Society
Items on national and international social issues and reforms
The Human Race
Mon 30 Oct 2006 by Paul Johnson
A Success or a Failure?
Historian Paul Johnson reflects on the history and prospects of the human race in a provocative lecture to the Trinity Forum in Europe. At the rate we are going, will the human race survive? Does it deserve to survive? It’s rarely a pretty picture, he says, but yet there is hope.
The Dynamics of Cultural Change
Tue 24 Oct 2006 • Responses: 2 • by William Edgar
Part One of Two: The Possibility of Cultural Transformation
Senior Fellow Bill Edgar talks about the tensions we face as we work and pray for real transformation in people and cultures. In this first of two parts, he discusses a biblical perspective on change that acknowledges both the authority of Jesus and our own responsibility to act. Which of our strategies are wisest and most attuned to the way change actually happens?
The Revolution in France
Sat 21 Oct 2006 • Responses: 4 • by David Aikman
Why are so many French immigrants so obviously not integrated into French society? Perhaps they don’t want to be.
Last fall, when hundreds of cars were torched in suburban housing estate communities in Paris and across France, it was clear that the perpetrators were very largely Arab immigrants to France from former French colonies in North Africa. In addition to the property damage and vandalism, there was violence against people, with the police often being targeted. Yet at the time, the French political establishment and the French media elite were united in proclaiming that all of the mayhem had nothing to do with the vandals’ religion. These unfortunates, they said, were angry because they hadn’t been successfully integrated into French society.
That much was true. The question is, why not? Is it possible they didn’t want to be?
Immigration: Who Is Our Neighbour?
Mon 02 Oct 2006 • Responses: 4 • by Prabhu Guptara
“Can international challenges be tackled merely nationally?” Some questions and answers from European and biblical perspectives may help clarify the issues involved in the debates over US immigration policy.
Considering this vexed question properly involves three different perspectives—Divine, national, and individual.
Do Business Programs Produce Slaves to the Market?
Mon 21 Aug 2006 • Responses: 5 • by Vigen Guroian
“Are we in many if not most of our colleges and universities training young men and women to be mules of the marketplace, deprived of a moral imagination?”
American society is business oriented and has been so for some time, with obvious benefits. The vast majority of American citizens enjoy material comforts unimagined even by the very wealthiest in former ages. While some people lament the hedonism of American life—no one expects the basic structure or influence of the American economy to change any time soon. How does education fit into this scenario?
In the not-so-distant past, we founded and built land-grant and agricultural colleges to service the needs of an agricultural economy, and some of our great state colleges and universities carry that legacy. For the past fifty years, however, and especially over the last quarter century, colleges and universities have responded to the manpower needs of America’s businesses by establishing or expanding business schools and programs. Are such programs threatening the business culture and enslaving business leaders?
To Change the World
Wed 03 May 2006 by James Davison Hunter
A fresh perspective on cultural change
In this transcript of our popular 2002 audio Briefing, James Davison Hunter shares a vision for cultural change with with the Trinity Forum Board of Trustees. We live at a time of unprecedented changes and challenges, he argues, but precisely for this reason it is also a time of extraordinary opportunity. In a time like ours—fluid, unstable, volatile—everything is to play for, and we have a real chance to foster a culture that will promote human flourishing.
The Price of Wilberforce’s Success
Tue 21 Feb 2006 by Peter Edman
In one of our curricula, we use an 1833 quote from William Wilberforce, delivered from his deathbed on hearing news of the success of abolition.
“Thank God, that I should have lived to witness a day in which England is willing to give twenty millions sterling for the Abolition of Slavery.”
Our notes say that £20 million, the price to be paid to the slave owners of the British Empire, approximately half the value of their slaves, was an astronomical sum in those days. Not being British, I’ve always wondered how much it was worth in dollars. I recently ran across a comparison site, and now I know. Depending on the method of conversion, in 2000 US Dollars the value is between $1.3 billion (retail price index) to more than $42 billion (via a GDP comparison, which may be the more valid comparison). That’s a lot of money. The details are here.
The Bible and Its Influence—A New Public School Text
Tue 27 Sep 2005 by Peter Edman
The Bible Literacy Project, led by TF alumnus Chuck Stetson, has released its student textbook, The Bible and Its Influence.
A teacher edition will follow. The project continues in the tradition of the Williamsburg Charter and its contributors include Charles Haynes and others familiar to us at the Trinity Forum. As someone who worked with Os Guinness on an older project, Living With Our Deepest Differences, now out of print but with similar ambitions, I’m very pleased to see something of this caliber out there.
This curriculum differs from earlier attempts in that it recognizes not just the literary and cultural influence of the Bible, but its importance as a religious text as well, and it does so while respecting but not endorsing various faith traditions and denominations. I hope it will be more influential than the Wall Street Journal is fearing. (Knight Ridder article)
The Future of Tradition
Fri 22 Jul 2005 by Peter Edman
The Wall Street Journal has published a long but extremely thoughtful essay on “The Future of Tradition” by novelist and essayist Lee Harris (22 July 2005).
In this article, originally published in Policy Review, Harris discusses how tradition has been defended and attacked by the Enlightenment and its elites and suggests some different ways of talking about tradition that are well worth pondering—particularly for those of us in Western societies who are having difficulty maintaining our population and tradition—Italians and other Europeans, pay attention! Actually, everybody should probably pay attention to this one. The second parts of the essay are much more concrete, so skim the first section if you must, but do not miss the later discussion. Moral abstraction, he says, is not enough. Good historical context for the culture wars. Interesting discussion of the unintended consequences of Maimonides trying to defend Jewish dietary laws as if they were a health code. Fascinating discussion of language and the repsponsibilities of the elites. Read toward the end for some unexpected personal revelations by the author. Take that, Andrew Sullivan.
Basically, take the time to read this.
. . . in the view outlined here, a tradition is viable if it effectively keeps future generations from backsliding to a lower ethical or civilizational state. The track record of a tradition is irrelevant here; it may have been supremely useful in the past, but if its continuing embodiment in the rising generation begins to lower the society’s civilizational standards, the tradition must be discarded and replaced, and it makes no difference how many evolutionary challenges it may have successfully overcome in the past.
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:
