Tasty Tidbits 8/1/11

1. Debt deal.
2. Ancient meets ultra-modern — Russian Center in Paris.
3. Islams.
4. Champion “constrained cinema.”
5. Phases of Conversion.
6. Evangelicalism appreciated.
7. From the annals of plagiarism.

1

Consensus seems to be that the Tea Party won on the debt deal. I’m grateful that some cuts were made in our Department of War Defense. 

I remember, though, the dubious joys of having the GOP in full charge.

Can we go back to 1776 and reconsider?

2

I wouldn’t have thought a blending of Orthodoxy with ultra-modern architecture was possible, but Atelier Zündel & Cristea, on commission from the Russian Federation, has executed a beautiful blend in Paris.

Perhaps I should add “beautiful inside.” I don’t care for the exterior; not for a Church.

3

I’ve said or implied it before, and now someone else thoughtfully says it:

It is simple foolish and silly to reduce Islam to one homogenous group. There are a variety of forms of Islam just as there are diverse interpretations of Judaism, Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism and Taoism.
The form Islam takes in Iran is different than in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait is different from Pakistan, Egypt than Sudan. Islam in North Africa and the Middle East is distinctively different than Islam in Turkey, Indonesia, the Balkans and Russia. So, whose version of Islam should the West attempt to interpret?
Whose version of Christianity should the Muslims accept and why? The answer to such questions will certainly hold and occupy the thoughtful in the 21stcentury.
Listening to Islam is a fine primer on the fact that the West can no more ignore or caricature Islam. The task in the future will be both to understand and discern the future of Islam and the West—demonization, idealization or reducing Islam is a homogenous group will not do.

4

Got 4 minutes? The follow this link to a stunning “constrained cinema” grand prize winner (3 minutes) and the introduction (less than a minute to read).

(By the way: 67 years ago today, Anne Frank wrote her final diary entry.)

5

I first encountered Steve Robinson as cohost of a radio show in Phoenix which got syndicated, so to speak, as a Podcast at Ancient Faith Radio. Then, with his trade being construction, he started Steve the Builder, a second podcast, and Pithless Thoughts, a blog.

I like Steve better as a solo than a duo. He’s had some very provocative podcasts and blogs.

Having given him that build-up, I find that the blog I wanted especially to link, on Phases of Conversion, was stolen from another blogger, Silouan Thompson, whose website is gorgeous and whose material is strikingly good. Oh well. Steve acknowledged it.

And I hereby acknowledge having experienced Phase 1 and maybe the early warning signs of Phase 2 of conversion over the last 14 years, with Evangelicalism in particular (Calvinism less so, although it was my penultimate tradition) as my target. I’ve been impatient much of my life, and the vinegar in the face of “wake up, you stupid people!” is a characteristically impatient alternative to putting out honey. It pretty much worked with me, starting with Father John Whitehead’s durable polemic against Sola Scriptura, of which Silouan has reminded me by incorporating it.

I’ll try to do better, though.

6

One good reason for getting all softy and trying to do better is 3 reminders this week of the best Evangelicalism has to offer once you get away from the Televangelists:

1. John R.W. Stott, who I had lost touch with but who leavened the Evangelical loaf, or at least part of it.
2. Other Evangelicals who quietly do good, and whose lives may surpass what one might expect given their soteriology.
3. The (apparently counterintuitive) news that Bible reading tends to make people better in several respects, Evangelical being, on paper at least, big Bible readers.

That last item doesn’t really come as news to me. It has been my experience that the bigoted blowhards of the western world are not all that conversant with the Bible most of the time, even if they’ve picked up a snippet here and there.

7

Funny/pathetic story I heard this week.

Cheating and wholesale plagiarism are rampant on campus today. It seems a student bought a paper on the internet and turned it in as his own.

Trouble is, the professor recognized as the professor’s own work, published some years earlier. He called in the student.

“I want to talk to you about your term paper.”

“Why? Is something wrong with it?”

“No, no, no! It’s excellent! Amazingly well thought-out and written! So much so that I thought you might enjoy reading this ….” Whereupon, Prof reaches for the Journal containing his article, opens it, and hands it to the student.

Student begins reading and looks up, puzzled. “Why did you think I might enjoy this?”

The light goes on in Prof’s head. “My gosh! You didn’t even read your paper before handing it in, did you?,” handing it back to the student for comparison with the journal article.

Comparing them for a few seconds, the student looks up and says accusingly “You’re out to get me, aren’t you?”

(Told to me as a true story. Story-teller’s identity omitted.)

Bon appetit!