Owner: America's Young Theologian - The Life and Theology of Dan Morehead URL:http://americasyoungtheologian.blogspot.com Join Date: Fri, 13 Oct 2006 21:59:05 -0500 Rating:1 Site Description: America's Young Theologian seeks to bring you, not simply music, poetry and mirth, but theological biography and biographical theology. Site statistics:Click here
article | For Fuck's Sake 2007-10-16 14:40:00 I enjoy language, grammar, and poetry. In the last week I've had several conversations with friends which bordered on questions of impropriety of speech: one about the somewhat odd [though common in Scotland] phrase -- for fuck's sake, one where a friend described her desire to swear less commonly, and another while sitting on the beach in Ocracoke, NC about the place of taboos in our culture. Having had three such conversations in a week, I enjoyed the article "What the F***?" by Steven Pinker in The New Republic:Fucking became the subject of congressional debate in 2003, after NBC broadcast the Golden Globe Awards. Bono, lead singer of the mega-band U2, was accepting a prize on behalf of the group and in his euphoria exclaimed, "This is really, really, fucking brilliant" on the air. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC), which is charged with monitoring the nation's airwaves for indecency, decided somewhat surprisingly not to sanction the network for failing to bleep out t
misc | Video Of The Week 2007-10-16 12:16:00 HT: STP[America's Young Theologian][Theology][Politics][Humor]
politics | Encourage Congress 2007-10-22 21:26:00 "America should do what it takes to support our troops and protect our people."-- George W. Bush, October 22, 2007George Bush and I agree when it comes to the above statement. However, I also agree with those that see each bullet fired in Iraq as a bullet fired at America's poor. Our resources are limited as we were reminded when Mr. Bush vetoed an expansion of a children’s health insurance program costing $35 billion.[We should also remember what Bush said in 2004 at the Republican National Convention: "America's children must also have a healthy start in life. In a new term, we will lead an aggressive effort to enroll millions of poor children who are eligible but not signed up for the government's health insurance programs. We will not allow a lack of attention, or information, to stand between these children and the health care they need."]Not only are the poor overwhelmingly represented among our soldiers, but each additional dollar spent on the wars is a decision to und Read more:politics
, Congress
theology | Hauerwas On The End of Religious Pluralism 2007-10-24 09:43:00 "I regard the Religious Right as a representative of a truncated if not idolatrous form of Christianity. Indeed, I think that the Religious Right is a desperate attempt of Protestantism to make sense of itself as a form of civil religion for America. That it why the Christianity represented by the Religious Right is one so strident and pathetic."--Stanley HauerwasThanks to Dan Greeson for the link to this lecture that Dr. Hauerwas gave last year at Boston College. If you have an hour free, give it a listen.[America's Young Theologian][Theology][Politics] Read more:theology
article | A Letter From André Gorz 2007-10-28 13:41:00 "I was amazed that my leaving the journal, after 20 years of collaboration, was neither painful to myself nor to others. I remember having written that, at the end of the day, only one thing was essential to me: to be with you. I can’t imagine continuing to write, if you no longer are. You are the essential without which all the rest, no matter how important it seems to me when you are there, loses its meaning and its importance. I told you that in the dedication of my last work.Twenty-three years have gone by since we went off to live in the country, first in ‘your’ house, which radiated a sense of meditative harmony. A harmony we enjoyed for only three years. They started building a nuclear power station nearby and that drove us away. We found another house, very old, cool in summer, warm in winter, with huge grounds. It was a place where you could be happy."Continue reading...[André Gorz (February 1923 – September 22, 2007) was an Austrian and French social philosopher, who Read more:Letter
misc | On Love 2007-11-01 18:05:00 There are many who are wary about love functioning as a political concept and their concerns are not unwarranted. Respect, after all, is a much less volatile concept, less given to the corruption that can take place given the vulnerability necessary to love. There is also the concern about love (or friendship, for that matter) being violent, that is to say, domesticating difference. There is plenty to read on these subjects: Arendt's work, Augustine, Derrida's Politics of Friendship, even Pope Benedict XVI's first encyclical Deus Caritas Est. There is an increasing interest in how love might function politically, or why it may be beneficial to liberate love from the tyranny of private relationships. Eric Gregory will be publishing a book in the spring entitled, Politics and the Order of Love: An Augustinian Ethic of Democratic Citizenship. I read the first draft and would recommend it. I recently came across a set of videos where Michael Hardt discusses this topic at the Europ
quote | Christians And The State 2007-11-07 01:09:00 "Christians
would be neglecting the distinctive service which they can and must render to the State
, were they to adopt an unquestioning assent to the will and action of the State which is directly or indirectly aimed at the suppression of the freedom of the Word of God . . . Christians would, in point of fact, become enemies of any State if, when the State threatens their freedom, they did not resist, or if they concealed their resistance."Karl Barth, Church and State, 69.[America's Young Theologian][Theology][Politics][Karl Barth]
news | Thomas Forsyth Torrance Has Died 2007-12-03 00:42:00 One of the greatest English-speaking theologians of the former generation, Thomas
Forsyth Torrance has passed away. Read more here.
