Richard Dawkins’ Summer Camp for Kids

Now here’s an interesting news item.  Dr Richard Dawkins, formerly of Oxford University, is to subsidise summer camp experiences for kids.  The Daily Mail reports that Dawkins intends to support the efforts of those who wish to provide for children and young people an opportunity to experience a new way of thinking.  The aim is to encourage campers to think “sceptically and rationally”.

The Times also reports the story (see article6591231.ece). As one father expresses things, “I’m very keen on not indoctrinating them with religion or creeds,” he said this weekend. “I would rather equip them with the tools to learn how to think, not what to think.”

Reportedly these camps have been going on in the States for the past 13 years and folk here in this country (UK) want to give British kids a similar experience.  As one person puts it, “I think this is superb and will encourage young people to think for themselves. To say that the world was created by a god disallows people to think beyond. There is no ‘God’ the world has evolved and will continue to do so.”

Hopefully (so the argument goes) these camps will rival not only Scout summer camps but Christian summer camps (which here in the UK has played a wonderfully significant role).

It’s not so much that one resents competition or rival summer camp experiences.  Rather it is the continued assumption by Dawkins et al of a totally neutral starting position.

Dr Richard Dawkins

In one sense, I agree: I don’t want kids to be ‘brainwashed’ or discouraged  to think critically and carefully.  But this is precisely my beef with Dawkins’ statements.  He and others actually ’stack the deck’ just as much as those whom he and they despise.  It is assumed, from the get go, that the wise and rational assumption is “there is no god or supreme being”. Well, ergo, one starts to see all sorts of ‘logical’ conclusions from this.  But isn’t this simply yet another faith assumption — and one untested, unvarifiable and, well, ‘a leap’?

See the story at Richard-Dawkins-launches-childrens-summer-camp-atheists.html

The ‘iconic’ Michael Jackson

There’ll be countless articles, comments and blog statements about the news of Michael Jackson’s death last evening.  And there probably should be: Jackson, whatever one thinks about both his music and his life-style, was a dominant figure over the past (and let’s not forget how young he was when he shot to fame with his brothers, The Jackson 5) four decades.

There is already one expression used about Michael Jackson, it is icon.  Look up the meanings of the word icon or iconic and you find that it probably does describe him.  Admittedly, Jackson was not an icon in the normal, Christian or religious sense — like icons used in various Orthodox traditions.  At the same time, using some of the other definitions available, Jackson did iconically “represent a symbol as in semiotics” or a “graphic image used in computer language to convey values or representation”.

He came to symbolise (and not one dimensionally) in the late 60s and early 70s a type of celebrity.  To be sure child stars and child celebrities earlier caught people’s imaginations (Shirley Temple or Judy Garland come to mind).  But Michael, in particular among his brothers, became a celebrity both talented and young. And this dynamic tension between talent and child was never reconciled but, by both his father and Motown, encouraged and manipulated.

Jackson symbolised black funk and rock ‘n roll blending with white mainstream pop music and culture.  Again, we simply have to think of the time in history: post Civil rights and post Martin Luther King.  If Diana Ross and the Supremes were one of many Motown proto-types they were still, more or less, blacks looking, acting and performing sort of like white women.  Jackson wasn’t like white boys — despite the futile imitations of Donny Osmond and David Cassidy trying to be like him.

Jackson was an icon of postmodern cliche.  It wasn’t Madonna it was Michael Jackson who came to represent the ‘fluid and changeable’ self-identity of the postmodern self.  As his appearances changed over the years we wondered: is he white or is he black, is he male or is he female, is he well or is he ill.  But these questions were questions somewhat indicative of what was within (and still is within) some of the ways society seeks to find definition: playfully, paradoxically and incompletely.

Jackson’s monumental 1982 album Thriller with both the eponymous hit and “Billie Jean” was one of the first music productions to use movie/video to promote the album and to be at the centre of the album’s work.  This album did what the Beatles’ Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967) album did: gave both unified structure and visual impact to an album.

