MyQuest

2009 Trends in American Spirituality

The Barna Group published their year in review report and proposed these four trends resulting from this year's research:

Theme 1: Increasingly, Americans are more interested in faith and spirituality than in Christianity.

Theme 2: Faith in the American context is now individual and customized. Americans are comfortable with an altered spiritual experience as long as they can participate in the shaping of that faith experience.

Theme 3: Biblical literacy is neither a current reality nor a goal in the U.S.

Theme 4: Effective and periodic measurement of spirituality – conducted personally or through a church – is not common at this time and it is not likely to become common in the near future.

Did Sen. Coburn threaten fellow Senators?

Read what he saidhere.

Earthquake activity this year in Oklahoma County has almost quadrupled

Seriously.  What could this mean?

Christmas Card 2009

Here is the text of our Christmas letter this year:

On February 7, Scott said to Michael, “Marry me.”  Michael said, “Is that a proposal?”

It was.  So, on June 6 we were married in Edgemere Park just a few blocks from our home, followed by the reception at our house where we observed Filipino tradition and served roast pig, with a full-size pig on display in the middle of the table with a sunflower in its mouth!

This year we are sending out our first joint Christmas letter.  We hope that it finds you as happy as we are.

The spring was spent hurriedly planning the wedding, as you can imagine.  We did take time out in April for a trip to Minnesota so that Michael could introduce Scott to the extended Cich clan and Scott could learn from where all of Michael’s quirky traits derive.

In May our nephew Connor Adams was born; Jacob was the happy older brother.

Speaking of trips, we didn’t take any grand vacations this year (we keep saving for the honeymoon to Italy), but we did go camping in Missouri with friends and float the Elk River, spent our anniversary-of-our-first-date-weekend in Pittsburg, KS at the Little Balkans Day Festival, and had a romantic weekend get-away to Eureka Springs this fall. 

We used the Joy of Cooking to learn new recipes together.

“Up” was our favourite film, especially the opening montage of Carl & Ellie’s relationship.

This fall we mourned Scott’s grandmother Sue.

Michael helped to organize the new LGBT youth group in Oklahoma City, and Scott became a monthly columnist for The Oklahoma Gazette.

Oh, and this year the platform of the Oklahoma Republican Party denounced our relationship.  No kidding, you can read it here on page 29.  Of that we were quite proud!

 

Opposing the Current Senate Health Care Bill

It really must be opposed.

The original proposals were themselves already the compromise for many of us who wanted something more than the public option.  Now that the Senate has stripped it, we don't have anything like health care reform.  I think passing this bill would be worse than doing nothing.

The NYTimes has a good article about the uprising left.

Update on Annual Christmas Letter

Last night I started seriously thinking about my annual Christmas letter.  Usually I would have begun that about a month ago! 

Then, I realized one reason I was not as energized by it this year is because it was my tradition and last year was one of the best ones I've done.

But I'm not longer just me.  I'm a we.  Now that I'm married, I realized that I want a new tradition, something reflective of us.

So, this year's will be very different than what you are used to.

Mahnola Dargis on Avatar

I really enjoyed this review.  The closing lines are nice:

Movies rarely carry us away, few even try. They entertain and instruct and sometimes enlighten. Some attempt to overwhelm us, but their efforts are usually a matter of volume. What’s often missing is awe, something Mr. Cameron has, after an absence from Hollywood, returned to the screen with a vengeance. He hasn’t changed cinema, but with blue people and pink blooms he has confirmed its wonder.

Some interesting thoughts on language

particulary how languages die or survive.

3 Kalamazoo churches quit homeless ministry because of LGBT welcome

I'm not joking.  You can read about it here.

Lieberman's Flip-flop

Gail Collins says it is bitterness.

Brooks on Obama's Christian Realism

David Brooks writes a good little piece on Obama's Christian Realism as that has been worked on in recent weeks, particularly in the Oslo speech.

As you may remember, last year during the Jeremiah Wright episode, when it became clear that Obama was a Christian realist, I became very worried.  Yes, it is better than some intellectual positions, but it has fundamental flaws as a Christian theology.

I take issue with this paragraph from Brooks' essay:

But after Vietnam, most liberals moved on. It became unfashionable to talk about evil. Some liberals came to believe in the inherent goodness of man and the limitless possibilities of negotiation. Some blamed conflicts on weapons systems and pursued arms control. Some based their foreign-policy thinking on being against whatever George W. Bush was for. If Bush was an idealistic nation-builder, they became Nixonian realists.

Brooks appears to be ignorant (though I can't imagine that he is) of two strains of Christian theology that provide alternatives he doesn't mention.

One is Liberation Theology (what Obama, frigtheningly, rejected in the Wright episode).  The other is resurgence of an Anabaptist, nonviolent tradition following John Howard Yoder's The Politics of Jesus and developed most prominently by Stanley Hauerwas.

Both of these approaches reject the accomodation of Christian Realism and its tendency to approach issues from cultural categories instead of Christian categories.

Both of these approaches take sin seriously.  They fully grasp institutional, structural sin (Neibuhr was spot-on about this). 

And both would suggest policies different from Obama's.  In fact, the Anabaptist tradition would reject his warmongering outright, as nonviolence is essential to Christian discipleship.

Chinua Achebe

Achebe has a new book of essays out, covered here by the NYTimes.  There are some interesting reflections on the racism in classic Western literature.

I keep wondering, when will he win the Nobel Prize?  His major work, Things Fall Apart, is an acknowledged masterpiece of world literature.  And it is over fifty years old now.

Fox News Story on School Board Change

It's a pretty good piece: http://www.okcfox.com/newsroom/top_stories/videos/kokh_vid_831.shtml

The Gay Agenda Revealed!

Follow the link: http://blogs.chron.com/nickanderson/archives/2009/12/the_agenda.html

The school seems to be getting serious about bullying

Confronting hate groups on social networking sites.  Read about it here.