “There
are powers for good and powers for harm,” he says. “Our Western, Hellenistic
view says that doesn’t exist, so we can safely put it off the map. But I can
bring you people who would tell you otherwise, for whom the spiritual world is a
real, day-to-day concern.” In his years in the field, Dahlman says he has seen
an exorcism that reversed the curse of a laibon—a powerful spiritual figure in
Masai culture—as well as a prayer session that healed a woman whose femur was
fractured by a cape buffalo. She could not walk and, because night had fallen,
could not be evacuated. But as daylight broke after an all-night vigil, “the
American, board-certified doctor who had diagnosed the fracture came to the
woman’s house, and she walked out and greeted them,” Dahlman says. “So you can
say there never was any break, contrary to what this physician said and saw,
with this lady unable to walk or bear any pressure on that leg. Do you mistrust
that easy diagnosis, or do you believe that something else happened?”

http://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/aids-relief-and-moral-myopia, as found on Rod Dreher's site.

Debating Fair Trade

I have become deeply concerned with the economic orthodoxy developing in the Christian sub-culture in North America regarding so-called fair-trade. My own denomination - the Christian Reformed Church of North America - has recently published an issue of Justice Seekers on the importance of buying fair trade.

But this is pop culture international political economy, and nothing I've read and understand of economics seems to confirm this enthusiasm. What it confirms is an uncritical embrace of Wendell Berry's idyllic mode of production. Fair trade fits with the popular imagination of Africa needing essentially small-scale "mom and pop" stores, which fetch fair prices rather than being driven out of business by the conglomerate chains, like we all witness far too often here in North America.

The problem with this nostalgia is that it does not actually generate wealth. If it did, "mom and pop" stores wouldn't have gone out of business. Artificially floating unprofitable systems of production is as good a way as any to ensure that Africa (and other regions) stay poor; it ensures that single-industry economies continue to linger on, artificially stimulated by the latent guilt of the global north, when such economies could be differentiating, producing and even competing with the global North. What keeps this dream from happening is not paying higher prices for your coffee, but a profoundly broken system of international trade and global financial institutions.

I embrace Fair Trade as essentially a glorified public-relations campaign. It alerts us depth of our economic and political problems, but solve global economic disparity? Nonsense. The reverse is more true. We do need fairer trade - something tied, I believe, to freer trade. And, as both Joseph Stiglitz and Paul Collier agree, the problem with free trade is that it's never been tried.

* Further reading: I recommend here Collier's much lauded book The Bottom Billion, or his TED talk.

Amazing Grace (with Garlic)

I've been reading a lot of high literary theory as well as systematic theology and philosophy recently and in tackling the grand, abstract questions I sometimes forget the blessings of embodiment. This could be due to the fact that unlike others of you out there with lean abs, a love of physical activity, and metabolism to burn, I bear the burden of being portly, born with a loathing of physical activity that seems unable to be exorcised even with much fasting and prayer (okay, the fasting part is a lie). And yet, today I was able to take a moment to reflect on the embodied life God has given me and how good that can truly be.

I didn't make the chicken stew from scratch but I did authentically defrost it in the microwave and put it to boil on the stove. And before she left for work, my wife pulled out a recipe of drop dumplings from her favourite cookbook, Food That Really Smecks! I should have known or felt that some divine encounter was going to take place because such things happen when making, eating or even thinking about dumplings. While the stew was coming to a boil I mixed the cup of flour with 1.5 teaspoons of baking powder and the same amount of salt, cut 2 tablespoons of margarine into the mix, added a teaspoon of parsley and several good shakes of oregano. I was about the add the half cup of milk when I felt called by the Spirit to grab the garlic powder and give it a few good shakes over the mixture.

By this time the stew was boiling so I put it down to simmer and dropped the dumplings into the pot, put the lid on for 15 min. and sat back on the couch. The busyness of my past week seemed to crash through the windows at that point and I found myself again swept away in a tide of "lofty" concerns.

Then the timer went.

I grabbed a bowl and scooped myself up a good portion of chicken stew and parsley-garlic dumplings and went back out the couch to look out over the cityscape out our third story window. The smell of the stew would have been enough to tempt me to break my fast (that is, if I ever actually had the self-discipline to fast in the first place).

I held up the bowl in front of the window and watched the steam curl in on itself and dissipate even as I tuned into the words of the song I had playing on the CD player, "Amazing Grace, I feel you coming up slowly now, like the sun is rising, heat on my face...".

And I was truly thankful for my meal, even the bit that I dumped down the front of my shirt. Thankful in a way I haven't been for a long time. The words "amazing grace" have many connotations for me and many memories associated with the singing of those words but now I have a smell to go with them... garlic.

God of all Creation, thank you for garlic, and dumplings, and re-heated chicken stew! Amen.

[NOTE: To my Reformed friends, cooking with garlic won't turn you into a Pentecostal... think of it as, say, Creational].

Gross, gag-worthy, healthy

Following up on my "On shit" and "On shit II" posts, here is another unsexy, gross, but seemingly very effective thing that would help those in need.

I will file this under unsexy=effective.

Can anyone point me to any data which would belie these predictions? Article from which the graph is sourced is here.

I've become convinced that people in our age bracket are going to have to work very, very, hard to pay for their parents. Not only by doing the right and familial thing of caring for them when they become old and gray, but also by paying for the government debt incurred when they made up the bulk of the voting population.

A prediction to debate: we'll see tax increases in the next five years.

More on technology, this time with favour

"It's my memory. I call it my other brain," said Ms. Walmsley. "It's not a cool gadget. It's my lifeline."

So says a diagnosed amnesia sufferer, referencing her smartphone.

While many of us here at the Lair don't suffer from amnesia (well, let's just say we've not been diagnosed), I think we can identify with that. In fact, I remember a contributor of many a fine morsel at the Lair stating boldly in reference to one such device/program: "It basically runs my life."

I have to say that, as a late adopter, and as one who suffers from amnesia of a certain variety (My beloved prefers to call it squirrel syndrome), such little devices have dramatically improved my life. I'm serious. If I had a blackberry with outlook earlier in my life, I would have avoided much heartache. I'm assuming a hearty "hear hear" from the readers here familiar with my past ways.

Does anyone at the Lair have any examples of technology that has significantly improved their lives?

I love to tell the story

"Mistake me not," said the Cardinal, "the literature of which we are speaking—the literature of individuals, if we may call it so—is a noble art, a great, earnest and ambitious human product. But it is a human product. The divine art is the story. In the beginning was the story. At the end we shall be privileged to view, and review, it—and that is what is named the day of judgment.
"But you will remember," he remarked, as in a parenthesis and with a smile, "that the human characters in the book do come forth on the sixth day only—by that time they were bound to come, for where the story is, the characters will gather!"

h/t Culture Making

I think that there's something slightly amiss here: for some reason, I think it will be our stories that are viewed and reviewed alongside the divine story and not us who view and review the divine story, but nonetheless, I really, really appreciate this bit, and I think I'm going to try to pick up the book from the library.

Isak Dinesen, by the by, is really Karen Blixen (what a name!), of Babette's Feast and Out of Africa fame.

I'd like to ask those in the lair what they make of this, particularly with regard to how it relates to their relationships and the way in which they communicate with friends; those who recognize the divine art, and those who perhaps can't, don't, or won't see it.

For the tech addicts among us.

“Did you know that now, thanks to iPhone, you can use location services to tell your friends where are you are at any given moment, and if they’re on iPhone and have that same app they can find you, and then you can then ask iPhone to tell you if there are any Tex-Mex restaurants within a five-block radius, and what movies are playing at the nearest cinema? Then you can use Twitter (or, rather, one of the 14,000 Twitter apps) to tell your followers what you’re up to, and automatically feed that into your Facebook page so that your Facebook friends can comment on your movie plans, and advertisers can scour your personal messages and use keyword searches to send target messages to each of you, and deep thinkers like Robert Scoble and Chris Anderson will reassure you that you are not just getting sucked into the maw of the brain-killing machine, and this is not just mindless time-wasting twattle but is in fact extremely profound and revolutionary and important and intellectually challenging. Because in the old days you just read books and that was so passive, but now you’re so engaged and interactive, you’re not just a media consumer but you’re also a media creator — why, in fact, you’re a public intellectual — and if you don’t fully immerse yourself in every last bit of this shit then you will no longer be participating in your culture which means you will lose your job and everyone will laugh at you because you just don’t get it and you might as well be some 90-year-old dude sitting in a pee-stained bathrobe drooling.”

Thanks to Alan Jacobs for this.

Steiner on the Bible as Inspired Literature

I've been wrestling with the question regarding to what extent we ought to read the Bible "as any other book." I just got access to George Steiner's review of Alter and Kermode's Literary Guide to the Bible. His basic critique is that the recent trend evident in The Guide reduces the Bible to mere literature without accounting for its otherness. I love this quote in reference to the book of Job:

"I can--just--come to imagine for myself that a man of more or less my own biological and social composition could have written "Hamlet" or "Lear" and gone home to lunch and found a normal answer to the question "How did it go today?" I cannot conceive of the author of the Speech Out of the Whirlwind in Job writing or dictating that text and dwelling within common existence and parlance." (Steiner, "The Good Books," The New Yorker [Jan 11, 1988], 97)

Islamic Superheroes

The BBC runs a spot on Islamic Superheroes today, created by the Kuwaiti psychologist Dr Naif al Mutawa. He writes an open letter to his sons explaining why he created these characters. A quote:

So, at the age of 32, I uncapped my pen to create a concept that could be popular in the East and the West. I would go back to the very sources from which others took violent and hateful messages and offer messages of tolerance and peace in their place. I would give my heroes a Trojan horse in the form of THE 99. Islam was my Helen. I wanted her back.

Two Questions

In conversation with folks last night at Theology on Tap we were reminiscing about "big questions" in how and why we live our lives the way we do. There are always a host of big questions about how to live as Christians with integrity in North America, but we boiled it down to two basic ones that - to me - grabs the great idols of our time (and I think especially of our generation):

1. Do you pray?
2. Do you give?

Consistent prayer - not evangelical guilt-manipulated "I wish I prayed more"; but real, robust, ritual prayer is a statement about time, as much as where we put our money is a statement about value. The only two things we probably ever really control in this life are our time and our money. Surely what we do with them is the most profound incarnation of our beliefs, and the gods - or God - that animates our lives.

There is no shortage of excellent Christian living amongst 20'somethings, but how much of that excellence is the product of socializiation and not out of a deep relationship with God?

Finally, my friend Geoff Ryan challenges #2 saying it is not merely "do you give," but "how do you give?" The North American church has outsourced mercy, and a committed 10%+ tithe that operates from the suburban margins and never threatens to encounter the other is not sufficient.

Fuhd Me

Cardus has asked me to keep an informal log of my time and research for dissertation research, which can be found here. This site is only for reflections and notes as relate to the PhD and so will be of marginal interest, likely. Regardless it is part of our internal knowledge sharing and a capable enough tool for exchange with my overseas supervisors. You are all also welcome to visit as you are moved to.

John Hodgman at Radio & TV Correspondents' Dinner

I dare you to click this link

That's right, I double dog dare you to click this link.

At once hilarious, lamentable and grossly generalizing. Enjoy, if you dare.

Rediscovering Celibacy

To my delight I recently discovered a real attempt to engage the vocation of celibacy in Singled Out: Why Celibacy Must be Reinvented in Today's Church. I took a read through this last night and wanted to share a few thoughts.

First, bravo for evangelicalism getting something out on this topic. These are two fine authors with sharp minds, working on a pressing lack at the heart of evangelical theology.

But second, why "reinvent"? Jaroslav Pelikan makes an important point in The Vindication of Tradition that we never recover and we certainly don't reinvent tradition, we rediscover it. To their credit the authors do reach back into church history, but seem far too quick to move "beyond" these models. Rather than reinvent an evangelical theology of celibacy it might be worth looking at the folks that are already doing it more closely.

Briefly, let me explain why reinvention is a very bad idea. The tradition of celibacy would remind us that it is a vocation, a holy calling like marriage, that serves God and others. That same tradition would also remind us that, like marriage, there are specific disciplines that sustain and develop the life of celibacy. Henri Nouwen is very clear that celibacy should never be pursued as an isolated vow: there are reinforcing disciplines that support the celibate life. These are disciplines like silence, contemplative prayer and simplicity. The vocation of marriage has its disciplines which sustain it, why would not celibacy? We admit that marriage is so hard that we have marriage counselling before its administration - to deeply reflect on the disciplines that sustain the vocation. Our loss of the vocation of celibacy is indicative of even more profound losses in evangelicalism. More strongly, the surest sign of a flawed vision of family and community, is the denigration or dishonouring of the celibate life.

Finally, the radical embrace of what some of my students call "intentional living" also seems reflective of this a-historical evangelicalism. These students seem to want to embrace simplicity, contra North America's consumerism, living in rhythm with the land and seasons, focus their lives intentionally on the person of God and find creative spaces for prayer and service. Such institutions exist: they are called monasteries. The reason so much intentional-living in the evangelical community seems to precipitate conflict and betray emotional cataclysm is because these disciplines are damn hard to practice together and monks know that, and have been at it for a very long time. The rituals and disciplines that sustain monastic life are not so much ornamentation, they are critical features without which communal life rooted in the passionate pursuit of God collapses.

I will be giving a talk at the University of Western Ontario this fall tentatively titled thus far "How to do public life and (still) believe stuff." In that process I expect to reflect more extensively on celibacy and its supporting monastic disciplines, and relate this to the challenges of public life particularly. Thus, more thoughts will no doubt come on this.

Craftsmanship

It seemed appropriate given the last post to point to a piece recently done by one of our number: Rediscovering Craftsmanship. I believe - if you are in the Ottawa valley - he will also sharpen your knives for real cheap.

Perhaps the life of the mind needs the balance of carefully cultivating skills of the hands, to reorient us toward the tactile and the material.

the case for working with your hands

I just came across this New York Times article about an academic who more or less gave up his academic life and opened up a motorcycle repair shop. The article is called The Case for Working with your Hands by Matthew B. Crawford (HT Culture Making blog). This resonated particularly with me for a number of reasons.

1. My experience was the opposite of Crawford's--that is I used to be a tradesman and gave that up to pursue academics (though for the first 5 or 6 years of studying I returned to my trade in the summers for income).
2. I love motorcycles and at this point might actually consider leaving my research for the chance to work on bikes full time (okay that was [mostly] a joke)!
3. I recently bought an older motorcycle that needs some work to get it on the road (in case you are wondering the bike was manufactured by an East German company called Motorrad und Zweiradwerk, and though it's a bit rough around the edges I'm not ashamed to admit that I have completely fallen in love with it!).

It's also interesting because I have recently moved from a christian context in which working with your hands is an honoured tradition to a new context made up almost entirely of professionals (seriously, I can count on one hand the number of people whom I have met who do some sort of manual work, be it a trade or some other form of labour). Anyway, I'm not sure I have any great insights into this but I thought I'd throw it into the mix.

cheers!

The Death of Adam and Why We Should Laugh

In response to the post "Critical of Critical Theory?" by - and the comments on that post by Adunare, I offer up the following meditation on Marilynne Robinson's collection of essays The Death of Adam, in which many of the questions regarding critical theory and postmodern thought are explored. Before venturing into Robinson's essays, however, I'd like to re-iterate the quotation by R.R. Reno in the former post: Critical theory plays a significant and important role in contemporary society: it de-mystifies and de-legitimates inherited beliefs. [...] These days critical theory is an intellectual project, the main goal of which is to show that conventional ways of thinking are hopelessly naïve, if not malign and corrupt. It is a deck-clearing operation... . Though not responding directly to Reno, Robinson puts forward that the deck - in her discussion, belief in the Christian God - has not been cleared at all but, rather, the entire game has been abandoned. She puts it this way:

What if, in important numbers, we believe there is a God who is mysterious and demanding, with whom one is not easily at peace? What if we believe there will be a reckoning? [These beliefs do not seem to have been forsaken but they do seem to have] simply dropped out of the cultural conversation. And, at the same time we adopted the very small view of ourselves and others, as consumers and patients and members of interest groups, creatures too minor, we may somehow hope, for great death to pause over us. If we still believe in the seriousness of being human, while we have lost the means of acknowledging this belief, even in our thoughts, then profound anxiety, whose origins we would be at a loss to name, seems to me an inevitable consequence. And this may account for both the narrowness and the intensity of the fiction that contains us. It is our comfort and our distraction. We are spiritual agoraphobes. (from "Facing Reality")

The "fiction" Robinson evokes here can be seen as the idea that has somehow become a cultural worldview - that "Truths are fictions whose fictionality has been forgotten." For Robinson, this fiction we inhabit - a paranoid culture of perpetual suspician where we cannot play any game because we are continually clearing the deck - is unbearably and debilitatingly narrow. I concure with Robinson in that though we may still believe in the seriousness of being human (that we are indeed made in God's own image) that we have lost the means of acknowledging this truth as Truth. Because of this I also resonate with Adunare's decreasing enthusiasm for the possibilities supposedly put forward by the postie canon for theistic scholars.

