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Josh Moody

Date posted: 1 Dec 2006

Halloween, just past, is an American institution, with its kid-friendly ‘Trick or Treat’ tradition, in a way beyond what we experience in England.

Some churches respond to what children’s books call ‘my favourite holiday’ by putting on alternative Halloween events, a Harvest Festival for instance, with sweets and games, where children dress up as they would at Halloween. Other churches, apparently, stage ‘Hell Houses’. These are similar to Haunted Houses but depict with frightening intensity the woes of sins like drugs or alcohol or extra-marital sex and the terminal destination with Lucifer.

Josh Moody

Date posted: 1 Oct 2006

‘Jonathan Edwards is my homeboy’ may not carry quite the same ring as Sola Fide, but as a rallying cry for the faithful it blazoned on a recent front cover of Christianity Today. Inside, the leader told the story of an emerging network of young, restless and Reformed Christians. What’s going on?

For some while now, John Piper (http://www.desiringgod.org) has advocated a passionate return to Reformed principles through his now well-known mantra of ‘God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in him’. A self-styled ‘divine hedonist’, Piper has appealed to a whole new generation of evangelicals through the Passion conferences that stoke the flames of ardour for God, within a classically biblical (and Jonathan Edwards influenced) framework.

Josh Moody

Date posted: 1 Nov 2006

On the one hand, it’s a small story. It only relates to 50 students or so. Other than a cameo appearance in Love Actually, Wisconsin is not a name brand state.

On the other hand, this is the third in a row. First it was Rutgers University in New Jersey. Then it was Georgetown University. Now the University of Wisconsin has ‘De-recognised’ the Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship group. On October 2, IVCF filed suit.

Josh Moody

Date posted: 1 Sep 2006

It was not that long ago — though it seems an age — when Yasser Arafat and Clinton and Co. were touting the latest round of peace initiatives.

With cosy pictures in print, editorials eagerly trumpeting a new day, it was appealing to believe that we were on the verge of a solution to the most troubled of troubled places on the earth. Since then the Palestinian-Israeli conflict has not only dragged on, it has flared into new entrenched hostilities. The ‘two-state’ solution to the area appears intractable. I’m reminded of a British Foreign Office report on the area from much earlier in the 20th century that simply calculated that no political solution was possible because the claims of the peoples were directly competitive.

Josh Moody

Date posted: 1 Jul 2006

I was recently alerted to a rather surprising clause in an application for missionary funding from a major denomination in the United States.

As all large sending agencies, this denomination admirably desires to ensure that its missionaries will be exemplary witnesses to the gospel of Jesus Christ. Then there is the surprising clause.

Josh Moody

Date posted: 1 Aug 2006

Several times now I have come across people in a pastoral context whose perception of their experience of God has become dangerously skewed. Some have even thought he was telling them not to eat.

Granted, the Bible does encourage us to fast occasionally. Nonetheless, when the supposed command from God not to eat is taken to a dangerous medical extreme, it is not only legitimate to wonder whether the spiritual experience is genuine, but it is imperative to seek professional help. I have come across other even weirder messages purportedly received from God. The psychological difference between people who think God is telling them to cut their wrists and those who think they are Napoleon is not as great as we might wish.

Josh Moody

Date posted: 1 Apr 2006

Readers of a certain ilk may recognise the reference to an album from the aged rock group Supertramp: ‘Crisis? What crisis?’ The picture on that album ironically captured a man sunbathing with icons of industrial waste in the background.

For many today, the American establishment’s refusal to act on warnings of global warming has a similarly absurd, ostrich-like head in the sand feel. It would be funny if it were not so tragic.

Josh Moody

Date posted: 1 May 2006

From an English perspective, American industrial might is something to be admired. But America’s giant carmaker General Motors (GM) is in serious trouble. A Peter Pan-like fantasy of forever extendable ‘financing’, or living on ‘the never never’, is taking its toll.

Detroit has long been the centre of the American auto industry; now, however, various factors are combining to make profitability in the Detroit area hard to find. One of the parts suppliers for GM, once itself a part of the GM group, is close to bankruptcy, an issue which will radically affect the profit margin of GM, through delayed or cancelled orders. In terms of business systems, several different issues seem to be involved. To begin with, the global economy, in particular cheap labour and parts from the East, are undercutting the American auto industry’s ability to maintain its market share. GM’s share of cars bought in the US has been slipping for sometime. Also, however, there appear to be archaic, and inevitably unprofitable, expectations in terms of salary from the workers. The much-vilified new president of the parts supplier quipped in one public speech that it was no longer economically feasible to pay $65 per hour for someone to mow the lawns.

