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Nate at Culture Making describes

The Rosetta Disk:

‘Concieved as a modern-day Rosetta Stone, the Rosetta Disk [a project of the Long Now Foundation] aims to preserve linguistic knowledge for the long-term future, well after DVD and even paper may decay. This side contains the teaser: ‘Languages of the World: This is an archive of over 1,500 human languages assembled in the year 02008 C.E. Magnify 1,000 times to find over 13,000 pages of language documentation.’ The chosen text for the microengraved parallel translations: the book of Genesis.’

Specifically, the text inscribed in 1,500 languages is Genesis 1 - 3, chosen because it has already been translated into so many language. Neither Culture Making nor The Long Now Foundation notes that so many translations of Genesis exist because of the efforts of Christian missionaries who are convinced that people groups deserve a copy of the Scriptures in their own language.

HT: Culture Making

CNN.com ran a story a couple of days ago about wives, without children, choosing to “stay at home” while their husbands worked. It was an interesting article, with at least one “ouch” quote from an academic who chalks up the trend (if it is a trend) as a status symbol:

Daniel Buccino, a Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine clinical social worker and psychotherapist, says stay-at-home wives are the latest “status symbols.” “It says, ‘We make enough money that we both don’t need to work outside the home,’” he says. “And especially with the recent economic pressures, a stay-at-home spouse is often an extreme and visible luxury.”

Not really sure where a clinical social worker and psychotherapist fits in as an academic expert on this, but there you have it. One of the women profiled had a more generous take on her life.

Davis says her life isn’t luxurious. “Tuesdays are my laundry day,” she says. “I go grocery shopping on Wednesdays and clean house on Thursdays.” Mondays and Fridays are reserved for appointments and other errands. But her schedule also allows for charity work and leisure: reading, creative writing and exploring new hobbies, like sewing.

There were a couple of things missing, though. First was any sense whatsoever that keeping a house, and all that entails, was a legitimate occupation. Having a “regular job”? OK. Staying at home with kids? OK. Managing a household? Not so much. I had a professor at the University of Louisville who liked to pull out those annual Mother’s Day news stories about how much a stay-at-home mom could earn if all of her tasks were contracted out to paid employees. (A strange practice, since this professor herself had a full-time job outside of the house.) It strikes me as a feminist twist on a typically-capitalist mistake which privileges “paying work” over everything else.

The second element missing from CNN’s article was the question of “charity work,” as CNN so happily summarized the work of volunteering at a nonprofit, which can run from hands-on social work and physical care to management tasks like fundraising or running an event. Two generations ago, nonprofits of every stripe relied heavily on the volunteer efforts of housewives. These volunteers were smart, organized, and dedicated, and had the time and ability to run important causes. Many nonprofits today struggle to find skilled volunteers, and often hire employees to fill the roles once maintained by dedicated volunteers.

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Before coming to work for InterVarsity, I reviewed charities for the Better Business Bureau. The BBB has one of the best charity accreditation programs in the country. Charities are asked to submit financial statements, governance documents, and copies of their fundraising materials, and the BBB reviews them against a set of 20 Standards for Charity Accountability.

Today, the BBB and a group called Muslim Advocates announced a plan to encourage Muslim charities to undergo the BBB’s accreditation program. Muslim charities have been under a great deal of scrutiny since 9/11 for supposed ties to terrorism, and ethical Muslim charities hope that this new program will encourage donors to trust them with their money. One of the mantras that I repeated while I was at the BBB was that it was nearly impossible for a donor to tell the difference between a “legitimate” charity and an unethical one, and that even the definition of “legitimate” was questionable. For example, the American Red Cross has been involved in a number of ethics scandals, regarding their executives, their handling of 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina, and their blood donation program. Yet the Red Cross unquestionably does a great deal of good. Are they “legitimate”? Are they “ethical”? This is why the BBB’s standards are so important. The standards provide 20 objective measures of a charity’s practices and policies, so that donors can make their own decision. According to the Wall Street Journal, one of the first charities to volunteer for the program is the Islamic Center of Greater Cincinnati, which would have been part of my territory.

Way to go, BBB!

Andy Crouch’s new book, Culture Making, offers 5 questions that you should ask about cultural artifacts (i.e. cultural goods, things that make up a culture) if you want to understand it better:

1. What does the cultural artifact assume about the way the world is?
2. What does it assume about the way the world should be?
3. What does it make possible?
4. What does it make impossible (or at least more difficult)?
5. What new culture is created in response?

