Links to Your World, Inauguration Day, Tuesday January 20

Inauguration Links:

Paste Magazine can put you in the iconic Obama campaign poster, with your own one-word slogan.


President-elect Barack Obama will use the same Bible at his inauguration that Abraham Lincoln used in 1861 when he was sworn in. The WSJ has an interactive timeline showing which Bibles and verses other U.S. presidents chose.


“A Muslim scholar [Ingrid Mattson] chosen to speak at President-elect Barack Obama's inaugural prayer service Wednesday is the leader of a group that federal prosecutors say has ties to terrorists…. The court documents represent a complicated picture of the group.” (USA Today)


Amy Sullivan in Time says,“Warren wants to be both the universally admired pastor who speaks to the nation and the influential leader who mobilizes religious conservatives for political ends. But those are two inherently conflicting roles, and he cannot be both, no matter how hard he tries.” I wonder, though: should Warren be seen as consciously showing two faces to the public, or is he just trying to figure out how to get stable footing on the new cultural landscape? While we’re at it, am I?


“It is not a triumphant, boastful affair, ‘America the Beautiful.’ … It is a simple Congregationalist musing, composed in peacetime, making a humble pleading for God to find this mongrel nation worthy of having grace shed upon it and ‘crown thy good with Brotherhood, from sea to shining sea.’” (Read the WaPo story behind “America the Beautiful,” slated to be sung by a children’s choir at today’s inauguration)


"As a conservative, I think I may actually enjoy Barack Obama's inauguration more than my many Obama-supporting friends. I'm not planning a special trip to Washington, D.C., or stocking up on commemorative coins or coffee cups. Throughout the campaign, I considered Obama to be an impressive orator, a compelling candidate, and, as we got closer to November, the likely victor. But, at the end of the day, he was still—in my eyes—just a politician, and, perhaps more distressing to his legions of fans, a human being. My hopes and expectations for Obama, therefore, are much more reasonable, and I will be able to take in the history and the pomp without the accompanying anxiety that Inauguration Day will bring to my more liberal friends." (Rachael Larimore in Slate)


Assessment of the Outgoing President:

Krauthammer: Acknowledge what we owe Bush



“By his own standard, Mr. Bush achieved the one big thing he and all Americans demanded of his Administration. Not a single man, woman or child has been killed by terrorists on U.S. soil since the morning of September 11. Al Qaeda was flushed from safe havens in Afghanistan, then Iraq, and its terrorist network put under siege around the world. All subsequent terror attacks hit soft targets and used primitive means. No one seriously predicted such an outcome at the time….A measure of the Administration's success is the criticism it has drawn as the threat has seemed more remote….After the Clinton decade in which al Qaeda and proliferation went unchallenged, the Bush Presidency had to scramble to defend against a terror threat that with WMD could kill millions of Americans. His decision to fight this as a "war," and to marshal the means attendant to war, has been controversial and expensive. But like Harry Truman's decisions at the onset of the Cold War, we suspect more of his policy will survive than his many critics now admit.” (WSJ editorial, assessing Bush’s foreign policy legacy)


Time photographers reflecting on eight years photographing President Bush


“For the bulk of the nation, reeling from recession, Bush leaves presidential office with a severely tattered legacy. At the same time, perhaps paradoxically, Bush's most remarkable contributions were to victims of poverty and disease overseas and sufferers in the U.S. who will be helped by faith-based organizations for years to come.” (Read CT’s assessment of the Bush years: “Bush’ Faith-Based Legacy,” by Tony Carnes and Sarah Pulliam)


Other Links for this Week:

Surfing the Net is Great for the Mind


Time magazine asks, “Does Facebook Replace Face Time or Enhance It?


“I continue to see movements gaining traction among Christians that do not seem to have many converts. In other words, they have recruits to their cause, but few converts to Christ. And I am concerned. I am concerned that in the name of "fixing the Church" we are not proclaiming the Church's gospel.” (Ed Stetzer in this Catalyst article)


PETA Tries to Re-brand Fish as “Sea Kittens”


Internet generation leave parents behind.


15,000 iPhone/iPod apps have been created; half a billion downloads have been performed. Gizmodo breaks down the numbers, and after two weeks with my iPhone, I’m guessing they’re about right. Useful apps: 1%--


Churchgoing linked to lower suicide risk (Washington Times)


Mysterious credit card charge may have hit millions of users


“My personal trainer sometimes gives me an odd piece of advice during workouts: ‘Relax your face.’ For a long time, I found this advice confusing. Isn't physical exertion supposed to be expressed in grimaces? I thought of the face as a pressure-relief valve that helps emit the pain the body is experiencing. But the trainer suggested I think about it the other way around — that controlling the face can help control the mind…. It turns out the trainer is right: The face isn't a pressure-relief valve. It is more like a thermostat. When you turn down the setting, the machinery inside has to do less work.” (“How to Lift Your Mood? Try Smiling.” Time magazine)


Producers of a British TV show hid the cross in a 14th century British church during their church wedding scene “to avoid offending non-Christians” (story)


In “The ‘American Experience’ and the Death of Evangelism,” Albert Mohler says that unexamined American assumptions is killing any drive to evangelism.


A Christian bus driver has refused to drive a bus with an atheist slogan proclaiming "There's probably no God". (BBC)


“The question married women ask me most often is, ‘What can I do to help my husband become the spiritual leader in our home?’” (“Following My Leading Man”)


“The breadth and depth of California's toleration regarding sexual lifestyles refute the worry that gays are a vulnerable minority menaced by majoritarian tyranny. Proposition 8 merely restored to California law the ancient and nearly universal definition of marriage, a definition resoundingly endorsed by the U.S. Congress (85-14 in the Senate, 342-67 in the House) and written into the laws of 47 other states.… Just eight years ago, Proposition 22 was passed 61.4 to 38.6. The much narrower victory of Proposition 8 suggests that minds are moving toward toleration of same-sex marriage. If advocates of that have the patience required by democratic persuasion, California's ongoing conversation may end as they hope. If, however, the conversation is truncated, as Brown urges, by judicial fiat, the argument will become as embittered as the argument about abortion has been by judicial highhandedness.” (George Will)