Water, Bread, Wine and Kids. Mark Byron has some opening comments on baptism, one I'd like to touch on more in relation to communion (or The Lord's Supper or Holy Eucharist as your tradition might refer to it). Dr. B. writes, in part,

The model in Acts has the believer, not a child, being baptized, which raises an issue for believers from child-baptizing churches. I was baptized as a child as a Methodist, but I know that the baptism was initiated by my parents and not myself, and was rebaptized in a Baptist church shortly after I came to the Lord.

My wife Eileen's in a awkward spot, being baptized as a precocious five-year-old in her Presbyterian church. Was her kindergarten faith sufficient to count as a believer's baptism or does she need a redo? Does sprinkling rather than dunking matter? Now that she's hanging out with a beleiver-baptising crowd, it's an open question. I'm letting her make that call, to get baptized when and if she feels moved to do so, rather than be pressured into doing so.

For me, the issue of a child's faith first came up at communion. Our church (Truro Episcopal, if you're curious) invites everyone to the communion table (rail) for prayer during communion and for baptised Christians who would like to parttake, the bread and wine. Our children were all baptised as infants and so around the age of two began to express interest in having communion. This caused some consternation for me -- Paul's Letter to the Corinthians lays out the seriousness and sobriety necessary for partaking in the Lord's Supper (See Chapter 11). For example, verse 28 commands ". . . let a man examine himself, and so let him eat of the bread and drink of the cup." I objected to my Pastor saying that kids aren't able to do this. "They don't understand the Eucharist."

But what did Jesus say? he asked. What did He say about the children?

And He called a child to Himself and set him before them, and said, "Truly I say to you, unless you are converted and become like children, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven. Whoever then humbles himself as this child, he is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven."

Matthew 18:2-4

Now that I am on baby number four and my oldest is 13, I've begun to see that He was right -- children do have a much better understanding of communion than do I. In fact, the older I get, the less I realize I know.

We can talk more about Baptism and things like Believer's Baptism and the Baptism of Infants another day, but I would say to my brothers and sisters to not minimize the profession of faith of a child. I would strongly, yet respectfully, argue against re-baptism of persons.

There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called in one hope of your calling; one Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God and Father of all, who is above all, and through all, and in you all.

Ephesians 4:4-6

Cover Watch. Newsweek on why we need Heaven -- sounds like a Lennonist approach to things. I figure Heaven is there -- it's not a big motivator for me. Time magazine looks at whether the Bush administration considered hitting al-Qaeda prior to 9/11. A moot point. Nevertheless, let's assume it did -- can you imagine the howls of protest from the not-so-loyal opposition? If anyone is to blame for Bush and company holding back it is these folks who from the beginning sought to undermine and delegitimatize his administration.

Tom Blair. My wife's uncle, Thomas Blair passed away on Thursday afternoon. Uncle Tom was a good man and did something pretty unique -- he sent each person in the family a birthday card every year. And I do mean each person. Soon after I married his niece, I began receiving cards. Plus he sent them to each of our kids. He was a gentle man, a wonderful story teller.

Interestingly, he was one of the first Americans into Hiroshima after the war. He was part of the Army invasion force planning for the invasion of Japan. After the dropping of the atomic bombs and the Japanese surrender, his unit was sent to Hiroshima to clean up. As he noted, they weren't given any special equipment or protection because they just didn't know anything about the danger of radiation fall out at the time. He died of cancer which he believed was a result of that exposure to the radiation. Just a month ago we spoke at the family reunion and he said he figured he was done in by the war. If it hadn't been for the atomic bomb, he would've died in the invasion -- this way he just had a life to live and a family to raise before his number came up.

We all will miss him.

Great Movie. Signs is a great movie. I was expecting something in the vein of Sixth Sense based on one of the reviews I read and was trying to guess who was dead or something, but it wasn't like that at all. It has it's very scary moments -- done well. Yet at the same time it was sweet. I'll have more later -- with spoilers, so I'll give warnings, but in the meantime, go see it.

Wonderful movie.

More. Here is Doug LeBlanc's review -- read it after seeing the movie.

Baptism. Kevin Holtsberry kindly replies to my inquiry (in his comments) and Mark Byron responds in the Theology Department. I'll post something tomorrow (promises, promises).

PLO. I'm so fed up with the palestinians -- right now I'd like to have them all appear in a H. Bosch painting.

Hall of Fame. George Allen was overlooked for far too long -- the guy was one of the greatest coaches and motivators around. A truly sharp guy. Sometimes people don't get in because they are controversial or rub people the wrong way. I think this was the case with George Allen. In other instances, men who play positions with little recognition don't make it -- put in a list of offensive linemen here. In other cases, a man might attract media attention and make it at the expense of a lesser media-savy, but far superior teammate. That was the case with Lynn Swann and John Stallworth. John Stallworth finally makes it, but should've gone in long before Swann. For that matter, Cliff Branch deserves to get in the Hall long before Swann (but Swanny is in already).

Here are Dr. Z's comments about who should be in and why. One player he mentions in passing, Bob "Boomer" Brown is long overdue. The guy was an awesome blocker who could flatten anyone with his forearm (at the end of his career, he was traded to the Raiders. His first day of practice he lined up in front of the goal post, charged out of his stance and threw his forearm and brought down the goal post). He's not in because of his mouth -- he was very contentious when he played for the Eagles -- and because he was an offensive tackle.

Also, Z notes he is not enthusiastic about Art Monk, which may tick off my Redskins friends -- I'm on the bubble with Monk -- I like the guy. But is he HOF material? Shrug. In any event, I'd place him there before Swann -- but I think anyone would.

It's sold. This was up for auction at e-bay. Unfortunately, it looks like they're all sold out.

Textbook. One of the texts that my daughter and I will be using for 8th grade this year is Slaves, Women, and Homosexuals: Exploring the Hermeneutics of Cultural Analysis by William J. Webb. As you can see, it looks at Biblical hermeneutics with a particular emphasis on the sticky questions of applying what the Bible says to slavery, homosexuality and the role of women. For example, if the Bible teaches that homosexuality is a sin, then why doesn't it say the same thing about slavery? Similarly, if we ordain women, why not gay persons? Or on the flip side, if we don't ordain gays, shouldn't we also withhold ordination from women, especially in light of 1 Tim. 2:12a "But I do not allow a woman to teach or exercise authority over a man. . . " Or aren't we just really reading our own preferences and prejudices into Scripture?

From what I understand, Webb addresses these issues square on. For a review of this book see this essay by Agnieszka Tennant.

Quote

According to Jesus, by far the most important thing about praying is to keep at it... Be importunate, Jesus says -- not, one assumes, because you have to beat a path to God's door before he'll open it, but because until you beat the path maybe there's no way of getting to your door.
... Frederick Buechner

Not Me

12.5 %

My weblog owns 12.5 % of me.
Does your weblog own you?

Comments May Be Back. I've been watching Ann Salisbury's comment feature and it seems to be working. So I'm putting my toe back in the water and we'll see how it goes.

update I may have put way too much stray code in here. There are a few comments way down at the bottom of the page, but none up here. I'll figure this out or cut it loose entirely.

More. No luck. Not only am I an idiot, but am incompetent as well. Oh, well, this may give me the incentive to strip things down and redo them completely.

The Next Archbishop of Canterbury. The following are the comments of the pastor of my church, Martyn Minns, on Rowan Williams:

The speculation is over and now we know that Rowan Williams will become the next Archbishop of Canterbury. But who exactly is he?

Rowan currently serves as Archbishop of Wales and is one of the youngest men to be appointed. He has never served in a parish, but has instead followed the academic path of ministry. Rowan grew up in Wales, his father was a mining engineer. He studied at the local grammar school before heading off to Cambridge and then to Oxford University. He distinguished himself as a brilliant theologian, he speaks five languages, and is married with two school age children. He served as Bishop of Monmouth before becoming Archbishop of Wales. But none of this info makes for exciting headlines, and so in recent days Rowan has been peace activist, etc., by the British media I first met Rowan Williams at Lambeth in 1998. He was a strong supporter of our Five Talents Initiative and I was impressed by his passion for a gospel which is truly good news for the poor. He is also helping us in the formation of Five Talents (UK).

Rowan is someone who defies simple labels. He is a faithful Christian. He is an academic, but he is also someone who can connect with folks who are not. He does hold to liberal political views, and yet he is passionately pro life. He has published books and articles that are sometimes obscure and difficult to read, yet he holds firm to the classical creeds of our faith. He is a strong supporter of contemporary evangelism initiatives such as ALPHA. He is a complex man and time will tell as to what shape his ministry will take. At the moment he needs our prayers as his new responsibilities are overwhelming. Please join me in praying that he will be God’s anointed servant to lead our Anglican Communion through the next few years.

Confirming the above, it should be noted that Williams is a member of the English pro-life group Society for the Protection of Unborn Children ("SPUC"). It would be very interesting to see that a nomination that was rammed through because of perceived support for female bishops and gay clergy turned out to be a pro-life trojan horse for Labour.

Buechner. Frederick Buechner is one of those great living writers who has been overlooked by popular culture and far too many critics. I see that he has a new book coming out soon, I would suggest if you haven't read anything by him, you might want to give this a shot. Here's a review. According to the review, he looks at four writers: Gerard Manley Hopkins, Mark Twain, G.K. Chesterton, and Shakespeare. Coincidentally, I was reading about Hopkins earlier this week in Peter Sean Bradley's blog.

To give you a little idea of how well respected Buechner is, the rock group Daniel Amos has a CD titled Mr. Buechner's Dream [go here for a compendium of reviews of the CD]. If you are a Christian of the Catholic stripe, let me entice you by noting FB, although a Protestant minister, has written a book drawn solely from a book in the Catholic Bible. If you are a Protestant of the liberal persuasion, you will find Sojourner's as one of his boosters. If you worship on the right side of the aisle, you will be glad to note that he has fans at World magazine.

Here is an interview with Buechner by the Door.

*sigh* I always write these things out, but then forget to hit the publish button (what an idiot). In any event, it gives me a chance to revise and extend my remarks. In particular, see the Bros. Judd Good Books site for reviews of Son of Laughter and The Storm.

See Lauren Winner on Why Evangelicals like FB.

Finally, here's a sample, from from Peculiar Treasures, A Biblical Who's Who by Frederick Buechner

Gomer

She was always good company-a little heavy with the lipstick maybe, a little less than choosy about men and booze, a little loud, but great at a party and always good for a laugh. Then the prophet Hosea came along wearing a sandwich board that read "The End Is at Hand" on one side and "Watch Out" on the other.

The first time he asked her to marry him, she thought he was kidding. The second time she knew he was serious but thought he was crazy. The third time she said yes. He wasn't exactly a swinger, but he had a kind face, and he was generous, and he wasn't all that crazier than everybody else. Besides, any fool could see he loved her.

Give or take a little, she even loved him back for a while, and they had three children whom Hosea named with queer names like Not-pitied-for-God-will-no-longer-pity-Israel-now-that-it’s-gone-to-the-dogs so that every time the roll was called at school, Hosea would be scoring a prophetic bullseye in absentia. But everybody could see the marriage wasn’t going to last, and it didn’t.

While Hosea was off hitting the sawdust trail, Gomer took to hitting as many night spots as she could squeeze into a night, and any resemblance between her next batch of children and Hosea was purely coincidental. It almost killed him, of course, Every time he raised a hand to her, he burst into tears. Every time she raised one to him, he was the one who ended up apologizing.

He tried locking her out of the house a few times when she wasn't in by five in the morning, but he always opened the door when she finally showed up and helped get her to bed if she couldn't see straight enough to get there herself. Then one day she didn't show up at all.

He swore that this time he was through with her for keeps, but of course he wasn't. When he finally found her, she was lying passed out in a highly specialized establishment located above an adult bookstore, and he had to pay the management plenty to let her out of her contract. She'd lost her front teeth and picked up some scars you had to see to believe, but Hosea had her back again and that seemed to be all that mattered.

He changed his sandwich board to read "God Is Love" on one side and "There's No End to It" on the other, and when he stood on the street corner belting out:

How can I give you up, O Ephraim!
How can I hand you over, O Israel!
For I am God and not man,
The Holy One in your midst.
(Hosea 11:8-9)

Nobody can say how many converts he made, but one thing that's for sure is that, including Gomer's, there was seldom a dry eye in the house.
(Hosea 1-3, 11)

Peculiar Treasures A Biblical Who’s Who
Copyright 1979, Frederick Buechner Harper Collins

+Peter responds. In response to my concerns about his joining the dissenting letter from the Evangelicals, as raised by Ben and commented on by others, I received this message from the Right Rev. Peter Moore (we generally just abbrev. the title as "+")

Thanks so much for writing me of your concerns, and not just stewing and thinking that we are as far apart as possible on the Middle East. I
unequivocally affirm the right of Israel to exist with secure borders, and I believe that God has a long-term plan for the Jews that somehow includes the territory of Israel. My other concern, however, is for a just resolution to the crisis, and I think that the only way this can happen is if the Bush administration (which I heartily support) knows that the American evangelical community is not so pro-Israel that we can't see injustice when it happens. I am thinking of the continued settlements of Israelis on the West Bank. This only pours gasoline on the fires of hatred. So, please do not assume that I have suddenly switched to the Palestinian side, and am knocking Israel. I am not. But I do think that some Christians are so pro-Israel as not to see when this secular state acts without regard for its very confused, hate-filled, and oppressed neighbor -- the Palestinian people. Hopefully, one day we will have a secure Israel and a secure Palestine -- with Arafat as history! Let's join in prayer for that goal.

Signs. Part of why I'm looking forward to Signs can be seen in this sentence extracted from David Ansen's review: "Widower Graham Hess (Mel Gibson), an Episcopalian minister who has lost his faith after the agonizing death of his wife, tries to keep his family calm in the face of mighty strange occurrences." I dig movies that intelligently examine faith -- faith in transition -- and I've never seen a Mel Gibson movie that trivialized faith.

Beekner. Reminder to myself to write about this.

Ben Domenech does a valuable service in pointing out this minor article in the Post from last weekend (page B9).

In the orginal article there is a quote from "Gary M. Burge, professor of theology at Wheaton College in Illinois" in which he wants "Bush to know that 'Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson, just to take two names, do not represent the evangelical voice of America.'" First of all, that's never been the case -- that those guys represent the Evangelical Voice of America (EVoA -- tm pending, I'm sure). Secondly, it goes back to the odd question of what is an evangelical as well -- Robertson, a Pentecostal broadcaster and Falwell, a Fundamentalist (and I use the historical, not perjorative sense) Baptist minister represent a pretty wide spectrum of theological belief. Third, my recollection is that Robertson has been all over the place on the Middle East (perhaps paying more attention to his ponies), but maybe I'm wrong.

Mark Byron added his thoughts, always trenchant (although far too kind to Big Tony Campolo) and Ben posted some more information, including this quote from the letter:

...We urge you to provide the leadership necessary for peacemaking in the Middle East by vigorously opposing injustice, including the continued unlawful and degrading Israeli settlement movement. The theft of Palestinian land and the destruction of Palestinian homes and fields is surely one of the major causes of the strife that has resulted in terrorism and the loss of so many Israeli and Palestinian lives. The continued Israeli military occupation that daily humiliates ordinary Palestinians is also having disastrous effects on the Israeli soul.

Yeah, right. This reminds me of Jonathan Alter reaction to the hand-wringer after 9-11: "Talk about ironic: the same people always urging us to not blame the victim in rape cases are now saying Uncle Sam wore a short skirt and asked for it." So now Prison Fellowship and the are saying Israel has been asking for it? Not a good sign.

Two of the names on the list were very surprising to me: the Very Right Rev. Peter Moore and David Neff (editor of CT). I sent a note to +Moore -- I'll let you know if I get a response. I've been reading Neff for a number of years now -- he's usually a careful writer -- I can't see him subscribing to the aforementioned passage.

Last, I'll take issue with some of the characterizations made by Bobby Allison-Gallimore who writes:

Richard J. Mouw, president of Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, California: Rev. Mouw has an extensive number of works published on the Internet. You can read his writings about subjects as varied as: defending polygamy, why being a proud American is idolatrous, the rights of chickens, and what a Biblical scholar President Clinton is.

Actually, if you read the articles he links to, you will see that Mouw (who I don't believe is ordained -- I think he's just an academic) labels polygamy a sin, but says maybe in America we should allow a religious exception to those who want to practice it. Not an unusual postion -- I've heard it from a number of prominent Christian attorneys. Similarly, he doesn't write that being an proud American is idolatrous. He does state

The kind of patriotism that was being espoused struck me as bordering on idolatry. The worship--or near-worship--of the nation is serious problem from a biblical perspective.

