Embedded Files
( - previous issue - )
Apologia Report 13:20
May 19, 2008
Subject: A stinging analysis of evangelicalism and pop-culture
In this issue:
CULTURE - the "deep contradictions" and "neurotic relationship" of evangelicals and American popular culture
EDUCATION - "an intellectual version of paradise"
ISLAM - yet another update on America's accommodation to sharia law
ORIGINS - why "intelligent design is a greater threat to science than creationism ever was"
WINFREY, OPRAH - latest promo, "the most exciting thing I've ever done"
-------
CULTURE
Rapture Ready!: Adventures in the Parallel Universe of Christian Pop Culture, by Daniel Radosh [1] -- reviewer for the on-line magazine Slate, Hanna Rosin reports that Radosh mines "the deep contradictions of Christian popular culture" while describing "evangelicals' deeply neurotic relationship with popular culture." In the final analysis, "Worried that American popular culture leads people - and especially teenagers - astray, the Christian version is designed to satisfy all the same needs in a cleaner form."
Rosin cautions that "few of us have any idea of how truly extensive this so-called subculture is." She offers clear insight: "What does commercializing do to the substance of belief, and what does an infusion of belief do to the product?" And later, she identifies the plight of Christian rock musicians who "want to make good, authentic music. But they are also enlisted in a specific mission which confines their art."
Her summary example is chilling. "A Christian friend who'd grown up totally sheltered once wrote to me that the first time he heard a Top 40 station he was horrified, and not because of the racy lyrics: 'Suddenly, my lifelong suspicions became crystal clear,' he wrote. 'Christian subculture was nothing but a commercialized rip-off of the mainstream, done with wretched quality and an apocryphal insistence on the sanitization of reality.'" Slate, May 5 '08, <http://www.slate.com/id/2190482>
---
EDUCATION
"Dwelling in Possibilities: Our students' spectacular hunger for life makes them radically vulnerable" by Mark Edmundson, professor of English at the University of Virginia, who considers such vulnerability a good thing. Well into this lengthy and observant essay on what passes for college life and its attendant challenges today, Edmundson presents a candid educator's purpose statement along with his methodology.
"Genuine education is a process that gives students a second chance. They've been socialized once by their parents and teachers; now it's time for a second, maybe a better, shot. It's time - to be a little idealizing about it - for Socrates to have a turn.
"For a student to be educated, she has to face brilliant antagonists. She has to encounter thinkers who see the world in different terms than she does. Does she come to college as a fundamentalist guardian of crude faith? Then two necessary books for her are Freud's Future of an Illusion [2] and Nietzsche's The Anti-Christ [3]. Once she's weathered the surface insults, she may find herself in an intellectual version of paradise, where she can defend her beliefs or change them, and where what's on hand is not a chance conversation, as Socrates liked to say, but a dialogue about how to live. Is the student a scion of high-minded liberals who think that religion is the OxyContin - the redneck heroin - of Redneck Nation? Then on might come William James and The Varieties of Religious Experience [4] or Schopenhauer's essays on faith [5]." Chronicle of Higher Education, 54:27 - 2008, pB7, <http://chronicle.com/free/v54/i27/27b00701.htm>
---
ISLAM
"Amerabia" by Frank J. Gaffney, Jr. -- reviews the USA's "accommodation to totalitarian ideology known alternatively as Islamism, jihadism or Islamofascism." Gaffney describes the findings of "last year's federal trial of the Holy Land Foundation on terrorism-financing charges." It revealed the various "front organizations systematically established by the Islamist organization known as the Ikhwan, or Muslim Brotherhood." Most notable among them are: "the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) and the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC)."
Gaffney reports on the "Muslim Brotherhood's comprehensive plan to set down roots in civil society. It begins by both founding and taking control of American Muslim organizations.... [I]n the past seventeen years, the Ikhwan has succeeded beyond its wildest dreams. Groups like CAIR, ISNA and MPAC not only made great strides in what Ibrahim calls 'the common task [of] instill[ing] the notion among Arab-Americans or European immigrant communities of Muslim countries that they are not part of secular multicultural societies.' Brotherhood fronts have also penetrated and exercised enormous influence....
"The FBI allows CAIR to provide 'sensitivity training' for its agents. U.S. intelligence actively recruits at ISNA and other Ikhwan front conferences. One of ISNA's highly placed admirers, Pentagon deputy chief Gordon England's consigliere Hisham Islam, was allowed to purge the Joint Chiefs of Staff's Islamist expert, Steven Coughlin, for warning against such practices.