Jackson was iconic as well in his brokenness and confusion.  This sounds trite of me to suggest but I’m not entirely sure how else to express it.  Over the next days, months and years lots of things will be written about Jackson’s childhood (if it can be rightly called that) and his relationship with his, reportedly, dysfunctional father.  I cannot comment.  But whatever the source and cause of Jackson’s own dysfunction — symbolised by his marriage and divorce with Elvis’ daughter, Lisa-Marie — his brokenness and confusion cannot be entirely his own doing.  Society contributed in no small way.

We don’t like thinking that we contribute to celebrities’ problems because either we reject our culpability in preference for individual responsibility or we chose to deny that those whom we idolise we tend to create in our own image.

You see, I suspect  our icons very often not only portray ideals we esteem but also are our values, aspirations and longing we unknowingly fashion into the metrics we use to esteem our idols and celebrities.  To put it simply: Michael Jackson is an icon not only of what many, many people valued (worshiped?) but he became what many, many people wanted.  It was a case of mutual use and abuse.

He was hugely talented musician (OK, I admit it: I didn’t really like his music), a phenomenal performer (come on: we all secretly wished we could have danced like him in his “Billie Jean” video even if we well knew we’d seriously hurt ourselves if we tried) and master video producer.  Whatever the cause of his death (and rumours abound already) in his life Michael Jackson was iconic — then again, I wonder if even his death is iconic.

Tim Keller on Faith and Politics

Thanks to fellow blogger, Phil Whittall, I was introduced to an interesting site called big think (http://www.bigthink.com).  This site has tonnes of different video clips covering a vast number of different topics, including one section entitled ‘faith and beliefs’.  I was pleased to see some stuff by Tim Keller of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in Manhattan.

For a variety of reasons, many, many people are really suspicious (frightened?) when Christians speak about politics, especially politics in the USA.  I think there have been some very good reasons for suspicion and fear (think particularly of the most recent years).  So many folk assume that if one is a Christian in the States this means one is Republican, and a certain type of Republican at that!  Truth is, this is probably more the result of  unfortunate rhetoric by some and caricature by others. Finding Christian voices that don’t speak about solely one issue or endorse only one political party/opinion is hard.

In this sense, Keller’s suggestions (and they are only suggestions in general) do sound refreshing.  Watch and listen to what he says — no matter what your country or political persuasion and whether you would call yourself a Christian or not.

http://bigthink.com/topics/faith-&-beliefs/ideas/tim-keller-on-faith-and-politics#

Film Recommendations: Lemon Tree & The Boy in the Striped Pajamas

Two unrelated films are highly commendable.  First, an Israeli film entitled Lemon Tree (2008)  is the story of two neighbours in the hotly contested Israeli/West Bank region.  One is the widowed   45-year-old Salma Zidane (played by Hiam Abbas) who tries to make a living by tending her family’s lemon grove.

The other is Israel’s hawkish Defence Minister (Doron Tavory) and his young wife, Mira (Rona Lipaz-Michael).  For security reasons (but one senses other reasons too) the Israelis erect a wall between their new home and Salma’s lemon grove.  This is where the tension increases.

The Israeli authorities order Salma to uproot her trees because the area represents a potential security threat. Defiantly, Salma asks a Russian-educated lawyer Ziad Daud (Ali Suliman) to help her prevent the construction of the wall and the impact this will have on her lemon grove.  The case ends up going all the way to Israel’s Supreme Court, a process which gains the attention of the national and international media.

Running underneath the obvious Palestinian/Israeli conflict expressed in this film are sets of relationships full of pathos. Salma, for example, incurs the displeasure of a Palestinian elder (Makram J Khoury) for becoming romantically involved with her attorney Ziad.  There is also tension between Mira and her defence minister husband — there is clearly a relational “wall” between them.  But the most poignant relational component is that between Mira and Salma.   Mira is torn between her sense of loyalty to her husband and her unease at what is being done to Salma, admitting that “I wish I could be a better neighbour to her”.

Israeli writer-director Eran Riklis  stated that he wanted to show “people trapped in a political deadlock”, and Lemon Tree creates an almost parable-like context.

