Adam Gopnik’s piece about G.K. Chesterton in the New Yorker continues to stir up dissenting opinions.  The latest comes from one of my favorite contemporary conservatives, Ross Douthat, who writes:

But the whole point of the “in the context of his times” argument is precisely that by the standards of the ’20s and ’30s, it was morally impressive for a political writer to reject both fascism and communism, to praise Zionism, and to speak out forcefully against Nazi anti-Semitism – and not in its eliminationist phase, but in its very earliest stages. (Chesterton died in 1936.) This does not excuse Chesterton’s anti-Semitism by any means, but it makes him an odd target, out of all the writers and thinkers of that period, to single out for particular opprobrium. Here I think Gopnik is indulging the chauvinism of hindsight: The assumption that everyone who partook of the attitudes that helped make the Holocaust possible should be judged and condemned on the basis of what we know now, rather than what they knew then. It’s the Goldhagen approach to assigning culpability, in which even people who opposed Hitler – even people like Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who died fighting him – are to be judged, and harshly, if they failed to live up the standards that Western society only adopted after the Holocaust provided a terrible example of where these thoughts and impulses can lead.

Indeed.

In recent years, evangelical Christians have begun joining tradition of seeking social justice that Catholics and others have long excelled at.  In doing so, they have often advocated protecting the poor, the orphan, and the widow on grounds that we ought have the same compassion and mercy that Jesus had.

Such grounds are, of course, true.  But for some who may have not yet cultivated the compassion that Christ demands, such appeals are insufficient.

In Just Courage, International Justice Mission’s Gary Haugen uses a different tactic, appealing not to our sense of compassion, but our desire for courage.  Haugen challenges us to recognize the dangers of seeking justice and to leave complacency, comfort, and our sense of security behind to risk protecting those in need.

At points, Just Courage feels like an extended appeal for IJM, which would be troublesome if IJM were not such a fascinating organization.  While I was familiar with the organization, Haugen’s book was helpful for my understanding of their mission in the world.  For Haugen (and IJM), social justice is only peripherally about feeding the poor.  At its core, it is about defeating the violence that keeps people in poverty:

We are calling Christians to address the distinctive problem of violence that lies beneath so much of the suffering of the poor–the suffering that tenaciously keeps so many of the poor in poverty…Almost every night, somewhere in the world, IJM undercover investigators are infiltrating the dark, violent underworld of sex trafficking to find the women and children who have disappeared into the blackness…And when we find the victims, we find they are suffering by accident.  They aren’t suffering because of bad luck or a bad storm or a bad harvest or a bad bacteria.  They are suffering because violent people want them to suffer.  Violence is intentional.

It is the intentionality of this violence that makes it so dangerous and that requires so much courage to overcome.  Haugen recounts numerous stories of IJM’s dangerous work around the globe, highlighting some of the successes they have achieved.

But Haugen’s work is not simply an advertisement for IJM.  It is a challenge to understand the work of justice and how it fits in with the character of God.  Haugen is intent on helping Christians open themselves to the will of God in this area and on sowing seeds of discontent among those who are currently uninterested in the work of social justice.  By positioning social justice within the desire for meaning and for courageous action, Haugen expands the appeal to those who may not (initially) be moved by appeals for compassion or mercy.

Haugen’s book is hardly heavy lifting.  It is light on theology and structured in haphazard fashion.  But the hour and a half that it takes to read is time well spent, especially for those who struggle to be moved to action by appeals to compassion and mercy.

*Disclosure:  I was provided a free copy of this book by IVP.

Camille Paglia has penned an interesting analysis of the history and future of feminism.  Feminism is a lot like dispensationalism–a lot of people know they don’t like it, even though they don’t really know what it is.

Paglia’s article is one of the most helpful and balanced analyses of the movement. Her conclusion:

In conclusion, my proposals for reform are as follows. First of all, science must be made a fundamental component of all women’s or gender studies programs. Second, every such program must be assessed by qualified faculty (not administrators or politicians) for ideological bias. The writings of conservative opponents of feminism, as well as of dissident feminists, must be included. Without such diversity, students are getting indoctrination, not education. Certainly among current dissident points of view is the abstinence movement, as an evangelical Protestant phenomenon and also as an argument set forth in Wendy Shalit’s first book, A Return to Modesty, which created a storm when it was published nine years ago but whose influence can be detected in today’s campus chastity clubs, including here at Harvard. As a veteran of pro-sex feminism who still endorses pornography and prostitution, I say more power to all these chaste young women who are defending their individuality and defying groupthink and social convention. That is true feminism!

