The interest in Sarah Palin continues to drive the traffic on this blog up and up and up, as the search hits keep rolling in; and it’s not just me, either—Adam Brickley’s blog, which is the hub of the Palin movement, topped 5,000 hits both Monday and Tuesday (a fact he relayed in his excellent “pep talk,” in which he made the case for Palin as well as he ever has). A great many people across this country—many Republicans, but also more than a few moderate Democrats—are catching the vision of a McCain/Palin ticket, and getting excited about the possibility. This is the reason John McCain needs to name Gov. Palin as his running mate, because you can’t say that about anybody else; the arguments for the other candidates are all purely rational, coldly political parsings of the data. There are equally strong rational arguments, and perhaps stronger, to be made for Gov. Palin, but among them is this: she excites people. None of the other candidates do that, except Mormons for Romney; none of them excite both wings of the Republican base; none of them excite people beyond the Republican base. Only Gov. Palin does that, and I hope Sen. McCain realizes that.The question is, will he do it? We’ll find out tomorrow—or maybe today, if it leaks the way the Biden pick did. If he does, then yes, the media will immediately go on the attack, but despite them, we’ll see the excitement continue to build; if he doesn’t, it will deflate. We have lifelong Democrats who are leaning toward voting Republican for the first time; some of them will go back to Sen. Obama. We have disaffected Republicans who don’t like Sen. McCain but are thrilled at the prospect of voting for Gov. Palin; some of them won’t vote. We have others who like Sen. McCain well enough but aren’t energized by him, but would love to turn out and work for a McCain/Palin ticket; they’ll still vote for him in November, but most of them won’t contribute otherwise. And then there are those of us who will keep beating the drum regardless, but would like to have as many reasons as possible to make our case; there’s simply more to be said for McCain/Palin than for McCain/Hutchison or McCain/Pawlenty, let alone McCain/Romney. And yes, for a lot of us, if the Palin energy goes, there will also be a lot fewer people listening to us as we do.So, will John McCain make history by picking Sarah Palin, Alaska’s preternaturally accomplished female governor, as his running mate? I don’t know—but I hope so.
Monthly Archives: August 2008
Worship for blokes; or, what did that song say?
Some time ago, I referenced a book called The Message in the Music: Studying Contemporary Praise and Worship, edited by a couple of professors at Spring Arbor; it’s a good book which I highly recommend for its multifaceted analysis of the lyrical content of the top 77 contemporary worship songs in the American church. (I lack the expertise to comment similarly on the essays devoted to the music itself.) That post was focused on Dr. Lester Ruth’s study of the Trinitarian content (or lack thereof) of those songs, but that’s only one angle the book takes; there are also excellent and highly valuable essays on topics such as “Contemporary Worship Music and God’s Concern for Righteousness and Social Justice” (is anyone surprised to hear the author’s conclusion that the songs studied were “sorely lacking” in this respect?) and “Worshiping God in the Darkness—The Expression of Pain and Suffering in Contemporary Worship” (in which respect there were at least a handful of really good songs), among others. It’s an important book for anyone interested in planning and leading worship with strong theological content.One interesting aspect of the book is that there are two different essays approaching the question of romantic lyrics and the influence of American love songs in our contemporary worship music—one of them explicitly from the male perspective. I’ve been thinking about that again since Hap put up this post considering her responsibility as a worship leader to help lead all those in the sanctuary in worship, not just those who share her perspectives (or vocal range—I do hope you still have your upper register, my friend). As part of her post, she included a fascinating snippet of an interview with Matt Redman (which I’ve posted as well below) in which he talks about learning to write songs that blokes can worship to without feeling uncomfortable. As Keith Drury showed in his essay in The Message in the Music, romantic-sounding lyrics aren’t as much of a problem for as many guys as one might think, because many of us find ways to handle it; but as Dr. John Stackhouse points out, not only are there a lot of us who do find that creepy, but there are some relational and theological problems with that sort of language in worship if we interpret it in the way in which the world teaches us to interpret it.The thing I most appreciate about Redman’s reaction in this interview—which is no surprise, since he tends to be theologically and scripturally strong and aware, but is still gratifying—is that he acknowledges the importance of thinking carefully about the lyrics he writes, so that they use language which is both biblical and free of cultural distortions. This is, as Hap puts it, a major part of responsible songwriting for the church; unfortunately, it’s a discipline which is too easy not to practice. The more that folks like Redman and Brian Doerksen and Chris Tomlin, the people who set the musical and lyrical agenda for the Western contemporary church, talk about and practice that sort of discipline, though, the more the rest of the church will follow, and the better off we’ll be.
