In Other News

Thanks to the DPLA, images like this are accessible to all!

The DPLA has launched, yesterday while I was too busy presenting at a conference to join in the festive announcements across the history blogosphere. The DPLA (Digital Public Library of America) is an ambitious project which casts itself as the first step toward a global, free access library that will include the fullest possible amount of material (i.e. everything not covered by copyright). It is a social leveling project as much as an intellectual endeavor, allowing students at community colleges, in poorer regions of this country and eventually the world, and all the academically disadvantaged to have access to archives at places like Harvard. Relying on a variety of charitable institutions, the DPLA in its present form is a centralizing service that allows scholars--or curious web browsers--to search across a wide range of participating institutions in a single place and be linked directly to the material in those archives. It promises be, whether or not it fulfills its utopian vision of an equal academic play field, a tremendous resource for research (even as it is also likely to thwart the efforts of young scholars trying to think up excuses to get research funding to visit Boston). A link to the DPLA can now be found enshrined on my Resources page.

In less exciting news, the church institutional continues to disgrace itself on a variety of fronts. The Episcopal Church has won a "victory" in its civil case against itself before the Virginia Supreme Court.

The panel affirmed a lower court’s decision that the 3,000-member congregation, which voted in 2006 to leave the Episcopal Church, did not have the right to keep the sprawling property known as the Falls Church.

The Falls Church property is one of the country’s largest Episcopal churches and is a central landmark in downtown Falls Church.

The breakaway congregation, now called the Falls Church Anglican, has been worshiping in the Bishop O’Connell High School auditorium in Arlington County while it sought to overturn the Fairfax County Circuit Court decision from last year.

On Thursday, the Supreme Court affirmed that the property was rightly given to the mainline denomination but said some of the nearly $3 million in church coffers belongs to the Falls Church Anglican congregation.

I put "victory" in scare quotes because it hardly seems appropriate to call either side victorious when both have so miserably failed the basic standard of Christian charity and forbearance, applied particularly to this situation by Paul in 1 Corinthians 6. "Why not rather suffer wrong? Why not rather be defrauded?" Probably because Paul's churches never had anything like three million dollars in its "church coffers." If it did, maybe Paul wouldn't have been so quick on the draw with that "to have lawsuits at all with one another is already a defeat to you" nonsense.

The Orthodox Church global is having its own struggles. At the end of a long saga that has witnessed significantly more diligence than Catholic handling of sexual misconduct, Bishop Matthias has resigned. The head of the Chicago diocese of the Orthodox Church in America could no longer bear the odium of his sexual misconduct scandal and finally yielded to pressure from above to step down. In a deferential address--a momentary lapse from his conspiratorial theories about a liberal plot to manufacture his ouster--he expressed hope that "my stepping down will end the ordeal, allowing the diocese to move toward healing," and asked "for everyone's forgiveness for my failings, my mistakes and sins." He then graciously offered to forgive everyone else, for what is not entirely clear. Maybe he forgives the woman who misunderstood his "inappropriate words that I thought were being received as humorous." That certainly is the way this sincere apology feels: "I am sorry that my kindness and generosity to this person was viewed with suspicion and ulterior motives." Growing up, when I made apologies like that I got slapped. I suppose being stripped of your diocese is the ecclesiastical equivalent.

In Prague, a much bigger fish has been fried by a much sexier scandal. Metropolitan Krystof, the head of the Orthodox Church in the Czech Republic and Slovakia, has stepped down after scandal broke about his lascivious life. The prelate is alleged to have had an affair with the wife of one of his priest's and of fathering numerous illegitimate children. With all the talk of progress in Europe, it seems they are still very much medieval over there.

Denying the Holocaust: Albany Teacher Suspended for Teaching Nazism

The Nazis are stealing your children!

Nazis are bad. I learned that lesson in high school like everyone else, though, let's be honest, we all knew that Nazis were bad before we ever made it to high school. Nevertheless, that is the lesson I was taught. Nothing more; nothing less. At Albany High School in New York, one teacher tried to take this lesson a little further in three sophomore English classes:

As part of the 10th grade English persuasive writing assignment, the Albany High students were asked to pretend their teacher is a Nazi government official who must be convinced they believe Jews are the source of Germany's problems: "You must argue that Jews are evil, and use solid rationale from government propaganda to convince me of your loyalty to the Third Reich!"

The teacher is on leave, facing possible termination, because school officials and government leaders were appalled. Said Superintendent Vanden Wyngaard, "You asked a child to support the notion that the Holocaust was justified, that's my struggle. It's an illogical leap for a student to make." Said New York City Councilmen David Greenfield, "The teacher responsible for coming up with and assigning students with this task must be held accountable for attempting to indoctrinate children with anti-Semitic beliefs." Said Director of the Jewish Federation Shelly Shapiro "It's not how you teach about how prejudice has led to genocide."

