here I am again
Over the past couple of years I’ve been going back and forth between this blog and my Tumblr, trying to figure out which one works best for me. I haven’t worried about doing that — haven’t chastised myself for inconsistency — because after all it’s all on the same internet and most people who read what I write get to it from Twitter anyway. (Though God bless those of you who employ the far superior technology of plain old RSS feeds and readers.)
The main reasons for using Tumblr are (a) ease of posting, (b) more readers — because of all the Tumblr users out there, (c) ease of re-posting for those who like to do that kind of thing.
The main reasons for using this blog are (a) it’s my turf, (b) some people read my stuff at workplaces where Tumblr.com is blocked, (c) it’s my turf.
Now that the Tumblr UI is getting worse and worse and worse the second set of reasons seems more powerful to me than the first set. So I’m coming back over here. Maybe for a while, maybe for good; we’ll see.
And so if the word is basically ‘ISIS’, but in Arabic, why are the people it describes in such a fury about it? Because they hear it, quite rightly, as a challenge to their legitimacy: a dismissal of their aspirations to define Islamic practice, to be 'a state for all Muslims’ and – crucially – as a refusal to acknowledge and address them as such. They want to be addressed as exactly what they claim to be, by people so in awe of them that they use the pompous, long and delusional name created by the group, not some funny-sounding made-up word. And here is the very simple key point that has been overlooked in all the anglophone press coverage I’ve seen: in Arabic, acronyms are not anything like as widely used as they are in English, and so arabophones are not as used to hearing them as anglophones are. Thus, the creation and use of a title that stands out as a nonsense neologism for an organisation like this one is inherently funny, disrespectful, and ultimately threatening of the organisation’s status. Khaled al-Haj Salih, the Syrian activist who coined the term back in 2013, says that initially even many of his fellow activists, resisting Daesh alongside him, were shocked by the idea of an Arabic acronym, and he had to justify it to them by referencing the tradition of acronyms being used as names by Palestinian organisations (such as Fatah). So saturated in acronyms are we in English that we struggle to imagine this, but it’s true.
[gallery columns=“1” size=“full” ids=“17406,17407,17408,17409,17410,17411,17412,17413,17414,17415”]
Images from our new post, a visual history of colour wheels, charts, and tables: from simple circles to multi-layered pyramids, from scientific systems to those based on the hues of human emotion. Explore more here: http://bit.ly/1NBtj1E
Student Activism Is Serious Business
Student Activism Is Serious Business
See how simple our political controversies are? All you have to do is boil everything down to the most reductive, simplistic, Manichaean oppositions between Good and Evil and then the answer becomes obvious!
It’s true that in a certain sense, to share means that there aren’t differences between us, that we have the same doctrine – underscoring that word, a difficult word to understand. But I ask myself: but don’t we have the same Baptism? If we have the same Baptism, shouldn’t we be walking together? And you’re a witness of a likewise profound journey, a journey of marriage: itself a journey of family and human love and of a shared faith, no? We have the same Baptism….The question [Pope draws question mark with his finger]…. The supper? There are questions that only if one is sincere with oneself and the little theological light one has, must be responded to on one’s own. See for yourself. This is my body. This is my blood. Do it in remembrance of me – this is a viaticum that helps us to journey on.
Pope Francis. For what it’s worth, I am, as I suggested yesterday, not only in full agreement with the Pope about this but am hoping that he goes further.
The Catholic and Orthodox thinkers who support the closing of Communion to all Christians outside their jurisdictions typically make two arguments in support of their position: first, that full unity is a precondition for sharing the great Meal of the Church; and second, that their exceptionally high regard for the Eucharist is what makes it so necessary that they be careful about who receives it. I don’t think either of these arguments works.
The key to these questions lies hidden in a word that Pope Francis uses: viaticum. In Catholic usage this often refers only to the Eucharist given in articulo mortis, but the Pope is quite rightly using it in a broader sense: the Eucharist is the meal that strengthens us on our way through life, we wayfarers. Each of us is a viator passing through this vale of tears towards our true home (which is not “Heaven” but this very world renewed and restored); we are in desperate need of the “spiritual food and drink of Christ’s body and blood” to sustain us on the way. If you remember the lembas (waybread) of the elves in The Lord of the Rings you will get the idea precisely.
