pspan style=font-size: 14px; font-family: Verdana;a href=http://www.theboyinstripedpajamas.coma href=http://johnharmstrong.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451cfe769e2010536195aa9970b-pi style=float: left;img alt=BITSP_S_Poster border=0 class=at-xid-6a00d83451cfe769e2010536195aa9970b image-full src=http://johnharmstrong.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451cfe769e2010536195aa9970b-800wi style=margin: 0px 5px 5px 0px; title=BITSP_S_Poster //a The Boy in the Striped Pajamas/a is a one of the most moving films I#39;ve seen in a long while. I doubt the critics will acknowledged it as they should but it is a four-star film to me. (a href=http://www.rottentomatoes.comRotten Tomatoes/a gave it a 64% rating, which is pretty good for the ratings of professional critics!) Only one other film that deals with the Holocaust from the perspective of a child#39;s viewpoint comes remotely close. emLife Is Beautiful /em(1998), starring Roberto Benigni. It has ranked as my favorite such film butnow I have to put this new Disney film in the same genre and give it just as high a rating. This film is good enough to see in the theater embefore /emit comes out on DVD. It has already received a Heartland quot;Truly Moving Picture Awardquot; and deservedly so. It is family approved for ages 12 and above. I think this is about right. Young children could not handle the dark side of the Holocaust presented here without some emotional problems but everyone else will be moved in a way that is truly human. When the film ended I sat in the last row of a fairly packed theater audience and quietly wept. I felt my usual anger at the Nazi#39;s but I also felt in a very deep sense the reality that children see things we do not readily see and experience life in a way that we must all seek to learn again. /span/ppspan style=font-size: 14px; font-family: Verdana;The film#39;s story line is situated in the 1940s. A German officer, with his wife and two children (ages 8 and 12), are moved to the country from his work in Berlin. The children, and the wife, soon realize that they are in the midst of a Jewish death camp. Bruno (Asa Butterfield, an eleven year old actor), the son of the German officer, begins to realize that life is very different here than he ever imagined in the city of Berlin. He has no friends and grows bored. Bruno is curious, as all such boys will be at eight. He wants to explore the farm but his mother forbids it. Eventually he slips out and finds a barbed wire encampment. Here Bruno establishes a friendship with a little Jewish boy, Shmuel, who is also eight years old. He is delighted to make a new friendship. He visits his friend every day. This is where the title of the movie comes from since Shmuel lives in quot;striped pajamasquot; behind barbed wire in the extermination camp. Day after day the two boys talk and play building a close friendship. I will not tell you more about where the story goes since to say more will give away too much. /span/ppspan style=font-size: 14px; font-family: Verdana;a href=http://johnharmstrong.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451cfe769e201053621fa1d970c-pi style=float: right;img alt=BITSP_S_Shaking_Hands class=at-xid-6a00d83451cfe769e201053621fa1d970c src=http://johnharmstrong.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451cfe769e201053621fa1d970c-120wi style=margin: 0px 0px 5px 5px; //a The story line is arresting, the theme is truly touching, and the ending is gripping and chilling. You will be hard pressed to leave the theater without being touched very deeply. The central point, emseeing and experiencing evil from a child#39;s perspective,/em is the whole point. Don#39;t allow critic#39;s comments about British accents in a Nazi film put you off. See it. The film is a comfortable 94 minutes in length and well directed with beautiful scenes and solid adaptations. /span/ppspan style=font-size: 14px; font-family: Verdana;The film is based on the book, strongemThe Boy in the Striped Pajamas/em/strong, by John Boyne. The book was published in 2006 and immediately won awards. In Ireland it won two prestigious awards and was voted the children#39;s book of the year. It was a bestseller in the United Kingdom and eventually made it as a best-seller on the emNew York Times/em list. Boyne, born in Dublin, studied literature at Trinity College, Dublin, and is now working on his seventh novel. I intend to read more of his work based upon seeing the screen adaption of this fine story. /span/pbr /

pspan style=font-size: 14px; font-family: Verdana;a href=http://johnharmstrong.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451cfe769e2010536193d52970b-pi style=float: left;img alt=Wcc_logo border=0 class=at-xid-6a00d83451cfe769e2010536193d52970b src=http://johnharmstrong.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451cfe769e2010536193d52970b-800wi style=margin: 0px 5px 5px 0px; title=Wcc_logo //a Having recently completed a book, strongYour Church Is Too Small/strong, I have given a great deal of thought to the question: quot;What emmust /ema Christian believe?quot; The answer to this question is the very basis upon which we can experience the unity of the Spirit in the bonds of peace with other Christians, even other Christians who believe much more, or much less, than we confess. /span/ppspan style=font-size: 14px; font-family: Verdana;It seems that the most common objection to relational unity with other Christians is based upon a prior question, quot;What must we believe in order to enter into a relationship in Christ that does not compromise the historic Christian faith in any essential way?quot; emDoctrine matters because Christianity is more than a relationship./em It is a relationship, and it includes a vital experience that comes in being united with the living Christ by the Holy Spirit. But this relationship and experience is rooted in teaching, or doctrine. If you do not have a doctrinal basis for this relationship then you may have the wrong relationship, or even a dangerous relationship. This truth is routinely abused by all types of fundamentalist Christians, from all three of the great traditions, but it is a relationship that we must insist upon if we are to be faithful to Jesus Christ. /span/ppspan style=font-size: 14px; font-family: Verdana;The sectarian answer to this question will always insist on an approach that says, in effect: quot;My (our) way or the highway.quot; The sectarian will take a whole system of doctrinal affirmations, including a number of them that are not common to the great Christian tradition, and make these the test of all relationships. /span/ppspan style=font-size: 14px; font-family: Verdana;a href=http://johnharmstrong.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451cfe769e201053621dbb8970c-pi style=float: right;img alt=Getimage.aspx class=at-xid-6a00d83451cfe769e201053621dbb8970c src=http://johnharmstrong.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451cfe769e201053621dbb8970c-500wi style=margin: 0px 0px 5px 5px; //a The latitudinarian answer to this question will say: quot;Believe whatever you will so long as we love one another and remain tolerant.quot; Christians from many traditions, and supposedly from no tradition, refuse to have anything to do with a doctrinal basis for relationship, insisting that doctrine divides and love unites. The core problem here is that these Christians appeal to the love of Christ emwithout/em affirming faith in the person of Christ. This approach will eventually destroy vital Christianity by reducing it to an ethical framework emwithout/em a biblical and historical basis./span br /span style=font-size: 14px; font-family: Verdana;br /The emHeidelberg Catechism/em, in strongQuestion 22/strong, asks: quot;What then emmust/em a Christian believe?quot;/spanbr /span style=font-size: 14px; font-family: Verdana;br /strongAnswer:/strong br /br /emEverything God promises us in the gospel (cf. Matthew 28:18-20; John 20:30-31). That gospel is summarized for us in the articles of our Christian faith---a creed beyond doubt and confessed throughout the world. br //em/span/ppspan style=font-size: 14px; font-family: Verdana;What follows, in questions 23-58, are careful and biblical applications of the articles of the Apostles#39; Creed. /span/ppspan style=font-size: 14px; font-family: Verdana;I would argue that the framers of this catechism got it right. What every Christian emmust believe/em is to be found in the Apostles#39; Creed. Roman Catholics believe much more than what is in this creed. So do the Orthodox and all Protestants. All who are faithful to the core orthodoxy of Christianity and the essential teaching of the Bible believe in their heart and soul what this creed teaches. This is so because the creed teaches, emin a simple summary fashion/em, what the Bible teaches. Again, there is emmore /emtaught in the Bible than is taught in this short creed but what is taught in this creed quot;mustquot; be believed by all Christians. /span/ppspan style=font-size: 14px; font-family: Verdana;This approach does several important things. First, it promotes emcore orthodoxy/em and properly refuses Christian standing to cults and non-Christian heresies. Second, it keeps the faithful centered on what is emprimary/em and essential to real faith. Third, it reminds us that all Christians, regardless of their earthly communion and various beliefs, share in this quot;mere Christianity.quot; /span/ppspan style=font-size: 14px; font-family: Verdana;Everything I teach and everything I practice is passed through this holy test. Is the faith being confessed in agreement with the faith confessed by the earliest Christians, those who came right emafter/em the apostles and prophets of the New Testament? The Apostles#39; Creed has the unique role of history and place and unites us where we can and must be united. /span/ppspan style=font-size: 14px; font-family: Verdana;a href=http://johnharmstrong.