I have very little knowledge of the whys and wherefores of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, even as President Obama tries to bring both sides together “yet again” to see if some sort of dialogue and potential resolution can arise.  Lemon Tree, I think, doesn’t end up taking one side or the other.  Instead, it provides a window for viewers to see the heartache, frustration, complexities and pain experienced by all parties in this ongoing tragedy.

The second film is the remarkable, The Boy in the Striped Pajamas (2008), based upon the John Boyne novel.

You’d think that yet another film about the Nazi extermination of millions of Jews during the Second World War would prove problematic.  Yet the novel and this film adaptation prove not to be “yet another film” about this horrific period of European history.

Fundamentally the film’s success is because it is the story of two 8 year old boys: Bruno (Asa Butterfield), the son of the German S.S. labour/extermination camp commandant and Shmuel (Jack Scanlon), a Jewish boy imprisoned in the camp and, in the first instance, is “the boy in the striped pajamas”.  The two young child actors playing these boys are outstanding (their facial expressions and, especially, eyes are intensely affecting).

Now it is important to say that critics of Boyne’s novel have strongly challenged the story insisting that 8 year old children did not stay long in extermination camps (like Auschwitz) because they were killed almost immediately upon arrival.  Boyne has been accused of creating an erroneous historical picture.  The film’s detractors (and they’ve been outspoken) accuse the film of trivialisation and Hollywood kitsch.  On the other hand there are reviewers who counter with evidence that children were in some of the extermination camps.  You’ll need to read some of the articles and on-line comments.

Of course it could be argued that both the novel and the film are not necessarily trying to present a fully or literally accurate account.  Rather, the two boys are story expressions or ‘devices’ to get underneath our understanding of the Holocaust to show us in another way the horrors.  It is allegorical in this sense.

Concurrent with the developing relationship between Bruno and Shmuel (a relationship existing with innocence and confusion and separated by barbed wire) is the relationship breakdown within Bruno’s family and extended family.

His father (played by David Thewlis of Harry Potter fame) and mother (superbly played by Vera Farmiga) fall apart as his mother’s naivete and superficiality are stripped away, leaving her with the excruciating reality of what her country and, especially, her husband are doing.

I won’t give the story away.  What I will say is this film shows not only the horror of the Nazis’ murder of Jewish people but the multiple levels of ‘culpability’.  Bruno’s family, at the start of the film, display all the signs of a loving and ‘respectable’ family.  Yet at the very heart of things are blindness, naivete, superficiality and (and here is the powerful point) culpability — a culpability that includes them and ends up breaking them.  The boy in the stripped pajamas takes on an unforeseen, personal and tragic meaning.

And it is this sense of culpability that got me thinking of my and our lives: in what ways am I, are we, currently just like Bruno’s family?  What am I and we ignoring?  Whatever else we may say about Boyne’s novel and this film adaptation we really aren’t left with the comfortable option of saying “This is an interesting (or dubious) story of something long ago.”  The story (and its’ devices) tunnel underneath us and, thereby, include us.

CD of the Month (June 09)

U2’s latest work, No Line on the Horizon, kicks to touch the adage that “things tend to fall apart with age.”  Not these boys!  For almost 30 years these guys have been producing outstanding music (with significant help from Brian Eno, whom I wouldn’t mind producing my life!) and they get better and better with age (like fine wine).

Hard core U2 fans may shoot me down but I think this album is their best (followed in my opinion by Joshua Tree).  Of course, some of the reviews are puzzled and even dismissive.

Basically I think U2 splendly subverts all sorts of preconceived social consumer values and ideas.  There is a wonderful blend of the whimsical, the cheeky, the ‘rocker’, the ironic and, most impressively, the prophetic.

Musically, this album is tight and well put together.  There are some good basic rock along with added touches of ambient sounds and fascinating percussion.  I take it that a good deal of credit must go to Brian Eno and DannyLanois.

Bono’s lyrics, for me, are nothing short of magisterial.  For my money, I am blown away every time I listen to ‘Magnificent’ — ‘only love can leave such a mark‘. The multiple levels of meaning and address are wonderful.

‘Get On Your Boots’  and ‘Stand Up Comedy’ display U2’s brilliant subversiveness: here’s rock ‘n roll but within is a clarion call by way of its’ lyrics.

