The Bosque Boys

Somehow I had overlooked these before. Below is the questionaire filled out by each candidate for the Kansas City Star newspaper last summer.

Claire McCaskill (D)
I do not think there are real surprises in her positions. She does sound more hawkish on Iran than some Democrats, but talk is cheap.

Jim Talent (R)
I do not think there are any real surprises in his positions. He is more straightforward than many candidates.

We seem instinctively to favor other humans over all other animals.

I was raised on a farm around animals, and can be without human companionship for a long time without feeling lonely if I have animals around. But, I have hunted and killed and eaten wild animals, and have killed and helped butcher domesticated animals. I have looked at a fat squirrel in a pecan tree and thought--you'd taste good after I fried you up. I've never had carniverous thoughts about another human being. And I'm not alone. We have now and have had lots of human cultures around the globe, but relatively few cannibalistic ones. We seem naturally to distinguish human from non-human life.

Without reflection, we hold humans to a different standard than we do non-human animals. Even the most fervent vegetarian environmentalist (say a Vegan) does not condemn beavers for building dams across streams, but may condemn humans for building our dams. Logically, the only reason one may condemn a human-built dam as an artificial interference with nature, and admire a beaver dam as an expression of nature, is if humans are placed in a different category than beavers. If a tiger mauls a stage magician, we do not arrest the tiger and try it before a jury of fellow tigers. We unreflectively differentiate the human from the nonhuman.

Even the Jain, the religion that most stresses a prohibition against the taking of any life (the First Great Vow: "I renounce all killing of living beings, whether movable or immovable. Nor shall I myself kill living beings nor cause others to do it, nor consent to it."), has as its majority the Lay-Folk who do not take the Five Great Vows, but instead take 12 lesser vows, which include avoiding directly taking sentient life. But even the Jain privilege humans above other living beings: one cannot attain salvation until one is born human (for some Jain sects, born a man).

The point I am trying to make is that we instinctively differentiate, and give privilege to, human beings as somehow set apart from other living creatures. And we do this in a wide variety of cultures and religions. (more below)

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Ex-President James Carter continues his descent by congratulating himself on "solving" the North Korean problem, only to see it messed up by GWB. For a brief rebuttal see Steven Hayward here.

For the sake of whatever dignity you have left, sir, and the dignity of your former office, pick up your hammer and go back to building Habitat houses.

Willow Creek Named Most Influential Church
According to the Church Report magazine, Willow Creek Community Church in suburban Chicago, Illinois, is the most influential church in America. The annual list of the nation's influential churches is based on a survey sent to 2,000 pastors nationwide that asked participants to recommend up to ten churches they considered most influential.
Other churches in the top five included Saddleback Church in California, North Point Community Church in Georgia, Fellowship Church in Texas, and Lake Wood Church, also in Texas. (EP) From the Church Herald., the magazine of the Reformed Church in America.

Here are links to these congregation's webpages.

Willow Creek

Saddleback Church

North Point Community Church


Fellowship Church

Lake Wood Church

I admired John Paul II. I think he was the right pope at the right time. His stand for liberty and against tyranny helped bring about the collapse of the Soviet Union.

I think Benedict XVI is now the right pope at the right time. He is taking an unflinching stand for the truth of Christianity against both the secular relativism so popular in modern Europe, calling that continent back to its Christian roots, and against the claims of Islam.

Here is a report on his recent remarks regarding inter-religious (i.e., between different religions) dialogue. I'll try to remember to link to the official text once it is available on the Vatican website. Hat tip Instapundit.

Here is a snippet:

VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - Pope Benedict said on Wednesday Christians could not allow their beliefs and identity to be diluted for the sake of dialogue with other religions.

"We have to remember that this identity of ours calls for strength, clarity, and courage in the world in which we live," he told pilgrims and tourists at his weekly general audience.

95 things that anger Muslims here

Jeffrey Weiss writing in the Dallas Morning News has an article on the flurry of interest in Hollywood and outside Hollywood in making movies with religious themes. Studios want to make money, and The Passion of the Christ incited a desire to reach a church-going audience. Religiously-based independents are using movies to spread their message.

I'll try to get around to a list of movies with Christian themes that I think are worthwhile.

Premillennial: believing that when Jesus Christ returns he will usher in a long period of peace and justice (the millennium). In other words, there is a radical discontinuity [the return of Jesus] between present human history and the evident reign of God on earth in human history (Shalom). After the millennium comes the fulfillment.

Amillennial: believing that Jesus will return and then usher in the fulfillment, without a period of God’s evident reign within human history. In other words, hope for Shalom will be met only beyond human history.

Postmillennial: believing that the return of Jesus will be preceded by a period of peace and justice in which God’s reign on earth will be seen. Then comes the return of Jesus and the fulfillment. In other words, there will be a continuity between present human history and the establishment of Shalom.

A while back, in the context of some posts on George Bush’s postmillennial theology, I mentioned that postmillennialism had been the majority opinion among evangelical Christians of the nineteenth century. Given the beliefs of contemporary evangelicals, holding to a postmillennial position seems unimaginable. In response to a comment by Joab, I promised to attempt a defense of each of these major positions. (Personal disclaimer, I am not a fully persuaded believer of one position; I tend to alternate between amillennialism and postmillennialism.)

All Christians are optimistic in an ultimate sense: we believe that Jesus will return and triumph over his foes, and ours, including death and suffering. But is there reason for optimism before the End? In other words, do Christians expect there to be any real, overall progress within human history? The answer given to this question will vary between Christians holding differing millennial views.

Answering “No,” are amillennialists and premillennialists. While there may be material progress within human history in areas such as technology, there is no actual human progress in a moral sense. All technological advances, for example, simply will allow us to kill one another in greater numbers. The amillennialists expect that the human history will continue a mixed-up mess of sin with some virtue, without real progress, until Jesus comes again. The premillennialists, most of them, expect that human history will continue a downward course getting worse and worse, a retrogress in effect, at least near the end of time. On the contrary, answering “Yes,” are the postmillennialists. The history of the human race, through the work of the Holy Spirit, does and will show moral progress as the gospel of Jesus Christ spreads over the world.

One’s attitude toward the progress, or lack of progress, within human history will affect political attitudes. (Wondering out loud: Reagan was postmillennial down to his bones, Carter?)

The American attitude, traditionally, has been optimistic regarding the future: we have thought of history in terms of progress. One of the roots of this optimism has been the influence of Christian postmillennial thought, the understanding of the majority of American evangelical Christians until some time in the twentieth century. Even today, though, I would venture to say that most Americans reject the idea that evil can triumph within human history until the End. In other words, I would say that most Americans reject the idea that God would allow a Hitler or a Stalin to envelope the world in a horror of tyrannical evil for centuries or millennia until Jesus comes again. We Americans seem to have a postmillennial heart, whatever doctrine is in our heads.

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The splitting of the Episcopal Church continues. Last month the Diocese of Quincy (Illinois), unhappy with the liberal trends of the denomination, asked for other oversight within Anglicanism. In other words, the diocese plans to remain Anglican (the worldwide communion of which the Episcopal church has been the U.S. expression), but does not want to accept the leadership of the Episcopal denomination. News release here.

See earlier posts.

Upcoming on Public Television:

Welcome to the world of "Maquilapolis," a border city where it
takes an hour of drudgework inside a poisonous factory to earn
enough to buy a jug of potable water. Where it takes about two hours
to earn a gallon of milk. Where factory workers find bathroom breaks are
few, toxins are many, and the pressure -- and intimidation -- are always
on. It's a place where poverty is so deep that workers are expected to be
grateful for the high-end $11 a day they might earn, to give up hope of
ever earning more or of ever seeking better working conditions. This
daily $11 does not buy them the protection and aid of their local and
national governments. In "Maquilapolis," undertaxed and under-regulated
factories operated by multinational corporations -- usually through local
middlemen -- pollute residential neighborhoods with seeming impunity.

Yet even $11 a day can prove too high a labor cost for today's international
manufacturer. The searing new feature documentary "Maquilapolis: City of
Factories" may take its name and stories from the maquiladoras, the
multinational assembly plants that sprang up south of the U.S.-Mexican
border in the mid-1960s and multiplied rapidly in the 1990s as a result of
1994's North America Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA.) But the new global
company town that "Maquilapolis" portrays is also movable. Less than 10
years after NAFTA, the maquiladoras of Mexico were already closing down
as corporations began to depart for even cheaper labor in Asia, leaving
behind decrepit factory sites, slag heaps of toxic material and endemic
unemployment.

"Maquilapolis" is a powerful and unique film that brought American and
Mexican-American filmmakers together with Tijuana factory workers and
community organizers to tell the story of globalization through the eyes
and voices of the workers themselves -- overwhelmingly women -- who
have borne the costs but reaped few of the benefits. The workers did not
just testify on camera, they became an integral part of creating their stories
on film. Two women in particular, Carmen Durán and Lourdes Luján, armed
with cameras for video diaries, chronicle their struggles. The result is not
only an informative and disturbing film, but also an evocative and poetic one.

Watch a trailer and check local PBS station listings at:
http://www.pbs.org/pov/pov2006/maquilapolis

"Maquilapolis: City of Factories" Airs Tuesday, October 10 at 10 PM
TIP: Days and times for P.O.V. broadcasts vary, so be
sure to check local listings for airdates and times for your
PBS station on the P.O.V. website.

Hat tip El Obispo. For an earlier post on topic here.