I know some people who refuse to sit on church committees
because they think it's a waste of time. I've known some church committees that
prove them correct. In one case, the chair has become something of an
establishment. She's rather undisciplined, drags meetings out needlessly and
talks excessively herself.
About 15 years
ago I was a guest at the annual meeting of theAssociation of Christians Teaching Sociology. In one session a professor reported on a
student's project. Taking the Century as a barometer of mainline Protestantism and Christianity Today as a barometer of evangelicalism, his student
compared the respective responses to the civil rights movement. The student
found that the Century was very hospitable toward the movement and that CT was critical of
it. (Full disclosure: At the time of this ACTS meeting, I was working for
CT.)
Since ACTS is comprised
largely of evangelical scholars, there was some hanging of heads in the room.
Evangelicals, they agreed, had been on the wrong side of history, not to speak
of the wrong side of justice.
The print version of the Century's recent
feature on spiritual direction included an annotated book list,
which I compiled based on recommendations from three professors in the
discipline.
If my pastor got up some Sunday and said,
"I am not a pastor. I'm just a regular person," I'd respond like this: "Well, we
hired you to be a pastor, and if you have a problem with it you should find
another line of work."
Books
Rock the Casbah
Rage and Rebellion Across the Islamic World
By Robin Wright
We Meant Well
How I Helped Lose the Battle for the Hearts and Minds of the Iraqi People
By Peter Van Buren
Bismarck
A Life
By Jonathan Steinberg
What It Is Like to Go to War
By Karl Marlantes
In the Plex
How Google Thinks, Works and Shapes our Lives
By Steve Levy
All the Devils are Here
The Hidden History of the Financial Crisis
By Bethany McLean and Joe Nocera
The Publisher
Henry Luce and His American Century
By Alan Brinkley
Railroaded
The Transcontinentals and the Making of Modern America
Rock the Casbah: Rage and Rebellion Across the Islamic World, by Robin Wright. The West's myopic preoccupation with the war on terror has kept it from seeing the ferment in the Middle East, says Wright.
As soon as I heard that Steve Jobs had died I went on Facebook and posted, “RIP, Steve Jobs.” There were many responses, some that surprised me. A few people talked in glowing terms about how Jobs had transformed their lives, as though he were a spiritual guru.
If you want a window into what has happened economically in
the United States the last 30 years, consider the case of Dean Foods, a leading
U.S. dairy company.
On the Shelf
In the Garden of Beasts
Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler's Berlin
Right now I'm
reading In the Garden of Beasts, by
master storyteller Erik Larson. It is the captivating story of William E. Dodd,
U.S. ambassador to Germany during Hitler's rise to power. Dodd's young adult
daughter Martha, a socialite who had affairs with the head of the Gestapo and a
Russian spy, steals the show. Next I plan to read Stephen Ozment's sweeping
survey A Mighty Fortress: A New History
of the German People.
If you're like me, you have a list of books in your head or on scraps of paper that you think you should read sometime. Somewhere, sometime, a teacher or a writer urged these books on me, but I haven't gotten around to reading them.
In 1831-32 two
young Frenchmen, Alexis de Tocqueville and Gustave de Beaumont, traveled
through the United States, ostensibly to study the prison system on behalf of
the French government. But the prisons bored and often appalled them--Quaker-inspired
prisons in Philadelphia being the exception--so they spent very little time in
prisons.
Every few years a fringe Christian leader
or group predicts when Jesus Christ is coming back to earth. The latest date,
announced on billboards in some mid-sized American cities, is May 21 of this
year.
The tragic shooting in Arizona has become a cultural Rorschach
test. People see what they want to see about what's wrong with our culture, who
the bad guys are and what should be done about it.
Century Blogs
Carols from the Old and New Worlds
Theatre of Voices
Traditional and Modern Carols
Pro Arte Singers, Indiana University Children's Chamber Choir
Sing We Christmas
Chanticleer
A Chanticleer Christmas
Chanticleer
The John Rutter Christmas Album
The Cambridge Singers, The City of London Sinfonia
I appreciate when other people recommend
favorite CDs. In that spirit, I share with you some of my favorite Christmas
CDs. (A warning: I tend to favor the less familiar over tried and true
Christmas carols. I also prefer vocal music to instrumental and a cappella to
accompanied.)
When radio stations started playing Henryk Górecki's Symphony no. 3, known as the Symphony of Sorrowful Songs, it was reported that drivers would pull off the road because the haunting, mournful music left them in tears. A 14-year-old Swedish burn victim wrote to Górecki to say that the Third Symphony was what kept her alive.
When I sit in church on Sunday mornings, I sometimes look
around at the other congregants and ask myself, "Why are these people here? Why
did they choose to come to church?" Some people prefer staying at home to
leisurely read the Sunday paper, or go out for a relaxed Sunday brunch. Why
have these people given up their precious spare time to be here?
I used to think my grandfather had a strange affliction. He not only
read the obituaries, but he kept a log of the deaths of relatives,
friends and people he knew. If there were ever any questions about who
died when, he’d retrieve his notebook and give us the facts.
On the Shelf
Unfinished Business
One Man's Extraordinary Year of Trying to Do the Right Things
Lee Kravitz loved his job as editor in chief of Parade magazine.
But like his ancestors before him, he was a workaholic. Most of the men
in his family worked until they died, usually from heart attacks in
their early 60s.
