Blogs & Columns

Have you ever wondered about the connection between spam (junk email) and spam (junk food)? Spam (Shoulder of Pork and hAM) first became a familiar staple as a function of food rationing in 1940's Great Britain. Half a century later, Joel Furr became the first person to refer to mass email as spam. The connection? Undesirable repetition.

Strangely enough, the conceptual connection between undesirable repetition in food and in words was made by a comedy skit. In the 1970 Monty Python cult classic "Spam," a waitress offers a menu that includes eggs and spam; eggs, bacon and spam; eggs, bacon, sausage, and spam; and, most famously, spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, baked beans, spam, spam, spam and spam. The word spam appears 132 times in the three-and-a-half-minute sketch.

What shall we make of this? Without putting too fine a point on it, the cultural history of spam is a parable of sorts.

Just out from InterVarsity Press, and making a big splash, is Andy Crouch's (Cornell '90) Culture Making. We'll have our own review of the book posted here shortly, but in the meantime here are a few items of interest:

I just returned from Envision: The Gospel, Politics, and the Future. The conference was a mixed bag; there were some very good talks and presentations, and there were some of the other kind. Lisa Sharon Harper of New York Faith and Justice gave a terrific and inspirational talk entitled "Theology of Shalom," including a short theatrical reading vividly depicting the poisonous effects of the Fall. In the beginning, all things were good--not just in the Platonic sense of goodness, but in a more Hebraic, relational sense of holding together in perfect harmony. In the beginning, there was Shalom. Harper recast the biblical motif of Creation, Fall, Redemption as Shalom, Shalom lost, Shalom Regained.

In the panel that followed, Bart Campolo said something to the effect that he used to believe "all that shalom stuff," but now that he lives among children who are born into the world disadvantaged and die before they ever have much opportunity in life, he doesn't really buy it anymore. Simply put, he said, "my theology did not survive my experience."

C.S. Lewis' The Chronicles of Narnia are among the best selling books ever. With over 100 million copies sold, what new could possibly be said about them?

In his recent book Planet Narnia, Lewis scholar Michael Ward makes the seemingly preposterous claim that "Lewis secretly based the Chronicles of Narnia on the seven heavens of the medieval cosmos." Ward offers a concise essay on the theme in the January/February issue of Books and Culture entitled "C.S. Lewis and the Star of Bethlehem." His thesis, simply put, is that each of the volumes in the Narnia series corresponds to the seven "planets" of the medieval cosmos--Sun, Moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn. And that this symbolic correspondence, everywhere present but nowhere explicit, determines the cosmological and Christological significance of each volume.

According to Alan Jacobs, author of The Narnian, such a claim causes the sensible reader to erect "a castle of scepticism." Or, as Tom Shippey put it in his review ("Planetary Influences"): "If the 'Narniad' has had a hundred million readers . . . what are the odds on the hundred-million-and-first suddenly stumbling on the truth?"

Does Ward pull it off? Against all odds, the emerging consensus seems to be yes.

"If God had been a liberal," someone once wrote, "we wouldn't have the Ten Commandments--we'd have the Ten Suggestions." Interestingly, the quote is used both by critics and defenders of Christianity to make very different points. In using the quote for their respective purposes, both groups miss the mark.

The recent conference on The Opening of the Evangelical Mind, convened by sociologist Peter Berger, was outstanding. More on that soon.

Among his many memorable formulations, Berger sometimes says that India is the most religious country in the world, Sweden is the least religious, and the United States is a nation of Indians ruled by Swedes. This gap between the secular cultural elite and popular religious sentiment is illustrated nicely by yesterday's New York Times review of "The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything," a new Veggie Tales feature film.

The reviewer is utterly dismissive. Meanwhile, every single reader review posted in the first 24 hours differs sharply with the reviewer.

Classes are over, the university has held its annual advent service, and I am headed to Boston for a conference entitled The Opening of the Evangelical Mind.

Our 2007 annual report is now posted. In the report I mention meeting one year ago with a couple that supports Chesterton House, sharing with them the idea for a conference, and together with them making it happen just six months later. Ministry should never be formulaic, but it does have essential ingredients--including vision, patronage, and prayer.

We are reminded at this time of year of our dependence on both your prayer and your patronage. As I think you will see from the report, we do a lot with the resources we have, making for a good "return" on gifts given to Chesterton House. Will you join us and our mission of promoting Christian learning at Cornell by supporting us this month? See three easy ways to give for more information. And, of course, don't forget to order one or more copies of "Heaven in a Nightclub"!

Many thanks. And during this season of gift-giving, many blessings in anticipation of the greatest of all gifts--the Christ child.

On the cover of William Edgar's book The Face of Truth, there is an image of a painting by Mako Fujimura. It is abstract, and, I confess, does not make an immediate impression on me. I am busy, and turn past it quickly, anxious to get to the message and substance of the book.