Well it certainly was not how I was taught that prejudice led to genocide. I learned, "Prejudice leads to genocide. It happened with the Nazis. So don't be prejudiced like the Nazis." And that was it. Something tells me that Shapiro is short-selling the pedagogical value of what is happening here. These students, in addition to learning a valuable lesson in English (because no creative writer has only had to write the perspective of laudable characters with whom everyone agrees), would take away from this assignment a powerful and deep understanding of not merely the tired truism that "prejudice has led to genocide" but an experience of precisely how it led to genocide. It teaches the student, in the most basic way, what it was to be a civilian in Nazi Germany, under a government that flooded the intellectual marketplace with antisemitic propaganda and expected you to learn a new cultural script to mirror it. The applications extend far beyond merely a better grasp of the history of 1930s Germany to a life lesson in the way propaganda continues to be employed and continues to shape the thinking of citizens around the world. Some clever honors student might even have concluded that the consumption of media in contemporary America might be shaping his or her thought in similar ways.

Renowned scholar of religion and American culture Stephen Prothero draws much the same conclusion:

I think it’s Greenfield who is lacking in common sense here. And it's the superintendent who is being illogical.

I suppose it is possible that the teacher is a closet Nazi attempting to reconstruct the Third Reich in Albany. But isn’t it more likely that he or she is trying to teach students about the dangers of propaganda and the horrors of the Holocaust?

Consider the student who felt “horrible” about doing this assignment. Is that really a bad thing? How are high school students today supposed to feel about Nazism and the Holocaust?

Apparently, what they are supposed to feel (and think) is nothing, because the lesson high school teachers are going to take away from this fiasco is to avoid this topic at all costs, lest they risk losing their jobs.

Prothero points to a further dimension of "this fiasco," the special place of the Holocaust in the American imagination. Historian John Fea has pointed out that if the principles espoused here to teaching the Holocaust were universally applied, teachers could no longer teach the thinking of Puritans who killed witches, settlers who killed Native Americans, southerners who kept slaves, nativist who oppressed Catholic immigrants, etc. What a moralistic history we are left with! And an incomplete history at that, a half history. Of course, no one would ever suggest hamstringing historians on those topics because they are not blessed by the kind of special pleading that surrounds the Holocaust. There is no villain like Hitler, no enormity like the Holocaust, and no racism like antisemitism. That, in the end, is the kind of lesson we were taught by the two-dimensional treatment of Nazism in school. No depth, no perspective, because the history of Nazism is alone a truly simple matter in history. It is a lesson against thinking for most students, and it is a tragedy that this teacher should suffer for bringing thought--in the form of an entertaining thought experiment the like of which I never enjoyed in high school or college--back into the subject of Nazism.

I hope the teacher is reinstated, because termination over something so ridiculous is unthinkable. I also hope the teacher is fired, because to take any punishment, even a slap on the wrist, and then return willingly to that environment of educational repression strikes me as a tacit admission that the teacher actually did something wrong. Of course, the teacher is probably sitting at home now worrying about paying bills, working long enough to retire some day, and coping with social ostracism. So what I really hope is that whatever the teacher wants happens. It's a shame that it had to go this far.

The Cows, a Sequel to Hitchcock's the Birds

Photo by Ryan Thompson

Remember that cow that got shot outside the primary school in the UK? You know, the one that got shot, and then got shot again, and then got shot again, and then was finally killed? The one the police insist they definitely did not miss, because it is better to be inhumane than inaccurate? Of course you remember--unless you're from Oklahoma, in which case you're excused. Well, after promising to take seriously the "significant public interest" in the not-at-all-disproportionate response--four marksmen, one sergeant, five officers, four PCSOs, five patrol cars, and a police van--to a cow loose in a residential area, the Lincolnshire Police issued a statement:

"The animal's presence in a residential area posed a serious risk to safety. A significant amount of resources were committed to containing the animal. The intention was to safely remove the animal from the area without destroying it if at all possible.

"After more than two hours of working towards this aim, it became apparent that it was not achievable. Several options, including sedation, were considered. The RSPCA and the owner of the animal were consulted.

"As more members of the public turned up to watch the incident, prompted by online commentary on the situation, the animal became increasingly distressed and there were fears that it would jump further fences and re-enter a residential area."

A compelling argument.

Meanwhile, on the continent, the Austrians are dealing with a full blown cowpocalypse.

A police statement says the 43 steers defied attempts by police and volunteer firefighters to recapture them after wandering off Thursday and heading toward the Upper Austrian town of Freistadt. After being chased away from the railway station, they endangered motorists by stampeding onto a two-lane highway before running into a town suburb.

Two firefighters who tried to stop them were injured and needed hospital treatment.

The statement says 18 of the animals remain on the loose Friday. The rest have been corralled or tranquilized.

