Archives for June, 2002
Some Canada Day Long Weekend Reading
Over at ginkworld.net’s postmodern theology discussion group we spent some time discussing some of the differences between Canada and our friends to the south. There are some excellent books that deal with some of the defining moments of Canada as a country. Here is my shortlist… you will notice they all come from Amazon.ca.
Vimy by Pierre Burton - one of the greatest books that bring back one of the defining moments of Canadian nationalism.
The Great Depression by Pierre Burton - this book explains much of the mentality of the older generations in the west. It gives an insightful view of the horrors of life across the west (where it was worse). It was really chilling to read of how hard it hit places like Saskatoon and the small surrounding towns. Many people who live in Spiritwood, went north during the depression to start a new life in the 1930’s. A really cool book.
Trudeau and our Times by Stephen Clarkson - Pierre Trudeau’s impact on Canada can not be underestimated. Much of the values that even the conservatives hold dear came to be a part of our culture during the Trudeau era. Well written and worthwhile book.
Kicking Ass in Canadian Politics by Warren Kinsella is a behind the scenes look at political campaigning in Canada. His is biased, obnoxious, and arrogant but we knew that about him before the book came out.
Lament For a Nation: The defeat of Canadian nationalism by George Grant. This is an extraordinary book dealing with the pervasiveness of U.S. culture in Canada, and how Canadians have seemingly allowed their own culture and politics to be subsumed into American versions. Written in the 1960s, this remarkable book is as relevant today as it was when it was published. A Canadian political classic.
Enjoy the long weekend!
Meetup
This is kind of a cool new site. Meetup helps groups of people with shared interests to meetup in local cafes (and other places) around the world. It looks like is has some potential for coolness.
Monday is Canada Day! You can brush up on some Canadian trivia here so when the big day comes, people will know you are the Grand Poobah of Canadiana.
Faithfully Dangerous
Brian McLaren offers up a response to a lousy review in Books & Culture. I read the review that panned A New Kind of Christian and I wondered if the reviewer was reading the same book as I did. Brian is far more gracious than I think I would have been. UPDATE As Dan Gilmour puts it, “as a blogger you need to accept that your readers know more than you do” (or something like that). Stephen Shields just e-mailed me a section of links featuring reviews and news about A New Kind of Christian on his excellent site, Faithmaps
The Blog Turns One Today!
The blog turns one today. I originally posted this a month ago but that was when I was messing around with some Blogger Pro features… Today is the real birthday. It started out as a really ugly template that I really never knew what to do with but was later integrated into my site as its own section. Several months ago I gave the front page over to my blog and it has evolved into the madness you see now.
Thanks for all the comments on my blogroll. I started to tweak it last night. As it stands now, there are over forty links listed and I would like to reduce that a little bit. I am looking at using Blogrolling for the simple reason that it montitors blogs that ping weblogs.com. The problem is that I need to change the page layout in order to use it. Check back this weekend for the new look and feel.
Dilutional thoughts and inappropriate comments from a very hot office of jordoncooper.com
Recently found out why I have been getting so many nasty e-mails lately. I was listed in a Christian newsletter on Biblical values as an example of what was wrong with the Canadian church. It was funny because all of the things they mentioned were all things that make us fun loving Canadians so much fun. In the end they were very concerned with my posting about Nickelodeon and not understanding the rage over John Ashcroft being liberal (as a Canadian that is hard for us to see). Along the way they got upset over a number of other things on this site and let me know. It is nice to have some context to the criticism.
Andrew Careaga offers up an excellent expansion on the original Soren Kierkegaard quote in a global context. A good read.
On another note, I took some time to read Christine and Tom Sine’s new book, Living on Purpose. It is the first book they have written together (I never would have thought that, I have only heard of them speak as a team so I always think of their books as being co-authored as well… I was wrong) and I really recommend it. I would have put up a review but Wendy is reading it now so it will have to wait. I really enjoyed it.
I renovated the Blogroll last night. I almost hate to do it now because for everyone I add, I am leaving off some excellent other blogs. After a while I find a very long blogroll defeats its own purpose and you don’t click on it because it is too long. Does my blogroll help you? Feel fee to throw me a bone and let me know.
Back online….
Well we are back from a couple of days in the mysterious north. No bear sitings but we saw a moose right beside the cabin. It is nice to be home in and wading through a lot of e-mail.
While I was gone I got the time to read David Weinberger’s excellent book, Small Pieces Loosely Joined. The book takes a good look at the cultural changes that are being brought around by the internet. He is going a lot deeper than people like Len Sweet have gone. If he is right, the implications for the church is enourmous and really exciting. I am working on an indepth review for TheOOZE to be posted in a couple of weeks. Outside of Andrew Careaga and Len Sweet (I know there are a few others) not many people have tackled the long term sociologial implications that are going to influence the church because of the net. It may be time to spend some serious time looking at it.