politics | Democratic Debate 2007-12-16 11:06:00 Only having six candidates instead of the nine at the Republican Debate
was helpful.I was encouraged by John Edwards; he constantly returned to the issue of corporate power, which in my opinion is one of the most serious issues in the U.S. and therefore world. Corporate power has eclipsed popular or governmental power, but has little concern for the lives of the people in the car its driving.Chris Dodd has always scared me; I think it was his eyebrows when I was younger. Still, childhood fears aside, he seemed coherent and intelligent.Joe Biden is essentially the candidate with the most foreign policy experience on either side of the aisle. Matched Mitt Romney in terms of smoothness, but seemed to have more knowledge.Bill Richardson. Eh.Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton both continued to perform well.Moment of Truth: Barack Obama and John EdwardsAfter Biden defended his record on racial equality (in light of some comments he made that were sensationalized in the media), Obama came t Read more:politics
, Democratic
article | Death Squads, Disappearances, And Torture 2007-12-16 10:45:00 "Having just ended a brutal 10-year civil war, its newly consolidated political leadership, facing a still unruly peasantry, turned to the U.S. for help. In 1962, the Kennedy White House sent General William Yarborough, later better known for being the "Father of the Green Berets" (as well as for directing domestic military surveillance of prominent civil-rights activists, including Martin Luther King Jr.). Yarborough advised the Colombian government to set up an irregular unit to "execute paramilitary, sabotage and/or terrorist activities against known communist proponents" -- as good a description of a death squad as any.As historian Michael McClintock puts it in his indispensable book Instruments of Statecraft, Yarborough left behind a "virtual blueprint" for creating military-directed death squads. This was, thanks to U.S. aid and training, immediately implemented. The use of such death squads would become part of what the counterinsurgency theorists of the era liked to call "count Read more:Torture
politics | Republican Debate 2007-12-13 00:56:00 Last night's Republican
debate was moderated by Carolyn Washburn, the Des Moines Register's editor and was sponsored by the Des Moines Register and Iowa Public Television.The Line Up: Rudolph Giuliani, Alan Keyes, Mike Huckabee, Duncan Hunter, John McCain, Ron Paul, Mitt Romney, Tom Tancredo, Fred ThompsonAwards:Most Articulate and Intelligent with a Small Dose of Crazy (or, if you will, the Prophetic): Alan KeyesMost Articulate and Confident but Suave/Creepy and Weak on Specifics: Mitt RomneyAward for Being Economically Sound but Utterly Failing to Say Much that the Average Voter Can Understand or Get Behind (also known as the H. Ross Perot Award): Ron PaulAward for Making the Worst Quasi-Theological Statement: Tom Tancredo"There are two sides to your human component, you know. One is the God-filled side. One is the human side. And there are things that feed either side, you know? And which ever you feed the most becomes the dominant side. And so you have to concentrate on feed Read more:politics
, Debate
music | Life On The Okkervil River 2007-12-12 15:52:00 When one goes to bed at four in the morning, one doesn't want to hear a loud knock at 10am. Two women wanted to make sure I had heard of Jesus. Even in my unhappily-roused stupor, I vaguely recalled having heard something about a star boy, a city called David, and neglectful shepherds spending their time chatting up angels. Given my bedtime, it was early and this was not a good start to the day. That said, the day turned out to be a gorgeous one -- Sunny, 80 degrees, and good music on the iPod. I've long appreciated the music of Okkervil River
and recently saw them at Cat's Cradle in Carrboro, NC. It was a fantastic show, one of the better I've seen this year. Their most recent album, however, I'd only listened to once or twice. After today that number has tripled. The Stage Names has a faster tempo than previous albums. I love the first track, "Our Life is Not a Movie or Maybe." If you visit their website, you can now download a collection of covers for free (my favori