The Risen Lord
For the love of Christ controls us, because we have concluded this: that one has died for all, therefore all have died; and he died for all, that those who live might no longer live for themselves but for him who for their sake died and was raised. From now on, therefore, we regard no one according to the flesh. Even though we once regarded Christ according to the flesh, we regard him thus no longer. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come. All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation. Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ,
be reconciled to God. For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin,
so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.—2 Corinthians 5:14-21, ESVA print of this painting, with a caption taken from this passage, hangs in my office, behind my desk (on the side wall, so I can see it). The artist, one of my favorite contemporary painters, is Dr. He Qi, a painter and philosopher of religious art who has taught at Nanjing Union Theological Seminary and Nanjing University (in the philosophy department). His website describes his art this way:
He has been committed to the artistic creation of modern Chinese Christian Art since 1983. He hopes to help change the “foreign image” of Christianity in China by using artistic language, and at the same time, to supplement Chinese Art the way Buddhist art did in ancient times. In his works, He Qi has blended together Chinese folk customs and traditional Chinese painting techniques with the western art of the Middle and Modern Ages, and has created an artistic style of color-on-paper painting.
If the piece above interests you, I encourage you to explore his website—he’s done some truly brilliant work. (You can also find an inexpensive set of prints—taken from the PC(USA)’s 2004-05 planning calendar, which used his artwork—here.)
A couple facts on offshore drilling
This is the offshore-drilling map: what Congress has allowed and what it has disallowed. The green areas are legal, the red aren’t, and the yellow aren’t under our jurisdiction. (For the rather lurid “No Zone” thing, blame Idaho Sen. Larry Craig—this was produced by his office.)
This is the map of the mockery that China, Cuba, Canada, and other countries are making of that ban, drilling into the Gulf oil fields from sites as close to 50 miles off the coast of Key West.
At the very least, as we debate expanding offshore drilling, we need to be aware that just because we’ve banned it doesn’t mean it isn’t happening—it just means it’s happening a little further off shore, to the benefit of other countries (some of them our enemies) instead of our own.
McCain/Leno ’08
I just got the chance to watch last night’s Tonight Show, which was a great one; Jay Leno was at the top of his form. (I especially enjoyed his crack that he had John McCain and Dara Torres on “not for politics and the Olympics, but just because I like being around people who’ve been told they’re too old for the job.” Nice shot at NBC there.) It was interesting to note the dead silence from the audience when Leno mentioned Joe Biden, and interesting too to see how well Sen. McCain connected with them; it underscored the point folks have made that he’s much better in an informal, unscripted setting than he is in a stump speech. (That, I imagine, is the reason Barack Obama has refused to do the town hall meetings with him, because Sen. Obama is the other way around.) I expect it helped that this was Sen. McCain’s 13th appearance on the show—I got the sense from watching him and Leno that there’s a fair degree of friendship between the two of them, as they seemed to enjoy talking with each other. They cracked a few jokes—some at Sen. McCain’s expense, a couple at Sen. Biden’s—but they also had some serious discussion, and I think some worthwhile points were made. In particular, I appreciated his response to Leno’s question about the dollar that the first thing we need to do is “stop sending $700,000,000 a year to countries who don’t like us,” which was the beginning of his argument for expanded domestic energy production—drilling, nuclear, hydrogen, the works. (Perhaps my biggest surprise of his appearance: he got applause from the audience for calling for offshore drilling.)If you didn’t get the chance to watch Sen. McCain on Leno, the video is below.
One last comment: might I just add how much I hope to see Gov. Sarah Palin sitting in that chair a few weeks from now as the Republican VP nominee? I think she’d rock the show.