That said, there is something valuable in interrogating inherited beliefs. The key is not to be seduced into the comfortable tautology that, "truthfully," truths are fictions that have forgotten their fictionality - a tautology Roland Barthes calls "myth." To return to Reno's metaphor: when clearing the deck becomes the game we've narrowed the possibilites of play. Play, a popular postie term, should never be separated from the conditional phrase, "so that". Here I return to Robinson, though in another essay on Dietrich Bonhoeffer, in which she elucidates Bonhoeffer's distinction between Relgion and "the church."

Religion for Bonhoeffer (and for Karl Barth before him) was what Reno calls "inherited belief": man-made, fallible, but taken as Truth. To show that this "Truth" was a fiction that would not admit to its own fictionality or fallibility, Bonhoeffer put forward the idea of "the church" or authentic Christianity. To do this Bonhoeffer spoke of religion as merely the garment of biblical Christianity, not its essence. Robinson writes: That "religion" has made inappropriate claims, [and] that God and "the church" should stand in opposition to it, is not a new idea for Bonhoeffer. Surely what is to be noted in all this is Bonhoeffer's steadfast refusal to condemn the "religionless" world, and his visionary certainty that it is comprehended in the divine presence (from "Deietrich Bonhoeffer"). If I read Robinson right, Bonhoeffer de-mystified Relgion proper by interrogating it with the idea of authentic, biblical Christianity so that inherited beliefs would not take the place of the One on whom those beliefs were originally predicated.

If Derrida can be trusted, deconstructive "play" has a serious side to it: clearing the deck so that the game can continue to be played anew. De-mystification has a purpose but when it becomes an end in and of itself, when it becomes cut off from its contigent "so that," when clearing the deck becomes the game entire, we have, as Robinson asserts, lost something of the seriousness of being human. This seriousness is what keeps us from succumbing to spiritual agorophobia: it is faith. But faith, for Robinson, in all its seriousness, is given its very breath by laughture: not cynical, snide chuckling, but wholehearted belly laughing brought on by all-out, uncontrollable rejoicing in the God who has made us in His image! Robinson does not seem to negate questioning, interrogating, or de-mystifying our inherited beliefs (she does this in her essays); but this is done so that the reader is not left wandering epistomoligcally but is restored to knowing that all knowing is in God, comes from His hand, and has its being in Him alone. And God, according the G.K. Chesterton, is a God of mirth.

To borrow a question from Jean Genet, what would happen if someone started laughing? [...] What if we understood our vulnerabilities to mean we are human, and so are our friends and our enemies, and so are our cities and books and gardens, our inspirations, our errors. We weep human tears, like Hamlet, like Hecuba. If the universe is only all we have so far seen, we are its great marvel. [...] This being human - people have loved it through plague and famine and siege. And Dante, who knew the world about suffering, had a place in hell for people who were grave when they might have rejoiced. (from "Facing Reality")

With Apologies

I removed a post from one of our distinguished number because it featured a piece I wrote in another forum I would rather not discuss in this space. I regret to have censored something of obvious importance in need of discussion.

The Importance of Tenure

A friend forwarded this to me, on the sure knowledge that I (like many of us) would appreciate it.

  

Can North American Christians do Cultural Transformation?

There is a great conversation going around my work email list today about the peril and prize of cultural and political transformationalism in Christian theology. Part of the conversation hit on the spiritual disciplines that public policy/politics folks must cultivate to do their work (though this extends far beyond politics).

In trust that this remains a pseudonymous forum for us to share opinions alike I copy a small section I wrote:

I remain very interested in the spiritual practices that fund a life in public policy/politics. North American Christians playing with wealth, power and politics always strikes me a bit like serving alcohol at the Lord’s Supper. I’m totally on side, but seriously – some people cannot handle that. And in this case, I’d say most of us are closet alcoholics. Frankly, I spend most of my days being torn somewhere between “this is so cool” and “I have to get the hell out of here”.

I am increasingly convinced that the disciplines of simplicity, contemplative prayer and chastity or celibacy are three critical virtues we need to rediscover to fund authentic Christian work in public life.

Thoughts?

Abundance for All

...this [prosperity gospel] means something very different in the comfort of an air-conditioned megachurch in suburban Atlanta (where “prosperity” signals an idolatrous, consumerist accumulation of luxury) as opposed to what “prosperity” promises in famished refugee camps in Rwanda. The former deserves our criticism; the latter, I think, requires careful listening.

- James K.A. Smith (whom I've met, and who I like)

A great little article in what seems to be a bit of a flurry of study on the prosperity gospel by Christian scholars of late (B&C reviewed a few books on the subject as of late).

Critical of Critical Theory?

R.R. Reno is.

Many have pointed out the gray ideological homogeneity of what passes for
critical theory. David Horowitz has amply chronicled the rigidity and
intolerance of the contemporary professoriate. Others have noticed that the
preening theoretical vocabularies of contemporary cultural analysts tend toward
rhetoric rather than argument. Back when deconstruction was the rage, John
Searle wrote a devastating analysis of the gimcrack posturing that was being
passed off as profound argument.

Yet endless theoretical elaborations of suspicion remain a growth industry all the same. “Truths are fictions whose fictionality has been forgotten”—it continues to be said in a thousand different ways. The reason, I think, is simple. Critical theory plays a significant and important role in contemporary society: it de-mystifies and de-legitimates inherited beliefs. It is not, as some critics would like to think, simply
Leftist ideology. Nor is it nonsense dressed up in fancy French words. These
days critical theory is an intellectual project, the main goal of which is to
show that conventional ways of thinking are hopelessly naïve, if not malign and
corrupt. It is a deck-clearing operation—not to prepare students for truth, but
to prepare them for life without truths.

Pope Benedict has called this mode of pedagogy a dictatorship of relativism. It is, of course, a soft tyranny. Nobody is imprisoning college students for having convictions. The dominant intellectual regime is satisfied with two basic strategies: continuous assault and a starvation diet. We take apart the belief-systems of adolescents with our multi-faceted and powerful modes of critical analysis—and we give them next to
nothing substantive to believe.

Discuss? I'd love to hear E.Go's thoughts on this.

Signs of Life

Are there any here? I know a few of us have picked up and rocked across the world, but at least one or two are still post-capable. Love to hear what we're all thinking/writing about!

End the University as We Know It

Mark C. Taylor writes,

GRADUATE education is the Detroit of higher learning. Most graduate programs in American universities produce a product for which there is no market (candidates for teaching positions that do not exist) and develop skills for which there is diminishing demand (research in subfields within subfields and publication in journals read by no one other than a few like-minded colleagues), all at a rapidly rising cost (sometimes well over $100,000 in student loans).

A great piece with plenty to evoke conversation and debate. Though it breaks my heart a bit to suggest tenure be phased out before I've had my own chance to abuse - cough - embrace the system :)

Postmodern Faith

This past weekend on retreat at St. Gregory's I finally put my finger on why I don't think postmodernity - ultimately - offers the place to start to explore faith and knowledge. I found and used much postie lit in my work to make the argument for universal faith; which is to say that all have recourse at some point to articles of argument which are not fundamentally deconstructible. Fair enough - Wolterstorff makes similar points in Reason within the Bounds of Religion. It's a useful enough line of logic in the contemporary academy.

The problem comes in execution. Faith remains an autonomous activity of human beings, something that we take as a leap, as Kierkegaard would say, or a "mad decision" as Derrida would later argue. But the Christian experience knows faith is too impossible for mere human beings to make on their own.