Oh, the humanity! Of all people, the Austrians should have a keen cultural awareness of the danger of appeasement techniques like corralling and tranquilizing. Lives are on the line, and the casualties are racking up. After two hours days of trying to control these stampeding menaces, surely it is time to take off the kid gloves and bring in the amateur marksmen with the seventy-two rounds necessary to fell eighteen cows. The real question for Americans is, if Austria solicits military aid in this time of crisis, should we send troops or should Obama just call in a drone strike?

Cow Shot, Shot Again, Then Killed

In front of an elementary school, it would appear:

Police were slammed yesterday after shooting dead an escaped cow in a primary school car park. The Belgian blue went on the run for almost three hours after fleeing its field.

Armed officers eventually cornered the terrified beast outside a primary school. Marksmen were ordered to shoot to kill and opened fire with a high-powered rifle.

But the cow survived the first two shots and did not die until it was hit by two further bullets 15 minutes later. Horrified locals accused police of animal cruelty...

"It kicked its back legs for another five or 10 minutes.

“The so-called marksman was less than 100 yards away. It was a joke.”

I'm not sure what about the cornered cow was so threatening. Or why they needed to take a coffee break between shooting it the first couple of times and finally killing it. I'm not sure why they don't have tranquilizers. I thought the police weren't as trigger happy in the UK as they are here. So much about this doesn't make sense to me.

Almost as tragic was the decision of the journalist to caption the picture in the article "Udder disgrace."

In Other News

Continuing to bring you the latest from the Orthodox world, this offer from the Orthodox Church of Cyprus is rightfully making waves:

The head of Cyprus' influential Orthodox church, Archbishop Chrysostomos II, says he will put the church's assets at the country's disposal to help pull it out of a financial crisis, after lawmakers rejected a plan to seize up to 10 percent of people's bank deposits to secure an international bailout.


Speaking after meeting President Nicos Anastasiades Wednesday, Chrysostomos said the church was willing to mortgage its assets to invest in government bonds.


The church has considerable wealth, including property, stakes in a bank and a brewery. Tuesday's rejection of the deposit tax has left the future of the country's international bailout in question.

Whether or not anything will come of the offer--and whether or not the church's assets are enough to make a substantial difference in Cyprus's financial crisis--it strikes me as precisely the right move for the church, which has been roundly and rightly criticized from all corners and in most developed countries for being inexcusably wealthy. I wonder what kind of dent the US churches could have made in 2008 if they had made a similar offer. Of course, they didn't and lack the institutional unity to make such a gesture. No longer living in an age when the apostolic heirs can honestly say "Silver and gold I have not," the Cypriot church has made a gesture that powerfully displays the way sacrifice on a church-wide scale can influence society.

Even so, there are many who would argue that the world is becoming an increasingly churchless place no matter what denominational bodies do. This "none" movement is constituted in part by those postmodern Christians enamored of the idea that Jesus never went to church, so why should they? Launching off of a quote from Toby Mac (“Jesus didn’t hang out in the church") that appeared on the Huffington Post, Revelation rock star Rick Oster has thoroughly debunked the notion of a church-free Jesus:

Since everyone knows there was no Christian church in existence in the days of Jesus’ earthly ministry, this statement is designed for its rhetorical impact, rather than its historical accuracy. Sometimes, though, rhetorical statements have a life of their own, and hearers forget the limitations of rhetoric. More probably the rhetoric of this statement was meant to emphasize the viewpoint that Jesus did not spend time associating with religious/Jewish organizations or hanging out in Jewish meeting places or chillaxing with the officialdom of Jewish religion. A fact-check of this viewpoint led me to conclude that it did not represent the whole story of Jesus.

This anti-institutional view of Jesus has a long history, but it stands in stark contrast to the picture of Jesus given us by the major writer of the New Testament, Luke, and also by John the prophet.

...To be sure, the validity of Christian ministry is determined by the authenticity of its message and accompanying lifestyle and not by its location. Bars and brothels are certainly within the purview of modern Christian ministry, but we need to be clear that this was not the fundamental approach used by Jesus. Most of Jesus’ time was spent in synagogues, in travel through the Jewish countryside, and in Jewish homes. It does not seem to have been an erratic choice when Jesus decided to give his inaugural teachings in synagogues (Lk. 4:14-15).

...We contemporary believers just might need to reconsider whether we want to recapture apostolic belief by acknowledging and confessing “that Jesus is not a parachurch Messiah” ([Oster's commentary on Revelation] p. 89), but a churchy Jesus, notwithstanding all the abuses and heresies propagated by his ostensible followers, both past and present.

Meanwhile, will Pope Francis go to Moscow? It's hard to care when you consider the momentous event that just occurred in Melfort, Saskatchewan:

Wally and Kerry LaClare raise cows on their farm near Melfort, and have seen hundreds of calves born. But last week when one of their cows gave birth, they witnessed something they've never seen before.

