Threads from Henry's Web

Author: henry

  • Exceptionally Good Testimony on Women in Ministry

    Scot McKnight has posted the testimony of Stan Gundry and his journey from complementarianism to egalitarianism and some of the thinking that marked it. I think this is one of the best pieces of writing on the topic I have read.

    I note that he also faced the challenge of the difference between the testimony of the story of scripture–the things women actually did–and the interpretation given to certain passages.

    It’s great stuff, not only for the issue of women in ministry, but also as an example of a scriptural approach to understanding an issue.

  • More on Evolution Conflict

    Ed Brayton has again weighed in on the framing of the conflict over science education. I agree with the way in which Ed has laid out the issues, and strongly recommend reading his piece.

    As an advocate of sound science education, I would like to repeat some things I’ve said before, but that are often forgotten in discussion.

    I am not opposed to free speech for intelligent design advocates. In fact, I see them exercising free speech all the time. What I would suggest they do about the peer reviewed publication is to simply establish one or more publications with peer review and publish scientific research in those publications. If it is done well, scientists will begin to read and respond to the new evidence they present. Of course I think the reason they are not generally published in peer-reviewed journals is because they are not doing research that is worthy of such publication.

    Further, I have no problem with ID being discussed at the college or university level to whatever extent the people who are teaching there want to discuss it. I went to college at a place where young earth creationism was a regular topic. Nobody is actually being repressed here, no matter how loud the whining becomes.

    But more important than my perception of repression or its absence–after all, I could be totally wrong–is the simple fact that there are other avenues open. In this age of the internet and various easy print publication opportunities, it’s quite easy to get something into print. But the real complaint is not getting published or not, it’s where one is published, or how much respect one gets from scienfic colleagues.

    That respect from scientific colleagues, however, has to be earned. And earning it is hard work. New ideas do work their way into the scientific community only slowly, and most new ideas get thrown out in the process of discussion. That is appropriate. One can argue that there should be more room or less room for new ideas, but ultimately, science must test ideas thoroughly before they are accepted.

    And that leads me to the place where I do not think that ID has a place–the high school science classroom. Why? Very simply I believe that the high school curriculum is packed enough with consensus science, and that it should be limited to that. Let new ideas be discussed elsewhere and when a scientific consensus arises, that will be time enough to add that material to the high school science curriculum.

    Framing the debate a s religion vs science, however, makes this difficult, no matter which side frames the discussion in that fashion.

    (Note: Read Ed’s piece before you comment here. I’m only making a small subpoint.)

  • I Thought this Before it Started

    Henry Kissinger now says that the Iraq war is not winnable, something I thought from the start. talking to the BBS (via MSNBC), he said:

    “If you mean by ‘military victory’ an Iraqi government that can be established and whose writ runs across the whole country, that gets the civil war under control and sectarian violence under control in a time period that the political processes of the democracies will support, I don’t believe that is possible.”

    All those factors were there before the war got started. If you combine the fact that Iraq is a nation pieced together from disparate elements that don’t really want to be a country in the first place with neighbors who would be happy to be in control of the same terrirtory you are placing a tall order. Then consider the fact that there never was a united opposition to Saddam’s reign, simply because the various elements of the opposition don’t generally share a vision for the country.

    If we allowed democracy to take it’s course, Iraq would likely become an Islamic republic led by the Shi’ites. Unfortunately what we seem to want to produce is a government that is both democratically elected and does what we want it to do. Bluntly, it’s not going to happen.

    Before the usual culprits accuse me of being pacifist and not wanting to fight terrorism, that is not my point. I believe that military force should sometimes be used. The problem is that there are those who don’t seem to choose wisely between one use of force and another. There might even have been things that could be accomplished militarily in Iraq. But the Iraq war that actually occurred was, in my view, a strategic error. My concern is not that people were killed, or that some feelings were hurt. My concern is that people were killed without any good and lasting result.

    At this point I’m afraid I see no option but to simply declare a set of doable goals–a certain amount of time spent in training, specified equipment levels for the Iraqi forces, and similar things, and then get out. Goals such as a peaceful, secure state are simply not going to happen, and all we’re doing trying to accomplish such goals is wasting time, political capital, money, and most importantly lives.

  • A Consistent and Principled Approach

    In a poll taken before the last election respondents indicated strong disapproval of congress (31% approve/63% disapprove) as a whole, and yet by an almost equal margin (60%/33%), they indicated approval of their own congressman (Fox Poll 10/13/06). This type of result occurs repeatedly in polls. I’m just using those numbers as an example. Similarly polls (and general observation) shows that people disapprove of attorneys as a profession, but like their own attorney, or certainly want a good, hard-hitting attorney on their side if they are in trouble.