While I was gone, Jeb has done some excellent work on the look for The Hockey Pundits. The masthead and new look should be online soon.
Where does the Baptist buck stop?
Terry Mattingly’s column today. This isn’t just about Baptists but about all churches. An interesting if just a little cynical look at the issue.
Where does the buck stop, when sexual abuse hits Protestant pulpits? The Southern Baptist resolution calls on local churches to discipline sex offenders. Yet the most powerful person in modern Protestantism is a successful pastor whose preaching and people skills keep packing people into the pews. Can his own church board truly investigate and discipline that pastor?
Once that question is asked, others quickly follow.
If the board of deacons in a Southern Baptist congregation faced an in-house sex scandal and wanted help, where could it turn? It could seek help from its competition, the circle of churches in its local association. Or it could appeal to its state convention. In some states, “conservative” and “moderate” churches would need to choose between competing conventions linked to these rival Baptist camps. Or could a church appeal for help from the boards and agencies of the 16-million-member national convention?
See You Later This Week
Wendy, Mark and I are off to Prince Albert National Park and to the township of Waskesiu for a couple days vacation. Won’t be back until later in the week so if you don’t have to e-mail me, please don’t because it will be an ugly thing seeing my inbox backed up again. In case you are missing this blog, don’t fret, there are plenty of good or better blogs in the blogroll and of course you can spend hours reading the constantly updated madness at The Hockey Pundits (c’mon, click on the link, you know you want to).
I am planning to finish Dallas Willard’s Renovation of the Heart and eat some ice cream. Will post some pics when I get home.
Kierkegaard on bloggers, I mean journalists…. from Plough’s Daily Dig
Something to chatter about! The crowd demands only something to chatter about, and this is understood to mean finding something about each other to chatter about, something about our meaningless lives, particularly the trivialities in our lives. Anything else nauseates the public, which knows only one lust - the desire for self-pollution by talking, a lust in which it indulges with the help of the journalist.
Journalists are animal-keepers who provide something for the public to talk about. In ancient days people were cast to the wild animals. Now the public devours the people - those tastefully prepared by the journalists.
Excerpted from Provocations by S�ren Kierkegaard.
Some Random Sunday Thoughts
A couple of comments from e-mail from my earlier post.
As a Canadian, I struggle understanding the cultural context that right wing conservative Christianity comes from. Their recent rage against John Ashcroft and Nickelodeon boggles my (limited?) mind. I live in Saskatchewan where the New Democratic Party have run the province for years and many of its leaders are clergy. The NDP are openly and strongly pro-choice and not only does it not bother the clergy (our Premier is a United Church Minister and the founder of the forerunner of the NDP was Tommy Douglas who was a Baptist minister), it doesn’t bother many of the provinces Christians who openly support them. Lakeview Church is a Free Methodist Church but I suspect that on the lawns of our core families, there would be a lot of NDP lawn signs come election time. I think the same could be said for almost every evangelical church in Saskatchewan. For the most part, the Canadian church doesn’t participate in partisan Canadian politics (the United Church of Canada was the exception in 1988 where they came out strongly against Free-Trade). The kind of debates that are happening over Nickelodeon airing a TV special doesn’t happen in Canada, even in the more conservative parts of the country. I don’t know why Christians are afraid of a discussion over the impact of being raised in a homosexual home. It seems to be that all sides of the discussion are poorer because of it. That being said, there are many churches across North America that are and have engaged in the debate and I think the kingdom is better for it.
I got a comment about Lakeview Church and single parents and why they are more accepting than some churches. I don’t know if Lakeview is special or if like a lot (but not all) of churches, it has comes to grips with divorce and single parents and other families that are non-traditional. I think part of it is the age of leadership. Some have gone through divorce, others parents have divorced or have seen the impact of divorce. I laugh at the countless people who phone into Dr. :Laura and feel a divorce won’t impact the kids or anyone else. It impacts everyone. In my earlier post, I wasn’t trying to judge the church now, just the churches I was in when my parents divorced. In the early in 1980’s it was still kind of rare. It was awkward in school and even minor hockey as well. Over the last 20 years, all of those institutions have understood more and have changed for the better. Churches too. Still, I don’t want to diminish the incredible ministry Lakeview and other churches that intentionally show God’s grace and welcome everyone, where ever they are on their spiritual journey.
