Some days, you just need to turn off social media, avoid the news, and get lost in a good novel. I find that reading fiction by someone long gone from this life helps with perspective. Librivox.org is my go-to for free audiobooks. They have most of the classics. Right now I’m in the middle of 20 Years After, the sequel to Alexandre Dumas’ Three Musketeers. Like most sequels, it’s not as good as the original, but I was in France last summer and I love a good destination novel (for francophiles dreaming of the streets of Paris, you'd be better off with Les Miserables or The Hunchback of Notre Dame).

You’ll find a few more suggestions here. You can also download the app for iOS and Android.


If you're a Librivox user (or if you're just into classic fiction), what's your favorite book? I'm looking for recommendations for my next read.

In an emotional gathering July 12th, President Barack Obama and former President George W. Bush delivered challenging speeches, calling for unity and progress in light of the Dallas police shootings. Below is a collection of highlights from the speeches of Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama. Some of these remarks are long and sermonic, but are well worth the read. I recommend listening to at least portions of each speech to get a sense of the gravitas with which they spoke.

George Bush:
“Most of us imagine if the moment called for it, we would risk our lives to protect a spouse or a child. Those wearing the uniform, assume that risk for the safety of strangers. They and their family share the unspoken knowledge that each new day brings new dangers.” 
 
“Too often we judge other groups by their worst examples, while judging ourselves by our best intentions.” 
 
“To renew our unity we only need to remember our values. We have never been held together by blood or background. We are bound by things of the Spirit, by shared commitments to the common ideas. At our best, we practice empathy, imagining ourselves in the lives and circumstances of others. This is the bridge across our nation’s deepest divisions.” 
 
“It’s not merely a matter of tolerance, but of learning from the stories of our fellow citizens and finding our better selves in the process.”
 
“At our best, we honor the image of God we see in one another. We recognize that we are bothers and sisters sharing the same brief moment on earth and owing each other the loyalty of our shared humanity.” 
 
“We do not want the unity of grief or the unity of fear. We want the unity of hope, affection and high purpose.”

----------------
Barack Obama:
"Scripture tells us that in our sufferings, there is glory, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. Sometimes the truths of these words are hard to see. Right now, those words test us because the people of Dallas, people across the country are suffering."
 
"Like police officers across the country, these men and their families shared a commitment to something larger than themselves. They weren’t looking for their names to be up in lights. They’d tell you the pay was decent, but wouldn’t make you rich. They could have told you about the stress and long shifts. And they’d probably agree with Chief Brown when he said that cops don’t expect to hear the words “thank you” very often, especially from those who need them the most. No. The reward comes in knowing that our entire way of life in America depends on the rule of law, that the maintenance of that law is a hard and daily labor, that in this country we don’t have soldiers in the streets or militias setting the rules.
Instead, we have public servants, police officers, like the men who were taken away from us."
 
"Despite the fact that police conduct was the subject of the protest, despite the fact that there must have been signs or slogans or chants with which they profoundly disagreed, these men and this department did their jobs like the professionals that they were."

According to Google, "What does it mean to leave the EU?" and "What is the EU?" are the top two questions UKers are asking the Internet after voting to exit the EU. I wish I could say I was shocked, but I'm not even surprised. 

When Donald Trump trademarked Ronald Reagan's "Make America Great Again" slogan in 2012, his marketing strategy was intentional and insightful. For older conservatives who had lived through the Reagan years, the slogan hearkens back to an era of supply-side economic policies and the restoration of national morale after the Vietnam War. For younger voters and those unfamiliar with Reagan's speeches, the slogan is less historical than it is rhetorical. In the interest of understanding where this rhetorical power comes from, let's break the slogan down one word at a time, starting with "Again." 

Again: The dictionary definition is fairly obvious: “once more; relating to a previous position or condition.” Again is nondescript, unspecific, and precisely because of that, inspiring. It rallies supporters to charge bravely towards something once held, like King Henry V rallied the troops into battle:
                         Once more [again] unto the breach, dear friends, once more;
                         Or close the wall up with our English dead.