Would any true Christian disagree with that statement? In his brief essay he raises concerns about a patriotism that crosses the line (as Christians, we are sojourners and ambassadors living in a strange land). On the rights of chickens -- it's a passage on recognizing that chickens are the creation of the Lord and treating them accordingly (not as possessors of rights). As for that last one -- Clinton the Bible scholar -- well I'm sure that Mouw didn't intend it this way, but when he wrote "President Clinton . . . quoted Scripture with ease." I thought of Jesus' temptations and how Satan was able to quote Scripture with ease.

Of Course.

what movie symbolism are you?

Great Lyrics. Kevin and others have been including some of their favorite lyrics lately. Let me join in -- consider these by Mark Heard (RIP):

ONE OF THE DOMINOES

Heaven help a timid child in a trendy tide
He really doesn't know
That his heart's being taken for a ride
Doing what the world lays down
As a steadfast rule
And changing when the world says to change
Like a steadfast fool

chorus:
Heaven heaven help me
I'm one of the dominoes
Chain reaction coming
Blow by blow

Heaven help a heedless man in a time of need
He can't feel the knife In his back
Or see the blood that he bleeds
Walking 'round blind
To the harm that's being done
He thinks it's alright
'Cause it's happening to everyone
(chorus)

Heaven help a seeker of truth
In an age of lies
Gonna make himself believe
That the truth is whatever he buys
Gonna buy what the world says to buy
In a monotone
Gonna cry when the whole world cries
And the truth is known
(chorus)

From Stop the Dominoes

AL West. The last weekend before the August 1 fan walkout, the Angels take over first, by percentage points, after taking two of three from the M's, including a very thrilling 1-0 game (for all you soccer fans) last night. The A's had a big chance against last place Texas to pick up a lot of ground, but drop 2 of 3 as Texas' pitching remains together for 25 of 27 innings (up 2-1 going into the 8th for a sweep last night, the Rangers surrender 3 in the 8th and 8 in the 9th, as Zito wins his 15th).

Bootlegger Ethics, continued. I know I need to bring back the comments -- it should be back this week. In the meantime, I received a note from Matthew Judd (a relative of the Judd Bros.?) in which he notes:

the one thing I add is, if I start collecting multiple shows from a particular band, I tend to buy some/all of their commercially available stuff; especially if I can get them directly from the band.

This is a good point and it doesn't have to necessarily be an intentional committment -- I sort of think it's a side-effect from getting involved in trading. Someone who has 17 versions of Bob Dylan singing Rainy Day Women (as I have, at least), is willing to buy two more versions on Before the Flood and Unplugged (and I don't even like the song). I think this is why the artists tolerate or even encourage the traders (just not the for-profit bootleggers).

This experience is somewhat similar to the experience of movie producers in the early 1980s when the VCR boomed. At first the producers said that people being able to tape shows would cut down on the dollars going the theaters, but it had the reverse effect, because people became enthusiasts.

In any event, I'm still waiting for a contrary opinion, arguing that the trading of bootlegged CDRs of concerts is immoral.

Cover Watch . The two main newsweeklies go for non-news, entertainment covers. On one hand, you have Time featuring the Boss, on the other, Newsweek, featuring the New Spielberg. Initially, I thought, "tough choice."

But on second thought, easy choice, advantage Newsweek, despite the horrible tag it puts on M. Night Shyamalan. Basically, it comes down to a choice between a cover story on a man who was the "new Bob Dylan" 30 years ago versus the man who may be the brightest star on the moviemaking horizon since, yes, Steven Spielberg (but please don't call him the "new Spielberg"). Given this old versus new distinction, I choose to learn about the new.

Now, I'm a huge Springsteen fan and was even pondering going to Tower tonight at midnight to get the new album. I have copies of the original Time and Newsweek dueling cover stories on Springsteen back in 1975. [Here's a link to the 1975 Time story and here's one to the 1975 Newsweek story]. Back in 1975, Springsteen wasn't the new Dylan or even "the future of Rock and Roll." However, he was a future of rock and roll (why weren't there any cover stories on any of the other futures of rock, say the Ramones, for example?). And yes, he still carries great significance and yet another cover story is not unmerited.

In any event, Shyamalan, is as unique as Springsteen and therefore deserves to be treated on his own terms. I believe that he could be as significant to movie making as Springsteen is to rock and roll.

Not A Doctor. I've been pretty sick the last two days -- I thought at first it was just a cold but have had a bad fever as well. Yesterday, my joints and muscles were so achy I went looking for some Motrin but all I could find was an old dose of prescription Motrin (800 mg. ibuprophin [sp?]) so I took it and felt much better -- what a wonderful drug that is. More later.

Mirror. Does Google have you down? Try the Google Mirror site to spice things up.

Stop the Presses! We've been so concerned about Ted Williams being frozen so he can be resurrected years from now, we've missed the big story. It turns out that Augustine, John Calvin, John Wesley, Martin Luther and Jonathan Edwards (The guy that did "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God" not the one who sang "Sunshine"), among others, all spoke to us at the end of the year last year. Why didn't we listen?

Perhaps it was because they all said something to the effect of "Reverend Sun Myung Moon is the True Parent of all humankind and I pledge and pledge again to live according to the direction and teachings of the True Parents." (in the words of John Wesley.)

And all this time I thought the True Parents were Tim and Bev.

Helmets I like the new Redskins helmet -- a throwback to the 60's -- when I saw my first game ('skins-Browns). I'm ambivalent about the Texans helmet. Interestingly, I've also seen the Texan helmet in white, which I think I prefer.




<---Redskins ____ Texans----->






More. While I generally like a lot of the throwback stuff -- I really, really, really, really hate the A's throwback uniforms -- and I came of age rooting for teams wearing these things. Nevertheless, Barry Zito and the boys are putting together some of the best baseball around right now. And the AL West is clearly the most dominant division in baseball.

[I really hate these uniforms]

[Really]

Losing his religion. In the never-ending series in the New York Times ("Why Ashcroft is the Anti-christ"), we learn that Ashcroft is losing his religious base.

Bootleg Ethics. Bootleggers of rock concerts have a pretty strict code of ethics, which may surprise some. Foremost among these is that no one profits. That is, people who trade CDR's of bootlegged concerts trade, but do not sell boots. The second ranking principle is that you do not trade an artists official albums -- if you want the album, buy it at the store so the artist gets a little profit. Occasionally, people will trade very rare out-of-print copies of these discs -- but even that licks at the edge of the permissible. Finally, bootleggers will go ahead and make copies (a backup) of the artists official releases to take with them in their cars or what have you and leave the source disc in a secure place at home.

I mention this, because my daughter has asked me to make a copy of one of her friends CDs for her own use. I won't do it because it's outside the code of ethics -- but this has me wondering if the code of ethics just suits my own selfish desires and whether I should reassess my position. Any bloggers have any thought on this.

[By the way -- if you want to get sucked into the world of trading, a good place to start is dylantree.com or http://trees.hempsall.com/
for CSNY stuff. What's kind of nice about the world of traders is that because we all start with nothing and since no one profits, traders will do what's known as B&P or making copies of shows to someone who sends blank discs and prepaid mailers -- blanks and postage.]

More. Some of you might be aware that Pearl Jam has started releasing its shows on direct bootlegs which is actually kind of the ideal situation. I'd love to have quality copies of some of the concerts I've been to (for example, there is an audience recording available of The Who from its whirlwind tour -- but it was made the night before I saw them and, being an audience recording, is pretty substandard). According to the bootleggers code of ethics, these recordings are not up for trade, since they are being marketed by the band. On the other hand, it also point out the relatively low cost of trading. With all the costs of a traded bootleg disc a pretty typical two disc boot "costs" the trader about 2 bucks -- ninety cents for the Mitsui CDRs, 86 cents for the postage, the balance for the sleeve and mailer. Pearl Jam's official boots cost about 14 bucks discounted or by mail-order.

For Something Completely Different. Here's a plug for Fred Sanders' comic books -- the "Dr. Doctrine's Christian Comix," a terrific fun series with a surprising amount of meat. (Name me another comic series that draws on Anselm, Aquinas, and Augustine all the way through Barth and the Tetramorph to Zwingli [actually, I don't remember if Zwingli is really in the books -- but it completes my A to Z illustration).

I "met" Fred (or as I affectionately call him "susan") through the Daniel Amos Discussion List (DADL), one of the better discussion lists I've ever run across. I found Fred to be one of the most illuminating young minds I've ever met. Consider, for example his analysis of "You Lay Down" from the album "John Wayne:"

Here comes the disection of the song, line by line. You may want to skip this if you have a weak stomach and can't stand to see a song cut up like this.

