Star Wars IV And Mentorship

HT: John Mark N. Reynolds

God help us, but if you aren’t ready for Obi-Wan when he comes, then you will never find a mentor. Star Wars is a movie and one not so tiny moment of unreality  is when Luke meets Obi-Wan Kenobi and immediately is ready to be mentored.

The speeder driving, womp rat killing Luke Skywalker had not done anything to be ready to learn. He was undisciplined and unfocussed. He wasn’t brave enough to defy his Uncle and go to the Academy or loving enough to be patient knowing he would get there eventually.

Why would he be ready for the chance of a lifetime from an old man stuck in the desert?

You can read the rest.

The Church And Immigration In The 19th Century

Some things change, but a lot of things stay the same. Chicago gets a lot of mentions in this article.

The early weeks of the Trump presidency have been dominated by discussions of the ethics and propriety of his immigration policies. But Americans in the late 19th and early 20th centuries faced a flood of immigration that makes today’s issues look modest in comparison. Between 1877 and 1890 alone, a total of 6.3 million new arrivals entered the United States. Even more would arrive before the coming of World War I. The total American population in 1900 was a little more than 72 million, so the new immigrants were visibly and suddenly changing the American landscape.

The influx particularly shifted the demographics of American cities. By 1890, some 15 percent of the national population had not been born in the United States. Cities like Chicago and New York were utterly transformed. By 1900, four-fifths of those cities’ populations were foreign born, or at least had parents who were not born in the United States. Many of the newcomers were Catholic or Jewish, and were coming from previously uncommon places of origin in southern and eastern Europe. (America also stood on the cusp of the first great wave of immigration from Mexico, which saw hundreds of thousands flee north during the Mexican Revolution of the 1910s.)

You can read the rest.

HT: Thomas Kidd

Daniel Syndrome

HT: Philip Jenkins

Another in a series of posts about the many and various ways in which religions spread – often by people who originally had no intention whatever of becoming missionaries, or indeed of leaving their homes.

Sometimes, people really do set out to spread their religion to new parts of the world, and they enjoy great success in doing so. They might be acknowledged missionaries, consciously pursuing evangelization, or else they are refugees and utopians seeking better conditions in which to pursue their faith. Think of the Puritans and their “New England.” In many instances, though, religions spread by non-intentional means, and these can be quite as successful as deliberate mission. Religions or denominations are carried along with larger migration movements. In other less studied cases, the people carrying religious traditions actually do so quite reluctantly, because they have no wish whatever to be in the countries in which they find themselves.

You can read the rest.

Church Sign of the Week (2/3/17)

Bad, very bad word placement.

Have a good Super Bowl weekend, everyone!

Does God Care About The Super Bowl? Interesting Stats.

HT: Kimberly Winston

Does God have his eye on the gridiron? Will he cheer for either the Atlanta Falcons or the New England Patriots in the Super Bowl on Feb. 5?

One-quarter (25 percent) of all Americans believe he does and he will, according to a new survey released today (Jan. 30) by the Public Religion Research Institute.

That’s slightly less than the number — 28 percent — who believe the Almighty had “a major role” in placing Donald Trump in the White House, the same study shows. Another 13 percent say God played a “minor role” — a backup quarterback, if you will — in the results of the 2016 presidential election.

You can read the rest.

Brings in some deep theological questions about God's involvement, but we ought to understand the difference between His will of decree and His will of desire.

Five Ways To Engage With News Media

HT: Paul Conner

Of all things to read, why read the news?

C. S. Lewis asked this question in both An Experiment in Criticism and Surprised by Joy. He described the person who reads only the news as “the most unliterary reader of all,” one step below the reader of the “lowest kinds of fiction.” As for news writers, Lewis deemed them unreliable because they tend to focus on stories of “vulgarity and sensationalism,” and rarely put facts in their proper context.

Lewis is onto something here. As a journalist, I hope you don’t cut the news entirely out of your reading diet. But Lewis’s words point to the fact that it’s wise for us to consider how we read the news.

Here are five biblically based principles for Christians to keep in mind when engaging with the media.

What To Do When Incivility Grips A Civilization

HT: David Rupert

More than a million women marched across the nation and world this weekend. They marched for issues like gender gaps in pay, abortion and gay rights. But call it what you want, these rallies were really just an opposition toward the election and now inauguration of Donald Trump.

That’s fine, when you have a nation that routinely votes about half and half, you’ll always have a side that stands in opposition. In a civilized world that values free speech this is a sign of a healthy society that allows dissension.

But I was shocked at the vulgarity and incivility that seemed to rule many of the speeches, signs and banners. I can’t even type some of the things I saw on TV and locally. They were crude, angry and disgusting. I don’t think I’m prudish, but to see such lewdness occur on a widespread basis was jarring.

Both sides are too blame. I saw much of the same during the last election cycle, as the high ground crumbled into the ground.

And here’s the rub. Our current President has only continued the volley with his own language, actions and crude behavior. So the opposition feels justified acting in kind.

Impropriety begets more impropriety. I don’t agree with it, but I get it from a human perspective.

You can read the rest.