Letter from America
Hotting up?
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.
Letter from America
A little walk on the wild side
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).
Letter from America
Such a sweet name
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.
Letter from America
Intelligent Design?
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.
Letter from America
Back to the future?
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?.
Letter from America
Legalism is dead - long live legalism
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.
Letter from America
Michael Jackson trial
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.’
Letter from America
Colson v. Wallis
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.
Letter from America
A hug says it all
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.
Letter from America
American Pie
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.'
Letter from America
The new challenge
Josh Moody
Date posted: 1 Jan 2005
Evangelism just got harder. Irrespective of the rights and wrongs (or should I say 'rights and lefts') of the recent election in America, biblical Christianity is now firmly associated in many people's minds with conservative Republican politics. These two sets overlap: there are moral issues that Republicans hold in common with Christians, there are Christians who are Republicans, etc. But they are not the same: there are Democrats who are Christians too.
Saying such things within biblical Christian circles in America is becoming a hard trick to pull off without being accused of being morally limp-wristed. Even more alarming, fringe Christians and 'seekers' are distancing themselves from biblical churches because they do not want to be told how to vote (nor do they want to be thought of as Republican). As I say, irrespective of the moral issues that may be at stake, this means that evangelism just got harder.