Ê "Most recently, two key federal agencies Ð the State Department and the Department of Homeland Security Ð encouraged American officials to eschew, when describing our enemies, the use of such terms as jihadist, mujahedeen, Islamic terrorist, Islamist, holy warrior and Islamofascism." From townhall.com, May 5 '08, <http://tinyurl.com/657lan>
---
ORIGINS
Only a Theory: Evolution and the Battle for America's Soul, by Kenneth R. Miller [6] -- "Thoroughly enjoyable and informative, this new book by Miller (Finding Darwin's God [7]), a Brown University biologist and leading proponent of evolution, dismantles the scientific basis of intelligent design piece by piece. He does this by taking seriously the claims of intelligent design (though with tongue often in cheek), such as irreducible complexity, and looking at the biological facts and the dubious conclusions ID concepts would lead to. He turns to the peer-reviewed scientific literature to demonstrate that the two biological phenomena ID proponents say could not have evolved - blood-clotting proteins and bacterial flagella - are now well-enough understood to fully rebut intelligent design. Looking at the underlying philosophical issues, Miller explains that ID's proponents want to replace modern science with '"theistic science" ... that would use the Divine not as ultimate cause, but as scientific explanation.' Miller effectively explores the devastating consequences such a change would have on both science and society. In a measured, well-reasoned book, Miller explains why evolution does not deny us our humanity or our unique place in the universe." Publishers Weekly, Apr 14 '08, p46.
A later interview between Miller and Publishers Weekly staff writer Sarah Gold (Apr 28 '08, p121) reveals the following:
SG: "How would you quickly sum up the central flaw in intelligent design?"
KM: "No evidence ... the argument is, we see a feature of a biological system that evolution couldn't have produced. Therefore something else must have made it. Now that's equivalent to saying, let's suppose, you think the moon is made of green cheese. And we get soil samples back from the moon, and you know what? They're not made of granite. So I say, great, that's evidence for the green cheese theory. Well, it's not. It's an entirely negative argument."
SG: "Why do you say that intelligent design is a greater threat to science than creationism was?"
KM: "First, intelligent design is less easily identified as religious in nature. And second, it promotes a kind of relativistic interpretation of science."
Also see: <http://www.publishersweekly.com/article/CA6558404.html?nid=2287>
---
WINFREY, OPRAH
The Christian Science Monitor (May 5 '08, n.p.) makes an unusual, though effective platform for Peter Jones, professor at Westminster Seminary (Escondido, CA). In "A New Earth: The Oprah-Tolle juggernaut is deeply unbiblical," Jones rebuts the latest New Age book promotion made by Winfrey: "an unprecedented, 10-week Web broadcast to discuss spiritual teacher Eckhart Tolle's latest bestselling book, A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose [8] (#2 on Amazon.com as I write this - RP).
Jones explains that New Earth "claims to liberate us from old, ideological, 'I am right; you are wrong' religious beliefs. It offers a new spirituality that supposedly lies at the hidden center of all religions. ...
"The Bible and A New Earth at first seem very similar, because Tolle's teachings are often presented in a quasi-Christian framework and affirmed by Oprah as consonant with Christianity. ...
"On the issue of the nature of God and humanity, and the way of salvation, the apparent agreements give way to fundamental contradictions.
"At bottom, one approach is rooted in God's grace. The other is rooted in man's vanity.
"For Tolle, echoing the teachings of the ancient Gnostics, the chief error is ignorance of our true self. This leads to the rise of 'egoic mind patterns,' a false consciousness that causes distress. This ego also mistakenly sees as real the 'forms' and 'content' of everyday life and the distinctions we see therein: right and wrong, creature and Creator. ...
"Oprah - and her millions of followers - are accepting the rules and doctrines of another system, Tolle's Gnostic view of truth that Jesus' earliest followers warned against. No wonder so many Christians are confused." <http://www.csmonitor.com/2008/0505/p09s01-coop.html>
-------
Sources, Monographs:
1 - Rapture Ready!: Adventures in the Parallel Universe of Christian Pop Culture, by Daniel Radosh (Scribner, 2008, hardcover, 320 pages) <http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0743297709/apologiareport>
2 - The Future of an Illusion, by Sigmund Freud (W. W. Norton, 1989, paperback, 80 pages) <http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0393008312/apologiareport>
3 - The Anti-Christ, by Friedrich Nietzsche (Wilder, 2008, hardcover, 108 pages) <http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/160459327X/apologiareport>
4 - Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature, by William James (BiblioBazaar, 2007, paperback, 458 pages) <http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1426442890/apologiareport>
5 - Religion, A Dialogue, Etc.: The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer, by Arthur Schopenhauer and T. Bailey Saunders (Kessinger, 2004, paperback, 68 pages) <http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1419161288/apologiareport>
6 - Only a Theory: Evolution and the Battle for America's Soul, by Kenneth R. Miller (Viking, 2008, hardcover, 256 pages) <http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/067001883X/apologiareport>
7 - Finding Darwin's God: A Scientist's Search for Common Ground Between God and Evolution, by Kenneth Miller (Cliff Street Books, 2000, paperback, 338 pages) <http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0060930497/apologiareport>
8 - A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose, by Eckhart Tolle (Penguin, 2008, paperback, 336 pages) <http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0452289963/apologiareport>
-------
( - next issue - )
Page updated
Google Sites
Report abuse