darkness
The historical record is like the night sky: we see a few stars and group them into mythic constellations. But what is chiefly visible is the darkness.
— Roy Porter, The Greatest Benefit to Mankind
Page 15 of the new student handbook of Cedarville University tells students to obey “the laws of the land.” However, there’s at least one law the Ohio evangelical college doesn’t support: the recent Supreme Court ruling that legalized gay marriage in all 50 states.
— Evangelical Colleges Still Discriminate Against LGBT Students Despite the Supreme Court’s Gay-Marriage Ruling. This is only scraping the surface: for instance, it’s legal in all 50 states to have extramarital sex, yet the behavioral codes of such colleges typically prohibit such acts. Lying, gossip, and general lack of charity are also forbidden, despite there being no legal prohibitions against such behavior, except in rare cases.
Moreover, American law clearly allows anyone who wishes to be an atheist, yet Christian colleges clearly do not support the legal system in that matter either, since they forbid atheists to enroll. Moreover, non-Christian theists — whose status under the law is clearly protected — are also often blocked from attending Christian colleges.
Indeed, the list of acts and beliefs explicitly allowed by the law and yet excluded from Chritian college campuses is very, very long. How has such blatant discrimination been allowed to continue for so long — in fact, only questioned in the past few months? This is a scandal of the first order.
a common conversation
BenOp Proponent: Now, to be clear, we certainly aren’t advocating running for the hills.
BenOp Opponent: I just think it’s absurd for Christians to run for the hills at the first sign of trouble.
Proponent: No, I just said I don't believe in running for the hills. That’s not what we’re talking about.
Opponent: How are you supposed to reach the world for Jesus if you’re locking yourselves away in your monastery?
Proponent: We’re not proposing to create monasteries, much less lock ourselves away in them. Seriously, we —
Opponent: — I mean, go ahead and hide in your room if you want, but you’re totally ignoring the Great Commission.
Proponent: <sigh>
“It’s utterly insane that you still need to put a period before a person’s Twitter handle, such as “.@twitter,” if you want everyone to see it,” says Nick Bilton. Why is that “insane”? Seems a perfectly simple and reasonable way to distinguish two kinds of tweets — two kinds that very much need to be distinguished. I have no idea what Bilton has in mind.
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Let the colonies always keep the idea of their civil rights associated with your government — they will cling and grapple to you, and no force under heaven will be of power to tear them from their allegiance. But let it be once understood that your government may be one thing and their privileges another, that these two things may exist without any mutual relation — the cement is gone, the cohesion is loosened, and everything hastens to decay and dissolution. As long as you have the wisdom to keep the sovereign authority of this country as the sanctuary of liberty, the sacred temple consecrated to our common faith, wherever the chosen race and sons of England worship freedom, they will turn their faces towards you. The more they multiply, the more friends you will have, the more ardently they love liberty, the more perfect will be their obedience. Slavery they can have anywhere. It is a weed that grows in every soil. They may have it from Spain, they may have it from Prussia. But until you become lost to all feeling of your true interest and your natural dignity, freedom they can have from none but you. This is the commodity of price, of which you have the monopoly. This is the true Act of Navigation, which binds to you the commerce of the colonies, and through them secures to you the wealth of the world. Deny them this participation of freedom, and you break that sole bond which originally made, and must still preserve, the unity of the empire.
the unexpected Francis (of Assisi)
In years of teaching, I have often been astounded at how unhappy students can be when they encounter a different Francis from the one they expect. Oddly enough, the most painful moment usually comes when they discover that Saint Francis did not write the “Peace Prayer of Saint Francis”—a popular hymn best known by its opening words “Make me a channel of your peace,” and sung to a tune written by the Anglican composer Sebastian Temple. Many are quite shocked to find that this song is not identical to Francis’s “Canticle of Brother Sun,” from which Zefferelli took the name of his movie. The “Peace Prayer” is modern and anonymous, originally written in French, and dates to about 1912, when it was published in a minor French spiritual magazine, La Clochette. Noble as its sentiments are, Francis would not have written such a piece, focused as it is on the self, with its constant repetition of the pronouns “I” and “me,” the words “God” and “Jesus” never appearing once.