Sightings
Items by or about Trinity Forum Fellows, Moderators, and other friends
Responses to Brown
Wed 19 Apr 2006 by Peter Edman
I should start with the disclaimer that I personally am inclined to the camp that thinks the book and movie of Dan Brown’s Da Vinci Code are best ignored lest further efforts to debunk his scholarship and historical claims actually contribute to the publicity campaign. But there’s no ignoring the fact that the publicity he’s already earned from the lawsuits and the dozens of debunking books and websites—combined with the novel’s own narrative drive, the human weakness for conspiracy theories, and the perennial desire to create a more comfortable form of religion—has made it a cultural force to be reckoned with.
Senior Fellow Bill Edgar is taking the lead for a new Da Vinci response site sponsored by Westminster Theological Seminary, The Truth About Da Vinci, which will also be including articles and multimedia from a variety of people we like, including Trinity Forum co-founder Os Guinness. The site looks winsome and non-defensive, attempting, as it says, to create “doubt about doubt.” But Bill & Co. are not the only ones out there—not even the only ones from the Reformed stream of the faith—making a stand.
Edgar on Entertainment and Calling
Thu 16 Feb 2006 by TTF Staff
Senior Fellow Bill Edgar has a great and important piece on entertainment in ByFaith Online, the online magazine of the PCA.
In an (apparently) undated but recent piece, “Good Company, Good Art, and a Good Laugh,” Bill discusses a Christian perspective on entertainment, suggesting that the real problem with our coarsening culture is related to a failure to fully understand calling and thus work.
These days work is either looked at as pure duty, or, the opposite, a messianic hope. Our modern culture has often turned work into drudgery, a necessary evil. Again, ironically, we reinforce this notion by fast foods and labor-saving devices which claim to make work easier. The more we see how work can be avoided, the more we complain when it has to be done. An equal but opposite error is to exaggerate the value of work. On the left, Karl Marx believed industriousness would yield utopia. On the right, the National Socialists dared to blaspheme: Arbeit macht frei (work makes free), emblazoned over the entrance to Auschwitz. Thus, both the left and the right destroyed the biblical balance—noble-but-flawed.
As a result, something had to be done to bring relief. Leisure! . . . [W]e need more time. But time without a purpose soon yields boredom.
The key, he suggests, is a recovery of true entertainment. Work isn’t all there is. “Life is not utilitarian. It is about the grace of God.”
Worth your time!
Loconte on Human Rights
Thu 15 Dec 2005 by TTF Staff
Senior Fellow Joe Loconte had a commentary on NPR on 12 December. “The Importance of Human Rights to U.S. Foreign Policy” ran on All Things Considered. Click the title link to see the NPR page with an audio link.
The transcript is below. Note that the title chosen by NPR is somewhat misleading. Loconte is talking about conscience and strange alliances, not so much U.S. foreign policy.
Unspeakable Review
Mon 14 Nov 2005 by Peter Edman
While updating our Online Store to include a few new items, including our stock of Os Guinness’s newest book, Unspeakable: Facing Up to Evil in an Age of Genocide and Terror (also available from Amazon in paper) I ran across a review of it posted this past May at Victor Davis Hanson’s website. “Lost Without Faith” by Bruce Thornton.
Loconte on Pacifism
Tue 08 Nov 2005 by Peter Edman
Senior Fellow Joseph Loconte had an article in the Friday November 4 edition of the Wall Street Journal that is worth noting.
In “Peace Now: Christian pacifists ignore the true ambitions of terrorists,” Loconte, ever the equal opportunity critic, addresses the theological and practical problems attending a certain current variant of Christian pacifism, which calls for peace at all costs. Unfortunately, its unconsidered costs include truth—and logic. In addition to being essentially futile, this position is fundamentally disrespectful to the enemy as well, suggesting that terrorists and others really don’t know what they want and would quiet down if we were nicer to them:
Any religious critique of terrorism that fails to acknowledge these ambitions is deeply impoverished. It produces a political theology that helps to rationalize terrorist rage. It refuses to distinguish between the acts of murderers and the use of government force to stop them. . . .