"Kerry came into the barn, and noticed the cow was straining a bit," said Wally LaClare. "I checked the cow and there was another calf, so we delivered it. We figured that was it, you never imagine triplets. When I came back in an hour later she was delivering her third,” he said.

The chances of a cow giving birth to triplets are so rare, about once in every 105,000 births, that a person has a better chance of hitting a hole in one.

I wonder how the chances of Orthodox-Catholic reunion stack up to that.

Two Men Go to Church Together: What Could it Mean?

Big things continue to happen in the Orthodox world, this time less comic and more significant than the Russian equivalents of Westboro Baptists demanding Alaska back. For the first time in nearly a millennia, the Ecumenical Patriarch will Catholic Mass for the installation of the new bishop of Rome:

The Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople will be present for the installation mass for Pope Francis on Tuesday. This is the first time an Ecumenical Patriarch has been present for this Catholic mass since the Great Schism of 1054, when the Eastern and Western Church cut ties with one another.

In an interview with a television network in Istanbul, Turkey, Bartholomew explained that the decision to attend was a gesture to showcase improving relations between the two Ancient Churches.

"It is a gesture to underline relations which have been developing over the recent years and to express my wish that our friendly ties flourish even more during this new era," said Bartholomew.

Other faith leaders, including other Orthodox Church officials, are expected as well. Metropolitan Tikhon, the head of the Orthodox Church in America, will be present. The Russian Orthodox Church's Patriarch will be sending his envoy.

Archpriest Leonid Kishkovsky, chairman of the Department of External Affairs and Interchurch Relations for The Orthodox Church in America, told The Christian Post that the attendance was "a significant gesture."

Fr. Kishkovsky's cool diplomacy probably rightly touches the limits of reasonable optimism, but who wants to be reasonable when the irrational optimism is boundless? It is hard not to be hopeful that such a substantial gesture is not the beginning of a quickening toward communion, toward the greatest stride toward Christian unity since...well since Christians started fracturing in earnest in the fourth century. Can you imagine the implications of the Catholics and Orthodox reestablishing communion? Neither can I. Of course, Kishkovsky is probably right when he says that union is "not in prospect at this time," but I confess I have never wanted a priest to be so wrong since the sixth century condemnation of Origen's doctrine of apocatastasis.

Fingers crossed.

Clean Monday: Straightening Out Alaska

Normally my Clean Monday thoughts tend more toward the devotional side. (I've already had some lagana this morning, have you?) But as I was perusing news from the Orthodox world, this little tidbit struck me as too delicious not to share.

US President Barack Obama must have known that his support of gay marriage would bring him trouble. But of all possible repercussions, a demand to roll back Alaska’s 1867 sale to the United States was one he was unlikely to have seen coming.

And yet that was the very claim that an ultraconservative religious group made in a Moscow arbitrage court, citing the need to protect fellow Christians from sin.

Obama’s alleged plans to legalize the “so-called same-sex marriage” threaten the freedom of religion of Alaska’s Orthodox Christians, who “would never accept sin for normal behavior,” the nongovernmental group Pchyolki (“Bees”) said.

“We see it as our duty to protect their right to freely practice their religion, which allows no tolerance to sin,” the group said in a statement on their website.

The groups charges that the contract for the sale of Alaska is null and void because of a technicality about the method of payment. Ironically, this lawsuit is only coming to light now because of the group's own inability to abide by the legal technicalities of their own system.

Something tells me this isn't the kind of cleanliness Clean Monday is supposed to be about. It's a shame that Lent starts so much later for the Orthodox this year than for Catholics and Protestants--my preference would always be to observe them simultaneously--but, if nothing else, let those observing the Western fast season allow today serve as a reminder of the purity you committed yourself to back in February. Your Orthodox brothers and sisters around the world join you today in offering themselves as living sacrifices. If only for two weeks, Christians everywhere will be united in a period of self-reflection, purification, and anticipation of the resurrection.

Animal Advocacy in North Stonington

Todd Caswell is still on the loose, but animal rights advocates are seizing the Angel shooting as an opportunity to improve the system of justice for cows, among others.

A bipartisan group of legislators, including state Rep. Diana Urban (D-North Stonington), is introducing a bill that would allow court-appointed advocates for animals during legal proceedings that concern the animals’ welfare or custody.

It a logical extension of the near universal practice in the US judicial system of appointing advocates for those without a voice, and it will almost certainly be a big step forward in animal rights law (one they've already taken in Rhode Island). Unfortunately, we still only care about violence against animals as an indicator of future violence against humans.

Urban cited data, which she noted has been available since 1971, that point to animal abuse as an early indicator of violence against humans. She has already authored legislation, now a law, that requires cross reporting of animal-abuse and domestic-violence cases. About 80 percent of school shooters were once animal abusers, she said.