If this is what the Eucharist is, then to argue that we Christians — those of us who share, as the Pope says, one baptism (“One Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all”) — should achieve unity first and only then share the sustaining meal is simply to devalue the Eucharist dramatically. For if we can achieve true and full unity among ourselves without sharing it, why would we ever need it at all? Those who would withhold the viaticum from other Christians — or forbid their own members from receiving it elsewhere — are treating it not as essential provision for our journey but as a kind of dessert, a special treat for those who have already become good boys and girls.
All of which suggests that, whatever these Catholic and Orthodox leaders think they value, what they really (if almost always unconsciously) value is not the Eucharist itself but administrative control over the Eucharist. This has been a problem since the (relatively) early Church started modeling its administrative practices on the organizational structures of the Roman Empire; we have all been afflicted, ever since, by the unfortunate consequences of that imitation. It is past time that bishops in all Christian communions realize this perversion of episcopacy and choose a better way. And there could be no better place to start than to recognize the viaticum of the Eucharist for what it is, and to see the sharing of it as essential for the restoration of the Oneness which the Lord Christ wants his people to have: “Be one, even as the Father and I are one.”
[gallery] Yep, I think this pretty much covers it
In some quarters of American life, evangelical Christians are viewed as fearful and xenophobic—afraid of “the other.” Perhaps in a few cases, which happen to make the news. But in fact, US evangelical churches are refugees’ best friend. If anyone looks fearful and xenophobic, it is the federal government and its broken immigration policies.This is not to deny the real political, social, and economic challenges of welcoming more sojourners. This is not to suggest that we open our borders without any security checks. It is to refuse to let the gods of fear and security dictate how we respond.
Nor do we mean to suggest our churches are doing all they can for the sojourner. Our resettlement agencies, here and abroad, need more money, more volunteers—more sponsorship from local churches—to face the burgeoning refugee crisis.
This is an unparalleled opportunity to love neighbors here and abroad, and to showcase the beauty of the gospel that proclaims good news to the poor, liberty for those stuck in refugee camps, and a new life for those fleeing from oppression, so that those “yearning to breathe free” can breathe easily.
In 2006, Indonesia passed a law requiring minority religious groups to collect signatures from the local majority group before building houses of worship. For instance, when Indonesia’s largest Protestant organization decided to build in a suburb of Jakarta, it was required to secure signatures of approval from 60 Christians and 90 people from another faith.Since the passage of this “religious harmony” bill, which was touted by lawmakers as a long-term solution to religious conflicts, more than 1,000 Indonesian Christian churches have closed. Others have never been built.
“It shows the failures of the religious harmony regulation,” Human Rights Watch researcher Andreas Harsono told Foreign Policy. “It discriminates [against] minorities, thus making way for the majority, mostly Muslim hard-liners in Indonesia, to pressure the government to close down churches.”
Pope Cracks Door to Lutheran Communion
Pope Cracks Door to Lutheran Communion
I guess I understand why Rod feels the way he does about this, but on Saturday I participated in a friend’s funeral, a ceremony in which an ancient Christian rite was lived into by a priest and a congregation who believe not only in the great ecumencal Creeds and conciliar formulae but also in the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist — and yet the Catholic and Orthodox attenders of the funeral were forbidden by their own churches to receive the Bread and the Wine. And in that vital respect, though we are united with them by our shared commitment — “One Lord, one faith, one baptism, One God and Father of all” — we were at the Lord’s Table itself divided from them. I cannot see this kind of policing of the Eucharist as a commendable form of church discipline. I see it rather as a tragic inability to overcome old resentments and grudges. It makes me weep, and if Pope Francis is grieved by it too, then that gives me at least a little bit of hope for the healing of the broken Body of Christ.
The purest and truest adherents of Christianity have always hindered and called into question its worldly success and so-called ‘power in history’ rather than promoted them; for they were accustomed to place themselves outside the 'world’ and had no regard for the 'process of the Christian idea’; for which reason they have as a rule remained whholy unknown and anonymous to history.