Faith begins in God, not the actualization of self. And until we recognize and embrace that we can't make it ourselves, but it is a gift, mysterious, unfathomable and outrageous in this broken world, we shall never rest easy in its constituent beliefs and activities.

How small and foolish I feel after such simple revelations.

The Challenge of Power and the New Geography of Human Settlement

Yet another piece has emerged challenging what has become the conventional wisdom of green energy, and not without cause. Wired magazine, a favourite in my household, recently did a feature spread on how emerging technology might revolutionize the electrical grid - a grid which, it is important to emphasize, functions like much of our domestic tele-communications infrastructure, with degrading 19th and 20th century components waiting on catastrophe. Wired received marked criticism for its futuristic nearly science fictional take on how to solve America's (and to us Canadians that means North America's) electrical power grid problem.

The real concern, as I understand it, is that policy advocates aren't sufficiently aware of the actual science behind electrical power generation and - especially - the delivery of electricity. Electricity is the ultimate JIT (just-in-time) product. Once it's generated there is no effective way of storing it (even some of the best industrial batteries save only 50% of the charge put into them which degrades over time) with severe limitations on transportation (higher voltage transit may mean lower losses, but ultimately even those equations break down). The fact is the best way of producing electrical power is a relatively local generating station, meeting the capacity of the region. That is a problem.

And it means some interesting opportunities. I was reflecting with a room full of electrical engineers and contractors recently that perhaps as energy costs rise - which if we move from carbon based generation to "something else" and that cost is accurately reflected in market rates it most certainly will - perhaps human settlement patterns will reflect this new reality.

The old geography is one based on transportation and agriculture, focussed especially on rivers. But new technology has made travel - both of people and of consumables - easy and fast. I think there are two critical geographic factors that will begin to determine where and how people settle: 1) fresh water, and 2) electrical generation capability.

Already companies and corporations are yielding to the latter. Google may "do no evil" with its low-energy HQ in California but its 100-megawatt server farms are popping up in places like Lithuania and China, where power is cheap and plentiful (though not especially clean).

There are places in Canada that have massive hydroelectric capacity - for example - that have no market to deliver the power to. Is it possible that as generating power becomes more and more expensive (in $$) and costly (in environmental terms) that these places - with gluts of fresh water and clean, easy power generation - will become the new cornerstones for industrial and human settlement?

In the short term, at least, I doubt it.

Theology on Tap

This group is very cool, and I could not have brainstormed a more compelling tagline: Good food. Great beer. Excellent ideas. I'm having lunch with the Chaplain who runs it this week, and might end up doing a few things with them. I'm starting a rather similar kind of event - if a bit lower on ideas and higher on good beer - this summer called Common Ground, with some great, community active friends in the Locke Street neighbourhood.

God and Evil

From C.S. Lewis via John Stackhouse, something that took on fresh meaning following a much loved sermon yesterday.

The real danger is coming to believe such dreadful things about Him. The conclusion I dread is not, "So there's no God after all," but, "So this is what God's really like. Deceive yourself no longer."

Can God be Trusted?

Pursuant to a variety of recent blog posts, last night I read John Stackhouse's book Can God be Trusted?: Faith and the Challenge of Evil, a delightful, if roving, popular read on some of the issues at stake in the discussion.

What I appreciate most about the book is its popular but deeply sympathetic tone to the challenge of faith. It offers no ultimate answer, though does provide a reasonable outline for why belief in God might be consistent with the problem of evil. However, discussions like this often seem to intellectualize the very problem which is not - really - fundamentally intellectual. Stackhouse does not. He lets the reader continue to feel the heft of the existential problem of faith, and further to agree that faith is hard - it is no naturally easy thing to fall into, or to fix ourselves up with. And it is not, of course, something we can stir up in our own hearts with sufficient study and reflection.

Such faith, Stackhouse rightly notes, is moved and made within us by the Spirit of God, echoing my own oft repeated evening prayer: I do believe; help me overcome my unbelief!

When it comes to the deep pain and problems of the age we are in, I can think of no other prayer by which to come to faith.

Bravo to the writers of Battlestar Galactica

This past semester I felt less like a PhD English student and more like a serious critic (and fan!) of Battlestar Galactica. This is not to say that I neglected my studies: all my papers are now done (see my comment to Adunare's last post), my GA research is finished, I completed the Graduate Program in Teaching, and I have submitted a paper to a conference. All of this - and I do mean ALL - pales in importance to the evenings and afternoons and early, early mornings I spent catching up on the past 4 seasons of this epic TV space drama.

Not only did I engage this series with all of the giddy giggling, knee-slapping joy, and loud WTFs one would expect from a Calvinist proselyte, I also brought the wisdom of Battlestar to bear on discussions in a grad seminar and a fourth year course I gave a few guest lectures in. My enthusiasm was no doubt fuelled by the sheer amount of time I spent trying to get caught up so I could watch the final 2 hour episode when it aired a few weeks ago. This involved watching all of season 4 in a raucous 24 hour marathon.

Not only does shit blow up in this series (a creational requisite for space dramas and good TV in general), but the character development is of a depth rarely achieved in this medium, and the issues dealt with are as current as today's news yet as epic as the great myths. If it sounds like I'm gushing, I am! But that is because this series is that good!

The more Battlestar I watched the more I was moved by the way its worlds mirrored our own: making me more keenly aware of human sinfulness, our dreams that literally keep us alive, the often crushing difficulty of being a leader in a difficult time, the high honor and value of bravery and sacrifice, etc.

The series as a whole makes epic the line of the Bob Dylan song that frames the final episodes: "There must be some way out of here, said the joker to the thief. There is too much confusion, I can't get no relief." The series makes the chaos of life so real that any watcher of it (especially after 24 hours straight!) ends up insisting on this same thing: there must be some way out of here. That Christianity provides a sounder answer than Balthaar does in the last episode is not surprising; but that does not make the struggle to live that "answer," especially in the midst of holocaust or disaster, any easier.

Or maybe it does...

Either way, if Admiral Adama was to become a Christian and a preacher I'd want to go to his church. So say we all.

The Last Day of School

It's the last day of school - here come lip synching and ice cream trucks, writes Jennifer Gardy (from one of my favourite blogs). I finished my last bit of teaching for the year on Tuesday night, with a mixture of relief and nostalgia. Where to go from here? Jennifer writes,

[O]nce the undergrads have left for their summer jobs, for their hometowns, and for their European backpacking adventures, the faculty and staff that are left behind pull a Tom Cruise in Risky Business. With no one to answer to, it's pants-less lip-synching from now 'til September, baby... Our department even brings in an ice cream truck once every summer to dispense free treats outside the building...

Obviously I teach at the wrong school. Many professors where I come from would decry this sort of thing, partly because it's a debasement of academia but mostly because they don't get invited to those kinds of parties.

Our Postmodern Financial Crisis

Via City Journal, Andre Glucksmann argues that the old axiom it is true because we say it is, has run its course:

Postmodernism, which places itself “beyond good and evil,” beyond true and false, inhabits a cosmic bubble. It would be a good thing if fear of a universal crisis allowed us to burst the mental bubble of postmodernism—if it washed away the euphoria of our pious wishes and brought us once again to see straight. That may be no more than another pious wish. But we should not succumb, as so many did in the 1920s, to a catastrophic sensibility. Yes, history is tragic, as Aeschylus and Sophocles knew. And yes, it is as stupid as set forth in Aristophanes or Euripides. No roll of the dice and no act of God or of mathematically refined finance can abolish chance, corruption, or adversity; the providence of the stock market cannot save us any more than that of the state. Let these lines from Plato be inscribed at the entryway to future G-20 meetings: “Is there not one true coin for which all things ought to be exchanged?—and that is wisdom.”

His Dark Materials: On Death and Life

Alan Jacobs takes issue with author Philip Pullman, who insists that the message of Lewis' book is: "Death is better than life; boys are better than girls; light-coloured people are better than dark-coloured people; and so on. There is no shortage of such nauseating drivel in Narnia, if you can face it."

I quite liked the Narnian tales. I also quite liked His Dark Materials, though I have obviously not put enough reflection into how, why and in what ways these tales reflect the existential squabble of Lewis and Pullman - and their respective worlds.