One things I didn’t post about the other day were some e-mail that have come in over the last several months about the lack of missions emphasis and also information about the Burnhams’ The mission comments first. I tell people that I have a passion for missions and Lakeland Church is involved in a couple global missions projects. We just finished raising some money for a medical clinic in Ethiopia through the Free Methodist World Missions and are involved in things like Samairitan’s Purse and other agencies that people in the church have a passion for. (people respond best to missions projects that their friends are passionate about I find). I don’t post a lot about missions organizations because there are so many of them and I am just not familiar with many of them. People like Andrew Jones and Wolfgang Fernandez seem to be your best bets for good ideas and views on global missions. I am not. My website reflects what I am learning and I am ignorant in the area of missions in a postmodern world. Please e-mail me some recommended reading and some websites. I have never backed down from a chance to become less ignorant (well, okay there was that time in Chicago…)
About the Burnhams. A lot of blogs posted about it and I did not. Some people have asked why? First of all Christianity Today has an excellent weblog and ALL of my information I read on the kidnapping came from their blog. I had no more to add as Ted Olson does an excellent job and all I would be doing was offering up a weak alternative to a cause that he kept front and center for over a year. Some of the mail I got about Kierkegaard talked about me ignoring the Burnhams as an example of ignoring the plight of global Christians. I can’t make that connection in my mind. It seems like people making an argument from silence. There is a lack of books about marriage and relationships in my bookstore, does that mean I don’t love my wife? I don’t post all things on my blog because I do have a life and a job. Other than Andrew Sullivan (who wrote a moving post today about it being his ninth anniversary of testing positive for HIV), I don’t know of another professional blogger. As the publisher of jordoncooper.com (that sounds funny to me), I try to post things of interest of the occasional reader but at the same time I do have a focus (postmodern ministry and culture) on this site that I like to think that I maintain. I don’t have the time or the qualifications to talk about global missions, persecution of the faith, or spend the time scanning the wire services like Ted Olson over at CT does. I’ll let those more qualified than I speak on topics I know little about.
Some other thoughts from today…
When I talked of the Christian ghetto in the past, this is what I was thinking of. From the article The Rev. Jerry Falwell has a vision for his 4,300 acres here: golf courses, recreation centers and apartments, all part of a master-planned Christian community where members of his flock can live from “birth to antiquity.”
ANDY CROUCH SAYS…
“…we will never change culture by withdrawing from it into private alternatives. A private interstate highway system — say, one accessible only to cars bearing fish emblems — would have done nothing to reshape the landscape of the United States. Any effort to engage culture must take place in the messy, unpredictable world outside church walls.”
On a slightly different topic. Someone from the church in Spiritwood are building an amazing log cabin. It is 16×20 feet but it is going to be an amazing get away on some farm land outside of the town by about ten minutes. I would love to build something like it someday.
That’s it, I’ve had enough!
I love Saskatchewan (not enough to retire here) but it isn’t a bad place to live, except during the next couple of weeks when the caterpillar come down from eating all of Saskatoon’s trees. We didn’t band our trees last year (got too busy) and we are paying for it now. They are so noisy you can hear them eat, then the worm waste is all over the deck and cars, then finally their silk webs come down and as you walk underneath any of the thousands of maple and elm trees, they drop on you. It is a regular occurance to be shopping and see a stranger point our a caterpillar to you as it crawls on your shoulders. It is so gross. About another two weeks and it is done till next year. I can’t wait.
Over the last week two different posts have provoked a lot of response. I can kind of understand one but the other has left me a little confused. The first one has to deal with Nickelodeon’s decision to air a television show that deals with the issue of children of homosexual parents. Within a day over 30 people had e-mailed to criticize the post and many were very angry. I deleted seven or eight posts from my commenting feature because of the language. I made an effort to e-mail back anyone who wanted to dialogue and have had some excellent exchanges and just ignored some that crossed the line. In some people’s minds, that post even made me unfit to parent. You can read what I wrote here.
I have several problems with the responses I got back. All Nickelodeon professed to be trying to do was create a discussion on the topic through a child’s eyes. Let me explain it this way. My own dad walked out the day before my little brother was born in 1982. He was in an adulterous relationship. Being in a single parent family and going to evangelical churches who spoke strongly against all parties in a divorce was really hard. I heard sermons where my single mom’s (like my Mom) were called horrible things and I walked out feeling less then worthy too. I still remember when a Sunday School teacher was talking about children with no father. One of the kids asked if myself and another kid were “bastards” (his dad left his family too). After thinking about it for a while, the rather dense teacher said, “yes”. It was my Dad that committed adultery and broke his wedding vows, not me yet the church could be so totally cruel and awful to kids who parents had gone through a divorce. (that being said, from the time I was in high school on I was blessed with some amazing pastoral role models) One of the coolest things about being at Lakeview is that is a church that opens its arms to those who are going through the same thing that we as a family went through. It warms my heart to see it on a consistent basis.