“I just want society to take this seriously,” she said.

It's too bad society won't take seriously shooting a cow in the face, fatally wounding her, just for thrills and then conspiring to conceal your crime unless it can be shown to somehow threaten human well being. Baby steps, I guess.

Connecticut Takes Their Cows Seriously

And why shouldn't they. There have been fascinating new developments in the Angel assassination case. I must say, as necessarily corrupt and unjust as our legal system inherently is, I find the seriousness with which they people of North Stonington are taking the death of the Palmers' cow both intriguing and--in the interest of confession--a little reassuring. Though the trigger man remains at large, they have caught the getaway driver and the owner of the truck and gun, both of whom are being treated with righteous severity. According to The Day, Judge John J. Nazzaro has declared Max Urso, driver and senior at Wheeler High School,

a threat to the community and ordered him placed on intensive pretrial supervision, including GPS monitoring and home confinement except for medical, legal and educational outings, while his case is pending.

This in addition to being held for a time on a $25,000 bond and being in the process of getting expelled from school. It is an overwhelming reaction to what, in the minds of many, amounts to little more than the destruction of private property. The Christian response to violence is, of course, forgiveness, something which ought to be counseled particularly to members of the same church as is the case here. Yet, a secular evaluation of the progress in the protection of animals from recreational cruelty cannot help but reassure.

I can be less conflicted about the response of the community to this travesty.

After the shooting, state Rep. Diana Urban, D-North Stonington, known as a champion of animals, established "The Angel Fund" at Chelsea Groton Bank to raise money for the Palmer family. More than $3,500 has been raised. Farmer George Palmer told state police the replacement cost of the cow is $1,500, veterinary fees were $139 and it cost approximately $200 in labor to care for and move the injured cows.

Palmer's son, Asa, had been raising the cows. He said Tuesday that he was angry that people he knew from school and church would do such a thing to the animals.

Michael Jackson Finally Convicted

In the ongoing parade of atrocities that has become the staple of cow news here, the New Zealand Herald reports this "worst case of its kind" abuse case:

West Coast farmer Michael Jackson, 43, admitted breaking or injuring 230 cows tails trying to usher them into his milking shed.

Jackson pleaded guilty to a charge of failing to alleviate pain or distress in 230 injured dairy cattle under Section 11 of the Animal Welfare Act 1999.

At Christchurch District Court yesterday he was sentenced to 300 hours of community service, ordered to pay reparation of $223 for veterinary costs and was banned from owning cows for five years.

The question that leapt immediately into my mind was how many tails did he need to break before they would ban him from owning cows indefinitely. Somehow, I get the suspicion that if I were to break or injure the tails of 230 golden retrievers, I might fair worse than Michael Jackson has.

Angel Killer Caught!

It is only rarely that I am able to provide substantial follow-up for the countless bovine news that I share here, mostly because people are fleetingly interested in the goings-on in the cattle world, even if they condescend to report it. That is why I am grateful to the Bridgeport's Connecticut Post for staying on top of the slaying of Angel the Cow. Back in January, Angel and her Holstein companion were attacked in a drive by that left the Holstein hurt and Angel so badly wounded that she was euthanized. Now, it seems, the culprits have been caught:

State Police have arrested two men and are looking for a third in connection with the shooting of two cows at a North Stonington farm.

Troopers charged 18-year-old Max Urso of North Stonington on Tuesday with cruelty to animals and other crimes. Twenty-year-old Henry Williamson of Stonington was charged with hindering prosecution and making a false statement to authorities.

State police say they're also seeking 23-year-old Todd Caswell of North Stonington on animal cruelty and other charges.

According to Connecticut General Assembly website, it is "an unclassified felony to maliciously and intentionally maim, mutilate, torture, wound, or kill an animal" punishable by five years in prison, a $5,000 fine, or both.

If they'll keep reporting on it, I'll keep sharing updates.

An Unexpected Benediction

Go with God, Pope Benedict.

This is undoubtedly the biggest religious news in a long time, and, much to my unceasing shame, I can think of nothing substantial to contribute to the discussion. I can only reiterate the commonsense observation that has been made at least since the death of John Paul II, namely that the papacy no longer reflects the largest and most vibrant Catholic constituencies.

It seems that the primary discussion in the wake of Benedict's announcement has been whether or not the papacy will remain Germanic or return to Italian dominance. Never mind that Europe represents a radical minority of stereotypically nominal Catholics in the global picture.

As to the frequent and melodramatically dire warning that the election of a "third world" pope might bring about a conservative backlash that could undermine Vatican II, of course it could. But this reflects precisely the same problem as minority domination of the papacy: the guiding vision of a liberalizing strand of Catholicism which predominates in the West is foisted upon the majority of Catholics who may or may not share that vision. The papacy ought to reflect the Catholic Church, both through continuity with its honored traditions and through representation of the needs of the parishioners.

