Riverwood Presbyterian Church

Christian Chaff

Adding Fuel to the Fire

by Tim Lien

Groups are beginning to gather around gas stations to pray for lower gas prices.

Short article, here.

I realize that we should “pray without ceasing.” But have we really run out of things to pray for?

I am reminded what R. Laurence Moore (Cornell University) said of much of American Christianity:

“…most American Protestants have merely confused the sacred with their well-known devotion to practical results.”

Isn’t that what you want to tell your co-workers: “Yes, I worship the great-god-of-lower-gas-prices-and-occasional discounts-on-detergent-almighty. Won’t you come to my church? Also: can I borrow a couple bucks?”

Christian Chaff

I AM the Calorie, the Carb, and All Trans-Fat

by Tim Lien

Humor

A Crack in the Dam

by Clay Staggs

One of the things that’s struck me about this election cycle has been the way no one will make jokes about Obama. This morning, that’s changed. Not anyone here though, where political correctness reigns supreme. Gerard Baker of the Times (UK) strikes first. The whole piece is here. I’ll paste in the first two paragraphs, but read the whole thing. Funny stuff…

And it came to pass, in the eighth year of the reign of the evil Bush the Younger (The Ignorant), when the whole land from the Arabian desert to the shores of the Great Lakes had been laid barren, that a Child appeared in the wilderness.

The Child was blessed in looks and intellect. Scion of a simple family, offspring of a miraculous union, grandson of a typical white person and an African peasant. And yea, as he grew, the Child walked in the path of righteousness, with only the occasional detour into the odd weed and a little blow.

HT: Drudge.

Politics

Obama Abroad

by Clay Staggs

So, unless you’ve been under a rock for the past week or so, you probably already know that Obama is traveling in the middle east and Europe. This has created a frenzy of mainstream media attention unlike anything I’ve ever seen before. I’ve found a couple of items from his trip that I thought were worth posting.

The first is a flyer advertising his campaign rally - oh, I’m sorry - his speech in Berlin. Now, the Obama campaign is noted for its piles and piles of campaign contributions, but I think that spending money doing ads directed at folks who can’t even vote is a little over the top. Apparently this is being plastered up all over Berlin:

Note the official campaign logo in the top right. In addition to the mind-blowing hubris of doing such a thing as this, I’m surprised at it on a tactical level. Doesn’t this risk the average voter looking at this and reacting against it, preferring that we Americans choose our own president (in English) rather than Europeans?

The second thing is a remarkable clip from an interview that Obama gave regarding Iraq. The interviewer asks Obama whether, knowing what he knows now about the surge’s success, if he had it to do over again, he would support it. And Obama says no!! I didn’t believe it myself until I saw the video, so here it is:

So, given the benefit of hindsight, he wouldn’t change his position. That’s either completely dishonest or so intellectually rigid as to make him unfit to lead. If a Republican had said such a thing, he’d have been scolded by the interviewer for being so callous about the continued loss of life that the surge turns out to have stopped.

Obama is turning out to be an exceptionally bad candidate, masked only by a press that fawns over him and gives him cover. Given what a terrible year this is shaping up to be for Republicans, he ought to be ahead by a mile. He’s not. The polls are dead even. If Obama loses, it will be on account of a perception (which appears to be at least somewhat justified) of egomania that even the media can’t cover. From holding campaign rallies in Europe to refusing to admit his own fallibility, it’s just not an appealing picture he’s painting of what the next 4 years would hold in store if he wins.

Culture Wars

The Face of Christianity

by Jimmy Hopper

I have always (since I became a Christian) been jealous of the name of Christ and concerned when His Church is put , or puts itself, in a bad light before the world. I recently posted about this, particularly the use of the term “evangelical”, to describe Christianinty and the attempt to correct this with the recent Evangelical Manifesto (read the post here).

On Saturday, I opened the newspaper with my coffee, as usual, and got out the weekly religion page first, as usual. And, as usual, it was more of the same, but Saturday it was much, much more. The lead article headline was “Miracle Worker?” and described one Todd Bentley, a current “healer” phenom operating out of Lakeland, Florida. Her is in his third month of a tent “revival” and hundreds of thousands have attended. Mary Ann Johnson reports that he is quite the celebrity in churches in London. His act is so outrageous, even violent (he once kicked an elderly woman in the face to “heal” her) that even the Pentecostals are complaining. Two statements I noted that they spoke out against in the article were “miracles are poppin’ like popcorn tonight,” and “Someone’s getting a new spinal cord tonight.” The Pentecostal leaders stated that this “cheapened” the work of the Holy Spirit. That in itself is some statement when you consider the source. Of course, none of the “healings” could be verified through medical evidence by the Associated Press reporter doing the article. Yet Bentley continues, and is, to the outside world, a face of Chirstianity.

Directly below that piece was another episode of the agonizing and embarrassing Episcopal/Anglican soap opera. Bishops from around the world were in London for the church-wide Lambeth conference, an 18 day event. Bishops from around the world didn’t include the 200 conservative Anglican bishops who are boycotting the conference because of the consecration of Bishop Robinson, of New Hampshire, an openly gay man who lives with his lover and “leads” the church of Christ. Robinson has been barred from the conference by the Archbishop of Canterbury, “for the sake of unity,” but never fear; Bishop Katherine Schori of New York is there to stand up for him. In fact, Robinson himself is in London; he just doesn’t go to the meetings. Schori is introducing him to the other bishops after hours in a series of social events she has arranged. Schori believes that Robinson’s situation is covered by her belief that “committed same sex relationships are permitted under the Bible’s social justice teachings.” This is obviously a text I’ve never seen since the same situation with opposite sex relationships was dealt with by the phrase, “Go and sin no more.” This side-show also is the face of Christianity to the world.