It seems to me that elements in the North American church are at it again. Nickelodeon wants to look at what it means to be a child of homosexual parents. It isn’t promoting homosexuality, they have invited and have taped people saying it is wrong from a Christian viewpoint. What I want to know is why is the church so afraid of this discussion. It seems to be that some elements of conservative Christianity is responsible for creating the problem in the first place. In our “hating the sin”, we forget that we have deeply wounded and prejudiced against the children who have done nothing wrong. What does 100,000 phone calls and letters from the religious right say to the children and families of those who are gay? I haven’t seen the Nickelodeon special but I support it. It may suck but at least someone has the courage to talk about it in an open matter. Good for them.
The other posting that has gotten some response is the quote I posted by Kierkegaard. It seemed to provoke a response in a way I never intended. I assumed that my readers would assume that Kierkegaard was writing about a western context and not global Christianity. I was wrong. A lot of people got angry and e-mail and posted on blogs that they were quite disapointed in the quote and in my blog (what else is new). Before you burn my site in effigy, let me explain.
The quote was posted as a thought from a fairly respected thinker. I got the quote and it gave me the opportunity to think about it and I thought it has some value. I posted it on my site as what I thought it was, a quote to ponder. It never was meant to be a reflection of global Christianity or a mini-commentary. I know it offers a very small picture but it was of that picture Kierkegaard was talking about (yes I do read his works).
For those of you have read my site on a regular basis, you will know I post a fair amount without a lot of context. It is just a thought or an idea and one of the things that Blogger does so well is it lowers the bar to the point where you can do that. Those thoughts and quotes often end up in my sermons and article but more often then not are things that impacted me at that moment. Often times I don’t provide a lot of context because sometimes the thought itself doesn’t come with a lot of context either. (like the SK quote) I also assume that for the most part, I have a fairly intelligent readership and you can provide the context.
What I am really trying to say, if I offended you, I am sorry and I would ask that you show me some grace sometimes too.
Jordon
From Living on Purpose
The clock is my dictator, I shall not rest.
It makes me lie down only when exhausted.
It leads me to deep depression, it hounds my soul.
It leads me in circles of frenzy for activities sake.
Even though I run frantically from task to task,
I will never get it done, for my “ideal” is with me.
Deadlines and my need for approval, they drive me.
They demand performance from me, beyond the limits from my schedule.
They anoint my head with migraines, my in-basket over-flows.
Surely fatigue and time pressure shall follow me all days of my life,
And I will dwell in the bonds of frustration forever.
Marcia K. Hornok, “Psalm 23, Antithesis”
Some light vacation reading
I ran to the local keeper of the Christian sub-culture today to buy Dallas Willard’s Renovation of the Heart. Along the way I stumbled into Christine and Tom Sine’s newest book called Living on Purpose. I am going to bring both of them and Jihad vs. McWorld with me to Waskesiu this week and get some quality reading in. All three will be reviewed on TheOOZE sometime this summer unless they aren’t that good but I highly doubt that.
Wendy, some friends of ours, and I will be heading to Waskesiu on Monday to enjoy the lake and a great log cabin we have rented. Wendy called Waskesiu, the Martha’s Vineyard of Saskatchewan. I don’t know if it is that nice but Saskatchewan isn’t exactly the Irish section of Boston either so maybe she is right. We don’t have a lot planned other than taking a paddlewheeler around the lake and eating some ice cream on the beach. Maybe some sports will be played. Regardless of what happens, there will be some pictures to post and some books to comment on when we get back.
In case you haven’t realized, the Soularize site is now online. Spread the word. While you are spreading the word, Hockey Pundits is online and is extremely busy. If you want to join our community of hockey commentators or if you just want to see how passionately some of us feel about the game, head on over and tell your friends.
Finally, Stephen Shield’s new blog is now online. Stephen is also the creator of Faith Maps and one of the finest e-mail discussion forum moderators on the planet.
Our Cabin Weblog- Recently listened to music
- David Gray – Be Mine October 19, 2008
- David Gray – December October 19, 2008
- David Gray – Knowhere October 19, 2008
- David Gray – Real Love October 19, 2008
- David Gray – Last Boat To America October 19, 2008
- Recently additions to my library
- Messy Faith: Daring to Live by Grace by A. J. Gregory October 28, 2008
- Rediscovering Church: The Story and Vision of Willow Creek Community Church by Lynne Hybels October 26, 2008
- The Teeth of the Tiger, A Novel by Tom Clancy October 26, 2008
- The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership: Follow Them and People Will Follow You by John C. Maxwell October 26, 2008
- The Sum of All Fears by Tom Clancy October 26, 2008
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