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451cfe769e2010536193e57970b-pi style=float: left;img alt=Globe border=0 class=at-xid-6a00d83451cfe769e2010536193e57970b src=http://johnharmstrong.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451cfe769e2010536193e57970b-800wi style=margin: 0px 5px 5px 0px; title=Globe //a This is why I have such precious unity of the Spirit with so many Christians with whom I disagree on one or more points of faith and/or practice. The unity I share is rooted in the experience we have in Christ and the faith that we share in the teachings of the earliest Christians. I long to see a growing army of Christians adopt this simple, embut not simplistic/em, approach to unity. If we are baptized followers of Jesus Christ, who confess explicit faith in the Lord of heaven and earth, and affirm that our oneness is found in confessing together what the church has confessed from the earliest times then we can share a deep and growing relational unity with one another. We may not share that relationship in the same church communion on earth but we can share it in common human relationships since we are truly brothers and sisters in Jesus Christ. We will all share this faith in the church triumphant so it only makes sense to find ways that we can share it now in the church militant. This is my ecumenism. /span/p

pspan style=font-size: 14px; font-family: Verdana;Wally Lamb has written two hugely successful best-selling novels: emstrongShe#39;s Come Undone/strong/em and emstrongI Know This Much/strong/em. He has been called quot;a modern-day Dostoevskyquot; because his characters are introspective and search for a quot;mocking, sadistic Godquot; in the process of coming to grips with life. br /br /span style=text-decoration: underline;a href=http://johnharmstrong.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451cfe769e201053617f9be970b-pi style=float: left;img alt=Novel class=at-xid-6a00d83451cfe769e201053617f9be970b src=http://johnharmstrong.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451cfe769e201053617f9be970b-120wi style=margin: 0px 5px 5px 0px; //a /spanLamb#39;s new novel, recently released after some ten years in the making, is over 700 pages long and titled: emstrongThe Hour I First Believed/strong/em. The new book deals with tragedy in general and the teen killings at Columbine in particular. While Lamb was writing this novel 9/11 shattered our daily lives in an unusual way. Then this horror was followed by the widening war in Iraq and Afghanistan and Hurricane Katrina. Says Lamb, quot;I worried this novel into existence.quot; A reporter writes that at one point Lamb was so vexed that he offered to pay back a large royalty advance and give up the entire project. /span/ppspan style=font-size: 14px; font-family: Verdana;Lamb believes the media did not portray the shooters at Columbine accurately. He feels they did not kill because they were quot;bulliedquot; bur rather, quot;The killers were motivated more by feelings of superiority than inferiority. They thought they had the right to play God.quot; /span/ppspan style=font-size: 14px; font-family: Verdana;Coming from a man who has spent a decade studying and writing about violence and heartbreak I have to take this observation quite seriously. I have always wondered about the mainstream analysis of the Columbine evil and now I have good reason to wonder even more. /span/ppspan style=font-size: 14px; font-family: Verdana;Lamb says his spirit was nearly broken by this study. quot;I#39;m scared by the randomness that can happen in life. Yet I ended up feeling hopeful about a world that somehow goes on in spite of it.quot; /span/ppspan style=font-size: 14px; font-family: Verdana;a href=http://johnharmstrong.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451cfe769e2010536206cf3970c-pi style=float: right;img alt=Lamb border=0 class=at-xid-6a00d83451cfe769e2010536206cf3970c src=http://johnharmstrong.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451cfe769e2010536206cf3970c-800wi style=margin: 0px 0px 5px 5px; title=Lamb //a Lamb has apparently grasped something deeply human about all of this but lacks the perspective that a robust doctrine of Christian providence can give to those who fear and grieve in the midst of divine hope. /span/ppspan style=font-size: 14px; font-family: Verdana;Providence is very often rejected or misunderstood in our time. The famous emHeidelberg Catechism/em says:/span/ppspan style=font-size: 14px; font-family: Verdana;quot;Providence is the almighty and ever present power of God by which he upholds, as with his hand, heaven and earth and all creatures, and so rules them that leaf and blade, rain and drought, fruitful and lean years, food and drink, health and sickness, prosperity and poverty---all things in fact, come to us not by chance but from his fatherly handquot; (Question 27). /span/ppspan style=font-size: 14px; font-family: Verdana;The alternative to such a view of providence is appealing on one level, since it seems to create a universe where random acts of violence and kindness co-exist and God is not sovereign in any meaningful sense. But I have never understood how a Christian gains comfort from random acts of either violence or kindness. There is nothing random about God#39;s care for his creation, especially his care for his own children. Mystery abounds for sure but removing God#39;s personal care is not a solution, or at least it is not one that lends any measure of comfort to the human soul. /span/ppspan style=font-size: 14px; font-family: Verdana;I think I will read Lamb#39;s novel but I expect that I will wonder where providence fits in the world that he responds to as a truly great story-teller. /span/pbr /

pspan style=font-size: 14px; font-family: Verdana;a href=http://johnharmstrong.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451cfe769e201053618cdc4970c-pi style=float: left;img alt=Film border=0 class=at-xid-6a00d83451cfe769e201053618cdc4970c src=http://johnharmstrong.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451cfe769e201053618cdc4970c-800wi style=margin: 0px 5px 5px 0px; title=Film //a The film producer Oliver Stone has made more than his share of biopics that have created considerable controversy. Some of his films feature elements that are intentionally mythic and hugely debatable. I have seen most of Sspan style=font-size: 15px;tone#39;s films, movies like emNixon/em, emJFK/em/span and the war movies. Stone#39;s most recent film is emW./em I was certain when I saw that this film was being released that I would not like it, at least until I began to read a few reviews. I then saw it several weeks ago and found it a sympathetic and engaging portrait that plays with some really big ideas that make President George W. Bush look a personable and warmly human figure who is also tragic. I then saw Governor Mike Huckabee interview Oliver Stone on his Fox News Channel program. I found the interview very interesting. To hear Stone explain what he was trying to accomplish in this film and how he wrote and produced it was quite convincing to me. Huckabee had issues with the film, as I did, but he liked it. So did I. /span/ppspan style=font-size: 14px; font-family: Verdana;Stone tells the Bush story through three parts, or three big story lines. The lead character, who plays W., is actor Josh Brolin. a href=http://johnharmstrong.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451cfe769e20105361081c0970b-pi style=float: right;img alt=Brolin border=0 class=at-xid-6a00d83451cfe769e20105361081c0970b src=http://johnharmstrong.