In this, however, I think Jacobs makes a salient criticism. Having read Pullman's books (several times) it is ironic to find him accusing another author of celebrating death, especially when compared against his own idea of death as eternal release to rejoin the cosmos. Indeed - if God is to have one cardinal sin (of which the Angel masquerading as God in Pullman's series has many) it would be his inability to face death, and that ecstatic reunion with the universe. It is his insistence to continue to live, which leads to his need to dominate, and to suppress all that is vibrant and good.

Racism and sexism Narnia may have, but not - I think - this kind of necrotism.

Nude Bathers

How do you "do" public life without becoming an arrogant SOB?

I've now had this conversation with at least a few good friends, and finally see bits of it are picked up independently by another friend's blog.

"Doing" public life seems to come with a few pieces. First, it comes with a set of values - independent even of opinions on issues themselves. I mean by these values things like: being informed - being engaged - active interest in politics and common life generally - being concerned with "big picture" stuff - and more. Second, valuing these things often (though not always) breeds a certain kind of personality. It means: having a thick skin - being confident - being prepared and thinking strategically - making value judgments quickly and decisively - and more.

I grow increasingly concerned that this matrix of public life is turning me into an arrogant SOB. I find myself increasingly dulled by pedestrian conversation, which does not obviously connect in with public values - values I seem to have mapped onto others as being necessary parts of having a complete, intelligent, self-aware life.

Academics can have the same SOB's problem - but this is different. Academic conversation can be just as pedestrian: sock makers making socks for other sock makers. Public policy types love to condescend the academy as self-proclaimed prophets preaching to no one who's listening - or, at least, no one who is capable of generating real change. Accomplishment is the name of this game. And that, friends, comes in bullet points - not long essays: snap decisive judgment.

I'm not at all impressed with this tendency, or with my collusion in it. It directly contravenes the excellent notions of co-vocationalism and craftsmanship that I have been exploring, but I find it built subtly into my vocational and social life all the same. Dinner conversations inevitably focus on the news of the day, the global economy, foreign policy and capital markets - advertising strategy and business plans. Such dinner tables are - without a doubt - poor hosts; where the values and desires of the home are forced on the guest.

I'm disappointed - but I'm also curious. I think the topic this opens for me is "spiritual formation for public life Christians." - how to stay rooted in the midst of the political cycle. I don't have the answer, and I'm a bit worried about where the road leads from here unless I start to.

This Is a Hymn

Here is a poem by Lorna Goodison entitled "This Is a Hymn" that I thought fitting for this space after Adunare's recent posts on the question, "Can God be trusted?" and on Gregory Wolfe's lecture. I think it also goes well with the poem posted by e.go recently.

"This Is a Hymn"

For all who ride the trains
all night
sleep on sidewalks and park benches
beneath basements
and abandoned buildings
this is a hymn.

For those whose homes
are the great outdoors
the streets their one big room
for live men asleep in tombs
this is a hymn.

This is a hymn for bag women
pushing rubbish babies
in ridiculous prams
dividing open lots
into elaborate architects' plans.

Mansions of the dispossessed
Magnificence of desperate rooms
Kings and queens of homelessness
Die with empty bottles
Rising from their tombs.

This is a hymn
for all recommending
a bootstrap as a way
to rise with effort
on your part.
This is a hymn
may it renew
what passes for your heart.

This hymn
is for the must-be-blessed
the victims of the world
who know salt best
the world tribe
of the dispossessed

outside the halls of plenty
looking in
this is a benediction
this is a hymn.

What to Call your Professor

This is a very handy diagram for people who have ever been caught in an awkward situation. Btw, undergrad profs among us - what do you have your students call you? I've heard more than a few "first name" proponents but I'm going to agree with the bottom right bubble: it's just wierd.

On being a better listener (the 2009 E.J. Pratt Lecture)

The E.J. Pratt Lecture is the most prestigious literary event of the year at Memorial University of Newfoundland. Past speakers have included Northrup Frye, David Lodge, Terry Eagleton, Ursula K. LeGuin, and Stan Dragland. This year's lecture was given by J. Edward Chamberlin or "Ted", as a small group of grad students came to know him at in an informal question-and-answer period the day after he delivered his lecture entitled "The Snarl Around Our Dory: The Long Line of Island Traditions" (http://today.mun.ca/news.php?news_id=4463).

In sitting through his lecture that ranged from Native North American lore to Australian Aborigines' oral storytelling to constitutions and treaties as narratives of identity to Israeli and Palestinian relations, I realized that Dr. Chamberlin's chief skill was not as an orator, writer or storyteller (though he is quite good at all of these). His chief skill is as a listener.

As an intent and careful listener, Dr. Chamberlin has spent a lifetime inclining his ear to people's stories: to many people's stories, recognizing conflict and seeing the need for common ground but being refreshingly reticent to promote "simple" pluralism. Dr. Chamberlin has worked with aboriginal land claims in the Mackenzie River Valley, Alaska, and Australia, advocating the primacy of people's stories of themselves, whatever disparate forms those stories take. And these stories, according to Dr. Chamberlin, are not just coming from one side of any conflict; the unique and compelling strength of his argument is that distinct (and often violently conflicting) worldviews or stories cannot be taken seriously if they are homegenized into "nice liberal pruralism."

"Pluralism is a danger not because it creates conflicts... but because it masks them" (from If this is your land, where are your stories?).

In listening to Dr. Chamberlin and in having him listen to me and to my colleagues and friends, I felt that even though we may not all share the same worldview or faith-perspective (though he is a fascinating person to speak to about "belief"), he actively listened to us and tried to understand us on our own terms. This could have been aided by the food on the table in the side conference room in the English Department and the Red Stripe Lager we were drinking, or it could be in part that he introduced himself as Ted rather than Dr. Chamberlin and that he remembered my name though I only offered it once.

I came away from that lecture and that informal meeting not only refreshed that someone was as enamoured with stories and belief as I am, but challenged to be a better listener, and by extension (since I am an English student), a better reader. In pursuit of this I'm working my way through Dr. Chamberlin's book If this is your land, where are your stories? which I highly recommend to all but perhaps specifically to Adunare and e.go.

Beauty and Imagination

Gregory Wolfe does the most recent Think podcast at Cardus on "The Wound of Beauty". I love this piece.

Greg talks about the nature of knowledge, as it was understood in the early medieval period, resting on three pillars: beauty, faith and reason. The traditional corresponding fields of inquiry are: imagination, goodness and truth. But - unlike in my thinking - one does not prefigure the next, until ultimately we are left with reason. Allow me to explain: linear thinkers such as myself suffer from a tendency to over simplify processes. Thus, we think of faith as preceding reason (reason within the bounds of religion) - if faith is properly grounded, reason is oriented correctly and can thus function as needed. Faith is a pre-requisite in this picture, but not necessarily continuously in need of attention. Like building a house, I've thought of faith as a foundation that once in place, can be somewhat taken for granted (I am caricaturing my own thinking here for the point of emphasis).

This concept of faith does not even work in the postie cannon. Faith in this setting becomes a leap of faith - an act of human imagination - which we must continuously sustain, on which we predicate all subsequent reasonable inquiry. Thus my own religious conception of faith falls short of what is offered by more cosmopolitan philosophy. But the real critical difference is not merely between my rediscovery of faith as being continuously sustained (surely the Ignatian practices I cherish emphasize this daily), but that in the postie philosophy the root of faith is the human imagination - the self. In the Christian picture imagination, faith and reason are all rooted in the person of God, who - I was reminded Sunday at an excellent Canadian Reformed service - alone, by His Holy Spirit, is capable of rendering faith in the hearts of human kind.

Yet how important imagination is in this rendering! Surely the Spirit does not cultivate faith within in dull, abstract statements of belief - as though all of life were a philosophers contest. No, instead the Spirit uses both faith and reason (yes!), but ultimately also imagination with which to capture our hearts and minds.

The academic and policy process, I worry, anchors itself too much on mere statements of faith and practices of reason. How can beauty and imagination reenter the process of cultivating knowledge and wisdom within and without?

I came on this poem in a book of Mary Oliver's poetry--a book that has mysteriously appeared on my bookshelf with a Brian Prince bookmark in it. Thought I'd share it to give Adunare a break from his lonesome posting.

"The Summer Day"

Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean--
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down--
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

Oratory

I laughed, I cried, I forwarded it on. So here I also post it.