(Of course, in truth, my biggest hope is that whoever is elected will be someone willing to work closely for the bettering of relations between the papacy and the patriarchate in Constantinople. Fingers crossed.)

God Rigs the Super Bowl!

This is apparently a revelation to CNN, which has reported with some amusement:

Well, according to a new poll, 27% of Americans believe that God "plays a role in determining which team wins" sporting events. That means about 80 million Americans believe that God will help one of the teams in this Sunday's Super Bowl.

That number actually strikes me as very low. I might be surprised to find that many Americans think God cares about who wins sporting events, but the belief that God is determinative in everything which happens in the world is a venerable old Christian doctrine, particularly in America. Hopefully, that is what people have in mind when they say that God is going to pick the Super Bowl winner. Of course, I could get behind the statement that "it's clear that God likes certain teams more than others. And God's favorite -- and I know many will hate to hear this -- is clearly the New York Yankees."

This House Believes Religion Has No Place in the 21st Century

The title was the proposition debated yesterday at the Cambridge Union Society debate which included former archbishop Rowan Williams and current archatheist Richard Dawkins. The audience, perhaps contrary to expectations, overwhelming rejected the proposition (324-138). Most of the headlines in the aftermath have triumphantly declare that Williams beat Dawkins in the debate, with the not so subtle implication that Christianity has triumphed over atheism. There is a sense in which that is true, but before Christians become too jubilant over what would be a largely symbolic victory anyway, it is important to remember exactly what has won the approbation of the student audience:

Some students voiced that Dawkins was in fact "the least intriguing speaker" at the debate. One second year student told TCS: "He did not address the motion. His points focused only on debating whether religion is true, and ignored the question of whether it has a place in modern society."

The student, in critiquing Dawkins, drove right to the heart of why this victory should be, if anything, disappointing for Christians. This was not a debate about the truth claims of any particular religion, least of all Christianity. Consigned to the too often unread body of the text are the humanist, the philosopher, the neo-con, and the Muslim who also weighed in on the proposition. The issue, as the profession of one of the objectors will demonstrate, was not whether or not Christianity is true or even more simply whether or not God exists but whether or not religion, in the abstract, can function for social cohesion. Christianity is no longer the subject of debate. Neither God in heaven nor Christ incarnate are propositions worth debating. Faith has been dissolved into social utility, and in that respect Christians who are delighted by the Cambridge verdict are rejoicing in their own obsolescence.

Williams won and Dawkins lost because the latter didn't realize that the question he cared so deeply about was no longer a topic of any interest. Had the proposition been "This House Believes in a Deity," statistics suggest the vote would have been very much the same, roughly three quarters voting against. In other words, Dawkins lost because he didn't realize he had already won.

Angel Killed by Drive-By Shooter

There has been a merciless assassination in Connecticut:

Sometime during the night of Friday Jan. 18 or the morning of Saturday, Jan. 19, someone driving on Pendleton Hill Road took aim at two cows in a field. Using a high powered rifle, the shooter or shooters shot a Holstein and an Ayrshire in their faces.

The good news is, the Holstein will recover. The Ayrshire, whose name is Angel, will be euthanized. The damage is apparently too extensive. I can't help but agree with the owners evaluation:

“They have to be degenerates. They have to be someone who has nothing to lose,” he said. “I don’t have any enemies that I know of.”

I can't imagine the Ayrshire having any enemies either. Perhaps the worst part is that these gentle creatures were destined for a life as dairy cows on a little New England farm as part of a herd of five, no reduced to four.

All elegiac excesses aside, what sort of callous anthropo-chauvinism makes someone believe that it is appropriate to shoot cattle with a high powered rifle for thrills (or revenge)? Perhaps the same logic that permits sport hunting.

Paragould: The Murder Capital of Upper Northwestern Arkansas

Here is a bit of news that proved too beautiful not to be true. Back in the great state of Arkansas, the rising crime rate in Paragould now warrants the declaration of martial law:

"[Police are] going to be in SWAT gear and have AR-15s around their neck," [Police Chief] Stovall said. "If you're out walking, we're going to stop you, ask why you're out walking, check for your ID."

...[Mayor] Gaskill backed Stovall's proposed actions during Thursday's town hall.

"They may not be doing anything but walking their dog," he said. "But they're going to have to prove it."

A more recent press release has soften some of these statements, suggesting that officers wouldn't always be in SWAT gear. It also canceled the two town meetings scheduled to further discuss the issue. The cancellations were in the interest of public safety, no doubt in the same way that men with machine guns stopping you while you walk your dog is in the interest of public safety.

In a world where schools have metal detectors and TSA agents have x-ray vision, it's nice to know that Americans can still do paranoia on a smaller but equally intense scale.

Mike Huckabee on School Shootings: Open Mouth, Insert...

