Tag Archives: Culture

More “Religions”

08 Thursday Feb 2018

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I previously posted on politics as religion.  Here is yet another example:

Siegel: Liberalism has taken on a religious aspect. It’s a belief system, and not a system that represents political interests. Liberalism is seen as a source of grace, in religious terms. It is hard to talk to people, when you are effectively suggesting they are not among the blessed (or, to use Thomas Sowell’s phrase, the ‘anointed’), that they are in fact mistaken. Trump is wrong about many things, but you can argue with Trumpism. But it is very hard to argue with contemporary liberalism, especially in its West Coast incarnation.

Just prior to the Super Bowl, the Washington Post wrote on football as Tom Brady’s religion. This is nothing new. The Aztecs played a purposefully religious: “The Aztec ball game had a lot of ritual significance. It was mean to mirror the ball court of the heavens, this being the ball court of the underworld where the sun passed each night.” The games of the ancient Greeks were religious affairs such as the Olympics or Isthmian Games.

Sporting events as religious ceremony has been noted many times:

As Wann and collaborators note, various scholars discuss sport in terms of “natural religion,” “humanistic religion,” and “primitive polytheism” pointing out that “spectators worship other human beings, their achievements, and the groups to which they belong.” And that sports stadiums and arenas resemble “cathedrals where followers gather to worship their heroes and pray for their successes” (1, p. 200). Meanwhile, fans wear the team colors, and bear its flags, icons, and mascots whilst literally singing its praises.

Sport as Religion. Or as The Atlantic writes, “In short, if you look hard at sports, you can’t help but see contours of religion.”

 

 

John Patton on the Treatment of Women in Tanna, Before Christianity

18 Tuesday Jul 2017

Posted by in Church History, Culture, Uncategorized

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John Patton (1824-1907) was a missionary to the New Hebrides. With the rather common attack upon Christianity in the West as somehow being degrading of women, it is interesting to read Patton’s observations about an explicitly non-Western and non-Christian culture on this point:

Amongst the Heathen, in the New Hebrides, and especially on Tanna, woman is a down-trodden slave of man. She is kept working hard, and bears all the heavier burdens, while he wills by her side with musket, club or spear. If she offends him, he beats or abuses her at pleasure. A savage gave his poor wife a severe beating in front of our house, while in vain we strove to prevent it. Such scenes were so common that no one thought of interfering. Even if the woman died in his hand, or immediately thereafter, neighbors took no notice, if any at all.

…The girls have, with their mother and sisters, to toil and slave in village plantations, to prepare all the materials for fencing these around, to bear every burden, and to be knocked about at the will by men and boys.

Oh, how sad and degraded is the position of woman where the teaching of Christ is unknown, or disregarded though known! It is the Christ of the Bible, it is His Spirit entering into humanity that has lifted woman, and made her helpmate and the friend of man, not his toy or his slave.

“At Home with the Cannibals”.

Leaving all the consequences to the disposal of my Lord, I determined to make an unflinching stand against wife-beating and widow-strangling [when a man died, they would strangle his wife], feeling confident that even their natural consequence would be on my side. I accordingly pleaded with all who were in power to unite and put down these shocking and disgraceful customs. At length, ten Chiefs entered into a covenant not to allow any more beating of wives or strangling of widows, ….One Chief boldly declared, ‘If we did not beat our women, they would need work; they would not fear and obey us; but when we have beaten and killed, and feasted on two or three [they were cannibals] the rest are very quiet and good for a long time to come!”

I tried to show how cruel it was, besides that it made them unable for work, and that kinds would have a much better effect; but he promptly assured me that Tannest woman ‘could not understand kindness.’

“Superstitions and Cruelties.” He then continued onto explain how he sought to teach the men to not abuse the woman. I imagine one point which would be offensive to some now is that he taught the men to bear the heavier burdens, “as men were made stronger, and they were intended to bear the heavier burdens”.

Masterpiece Cakeshop

07 Tuesday Mar 2017

Posted by in Apologetics, Culture, Uncategorized

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The First Amendment prohibits the government from telling private citizens “what they must say.” Agency for Int’l Dev. v. Alliance for Open Soc. Int’l, Inc., 133 S. Ct. 2321, 2327 (2013). It is undisputed that the Colorado Civil Rights Commission (the “Commission”) does not apply CADA to ban (1) an African-American cake artist from refusing to create a cake promoting white-supremacism for the Aryan Nation, (2) an Islamic cake artist from refusing to create a cake denigrating the Quran for the Westboro Baptist Church, and (3) three secular cake artists from refusing to create cakes opposing same- sex marriage for a Christian patron. App. 78a; App. 297a-App. 331a.