If you like U2, well, you’ve already purchased this album and you know why I’m commending this.  If you haven’t listen yet, do and share the music and lyrics with others.  U2 has once again found a resonance by intriguingly and willingly creating a dissonance with so much of our current trivia, brokenness and blindness.

It’s not that I believe in love, it’s love believes in me…

CD of the Month (May 09)

Yeah, I know its been far too long since I posted anything but life sorta got in the way and, well, that’s the way things go.  But let me commend a CD I’ve been enjoying.

The Irish have come up with yet another impressive band! (Is it the Guinness, I ask?)  This CD is the debut album by an Irish trio called The Script.  See The Script

These lads have had some L.A. work done on their style — a style blending something Indie, something pop, something blues and something that’s their own — but they ain’t American at all.

I enjoy words and lyrics that are thoughtful and thought provoking — we have way, way too much contentless lyrics today.  The Script write songs that are drenched with meaning: meaning expressed in similies, questions and expressions of pain and frustration.  I especially like “We Cry”, “Talk You Down” and “The Man Who Can’t Be Moved”.  Listen to the music and read the lyrics!  These Dubliners know life and know what life can do.

Some reviews of this album complain the songs start to sound similar and when you’ve heard one song you’ve heard the others.  Point taken but only to a point.  I suspect this may have more to do with production than any artistic limitations.  Maybe they can have a drink and chat about their next productions with those certain other musicians from Ireland!

Friedman on Diplomacy Today in the age of Pirates

Here is another timely and thought provoking essay by Thomas Friedman, writer for The New York Times.

In the Age of Pirates

By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN

I’ve been thinking lately of starting a new school of foreign service to train U.S. diplomats. My school, though, would be very simple. It would consist of a single classroom with a desk and a chair. At the desk would be a teacher, pretending to be a foreign leader. The student would come in and have to persuade the foreign leader to do something — to pull this or that lever. At one point, the foreign leader would nod vigorously in agreement and then reach behind him and pull the lever — and it would come off the wall in his hands. Or, he would nod vigorously and say, “Yes, yes, of course, I will pull that lever,” but then would only pretend to do so.

The student would then have to figure out what to do next. …

I’m wondering if President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton aren’t those students, trying to deal with the leaders of Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran and North Korea. I say that not to criticize but to sympathize. “Mama, don’t let your children grow up to be diplomats.”

This is not the great age of diplomacy.

A secretary of state can broker deals only when other states or parties are ready or able to make them. In the cold war, an age of great powers, grand bargains and reasonably solid client states, there were ample opportunities for that — whether in arms control with the Soviet Union or peacemaking between our respective client states around the globe. But this is increasingly an age of pirates, failed states, nonstate actors and nation-building — the stuff of snipers, drones and generals, not diplomats.

Hence the déjà vu all over again quality of U.S. foreign policy right now — the sense that when it comes to our major problems (Afghanistan and Pakistan and North Korea and Iran), we just go around and around, buying the same carpets from the same people, over and over, but nothing changes.

“We are dealing with states and leaders who either cannot deliver or will not deliver,” notes the Johns Hopkins University foreign policy professor Michael Mandelbaum. “The issues we have with them look less like problems that can be solved and more like conditions that we have to manage.”

The ones who can’t deliver — the leaders of Afghanistan and Pakistan — are the ones who promise to do all sorts of good things, and pull all sorts of levers, but at the end of the day the levers come off the wall because the governments in these countries have only limited powers. The ones who won’t deliver — Iran and North Korea — time and again tell us: “Yes, we need to talk.” But at the end of the day, their hostile relationships with America or the West are so central to the survival strategy of their regimes, so much at the core of their justifications for remaining in power, that it is not in their interest to deliver real reconciliation, but just to pretend to deliver it.

The only thing that could change this is a greater exercise of U.S. and allied power. In the case of Afghanistan and Pakistan, that power would have to be used to actually rebuild these states from the inside into modern nations. We would literally have to build the institutions — the pulleys and wheels — so that when the leaders of these states pulled a lever something actually happened, and the lever wouldn’t just break off in their hands.