Jesus said it, but before him Confucius said it too. So did the Roman stoic Seneca the Younger: "Do to others what you would have them do to you." So enough talk about closing our borders and building walls. This is the principle that led Ghandi and Martin Luther King Jr. to lead nonviolent revolutions, and I hope it continues to shape our individual, communal, national and global ethos.

It means trusting others and taking the long view of human nature, trusting that even if someone takes advantage of you at first, eventually, you'll win them over. And in Canada this week, we see the results:

This presidential election is by far the craziest that I've witnessed in my 30 years on this planet. If you've been around longer and can remember another election season that comes even close, please leave a comment, I'd really be interested (apparently some of the Founding Father's could have held their own with Trump). But despite the name-calling and theatrics happening in the Republican debates recently, there have been some bright lights. 

-JEB!, regarding dialogue and treating others with respect, even across party lines:

 JEB!: "I don't think Barack Obama has bad motives. I just think he's wrong on a lot of issues... If you start with the premise that people have good motives, you can find common ground."

JEB! also points out that the divisiveness we've been seeing in Washington isn't present at the state and local level.

America needs more leaders who can admit this. I suspect that behind the scenes even Washington politicians get along better than the media portrays. 

-Bernie Sanders on religion:

"I worry very much about a society where some people say spiritually, 'It doesn't matter to me. I got it [right]. I don't care about other people.' My spirituality is, we are all in this together. When children go hungry, when veterans sleep out on the street, it impacts me."

I'll leave it to the economists to prove whether or not Democratic Socialism has any real possibility of remedying these problems, but you don't have to agree with Bernie's politics  to agree with his sentiments (I would point you to JEB!'s quote above). This idea is at the heart of Christianity:  "Religion that God accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world" (James 1:27). And as Bernie has pointed out in other places, it's also present in Judaism: "Love your neighbor as yourself; I am the L-RD... The stranger who resides with you shall be to you as one of your citizens; you shall love him as yourself, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt: I the L-RD am your God." (Leviticus 19:18, 34). And in Islam: "None of you [truly] believes until he wishes for his brother what he wishes for himself" (An-Nawawi’s Forty, 13, 56, Hadith); "Seek for mankind that of which you are desirous for yourself, that you may be a believer" (Sukhanan-i-Muhammad, Teheran, 1938). To see examples from other religions, click here.

These are the bright lights I've seen this election, I'm sure there are others. Let's learn from them how to respect people on the other side of the aisle, and let's work together to care for those who are most vulnerable in our country, and in our world.

I started this post right after the State of the Union Address back in January, but before I could finish it, my economics class amped up and I haven't had a chance to finish it until now. With all the craziness going on in the political arena right now, it somehow seems important again...

The ongoing presidential debates mark the perfect time to take a brief look at logic and statistics. On any given issue, statistics are often used to create a bulletproof case, but things aren't always what they seem. In fact, statistics are tricky little buggers. They are used to strengthen arguments and make them appear logical, but how good is a statistic if you can't fact check it? Most of us aren't equipped to go beyond the basic steps of fact checking, even if the Internet makes it possible. 

My rule of thumb: Do a quick Google search and look for multiple perspectives on the issue involved. If it's political, look for both conservative and liberal voices. If a study is mentioned, try to find the original and decipher it on your own, or look for a .edu website explaining it. 

Here's an example from President Obama's 2016 State of the Union Address:

According to this speech, the U.S. spends "more on our military than the next eight nations combined." Presented this way, the numbers seem outrageous. Why are we spending so much on national defense when no one else even comes close? (By way of comparison, in 2009, U.S. defense spending accounted for 40% of global arms spending, and in 2012, our defense budget was 6x larger than China's).