On his website, Andy is asking these questions about the Olympics, and asking others to join the conversation.  (At the very least, you should check it out for the cool response format Andy has set up.)

There was an ad in this morning’s paper that confused me.  It was for Liberty Mutual’s Responsibility Project, and the ad started with this scenario: “Your sons favorite ballplayer just got arrested.” There is then a looping, swooping string of possible advice to give your son - I’m not sure if it’s meant to be a variety of options or a single conversation - that read,

Say he’s an example of how NOT to act -> Athletes aren’t role models -> Keep your opinions to yourself. -> Life’s all about second chances. -> Who am I to judge?

I’m not really sure what “keep your opinions to yourself” is all about; I’m not familiar with any U.S. athletes being arrested as political prisoners.  But it struck me that we talk a lot about athletes being role models or not being role models, either as good citizens or bad seeds, as if a person was one or the other and could never change.  Here in Cincinnati in recent years, we’ve had our share of “bad seed”-type athletes (or so we think - more on that in a second).  Most of the time, they are either written off altogether as too much risk, or their athletic ability earns them a second, third, or fourth chance to be on the team. Our city has also had its share of  “role model” athletes, who are put on such a high pedestal that they seem almost like gods.

We’ve also been fortunate enough to have had a local athlete who has given us a glimpse of true reality: Josh Hamilton. Hamilton was a golden boy, the #1 pick in the baseball draft, who quickly turned into a “bad seed,” complete with drug addictions and scary-looking tattoos.  But then, so far as anyone can tell these types of things, Hamilton was converted to Christ, and, through the power of Christ, his life has been transformed and redeemed.  Praise God.

We tend to lump athletes (all celebrities, really) into “good guys” and “bad guys,” as if life were some sort of action movie or pro wrestling set-up. We tend not to take the time to think about athletes as human beings who happen to be extraordinarily gifted in one area of life, who are made in God’s image, who have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, and who are in need of Christ to redeem their lives.

The Liberty Mutual ad was not Christian, did not even suggest what the right way to approach their scenario might be.  (The ad’s tag line is “What’s the responsible point of view? Everyone has one.  Let’s hear yours.”  I don’t think I buy the idea that “everyone” has a “responsible” point of view.)  Yet it motivated me to pray for some of the local athletes who have gotten themselves into trouble.  They are usually young men doing the stupid, destructive things that young men tend to do.  I really don’t care if they get their athletic careers back on track, since the celebrity and wealth that come from those careers seems to be enabling their destructive behavior.  But I confess that, for the first time, I was moved to pray for them and their families, that Christ would redeem their lives, and heal both their wounds and the wound they have inflicted on others.

May God make it so.

A serious wake-up call from Thomas Friedman:

My fellow Americans: We are a country in debt and in decline — not terminal, not irreversible, but in decline. Our political system seems incapable of producing long-range answers to big problems or big opportunities. We are the ones who need a better-functioning democracy — more than the Iraqis and Afghans. We are the ones in need of nation-building. It is our political system that is not working.

This weekend’s NY Times Magazine has a fascinating article about plummeting birthrates in Europe - basically, at current trends, European populations will be cut in half by 2050.  But there was a telling quote about differences between Europe and the U.S. from a researcher studying the problem.  He noted that two places that buck the trend of falling birthrates are Scandinavia, where there are large state subsidies for child care and maternity leave, and the U.S., where it is relatively easy to leave and re-enter the workforce. The article’s author writes:

So there would seem to be two models for achieving higher fertility: the neosocialist Scandinavian system and the laissez-faire American one. Aassve put it to me this way: “You might say that in order to promote fertility, your society needs to be generous or flexible. The U.S. isn’t very generous, but it is flexible. Italy is not generous in terms of social services and it’s not flexible. There is also a social stigma in countries like Italy, where it is seen as less socially accepted for women with children to work. In the U.S., that is very accepted.”

This is something I have repeatedly heard in nonprofit circles.  Because there isn’t a government program for a particular something, the “U.S. isn’t very generous.”  Mind you, this is only talking about government programs for child care and maternity leave, not benefits from private companies, low-cost programs from nonprofit organizations, or community programs from churches or other groups.  ”Society” is narrowly defined as “the government.”  I think this brief quote speaks volumes about the different cultural assumptions between the U.S. and Europe. 

This morning, an interesting article from the UC student newspaper caught my eye.  Here’s the lede:

The University of Cincinnati’s Student Government Association and Faculty Senate recently voted to support including “gender identity and expression” in the university’s non-discrimination statement. 

I don’t think that is too surprising: the city of Cincinnati passed a similar law in 2006 and, as the article notes, UC was just following the leads of Ohio U. and Ohio State. 

However, near the end of the article, a comment caught my eye: Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve long been uncomfortable with our contemporary habit of attacking our dead ancestors in the church for their blind spots.   I hope you know what I mean: you’ll be reading some Christian classic from 100, 200, even 1500 years ago, and suddenly come across a phrase or thought that is so utterly abhorrent to you, that for a second you can’t believe that this person was actually a believer. For example, I read a book review recently, in which the reviewer condemned the book’s author for making the same mistakes as Augustine, Aquinas, and Calvin.   (If I’m going to be making mistakes, that’s the company I want to keep!) 

It’s easy for us to condemn these uncomfortable statements from the past as patently absurd and plainly anti-gospel.  And our culture habitually favors the new, so it’s easy for us to see our current culture as inherently superior to that of the past.  And, let’s admit it, it’s easy: the dead are no longer around to defend themselves.  We don’t have to worry about some preacher from 300 years ago calling us up and giving us an earful for distorting his sermon. 

We have our own cultural blind spots, and reading books from the past with a hyper-critical eye robs us of the chance of having our own blind spots pointed out.  C. S. Lewis and G. K. Chesterton each made this point in various places, and I recently heard an interview with the late Jaroslav Pelikan that again made this point well.  Pelikan was a church historian, and he described his role as “filing a minority report for the past 2,000 years.” 

Secondly, we deny the communion of the saints when we are too quick to point out the faults of our spiritual ancestors.  Today, it is easy to condemn a dead believer or long-gone community of believers for their now-rejected beliefs.  It is much harder to extend grace to them and accept them as brothers and sisters in Christ. It is much harder to forgive their faults, and praise them for the accomplishments they achieved without the benefit of hindsight.  It is much harder to put aside judgment, and submit ourselves to their judgment, so that our own blind spots can be revealed. 

Last week, while my wife and I were getting to know our new son, a group of prominent evangelical leaders released “An Evangelical Manifesto,” which issues to evangelical Christians (or “Evangelical” with a capital “e,” as the document recommends)

an urgent challenge to reaffirm Evangelical identity, to reform Evangelical behavior, to reposition Evangelicals in public life, and so rededicate ourselves to the high calling of being Evangelical followers of Jesus Christ.

There is much to commend in this document, and the signatories are some pretty heavy hitters in the Evangelical world. Since this is an election year, it touches on the issue of religion and politics.  Here’s GetReligion’s take on one aspect: 

Granted, “An Evangelical Manifesto” lacks specific examples of evangelical political misbehavior. It urges an “expansion of concern beyond single-issue politics,” but fails to sketch out how this might be accomplished or what form this would take. A Communist Manifesto this is not.

Here is the section from the manifesto itself:

We call for an expansion of our concern beyond single-issue politics, such as abortion and marriage, and a fuller recognition of the comprehensive causes and concerns of the Gospel, and of all the human issues that must be engaged in public life.  Although we cannot back away from our biblically rooted commitment to the sanctity of every human life, including those unborn, nor can we deny the holiness of marriage as instituted by God between one man and one woman, we must follow the model of Jesus, the Prince of Peace,  engaging the global giants of conflict, racism, corruption, poverty, pandemic diseases, illiteracy, ignorance, and spiritual emptiness, by promoting reconciliation, encouraging ethical servant leadership, assisting the poor, caring for the sick, and educating the next generation.  We believe it is our calling to be good stewards of all God has entrusted to our care so that it may be passed on to generations yet to be born.  (”An Evangelical Manifesto, 13-14)

Nothing I particularly disagree with here, but I am puzzled by the hand-wringing over “single issue politics.” If our goal is to be obedient to Biblical truth, and to call both major political parties to a deeper faithfulness to Biblical truth, then I’m not sure that accepting abortion rights - or, at least, accepting an acceptance of abortion rights - is all that good of an idea.  Abortion is a “hot button” issue precisely because it is an important issue, just as slavery, suffrage for women, and civil rights have been “hot button” issues in our country.  

Neither political party fully embraces God’s desire for our nation or our world.  We should never expect them to.  But when we vote, we’re faced with an imperfect choice.  We can’t say “I’ll vote for Candidate A on Issues X, Y, and Z, and Candidate B on Issues T, U, and V.” If, as this manifesto suggests, voting based on the issue we consider most important is not acceptable, what, then, is the right way for a Christian to vote in America?