Josh Moody

Date posted: 1 Mar 2006

Each year 60,000 people cram into a stadium on a Sunday to watch the Super Bowl.

This year the Rolling Stones provided half time entertainment. Around the nation far more gather around the TV. There are ‘Super Bowl Parties’, events where friends gather to chomp on snacks and watch the game. Advertising for the commercial slots in between breaks in the game are at a premium. Companies pour millions of dollars into their few seconds of fame.

Josh Moody

Date posted: 1 Jun 2006

It is an interesting experience having lived for so long as a foreigner. Before coming to America, I lived for a year in the former Soviet Union, and before that for a year in Canada, but by and large most of my life was spent in England (a good ten years of it in Cambridge).

Having now lived for seven or so years in America, it’s becoming increasingly true that I feel the sense of being without home that, for the Christian, underlines the spiritual reality of this world not being our home but that we are ‘just a-passing through’.

Josh Moody

Date posted: 1 Jan 2006

A new list of the top ten highest paid Hollywood stars has recently been posted. Julia Roberts tops the bill earning a massive $10 million per film. Ex-Friends star Jennifer Aniston comes in last at a measly $9 million a movie (poor thing).

Statistics are notoriously unpredictable because their seeming precision belies a host of assumptions. Nonetheless these numbers above are pretty straightforward. They give me something of a shudder when I compare them to another statistic someone reported to me the other day: every minute 6,000 people die of hunger.

Josh Moody

Date posted: 1 Nov 2005

Strange as it is may seem to environmentally minded Europeans, the fact remains that many Americans do not think much about global warming.

Could it not be, some wonder, that global warming, including its detrimental side effects like the shrinking polar cap, is merely the result of an unavoidable cyclical increase in global heat? If so rising temperatures are not ultimately due to gas-guzzling SUVs (Sports Utility Vehicles), and similar industrial pollutants.

Josh Moody

Date posted: 1 Feb 2006

Driving back over the Appalachians from a family wedding in Canada we passed Stockbridge. This town was the lesser-known base of operations for Jonathan Edwards’s missionary labours. More famously, Edwards resided in Northampton, the central location for the dramatic revivals of the Great Awakening in New England of the 18th century.

Being something of an Edwards aficionado I was aware of the Edwards Stockbridge connection. I wasn’t cognisant of the even less well-known relationship between Edwards and McDonalds until, as we hurtled by Stockbridge in our minivan, we decided that the time had come to eat. And there and behold we did what surely would have surprised the famous evangelical leader: we picked up a Drive-Thru McDonalds.

Josh Moody

Date posted: 1 Dec 2005

To be accorded the accolade of ‘first class nut’ by none other than Jerry Falwell is no small achievement. Yet that is a relatively mild epithet for the extremely controversial Fred Phelps. Phelps is the pastor of Westborough Baptist Church in Topeka, Kansas.

The church is primarily (some say exclusively) made up of his children and grandchildren. It resides in a protected ‘compound’ (with an Olympic size swimming pool for baptisms — it is said filled in either after one of the family almost drowned, or when their tax exempt status became problematic).

Josh Moody

Date posted: 1 Oct 2005

Katrina did her worst. For many years geologists have predicted that the Mardi Gras city of New Orleans is a disaster waiting to happen. Situated between a river, a lake and the ocean, New Orleans is also significantly beneath sea level. There are levees (like the Dutch dikes) which exist to prevent the city from being swallowed by the sea. The old French settlers discovered that the city went under water in the summer and so built their houses on stilts.

Despite all such man-made attempts to turn back the basic rules of nature, hurricane Katrina, a force four, ripped through the barriers and destroyed a famous city at the end of August. The news and the pictures and the stories coming out of the area are simply horrific. Not now is there simply the natural disaster (of biblical proportions as one secular commentator noted), but there is also the human chaos inflicted on a society broken down, and rumours and eyewitness accounts of brutality and looting begin to abound.

Josh Moody

Date posted: 1 Sep 2005

Time magazine recently sported a new front page article recording the latest evolution v. creation educational debate.