theology | Cornel West At St. Sabina 2008-02-26 13:06:00 Cornel West gave his annual February address at St. Sabina
Catholic Church in Chicago, Illinois a few weeks back. Listen here. Read more:theology
internet | Video Of The Week 2008-02-26 12:36:00 A Charlie Rose discussion from 1996 with Henry Louis Gates, then chairman of the Department of African American studies at Harvard University, and Cornel West, then professor of African American studies at Harvard, about their book "The Future of the Race", which examines the W.E.B. Du Bois essay, "The Talented Ten". Gates and West also discuss civil rights, apartheid, affirmative action and what race relations in America will look like over the next fifty years."I'm first and foremost a Christian. But by Christian, you see, as one who works through Chekhov, through Coletrain, through Toni Morrison, as says what?: that the tragic-comic character of the world is such that the suffering and the pain and the grief that sit at the center of it serve as the terrain upon which we must struggle,
politics | Clinton - Obama 2008-02-24 14:35:00 I've watched all of the debates, Republican and Democratic. All of them, from the early ones including the lunatic and luminary fringe, to the sit down debate three nights ago in Texas. I've supported Hillary Clinton
throughout. I still hope she wins, even though it looks unlikely now, regardless of how uncool that makes me. I don't dislike Obama
, quite frankly, I could be happy with him as a candidate. There's no doubt he's bright, there's no doubt he's charismatic.I had an hour-long conversation this week about our national electoral politics
. For me, national politics are not as important as local grass-roots politics, not as important as day-to-day actions, coalitions, and attempts to live together in relative flourishing and accord. That said, I've watched all the debates, read
life | My Former Automobile 2008-02-14 14:09:00 Some who have known me for years will remember the last car I owned, a green Acura Integra. I sold it to a friend in 2005 before I took off for Europe. Obviously it hasn't faired too well as it was recently stolen and stripped.[America's Young Theologian][Life] Read more:Former
, Automobile
politics | Who Supported The War? 2008-02-12 11:15:00 The question for our national politics
is not who supported the war, but who will apologize for it, and who will take responsibility for the sins of our youth: our racial oppression, our failure to honor treaties, and our genocide.[America's Young Theologian][Theology][Politics]
quote | Barth On Dogmatics (1924/5) 2008-02-10 16:22:00 "Dogmatics entails risk; it is life-threatening. Consider the situation! The Word of God comes to those who are entirely inadequate for it, and it comes with the command that it be taken up and spoken in human words. We have been commanded to do a task and have been condemned thereby, for none of us is able (in and of ourselves) to fulfil it. The sword of Damocles hangs over the head of every dogmatician in every moment."Bruce McCormack, Karl Barth's Critically Realistic Dialectical Theology, 344-5.[America's Young Theologian][Theology][Karl Barth]
poem | Auden On Physics 2008-02-07 18:59:00 After Reading a Child's Guide to Modern Physics
by W.H. AudenIf all a top physicist knowsAbout the Truth be true,Then, for all the so-and-so's,Futility and grime,Our common world contains,We have a better timeThan the Greater Nebulae do,Or the atoms in our brains.Marriage is rarely blissBut, surely it would be worseAs particles to peltAt thousands of miles per secAbout a universeWherein a lover's kissWould either not be feltOr break the loved one's neck.Though the face at which I stareWhile shaving it be cruelFor, year after year, it repelsAn ageing suitor, it has,Thank God, sufficient massTo be altogether there,Not an indeterminate gruelWhich is partly somewhere else.Our eyes prefer to supposeThat a habitable placeHas a geocentric view,That architects encloseA quiet Euclidian space:Explode
internet | Video Of The Week 2008-02-02 15:54:00 I love ImprovEverywhere and first blogged about them around this time last year. Check out their stunt in Grand Central.