My final recommendation for reform is a massive rollback of the paternalistic system of grievance committees and other meddlesome bureaucratic contrivances which have turned American college campuses into womblike customer-service resorts. The feminists of my baby-boom generation fought to tear down the intrusive in loco parentis rules that insultingly confined women in their dormitories at night. College administrators and academic committees have no competence whatever to investigate crimes, including sexual assault. If an offense has been committed, it should be reported to the police, so that the civil liberties of both the accuser and the accused can be protected. This is not to absolve young men from their duty to behave honorably. Hooliganism cannot be tolerated. But we must stop seeing everything in life through the narrow lens of gender. If women expect equal treatment in society, they must stop asking for infantilizing special protections. With freedom comes personal responsibility.

Paglia’s recommendations are tough to disagree with.  Read the whole thing.

HT:  The Fire and the Rose

Satire.

In case you missed it, PZ Myers has created quite a stir by taking a consecrated wafer from a Catholic Church with the express intent of desecrating it. He has a point, naturally:

By the way, I didn’t want to single out just the cracker, so I nailed it to a few ripped-out pages from the Qur’an and The God Delusion. They are just paper. Nothing must be held sacred. Question everything. God is not great, Jesus is not your lord, you are not disciples of any charismatic prophet. You are all human beings who must make your way through your life by thinking and learning, and you have the job of advancing humanity’s knowledge by winnowing out the errors of past generations and finding deeper understanding of reality. You will not find wisdom in rituals and sacraments and dogma, which build only self-satisfied ignorance, but you can find truth by looking at your world with fresh eyes and a questioning mind.

Does the idea that “nothing must be held sacred” include the notion of individual liberties such as the one Myers utilized ought be protected? Just asking.

But never mind. It was interesting to me that Meyers was surprised not by the overwhelming reaction by Catholics, but that there are Catholics at all!

Catholicism has been actively poisoning the minds of its practitioners with the most amazing bullshit for years, and until recently, I had no idea that a significant number of people actually believed this nonsense, or that the hatred was still simmering there, waiting for an opportunity to rise up in misplaced defense of absurdity.

Apparently, Mr. Myers doesn’t get out much.

Catholics, of course, are unamused at his theatrics–the eminently reasonable Jimmy Akin is calling for his job. The university may actually have some grounds for corrective action, given that its Code of Conduct requires that all university employees be fair and respectful to others. Whatever Mr. Meyers has done, it clearly has not been that.

Question for the non-religious readers: what make you of Myers’ actions? Anyone want to rush to his defense?

(Update:  Stupid spelling error corrected.  Good heaven’s, it’s becoming a trend!)

Unfortunately, it’s hard to disagree with his assessment:

Obviously the world of religious conservatism also includes lots of people who are invested in actual Christian orthodoxy, as opposed to the Osteen-Shori vision of God as a really powerful life coach. But the theological continuum that encompasses both Schori-style liberal Protestants and Oprah-watching, The Secret-reading spiritual seekers – call it moralistic therapeutic deism, call it gnosticism, call it the American heresy – extends way deeper into the “religious right” than a lot of people think.

Occasionally I come across a book review so scathing that it makes me laugh, cringe, repent for laughing (in that order) and then pray that I am never the recipient of such harsh language.

It is rarely surprising to find such reviews.  After all, there are doubtlessly numerous worthy books published each year.  It is surprising, however, to read such a review directed at an author as respected as Joseph Pearce.

Robert Miola, whose article on Shakespeare’s Catholicism in First Things I discussed previously, had ridiculously harsh words for Pearce’s new book on Shakespeare’s purported Catholicism in the most recent issue of First Things (not available online):

A promising beginning, you might think.  Unfortunately, The Quest for Shakespeare proves to be a patchwork of other people’s work, indiscriminately selected, hastily stitched togeter, and served up with self-congratulatory fanfare.  Seldom has such a slight book managed to combine ignorance and arrogance on such a grand scale.

It gets worse:

But Pearce’s failure is hardly surprising.  What he doesn’t know about Shakespeare and the Catholicism of his times would fill several large libraries.