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451cfe769e20105361081c0970b-800wi style=margin: 0px 0px 5px 5px; title=Brolin //a These three story lines are not told chronologically but in various flash back and fast-forward types of ways. He deals with Bush the playboy, the party guy who drank too much and never amounted to much, never keeping a real job for more than months at a time. He then deals with Bush the convert to Christian faith. This is done with rare sensitivity, and even a measure of respect, at least in my view. Finally he deals with Bush, the man who never got his father#39;s approval and who lacked the innate ability to make good decisions in leadership, especially with regard to the war in Iraq. This Bush, still desperately seeking and needing his father#39;s approval, seems to have struggled with who he was his entire life. (W. is much like his mother Barbara while Jeb is more like his father, George H. W. Bush. Since I have read a good deal about this family I think Stone gets this relationship about right.) Even if you disagree with Oliver Stone#39;s portrayal, and much of this is fiction since we do not know exactly what the president was thinkingor saying at a particular point in time, the film does give a relatively fair treatment of the semi-complicated personality of the world#39;s most powerful man. /span/ppspan style=font-size: 14px; font-family: Verdana;a href=http://johnharmstrong.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451cfe769e20105361081e9970b-pi style=float: left;img alt=GWB border=0 class=at-xid-6a00d83451cfe769e20105361081e9970b src=http://johnharmstrong.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451cfe769e20105361081e9970b-800wi style=margin: 0px 5px 5px 0px; title=GWB //a I have had several people tell me the film bored them. Others, who love George W. Bush and are offended by such portrayals, find it terribly unfair or, in most cases, will never watch the film. It didn#39;t bore me at all and I confess I rather liked it. I saw it as fictional-biography and thus as one person#39;s interpretation of the president. This is precisely what Stone told Huckabee he intended to do. Stone is an artist, for better or for worse, not a historian. What surprised me was how close to reality I sensed the big picture got in the end. It is clearly Oliver Stone#39;s best such moviespan style=font-size: 15px; font-family: Verdana;. /span/spanspan style=font-size: 15px; font-family: Verdana;I recommend you see it of you understand the premise and can handle the obvious fictional elements, which is a way of saying literalists should stay awayspan style=font-size: 14px; font-family: Verdana;. /span/spanspan style=font-size: 14px; font-family: Verdana;Most literalists do not like novels or films anyway so the warning is probably unnecessary./span/p

pspan style=font-size: 14px; font-family: Verdana;a href=http://johnharmstrong.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451cfe769e201053610724c970b-pi style=float: left;img alt=Coliseum class=at-xid-6a00d83451cfe769e201053610724c970b src=http://johnharmstrong.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451cfe769e201053610724c970b-320wi style=margin: 0px 5px 5px 0px; //a There were more martyrs for the Christian faith in the last century than in any previous century. I am not totally sure about this fact but I think there were possibly more martyrs in the 20th century than in all the previous 19 centuries total. This fact is clear: martyrdom is still a emmajor trial for the church/em and there is little or no evidence that it is declining in the 21st century. /span/ppspan style=font-size: 14px; font-family: Verdana;My good friend Dr. Timothy George is the Dean of Beeson Divinity School in Birmingham, Alabama. a href=http://johnharmstrong.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451cfe769e201053618c24a970c-pi style=float: right;img alt=TG border=0 class=at-xid-6a00d83451cfe769e201053618c24a970c src=http://johnharmstrong.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451cfe769e201053618c24a970c-800wi style=margin: 0px 0px 5px 5px; title=TG //a Beeson Divinity School is one of my top-five schools for training ministers in America. It is evangelical, ecumenical and outward looking in an unusual way. It has a superb faculty and is a great place to get into a smallish community of learners and worshipers. I have frequently recommended Beeson and not one student I have urged to enroll there has ever regretted it./span/ppspan style=font-size: 14px; font-family: Verdana;I bring this up because the chapel at Beeson is one of the most magnificent seminary chapels in all of America. Dr. George#39;s thoughtful engagement in planning this magnificent chapel shows in every possible way. One of the more amazing aspects of the Beeson chapel is that the area where the pulpit is located has a rotunda above it that has the look of a balcony. a href=http://johnharmstrong.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451cfe769e20105361073ef970b-pi style=float: left;img alt=Chapel class=at-xid-6a00d83451cfe769e20105361073ef970b src=http://johnharmstrong.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451cfe769e20105361073ef970b-500wi style=margin: 0px 5px 5px 0px; //a Around the balcony are great men and women of the faith looking down upon the worship of the church on earth from their place above. There is Augustine, Chrysostom, Luther, Calvin, Spurgeon and a host of others. Even the pulpit has a carving of one of the great preachers of the church. /span/ppspan style=font-size: 14px; font-family: Verdana;#0160;One of the more important aspects of the Beeson Chapel design is that martyrs are also priminently featured, as they should be. One of the martyrs prominently feature there is Bishop Janani Luwum (d. 1977). Bishop Luwum was the leader of the Anglican Church of Uganda under Idi Amin#39;s reign of terror during the 1970s. (emThe Last King of Scotland/em, an award winning film, portrays the reign of Amin quite graphically and very powerfully.) Amin empersonally/em killed Bishop Luwum on February 16, 1977. That same year the church marked its 100th anniversary in Ugandspan style=font-size: 15px; font-family: Verdana;a. /span/spanspan style=font-size: 15px; font-family: Verdana;The blood of this wonderful bishop eventually became the seed of a new church in Uganda, one with spiritual power and fidelity matched by none. /span/ppspan style=font-size: 14px; font-family: Verdana;Janani Luwum was ordained in 1956 while Uganda was still a protectorate of Great Britain. He was an active leader in the East African Revival and frequently told his congregations: quot;God does not have grand-children; He only has sons and daughters.quot; By this simple statement he urged people to have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ, not a second-hand one. The East African Revival was one of the greatest movements of the Holy Spirit in the 20th century. It taught millions to trust God and to live through hard times with faith. It prepared Christians both to live well and to die well. /span/ppspan style=font-size: 14px; font-family: Verdana;a href=http://johnharmstrong.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451cfe769e2010536107419970b-pi style=float: right;img alt=Luwum border=0 class=at-xid-6a00d83451cfe769e2010536107419970b src=http://johnharmstrong.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451cfe769e2010536107419970b-800wi style=margin: 0px 0px 5px 5px; title=Luwum //a Bishop Luwum was accused of treason, a atypical Amin charge against anyone who didn#39;t give complete obeisance to him. Death was then sure to follow. Luwum said to Amin, quot;We must see the hand of God in this.quot; The bishop#39;s trouble with Amin actually began when he criticized the abuse of human rights in Uganda in order to protect his own people and the lives of others. quot;Public executions, disappearances and expulsions abounded,quot; says writer Mark Fackler. To criticize Amin during his eight-year reign of terror was to invite certain death. But Luwum knew he had to speak up for his people and neither feared Amin or death. He gladly faced his own martyrdom in order to speak truth to power and to show real Christian love. /span/ppspan style=font-size: 14px; font-family: Verdana;After Luwum was shot his family and some of the bishops were forced to flee the country. But the church continued to survive under intense persecution. In April of 1979 the regime fell to the joint forces of Ugandan rebels and Tanzanian troops. Amin fled and died outside of Uganda many years later. Today the church in Uganda thrives and the gospel is changing lives with incredible power. /span/ppspan style=font-size: 14px; font-family: Verdana;Standing in the pulpit at the Beeson Chapel I have looked at this bust of Janani Luwum and been powerfully reminded that the martyrs should always be a major part of the Christian story. In my own lifetime this man of God, Janani Luwum, laid down his life freely in order to be faithful to Christ. a href=http://johnharmstrong.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451cfe769e201053618c2cb970c-pi style=float: right;img alt=SuperStock_1047-654 class=at-xid-6a00d83451cfe769e201053618c2cb970c src=http://johnharmstrong.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451cfe769e201053618c2cb970c-120wi style=margin: 0px 0px 5px 5px; //a I am also reminded of St. Stephen, the first martyr of the Christian church. From 36 A.D. until the present moment in history the martyrs have played a huge role in the faithful witness of Christ to his people and to the watching world. Surely you and I can do no less than be faithful in life and, if called upon, be faithful in death. /spanspan style=font-size: 14px; font-family: Verdana;We should all quot;die dailyquot; if we truly desire to follow Jesus Christ. /spanspan style=font-size: 14px; font-family: Verdana;Martyrs like Luwum speak powerfully to all of us. /span/p