And yet I pause, more out of duty than desire. I know Edgar and Fujimura well enough to know that there is something of substance here. I also know that, despite my appetite for accumulating information, imagination matters.

The following are my reflections offered at the recent memorial service for Christian Anible. Christian was on staff with InterVarsity Graduate/ Faculty ministries, and a founding board member of Chesterton House.

My name is Karl Johnson. I am a campus minister at Cornell and an elder of New Life Presbyterian Church—two positions I shared in common with Christian.

Christian was to me not just a colleague and a friend; he was a kindred spirit. As much or perhaps more than anyone else I know, he was the one person who was regularly reading and listening to the same material that I was. From Eugene Petersen to Wendell Berry, we shared many favorite authors in common. One of the last times I visited Christian, he told me that he was listening to a great lecture he had downloaded from the internet by Henri Blocher. “This is someone new,” I said. “Tell me more.” As it turns out, I had actually just started reading a book by Blocher but didn’t recognize the correct pronunciation of his name. I mention our common interests not only to say that I will miss Christian sorely, though I will—and already do—but because this sharing of common interests and affections is the very gift of friendship. Christian was a gift to me, as I know he was to many of you.

Among the things I most appreciated about Christian is this: the virtues he made most vivid were ordinary virtues—virtues that you and I can reasonably seek to imitate.

Ostensibly, your college education is about acquiring knowledge and skills to help you get a job and to live life well. It does that, of course. But as all students know, the college years are defined as much as anything else by the quest for friendships that are deep, satisfying, and enduring.

This "college experience" is a somewhat modern phenomenon. In ages past, most people traveled less, didn't go to school for so long, and married younger. Friendship needs were met largely through rootedness in family and community. Today, in a world of social and geographic mobility, extended schooling, and later marriage, friendship is a little more complicated. Suddenly landing on a campus with thousands of peers and potential friends one has never before met entails both great disorientation and great opportunity. For all its benefits, there is one weird side effect of the modern college experience: the compartmentalization of learning and living.

According to the New York Times, there is a "new breed" of evangelicals that doesn't fit the old stereotypes. Whether the old stereotypes had any merit or not, Shane Claiborne is certainly a new breed of sorts.

 Just a few years ago, nobody seemed interested in talking about religion. How things change.

In a much-discussed CHE article from a couple of years ago, Stanley Fish wrote the following: "When Jacques Derrida died I was called by a reporter who wanted to know what would succeed high theory and the triumvirate of race, gender, and class as the center of intellectual energy in the academy. I answered like a shot: religion.” The article, entitled One University Under God? is well worth reading.

I don't know what I would have done if I had been an artist living blocks from Ground Zero, but I like to think I might have done what Mako Fujimura has done.

Over the last several years, Fujimura has communicated in images and words that 9/11 was not only an extraordinary event, but also an ordinary event, in this sense: the whole world is a Ground Zero of sorts. The world is broken, full of suffering that ought never be denied. That is not to say Fujimura's work is cynical. He rather steers a middle course between despair and sentimentality, capturing the complexity of a world that is simultaneously broken and beautiful. Not only that, but he also suggests hope for re-creating the world as it ought to be. Such nuance is a mark of good art--and of good religion.

Last month, Chesterton House provided scholarships to Cornell students attending "Redemptive Culture: Creating the World that Ought to Be," the 2007 International Arts Movement (IAM) conference in New York City. The conference was outstanding. Speakers included IAM founder Fujimura, Les Miserables producer Karen Goodwin, Ground Zero master plan architect Daniel Libeskind, and two theologian-musicologists--Dr. Jeremy Begbie and Dr. William Edgar.

Begbie's keynote addresses also dealt with the theme of re-humanizing a broken world. The tension is that while we long for something radically new, we are bound to time and space. The "relentless cult of novelty" (Solzhenitsyn) among the avant-garde is a longing to be re-born, and yet we cannot escape tradition. Every effort to transcend tradition fails, and results in a new tradition. The concept of artists creating ex nihilo is thus mistaken. What creative artists really do is re-create; they add something new to something old and thereby re-make or re-envision it. Indeed, in art, music, literature, and film, there is always the presence of antecedent texts, styles, and methods.

Speaking from the book of Isaiah, Begbie asked whether God himself might renew this world by a similar pattern--by introducing "a newness from beyond" that arrives in the world in recognizable form. "Quite so," he concluded his first lecture.

Looking back on the year in articles, a few themes emerge. First, evangelicals received a lot of press with respect to politics in general and the environment in particular. Second, atheism went on the offensive. Third, the conversation regarding the relationship between "Christ and Culture" continues.