Miola saves his most interesting criticism for the end:

[The unqualified conviction that one can read the author's life from the work and vice versa] is widespread in Shakespeare studies, true enough, but the business of wrenching passages out of dramatic context as evidence of the playwright’s personal beliefs usually reveals more about the critic than about Shakespeare.  Pearce endorses this method for himself–then vents his spleen on anyone else who dares use it for different conclusions.  Thus, for example, he ridicules the ‘doyens of postmodernity’ for writing into the plays their own ‘prejudiced agenda.’  As Pearce notes about much contemporary work on Shakespeare:  “For the proponents of ‘queer theory’ he becomes conveniently homosexual; for secular fundamentalists he is proto-secularist; for ‘post-Christian’ agnostics he becomes a prophet of modernity.”

Quite right, one wants to say.  But what shall we do when Joseph Pearce comes along to say, in essence:  “You’re all stupid to think that Shakespeare is just like you.  Actually, Shakespeare is just like me”?  There is a parable about a mote and a beam that applies somewhere here.

As they say, “Move along, folks.  Move along.”

One fo the narratives of this campaign season has been evangelicals newfound freedom from the tyranny of the Republican party.  Ironically, the seeds to the narrative were sown back in the fall when the candidate whom evangelicals prominently supported (Huckabee) was painted by the Republican establishment as a closet Democrat.  Around that time, I wrote:

The ferocity of the attacks on Huckabee has risked alienating young voters like myself. Hugh recently wrote that evangelicals are not easily led, or subject to dog whistles,” And in this, he is exactly right. But the story of this campaign is that evangelicals will not follow the dog whistles of the mainstream GOP, which has rejected “compassionate conservatism” wholesale. Our position in the GOP is less secure than it was four years ago, as evidenced by Giuliani’s position as frontrunner for the bulk of this campaign.

If anything, Huckabee’s rise is indicative of evangelicals’ refusal to let the mainstream GOP take them for granted any longer. The pundits said that Huckabee wasn’t a player–evangelicals put him into the top tier. The pundits explained that Huckabee wasn’t electable. Evangelicals have made him electable.

It is an irony of history that the candidate whom the Republican intelligentsia most strenuously opposed was the most sympathetic voice for the people on the issue that will probably determine this election:  the economy.  While Huckabee was belittled by conservatives for his populist rhetoric, it is clearly the more sympathetic sounding position, and one that will probably charm voters this fall.  Advantage, Obama.

Of course, the narrative that evangelicals are disenchanted with Republicans continued into the spring, with rumblings that they are migrating away from Republicans and toward Obama.  Given the treatment of Huckabee last fall, this is unsurprising.  Except, of course, that they haven’t been:

Now, it may be true that presumptive Republican nominee John McCain has failed to get many folks, including evangelicals, excited about him. But given all the coverage to the contrary, I was somewhat surprised to see the results of a new Pew study that indicates that Obama is getting slightly fewer — that’s right — fewer white evangelical supporters than John Kerry was at the same time four years ago…

Twenty-six percent of white evangelicals supported Kerry at this time in 2004. This year, 25 percent of white evangelicals support Obama. Some migration!

It would be interesting to note the age breakdown in the study.  If there is a divide in evangelicalism, it falls along generational lines.  Huckabee and Obama both did very well with younger crowds, which suggests to me that if there is a shift towards Obama from evangelicals, it will be the 30-and under crowd that will lead it.

The real story, though, is that 26% of evangelicals supported John Kerry at this point in 2004.  Why didn’t we hear about that then?

(HT:  Justin)

It’s no secret that as the ranks of bloggers has increased, the need for more effective tools to find the truly hidden gems in the blogging community has increased as well.  Those blogs that routinely produce excellent content–see here, here and here, for instance–have solidified their position at the top of the blogging ladder, which allows them to expand their readership exponentially.  As I have argued in the past, the meritocracy that marked the early days of blogging has been superseded by a hierarchy.  The hidden gems of the blogging community face a more difficult time than ever rising to the top.

Part of the problem is volume.  With more and more people blogging, it can seem impossible to cut through the chatter and offer a distinct opinion or a unique voice.  And as someone who is looking for that unique perspective, it is nearly impossible to find it.

Enter PostRank, an RSS feed reader plugin that is trying to solve the problem of chatter by scoring content based upon interaction from readers.  When readers comment, bookmark, share on Digg, Pownce or other social networking tools, it adds to the posts score.  PostRank weighs the types of interaction differently, tallies up the score, and lets you know in Google Reader (or NewsGator) which posts have been interacted with the most.

There are shortcomings, of course.  There is no ability to rank posts, which some people might prefer.  And it doesn’t take into account people’s individual preferences–an interaction from one reader might actually mean more than interaction from another, depending upon their patterns of use.  If it gets smart enough to take both those features into account, it would be a masterful tool.

