Now that The Golden Compass is out on DVD, you might want to review my take on the controversial film. Read “Navigating the Golden Compass” and “Articles for Navigating the Golden Compass.”
“According to a September 2007 survey by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life, 15 percent of white evangelicals between 18 and 29, a group traditionally a shoo-in for the GOP, say they no longer identify with the Republican Party. Older evangelicals are also questioning their traditional allegiance, but not at the same rate. But, Howard Dean, don't count your chickens quite yet. College-age and 20-something Christians may be leaving the GOP, but only 5 percent of young evangelicals have joined the Democrats, according to the Pew survey. The other 10 percent are wandering the political wilderness, somewhere between ‘independent’ and ‘unaffiliated.’” (Seattle Times)
“If you had a bit of spinach stuck between your teeth, or body odor so bad your co-workers were snickering around the water cooler, would you want someone to tell you? Then if you know hell is real, and you know people who are headed to a Christ-less eternity, should you not tell them?” Andree Seu at World on the Web.
Must-read article for dads with daughters. Steve Almond says: “What I’ve come to realize is that there are really two people inside me: the Dude Self and the Dad Self. The Dude Self has an evolutionary mandate. Namely, to get his DNA into all available fertile females. This is how I explain the compulsion toward media sluts, who, after all, sow the fantasy that women exist only for the carnal pleasure of men.
"But then there’s the Dad Self. The Dad Self has to worry about the survival of his wife and offspring. It might be said that his genetic material is heavily mortgaged. He regards women differently, especially if he has a daughter. Now he must think about the kind of world in which he’d like her to grow up, and especially how he’d like other males to treat her, which is to say not as a sexual chew toy, but with kindness and respect.
"It’s here that my old Dude Self and my brand-new Dad Self come to blows. Because as much as I want to check out Paris and Lindsay, I know I’m harming my daughter by doing so. For one thing, I’m sending her a very clear message: Daddy loves sluts. Be a slut and Daddy will love you. And if you don’t believe that a 1-year-old picks up on messages, you’ve never seen my daughter in action. She is intensely focused on everything in her environment, especially whatever I happen to be looking at” (HT: Evangelical Outpost).
Should it be Burma or Myanmar? (HT: Creation Project)
Very cool pics of a thunderstorm colliding with the ash from an erupting Chilean volcano.
From Eileen Flynn’s article in last Saturday’s Statesman. She has more at her blog, Of Sacred and Secular: “I recently attended a Passover Seder at the home of some friends in South Austin. As we recounted the Exodus story and ate our bitter herbs and all the things you do at a Seder, the hosts asked the 20 or so people gathered to name some modern-day plagues (the equivalent of the locusts and disease God sent to Egypt in the Bible).
"Traffic!" someone shouted.
"The war in Iraq," offered a 10-year-old girl.
"Global warming," called out one man. "Or is the proper term now climate change?"
Other problems were tossed out and met with hearty responses. And then the woman sitting opposite me declared, "Evangelicals!
“Too often my fellow former evangelicals think that dumping the term will make them (or to be more generous, The Gospel) more palatable to the outside world. What they are missing (or simply refuse to admit to themselves) is that it is not the term "evangelical" that the world despises but the beliefs behind the word. Call yourself whatever you want—'post-evangelical' is my favorite—but the minute you tell the world that homosexual behavior is sinful, that killing infants in the womb is wrong, and that man[kind] has an inherent dignity because we are made in the image of God then you can expect to have that label spat upon too.” (Joe Carter, reflecting on the Evangelical Manifesto)
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