Mike Huckabee has offered his wisdom on the recent school shooting:

Responding to the deadly mass shooting Friday in Newtown, Connecticut, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee said new laws regulating guns won't deter such shootings, linking a lack of religious discussion in the classroom to increased violence in schools.

"We ask why there's violence in our school but we've systematically removed God from our schools," Huckabee said on Fox News. "Should we be so surprised that schools have become such a place of carnage? Because we've made it a place where we don't want to talk about eternity, life, what responsibility means, accountability."

It's a good thing the community in Nickel Mines doesn't have any televisions. Huckabee's theory falls woefully short of explaining why homeschooled Charles Carl Roberts IV killed those five little girls in the one room Amish schoolhouse. I would tell Huckabee not to quit his day job, but blithely politicizing evil for partisan ends is his day job.

What a world.

Abortion is Murder, Rabbi

In an ill-advised recent article, Rabbi Boteach attempted to argue in the Huffington Post that the Catholic Church ought to abandon its stance on abortion because it is based on a mistranslation of the Hebrew in the Septuagint. There are countless reasons--logical and illogical--why the Catholic Church, not to mention other "Bible-believing" Christians, can ignore Boteach's argument, not the least of which is that the very last Christian denomination that would take doctrinal advice about its tradition from a rabbi is the Roman Catholic Church. There are better reasons of course, including that the Catholic Church does not view the Septuagint with the same disdain that modern Jews do (the opinions of late-antique Jews notwithstanding). It is also worth noting that even if the tradition were based on a faulty reading of the text in question, the Catholic Church has traditionally been loathe to interpret Scripture without tradition as a hermeneutical lens. Wrong or not, the tradition gives the normative starting point for reading the sacred text.

The best reason, however, for ignoring Boteach is that the Christian pro-life tradition does not spring exclusively (or even primarily) from the verse in question. Boteach rightly identifies a passage in Exodus as the prooftext to which many contemporary Christians turn to ground their opposition to abortion in Scripture:

The Hebrew Bible makes only one reference to abortion, and this is by implication. Exodus 21:22-23 states: "And if two men strive together and hurt a woman with child, so that her fruit depart, and yet no harm follow, he shall be surely fined, accordingly as the woman's husband shall lay upon him, and he shall pay as the judges determine. But if any harm follows, though shalt give life for life."

He even goes through the trouble of tracing the Catholic tradition of interpretation for this verse back through Byzantine law to the writings of the second century Latin father Tertullian--a noble effort for a HuffPo article. Not being in a position--nor thinking it particularly relevant--to challenge this historical account, I grant it to him, arguendo. I will even grant him his exegetical work on the meaning of the original text. In both cases the points are moot.　

What truly matters is that Boteach fails to consider a Christian tradition against abortion that antedates even Tertullian and is based on another text in the Hebrew Bible which references abortion by implication: "Thou shalt not kill." Outrage is sure to follow at the suggestion that the commandment can be simply construed to prohibit abortion, but the argument being made here is not an exegetical one. It is historical. I need not demonstrate that the prohibition on murder extends to the unborn, only that the text was not corrupted in its translation to the Septuagint and that an early Christian tradition construed the verse to prohibit abortion.

If anyone seriously doubts the first point, I will be glad to argue it, but for my purposes here, the latter point is the more novel and more contentious. Yet, had Boteach bothered to dig only a little deeper he would have found an earlier contemporary of Tertullian, Athenagoras, writing passionately against all murder, including abortion. The following is from his A Plea for Christians, specifically from a section when he is answering charges that Christians kill and eat babies as part of their "love feasts:"

For when they know that we cannot endure even to see a man put to death, though justly; who of them can accuse us of murder or cannibalism? Who does not reckon among the things of greatest interest the contests of gladiators and wild beasts, especially those which are given by you? But we, deeming that to see a man put to death is much the same as killing him, have abjured such spectacles. How, then, when we do not even look on, lest we should contract guilt and pollution, can we put people to death? And when we say that those women who use drugs to bring on abortion commit murder, and will have to give an account to God for the abortion, on what principle should we commit murder? For it does not belong to the same person to regard the very foetus in the womb as a created being, and therefore an object of God’s care, and when it has passed into life, to kill it; and not to expose an infant, because those who expose them are chargeable with child-murder, and on the other hand, when it has been reared to destroy it.

The passage is interesting for its implications both for the Christian position on capital punishment and our modern delight in virtualizing our love of torture. For the moment, however, consider that abortion falls into a single category, "murder," considered here by Athenagoras: execution, abortion, infanticide. They are all equally beneath the broad heading of murder which, naturally, Christians abstain from. All these are not only opposed by Christians on the grounds that all are murder, but Athenagoras thought them so central to Christian belief and practice that anyone who knew a Christian would know that he abhorred execution and opposed abortion and that on those grounds could be freed from any suspicion of infanticide. There is no complex exegetical wrangling, no attempt to define the way Hebrew law applies to Christian ethics. Just the simple maxim Christians do not murder and the obvious (at least in the second century) implication that this includes abortion.