Neither should CADA ban Jack Phillips’ polite declining to create a cake celebrating same-sex marriage on religious grounds when he is happy to create other items for gay and lesbian clients. See Obergefell v. Hodges, 135 S. Ct. 2584, 2607 (2015) (“[T]hose who adhere to religious doctrines, may continue to advocate with utmost, sincere conviction that, by divine precepts, same-sex marriage should not be condoned.”).

Here’s the rest of the brief

This is interesting, because it was not the refusal to sell anything: rather, the issue is whether the government can compel speech.

More:

Because of the artistry associated with custom cakes, Phillips also honors God through his work by declining to use his creative talents to design and create cakes that violate his religious beliefs. App. 282-283a, ¶¶ 57-58, 62. This includes cakes with offensive written messages and cakes celebrating events or ideas that violate his beliefs, including cakes celebrating Halloween (a decision that costs him significant revenue), anti-American or anti- family themes, atheism, racism, or indecency. App. 283-284a, ¶¶ 61, 63-64. He also will not create cakes with hateful, vulgar, or profane messages, or sell any products containing alcohol. Id., ¶¶ 59, 61.

Consistent with this longstanding practice, Phillips also will not create cakes celebrating any marriage that is contrary to his understanding of biblical teaching. App. 276-277a, ¶¶ 21, 25. As a Christian, Phillips believes that God ordained marriage as the sacred union between one man and one woman, a union that exemplifies the relationship of Christ and His Church. App. 274- 275a, ¶¶ 10-15. And Phillips’ religious conviction compels him to create cakes celebrating only marriages that are consistent with his understanding of God’s design. App. 275-277a, ¶¶16-22, 25. For this reason, Phillips politely declined to design and create a cake celebrating Respondents Craig’s and Mullins’ same-sex wedding, App. 287a, ¶ 78, but offered to make any other cake for them, id., ¶ 79.

 

This was not bigotry: he did not refuse to sell them anything. He merely treated the couple the same as he did every other patron: there were some-things Jack would not say. Irrespective of how one feels about the underlying wedding, one should be concerned if the government can force speech under threat of penalty. Think of it this, would you like President Obama or President Trump (or both) telling you what you had to say? You can’t pick the guy “on your side”.

 

 

Kierkegaard, The Diary of the Seducer.2

27 Friday Jan 2017

Posted by in Apologetics, Kierkegaard, Philosophy, Politics, Uncategorized

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The “editor” of the “diary” — the whole thing a fiction on a fiction — asks the question of why this “factual” diary had such a “poetical” aspect. The aesthetic aspect of the diary derived from the fact that the “seducer” had such a temperament,

The was the more he himself brought with him. This more was the poetical he enjoyed in the poetic situation of reality; he withdrew this agin in the form poetic reflection. This afforded him a second enjoyment, and his whole life was motived by enjoyment.

This is the “first stage” of human development: the aesthetic, which the first volume of Either/Or seeks to develop and display. This was the whole purpose of the “seduction”. It was the tantalization of desire, not possession of a body, which drove the man, “for he was far to intellectually inclined to be a seducer in the ordinary sense of the world.”

For his part, having brought the girl to the point where “she was read to sacrifice everything”, he broke off the relationship. He did not want her, he wanted the sensation of wanting her. This is what was described in the Immediate Stages of the Erotic, “the erotic here is seduction.”

Thus, the delight derives in the sensation which the seducer manages to derive from the relationship to the other person — the other person is reduced to the object of desire, but has no independent merit as a person. The value of the other is in the sensation they produce in the subject.

This reduction of the other to object, to the sensation they produce does not necessarily mean a pleasant sensation — this is a matter of averting boredom. When we think of this process in such a manner, we can quickly see that the greatest part of our public life and media is built up with human beings who reduce all others into objects to reduce boredom — and, since we are on the other side of Sartre — to create “meaning” (as paltry as it is).