pspan style=font-size: 14px; font-family: Verdana;There can be no doubt that certain kinds of Christianity have fostered hate. This has been true historically and it is still true in some places today. I am not speaking of quot;hate crimesquot; as defined by secular legal minds in our own time but rather of the type of hatred that makes people see Christians and Christianity as mean-spirited./span/ppspan style=font-size: 14px; font-family: Verdana;I am convinced that the good news of Jesus, properly understood, never breeds a hateful faith, only a gracious faith. The reason for this is that Jesus himself is at the center of real faith and Jesus never modeled hate speech or mean actions. He was firm, especially with religious conservatives who failed to keep the spirit of the law, but he was never mean. He exemplified love and grace and always displayed the virtues of love, patience, meekness and humility in his dealings with people. Since he is our model we should do the same, in so far as we follow him. /span/ppspan style=font-size: 14px; font-family: Verdana;What I am really saying is that faith is emprimarily/em relational. This does not mean that doctrine does not matter but rather that how you treat a person is far more important to Christ than having all knowledge about the faith. Another way to say this is to say that faith is incarnational more than rational. It exists in flesh-and-blood people who laugh, cry and die much more than in abstract truths and arguments. /span/ppspan style=font-size: 14px; font-family: Verdana;So is doctrine important? You bet it is. If your doctrine of Jesus is wrong than you will not be an incarnational person. And if your doctrine about Jesus is wrong you will not have a role model who is truly good and holy. What this does mean, however, is that emtrue faith goes beyond dogma/em. Dogma without faith is dead. Faith without dogma will never be emtrue/em faith. But the faith always precedes the doctrine and thus has a priority in how we actually live. When this happens Christianity will never foster hatred. /span/p

pspan style=font-size: 14px; font-family: Verdana;Yesterday I wrote about how the abortion issue has shifted within our culture. I suggested that we needed to take a new approach to creating a culture of life and to the end of saving as many of the unborn as possible. /span/ppspan style=font-size: 14px; font-family: Verdana;a href=http://johnharmstrong.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451cfe769e201053603b7c5970c-pi style=float: right;img alt=Ribbon border=0 class=at-xid-6a00d83451cfe769e201053603b7c5970c src=http://johnharmstrong.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451cfe769e201053603b7c5970c-800wi style=margin: 0px 0px 5px 5px; title=Ribbon //a First some history. Evangelicals came to the pro-life issue several years emafter /emRoman Catholics. They initially even showed a willingness to accept it until people like C. Everett Koop, Francis Schaeffer and Harold O. J. Brown began to inform them of their mistakes. Then evangelicals responded the way they often respond. They got emotionally and passionately involved. Some even made this the quot;single most important issuequot; of our time. The rhetoric employed made it sound like a Nazi-like holocaust was unfolding in the United States. This approach, in my view, made things worse. Even if you believe that a real human life is taken in an abortion, and I strongly do, serious ethical consideration will force you to approach this issue differently than the way we understand the Holocaust. Language of quot;equivalencyquot; in this case actually harmed the movement. It amounted to quot;the little boy who cried firequot; much too often. We lost the moral high ground and the real reason was the sexual revolution, not emRoe v. Wade/em. The church lost the abortion issue twenty-five years before emRoe v. Wade/em and still doesn#39;t understand how or why. /span/ppspan style=font-size: 14px; font-family: Verdana;We should also ask a question I rarely here emotionally charged pro-life advocates ask: quot;Do you want to criminalize the mothers who choose abortion?quot;/span/ppspan style=font-size: 14px; font-family: Verdana;But Catholics always had a solid answer on abortion since they had a more healthy wholistic view of sexual ethics in general. The problem is that Catholics are now about 50-50 on the issue of abortion. The less faithful they are to Mass attendance the more likely they are to embrace abortion. Even the American bishops are sending some confusing signals and do emnot/em completely agree with each other about how to respond to this issue. (They agree on pro-life itself but not on a response to their members who disagree!)/span/ppspan style=font-size: 14px; font-family: Verdana;a href=http://johnharmstrong.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451cfe769e201053603b7e8970c-pi style=float: left;img alt=Pope border=0 class=at-xid-6a00d83451cfe769e201053603b7e8970c src=http://johnharmstrong.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451cfe769e201053603b7e8970c-800wi style=margin: 0px 5px 5px 0px; title=Pope //a Pope Benedict XVI has a lot more wisdom to offer than most realize. In September, speaking in France, the pope approved the separation of church and state emopenly/em. (Does anyone realize how much of a shift this is from 100 years ago?) But the pope rightly reminded us that the church has an quot;irreplacable rolequot; in forming the conscience of people and helping them quot;create a basic ethical consensus in society.quot;/span/ppspan style=font-size: 14px; font-family: Verdana;This is what the church in America, including many non-Catholic churches, have been doing but their approach has had a quot;scattershotquot; effect. By 2008 we can see that these uncoordinated and ineffective respones have had diminishing results. The U.S. Bishops sugest that a new program be launched to educate Catholics and help them form a Christian conscience. The approach will be largely free of political partisanship./span/ppspan style=font-size: 14px; font-family: Verdana;I resonnate with this reading of Benedict XVI#39;s words. I pray that many of you will find ways to educate Christians in your churches without making this into another round of partisan political rhetoric at each election time. This is the only way we can make a real difference and we ought to realize it at this point in time. /spanspan style=font-size: 14px; font-family: Verdana;Every pastor and church leader who reads this blog has to know that you are presently leading a number of people who have had abortions and a number who will yet have one unless they are taught clearly the moral reasons to respond to life more positively. /span/p

pspan style=font-size: 14px; font-family: Verdana;Sociologist James Davison Hunter has coined a term that very effectively describes what is going on in our culture in terms of how people are taught to define reality. Hunter writes that there is a quot;coerced consensusquot; that comes about through the imposition of a particular viewpoint on a people at large. The ultimate goal of this consensus, adds Bishop Michael Sheridan (Colorado Springs), is quot;unconscious acceptance.quot; When this happens reality is then defined through the multitude of messages that are fed to us continually through a media saturated culture. Bishop Sheridan believes that this quot;unconscious acceptance#39; makes dissent an act of quot;virtual treason.quot; Through the clever use of media the enemy of our souls has accomplished, in less than one generation, a complete reordering of the moral life of most people, even most Christians. Bishop Sheridan calls this the quot;principal tool of the culture of death.quot; /span/ppspan style=font-size: 14px; font-family: Verdana;This quot;coerced consensusquot; permeates our society through television and film stereotypes and an anti-religious social system. When a Christian challenges these messages they are made to feel as if they are the real radicals who reject the basic norms of society and a proper social response. Words like quot;extremistquot; and quot;intolerantquot; are commonly used for those of us who disagree with this reigning consensus. /span/ppspan style=font-size: 14px; font-family: Verdana;We have not yet been required to shed our blood for the truth of the gospel but we are now regularly put in the place where to resist the ideology of the quot;coerced consensusquot; is to invite serious ridicule and social rejection. We should not be surprised at this reality. With the death of Christendom comes the social situation that approximates the culture the church faced in its first three centuries. This means we need to train Christians much better than we have been doing for more than a generation or they will end up professing a faith without any real evidence of conformity to the truth of God. /span/p