~~In a garden of thorns my Rose of Sharon

The Rose of Sharon (Song of Solomon 2:1) is Christ, at least if you're willing to read the Song of Solomon as, among other things, an allegory of the love between Christ and the Christian, or the Church. There is a long tradition of reading the Song of Solomon this way, from Origen in the 2nd century, right through the medieval mystics and the Reformers down to, I don't know, Watchman Nee in the 20th. Terry joins in that centuries-old tradition with a real passion; consider the whole album _Briefing_, or "When Moonlight Sleeps" from _Fearful Symmetry_, or the voice-over that says "come away my love" on his first solo album. Terry mobilizes the whole range of powerful erotic longing in singing about the love of Christ.

The other image here is botanical, as Terry transposes the Rose of Sharon into the garden of thorns. Symbolically, thorns are the result of the primal fall of humanity into sin (Genesis 3:18), in which human rebellion turned the garden into a place where the ground itself is cursed. Christ the Rose grows in that garden, and stands out like the only blossom among the twisted thistles.

Consider Terry's other uses of garden imagery: Sometimes it's the garden of Gethsemane ("Come to the garden, come to the hill; Come to the tree, come to the kill...", from "Angels Tuck You In"); sometimes it's Eden ("Long time ago we hid our shame outside the garden wall," from "Eleanor It's Raining"); sometimes he leaves it vague on purpose to capitalize on its polyvalence ("Out over the gate we saw angels in the garden", "If You Want To"). Terry blurs the lines because the gardens belong together:
Christ in Gethsemane is the last Adam in the last garden, paying the price demanded by what happened when the first Adam rebelled in the first garden.

~~bleeds till she's the color of the moonlight

She is a red rose, I take it, but she has bled out her color and turned pale white from the loss. She takes on "the color of the moonlight."
This line knocks me out: not only does it set the scene more concretely (suggesting that it's night time under an open sky), but it turns my thoughts to the dark and cold of the night, and points me to the night sky.

~~and the angels wrap her in their feathered arms
~~but they cannot conceal her from the darkest night

Angels with feathered arms are cool. Angels ministered to Christ twice that I recall; after his 40 days of fasting and temptation in the wilderness, and in Gethsemane. Both times he faced the darkest night.
This line is an interesting contrast to the song "Angels Tuck You In," where the fantasy angels protect the pampered Christian from any thought of the garden, the hill, the tree, the kill. These angels, real feathered angels, do what they can to tuck her in tonight, but there's no keeping out the dark and cold.

~~And you didn't say a word when they accused you
~~You did not fight back when the whole world used you

The silence before the accusers here is an allusion to Christ at his trials before Pilate etc., and also to Isaiah's suffering servant (esp. 53:7). I hang on the line "the whole world used you." It partially resonates with the actual life and death of Jesus, especially the way he was caught between the wheels of the complex power maneuvers of maintaining national security in Roman-occupied Palestine. Humanly speaking, he was killed for all the wrong reasons, set up to be knocked down, and traded like a pawn to balance the power. He was passed from court to court to court. His life was literally sold for a bag of money (although Judas apparently didn't realize just how dangerous the information he was selling was going to be, which is why he was so full of regret afterwards). Then it was traded again for the life of a famous rebel, in a carnival-like atmosphere, a "get-off-death-row" lottery of sorts to keep the crowd excited). But "the whole world used you" also jars me into the contemporary world, where Jesus is used for more things by more people than ever before.

~~When hate was a King your love never diminished
~~you stood meek as a lamb there without blemish

King Hate evokes for me the sick politics and fickle mob of the passion story. If we are still moving in the sphere of Jesus' trial, kinghood is also a theme which makes several appearances: Pilate puts the question, are you the king of the Jews? Jesus replies "you say so," and in John he goes on to say "my kingdom is not of this world." The soldiers mocked Christ cruelly with a pantomime of royalty. The sign over the cross declared, in three languages: King of the Jews.

Standing meek as a lamb is another echo of Isaiah 53:7 (like a lamb before the shearers he was silent), but Terry cross-references it with the scriptural phrase "a lamb without blemish," meaning the animal considered perfect for sacrifice under the holiness code (see a zillion refs from Ex 25 to I Peter 1:19). This is a deceptively simple move, linking these two phrases. It's a way of exploiting the lamb image for its full range of biblical meanings.

~~And they laughed when you cried out "It is finished"

Notice that we've jumped right to the end very suddenly; directly from Gethsemane and the trial(s) to the very moment of death. It's a powerful omission. Without even noticing consciously that anything's been skipped, my mind kind of reels because of the size of the leap.

~~You lay down You lay down
~~and I'll step upon your back
~~up high enough above the fence
~~to see all the way to glory land

This is the central image of the song: Laying down and being stepped on.
I think it sets us back in the garden of Gethsemane, where Christ fell on his face before God ("threw himself on the ground") and poured out his soul in anguish. This is where the feathered angels are, and this is where the decision was made and re-made and stuck to in full view of the consequences. The arresting thing in the image is how clear Terry makes the falling down of Christ and the rising up of sinners. It's like the physical law demanding an equal and opposite reaction to any thrust: we rise as high as he fell low, or he stooped as low as he intended to raise us up. The sense of compensated leverage, or equilibrium of forces, is almost a translation of the substitutionary-penalty motifs in scripture into physical terms. Christ's death restores a balance, and at great cost redistributes the forces we set in motion to our own destruction.

Not to compare TST with JSBach, but I'm going to. Last week I went to a performance of Bach's St. Matthew Passion, a sprawling 3-hour presentation of the passion of Christ which ends with the entombment of the Lord's body. (What! No resurrection? Dang Lutherans!) With 3 hours and dozens of musicians and singers at his command, Bach has plenty of resources to go into great depth about each moment in the passion. In the Gethsemane scene, Bach has the bass voice sing these lines:

Der Heiland fällt vor seinem Vater nieder:
Dadurch erhebt er mich und alle
Von unserm Falle
Hinauf zu Gottes Gnade wieder.

(Before his Father falls the Savior low:
Thereby he raises up both me and all,
Up from our fall,
Up to the grace of God once more.)

--JS Bach, St. Matthew Passion. Libretto by Picander.

Same point Terry makes, but Terry chooses to say it much more concretely. So concretely, in fact, that I can't help instinctively wondering where exactly I'm going to plant my foot. Upper back or lower? Left, right, or middle? I'll need something that doesn't wiggle when I kick off. It sounds grisly, but I can't help starting to work through the placement problem when I hear that line.

And not to compare TST to the greatest theologian of the 20th century, Karl Barth, but I'm going to. Here's a quote from Barth:

"In Him, humanity is exalted humanity, just as Godhead is humiliated Godhead.
And humanity is exalted in Him by the humiliation of Godhead."

"Humiliation" is a strong and suggestive word, but I think it's the same thing TST's getting at with "You lay down and I'll step upon your back," and all the images of voluntary degradation that set those lines up.

The focus of this song is on the mystery of Gethsemane, but it calls to mind the actions of Maundy Thursday as well: John tells us that Christ, knowing who he was and where he came from, stripped to a towel and washed the disciples' feet. The reason Peter objected was because Christ was doing something beneath his station; humiliating himself by stooping so low. That would be fairly revealing if it were just an example of how to lead by serving; but in the context of holy week it's a true revelation, an enactment of God's love which will go to the cross to implement this pattern of self-emptying.

Another interesting thing is that the word "lay" could be taken a number of different ways, depending on how grammatically correct you think Terry's being. It's a word that, no matter what the grammar books say, people use to mean all kinds of things. It could be meant in the sense of past tense, "you layed down," or or present tense, "you are laying yourself down now" or more generally, "you're the kind who's always laying down," or even imperative, "You! Lay down!" In fact, if it's to go with "I'll step upon your back," the imperative works pretty well, as if an agreement is being negotiated. You lay down, and I'll step upon your back.

As for looking over a fence into glory land, I think this is Terry's characteristic hard-won humility about all things eschatological. I mean, the song could have had us climb right out of the garden of thorns. Instead, Terry opts for vision: we see to glory land. Terry used to be a proud member of the pop-dispensationalist "We Know The Name of the Antichrist's Dog" club, but he's traded that stuff in for a more ample ecumenical eschatology. Um, I mean he's more excited about heaven and hell, the resurrection of the body and the restoration of all things now, rather than cracking prophecies with his Hal Lindsey Decoder Ring.

The fence we see over is a cipher for the barrier between us and God, the limit or boundary between us; "my frontier" through which I can only see if a "hole in the world" permits. A fence is a pretty homey image to invoke, but it goes with a garden, I suppose. And there's the other fence reference on the album, "for instance there's no fences round your dream."