And in the case of the strong states — Iran and North Korea — we would have to generate much more effective leverage from the outside to get them to change their behavior along the lines we seek. In both cases, though, success surely would require a bigger and longer U.S. investment of money and power, not to mention allies.

Instead, I fear that we are adopting a middle-ground strategy — doing just enough to avoid collapse but not enough to solve the problems. If our goal in Afghanistan and Pakistan is nation-building, so they will have self-sustaining moderate governments, we surely don’t have enough troops or resources inside devoted to either. If our goal is changing regime behavior in Iran and North Korea, we surely have not generated enough leverage from outside. North Korea’s defiant missile launch and Iran’s continued development of its nuclear capability testify to that.

So, in sum, we have four problem countries at the heart of U.S. foreign policy today that we don’t have the will or ability to ignore but seem to lack the leverage or the allies to decisively change. The big wild card — a critical mass of people who share our aspirations inside these countries, rising up and leading the fight, which is ultimately what tipped Iraq for the better — I don’t see. As such, I fear we are sliding into commitments in Afghanistan and Pakistan without a real national debate about the ends or the means or the exits. That is a recipe for trouble.

Given all that is on his plate, you cannot blame President Obama for looking for a middle ground — not wanting to abandon progressives and women in Afghanistan and Pakistan, but not wanting to get in too deeply. But history teaches that the middle ground can be a perilous place. Think of Iraq before the surge — not enough to win or lose, but just enough to be stuck.

Easter: from death to life

Here is a well done video describing the central feature of Christianity: the crucified sin-bearer Jesus was raised from the dead and he is Lord. His bodily and historic resurrection, witnessed to by  women seeing the empty tomb and later seeing the risen Jesus, heralds the most radical turning point in human history and extends an extraordinary promise.  Check it out!

New Word Alive 2009

Last week I, along with a couple of thousand others, attended week 1 of New Word Alive 2009 at Pwllehi in North Wales.  New Word Alive is a cooperative ministry among a number of Christian groups.  Week 1 was especially, but not exclusively, geared towards university students.  I was there teaching a seminar entitled “Connecting With Cultures”.

What made it a special time (for me, at least) included the beautiful sunny weather we experienced — what you cannot predict in Wales but when it comes it is awesome.

Looking towards Snowdonia -- New Word Alive 2009

Moreover, the magisterial morning Bible readings from 1 Corinthians 1-7 by Vaughan Roberts (rector of St Ebbe’s Church, Oxford) helped us hear from the apostle Paul what is true spirituality — spirituality which is consequently true humanity and true living.

Capping everything off, however, was the simple yet profound joy of meeting up with friends. The Starbucks on site must have done a roaring business! There is a richness in connecting once again with special people.

For someone like myself who’s moved way too many times, these re-connections bring a deep thanksgiving for what is constant.  This constancy isn’t static (our children are older and some now have their own children; our work and ministries aren’t exactly what we did 10-20 years ago; and, er, we don’t look exactly as we once did).

Constancy is more a matter of a continued experience of what the German theologian and martyr, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, called “life together”.  This life together is the result not only of shared experiences and location; it comes from the mercy, kindness and grace of the one who is the author of life — the one who gave his life so we might have life.

New Word Alive was a reminder to me of the “realness” or the “concreteness” (we can call it even the mundane if we remember mundanus (Latin) doesn’t mean boring or dull) of the life the Lord Jesus Christ brings and offers men and women.  What is even more amazing is the promise that what is real and concrete now is actually only partial and is shot through with “anticipating glory”.  And if North Wales is awesome in the nice weather of “now” and our friendships and reconnections “now” are special how can we even begin to imagine  the “now” of God’s promised new creation!

The extraordinary speed of extraordinary changes in life

Here is a remarkable video collection of information about the even more remarkable changes in our global life.  Of course other generations and cultures experienced change and innovation; but, arguably, the rapidity and profundity of changes over the last 40 years are resulting in unimaginable benefits and, equally, unanticipated negative consequences.  The issue may not be so much change itself as it is the affects of the exponential change and the speed of change.