To You from Failing Hands, We Throw the Torch

The latest Books & Culture is a treasure trove. At least one gem is a short piece by Richard Mouw on, "Remember the Antithesis!". Here he argues that Kuyperians typically struggle with holding common grace and the antithesis in a healthy tension: some come down more on the side of common grace while others have majored in the antithesis.

Van Til, writes Mouw, was clearly on the latter. I am quite firmly in the former. How important, then, for publicly engaged folk such as myself to be reading Van Til and thinking strongly through what the antithesis means for public life. Mouw recalls an exchange between William Harry Jellema and Van Til, when Jellema was close to death. Van Til thanked Jellema for all he had learned from him, but Jellema responded: "Yes, but Kees, it was you who at times kept us from going too far." Jellema is not the only one with that kind of indebtedness to Van Til.

Who in this generation will carry that torch? Who will keep those of us - myself included - who are tempted to follow commonness in a murky direction, honest and rooted?

Can God be Trusted?

A new book by John Stackhouse, Can God be Trusted?, asks some of the questions I've been thinking through the last few years. The intellectual challenge of evil can be answered in the abstract, that God can indeed be trusted to fulfill all things to the end that He has ordained. But along the way we can't pretend a great deal is not broken - not always to be repaired in the here and now.

Thus the challenge of evil I've been thinking about is not: can I trust that the world will reach its final consummation? - but, can I trust that this is going to work out for the better personally? Pardon the narcissism. The answer to that question - it seems to me - is no. I find this deeply troubling. What does trust in God mean, if I am rather unconvinced that God will indeed not keep "my foot from striking against a stone"? I am not so pious and not so pure as to be wholly indifferent to my stake in this life, and instead yearn only for the coming glory of the LORD. Perhaps I do yearn - if imperfectly - but much of my time is obsessed with the here and now, with the proximate and the piecemeal. How should a person experience a personal trust in God, in the wake of this challenge?

The Globalization of Cheating

Who knew? Apparently I can entirely outsource my PhD!

Needed: A Fiscal Framework

Jeffrey Sach's writes a compelling piece in April's Scientific American, a magazine I recently ordered and have been quite enjoying. He suggests that rather than arguing over what kinds of short-term stimulus - tax cuts or spending - produce more real stimulus dollars, we need to take a more systematic long view of our economics.

Infrastructure, for example, shouldn't be invested in because of its ability to produce short-term stimulus. It should be invested in because our infrastructure is crumbling, and has been in hard need of attention for decades. Tax cuts - of course - don't necessarily shore up economic stability in the short term. And, the problem with cuts long term, is that - at least in America - those cuts will need to do a strong about-face in order to compensate for a massive national debt and the forthcoming demographic crisis.

Sachs recommends what he calls a "medium-term fiscal framework" as a way beyond the spending/tax cutting dichotomy: a systematic trade-off of taxation and spending backed up by formal budget projections for at least 5-10 years, if not nearly 50. An example of this, cited by Sachs, is Norway's hydrocarbon wealth program.

Is it time for a new paradigm? Sachs is no fiscal slouch, and his ideas have resonance with me on a few different levels.

Tithing in an age of convinience

The National Post's blog has a short post entitled "Praise the Lord and swipe the plastic", talking about modern churches installing donation kiosks and offertory point-of-(purchase?) equipment.

The topic of tithing and generosity as a whole has arisen in conversation several times over the last twelve months. It is quite interesting to see how a culture of convenience shapes people's giving habits. In some ways, there's increased pressure in churches to begin tapping into the underlying psychology of buying (tactics like "if you see it, you'll purchase it", as the grocery store checkouts suggest). More and more church is trying to make a sale.

Two questions come to me from this. Does it undermine the practice of tithing if you can do it with minimal effort? What is the value of this effort? If something takes more work, is it a better show of generosity? 

Second, should churches respond to flagging donations on account of less people carrying cash by making it easier to give, or should they be dealing with a convenience and experience-oriented congregation who expect to be catered to if they are to give? Rather than "selling" church and God's work, should we see tithing promoted as an appropriate response of thankfulness to Christ and His grace?

For the record, I seldom use collection plates. Over the course of the year my tithes accumulate in a high interest account before being given, lump sum, to my church. So far, I wouldn't say it undermines my intentionality at all.

Thoughts?

Round trip

Round Trip Missions - Trailer from Round Trip on Vimeo.

I'd be interested to hear what the hive makes of this. It's taken from Culture Making which states:

I don’t think anyone has done this before: document not just an North American team going to Kenya, but a Kenyan short-term team coming to America. We got some of the best thinkers and teachers on the planet to give us deep insights into the best way to build lasting partnerships in short trips

On shit (part II)

I really apologize for following e.go's post up with something so base, but this is really an update on an earlier post in which I wondered if sometimes we get so caught up with the 'big ideas' about globalization and development that we forget about base, human things which, while overlooked, are fundamental to human lives. This will tie into e.go's latest post, I promise.

Anywho, I want to alert you all to something which might help resolve some of the issues surrounding basic sanitation, a key issue in many developing countries, and indeed, a key issue in public health.

Click here and here. Isn't that, like, totally awesomecoolamazing?

I read in the Economist once of a Nigerian (I think he was Nigerian, I can't find the article online) who started a business in which all he did was a. manufacture port-o-potties and b. deliver them and manage them in shanty towns. What is most fascinating is that this simple bit of entreprenuership did a few things: a. it made him wealthy. b. it created jobs for upwards of 100 people making good wages c. it increased sanitation and thereby the health in the shanty towns in which his business operated

This, to me, seems to be an example of healthy entreprenuership and globalization. It meets basic human needs (I think this is key; I'm not sure if the infusion of capital into an area by setting up plants in shanty towns to exploit cheap labour is as good, though I'm open to the idea), and creates wealth in doing so. The business owner above, was able to start his business through micro-credit and grew it, all the while addressing basic needs.

A belated hello...a busy life has kept me from fully participating in this forum so far, but happily I expect that to change.

"The Future of Globalization," an article by Christian ethicist Rebecca Todd Peters, presents a scathing critique of two ideological approaches to globalization: neo-liberalism and the development community and offers earthism and postcolonialism as two alternative approaches.

She's got my blood running faster than it has in a while, describing the ways in which "the current path of globalization can only succeed on the backs of a substantial constituency of low-skill, low-wage workers" (129). The paragraph that spoke most deeply to my desire to think and live faithfully follows; its assumption that justice is to be pursued by church communities reminds me of conversations I've had with people whose church communities expressly do not believe that:

The sins of overconsumption, indifference, and greed are so subtly woven into the fabric of our culture, and even our religion, that we often overlook or ignore them. These sins are manifested in both our individual and our communal behavior as families, communities, and nations. To the extent that our faith encourages us to focus on our intentional and overt sinful behavior at the expense of a deeper probing of the meaning of sin, we are encouraged to ignore what I believe to be the most egregious expression of sin for the globalized elite of our world. That sin is our unexamined participation in globalized systems of oppression that are killing life and destroying God's creation. Within the Christian context, it is important to name our complicity in economic globalization 'sin' because this naming holds a powerful force in our tradition. In calling Christian communities of faith to accountability, it is essential that church communities and their individual members begin to see themselves as morally responsible for participating in the transformation of globalization" (127, emphasis mine).

CNBC Smackdown

Jon Stewart has been regularly sticking it to CNBC business coverage this week, in episodes that I've seen only snippets of, but look forward to catching up on this weekend. Stewart's campaign against not merely CNBC but "business TV" generally has actually been picked up by mainstream Canadian media, in the Globe and Mail. I quote from that article,

What's truly strange, however, is that it has taken until now for somebody to notice that, while most television coverage is built around a moral framework, business television has no sense of good or evil. That's what makes it starkly abnormal and, these days, vaguely repulsive. First came the vilification of corporate America. It took a long time for the vilification of corporate America's cheerleaders to begin.

The function of business television is simpleminded and austere. The genre sells the reporting of buying and selling and, to make viewers stay with it, the genre sells the joy of greed. This applies not just to CNBC, but to every all-finance channel and to all the segments about business that appear on every all-news channel.