~~Above the garden of thorns my Rose of Sharon
~~climbs up and clings to an old rugged tower

With this verse we start into a repetition of the original verse, with fairly minor changes. But they're significant. For instance, "clinging" to an old rugged tower is striking. Don't even get me started on why it's a tower; but if it's old rugged, it's clearly a symbol for the cross. But clinging stresses the determination, the free choice by which this act takes place. You don't accidentally climb and cling; climbing and clinging is not something that happens to you, but something you do.
This reminds me of medieval Franciscan paintings which show the cross with a ladder propped against it, and Jesus climbing the ladder. It emphasizes the same thing Jesus taught, which is that he lays down his own life voluntarily. Michael Card has a song that includes the line: "Why did they nail his feet and hands; his love would have held him there." There's an ever more obscure tradition in Franciscan painting that shows Jesus being nailed to the cross by three women. The women are allegorical figures, and what they represent is clearly labelled by the
artist: Nailing Christ's right hand is Obedience, nailing his left hand is Humility, nailing his feet is Courage, and piercing his side is Love.


~~and though the angels offer her a thousand tears
~~still she wilts in the cold flame of her darkest hour

Unfortunately I still hear "the corn flakes of her darkest hour" sometimes, which breaks the mood.

~~And I lied when I said I never knew you

The parallel line from the first verse was "you didn't say a word when they accused you," but here in the second half of the song it is replaced by a first person confession: I said I never knew you. The allusion is to Peter's denial of Christ in the courtyard during the trial before Pilate. We are no longer reporting on an event inside the court, but watching a simultaneous event out here where we are. Inside, Jesus is silent before his accusers, and out here I am Peter denying him. The focus has shifted from the fate of Jesus in the hands of others, to the fate of Jesus at my own hands.

~~You did not fight back when I scarred and bruised you

Same move, but this time I must be stepping in to the character of the executioners and torturers. How much further can this go?

~~When hate was a King your love never diminished
~~You stood meek as a lamb there without blemish
~~and we laughed when you cried out,
~~how we laughed when you cried out, "It is finished"

Again, the shift to first person, but this time it's plural, from "they" to "we."

A little musical breather, and then:

~~And you didn't say a word when we accused you
~~You did not fight back when the whole world used you.
~~When hate was crowned King, your love never diminished

To the bare "king" image is added now the word "crown," which definitely brings to mind the mock crowning of Christ.

~~You stood meek as a lamb there, without blemish
~~And we laughed when you cried out, It is finished.

~~So you lay down you lay down
~~and I'll step upon your back
~~up high enough above the fence
~~to see all the way to glory land

Parts of the song remind me of medieval devotional images called the "arma Christi." These are paintings of the cross or the crucifixion, but instead of being set in a historical landscape with all the right characters present, these images have isolated implements of the passion suspended in visual space around the cross: a crown of thorns, a spear, a whip, a sponge on a stick, dice, the disembodied face of a spitting man, a rooster, thirty pieces of silver, and so on. One of the most famous of these arma Christi images is by Fra Angelico, a fresco at San Marco in Florence, Italy. The purpose of these images was to hold before the worshipper these individual elements of Christ's passion, for reflection, penitence, and adoration. "You Lay Down" does the same thing, by evoking the moments of Christ's movement toward death, and recounting the story in strange terms that cause me to stop and reflect in ways I hadn't before.

Terry's work is worth pondering. I've found that it almost always repays the effort. (quoted from the DADL, 3/31/99)

Now then, having pasted all that in, I hope I've whetted your interest in either Terry Scott Taylor or Fred Sanders, or (preferably) both.

Code Red. Ben has a note up about Code Red Mountain Dew, 'nilla Coke, et al. Personally, I'm looking forward to Blue, but the reason I write is to note that the companies need to get these new sodas in a diet version. I first came across Code Red Mt. Dew in diet about 6 weeks ago in the Newport News area while on a trip and bought up a trunk full. Two weeks ago, it appeared on the shelves in the local (DC area) stores, so I bought some 12-packs. On my recent trip to Sacramento, I brought along 3 cans of the stuff, thinking that would tide me over until I could get to Vons or Ralphs (although, I found out those are SoCal stores). I was very surprised to find out that this was a product unknown in the area. I could've sold those 12 oz. cans for 5 bucks each, easily.

Oh, and 'nilla coke sux -- stick with Cream Soda.

Druid Heads Anglican Communion. No, I'm not making this up. As has been expected, Rowan Williams has been named the next Archbishop of Canterbury, spiritual head of the Anglican Communion.

The following article is from the Times of London, which no longer is available for non-subscribers, explanation here. [if you do have a subscription, you may go here to read the original article.]

Why the Archbishop is embracing pagan roots

By Ruth Gledhill, Religion Correspondent
The London TIMES

THE man expected to be the new Archbishop of Canterbury will be inducted as a druid in a 200-year-old ceremony with pagan roots in
Wales next month.

As the sun rises over a circle of Pembrokeshire bluestones, the Archbishop of Wales, the Most Rev Dr. Rowan Williams, will don a long white cloak while druids chant a prayer to the ancient god and goddess of the land. After a trumpet fanfare and the thrice partial sheathing and unsheathing of a 6ft 6in sword, a citation will be read. Dr Williams will close his hands in prayer while the archdruid, wearing a crown and shield over his bardic robes will enfold them in his own and utter words of welcome.

That will be the moment that Dr Williams, who will adopt a new, bardic name, is accepted into the white druidic order, the highest of three orders of the Gorsedd of Bards, the Welsh body of poets, musicians, writers and artists. The Mistress of the Robes, Sian Aman, will then clothe him in a druidic white headdress, and a steward will lead him to join the other assembled druids inside a sacred circle.

The ceremony will take place "in the face of the sun, in the eye of the light" at the start of the Welsh National Eisteddfod at St David's,
Pembrokeshire, in early August.

Although organisers insist the Gorsedd's pagan roots are long behind it, contributors to discussion forums on the Church in Wales website have already suggested it is "nearer to Shintoism than Christianity". Evangelical leaders in the Church of England described it as "unbelievable". The Rev David Banting, chairman of Reform, the conservative evangelical group, said: "We are concerned that Christian leaders should concentrate on the celebration and promotion of the Christian faith in all its wonder and power rather than dabbling in other things."

Dr Williams will not be the only church leader admitted as an honorary druid to the Gorsedd. The Right Rev Daniel Mullins, retired Roman Catholic bishop of Menevia, South Wales, is a member. He insisted: "It has no link at all with ancient druidism." A former Archbishop of Wales, the Right Rev George Noakes, is also a member.

Dr Williams is a prolific author and poet. His book of poems, Remembering Jerusalem, is currently high on the religious bestsellers
list.

The Gorsedd of Bards takes its name from the high seat, which in prehistoric times referred to the mounds on which the sacred kings were wedded to the female spirit of the land. It was invented in the 18th century by the Welsh scholar Iolo Morganwg (Edward Williams), a Welsh cultural icon suspected of sympathies with French revolutionaries and American rebels. On June 21, 1792
he laid out a circle of stones on the grass and proclaimed a Gorsedd of Bards - not in Wales but on Primrose Hill in Camden, North London. Morganwg, who claimed to have found an ancient Welsh manuscript with the ceremony but in fact wrote it himself, pronounced his first Welsh Gorsedd at the Eisteddfod in Caermarthen, Wales, in 1819. The Gorsedd of Bards has been closely associated with the National Eisteddfod since it was founded in 1860 and the three ceremonies - the crowning of the
best free verse poet and the awards for prose and strict metre poetry - attract thousands with their pageantry and Celtic lore.

The Archdruid, Dr Robyn Lewis, a retired lawyer and deputy circuit judge, defended the archbishop's right to be inducted into the Gorsedd. Only fluent Welsh speakers are allowed in. He said: "The Gorsedd is an organisation which concerns itself with literature, poetry, music and art of all sorts including architecture. We meet in a circle of stones, a mini Stonehenge, that we erect in the towns where the Eisteddfod takes place." The three orders of the Gorsedd, white for druid, blue for bards and green for ovates, are the closest thing in Wales to an honours system. The Queen is an ovate, but the Prince of Wales has never been invited to join. The actor Richard Burton was also a member, as was Lloyd George.

Dr Lewis said: "We are not like the English druids. The Stonehenge druids are a pot-smoking crowd. Ours is a very respectable society. The ceremony is not pagan. It is just a ceremony. It is quite innocent, there is no serious paganism about it at all. It is a society for the furtherance of the arts in Wales, nothing more. We are not theistic, atheistic, pantheistic, agnostic or anything." He added: "All sorts of people have been members. The Queen was given a green robe although not all of us want her and she never turns up."