film | Lions For Lambs, Charlie Wilson's War, Juno 2008-01-01 00:15:00 Two months ago, I went to a screening of Robert Redford's film "Lion for Lambs" (written by Matthew Michael Carnahan). I mentally gave it an 'E' for effort and decided not to review the film at length. I was glad that Redford tried, tried to engage current events, tried to make a point or two about the failures of politics and the media when it comes to our mistakes in Iraq. The movie certainly had a talented cast, but the three related storylines failed to constitute a coherent vision. Every storyline has its problems. Redford plays a professor. Two of his former students are in Iraq, a storyline which is supposed to concretize the anti-war discussions but seems out of place, as though scenes left over from an action movie were spliced into another film. The Streep/Cruise journalist-meets Read more:Lions
, Charlie
, Wilson
politics | Iraq & McCain 2008-03-16 21:37:00 Just a few thoughts:I worry that the discussion about Iraq
is as morally anemic as it was 5 years ago. Now, the war is unpopular in the US. I'm glad to have more voices against it, but not sure those voices are clear on why to be against it. Clearly, it has been a disaster. But the reason to be against the war is not that it went poorly or was mismanaged. A better reason would be because it was unjust. In the case of robbing the proverbial liquor store, one doesn't make a decision to be for or against the action by how well it went.I also worry about how common war is in our history, and how much profit there is in the industrial-military complex, which makes war profitable (read: desirable). Like the child who grew up around abusive adults and failed to learn other ways of dealing Read more:politics
, McCain
misc | A Day In The Life Of... 2008-03-26 19:56:00 Haven't been blogging much as I've been trying to make big strides on my dissertation. Today's task: Read Heidegger's 1962 lecture "On Time and Being," which opens with the lines:"If we were to be shown right now tow pictures by Paul Klee, in the origianl, which he painted in the year of his death - the watercolor 'Saints from a Window,' and 'Death and Fire,' tempera on burlap - we should want to stand before them for a long while - and should abandon any claim that they be immediately intelligible."Of course I had to track down the paintings (see above). I finally got around to watching Todd Haynes' most recent film I'm Not There. As Roger Ebert writes:"I'm Not There" is an attempt to consider the contradictions of Bob Dylan by building itself upon contradictions. Maybe that's the only
film | Forgetting Sarah Marshall 2008-04-11 03:30:00 I've seen two comedies recently that were both set in Hawaii. The first was the 2004 Adam Sandler film 50 First Dates. I was looking to waste some time and accomplished that. The acting: poor. The humor: induced eye-rolls instead of laughter. Rob Schneider is a good sign that a movie will be awful.The second is the soon to be released Forgetting SarahMarshall
. I saw Anchorman, The 40 Year Old Virgin, Knocked Up, and Superbad (all produced by Judd Apatow). Frankly, I wasn't overly impressed with any of them. They all had their scenes certainly (and Anchorman had Will Ferrell), but only Knocked Up had any character development and that was at best anemic. Now, you might say that character development, or plot development for that matter, is not what they are going for in these films
news | AAR And SBL 2008-04-14 13:39:00 From the American Academy of Religion:"In light of the scheduling and logistical problems connected with the proposed Independent Annual Meetings, and given the views our members expressed in our recent member survey, the Board, in its April 12, 2008 meeting, approved a recommendation that the AAR begin scheduling concurrent, yet independent Annual Meetings with the Society of Biblical Literature as soon as is feasible."Hopefully SBL will play nice. The two meetings should have never been separated.
politics | The Philadelphia Debate? 2008-04-18 11:34:00 If you missed the debate on Wednesday, you didn't miss much. The questions were terrible, Obama wasn't particularly sharp (despite using his favorite line "I want to be clear about something." When he says that, you know he means business), and Clinton admitted that Obama can win (Her rejoinder was that she would be better. What she should have said to keep her electability claims alive is that she has a greater likelihood of winning.) If you must watch, click here, or take a look at Jon Stewart's take:[America's Young Theologian][Theology][Politics] Read more:politics
, Philadelphia
, Debate
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