    It’s very likely that these differences in perception have something to do with who each of those people are working for. My congressman has to try to serve my district, for example by trying to keep military bases here, get federal road projects here, and so forth. There are 434 other congressmen who don’t share his priorities on those district based items, and thus it is very unlikely that the people in any single district will approve of the whole of congress as much as they approve of their own.

    (more…)

  • Identifying Moderate Muslims

    Laura has a short post over at Pursuing Holiness on Pakistan and a move toward moderation legislatively. The particular form of moderation involved is preventing women who are raped from being charged with adultery. Personally, I’m eagerly awaiting the announcement of a moderate stoning, so that I could get some idea what that would be like (no, not actuallly!).

    MSNBC has an article on this titled Pakistan lawmakers OK changes to rape law, and it’s subtitle, Death penalty for extramarital sex dropped; Islamic fundamentalists angry is also of interest.

    I think our response to this sort of thing, including both the original problem, the reform, and the response of some other Muslims can be problematic.

    1. We might become hostile to Islam as such. This is an unacceptable option to me, simply because I know from personal experience that there are Muslims who are good people, who make good neighbors, and who would abhor the mistreatment of women (a severe understatement for charging a rape victim with adultery) as much as I do.
    2. We can put our heads in the sand because we don’t want to seem intolerant, so we don’t want to these Muslims, lest we seem to be intolerant of all Muslims. This, in my view, would morally reprehensible. We must, I believe, combat evil, and this is undoubtedly evil.
    3. We can do our best to identify specific people and policies and oppose those. This is what I try, not always successfully, to do.

    This is one of the problems with our “friends” in the Middle East. In many cases it’s a “with friends like these” situation. In order to fight one form of evil, we get tangled with another. When I was in Saudi Arabia and elsewhere in that part of the world during the first gulf war, I really thought about this. Who was it that I was defending? In general, my response had to be that they were not people I would want to defend, if I had the choice. This is not about them being Muslims. It’s about them being tyrants and enforcing sadistic laws and policies.

    I’m going to continue to try to distinguish Islam itself from many of its adherents. But I’m not going to let that stop me from making it clear that certain policies are simply evil. The treatment of women in many countries of the Middle East is one of those policies.

  • Finally Some Cover on Multiple Reading!

    Joe Carter at the evangelical outpost has written a post titled How to Change Your Mind. I’m not going to steal the thunder of his post, other than to say that it deals with reading passages multiple times.

    I have long been recommending reading a book of the Bible, or any passage you are about to study (to include a decent amount of context, and a logical selection) twelve times before going on to detailed study. I tell classes and study groups, normally over the shocked looks and nervous laughter that if they will follow this advice they will get an incredible blessing.

    The method Joe Carter is recommending is not precisely the same as mine. He’s talking about a slightly different number of times, though I’ll note that I tell people that they will get some significant blessing from increasing the number of times. I learned my method from my mother and have added to it.

    (more…)

  • Tolerance or Homogenization

    I value tolerance. Even more, I value and celebrate diversity. But frequently I see definitions of tolerance that must be considered self-destructive.

    I usually encounter these in the form of straw-man arguments. Someone may ask me if I believe in tolerance. When I acknowledge that I do, they will ask me then whether I will tolerate some form of intolerance or another. The answer to that is, “It depends.” Whereupon I’m informed that I really don’t believe in tolerance because I don’t tolerate everything.

    I believe in tolerance as a value, not as an absolute. I don’t believe in tolerating everything, merely as much as it is possible to tolerate practically. If someone believes in firing a machine gun into a crowd of people, I find it quite appropriate not to tolerate his belief, at least if he has the intention and the means to act on it.

    (more…)

  • Environmental Skepticism Where Appropriate

    The Evangelical Ecologist has an excellent post on the value of skepticism in the appropriate place, and also touches on where it is appropriate.

    He says:

    There is an important distinction, then, between aggressively promoting environmental stewardship as a God-ordained moral ethic (which it is), and aggressively promoting a particular area of human-derived environmental science as a moral ethic (which it is not).

    I think he makes a couple of excellent points in this post. I’ve been trying to find time to link to some of his stuff since I first found the site a few weeks ago, but I haven’t had the time. Go over and check it out.

  • MBWR To End

    John at Locusts and Honey, is bringing the Methodist Blogs Weekly Roundup to a close with this week’s edition. John has done a wonderful job of building up the Methodist blogosphere, and I have great sympathy for him as he lays aside this enormous task.

    I’ll miss the “human touch” in selecting the posts, but there is a new Methodist portal (the Methoblog) which has a good blogroll and some aggregation. So connection via the blogosphere continues.

    Thanks to John for his work. Onward and upward, folks!

  • Christian Carnival CXLVIII Posted

    Christian Carnival CXLVIII is now available at Crossroads for your reading pleasure.

    I will again try to post some links to some of the posts that catch my attention. I rarely get time to link to all of them.