This sort of visceral take on American business television is probably well-earned from the bits of it that I've seen. Business TV seems to cultivate its viewership in large part by constructing a fantasy world, in which attractive people, in expensive suits are always capable of making more and more money, with no consequences. Sometimes people lose, but that's the thrill of the game - it's high stakes and high rolls - a real man's world. And - of course - consequence free bubble money is a myth just like the world these networks fabricate. I, for one, am enjoying the ribbing Stewart is giving these nonsense pundits.

PFFFFTTT goes the Fun

Says Jennifer Gardy, of (I admit it) my next to favourite blog. Over the years as undergraduate counts soar, degrees become more competitive, and employment becomes less sure the "fun" has slowly been leaking out of Canada's campuses. While her measurement of fun is fairly narrow - consisting of mostly beer and the opposite sex - it is undoubtedly a proud tradition of fun that Canadian Uni's have been well known for. What happens when students stop pranking? When they stop hitting the sauce, debating and creating things that sharp thinking mature adults never would? Is this a critical step in adolescent creativity, discovery and exploration that has gone missing, and is our education more impoverished for it?

The Way, the Truth and Philip Jenkins

A generous h/t to Oli'O who, in this space, made the very same criticism of Jenkin's last Boston Globe piece as Alan Jacobs in the March issue of First Things. This latest issue is very good, btw, and Jean Bethke Elshtain's piece on "While Europe Slept" deserves plenty of attention I hope to give it.

Rethinking Sabbath

It was almost a month ago that I was struck - with an almost physical trauma - about how profoundly impoverished my practice of "Sabbath" is. Listening to Lauren Winner about a month ago I re-encountered some of her reflections on Jewish Sabbath. She tells a story of staying in the home of an Orthodox Jewish couple in New York. Finally, after succumbing to frustration Lis Harris, the woman of the story, asks over dinner "why God cares whether or not she microwaves a frozen dinner on Friday night." The response:

What happens when we stop working and controlling nature? When we don't operate machines, or pick flowers, or pluck fish from the sea?... When we cease interfering in the world we are acknowledging that it is God's world.

This Lent I am rethinking Sabbath, and as a first, small step I am "ceasing to create" vocationally in its space: not writing, not reading, not debating or meeting about policy, politics, philosophy, theology and more. A very small step. I wonder what other practices of Sabbath exist here that I could learn from, in this Lenten period of reflection?

Financial Wars

I think that apocalyptic concerns about the relationship between wars and economic downturns are slightly exagerrated, but I want to take the relationship between war and economics in a slightly different direction.

There have been a lot of comparisons and critiques thereof of our current economic situation and the great depression of the 1930's. Likewise, there have been a lot of comparisons and critiques thereof of the way out of the economic doldrums, with some suggesting that it was government spending in the shape of the new deal that lead the way out of the dirty thirties, while others suggest that it was in fact the industrializing and expenditures associated with the second world war which were responsible (these are, admittedly, very general statements).

I wonder if the debate on whether it was social spending or war that brought us out of the doldrums is really the most important one to be having, or whether more attention should be paid to the increase in bottom line government budgets which took place in the 1930-40's and what seems to be the next step forward in increasing the size of government budgets. I'd like to see some more discussion in Canadian dialogue as to whether or not we are comfortable increasing the amount of money (and it's our money after all) being spent by the state as an institution. And, let me be clear, I am not necessarily making a libertarian argument, nor a partisan one. After all, the Conservative government in Canada has proven to be the biggest spender in Canadian history.

For explicit discussion: do we feel comfortable with what seems to be a giant step up in state expenditures? What does that mean for us as citizens, for our communities that are not the state? Does it strengthen them, or weaken them? Is it just? Winston Churchill was uncomfortable with it as war loomed, and then progressed. Then it became normal. Is the discomfort many of us are feeling about such massive government expenditures about to become the new normal?

Academic Funding and SSHRC

The Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada has launched a minor protest letter in the wake of the last federal budget. In its January 28 bulletin it gives a short nod to the federal government for increasing Canada Graduate Scholarships, but complains that of this money 40% is earmarked for NSERC, 40% for CIHR and only 20% for SSHRC, specifically for business related degrees.

Is this, therefore, a short-sighted capital infusion? The argument the bulletin makes is that SSHRC disciplines are responsible for generating (the very nebulous figure of) $700 billion of Canada's GDP.

If we put aside the irony of protesting getting more money (in a recession no less!) - just not as much as the next guy - I still think SSHRC is making the wrong case. The federal budget is targeting these programs because our economy is in trouble. I'm not suggesting social sciences don't contribute to the economy, but they are not usually considered decisive skills for turning profit margins.

Now just because you break your leg doesn't mean you shouldn't lose some weight. But let's be honest with ourselves: if you do break your leg, you want a cast or a splint - and if the doctor tells you at the same time you need to lose some weight, OK - fine. But if he pushes it too hard you say "go to hell", I've got a broken leg. Talk to me about it in 3 months. I've got a bit more on my mind right now.

And so does the Canadian economy. Academics don't have a divine right to public money.

Who Hurts the Most in Recessions?

Answer: the already poor, and especially the recently upwardly mobile. Recession economics aren't fair: the brunt isn't borne by the already wealthy and industrialized. America, and middle power countries like Canada, will continue to attract foreign investment because they are safe havens in turbulent economic times. They have proven track records, educated work forces and retain far more confidence than developing economies. Ironically in recession markets more money and investment, not less flows into the US - and it's coming out of the developing world.

Joe Clark - a once (Conservative) Prime Minister of Canada - argues the poor will feel this recession the worst for four reasons:

1. Private foreign investment plunges as investors look for "safe" markets.
   
2. Rich countries can borrow and run big deficits. Poor countries can't.
   
3. Aid budgets are the first to go, both in foreign policy and in NGO budgets. Sub-Saharan Africa can't unelect a a developed world government.
   
4. Remittance - money sent home from individuals working in rich countries - plummet (Remittances account for an astonishing 20-30% of GDP in Haiti, Bosnia and Jordan).
   

The real question: will Canada use its privileged place in the G20 to treat this global crisis as more than just a trade and economic issue?

Turning a CV into a Resume

Craving some classroom time?

A friend passed on an interesting link to Academic Earth, a repository of thousands lectures from people the site bills as the world's best scholars. 

It'd be interesting for everyone, according to their respective disciplines, to see if the big names are represented. For entrepreneurship, there are over 70o videos. Among them are a few hitters, but there's a regrettably high number of mid-level nobodies (and the poor scores of the lectures reflect that). Another disappointment is the single lecture in the category of religion. 

Thoughts on the site as a whole? Is it worth universities to try and use this as a tool to promote their allstar lecturers? What other applications could this have?

There Will be Blood

Or so says Niall Ferguson - Harvard financial and historical guru. The recession crunch is going to get much worse before it gets better, and the intensity of the seemingly short-lived "Buy American" scare is only the tip of the iceberg. It started yesterday when Abu Dhabi snapped up Nova Chemicals at bargain-basement pricing. Financial power is quickly moving to the world's creditors - often major sovereign wealth funds - and away from its debtors - us.

"It's revenge of the sovereign wealth funds. They got burned. And this time, no more Mr. Nice Guy."

This is a provoking interview with Niall Ferguson, one of North America's top public intellectuals, and I recommend it for a Tuesday morning read.

Grannie's Virtues

"Ah, for a little more Calvinism - and a little less, er, 'depleted moral capital.'"

Thus sayeth Ross Douthat in a good post on the paradoxes of capitalism. In the news these days, I'm constantly struck by the remedy offered to the economic plight we find ourselves in. The answer is: spending. And tax cuts to encourage spending. Now I recognize that there is much more going on, but I have yet to hear the majority of commentators comment on how saving, investment, frugality can be good things for the economy as a whole. In the short term we might feel the pinch, but in the long term we'll be healthier. Banks don't just put savings in mattresses after all. They make money by investing your money.

Thus, while I have my fair share of problems with them, it's time that we heard a little bit more from people in the Acton Institute, and a little less from the likes of the libertarians and socialist folk among us in our country. Or, perhaps I should ask: why not more Wellum on the airwaves?

We need a more virtuous bourgeoisie!

That's Not What I Heard

I was at a seminar recently in which a friend of mine was doing a presentation on journalism, religion and public life. I warmly recommend his book, which is an edited volume consisting of some rather helpful commentary on reading and enlisting religion in the public square: Blind Spot: When Journalists Don't Get Religion.