Think of political rallies, demonstrations, riots, demands for “justice” and such in terms of boredom aversion and the creation of “meaning” and they will become instantly more comprehensible. That is why such events and people are not susceptible to reasoned discourse or moral suasion: they are not operating at that “stage” (to use Kierkegaard’s term) of life.  Even the other speaking to them exists for the purpose of averting boredom (and creating meaning).  This throws an interesting light on apologetics.

Soren Kierkegaard: “The Rotation Method” Part One (Either/Or)

04 Wednesday Jan 2017

Posted by in Culture, Philosophy, Psychology, Uncategorized, Worship, Worship

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This is the most entertaining essay I have ever read on boredom. It begins:

Starting from a principle is affirmed by people of experience to be a very reasonable procedure; I am willing to humor them, and so begin with the principle that all men are bores. Surely no one will prove himself to be so great a bore as to contradict me in this….Boredom is the root of all evil.

In the context of this volume, which is addressing the human being at the aesthetic level of being, this principle cannot be gainsaid. If the point of all life is simply to avoid pain and obtain pleasure, boredom is monster which lurks everywhere (as soon one has food and shelter).

Think of how much effort and treasure is poured into entertainment: movies, music, sports, video-games. Drug taking is primarily to shake off boredom by being easily amused. It is the mark of a  culture which is largely childish. Consider these two sentences and at the same time consider street crime:

In the case of children, the ruinous character of boredom is universally acknowledged. Children are always well-behaved as long as they are enjoying themselves.

Sadly I have known more than one criminal intimately. I have never met the man who stole because he was honestly going to starve after he could not find work. Violence, theft, assaults, are weirdly often a form of entertainment.

He even attributes the Tower of Babel (Genesis 11) to boredom (“To divert themselves they conceived the idea of constructing a tower high enough to reach the heavens.”).

Think of politics: how much of politics is entertaining theater (I am happy here to draw out examples from all parties and candidates sufficient to gore everyone’s ox. But these facts are too well known).

Sadly, too much of the Christian church is little better than second rate theater meant to divert on in the task of “worship”. That does not mean I think that Christian worship should be boring: When it is truly worship, nothing is more riveting. Rather, diversion rather than presentation of the living God is where most “worship” settles (frankly it is easier to be diverting than meet God — it also the reason why it is so easy to forget).

 

So when we think about it: this question of boredom has profound effects: I have only briefly (and in the barest form) considered crime, culture, politics and worship. According to Kierkegaard’s formulation of the aesthetic stage the trouble is that most of world is peopled by those who cannot operate at a more matured level (that is for his later books).

How we were changed after the Civil War

12 Sunday Jun 2016

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We no longer have ears to hear or eyes to see. The eyes and ears of the Civil Warriors were taught during two centuries. Europe’s very first program of universal education began in Protestant areas of Germany in the second half of the 17th century, and the teachers’ manuals offered instruction in reading, writing, arithmetic and four-part harmony. As many German Protestants sought refuge in America as Englishmen, and the hymn-singing culture that produced a Bach or Haendel also informed the soldiers of the Civil War. That is America’s true popular culture, the adornment of its true Protestant mission.

No longer. As Joseph Bottum explains in a 2013 book that I reviewed here, the old American Protestantism has all but been replaced by a secular religion inspired by the old Social Gospel, in which religious categories are twisted to fit the narcissistic sentiments of the descendants of the old Puritans. How did this happen? Perhaps because the sacrifice of the Civil War was too great: it killed or crushed the spirit of the most enthusiastic members of that generation.

Appomattox Through a Glass Darkly — read it, the discussion of music is well worth the time.

Tiger Woods has retreated

12 Tuesday Apr 2016

Posted by in Ecclesiology, Thesis, Uncategorized

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Ecclesiastes 2:4–11 (ESV)

4 I made great works. I built houses and planted vineyards for myself. 5 I made myself gardens and parks, and planted in them all kinds of fruit trees. 6 I made myself pools from which to water the forest of growing trees. 7 I bought male and female slaves, and had slaves who were born in my house. I had also great possessions of herds and flocks, more than any who had been before me in Jerusalem. 8 I also gathered for myself silver and gold and the treasure of kings and provinces. I got singers, both men and women, and many concubines, the delight of the sons of man.