Among the issues that divide Christians, one is the importance of evangelism relative to cultural activity. In an interview in the current issue of Christianity Today, N.T. Wright, the prolific New Testament theologian and Bishop of Durham, puts it this way:

For generations the church has been polarized between those who see the main task being the saving of souls for heaven and the nurturing of those souls through the valley of this dark world, on the one hand, and on the other hand those who see the task of improving the lot of human beings and the world, rescuing the poor from their misery. (See Mere Mission: How to Present the Gospel in a Postmodern World.)

This is another example of the "Christ and Culture" debate, described at length 50 years ago by H. Richard Niebuhr in his book by that name. Although some scholars, such as Craig Carter, author of the hot-off-the-press Rethinking Christ and Culture (Brazos, 2007), think Niebuhr's framework has outlived its usefulness, the issues remain current.

I just received my copy of Chesterton Day by Day, a collection of daily readings from the most quotable of writers. Turning to today, Dec. 13 . . .

Elder father, though thine eyes

Shine with hoary mysteries,

Canst though tell what in the heart

Of a cowslip blossom lies?

Smaller than all lives that be,

Secret as the deepest sea,

Stands a little house of seeds

Like an elfin's granary.

Shortly after 9/11, journalist David Brooks came to understand what sociologists of religion have been saying for some time. “Secularism,” he realized, “is not the future; it is yesterday’s incorrect vision of the future. This realization sends us recovering secularists to the bookstore or the library in a desperate attempt to figure out what is going on in the world.” Indeed, rumors of the death of religion have proven to be greatly exaggerated. (See "Kicking the Secularist Habit").

What 9/11 did for Brooks, the culture wars have done for others—including, apparently, Cornell President Emeritus Hunter Rawlings III. As if following Brooks’ recipe for overcoming secular prejudice, Rawlings acknowledges that secularism is not the norm, and that the culture wars are at least partly the fault of secular fundamentalists among the intelligentsia. “Academic disdain for religion,” he writes, “diminishes the capacity of many academics to understand American culture and politics.” (See "Intelligent Design and the Place of Religiously-based Ideas in American Politics").

The pies are in the oven, and as I think about what I am thankful for this Thanksgiving, the Christian Vision Project is toward the top of the list. For those who haven't heard, haven't seen, haven't tasted the great articles--and now a DVD--coming out of this unique project, no more excuses. Check out the website. Watch the preview. Order the DVD. Get together with some friends and talk about what it all means.

Oh yes, we'll have the DVD's in the resource room just as fast as they can ship them.

Today, October 24th, is Take Back Your Time Day. Simply put, Take Back Your Time Day is for our harried schedules what Earth Day is for the natural environment.

Consider this. Hours spent at work peaked during the industrial era. In the late 19th and early 20th century, labor unions secured a string of successes in the shorter hours movement--first the 12-hour day, then the 10-hour day, the eight-hour day, and finally the five-day week. Imagine: From 80-hour weeks to 40-hour weeks in about half a century! The expectation, of course, was that this trend would continue. Social pundits contemplated the "problem of leisure," and state universities founded departments of leisure studies both to study the phenomenon of leisure and also to train recreation specialists to supervise leisure pursuits in the new age to come.

Last week eminent Harvard biologist E.O. Wilson published his most recent book--The Creation: An Appeal to Save Life on Earth. It's a very nice looking book from Norton, featuring earth tones and outdoorsy-feeling rough cut pages. The contents of the book, a series of letters to a fictional Southern Baptist preacher, the upshot of which is that we should all set aside dogma, ideology, and metaphysics, and join in the cause to "save the Creation," are more of a mixed bag.

I was considering posting my response in the form of a letter back to Wilson, but my friend Andy Crouch beat me to the punch in his Letter to a Tenured Professor. While affirming Wilson's appeal to collaborate across worldviews, Crouch puts his finger on the main problem: Wilson persists in speaking of science and religion in oppositional terms.

There are, to overgeneralize only slightly, three basic ways of understanding the relationship of religion to public life. First, there are those who believe their particular worldview is true and should therefore be established in schools and government agencies. Second, there are those who believe that religions and worldviews are a matter of personal preference, and that there exists some sort of viewpoint-neutral public reason that transcends and rightly relegates religion to a private sphere of life. Third, there are those who believe that there is no such thing as "a view from nowhere," that secularism is no less neutral a perspective than other "traditions of inquiry," and that true neutrality consists of equal accommodation of all particular viewpoints, including both the religious and the secular.

Advice to incoming college students is as plentiful as silly love songs. But here we go again.

The current issue of Comment, a relatively new publication out of Ontario, features a forum entitled "Making the Most of College." There is lots of advice, including this from philosopher Calvin Seerveld:

• Major in the best profs, who make you think self-critically and who give solid course content in a field-area that you have gifts for or can be busy with, without noticing the passage of time.
• Take a double major, if possible, to promote the ability to do interdisciplinary thinking.
• Get in-depth knowledge of a certain period.
• Read a novel every month or so.
  

And my favorite . . .