Bandits No More

By now you’ve seen pictures and heard reports of the destruction in Louisiana and Mississipi (and beyond). WWL reports that “Residents will probably be allowed back in town in a week, with identification only, but only to get essentials and clothing. You will then be asked to leave and not come back for one month.” The monetary cost of being out of your (likely destroyed) home for a month, is high enough. The emotional cost of living in total uncertainty will likely be even greater. What about school? Will the schools where the homeless are staying be able to temporarily absorb the displaced children? What will adults who are used to filling their days with work going to do?

Time to pray and keep on praying.

To me the unimaginable thing is that things like this happen in places like Bangladesh every year. Hundreds killed by Katrina – absolutely horrible. But how often do we hear of a storm or flood somewhere else that kills tens of thousands?

UMCOR (United Methodist Committee On Relief) is always ready to jump in when disaster strikes. Hurricane Katrina is no exception. If you’d like to support their relief effort you can check in at their Website.

Update: Here are a couple UM news items on Katrina:
UMCOR Goes Into Action
UMs Begin Response to Katrina

I crossed the narrow narthex from exterior door toward the sanctuary. That there were people other than myself in the narthex registered, but I took no notice. Then my hand made contact with the handle of the door to the sanctuary. At that point I heard a voice say, “You can’t go in there.” With that voice I suddenly became aware that the narthex was, in fact, full of people. All of them besides myself were armed, uniformed police.

I briefly considered entering the sanctuary anyway. Who are the police of Caesar to tell me I cannot enter a Christian house of worship? After all, I am not only an ordained United Methodist Elder, but am also ABD in a PhD in Church-State Studies, so I knew better than that officers of the State ought to restrict admittance to a church.

I very quickly weighed my options and decided making my flight home that afternoon was more important than getting involved in my own First Amendment case. I was escorted through the metal detectors into the hallway to wait with the others who had gotten there early.

The church was The Foundry United Methodist Church in Washington D.C. The occasion was a possible visit that Sunday morning by the President and First Lady. It was January 1999.

I understand there are security measures that must be taken before the President goes anywhere. Especially post September 11. But there is no excuse for allowing armed, uniformed agents of the state to control admittance into a place of worship.

I attended a city council meeting tonight. It opened with a public forum time during which interested citizens were invited to voice their opinions about the proposed property tax rate increase. I don’t recall the mayor also inviting questions, though he and the rest of the city council did their best to answer all questions that were asked.

I’d like to share some observations from that public forum session.

1. It was clear that one citizen’s questions were focused on making sure everyone in attendance recognized his intelligence and experience. In doing so, he was also questioning and challenging the experience and intelligence of the city council and mayor. I wouldn’t expect this to be an effective method or persuasion. In his case, it was not.
2. Another citizen repeatedly accused the council of not having made their budget recommendations available to the public. Though he was told repeatedly that he was welcome to a copy of the proposed budget, as was any citizen, he continued to ask questions based on presumptions about the budget he hadn’t seen in direct contradiction to how the council had explained the budget.
3. Among several citizens there was a penchant for questioning the character of the city councilmen because they were not in agreement with those asking the questions. This is common at higher levels of politics, but I would have thought it foreign to small town local politics where we know each other outside the council chambers.

While I have to admit that several on the city council, including the mayor and city manager are personal friends of mine, I believe my assessment is fair. They did answer questions, many times the same question over and over again. The trouble was they didn’t give the answers those asking wanted to hear.

Which is kind of refreshing from elected officeholders.

You can listen to this week’s sermon, Learning From John Wesley: Holiness. I show from Scripture (main text: Colossians 3:1-17) why holiness is good for us and how it fits into the big picture of what God is doing in our lives. I also give some pointers on how to pursue the holy life.