pspan style=font-size: 14px; font-family: Verdana;a href=http://johnharmstrong.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451cfe769e2010535f8f28e970b-pi style=float: left;img alt=Smiling Mc border=0 class=at-xid-6a00d83451cfe769e2010535f8f28e970b src=http://johnharmstrong.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451cfe769e2010535f8f28e970b-800wi style=margin: 0px 5px 5px 0px; title=Smiling Mc //a After a general election it is common to ask the question: quot;How did the losing candidate go wrong?quot; We often see a myriad of studies and opinions given. I find all of this more than curious since someone always loses an election when there is more than one candidate. The person who loses may have really done very well but the pundits insist there had to be some blame to place on the loser#39;s campaign and partspan style=font-size: 15px;y./span In the case of John McCain he actually did not do badly in a very hard year for Republican candidates. /span/ppspan style=font-size: 14px; font-family: Verdana;For starters we should be very clear about this much. There was no Republican candidate who could have won this election, period. Second, the economic collapse blew up every real chance McCain had to win. He was leading in all the polls in late September and then the crisis hit big time. He never led again. Never has an election taken place right in the middle of a major economic meltdown, now seen as the biggest Wall Street decline since the Great Depression. Add to this the fact that the outgoing president represented the lowest poll numbers for approval in polling history and you have the perfect storm for the Democrats to easily roll to victory in November. /span/ppspan style=font-size: 14px; font-family: Verdana;In spite of all of this John McCain actually did reasonably well. The fact is that he did much better than almost anyone else in his party in terms of this unique election. He out-polled his parties numbers across the board. So was the problem the party or the man at the top? The answer to this is more complicated than it may seem and raises a great deal of debate. I have span style=font-size: 15px;my own opinion. /spanI think it was more the party than the candidate but many conservatives resolutely disagree with me. /span/ppspan style=font-size: 14px; font-family: Verdana;1. McCain#39;s campaign problems included a failure to settle on a emconsistent/em message. He originally ran on his record with regard to Iraq but the war became a non-issue by fall, except for about 10% of the voters. A year before the election he was clearly right to believe that his political courage regarding the surge could win it all for him. It did gain him the nomination, at least as much as any single issue. But as the context shifted he was unprepared to run a campaign on the economy and to deliver a clear message about what he would do differently than Bush and his party. Remember, in the primaries McCain had once said he did not know much about the economy. That really hurt him over the long haul./span/ppspan style=font-size: 14px; font-family: Verdana;span style=text-decoration: underline;a href=http://johnharmstrong.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451cfe769e2010536005722970c-pi style=float: right;img alt=McCain border=0 class=at-xid-6a00d83451cfe769e2010536005722970c src=http://johnharmstrong.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451cfe769e2010536005722970c-800wi style=margin: 0px 0px 5px 5px; title=McCain //a /span#0160;2. McCain can be aggressive, especially about things he really believes, but he found it hard to be aggressive in this race. His big issue was muted. When he became more aggressive he sounded mean and angry. Maybe his age and manner of speaking both hurt him. He is not a great public speaker and against Obama it really showed. Obama was in control and unflappable in his manner throughout. He ran a highly disciplined campaign and had so much money that he could do almost anything he wanted to do to win. In all three debates Obama came across as more likable and human. McCain seemed to lecture and not have real human appeal. (He has an incredible sense of humor but no one saw it unless you saw the Al Smith Dinner on cable television!) One should recall that Bush was the more likable person in the 2000 election and eventually won even though Al Gore had the experience and the broader support. Who can forget Gore lecturing Bush in one of the debates?/span/ppspan style=font-size: 14px; font-family: Verdana;3. Obama successfully linked John McCain to President Bush. No Republican could have avoided this linkage unless they came from Mars, or somewhere clearly as far away from Washington as possible. For McCain, being a long-term U. S. senator hurt him much more than it helped him. Obama, with only four years in Washington, was the emoutsider/em. Clinton was the emoutsider/em in 1992 and Bush in 2000. br //span/ppspan style=font-size: 14px; font-family: Verdana;4. McCain became the last man standing in the primaries. We saw a glimpse of his fighting spirit and courage. I was inspired by it myself. He had refused to give up and won in New Hampshire when everyone thought he was dead. This will always stand out to me, as a political junkie of sorts, as quot;McCain#39;s greatest momentquot; in this race. He had fired his staff, cut his budget and was totally written off. In the fall of 2007 he was 13th on the list of candidates in the Iowa straw poll. Dead last.br //span/ppspan style=font-size: 14px; font-family: Verdana;a href=http://johnharmstrong.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451cfe769e201053600574d970c-pi style=float: left;img alt=Leib border=0 class=at-xid-6a00d83451cfe769e201053600574d970c src=http://johnharmstrong.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451cfe769e201053600574d970c-800wi style=margin: 0px 5px 5px 0px; title=Leib //a 5. McCain presided over a party that one can, and I think should, call dysfunctional. One liberal commentator says it was quot;on the verge of civil war.quot; I do not think this is too far from the truth. The divisions between the cultural conservatives, the tax cutters and the foreign policy hard-liners are very real. And within each faction there are other factions. McCain has a history of doing battle with factions and this was both his strength and became his huge weakness. emHe had to make peace with the very party he had run against for so lonspan style=font-size: 15px;g. /span/emI am sure the Christian Right never felt thrilled with John McCain and it showed in the end. The number of such conservative voters dropped from 2004 as McCain refused to run on issues like marriage amendments and embryonic stem cell research. (He was very clear, and always has been, on the issue of abortion!)/span/ppspan style=font-size: 14px; font-family: Verdana;One example stood out to me from the beginning. McCain supported a bipartisan immigration reform plan that was very close to the views of President Bush and Ted Kennedy. The conservatives in his own party emdespised/em him for this. Once he began to run seriously he had to shift toward quot;building the fence.quot; And the deficit hawk of the senate also had to endorse the Bush tax cuts when he had first opposed them. These moves worked in the primaries. Did they work in the general election? Some would say yes. I am not so sure. McCain the independent looked more and more like Bush III. /span/ppspan style=font-size: 14px; font-family: Verdana;After winning the primary the old John McCain talked about poverty and Hurricane Katrina. He even visited the Edmund Pettis Bridge in Montgomery and stopped in Memphis and said he was wrong about originally opposing the Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday. He really meant it. But the party, and the campaign, believed he had to be pushed further to the right, toward the various factions. (Enter Sarah Palin, a subject I do emnot/em wish to engage at this point. I wish he had chosen Joe Lieberman myself.) The result was that the McCain who ran in September-October was emnot/em the McCain who had always been the quot;realquot; John McCain. /span/ppspan style=font-size: 14px; font-family: Verdana;I will admit, now that the whole election is thankfully over, that the old John McCain was the one I voted for in the 2000 primary. I wish he had won then rather than George W. Bush. I think we would have been a different nation in 2008. And I admit that I would like to see the Republican Party less driven by all these factions, especially the ones represented by so many of the conservative pundits and talk show hosts.