And while the system is going to be heavily slanted toward those who already have larger audiences, it is a solid step toward helping those who read lots of blogs find the few posts that have elicited heavy interaction.

As such, if you are using Google Reader or NewsGator and are tired the noise, I would highly recommend it.

(Also, check out our top posts based on interaction over on our sidebar).

(HT:  TechCrunch)

File this one under the “Questions worth Asking” category.  Rob Moll has an excellent summation of a few articles highlighting the way medical expenses are altering how we think about end-of-life decisions and the recommendations doctors make:

Certainly life is priceless. But is more life equally invaluable?

Dying is different these days. Once, vast resources could go toward treating a man suffering from a heart attack. If he lived, he could continue living for decades, and those resources justifiably provided years of good living. Now, people die slowly, consuming those vast resources over the course of years–and often crippling relatives financially.

Economic factors shouldn’t be ignored in making end-of-life decisions.  We are not a country of infinite resources, and even if we were it is not clear that we ought devote infinite resources to the preservation of this life.  Sometimes letting go is the responsible thing to do.

Of course, such questions are excruciatingly difficult to answer. Moll frames them well:

Yet, what is that extra time worth? Any universal health care system seems unlikely to provide expensive and marginally beneficial treatment. The government would decide it’s not worth $1 million in taxpayer money to give an 85-year-old six more months of life. But unless and until the state starts making those decisions for us, we Christians need to think this one through: How much is longer life worth?

Here’s another one: How should pastors help their parishoners to make that choice. This is enough. It’s time to see God.

Moll’s language of “unless and until” seems to suggest that Christians ought deliberate about such questions only as a stop-gap until the government makes the final determinations.  I would disagree with him here, and argue that it is family’s job, not the government, to make these judgments.  But that quibble doesn’t answer his underlying question:  when is it time to say goodbye?

Of course, the question is almost certainly unanswerable in the abstract.  But sometimes the asking is more important than the answering.

In 2005, Christopher Nolan’s Batman Begins reinvigorated the nearly moribund franchise and introduced a needed sense of gravitas into the comic book genre.

Now, three years later, he has returned with The Dark Knight, a riveting and thoughtful exploration of the anatomy of heroism, the necessity of a moral order, and the conflict–and similarities–between goodness and evil.

Unfortunately, Nolan falls prey to “sequel’s syndrome,” creating an overly-long movie that introduces too many plot elements, leaving too little time to resolve them all satisfactorily. His lack of restraint causes him to hurry through scenes detailing Bruce Wayne’s internal conflict with his position as Batman, which limits the possibility for real emotional connection to the film.

But that is as much as is wrong with The Dark Knight. Heath Ledger’s performance as the Joker is the most disturbing and masterful portrayal of a villain that I can think of. His pseudo-philosophizing provides much of the intellectual heft to the film.

What makes Ledger so disturbing as the Joker is not his insanity, but his calm and cool-headed rationality. He cannot be reasoned with, as he shares none of the axioms that Batman has, but he is perfectly consistent in his own thinking nonetheless.

Ledger’s philosophizing is provocative. It lays the groundwork for Bruce Wayne’s anxiety over whether such an irrational evil can be fought, or merely ceded to. It is, interestingly enough, not Bruce Wayne that continues the fight, but Harvey Dent, the new DA of Gotham.

It is not difficult to see current political situation being dramatized in the film. Nolan alludes to it, using the (appropriate) term “terrorists” to refer to the Joker and his minions. But this is no political statement. It would be, in fact, incorrect to describe the film as a “statement” at all. It is more of a question, and as such left me wanting a second viewing if only to confirm my philosophical suspicions about the answers.

As such, it is an intellectually satisfying film, even if it is imperfect technically. It deserves the box office record it set this weekend. While it is not suitable for children due to its disturbing nature, it is the only movie I have seen this summer that I would heartily recommend to mature audiences.

It has been brought to my attention that we are currently bombarding folks who read us by RSS with a lot of spam links. Apologies for this–no one hates it more than I. I’ll be working this weekend to remedy the situation, and will probably upgrade Mere-O’s backend to remove some of the security gaps.

My apologies in advanced for any downtime.

John Mark Reynolds at Middlebrow laments the woes of the Extreme Atheist.

“It turns out that just as belief in a God of love is no absolute barrier against hateful activity, so too the ideology of atheism is no cure for human evil.” JMNR, Scriptorium Daily.