Christians have never viewed peace as the highest good. There are other goods: protecting human dignity and restraining evil, for example. A just peace can be the final result of these pursuits, God willing. But if peace is made the supreme goal, if it consumes all other virtues, it becomes an idol—and a snare to the statesman as well as the saint.
People interested in the topic will probably find much worth pondering in Loconte’s recent book, The End of Illusions.
Loconte on Robertson and Katrina
Tue 27 Sep 2005 by Peter Edman
I was away when this came out, so just posting now.
Moderator Joseph Loconte has an op-ed (September 16, 2005) on the Tribune News Service (link here at the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review) discussing “Christianity’s Religion Problem.” He’s justifiably harsh on Pat Robertson, who has been serially irresponsible and demonstrably uncharitable if not unorthodox in his public views for decades. Loconte’s criticism is among the strongest I’ve seen, though I’ve not been following this debate as closely as I should. I hope he’ll get a wide hearing.
Religious leaders rightly worry about airing their dirty laundry. But Robertson has made himself a public figure—and a massive public relations problem for the church. Until more evangelicals make a visible break with him, they’ll be vulnerable to the crass caricatures that dominate media coverage of conservative religion in America.
In an intensely partisan era, with so much at stake politically, it’s tempting to simply ignore the failings of one’s allies in the culture wars. Yet without integrity, cultural influence is impossible. As the apostle Peter once warned, not so delicately, judgment begins with the family of God.
It certainly would do Mercy Ships and other positive CBN ministries good to be dissociated with their founder. Board members, please take note. The means we choose define the way we reach our ends. They shape our ends. They matter as much as any ideal future.
Guptara Audio on Revolutionizing Business
Tue 27 Sep 2005 by TTF Staff
Senior Fellow Prabhu Guptara has a 90-minute lecture available online from the London Institute for Contemporary Christianity.
The lecture, titled “Revolutionising Business,” is available in MP3 format from this site. He addresses three questions: Is there a biblical view of business? What would the consequences be for business issues if so, at a board level? And What might this have to do with the possibility of a radically human practise of business?
Their site has several other interesting articles and lectures that may also be worth your time to peruse.
Prabhu Guptara blogging
Mon 11 Jul 2005 by TTF Staff
Senior Fellow Prof Prabhu Guptara is maintaining a blog on business and spirituality, among several other topics.
His blog is titled “Renaissance: Insights for Action in Today’s World.” Here is a recent snapshot from an interview, answering a question of the recent seeming fad relating spirituality and business:
Fads can be good and useful as well as useless and even horrible! But at least some of the reasons for the fad are negative ones, in that the impact of evolution in the West tore many people away from their spiritual roots in Christianity and the Bible. Now the children and grandchildren of these people are discovering that atheism may be fine as a means of protest against hypocrisy and intellectual dishonesty, but atheism provides no answers regarding how to live as an individual or family or how to conduct business or political life - so spirituality is coming back.
Cromartie to Chair USCIRF
Mon 11 Jul 2005 by TTF Staff
The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) has elected TF Senior Fellow Michael Cromartie to serve as Chair for 2005-2006.
News release is here. Congratulations, Mike!
Dallas Willard on Ethics
Wed 06 Jul 2005 by TTF Staff
Senior Fellow Dallas Willard is quoted in an article on ethical lapses among leaders in the Christian Science Monitor.
In an article of 6 July 2005, “It’s All Good, Boss!,” correspondent G. Jeffrey MacDonald (whose article has several good insights and quotes from others as well), sets up his dilemma so:
Though everyone struggles to recognize his or her own ethical lapses, the task of catching one’s own errors in judgment becomes especially challenging for high achievers, whether they run major companies or head up a small household. Reasons are several, but one looms largest: People in authority tend to lack the honest input that everyone needs to maintain a moral life.
Dr. Willard is quoted offering a positive vision of calling and moral accountability as a counterpoint to a more traditional perspective that sees ethical dilemmas as only shades of gray.