He was saddened by the prospect of Dr Williams's promotion. "Quite frankly, we do not want him to go to Canterbury. We feel he deserves it, but we feel we need him here. He is a fluent Welsh speaker for a start, and that will be wasted in Canterbury, wasted on the desert air."

The archbishop's chaplain, the Rev Gregory Cameron, defended Dr Williams. Speaking in Welsh on BBC Wales, he said: "The Gorsedd is not full-blooded paganism, it is an institution making an appeal to the natural universe, to what Wordsworth described as the power of nature."

On the positive side, Williams affirms the resurrection of Jesus. :/

Also, he detests Disney and loves the Simpsons (Christianity Today wrote: ' Williams added that he really likes The Simpsons, which he finds "sophisticated," "amusing," and "very moral." ').

Getting Back. I'm back home now after a long trip to Sacramento for work. I did stop by and work on the links a little bit, but nothing else. I hope to have caught up with my mail and chores by Wednesday. See you then.

Cover Watch. Too funny -- it's a tie, a draw, a deadlock, a stalemate, a standoff, an embarassment. Both Time and Newsweek are running covers on Hormone Therapy.

P.S. I'm basically still out -- I just wanted to add the post below.

update I'm having tremendous problems with the comments feature -- I played with it a little and ended up not even being able to post these last two items. I'm leaving comments out for now and may wipe it all clean and start over again. Or comments may reappear without my intent -- who knows.

Kass The Kass Council is out with it's report on cloning, as I'm sure everyone who's come here is aware.

In brief, the 10 member majority of the Council "recommend a ban on cloning-to-produce-children combined with a four-year moratorium on cloning-for-biomedical-research." On the other hand, the seven member minority supports permitting "cloning-for-biomedical-research now, while governing it through a prudent and sensible regulatory regime, is the most appropriate way to allow important research to proceed while insuring that abuses are prevented." The 10 member majority is made up of Rebecca S. Dresser, Francis Fukuyama, Robert P. George, Mary Ann Glendon, Alfonso Gómez-Lobo, William B. Hurlbut, Leon R. Kass, Charles Krauthammer, Paul McHugh, and Gilbert C. Meilaender. The seven member minority is made up of Elizabeth H. Blackburn, Daniel W. Foster, Michael S. Gazzaniga, William F. May, Janet D. Rowley, Michael J. Sandel, and James Q. Wilson.

By and large, the Council seems to have really struggled with the issues at hand, seeking both to understand and be understood. Yes, the members came in with many pre-conceived ideas, but these are ideas that comes from years of study and deliberation and do not reflect some sort of knee-jerk positions, whether they arrive at results favored by some or not. As Charles Murtaugh writes: ". . . the commission was proving more balanced than its early detractors had expected, myself included. It is to Kass's credit that he is publishing the dissenting report alongside the majority opinion, rather than trying to create a false sense of unanimity." Personnally, I think the Council members have proved to be far more open-minded on these questions than their detractors (excepting Mr. Murtaugh).

I do find the Tapped search for commies, er, pro-lifers pretty humorous. we were shocked to discover at least one section that seems to imply that human embryos are morally equivalent to persons. To quote:

As much as we wish to alleviate suffering now and to leave our children a world where suffering can be more effectively relieved, we also want to leave them a world in which we and they want to live -- a world that honors moral limits, that respects all life whether strong or weak, and that refuses to secure the good of some human beings by sacrificing the lives of others.

I have been reading the personal statements in the Appendix and have found several to be very interesting and thought-provoking. (At 196 pages, I have not read all the statements yet.) In particular, I was impressed by the joint statement of Robert George and Alfonso Gómez-Lobo (p. 168), focusing on the status of the embryo (I confess a particular interest in the discussion of miscarriage as I have a family member grieving over a very recent miscarriage, as well as another friend who experienced her fourth miscarriage in the past month) and the statement of James Q. Wilson (p. 194) who favors "Regulated Cloning-for-Biomedical-Research." Next up for me is the statement of Dr. Hurlbut (page 176)

One last note, Professor James Q. Wilson, of UCLA, shows that he may have been reading UCLA Law Professor Eugene Volokh's upcoming article on slippery slopes:

There is always some risk that allowing even strongly regulated research will create conditions that lead some scientists to ask for access to fertilized eggs beyond the blastocyst stage. But I do not believe we can object to this by making a generalized slippery slope argument, since virtually every medical procedure that involves entering or affecting the human body would also be liable to such an argument, a conclusion that would leave us (for example) without surgery. The slippery slope argument, stated baldly, would lead us to oppose allow-ing doctors to remove an inflamed appendix because they might later decide to remove a kidney, and after that a heart, and to oppose as well doctors prescribing a drug that will harm 0.5 percent of its recipients because we suspect that, once they do this, they will later insist on prescribing drugs that harm 1 percent, and then 10 percent, and possibly 50 percent of their patients. There may be good slippery slope arguments, but they cannot rest simply on the phrase “slippery slope”; they must also point clearly to a serious moral hazard and contain some reason for thinking that this hazard will become much more likely if we take the first step.

You can find this section all the way at the end of the appendix.

Off line. It looks like another 12+ hour day today at work, so not much in the way of blogging. I'm probably going to take the comments boxes off-line for a little while, as well. It appears that I'm not able to update my links and some other things while that code is lurking behind the scenes. Check back with me in a week or two and I should be back to 'normal' (heh).

Overruled. More on Judge Stephen Reinhardt.

And speaking of correspondence... I actually had a telephone call from Fritz Schranck this morning -- how cool -- this world is shrinking.

Rambing about the Pledge and walls and so on. I received a nice note from a person in C' ville, VA (when I lived in the Valley, we referred to Charlottesville as 'hookville' because the C looked like a hook when abbreviated.) disagreeing with me on the Newdow (pledge) decision. The reader writes "Church and state should be separate and 'under God' clearly violates this this supposed separation."

I agree that the church and state occupy different spheres (see Augustine, City of God), nevertheless, these spheres cross over from time-to-time (especially in an expanisve state like we live in now.*). Accordingly, strict separation is both impossible and unwise, not to mention, not a constitutional doctrine.

The framers, whether by happy accident or shrewd foresight barred the establishment of religion by law of Congress. The framers did not mandate a total separtion of religion and state. I believe that the framers recognized that religion was necessary to government (see, for example, the Northwest Ordinance: "Religion, morality, and knowledge, being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind. . ." therefore would not seek to exclude it.

Moreover, it should be noted that the national charter is not the U.S. Constitution, it is rather the Declaration of Independence. (The Constitution, of course, replaced the Article of Confederation. The second self-evident truth set forth in the Declaration is that all are "endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights. . ." The "representatives of the United States of America, in General Congress assembled, appeal[ed] to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of [their] intentions . . ." Finally, their pledge was issued "with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence. . ." Accordingly, I believe, the phrase "under God" as used in the Pledge of Allegiance is fully consistent with the national charter and is a statement of fact and not a matter of religion.

The phrase "under God" was used by Abraham Lincoln in his Gettysburg address (". . .that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain, that this nation under God shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth.") which itself references not the Constitution as the charter of the U.S., but the Declaration (calculate the fourscore and seven years). Therefore, there is all a poetic symmetry that weaves its way throughout.

Now, one may object to the use of the phrase in the Pledge. If so, the proper thing to do is to seek to amend it. However, this is not what Mr. Newdow tried to do, rather he is attempting to impose his views of the constitution and his religion on the people of the United States. Moreover, there is nothing in the Constitution which supports this view. Rather it is a series of Supreme Court decisions that have gone seriously off-kilter from the words and intent of the framers (not to mention the national charter).

And I understand those of you who are devoutly religious or non-religious who object to this phrase in the pledge. I almost agree with you, for the reasons stated in James Madion's Memorial and Remonstrance:

. . . for it is known that this Religion both existed and flourished, not only without the support of human laws, but in spite of every opposition from them, and not only during the period of miraculous aid, but long after it had been left to its own evidence and the ordinary care of Providence. Nay, it is a contradiction in terms; for a Religion not invented by human policy, must have pre-existed and been supported, before it was established by human policy. It is moreover to weaken in those who profess this Religion a pious confidence in its innate excellence and the patronage of its Author; and to foster in those who still reject it, a suspicion that its friends are too conscious of its fallacies to trust it to its own merits.