Having done a bit of public policy and public life stuff myself, I asked him: how do you define religion? His answer was: context, context, context. Who are you talking to? What's your audience? What they mean by religion, is more important than what you mean.

Communication, he argued, is not about what you say; it's about what the other person hears. His example: if a journalist asks me whether I believe in the separation of church and state, I don't go into a long explanation about why I think life is religion; I say "yes."

And, frankly, so do I. Academics have the pleasure of making longer, more sustained arguments, in order to nuance the debate and its language. Public intellectuals don't. They use the tools at their disposal, best as they are, to make proximate points toward better policies.

I like what Lori Halstead Windham of the Becket Fund said recently at an event on human dignity. In our work we want two things: to reform and expand the public concept of religious freedom, and a win. But we'll take a win.

Empathy and the Life of the Mind

In conversation with a good friend this morning we discussed the fundamental importance of empathy in the life of the mind, in proper, coherent, generous and Christian thinking.

I argued that empathy - the capacity to inhabit another person's moral and intellectual horizons - is not mere dressing to life of the mind. The ability to hear someone out, understand their perspective, stretch your own moral and intellectual fiber to accommodate another is the first step.

I reflected at a talk recently on spiritual narcissism, a kind of intellectual and existential malaise which reacts violently out of the insecurity of our selves, our identities and beliefs which lacks the capacity to accommodate. In that context opposite opinion, different belief and disagreement become heresy.

Contra this I believe firmly in empathy, and in what Scott Thomas calls a rooted cosmopolitanism (the topic of future posts, and forthcoming dissertation chapters). But the important point I want to make - and hear response to - is this: empathy is the first step in the academic process. For me, this comes out of the fear of the LORD, and a grounded theology of common grace.

We've all met fearsome academics capable of spinning intricate logical webs - but who lack the capacity for empathy, to hear their interlocutor, and so have porcupine intellects: the quills are always out for an errant idea. I want to suggest these are not merely unpleasant people, they are bad academics, and a true, fruitful life of the mind - which draws us deeply into love of God and of our neighbour - begins with the "woolly" enterprise of feeling, and of empathy.

Wisdom and Apprenticeship

Calvin Seerveld says you can't teach wisdom, but you can catch it. It's contagious. Despite my commitment to academia, and universities, I profoundly agree - knowledge and skill are not passed on by transferring cerebral knowledge.

David Greusel writes a stunning piece in the last Comment. He writes, "it is imagined that if a sufficient quantity of correct thoughts about professional practice occupy a person's brain cells, that person is unquestionably qualified... I beg to differ."

Beg on, Mr. Greusel. You have my full attention.

Tracking global spending

The New York Times has a fantastically interesting visual representation of what people the world around are spending their money on, and how said spending relates to their neighbours. It's a tad dated (Sept 08), but still quite insightful.

What I would love to see is a similar chart showing philanthropic activity with a breakdown of what is given to who and how it shrinks/contracts during times of recession. How does this correlate to consumer spending? Do we see people in countries who typically consume less give more when their fellow citizens are struggling? Do certain donors (health care, poverty alieviation,  etc) see a relative increase when things get rough? Would there be any way to leverage this information to better drive donations?

Read the full article here.

Why I Hate Professors

OK - I don't. But Stanley Fish writes a very compelling piece about one of the most tiresome features of academia, and of the entitled attitude of the professorial class in particular.

I've been following - along with Fish it seems - the U of O prof Denis Rancourt who finally ran into problems, after awarding A-plus grades on a whim, turning classes into activism seminars and drawing persistent negative criticism. Rancourt is the icon of tenure gone awry.

Supporters of Rancourt (and there are many) cry foul at his forthcoming dismissal. The argument is that this represents fundamental academic freedom, freedom to the ideals of truth and justice and not to the "parochial rules of an institution in thrall to intellectual, economic and political orthodoxies."

Nonsense. Total, complete and utter adolescent nonsense. Fish argues this reasoning basically boils down to: "the university may pay my salary, provide me with a platform, benefits, students, an office, secretarial help and societal status, but I retain my right to act in disregard to its interests; indeed I am obliged by my academic freedom to do so."

Academics regularly claim a kind of privileged epistemological exceptionalism - a radical postie individualism which says I should not be constrained by any force outside my burgeoning ego and (most radically) this will somehow be for the good of all.

My visceral reaction to this is partly because I used to share this perspective. Moving into a think tank disabused me quickly - though not painlessly - that my cerebral might was both a) not God's singular gift to the world and, b) that this gift must be trained, apprenticed, put to use of the common good; love of God and of our neighbour. Sometimes this means you do less pleasant things (but what roofer wants to get up on the scorching roof on a summer day?), and sometimes it means you even do things that are outside of your "expertise" (a sacred sin in the academy - hence the consistent genuflection to "although I am not an economist/theologian/political scientist").

Wendell Berry argues that people would appreciate food, rest and land more if they became closer to the land, its rhythms and seasons. Maybe professors would be better professors if they became closer to society, to the folks that endow their chairs, to the businesses that contribute to their salaries, and the foundations that make their work possible.

Jubilee: Reflections

Friends,

Mere blogs will not suffice to express the profound gratitude I have to have attended - even spoken - at this conference. Jubilee is - without reservation - the finest, most thoughtful and most enjoyable conference I have ever attended. It is remarkable not for its academic rigor (it is popular), or merely for the wide array of professionals and public intellectuals it draws, but for the confluence of passionate, remarkable, thoughtful and deeply pious people it gathers.

If there is one conference you make room for, which occupies a most sacred spot on your calendar in forthcoming years that you may not miss, let it be Jubilee. In it you will not (mercifully) find the fine minutia of your discipline, but rather gathering crowds of young and old to the vision that Christ is Lord over every square inch.

To put it simply it is the most authentically neo-Calvinist convention I've been to. I was expecting stock American evangelicalism! I was so shocked by the end of the first night I commented to my colleague that it was like "showing up to a party where you don't expect to know anyone, and it turns out they're all good friends with your mother."

I will save my most persuasive and effusive comments for personal conversations - but make plans in 2010 to go. You will not regret it.

Bell Canada: How I Feel of Thee

Sentimental Jesus

In response to Q Prentice asking tough questions about God, Job and the experience of brokenness in the world I wanted to share a personal worship experience from this past Sunday.

At my home church we make Lectio Devina a somewhat regular practice, something I have embraced personally now for a little more than four years. On this evening we read the story from Mark 4 of Jesus calming the storm. Afterward the congregation shared their reflections.

One of the pitfalls of Lectio is that it necessarily focuses on a very small story or section of Scripture (also one of its strengths!). The reflections that were shared after this story basically came to: Jesus cares about us, he's in the boat with us, and he will calm our storms if we ask him.

These comments come out of good Dutch-immigrant axiom's I grew up with: God never gives you a load your shoulders can't bear; He never gives you more than you can handle; it's all to make you stronger (etc). Thus emerges a picture of a loving, but stern Father God who allows pain because it benefits us - personally, in some future-unknown manner.

I don't know about this. I don't know about this at all. Our pastor asked us what kind of images occurred to us hearing this story. Maybe I have a little "glass-is-half-empty" syndrome, or I study the dark side of international politics too much, but the image that came to my mind was: walking along Atlantic coastal villages in Newfoundland, with good friends, reading the plaques and memorials of ships that went down, all hands lost, at sea. "Poor bastards", I thought. "They obviously didn't get a calm sea like Galilee that day in Mark 4". My experience of the world tells me pain and suffering doesn't always make me stronger, it doesn't always benefit me or allow me new important insights on life and God - sometimes it hurts like hell, it doesn't ever make sense, it breaks us, and we die.

This is a bigger discussion: about judgment, about evil, about suffering, about God. But I don't want to get lost in academic and theological jargon to lose the existential heft. There is a real intellectual and emotional effort to be made by Christians to confess that God is indeed omnipotent, indeed all-loving, but that doesn't necessarily mean He's my personal go-to guy who's never going to let bad things happen to me. Just because Jesus is in the passenger's seat, doesn't mean I won't rear-end that Volvo. I believe the Dutch axiom that covers this is: Trust God, but lock your doors.