There are others on those 6 pages of the religion section but these two are sufficient to the purpose. Christians will continue to be embarrassed by these degradations of the faith. The Riverwood Book Group has just finished reading D. G. Hart’s excellant study, The Lost Soul of American Protestantism ; a book that examines the roots of the pietist tradition of the protestant churches, beginning with the revivalist movement of “The Great Awakening” and continuing up until the present day with the Todd Bentleys of the Evangelical branch and the Robinsons and Schoris of the liberal branch of the pietist tradition. It’s a fascinating story and while it doesn’t cite a cure for the problem, it at least gives Confessional Christians some understanding of it and encouragement as they continue to hold to the faith and to worship the God of the scriptures.

Education

Economic Ignorance

by Clay Staggs

I’ve bemoaned the fact that no one teaches or learns logic so many times that I’ve lost count. But examples of people saying and doing things that are totally irrational just keep on coming. The latest one was at the President’s press conference yesterday.

The question you are about to read actually came from a White House correspondent - that is, someone who has been afforded the privilege of questioning the leader of the free world.

Q `You never mention oil companies. Are you confident that American oil producers are tapping all of the sources they have out there, including offshore?

Now, I don’t believe that a great deal of formal education in economics is necessary to know the answer to this question. Some simple logic should do. The price of oil is $140+ per barrel - a historic high. Why on earth would company fail to tap their resources and cash in? The President then obliged with an answer that should have gone without saying:

THE PRESIDENT: What about them — do I think they’re investing capital to find more reserves with the price at $140 a barrel? Absolutely. Take an offshore exploration company. First of all, it costs a lot of money to buy the lease, so they tie up capital. Secondly, it takes a lot of money to do the geophysics, to determine what the structure may or may not look like. That ties up capital. Then they put the rig out there. Now, first of all, in a federal offshore lease, if you’re not exploring within a set period of time, you lose your bonus; you lose the amount of money that you paid to get the lease in the first place.

And once you explore, your first exploratory, if you happen to find oil or gas, it is — you’ll find yourself in a position where a lot of capital is tied up. And it becomes in your interest, your economic interest, to continue to explore so as to reduce the capital costs of the project on a per-barrel basis. And so I — I think — I think they’re exploring. And hopefully a lot of people continue to explore so that the supply of oil worldwide increases relative to demand.

I probably make too much of this, but the fact that someone in the White House press corps lacks this much rational thought really bothers me. Of all the questions that could be put to George Bush, the fact that this one would have been asked is just pathetic.

Education

Because The Schools Have Nothing Better To Do

by Clay Staggs

Barack Obama gave a speech in Colorado recently on the subject of service. You can read the whole text here. I’d like to focus on his comments on service for those in middle and high school:

Finally, we need to integrate service into education, so that young Americans are called upon and prepared to be active citizens.

Just as we teach math and writing, arts and athletics, we need to teach young Americans to take citizenship seriously. Study after study shows that students who serve do better in school, are more likely to go to college, and more likely to maintain that service as adults. So when I’m President, I will set a goal for all American middle and high school students to perform 50 hours of service a year, and for all college students to perform 100 hours of service a year. This means that by the time you graduate college, you’ll have done 17 weeks of service.

We’ll reach this goal in several ways. At the middle and high school level, we’ll make federal assistance conditional on school districts developing service programs, and give schools resources to offer new service opportunities. At the community level, we’ll develop public-private partnerships so students can serve more outside the classroom.

Much criticism has been leveled at the No Child Left Behind Act, and most of it justified. In my mind, the most insidious thing that it did was to insert the ever-incompetent US Department of Education even further into what has historically been local decision-making where grade school education is concerned. It did this essentially through a bribe: Accept this increased federal funding if you want, but you have to do X Y and Z to get it. No state had to accept the funding, but if they did (as always) there was a catch.

It appears that, if elected, Obama would take that one step further. Federal aid would be dependent on the schools compelling community service from their middle and high school students. I’d like to make two points about this. First of all, the schools have all they can say grace over to actually, you know, teach the students the basics, and many are even failing at that. Is it not absurd to place yet another mandate on these schools? Is there no amount of social engineering that we won’t foist on the public schools?

On top of that, perhaps this is my reformed thinking coming through here, but if “community service” becomes mandatory, does it not lose something of its character? I thought this when Clinton did AmeriCorp - if you’re getting a reward for doing a job (in the case of AmeriCorp, reduced student loan debt) then isn’t that just employment and not true community service? Maybe I’m off base here, but I think of true community service as being at least in some measure voluntary, or maybe done without the motivation of profit. Once we make community service just another course in school, won’t it become about as noble as your 10th grade health class? Maybe it will, and nobody cares. I’m not sure which is worse.

For those interested, Paul Mirengoff at Powerline does an excellent fisking of some other aspects of this text, too.

Exit question: With all the homework requirements, accelerated reading, incessant testing, extracurricular activities, and now possibly mandatory community service, do kids ever get the chance to just be kids anymore?

Christian Chaff

The Worst Church Sign Yet

by Clay Staggs

Is this the best we’ve got? Has it come to this?

HT: Instapundit