Based on this essay by Arthur Schlesinger Jr., it appears that President Theodore Roosevelt had similar doubts:

T. R. expressed his "very firm conviction that to put such a motto on coins . . . not only does no good but does positive harm." His objection to "In God We Trust" was not constitutional; it was aesthetic. He felt that the motto cheapened and trivialized the trust in God it was intended to promote. "In all my life I have never heard any human being speak reverently of this motto on the coins or show any sign of its having appealed to any high emotion in him," he wrote. Indeed, he added, "the existence of this motto on the coins was a constant source of jest and ridicule." (my emphasis added)

Okay, I know I've gone on too long (I've got to to my share of 'blithering' to keep my title -- the idiocy comes effortlessly), but I did want to thank Jason Steffens for his link to the essay in the NYTime this past weekend on the 'wall of separation' phrase. When reading this last night, I recalled that Roger Williams was the souce of the metaphor and made a note on Steffans blog to that effect. I went looking through my books and didn't find the reference I recollect, but did come across this quote that rings true in my memory, but I don't have a source:

When they have opened a gap in the hedge or wall of separation between the garden of the Church and the wilderness of the world, God hath ever broke down the wall itself, removed the candlestick, and made his garden a wilderness, as at this day. And that therefore if He will e'er please to restore His garden and paradise again, it must of necessity be walled in peculiarly unto Himself from the world...

Since I don't have the source of that, consider it dubious for now, until I can back it up (or if someone else has it). In addition, consider Rich Hailey's comments and quotes on the Jeffersonian correspondence.

See also, this Rehnquist dissent for a critique of the the Court's use of the "wall" metaphor. From Wallace v. Jaffree, 472 U.S. 38 (1985).

Last, here's a piece on how the phrase got into the pledge.
----
endnote (for a blog, of all places):
*Justice Rehnquist accurately notes in his Thomas v. Review Board dissent: "First, the growth of social welfare legislation during the latter part of the 20th century has greatly magnified the potential for conflict between the two Clauses, since such legislation touches the individual at so many points in his life."

Cover Watch. Newsweek sleeps. Time disses meat. US News doesn't even publish (it did a double issue on American Music last week). Let's give thanks for a slow news week.

Update. Sasha Volokh reading the world news in Latin out of Finland also finds it was a slow news week.

There Goes the Greatest Hitter who ever lived. Ted Williams died today.
More on the greatest hitter.




Still more by Thomas Boswell.




More comments from others.








Still More. My father (Col. USMC-ret.) reminds me that Ted Williams was a Marine: "I'm a U.S. Marine, and I'll be one 'til I die." He served in the Marines as a "Flying Leatherneck" for 5 years during WWII and Korea; certainly giving up his shot at 600+ home runs for a career.

Independence Day. I'll take a day or two off for this one. See you this weekend.

[enjoy hated owner's birthday -- George Steinbrenner and Al Davis were both born on the 4th.]

905 John Entwistle's death last week got me looking at some of his old songs again. This one, 905 from the album "Who Are You?" strikes me as very current:

Mother was an incubator
Father was the contents
Of a test tube in the ice box
In the factory of birth

My name is 905,
And I've just become alive
I'm the newest populator
Of the planet we call Earth

In suspended animation
My childhood passed me by
If I speak without emotion
Then you know the reason why

Knowledge of the universe
Was fed into my mind
As my adolescent body
Left its puberty behind

And everything I know is what I need to know
And everything I do's been done before
Every sentence in my head
Someone else has said
At each end of my life is an open door

Automatically defrosted
When manhood came on time
I became a man
I left the "ice school" behind

Now I'm to begin
The life that I'm assigned
A life that's been used before
A thousand times

I have a feeling deep inside
That somethin' is missing
It's a feeling in my soul
And I can't help wishing

That one day I'll discover
That we're living a lie
And I'll tell the whole world
The reason why

Well, until then, everything I know is what I need to know
And everything I do's been done before
Every sentence in my head
Someone else has said
At each end of my life is an open door

Blame the child. The Domenecher has a note up referring to his brother and an ABC news article on Grand Theft Auto III. The ABC article is critical (although does present a counter assertion) of the violence and the "realism" in GTA-3. Ellis Domenech disagrees: "though these video games may seem real they are still just games and all you are really killing is a line of zeros and ones." And brother Ben echos: "If a child can't make a distinction between what they see in media -- video games, movies, and on TV -- and what they do in real life, it's a problem with the child, not the media. Life, after all, has no reset button."

I disagree. I would present my case here, but it has been done much better than I ever could by Lt. Col. Dave Grossman in his article in Christianity Today or here at his website. Grossman notes that killing does not come naturally and the military conditions it's soldiers to learn to kill other humans.

How the military increases the killing rate of soldiers in combat is instructive, because our culture today is doing the same thing to our children. The training methods militaries use are brutalization, classical conditioning, operant conditioning, and role modeling. I will explain these in the military context and show how these same factors are contributing to the phenomenal increase of violence in our culture.

He discusses each item primarily with respect to television and movies; however, with the third method, operant conditioning, he pretty clearly demonstrates the media, in this case, violent video games, does condition the child.

Therefore, I'm in disagreement with the Domenech brothers -- after all, life has no reset button.

Hot Dawg! It's summer -- temperatures touched 100 yesterday in my neighborhood and July 4th a day away, what could be more American than the Hot Dog? Not Mom or Apple Pie. See this article by Paul Lukas in the NY Times mentions his favorite 'dog joints. My own favorite place for enjoying a hot dog is at the ball park -- and my personal favorite is the Fenway Frank (although see this dissenting opinion) smothered in Guldens mustard. A close second is the foot long Dodger Dog. The hot dog I had the Sunday before last in Cincinnati (while enjoying a victory by my beloved Athletics over the Reds) was excellent. The dogs in San Diego and Louisville were pretty good. And, to show you I'm no homer, the dogs served up in the Oakland-Alameda County Stadium are to be avoided.

More on the Pledge ruling. Newsweek has a cover story on the Pledge ruling -- issued so smartly the week before our Independence Day reflections on the unalienable rights we are granted by our Creator.

Stuart Taylor notes the source of this shoddy opinion: ". . . the Supreme Court’s tendency to seed its own rulings with loose rhetoric has certainly tempted adventurous lower-court judges to issue decisions that infuriate most Americans." He further comments: "If judges hope to stop a popular wartime president from robbing them of their power, they’ll need to win the support of the Congress, and the public. Attacking the Pledge of Allegiance probably wasn’t the best way to start."

George Will touches on the controversey noting that while we may not be one nation, under God, we are ". . .one nation under judges."

Next, while not in Newsweek, you should read the important insights that Howard J. Bashman has on this ruling.

Last, modified for the day, here is the conclusion of the Declaration of Independence:

And for the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Alfred T. Goodwin, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes, and our secular honor.

I'm back. Sorry about the long absence -- I thought I would be able to get on-line again last Thursday or Friday. I was in Northern Kentucky for work last week and then went to Texas for my wife's family reunion. My wife took all four kids with her from Dulles early in the morning to fly to Austin, with the eventual destination being the Dixie Dude Ranch, where the reunion was held. Unfortunately, the weather was not with her so she and the kids baked for many hours on the runway at Dulles before returning to the terminal. After my last note on Lavenski Smith, she gave me a call and filled me in. Since I was in a hotel with one phone line and a dial-up modem, I kept the phone free for updates from her. Late in the evening, she and the kids got on a flight to Chicago with the slim possibility of a flight to San Antonio, where her father was staying, and she told me that if she didn't call, it probably meant she managed to get on the flight. When she didn't call by midnight, EDT, I assumed that she was on her way to SA. What it meant, however, was just more delays. She called me about 1:00 am and said that she finally reached Chicago but that there were no connecting flights until the morning. On our earlier calls, we had discussed where to sleep in Chicago at the last minute and I had called her brother (who flies for United, based in Chicago). Well, to cut a long story short, she decided that she and the kids would sleep on the cots offered by the airline (with at least 300 other stranded passengers). So that is where this saint spent the night.

I flew out on Friday morning, also encountering weather delays and re-routing, and we finally met up in Austin at around 2 that afternoon.

Anyway, we had a wonderful time at the family reunion and got back at 1 yesterday.

Unfinished Business. Pat Leahy's Judiciary committee has finally sent the nomination of Arkansas lawyer Lavenski Smith to the full Senate. Let's get off your butt, Pat and start looking at some of these other nominees.

Here's my prior comment about Lavenski Smith, the man from Hope.

Boris the Spider. John Entwistle died today in Las Vegas. Good bye, Ox.