In today’s New York Times columnist David Brooks summarizes Andy Krepinevich’s approach to winning in Iraq. The basic idea is to build up areas of safety for civilians rather than going after the insurgents. Sound an awful lot like Lewis Sorley’s description of Gen. Abram’s strategy in Vietnam. If Sorley is to believed, the strategy worked in Vietnam – in the short term, but fell apart when America neglected its role in the peace (and the North ignored the treaty it had made). If the Vietnam war – which, it is claimed, we lost – was part of a larger war against communism – which we won, then surely when we look at Iraq we must see it in context of a larger war. We still live with the loss in Vietnam (which was more a political loss than a military loss); if Iraq is lost – whether in reality or in the perception of the people – it will be with us a long time also.

Glenn Reynolds at Instapundit reports on an email from Frank Martin:

The lesson to all small towns across America in regards to the internet is as clear as it was to small towns in the last century in regards to trains and highways, if you want people to come to your town, you need to have high speed internet. If you have it, you are part of the world, if not, your days are numbered.

Pittsburg, Texas is a small town – fewer than 5000 in the city, about 12,000 in the county. We have high speed internet available through CountryNet (radio), DSL (SBC) and Cable (Cox). So if you’re a telecommuter looking for small town life, be sure and check Pittsburg & Camp County.

Bishop Will Willimon waps the self-help movement upside the head with the Gospel, seeing altogether too much SELF in much of it. His final comment:

Hello, my name is Will and I am a preacher, addicted to the need to ask, “This is all well and good, but is it the gospel?”

Go Will!

Many surveys of late have shown that teachers in higher ed tend to be overwhelmingly liberal (a prominent methodology is to compare political registration, which usually seems to run at least 10 to 1 toward the Democrats). K.C. Johnson at Inside Higher Ed examines this phenomenon, identifying three elements of the apologetic strategy offered by those who want to maintain the status quo (I only summarize – check the link for the whole piece).

1. The cultural left is, simply, more intelligent than anyone else.
2. A left-leaning tilt in the faculty is a pedagogical necessity, because professors must expose gender, racial, and class bias while promoting peace, diversity” and cultural competence.
3. A left-leaning professoriate is a structural necessity, because the liberal arts faculty must balance business school faculty and/or the general conservative political culture.

Nice to see humility at work, isn’t it?

All this is old news to any one of a conservative bent who has interacted with academia. What got me thinking was one of the comments under point 3:

“Professional schools reflect the mindset of their professions.”

This may be true when looking at law and business schools (I have no experience with either), but I doubt that it is generally true for seminaries, at least in the United Methodist tradition. From what I’ve seen, teachers at official United Methodist seminaries tend to track not with the overall profession (pastors), but with academia. Surveys come out every General Conference year showing that pastors tend to be more liberal than laity. From what I see there is also a tendency for seminary teachers to be more liberal yet.

Does anyone else see this or am I missing something?

Now it could be that pastors are inherently smarter than lay people, and seminary profs smarter than pastors, but I think that is an ad hominem, not an argument.

Another possibility is that our language is failing us here. We throw the terms “liberal” and “conservative” about as if we always know what they mean, and as if they always mean the same thing. They don’t. Considered theologically, United Methodist leaders tend to be more liberal than conservative (according to popular usage). Considered institutionally, however, our leaders sure look conservative to me – “we’ve always done it this way” is a pretty popular motto. So which is it? Are they liberal or conservative? I’m afraid our language is failing us here.

UPDATE: Here’s The New York Times’ latest on the subject. Also, Jim Lindgren at the Volokh Conspiracy has a word or two.

The next flight of Igniting Ministry ads are due out any time now. Here is the United Methodist News Service article.

The UMC has paid good money for quality ads to be put together. Serious demographic research was done at the start, and has been done throughout.

Flying in the face of all this research, though, is this statement at the end of the article: “The commercial will have the most airings, 264, on CNN and CNN Headline News, followed by 138 on The Weather Channel.”

Was CNN really the best choice for the largest chunk of our church’s $2 million dollar investment? By all accounts CNN’s ratings have been sliding fast. I am confident the ads could have been more wisely dispersed.