Book Review: Scoring Transcendence: Contemporary Film Music as Religious Experience
By Kutter Calloway
Baylor University Press, 2013 
​
  ​  As the title suggests, Scoring Transcendence by Kutter Calloway is concerned with parsing the theological implications of film music. Callaway’s thesis is premised on the notion that the divine Spirit is present and active in all human activities, including those activities outside the bounds of traditional religion. His goal in writing is to help readers become aware of the Spirit’s activity, particularly in our film experiences.[1]
        Callaway begins by showing that films, particularly film scores, have the potential to provide first-order spiritual encounters with the Transcendent. Using Pixar’s short library of animated films, his first set of examples will be accessible to most readers. Moreover, by starting with a list of films many would initially dismiss as “children’s movies,” Callaway is able to make a plausible case with more clarity and less effort than if he had begun with less accessible films like “The Tree of Life.”[2]     
          Methodologically, Callaway engages in second order theological reflection by analyzing film scores, while first-order theological experiences are drawn from personal interviews with movie-goers and from his own encounters with the divine in film.[3] This is essential to his argument that “’meaning’ emerges through the interplay between both the film’s form and the film’s reception.”[4] In other 
words, meaning cannot be solely deduced through the process of analytic logic from a distant observer, viewers engage a range of inherent meanings through the totality of their experiences. A two way hermeneutical movement occurs between our life experiences and our film experiences, so that what we experience in life affects how we watch films, yet our experiences watching films also profoundly impact the way we live our lives.[5]            
            Cutter argues that the hermeneutic by which we interpret our film experience arises not only from the images we see on the screen, or even from the plot. The music functions to create a surplus of additional meaning over and above the images and stories.[6] Calloway then uses specific examples from an array of films to show how a single musical theme or a major or minor key can change the way viewers interact with a story or scene.[7]
Critical Dialogue
            The above raises a question: Does God reveal Godself through anything and everything? Callaway wants us to believe that the “inspiriting presence” of the divine is permeating creation with redemptive activity. The transcendent power of film scores has little to do with second order theology or the knowledge of God, it has rather to do with the human/divine encounter in what traditionally has been called “general revelation.” [8] For a Protestant theologian like Callaway, this naturally leads to a second question: does this focus on the divine Spirit promote a low Christology? 
             Traditionally, Protestant theology has been concerned with a high Christology, insisting from passages such as Colossians 1:15-23 that all things were “created for him (Jesus)… that in everything he might be preeminent” (ESV). By emphasizing general revelation and the work of the Spirit in all of humanity, does Callaway risk missing out on the core of the Christian message? Callaway’s research on nonreligious viewer reviewing websites reveals that many people have experiences with the transcendent through watching film. The Spirit’s indwelling presence frees us “to move beyond pure critique, celebrating and affirming the ways in which cultural products like film reflect the presence and movement of God in the world.”[9]
            Thus, Scoring Transcendence provides readers with the tools to deepen their understanding of the film watching experience, by viewing it theologically, as something greater than cognitive-emotional reaction, as divine encounter. 


[1] Kutter Callaway, Scoring Transcendence: Contemporary Film Music as Religious Experience (Waco: Baylor University Press, 2013), 4.
[2] Callaway himself told me this was unintentional, a recommendation from the publisher. Originally, the Pixar chapter was the book’s conclusion.
[3] Callaway, 50.
[4] Ibid, 109.
[5] Ibid, 131.
[6] Ibid, 106.
[7] Ibid, 119.
[8] Ibid, 155.
[9] Ibid, 191.

The holidays threw me out of the habit of writing, but I promise to have regular posts again soon. In the meantime, watch this video from Evelyne Reisacher. I studied under her during my M.A., and she became one of my favorite professors for her compassion and insight.

Dr. Reisacher is professor of Islamic studies and intercultural relations, and this video (from an evangelical conference) is a must-watch for Christians concerned about the future of Christian/Muslim relations, Islam and the West, or Muslims in America... especially this election season.