9 So I became great and surpassed all who were before me in Jerusalem. Also my wisdom remained with me. 10 And whatever my eyes desired I did not keep from them. I kept my heart from no pleasure, for my heart found pleasure in all my toil, and this was my reward for all my toil. 11 Then I considered all that my hands had done and the toil I had expended in doing it, and behold, all was vanity and a striving after wind, and there was nothing to be gained under the sun.

The religion of “sci-tech progress”

30 Wednesday Mar 2016

Posted by in Culture, Hope, Psychology, Theology, Thesis, Uncategorized

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This article from reason explains that hope — although it does not explain it in terms of hope — is the (?) basis for satisfaction:

Stavrova and company concluded that the “correlation between a belief in scientific–technological progress and life satisfaction was positive and significant in 69 of the 72 countries.” On the other hand, the relationship between religiosity and life satisfaction was positive in only 28 countries and actually negative in 5 countries. Similarly, belief in sci-tech progress correlated with a sense of personal control in 67 countries, whereas religiosity was positively associated with personal control in only 23 countries—and was negative in 10 countries.

Stavrova and her colleagues speculate that this negative association between a belief in God and a sense of personal control might arise from dispositional differences. Primary control strategies aim to change the external world so that it fits with one’s personal needs and desires; secondary control strategies seek to change personal needs and desires so that they fit with the external world. Earlier research has found that religious believers tend to score higher on secondary than primary control strategies. Stavrova and her fellow researchers suggest that future studies might “examine whether a belief in scientific–technological progress, in contrast to a religious belief, entails individuals to rely more on primary rather than secondary control strategies.”

So why do people who believe in sci-tech progress tend to be happier than the religious faithful? Stavrova and her colleagues propose that “achieving control over the world and mastering the environment has always been one of the major goals of science. Believing that science is or will prospectively grant such mastery of nature imbues individuals with the belief that they are in control of their lives.” This sense of personal control in turn contributes to a higher life satisfaction.

It turns out that people who rely upon the efficacy of the human intellect to solve problems have a greater chance of living satisfying lives than those who cling to the supernatural hope that an unseen sky-God will somehow save them from their troubles.

A few things here: I certainly don’t believe bare “religious belief” matters much at all. In fact, I would hold that his belief in “science” is a “religious belief”. Belief can never be better than its object: the study merely looks at “religious belief” as if all religious belief were interchangeable. It does not consider the certainty of that belief.

It is the Scriptural position that most “religious belief” is false and rebellious.

Second, there is no apparent control for circumstances. I suspect that most of the people who hold to the “sci-tech progress” and well-educated, relatively prosperous and younger. In such a circumstance “sci-tech” has relatively little work to do. A comfortable, sociable, reasonably attractive 30 year old is probably happier than other people: but such happiness hinges upon circumstance.

I would be curious of the satisfaction of a “sic-tech progress” believer on the day they learn their child has cancer.

As a Christian (and often a poor specimen), I know that there is no promise of endless happiness now. In fact, the promise is precisely the opposite. I am hopeful; but I also know the realism that this world as a painful one. I know that making a better device will not alter the human heart. I know that no amount of medical technology (for which I am very grateful) will ever ultimately put off death.

I know that cultist and idolators often begin joyful.

Another aspect: personal control. Any belief in “personal control” is on its face irrational — although the desire for personal utter autonomy has been a human goal since the Garden.

 

 

 

March Against Irony

26 Saturday Mar 2016

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There are so many things which are said and implied in this single ironic sentence:

Brussels (AFP) – The organisers of a “March Against Fear” planned for Sunday to mark the Brussels terror attacks said they had cancelled the event after the authorities asked them to do so because of security fears.

You can read the rest here

What is Worship (2)?

10 Wednesday Feb 2016

Posted by in Culture, Thesis, Uncategorized, Worship

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Last night working this definition through my graduate theology class, I had some helpful assistance:

First, the “sin” is recognized, typically by a subject sense of unhappiness. The “salvation” thus being that which brings happiness.

Second, the matter of sin and salvation could be better understood as a matter of shame and honor.

Third, there are a series of sin/salvation events which lead ultimately to a self-honor which resolves the problem of having been put to shame in the Fall (since no one aspect of the creature is sufficient to resolve the lose of the Creator (see, Romans 1:18, et seq.) it will be necessary to seek multiple “salvations” — no creature will ever be enough).