To repeat: why John McCain should choose Sarah Palin
It occurred to me today that though I’ve posted a fair bit about Sarah Palin, it’s been a couple months now since I laid out the reasons that convinced me of the truth of the superficially crazy notion that the best running mate for John McCain is the first-term governor of a small red state that most Americans rarely think about. Given that more and more people are discovering her and starting to consider that superficially crazy notion for themselves, I thought that re-running those reasons might be in order.One, she’s young, just 44; she would balance out Sen. McCain’s age.Two, she has proven herself as an able executive and administrator, serving as mayor, head of the state’s Oil and Gas Conservation Commission, and now as governor; she would balance out Sen. McCain’s legislative experience (though he does have command experience in the Navy).Three, she has strong conservative credentials, both socially (she’s strongly pro-life, politically and personally) and fiscally (as her use of the line-item veto has shown); she would assuage concerns about Sen. McCain’s conservatism.Four, she’s independent, having risen to power against the Alaska GOP machine, not through it; she’s worked hard against the corruption in both her party and her state’s government. She would reinforce Sen. McCain’s maverick image, which is one of his greatest strengths in this election, but in a more conservative direction.Five, for the reasons listed above, she’s incredibly popular in Alaska. That might seem a minor factor to some, but it’s indicative of her abilities as a politician.Six, she has a remarkable personal story, of the sort the media would love. She’s a former beauty-pageant winner, the mother of five children (the oldest serving in the Army, preparing to deploy to Iraq, the youngest a Down Syndrome baby), an outdoorsy figure who rides snowmobiles and eats mooseburgers—and a tough, take-no-prisoners competitor who was known as “Sarah Barracuda” when she led her underdog high-school basketball team to the state championship, and who now has accomplished a similar feat in cutting her way to the governor’s office. No one now in American politics can match Sen. McCain’s life story (no, not even Barack Obama), but she comes as close as anyone can (including Sen. Obama); she fits his image.Seven, she would give the McCain campaign the “Wow!” factor it can really use in a vice-presidential nominee. As a young, attractive, tough, successful, independent-minded, appealing female politician, though not well known yet, she would make American voters sit up and take notice [as indeed she is already]; and given her past history, there could be no doubt that she would be a strong, independent voice in a McCain administration, should there be one. (Update: for those wondering how she’d do in debates, go here to watch how she did the last time around. Go here to see her inaugural address.)Eight, choosing Gov. Palin as his running mate, especially if coupled with actions like giving Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal the keynote slot at the GOP convention, would help the party going forward. The GOP needs to rebuild its bench of plausible strong future presidential candidates, and perhaps the best thing Sen. McCain can do for the party is to help with this. The party needs Gov. Jindal to stay where he is for another term or two (as, I believe, does the state of Louisiana), but in giving him the convention slot that launched Sen. Obama to prominence four years ago and putting Gov. Palin on the ticket, Sen. McCain would put two of the GOP’s best people and brightest hopes for the future in a perfect position to claim the White House themselves; in so doing, he would make them the face of the GOP for the future.
Does Barack Obama have a woman problem?