(Michael Medved, alone, still keeps my respect as a talk show host!)br //span/ppspan style=font-size: 14px; font-family: Verdana;McCain finally took a darker turn, in the general election, and began to attack Obama. It is right to say, however, that non-partisan groups clearly saw more of this quot;attack modequot; on Obama#39;s side than on McCain#39;s even though many wrote about McCain#39;s negativity. This approach was emnot/em one John McCain was comfortable with at aspan style=font-size: 14px;ll. /spanThe proof, I believe, was in that moment in Ohio when people in the crowd yelled out against Obama and his quot;radicalismquot; and McCain stopped speaking and chastised the person for the meanness of this unfair approach. Some saw this as the end. I saw it as the quot;realquot; John McCain; decent, civil and respectful of his opponent. /span/ppspan style=font-size: 14px; font-family: Verdana;Many always felt that getting the nomination would be the hard part for John McCain. I was one of those. This was clearly proved wrong. emThe hard part was running as a Republican once he secured the nomination. /emThis party is in trouble and most know it. But the Democrats were in real trouble in 2004. Things do change. /span/ppspan style=font-size: 14px; font-family: Verdana;One final word. I heard Governor Mike Huckabee, who has come to impress me very profoundly the longer I have listened to him, say last night that all the names being floated right now as possible candidates for 2012 will emnot/em be the the emreal /emcandidates when the time comes. He cited all the names mentioned in both parties in 2004 and not one of them was remotely close to being a emserious candidate/em in 2008. For the life of me I cannot understand why even the most serious political junkies would even begin to think about 2012 right now. I am glad this perpetual season of campaigning#0160; is finally overspan style=font-size: 15px;. /spanSomehow I wish we could shorten this non-stop campaign stuff. It seems to me that it works against us ever being eme pluribus unum /emin a deeply felt sense. /span/ppspan style=font-size: 14px; font-family: Verdana;The greatness of our nation can still be seen in this: emWe survived another election/em. We will change leaders in January. And not one drop of blood will be shed. We can surely give thanks for this historispan style=font-size: 15px;cal reality. /spanThis is a truly great nation. We are flawed, we have committed acts that are reprehensible and egregious, indeed immoral. But we are still the greatest experiment in freedom ever conceived bspan style=font-size: 15px;y mankind. /spanWe have done bad things but we are fundamentally a good nation, not an evil empire. If this election does not demonstrate this then I do not know what else to say to try to convince you. br //span/ppspan style=font-size: 14px; font-family: Verdana;br //span/p

pspan style=font-size: 14px; font-family: Verdana;The ballot initiatives on November 4 demonstrated that Americans are still not ready to embrace same-sex marriage as law. They clearly favor legal protection and recognition, but emnot/em marriage. The most surprising vote of all was Proposition 8 in California. And perhaps the most surprising fact of the entire California issue was who voted for and against the measure. White, educated voters supported gay marriage heavily. African-Americans and Hispanics emoverwhelmingly opposed/em it. The same voters who supported Barack Obama in large numbers voted emagainst/em same-sex marriage in very large numbers. Now the radical proponents are attacking groups like the Mormon Church and the Catholic Church, which remains a continual target of such groups. /span/ppspan style=font-size: 14px; font-family: Verdana;a href=http://johnharmstrong.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451cfe769e2010535fc1111970b-pi style=float: left;img alt=Ap_gay_marriage_081114_mn class=at-xid-6a00d83451cfe769e2010535fc1111970b src=http://johnharmstrong.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451cfe769e2010535fc1111970b-500wi style=margin: 0px 5px 5px 0px; //a Arizona and Florida also voted to approve an amendment to ban same-sex marriage, as have more than thirty states now. The simple fact is that most Americans still do not want same-sex marriage as law. For those who agree I would caution you to think that this somehow ends the debate. The overwhleming evidence is that younger voters disagree and unless their moral compass is altered they will eventually overwhelm the votes on this issue too. Every means possible will be explored and used until the promoters of this change get their way. I see nothing in the culture that will stop them, long term. I am no prophet but I think in ten years or less this issue will be altered quite a bi regardless of the initiatives approved by there several states. /span/ppspan style=font-size: 14px; font-family: Verdana;What is particularly interesting is what happened to other quot;moralquot; initiatives that are linked to ethical issues the church is concerned about; e.g. abortion, stem-cell research and euthanasia. There were six abortion initiatives that would have limited them in some fashion and they all lost. South Dakota had a proposal that went the furthest in limiting abortions and it went down to defeat 55% to 45%. And Washington voted 59% to 41% to allow physician assisted suicide. Colorado voted 73% to 27% to reject an amendment that would have defined a human person from the moment of conception. With numbers that high you do have to wonder what people who do go to church have actually been taught and what they really believe about human life? /span/ppspan style=font-size: 14px; font-family: Verdana;span style=text-decoration: underline;a href=http://johnharmstrong.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451cfe769e2010535fc11c5970b-pi style=float: right;img alt=Th_abortionis border=0 class=at-xid-6a00d83451cfe769e2010535fc11c5970b src=http://johnharmstrong.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451cfe769e2010535fc11c5970b-800wi style=margin: 0px 0px 5px 5px; title=Th_abortionis //a /spanWe need to be honest here friends. There is virtually no scenario on the horizon---and I mean for a long, long time---where the abortion situation will be altered by law. The facts are pretty clear. We will only save lives if we get deeply involved in personal ministry and compassionate action, emnot /emlegislative action. I am not suggesting that we give up on all legislation but I am suggesting that we need to seriously emrework the strategy/em of the pro-life movement, at least politically. I think it is time we not turn every election into a quot;pro-lifequot; election and see what we can do to work with the leaders that we do have to reduce the number of abortions and to find ways to help mothers keep children in difficult circumstances. (I have argued for a long time that we not limit pro-life dialogue to Republicans only.) Saving lives is what we want to do and there are many effective ways to advance this goal without having totally sympathetic legislators. emThe pro-choice movement has won at the level of government and the courts but the real battle was never there in the first place.span style=font-size: 14px; font-family: Verdana; /span/em/spanspan style=font-size: 14px; font-family: Verdana;Anyone who thought so was not paying attention and does not understand how cultures are really changed anyway. /span/p