In America, ever since the much storied Scopes trial (the ‘Monkey Trial’) in 1925, the culture wars have been shaped by the controversial and, in the end, almost universal teaching of evolution in High School classrooms. Various attempts by conservative Christians have been made to challenge this educational hegemony, but none so successful as the contemporary ‘Intelligent Design’ movement.

Josh Moody

Date posted: 1 Aug 2005

At the grand old age of 86, Billy Graham is said to be conducting his last American crusade in the city of New York.

The format appears to have changed little. The build up to the evangelistic message now includes more modern contemporary music from the likes of Jars of Clay, but George Beverly Shea (now, amazingly, 96) still sings immediately previous to Billy Graham?s sermon and the altar call is heralded with, of course, a full rendering of ?Just as I am?.

Josh Moody

Date posted: 1 May 2005

Pope John Paul II was without doubt an astonishing individual.

Josh Moody

Date posted: 1 Jul 2005

From the beginning, American Christianity appeared legalistic to many British sensibilities.

With Puritanical emphases on purity of church practice, or the fundamentalist controversy in the 1920s, American faith often tended to be viewed as fixated on the law. Of course, the role of the law in Christianity is a theological matter of great significance. But irrespective of exegetical considerations, the ‘feel’ of American Christianity — with its support for Prohibition at one extreme to some Christians’ tacit (even vocal) support for racial segregation at the other — seemed to many in Britain to be motivated by law as much as grace.

Josh Moody

Date posted: 1 Jun 2005

A disease is pandemic not merely epidemic when it affects people over a very wide geographical area. The 1918 influenza was pandemic, as also is the global reach of HIV. Michael Jackson’s trial is an extreme example of a very widespread cultural infection: a crisis of the child.

Michael Jackson, of course, is still most famous for that moonwalk dance and his massively successful Thriller album. Soon enough, though, the decade or more long scandals surrounding his Neverland Ranch and accusations of child molestation in that environment will compete for immediate word association with the Jackson brand name. The ‘Gloved One’ could become ‘the handcuffed one.’

Josh Moody

Date posted: 1 Apr 2005

Chuck Colson delivers a daily radio commentary which is listened to by an estimated one million people.

On February 21 he discussed Jim Wallis’s new approach to abortion and poverty issues, suggesting that, by advocating an ethical stance on both, Wallis was working out of a framework of ‘moral equivalency’. Jim Wallis replied with an Open Letter. Colson ditto.

Josh Moody

Date posted: 1 Mar 2005

George Bush's State of the Union Address this year packed a punch. Bush is not normally known for rhetorical effectiveness - compare Bill Clinton's speeches for pure entertainment value - but there was a defining moment in this State of the Union Address which was charged with emotion and will not easily be forgotten.

Bush had already introduced a human rights activist from Iraq. 11 years previously her father had been assassinated by Saddam Hussein's intelligence service. Three days ago, Bush said, she was able to vote. The applause was long and predictable and the emotional levels raised.

Josh Moody

Date posted: 1 Feb 2005

American Pie was the title of a risque comedy. I might receive a letter or two for saying it, but I sometimes wonder whether popular American piety might be sardonically dubbed 'American Pie'. Except, of course, it's not funny.

Statistical as well as anecdotal evidence combine to paint a far from pretty picture. Long ago Francis Schaeffer called it The Great Evangelical Disaster: 'Here is the great evangelical disaster - the failure of the evangelical world to stand for truth as truth... The evangelical church has accommodated to the world spirit of the age'. More recently, Gallup addressed a national seminar of Southern Baptist leaders saying, 'We find there is very little difference in ethical behaviour between churchgoers and those who are not active religiously. The levels of lying, cheating, and stealing are remarkably similar in both groups'. Barna would go further, identifying patterns of extra-marital sex, racism, and the physical abuse of spouses as at about the same level as 'in the world.'

Josh Moody

Date posted: 1 Dec 2004

Bush did it. George W. Bush won the White House and US Presidency for a second term.

Not only that, the Republicans increased their lead in both the house and the senate. What's more, Bush won the popular vote (Anoraks Anonymous: the 'electoral college' - the winners of each state - does not always match the popular majority vote) for the first time since his father did the same in 1988. Even more startling, Bush won the largest ever majority of the popular vote in Presidential history. On top of this, against all those who say that gay marriage is inevitable, in every single state where there was a referendum on same-sex marriages the legislation for a traditional view of marriage as between a woman and man only was supported.