Stephen McGarvey

It's surprising to me that the media hasn't really been talking about the plagiarism scandal surrounding Senator Joe Biden's withdrawal from the 1988 presidential race. It was also surprising that Obama picked him as his running mate for that reason. As the '88 election was the first one I followed closely, albeit from junior high school, I remember it vividly. David Greenburg over at Slate gives an excellent recap of that little footnote in election history that the DNC is probably wishing didn't exist. From the piece:

Biden's exit from the 1988 race is worth recalling in detail, because his transgressions far exceeded Obama's own relatively innocent lifting of rhetorical set pieces from his friend Deval Patrick, which occasioned a brief flap last February. Biden's misdeeds encompassed numerous self-aggrandizing thefts, misstatements, and exaggerations that seemed to point to a serious character defect...

The sheer number and extent of Biden's fibs, distortions, and plagiarisms struck many observers at the time as worrisome, to say the least. While a media feeding frenzy (a term popularized in the 1988 campaign) always creates an unseemly air of hysteria, Biden deserved the scrutiny he received. Quitting the race was the right thing to do.

 Perhaps people don't care anymore, but Biden should be forced to address it at some point. Kudos to Greenberg and Slate for the reminder and analysis. Read the full article: The Write Stuff?

It's always fascinating to me to see how non-Christian media handles Evangelicals. If you haven't seen it yet, TIME magazine's cover story on Rick Warren is worth a read. Says TIME:

If Warren is not quite today's Graham, who presided as "America's pastor" back when the U.S. affected a kind of Protestant civil religion, he is unquestionably the U.S.'s most influential and highest-profile churchman. He is a natural leader, a pathological schmoozer, insatiably curious and often the smartest person in the room. Like Graham, he projects an authenticity that has helped him forge an exquisite set of political connections — in the White House, on both sides of the legislative aisle and abroad. And he is both leading and riding the newest wave of change in the Evangelical community: an expansion beyond social conservatism to causes such as battling poverty, opposing torture and combating global warming. The movement has loosened the hold of religious-right leaders on ordinary Evangelicals and created an opportunity for Warren, who has lent his prominent voice to many of the new concerns.

Read the full story here: The Global Ambition of Rick Warren.

The Wall Street Journal and The Economist weigh in on the kidnapped missionaries from South Korea. The Journal also provides a fascinating short history of South Korea's missionary efforts of recent years:

The presence of South Korean Christian aid workers is one of the most visible examples of the trend toward "majority world" missionaries--those hailing from continents other than Europe and North America. South Korea, for example, sent only 93 missionaries abroad in 1979, but by 2000 there were over 8,000 and this number doubled by 2006...

South Korea's fervor is unique in that it's a relatively new Christian nation. The example set by the missionaries (mostly American and British) who came to work in Korea is still a recent memory. Like its neighbors China and Japan, the Korean peninsula was traditionally influenced by Buddhism and Confucianism. A small number of Catholic missionaries came in the late 18th century; their Protestant counterparts arrived about 100 years later. But it wasn't until the 1960s that the number of Christians began to increase dramatically. The traumas of the Japanese occupation (1910-45) and the Korean War (1950-53) had left the country reeling, and some see Christianity's growth as a response to those difficult times..

Read the full article: Further Fervor: Why those South Korean missionaries were in Afghanistan.

As their presence around the world increases, however, so do the dangers these missionaries incur. This incident with the Taliban, may be turning public opinion against Christian aid workers/missionaries. Notes The Economist:

[I]nter-church competition for alms goads pastors into one-upmanship, sending their congregations on ever-riskier missions to reap the resulting publicity.

The Korean press has been seized by the crisis in Afghanistan. Broadband is brimming with videos of frightened hostages and unsympathetic citizens admonishing the aid workers for not heeding the government's travel warning...

Read the full article: A clash of faiths

On FrontPage Magazine, Institute for Religion and Democracy's Mark Tooley notes that this in no way should mean that these Christains got what they deserved:

Some media reports about the captive and murdered Korean Christians have emphasized how purportedly irresponsible they were in traveling to strife-torn Afghanistan, where even the democratic government restricts Christian activity. An Afghan Interior Ministry official reported that the South Koreans, most of them from a Seoul suburban congregation, had been “very carelessly” traveling in their chartered bus when the Taliban abducted them about 110 miles south of Kabul.

But perhaps the Taliban’s beastly attacks upon unarmed Christians deserve more attention than any carelessness by the Korean sojourners. Christian missionaries across the centuries, dating to the age of the Apostles, have long been careless about their safety, often to the point of martyrdom. Most especially, church groups in the West might be expected to express more outrage over the abduction and murder of their fellow Christians, 18 of whom are women.

Tooley also points out the shocking lack of comment from America's mainline Christian denominations. He criticizes the "tepid" response from the World Council of Churches:

The WCC pronouncement is tepid and refers to the “negotiations” between the Taliban killers and the South Korean government almost as though it were a labor contract at issue. When Christians are being brutalized specifically because of their faith in Jesus Christ, might not church officials, even those based in Geneva, be a little more spiritually expressive?

After two millennia of martyrs and persecution, the Christian Church is not inexperienced as a victim of targeted brutality. These latest outrages by Islamist fanatics in Afghanistan might merit at least a Scripture citation and some bold words of divinely-inspired encouragement. Instead, the WCC spoke like a low level U.S. State Department official who is working the night shift.

Read Tooley's commentary: Killing Korean Christians

Again we should be asking ourselves, our media and our Church, "Where is the outrage?"

 

Here’s a great piece from AP Religion about Christians who are looking to apply their worldview to the visual arts. Historically, evangelicals have had a shaky relationship with the arts. But more and more these days we are hearing about Christian artists who want to change that. The article features Makoto Fujimura, an abstract painter who lives in New York City and founded the International Arts Movement to help bridge the gap between the religious and art communities. (I interviewed Mako a few years ago for an article on this topic.) From the feature:

By making a name for himself in the secular art world, Fujimura has become a role model for creatively wired evangelicals. They believe that their churches have forsaken the visual arts for too long -- and that a renaissance has begun…  

These artistic evangelicals, though still relatively small in number, are striving to be creators of culture rather than imitators, said Dick Staub, a Seattle-based radio talk show host and author of "The Culturally Savvy Christian: A Manifesto for Deepening Faith and Enriching Popular Culture In an Age of Christianity-Lite." There is a desire, he said, to avoid inventing a parallel arts universe with Christian knockoffs for Christian audiences.

"They want to make art that connects to everybody," Staub said. "The call is first and foremost to make good art."

The goal according to Staub, Fujimura and others is not to make “religious” art, but to make art informed by their faith, for God’s glory.

Christian institutions of higher learning are increasingly focusing on the arts:

Craig Detweiler, co-director of the… Reel Spirituality Institute [part of the Brehm Center for Worship, Theology, and the Arts at Fuller Theological Seminary], said students are fascinated with finding the sacred in the mundane and exploring life's mysteries. In other words, themes with far-reaching appeal.

"Maybe 20 years ago, young filmmakers wanted to tell stories for their own audience," said Detweiler, a screenwriter. "Today's young filmmakers ... find holy moments within mainstream movies and want to create more of the same.

"For too long, Christian art has implied pale imitation," Detweiler said. "We're trying to get back to the days of the Renaissance, where the church was the patron of the finest art."

It’s encouraging to see these efforts catching the attention of the national media. Read the full article: Evangelicals start push in the arts