pspan style=font-size: 14px; font-family: Verdana;ema href=http://johnharmstrong.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451cfe769e2010535fbf9b3970b-pi style=float: left;img alt=MO border=0 class=at-xid-6a00d83451cfe769e2010535fbf9b3970b src=http://johnharmstrong.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451cfe769e2010535fbf9b3970b-800wi style=margin: 0px 5px 5px 0px; title=MO //a Maxed Out/em is a documentary that every reader of this blog should take time to watch. It takes you on a journey deep inside the American style of debt. Given our present problems we all need to face this crisis honestly. How has the credit crisis impacted you, me and almost everyone else that we know unless they earn $200,000 plus annually. (In one sense even the wealthy are often misusing credit but they can recover in most cases since their income is so large.) /span/ppspan style=font-size: 14px; font-family: Verdana;The villains are to be found everywhere. First, the consumer is often clueless. Some of this is clearly their fault. They were never taught to save or to live within their means. They have been taught to spend now and pay later. An entire generation is hooked. Our president has actually encouraged it and Congress tried to stimulate it with checks this year. br //span/ppspan style=font-size: 14px; font-family: Verdana;Students are hooked in their first year in college and they have no way of paying back what they will charge. I consider the whole business of banks recruiting students with credit cards to be predatory lending and immoral. The whole premise is to get you hooked, as on a drug, so that you will be paying high interest for years to come. Make no mistake about this the major banks know full well what they are doing and they know who is hurt by their lending practices. Why can they write off so much bad debt? Because so many people are hooked and this remains so hugely profitable to the lenders. br //span/ppbr /span style=font-size: 14px; font-family: Verdana;And tougher bankruptcy laws, passed under President Bush, have actually created a system that makes it harder to find a solution. Now we are talking about quot;bailing outquot; the big three auto companies and I wonder what is next? Somewhere, somehow, this has to stop, for both individuals and the nation. We will face this music, one way or the other. br //span/ppspan style=font-size: 14px; font-family: Verdana;Here is the sad fact. Both students and older adults have taken their own lives (suicide) precisely because their day-to-day debt has become so bad they could see no way out but to die. (The sad fact of this is that it is true. Banks write off you debt when you die.) Do you know anyone who ran up enough debt to take their own life? I do. And the brutal truth is that these people should never have been given the credit they used in the first place. Somewhere along the line the law ought to protect us, even from ourselves.And home loans are another version of the same thing. Millions of people should never have been given money for a home. They could not afford it and the lenders knew it. They walked away with huge profits and the nation is struggling. Why is this not a crime? I wonder, I really do. br //span/ppspan style=font-size: 14px; font-family: Verdana;a href=http://johnharmstrong.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451cfe769e2010536039e5b970c-pi style=float: right;img alt=Images border=0 class=at-xid-6a00d83451cfe769e2010536039e5b970c src=http://johnharmstrong.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451cfe769e2010536039e5b970c-800wi style=margin: 0px 0px 5px 5px; title=Images //a This fine film shows how the modern financial industry really works. Who is a quot;preferred customer?quot; It is not me. I hope it is not you. I pay off all cards at my first bill cycle. The banks do emnot/em make much on me. But when a debt goes unpaid, or the minimum payment is made, then the banks start to make their real money on any of us. We need tough laws that prevent the kind of interest banks can charge and we need laws that stop the misleading sale of credit. Yes, the small print is there but most consumers pay little attention to it. And we need laws that keep banks for raising interest rates to 35% and higher once a person is buried in debt. br //span/ppspan style=font-size: 14px; font-family: Verdana;Fannie and Freddie are just mega-lenders who took advantage of the same problem. Yes, consumers should have been more careful but my anger is pointed at two groups after watching this sobering documentary. First, our government. Both President Clinton and Bush have openly advocated policies that allowed the big banks to operate in this way. Congress has gone along with it. Some members of Congress have even profited from all of this mess. Second, the banks themselves are to blame. Watching their CEOs testify before a senate committee was so provocative as to keep me awake late one evening last week. I hope our new president does something about this mess but I fear he will not. This will be a quot;realquot; test of the change he promised to bring to Washington as an outsider. I will be watching very carefully./span/ppspan style=font-size: 14px; font-family: Verdana;Finally, every church and pastor ought to openly help people deal with this issue. It is killing the church and our ability to support of mission. There is a brief clip on this film of Jerry Falwell preaching about tithing. Frankly it makes the typical Christian approach look simplistic. It sounded almost like a quot;health and wealthquot; message at one point. Tithe you way out of debt!br //span/ppspan style=font-size: 14px; font-family: Verdana;a href=http://johnharmstrong.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451cfe769e2010536039e7a970c-pi style=float: left;img alt=Past Due border=0 class=at-xid-6a00d83451cfe769e2010536039e7a970c src=http://johnharmstrong.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451cfe769e2010536039e7a970c-800wi style=margin: 0px 5px 5px 0px; title=Past Due //a On top of all of this debt crisis we have a huge national debt crisis. From the time of President Reagan to the present we have spent what we did not have and raised the level of debt again and again. I do not care what your economic views are I do not see how you could ever justify turning our country into ema debtor nation./em This change happened in the 1980s and nothing has altered it. Simply put, as a nation we owe much more than we are owed. It appears the chickens have come home to roost. May the new administration have the sense to seek a emreal /em(painful) solution. /span/ppspan style=font-size: 14px; font-family: Verdana;Meanwhile the rich get richer and the lower middle class and the poor get poorer. This is just the hard truth. And there is no easy way out of this mess. emMaxed Out/em will convince you that we face a national nightmare that is more real than most of us could imagine. span style=font-size: 14px; font-family: Verdana;I strongly urge you to watch it and even share it with your friends. It is alarming stuff. /span/spanspan style=font-size: 14px; font-family: Verdana;emMaxed Out/em is 87 minutes and includes several useful features as well. It was released in 2006. /span/p

pspan style=font-size: 14px; font-family: Verdana;a href=http://johnharmstrong.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451cfe769e2010535fc71bc970c-pi style=float: left;img alt=Frats border=0 class=at-xid-6a00d83451cfe769e2010535fc71bc970c src=http://johnharmstrong.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451cfe769e2010535fc71bc970c-800wi style=margin: 0px 5px 5px 0px; title=Frats //a I was never a big fan of the campus Greek system while I was at the University of Alabama (1967-69). There was just too much silliness and nonsense for my tastes. And when I saw how the Greeks partied and how they quot;cheatedquot; on exams I became less than impressed. /span/ppspan style=font-size: 14px; font-family: Verdana;I was thus surprised to read in a recent AP report that a new fraternity and sorority exists at my old campus in Tuscaloosa. The Lambda Sigma Phi house, right in the middle of fraternity row, is a emChristian/em Greek house. Here Bible study and mission projects trump booze and late night orgies. Lambda Sigma Phi is part of a wave of Christian fraternities and sororities that have gained a foothold on college campuses in America. There are 210 fraternities in this group nationwide. Some of these exist where schools have made it very difficult for them to be accepted. Members of these houses focus on prayer, Bible study and service projects as a part of membership requirement. /span/ppspan style=font-size: 14px; font-family: Verdana;Founded in 2001 Lambda Sigma Phi hopes to show other groups on the college campus what following Jesus is really all about. Alabama chapter president Daniel Weaver says, quot;We want to be a light on this campus.quot; Alpha Delta Chi, a Christian sorority with 14 active chapters, is just as straightforward about its requirements at Alabama. No smoking, no illegal drugs, no premarital sex and limited use of alcohol for those old enough to imbibe. The group features quot;sisterhood retreatsquot; as well. /span/ppspan style=font-size: 14px; font-family: Verdana;At the University of Florida such houses have been rejected and lawsuits have followed. The 11th U. S. Circuit Court of Appeals has order Florida to recognize the groups on campus while the lawsuit winds its way through the legal system. At Auburn members of Alpha Kappa Lambda decided in 2000 to emswitch/em their fraternity from athletics to Christianity. Junior Drew Bonner visited the group and said, quot;I really like it. I#39;m active in a church here, too, but it#39;s not the same as this.quot; /span/ppspan style=font-size: 14px; font-family: Verdana;a href=http://johnharmstrong.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451cfe769e2010535fc71e7970c-pi style=float: right;img alt=Guys border=0 class=at-xid-6a00d83451cfe769e2010535fc71e7970c src=http://johnharmstrong.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451cfe769e2010535fc71e7970c-800wi style=margin: 0px 0px 5px 5px; title=Guys //a I think this is a good trend but I would love to see how these students engage their non-Christian Greek peers. Have they emwithdrawn/em from the campus culture altogether or are they impacting those around them with the gospel? In my days we had Christians inside all the fraternities and sororities and they lived as light to those who were their Greek brothers and sisters. There is likely a place for both approaches though the darkness of secular fraternity life does present real problems for serious Christians. /span/p