Victory. I imagine everyone stoping here has heard the good news that the majority of the Supreme Court recognized school choice in constitutional. Here is a good link to the various opinions in both HTML and .pdf. I note that in .pdf format all the opinions run nearly 100 pages. In other cases the Court approved random drug tests for many public high school students (Breyer and Kennedy in the majority, O'Connor dissenting), declared a gag rule on judicial candidates to be unconstitutional, and determined that chaining a prisoner to a post for seven hours in the sun is cruel and unusual punishment.

I'll read these opinions and offer comments later, if I have anything to say.

RIP I just received a note saying that the former Dean of my law school (and my Labor Law Professor) passed away recently. He was a grand man. He loved God and his family. May he rest in peace.

Dishonest Judges Don't miss this note in Instapundit regarding historical falsification by David Souter in his opinion in Atwater v. Lago Vista. The referenced article is here in .pdf format.

This is not unusual. I recall prior Supreme Court opinions that severely twisted and manipulated history to suit the Justices preferences. Nevertheless, it's nice to see someone taking on the Justices.

On the cusp. It's the evening before the Zelman decision (whether providing vouchers to parents, which may be used for religious schools) is announced (actually, it could be held over for a decision next term) -- this case, more than any other could be the main case of the October 2001 Supreme Court term. By holding on to it until the last day, the Court clearly shows that this has been the subject of intense internal debate -- far from the unanimous opinion that I once predicted.

What I am very concerned about is that the Court will confuse a policy decision from a constitutional decision. In discussions with people regarding this case in the past few weeks they have all indicated in some fashionthat they hope the Court strikes down the case because it will kill the public schools. In the Zorach case I quoted below, Justice Douglas also wrote: "This program may be unwise and improvident from an educational or a community viewpoint. That appeal is made to us on a theory, previously advanced, that each case must be decided on the basis of 'our own prepossessions.' . . . Our individual preferences, however, are not the constitutional standard. The constitutional standard is the separation of Church and State." He concluded by saying "we cannot expand [our jurisprudence to strike down] the present released time program unless separation of Church and State means that public institutions can make no adjustments of their schedules to accommodate the religious needs of the people. We cannot read into the Bill of Rights such a philosophy of hostility to religion."

Yes, there may be valid reasons for voting against a voucher system like the one used in Cleveland, however, the Court are not council members or legislators -- the only issue before them is whether the use of government vouchers by parents to provide and education for their children is an unconstitutional establishment of religion. I am strongly convinced it is not. A decision to the countrary would be as illegitimate as the 9th Circuit striking down the amendments to the pledge of allegiance.

Pledging Allegiance. Two judges on the 9th Circuit Court, one, an elderly Nixon appointee, one, a Carter appointee (and the bete noir of the conservatives) today determined that the 1954 amendment, which held the words "under God" to the national Pledge of Allegiance to be an unconstitutional Establishment of Religion.

There were four parts to this decision, the first three were not surprising or controversial. In part A, the Court rejected Newdow's (the litigant) request to compel the President and Congress to amend the Pledge of Allegiance to strike the words "under God" from the Pledge. In part B, the Court said that it would not address Newdow's request to strike down the California Statute mandating in the Pledge in the schools, because the state of California was not a party. In part C, the court said that Newdow, as a parent of a child in a particular school district had standing to challenge that district's policy. It further said that he did not have standing to challege a policy of a different school district where his child was not a current student.

In Part D of the 9th Circuit determined that "in the context of the Pledge, the statement that the United States is a nation 'under God' is an endorsement of religion. It is a profession of a religious belief, namely, a belief in monotheism." After a review of the Supreme Court's recent Establishment clause jurisprudence, the two judges on the 9th circuit held that "the 1954 Act adding the words 'under God' to the Pledge . . . violate[s] the Establishment Clause."

To refresh everyone's recollection, the "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion." A review of the Supreme Court's jurisprudence of the past 20 years or so shows that it has built an edifice of case law that is so far askew of the plumb line of the establishment clause that it was bound to collapse, and this could bring it down. A review of the 9th Circuit decision shows that it has been built on those great errors. Specifically, in Wallace v. Jaffree, 472 U.S. 38 (1985), the Court struck down an Alabama statute that authorized a one-minute period of silence in public schools "for meditation or voluntary prayer." In Lee v. Weisman, 505 the Court banned a non-sectarian invocation offered at a high school graduation 505 U.S. 577 (1992). Finally, in Santa Fe Independent School District v. Doe, 530 U.S. 290 (2000), the court prohibited student initiated and led prayer before an extra-curricular school event. Each of these interpretations is a clear departure from the touchstone of the constitution.

This is not an establishment of religion. It is time for the Court to strip down the crust that has built up over the past twenty years and get back to first principles. The first question that should be asked is whether the action of Congress or the state has the effect of establishing a religion. Does this create an institution like the established church in England? If not, that doesn't necessarily mean the legislature can, say, require students to recite the Pledge. That issue was effectively addressed by the Supreme Court in the Barnette 319 U.S. 624 case (overruling the earlier Gobitis decision) in which the Court stated:

If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein." at 642.

Back in 1952, Justice William O. Douglas, writing for the Supreme Court observed:

The First Amendment, however, does not say that, in every and all respects there shall be a separation of Church and State. Rather, it studiously defines the manner, the specific ways, in which there shall be no concert or union or dependency one on the other. That is the common sense of the matter. Otherwise the state and religion would be aliens to each other -- hostile, suspicious, and even unfriendly. Churches could not be required to pay even property taxes. Municipalities would not be permitted to render police or fire protection to religious groups. Policemen who helped parishioners into their places of worship would violate the Constitution. Prayers in our legislative halls; the appeals [p*313] to the Almighty in the messages of the Chief Executive; the proclamations making Thanksgiving Day a holiday; "so help me God" in our courtroom oaths -- these and all other references to the Almighty that run through our laws, our public rituals, our ceremonies would be flouting the First Amendment. A fastidious atheist or agnostic could even object to the supplication with which the Court opens each session: "God save the United States and this Honorable Court."

Zorach v. Clauson 343 U.S. 306 (1952) In that case, Justice Douglas went on to write:

We are a religious people whose institutions presuppose a Supreme Being. We guarantee the freedom to worship as one chooses. We make room for as wide a variety of beliefs and creeds as the spiritual needs of man deem necessary. We sponsor an attitude on the part of government that shows no partiality to any one group and that lets each flourish according to the zeal of its adherents and the appeal of its dogma. When the state encourages religious instruction or cooperates with religious authorities by adjusting the schedule of public events to sectarian needs, it follows the best of our traditions. For it then respects the religious nature of our people and accommodates the public service to their spiritual needs. To hold that it may not would be to find in the Constitution a requirement that the government show a callous indifference to religious groups. That would be preferring those who believe in no religion over those who do believe. Government may not finance religious groups nor undertake religious instruction nor blend secular and sectarian education nor use secular institutions to force one or some religion on any person. But we find no constitutional requirement which makes it necessary for government to be hostile to religion and to throw its weight against efforts to widen the effective scope of religious influence. The government must be neutral when it comes to competition between sects. It may not thrust any sect on any person. It may not make a religious observance compulsory. It may not coerce anyone to attend church, to observe a religious holiday, or to take religious instruction.

Justice Douglas is widely perceived as a judicial liberal -- I recall attending a lecture by Notre Dame Law Professor where he referred to him as William ZERO Douglas -- yet, his liberalism could be (and generally was) grounded in the constitution (he was very wrong in his Yoder dissent). I would like to see today's judicial liberals return to that type of constitutional fidelity.

For further research: The judge who wrote the majority opinion, also was on the committee that issued this church report.

Judicial Idiots. I was going to talk about Zelman tonight, and I probably still will, but before I do, I'm going to sit down and read the 9th Circuit opinion declaring the Pledge of Allegiance unconstitutional. I'll have some comments later.

I'm looking forward to seeing whether the 2 judges on the 9th Circuit cite Red Skelton as an authority?

Cover Watch It's the end of the world! So naturally Time magazine takes the cover watch this week. I mean Martha Stewart for Newsweek? Martha Stewart v. the Apocalypse? No contest.

I haven't read the story yet which looks at the Tim LaHaye - Jerry Jenkins books, but I've listed to about 4.5 of these books (I'm half way through Apollon now), but I'll tell you these books are such drivel. As I indicated I've been listening to them on books on CD and I find that whenever there's a defect in a track, I can skip to the next track and not miss a thing. If you want to read a good book on the apocalypse, look for Father Elijah by Michael O'Brien. (I'll paste a link later)

It's the end of the world as we know it and I feel fine.