The precedent goes back even farther than even Athenagoras. The late first century Didache includes a clear statement on abortion and it links it again, not with the passage Boteach cited, but with the general prohibition on murder:

Thou shalt do no murder, thou shalt not commit adultery, thou shalt not corrupt boys, thou shalt not commit fornication, thou shalt not steal, thou shalt not deal in magic, thou shalt do no sorcery, thou shalt not murder a child by abortion nor kill them when born, thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's goods, thou shalt not perjure thyself, thou shalt not bear false witness, thou shalt not speak evil, thou shalt not cherish a grudge, thou shalt not be double-minded nor double-tongued

Here the connection with the Ten Commandments is even clearer, as the various applications of the commands are interspersed haphazardly with quotes from the Decalogue. Not only does the general command not to murder apply, but it applies specifically to murder of "a child by abortion" and, as with Athenagoras, infanticide.

The two passages offered provide wonderful avenues for further contemplation. The language of creation and the perception of the fetus as a child as early as the first century would seem to lend legitimacy to much of the rhetoric used by the pro-life camp. More important, however, at least for my purpose here is the fact that the anti-abortion stance of Christianity, the tradition that Boteach ties specifically to the Catholic Church, is neither bound to the passage Boteach considers nor is it as late in its articulation as he imagines. The belief that God has tasked his people with the preservation of life--in all the richest, theologically-informed meanings of the word--is not something the exegetical acrobatics and critiques of tradition can remove, especially not ones that fail by their own critical criteria.

Representative Democracy in Action

Back when the Arab Spring was just beginning to realize itself and Egypt was being thrown into chaos, I worried that the Coptic Christians would be caught in the crosshairs and that they might be tempted to respond in a way unfitting of the call we have received in Christ to take up a cross for his sake. Unfortunately but unsurprisingly, I was right on both counts. I also expressed a certain uncertainty about the intrinsic value of representative democracy when compared to authoritarian regimes. Undoubtedly, three decades under Mubarak did not see the Coptic church thrive in an open environment of religious freedom, but there is perhaps a bit of nostalgia for the times when the primary complaint was the inability to get government clearance to build new churches.

An Egyptian court convicted in absentia Wednesday seven Egyptian Coptic Christians and a Florida-based American pastor, sentencing them to death on charges linked to an anti-Islam film that had sparked riots in parts of the Muslim world...Egypt's official news agency said the court found the defendants guilty of harming national unity, insulting and publicly attacking Islam and spreading false information—charges that carry the death sentence.

Chances are that none of the defendants convicted of capital "spreading false information" will ever meet with justice at the hands of the Egyptian judicial system, which may explain why the story is buried in the middle of a religion in brief article. (Although I understand that Fox is making a big deal about it, undoubtedly for all the wrong reasons.) But if anyone thinks that the fact that these eight delinquents are safe means that this verdict is a paper tiger, they're deluding themselves. Pause for a moment and consider being a Copt in Egypt and learning that at any time the accusation of something as vague as spreading false information or harming national unity might carry with it a death penalty. It should unnerve every Christian to realize that by Muslim standards the very confession that Jesus Christ is the Son of God is both the ultimate falsehood and a direct assault against Islam.

Perhaps it won't be that direct, that obvious an abuse of the law and a persecution of Christians. Perhaps it is merely the construction of a culture of fear to keep Christians in their place in a society that is deeply inimical to them. Regardless, it would appear that the will of the people truly is being enshrined in their government, and it may be a government less willing to capitulate to the pressures of the pluralistic Christian West. My hope, however, continues to be less that the church will not be persecuted (the Great Physician did not come to treat the healthy) but that it will respond to whatever persecution may come with a meekness which deserves the inheritance reserved for it.

Cow News

If you thought the story, previously shared, of cows producing lactose-free milk was astonishing, just wait until you see what these magnificent creatures are doing now:

Would protection against the deadly human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) make you willing to give up your vegan lifestyle? New research from Australia’s Melbourne University suggests that a type of treated cow’s milk could provide the world’s first HIV vaccine.

Working together with biotechnology company Immuron Ltd., the Australian research team vaccinated pregnant dairy cows with an HIV protein. This injection posed no risk to the cows, as they are unable to contract the disease, according to researchers. After giving birth, the first milk produced by the cows was found to contain HIV-disabling antibodies...

“We were able to harvest antibodies specific to the HIV surface protein from the milk,” said Dr. Marit Kramski, who is presenting her research as one of the winners of Fresh Science — a national program for early-career scientists. “We have tested these antibodies and found in our laboratory experiments that they bind to HIV and that this inhibits the virus from infecting and entering human cells,” she said.

Got milk?