Tuesday Tidbits....

Thanklessness of Politics - I notice a few stories this morning regarding Milt Romney being physically threatened after asking the passenger in the seat in front of him to put up his seat. On one hand this is nothing more than the story of a violent passenger which, if there was no celebrity involved, would not have made the news. (I did find it interesting to note a recent Presidential candidate and multi-millionaire sitting in Economy class.) However, the comments on the websites of the Globe and Mail and Boston Globe caught my attention. Six of the first thirteen comments had to be removed from the Boston Globe site and many of the remainder, as with several on the Globe and Mail site, are political rants. I realize that those who post comments on newspaper websites are (thankfully) not a cross-section of population but as I skimmed them this morning, I was reminded why it is hard to get good people to consider politics as a career. I don't care what the political opinions of a candidate are: any individual including those I most profoundly disagree with deserve civility and respect.

Our Christian Roots - My colleague Alissa Wilkinson in an entry on the Cardus afterhours blog highlights the revisionist and often careless history that is advocated by those who like to highlight the Christian roots of the United States (and I think similar arguments can be made as it regards Canada.) The point is an important one in our context. Those bent on expunging all religion from the public square are inclined to write out religious influences or to paint them as era-specific cultural practices that no longer have meaning for today. In countering these arguments, it is important that we get our history right and not try to oversell or romanticize our Christian roots. Alissa says it well:

It doesn’t mean we give up our understanding that the American founders were at least influenced by Christianity (or a kind of Christian/humanist hybrid), but it does call us to a lot more humility about who we are and why we’re here, and points out the danger of extreme polarization in this sort of political debate. It means we have to start defining our terms and not assuming that every reference to “God” is a reference to the first person of the Trinity, invoked by a person with saving faith in Jesus Christ – especially in the public square. It means that we, via our churches, must actually educate ourselves on our history and how it fits into the broader global intellectual historical context in order to responsibly deserve our voice in the public square.

Melancthon's birthday: Today is the 513th birthday of Phillip Melancthon, friend and colleague of Martin Luther and influential Reformational figure. I would ordinarily not notice the trivia of reformer birthdays however this note was included in an email I received yesterday highlighting a project being launched today at the Theological University of Apeldoorn in the Netherlands under the direction of Dr. Herman Selderhuis. Refo500 "approaches the Reformation as a movement of renewal and change that is important for the past, present, and the future and whose significance and influence upon many fields since 1517 is undisputedly great. In its program, Refo500 examines the connection between then and now, so that it becomes clear that the Reformation is relevant for today. These nine themes are central: education and science, belief and conflict, money and power, doctrine and the church, life and death, art and culture, freedom and preaching, renewal and piety, Bible and language." The website refo500.nl is presently only up in Dutch but the English site is promised soon.