I wouldn’t have thought so—he’s married to a smart, strong, aggressive woman whom he clearly loves dearly (though I personally find her rather depressing); but I’m beginning to wonder. He’s certainly been rather inept in his handling of Hillary Clinton, managing to both cave in to her (and/or Bill) and to tick her off; sending the formal announcement of the Biden pick (even though it had already leaked) at 3 am was just over the top. Now people are starting to ask, “Why is Barack Obama so afraid of women?” I don’t believe he is, but with his campaign’s connection to the attempted political hit job on Sarah Palin coming right together with his treatment of Sen. Clinton, it does seem clear that he wants a monopoly on the identity politics in this campaign. He understands that “first black President” has a powerful pull, and that he can use that (and more power to him); in consequence, he doesn’t want that blurred or undermined by a woman in the race. He didn’t want to be upstaged (for which I don’t blame him), so he didn’t pick Hillary; equally, he doesn’t want to be competing in the general election against a woman on the GOP ticket, which would create crossing and conflicting claims in the identity-politics arena. After all, if the Democrats give you the chance to elect the first black man to the White House, and the Republicans give you the chance to elect the first woman (albeit just to the Blair House, the official residence of the VP), then you can make history either way. (And one would have to admit that between the two, the Republicans nominating a woman would be the bigger surprise.)In any case, I’m quite sure Sen. Obama has no problems with women—but it does seem like more and more women are wondering if he does. (Update: the latest numbers from Gallup show his support among women dropping, and especially among unmarried women, from 46% to 39%.) Some of that, again, is his treatment of Sen. Clinton, who hasn’t buried the hatchet—she’s doing her best to undermine him, even when she helps him; some is rooted in the behavior of many of his supporters, a problem Rebecca Traister wrote about in Salon a few months ago; some of it comes from who those supporters are, or at least the most visible ones. Stacy at Smart Girl Politics asks, “One last thought….have you ever noticed how many of John McCain’s spokespeople on the media rounds are women? Have you noticed how many top business women have lined up to support John McCain? How many prominent women can you name in the Obama campaign?” I’m not sure how widespread this sort of perception is, but Sen. Obama had better do something about it, or he’ll wind up seeing a lot more ads like this one:
Elemental powers
“See to it that no one takes you captive by philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the world, and not according to Christ. For in him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily, and you have been filled in him, who is the head of all rule and authority. In him also you were circumcised with a circumcision made without hands, by putting off the body of the flesh, by the circumcision of Christ, having been buried with him in baptism, in which you were also raised with him through faith in the powerful working of God, who raised him from the dead. And you, who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses, by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross. He disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame, by triumphing over them in him.”
—Colossians 2:8-15 (ESV)
The word translated “elemental spirits” in the beginning of that passage is stoicheia, which literally means “elements”; this refers to the spirits who were thought to control the physical world—the four elements, the stars, the other heavenly bodies, the signs of the zodiac—all those things which were commonly thought to control human destiny. These were the powers, people believed, that ruled the world, and had to be placated in order to get on with life.
To most people, I suspect, Paul’s warning in Colossians 2 seems irrelevant—it has nothing to do with how we live now. Sure, there are those who are into astrology and won’t do anything without consulting their horoscope, but most people know better than to think that the stars rule their lives; surely, the concern Paul raises is nothing we need to worry about in our own lives.
For my part, though, I’m not so sure; I think our culture has its own set of stoicheia that continue to assert their authority in our lives. They may look different, and they may not be tied into religious observance (as they were in Paul’s day), but they wield similar influence. I think we need to ask in all seriousness—and try to answer in all seriousness—what are the spiritsour society accepts as the elemental powers that rule human destiny?
I don’t have a complete answer to that, by any means; but I think that one force that has assumed that role in our culture, anyway, is sex. The ancients believed the stars ruled their fates, and that however hard you tried to resist or avoid your fate, you couldn’t; increasingly, our culture has much the same view of sexual desire, seeing it as a force too great to resist—and indeed, one which shouldn’t be resisted. Even among Christians, who should really know better, this sort of thinking is used to justify an appalling number of adulteries and divorces; on a larger scale, it’s also the assumption which underlies the debate over homosexuality. Clearly, on our society’s view, asking people not to act on their sexual desires is completely unreasonable—you might as well ask them to jump out a window and not fall.
Biblically, though, that’s neither more nor less than slavery “to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the world, and not according to Christ.” Granted, certainly, it’s a slavery which is (at least on some levels) comfortable and pleasant for us, and which is difficult and painful to escape; there’s no question that to tell people, whatever their particular desires may be, that God calls them to resist sexual temptation is to ask them to commit to a difficult and painful struggle, and one in which they may not know true victory in this life. This isn’t something we can do in our own strength; it’s beyond human ability.
That’s why Paul immediately moves from his warning to this wonderful passage about Jesus. We can’t do what God wants us to do: our sin, the debt we can never repay, gives the “elemental spirits of the universe” power over us, and we can’t get free of that power. But what we could never do, Christ did for us, and in us: he took that debt, he blotted it out, and then he nailed it to the cross. In his crucifixion he took those spirits and he disarmed them, stripping them of all their power and authority; in his resurrection he made a public spectacle of them, displaying their powerlessness for the world to see in the light of his great triumph. Nothing in this world has any power over you any longer, Paul says, because you are in Christ and Christ has defeated every other power—he alone is victorious.
