Jonathan's blog

In a blog post, Travis Stanley hit the highlights of a lecture given by Lynn Anderson at the ACU Graduate School of Theology Alumni Luncheon in February. The full text of the speech is available on Anderson's web site. Anderson highlighted three dangers he sees for American Christianity:

CONSTANTINIANISM
I am feeling troubled over a new rising tide of what some dub "neo-Constatinianism": that is the current unholy marriage between "the conservative Christian cause" and American Nationalism, more specifically the right wing view of American economic and political interests. CONSUMERISM Add to Constantinianism the cultural drift into Consumerism. Rugged Individualism expects its inalienable rights - "Life, liberty and pursuit of happiness." But consumerism turns these into demands for "affluence, license and the pursuit of gratification." Surely it takes no Solomon to recognize that the culture can shape the church rather than the other way around. CERTAINTY Then stir another ingredient into the mix of Constantinianism and Consumerism: Certainty - the hubris that trusts its own ability to understand - and thus to "get things right, absolutely right." (In churches of Christ we know a thing or two about certainty.) This kind of Certainty stands unbowed before the ever expanding mystery of God's majesty and Holiness. And it naively reduces the rich texture of scripture down to a few rigid moral and doctrinal bullet points. In addition it seems oblivious to the baffling mystery of human persons - let alone the overwhelming complexity of global social issues.

From an article by Peter S. Goodman in the Washington Post:

Last year, the United States issued nearly 8,000 visas to Chinese-born children adopted by American parents. More than 50,000 children have left China for the United States since 1992. And more than 10,000 children have landed in other countries, according to Chinese reports. The foreign adoption program has matched Chinese babies with foreign families eager for them, while delivering crucial funding to orphanages in this country. But it has also spawned a tragic irony, transforming once-unwanted Chinese girls into valuable commodities worth stealing. Last November, police arrested 27 members of a ring that since 2002 had abducted or purchased as many as 1,000 children here in Guangdong province and sold them to orphanages in Hunan for $400 to $538, according to reports in Chinese state media and interviews with sources familiar with the case, most of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity because provincial officials have ordered a media blackout. The orphanages placed most of those children in homes with unwitting foreign families, many of them Americans, in exchange for mandatory contributions of $3,000 per baby -- a sum nearly twice the average annual Chinese income -- according to sources familiar with the prosecution.

From an article on abcnews:

A growing number of teenage girls seem to be engaging in more extreme not-so-nice behavior, including violence. Teenage boys used to be the typical troublemakers, but statistics, and legal and school officials suggest young girls are narrowing the gap - with disturbing consequences. "The school violence cases that we see here," said Charles Lind, senior deputy prosecutor in King County, Wash., "about one out of every five involves a young woman instead of a young man. And those cases predominantly involve assaults and weapons possession in school." In his book, "See Jane Hit," Dr. James Garbarino said cultural changes in entertainment and sports have stripped away girls' inhibitions. "You used to be able to say to girls, 'Don't hit,' and have the culture back that up," he said. "Now that is no longer true." Girls no longer seem to worry if they're being "like the boys." "Sports can and does increase the risk of aggression, and aggression spilling off the field," he said. It's not just sports. Entertainment also is laced with violence by women.

From a Reuters article on MSNBC:

Getting too little -- or too much -- sleep may increase a person's risk of developing type 2 diabetes, new research suggests. Dr. Henry Klar Yaggi from Yale University in New Haven, Conn. and two colleagues studied the long-term (15-year) impact of sleep duration on the development of diabetes in more than 1,100 middle-aged and elderly men who were free of diabetes in 1987-1989 and were followed until 2004. Men getting no more than 6 hours of sleep per night, as well as those getting more than 8 hours of shut eye per night, were at significantly increased risk for developing diabetes, compared to men getting 7 to 8 hours of sleep each night. The risk of diabetes was roughly twofold higher in men reporting short sleep duration and more than threefold higher in those reporting long sleep duration, compared with men sleeping 7 to 8 hours nightly.

From an AP article on MSNBC:

Over the past 10 years, more than a dozen countries have made it easier to get abortions, and women from Mexico to Ireland have mounted court challenges to get access to the procedure. The trend contrasts sharply with the United States, where this week South Dakota's governor signed legislation that would ban most abortions in the state, launching a bitter new battle that activists seem ready to take to the Supreme Court. Most European countries have legalized abortion, with limits, for years and the issue rarely makes news. Many Latin American countries ban abortion or severely limit it. In the Middle East, Islamic law forbids abortion, although most countries allow it if the mother's life is endangered. Asia is a mixed bag, with the procedure banned in the predominantly Roman Catholic Philippines, but common in China and India. Nevertheless, the question is not entirely settled: Court cases in Mexico, Poland, Colombia, and Ireland have sought to broaden access to abortion. Each year, 46 million women worldwide have abortions, according to the Alan Guttmacher Institute, a reproductive rights think tank. About 60 percent live in countries where abortion is broadly permitted. Twenty-five percent live in nations where it is banned or allowed only to save a woman's life. The rest live in countries where abortion is allowed to protect a woman's life or health. On the other side, there are new Vatican-backed efforts to call into question Italy's liberal abortion law, and women's rights activists say they fear a new tightening of Poland's law, already one of Europe's strictest.