Sightings
Items by or about Trinity Forum Fellows, Moderators, and other friends
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.
Loconte on the Religious Left
Thu 30 Jun 2005 by Peter Edman
Moderator Joe Loconte has an article in the Wall Street Journal for 1 July 2005 on the latest resurgence of politically liberal Christians.
In ”From Gospel to Government,” Loconte discusses the current “Christian Alliance for Progress” and gives some context from recent history.
It proffers an agenda “founded firmly on the teachings of the Gospel.” Some students of the Gospel may be surprised at how neatly such an agenda fits the Democratic Party platform . . .
They can at least be comforted that they are not alone—the sermon from Tom Wright I linked to earlier included comments that in the UK, the people pushing for religion in public life are more on the left.
Loconte helps me articulate something I’ve been struggling with for a few weeks now:
N. T. Wright on Tolerance and the People of Faith
Thu 30 Jun 2005 by Peter Edman
Bishop N. T. Wright’s sermon at the end of the Anglican Consultative Council meeting deserves a wider hearing than just Anglicans.
Wright, an eminent New Testament historian and Bishop of Durham who has moderated Trinity Forum sessions in Europe, spoke on 28 June 2005. Particularly if you haven’t been aware of his thinking before, take the time to read this through very carefully.
“Shipwreck and Kingdom: Acts and the Anglican Communion” (one source text is here) includes an ironic discussion of the politics of left and right, but is particularly thought-provoking on the concept of “tolerance” and the truth-claims that underlie the Christian faith—and all other faiths, for that matter. Faith is not a matter of personal opinion, and those who say otherwise have their own not-so-hidden agendas.
But when you are in Caesar’s world, where truth comes out of the barrel of a gun, or in his day the sheath of a sword, tolerance can simply be a fancy name for cowardice. The claim that ‘Jesus is Lord’ was never, in the first century, what we would call a religious claim pure and simple. There was no such thing as religion pure and simple. It was a claim about an ultimate reality which included politics, culture, commerce, family life and everything else you could think of. . . .
And if you stop saying ‘Jesus is Lord’ out of deference to the private opinions of your friends and neighbours, Caesar smiles his grim smile and extends his empire by one more street. After all, the great eighteenth-century virtue of tolerance was developed not least by those who were keen on extending their geographical or industrial empires, and who didn’t want God breathing down their necks to stop them. Keep religion in the private sphere and we’ll run the public square. And to that idea Luke says a clear No; and so must we.
More on tolerance and its implications:
Loconte on A New Vision for Human Rights
Thu 16 Jun 2005 by TTF Staff
TF Moderator Joseph Loconte has an op-ed with Nile Gardiner in the Boston Globe of 16 June 2005.
In “A new vision for human rights”, Loconte and Gardiner call for a fundamental reform of the U.N. human rights apparatus—or for its replacement if no reform can be made to happen.
Edgar on the Blues
Wed 08 Jun 2005 by TTF Staff
Senior Fellow William Edgar has an article in the January/February 2005 issue of Modern Reformation on blues music.
The article is titled “Aint It Hard: Suffering & Hope in the Blues.” A quote:
It would be easy to conclude that this type of music is without hope or redemption. But this is far from the case. The realism of the blues does not stand opposed to hopefulness, but to sentimentality. So often the music of white people responds to troubled times with escapism. The blues is stark and realistic, but not hopeless. The blues tells us how to live on earth in order to prepare for heaven. Living down here makes no sense unless there is a heaven to give it meaning.
Guinness Review in Wilson Quarterly
Mon 06 Jun 2005 by TTF Staff
Trinity Forum founder and Moderator Os Guinness has published a review of a new book on religion and politics worldwide in the Spring 2005 issue of The Wilson Quarterly.
Discussing Sacred and Secular: Religion and Politics Worldwide by Pippa Norris and Ronald Inglehart. Dr. Guinness welcomes their contribution to the research and understanding of religion in public life but suggests that their approach contains a fundamental weakness. Two clips follow.
Interview with David Cook
Thu 02 Jun 2005 by TTF Staff
The Christian Post has an interview with Senior Fellow E. David Cook.
The interview, posted on May 9, 2005, covers Dr. Cook’s work in ethics and bioethics, his forthcoming book, his role at Wheaton, and includes his advice to U.S. and British leaders, including this response to a question on his advice for Tony Blair:
Guptara on the Gods of Business
Wed 01 Jun 2005 by TTF Staff
Senior Fellow Prabhu Guptara was featured on American Public Media’s Speaking of Faith program in late January 2005.
In addition to the radio program itself, the program site includes PDF and Web versions of his presentation slides, a transcript of a related speech, and several other interesting items.
Professor Guptara takes a fascinating cross-cultural view of contemporary business, discussing the major world religions (secularism, Buddhism, Hinduism, Confucianism, Islam, Judaism, and the Christian Faith) and their ethical implications in the age of Enron. He suggests that from an ethical point of view the world now exists in a multiple tension between traditional Judeo-Christian values; thorough pragmatism/ unethical materialism; and reviving fundamentalist values among Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, Sikh and other communities belonging to New and Fringe Religions.