Afterpastoring
The Aftermath of Afterpastoring
Afterpastors, or clergy who minister in the aftermath of betrayal of pastoral trust, are challenged with a complex and stressful set of circumstances as they assume the leadership of the troubled congregations their predecessors have left behind. The relationships and interactions in their ministries are frequently characterized by distrust and suspicion. Afterpastors often feel misheard or unheard by lay leaders and congregants, and they often report feeling manipulated, coerced, and sabotaged by lay leaders or seeing their decisions co-opted or corrupted by poor process or underhanded leadership. And many say they are often criticized without cause or unwarrantedly berated for incompetence.Nearly all afterpastors describe a general reactivity to their presence or position that encumbers their work and relationships. And some describe reactivity so acute that it makes them lightning rods for every upset, conflict, and complaint—large or small—in the congregation.
Let me tell you, barring someone coming in who knows how to address such situations (which is why trained, gifted interim pastors are so important), those effects can linger for a long, long time.
Sarah Palin: hit magnet
The biggest argument people offer against Sarah Palin as a potential running mate for John McCain is essentially that she’s too obscure. Part of that is the “Alaska’s a 3-electoral-vote state that’s going to vote Republican anyway” thing (which I happen to think the Biden pick has neutralized, since Joe Biden also represents a small state that was already safely in the column), but it seems to me that the driving concern there is really that most Americans don’t remember Alaska’s up there most of the time and don’t really take anything that happens up there seriously, and therefore Gov. Palin might as well be from Guam for all anyone in the lower 48 cares—she’s just too obscure to be a credible pick.Now, speaking as a Seattle Seahawks fan still smarting over Jimmy Johnson’s comment back in 2005 (our Super Bowl season) that nobody cares about the ‘Hawks because “they’re way up there in South Alaska,” I probably take that sort of twaddle rather more personally, and find it rather more irritating, than is truly warranted. My personal reactions aside, though, I think the folks who call Gov. Palin too obscure to be Sen. McCain’s pick are seriously misunderestimating the power of the Internet, especially as an amplifier for good old word-of-mouth advertising. As evidence, I can offer my own experience with this blog. Probably nothing I’ve done in the last two years has done more to attract traffic than when I started talking about Gov. Palin; every time I put up a post about her, I get a spike in hits. What’s more, of the folks who find this blog through searches, over 31% are currently landing here from the search term “Sarah Palin,” and another 7% or so are landing from some variant of that. (For all of you looking for information on Sarah Palin’s church, I’m sorry, I don’t know anything about that.)I would have expected this sort of result had I been posting on someone like Mitt Romney, who’s already understood to be nationally well-known (and who knows, maybe I’ll get a spike from mentioning him, too); to see it connected to Gov. Palin tells me that in fact she’s already a lot better known around the country than those who are skeptical about her think, and that she’s generating a lot of interest and excitement. There’s simply nobody else out there on the GOP side (including, alas, our presidential nominee) who has people that fired up, or who has the potential to fire up that many more people. The other VP candidates have their supporters, but the people who will vote for McCain/Romney or McCain/Pawlenty will vote for McCain regardless, and probably about as happily; they don’t really add anything to the equation (and Gov. Romney turned off enough people during the primaries that I continue to believe that he would be a net drag on the ticket). Based on what I’m seeing, the same cannot be said of a McCain/Palin ticket, which would generate excitement, support, commitment, and ultimately votes that no other possible combination would.(Update: we’re not just holding serve here, we’re seeing this go to a new level; judging by the spike in hits I’ve gotten today, interest in Gov. Palin continues to multiply. Sen. McCain, the excitement is out there: I hope you have the vision and the cool hand to grab hold of it, even if the CW is that naming her would be a gamble. But then, you have the gambler’s nerve.)(Further update: as the log keeps turning over—I don’t pay for StatCounter, so I just get the free 500-entry log—Gov. Palin keeps gaining on the rest of the list; as of now, right around 70% of all the search hits on this blog over that period were looking for Sarah Palin. That’s how strongly things are running right now. The wave is there for Sen. McCain to catch if he will.)