pspan style=font-size: 14px; font-family: Verdana;img alt=BCS border=0 class=at-xid-6a00d83451cfe769e201053617cb28970c src=http://johnharmstrong.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451cfe769e201053617cb28970c-800wi style=margin: 0px 5px 5px 0px; title=BCS / For those of you who are not fans of college football, and you do have my sincere sympathy, you may not have taken notice that our president-elect has a strong opinion regarding the question of how to determine the number one college football team in America. Obama, speaking on CBS#39; quot;60 Minutes,quot; recently said, quot;If you#39;ve got a bunch of teams who play throughout the season, and many of them have one loss or two losses, there#39;s no clear, decisive winner. We should be creating a playoff system.quot; /span/ppspan style=font-size: 14px; font-family: Verdana;As one who thinks the playoff system is emnot/em needed I find it interesting that one of the first places Barack Obama decided to use his quot;bully pulpitquot; was related to the question of determing the number one college football team in America. The Bowl Championship Series (BCS), which is the current system that uses rankings and computers to determine who plays who in the bowls and who plays for number one at the end of the season, is emnot/em a perfect system by a long shot. But it is not nearly as bad as the president-elect thinks. Let me explain./spanspan style=font-size: 14px; font-family: Verdana;/span/ppspan style=font-size: 14px; font-family: Verdana;Obama says, quot;I would add three weeks to the college season. You could trim back the regular season. I don#39;t know any serious fan of college football who has disagreed with me. So I#39;m going to throw my weight around a little bit. I think it#39;s the right thing to do.quot; /span/ppspan style=font-size: 14px; font-family: Verdana;Well, with all due respect Mr. President-elect, I am a serious fan and I may not represent a majority vote in the opinion polls but I do disagree with you strongly.img alt=Trophy border=0 class=at-xid-6a00d83451cfe769e20105360f872f970b src=http://johnharmstrong.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451cfe769e20105360f872f970b-800wi style=margin: 0px 0px 5px 5px; title=Trophy //span /ppspan style=font-size: 14px; font-family: Verdana;The common argument goes as follows. No major sport settles its championship the way college football does. I ask, quot;What#39;s wrong with being the one sport that is unique? Why must college football crown a champion the same way every other sport does?quot; From the end of August until January the fans of this great sport are in a continual discussion and debate about who is really the best team. Right now one fan says the best team is Texas Tech and another says Alabama. Then other teams jump in and say we could beat either of these two. The whole thing makes for great interest and friendly debate. I like the debate, the disagreements and the human mistakes. I like the idea that the human element comes to bear upon the whole sport in a very big way. What is wrong with that? Must college football become the minor leagues of the NFL? /span/ppspan style=font-size: 14px; font-family: Verdana;Look, in the present system you cannot afford to overlook anybody. Ask USC about Oregon State? Their fans think their number one but they will likely never get a chance to prove it. Why? They didn#39;t prepare and play against Oregon State like a great team should have done. Then they blow away Washington State and Washington teams in their league but so what? emThey lost to Oregon State/em. And if being undefeated is the sole issue then Ball State and Boise State should get a shot. The eight team plan leaves them both watching on the outside based on Obama#39;s idea. /span/ppspan style=font-size: 14px; font-family: Verdana;Under the current system even the fans of Boise State get to brag and guess and even sometimes play mighty Oklahom, like two years ago in a BCS bowl, which Boise State actually won in one of the best games you would ever wish to see. It was unforgettable. And the present system is lucrative if nothing else. ESPN just signed a big contract to cover the BCS from 2011 through 2014. This is good for everyone, not just a few powerhouse teams. /span/ppspan style=font-size: 14px; font-family: Verdana;Look, my team is sitting at number one. But they still have to win it on the field. Beating Auburn is not a cake walk. Beating Florida seems unlikely to many. Then, and only then, would they play in the Fed Ex Championship game on January 8, 2009. I would say if they go 13-0 and then beat whoever the BCS puts against them they deserve to be number one and need not play two more games to prove anything. /span/ppspan style=font-size: 14px; font-family: Verdana;The moral of the story is simple---don#39;t lose. Play well enough every week to win. Stay focused for the entire season. Persevere. Beat teams that are of less talent (e.g., Oregon State) when you are supposed to beat them. People say Alabama only beat Kentucky by 3 and Ole Miss by 4. So what. They won! That is what the game is about, not style points and running up a huge score on vastly inferior teams. /span/ppspan style=font-size: 14px; font-family: Verdana;span style=text-decoration: underline;a href=http://johnharmstrong.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451cfe769e20105360f8781970b-pi style=float: left;img alt=6367d230af38928f089c89915657db7d class=at-xid-6a00d83451cfe769e20105360f8781970b src=http://johnharmstrong.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451cfe769e20105360f8781970b-320wi style=margin: 0px 5px 5px 0px; //a /spanemChicago Tribune/em columnist Rick Morrissey, a writer who agrees with me, says: quot;Mr. Obama, a college playoff system is a change we don#39;t need, but I can see you#39;re unwilling to budge. I wonder what Vladimir Putin thinks about this.quot; /span/ppspan style=font-size: 14px; font-family: Verdana;I love the debates and the disagreements. I love that my team has to run the table to win it all this year. If they do then they deserve to be number one. If they don#39;t then Florida, or someone else, will be. I can live with that and love the game for it all the more. In my day Alabama lost several quot;mythicalquot; titles for reasons I will not go into in this post. (In 1966 they were the undefeated, beat a great Nebraska team in a bowl, but Notre Dame finished No. 1 after settling for a tie with Michigan State. Don#39;t get me started on that one. For me the deabte is for a lifetime and that makes it fun. And then there was the loss to Texas in the Orange Bowl when Joe Namath scored and the referees missed it.) It all makes for great angst and even more determination to show those coaches and writers the next season. Isn#39;t the fun of it all what this game is really about, not the system or the fairness of it? The players play for the game and the fans love it. Everyone has a chance to play a big bowl game and finish the year on a high note in the current system. The playoff guarantees that only emone/em team is really satisfied in the end. The uniqueness of many schools attaining high goals and still not being number one is a great part of this sport. Mr. Obama, you have spoken. Now spend your time on more important issues and let this great game alone. You didn#39;t attend a football school so you cannot fully understand what we long-time loyal fans think about this. Why make our sport like every other sport? Please leave it alone. /span/p