Thursday, June 30, 2005

THE DANGERS OF JOURNALISM

It was late spring, 1981. The classroom was unairconditioned and very hot. It was an introductory journalism class, and I was a bored high school junior. My friend Curtis and I had been amusing ourselves by having a stapler fight. It ended when he stapled my jeans to my leg. Mrs. Wiggins, our teacher, reminded us that our sports stories were due in two days and that we should get to work. Curtis and I eventually huddled up talking about sports and trying to cultivate ideas.

Half an hour later, Curtis drifts over close to Mrs. Wiggins' desk.

He nods in my direction as he whispers, "Mrs. Wiggins, have you heard about the record his dad held in track?"

"No," she says, growing attentive, proud that her students were making the connection between their lives and the assignment.

"Yeah, he ran like a four-minute mile or something. You should ask him about it; he's pretty proud of it."

A few minutes later, Mrs. Wiggins nonchalantly wanders by, smiling.

"I understand your dad held a record in the mile when he was in high school."

I freeze. Nothing moves. I stare at my desk for awhile, while a look of horror creeps across my face. Tears well up as I raise my head to give her a look of pain and complete astonishment. Mouth open.

"M-m-my dad doesn't have any legs," I whisper, plunging my head into my hands, and collapsing onto my desk. My body shakes with sobs.

Off in the corner, Curtis is laughing hysterically and pointing at my poor vulnerable back.

"CURTIS," she screams, red-faced, and getting larger by the moment. She is pissed. Right when she grabs him by the neck to bodily remove him from the room, I fall out of my desk, onto the floor, laughing.

She starts toward me to offer motherly comfort, then sees she has been taken for a ride. It had been a short ride, but the top was down and the pedal had been put to the metal, baby.

Both of us spent some time in the principal's office that afternoon; but it was okay, because for two days we were gods. We were the "no legs" guys that almost gave Mrs. Wiggins a heart attack. It was a sweet rep.

What's the lesson in all this? Be very careful of jouralism. It's a dangerous, dangerous business.

Tuesday, June 28, 2005

NO JUSTIFICATION

Nothing new.

I am sitting here, watching President Bush attempt to justify the war in Iraq. Sad. Very sad. I can't sit idly by while he bobs and weaves to save his skin. Your aggressive move is a sham, sir. You can attempt to divert our attention with red herrings if you wish, Mr. Bush, but you do not make up for the lies upon which you stand.

Justifying the war by detailing all the things you've done since you invaded illegally is not a legitimate argument. You act like the defender of freedom, when you violate international law with your reckless violence.

Do not use the blood of the 9/11 victims to defend your misguided aims. "Your watch" has been wasted. You do not defend freedom. You defend the ideology of the rich and powerful. You defend yourself and your family. You do not defend me.

Don't get me wrong, this is not a partisan issue for me. All you "liberals" out there (Ms. Clinton, Mr. Kerry, and your ilk) that supported this mess from the beginning are equally to blame. Blood is on your hands.

This militarism has been engineered since the early '90s. There is a design to promote democracy through force. I'm not buying it. I'm not buying you, sir. You say, "If evil is not confronted, it rises to face us on another day." I rise to confront you, then, Mr. President. I despise your manipulation of the American people by leading them to believe that lack of support for your violent policies is a rejection of our troops. Shame on you. Shame on you.

Mr. Bush, you say, "We've made progress, but he have a lot more to do." I should say so.

I should say so.

Monday, June 27, 2005

DOES JESUS NEED ACCREDITATION?

Until recently, I served on the accreditation steering committee at the evangelical university where I teach. My responsibility was to help evaluate the organization’s mission and integrity. I resigned from the committee when it became apparent that some in the administration did not desire authentic self-evaluation, and were only interested in accreditation as a marketing device. When I raised questions about an exclusive board of trustees that was entirely appointed by a statewide religious organization, a religion professor who was denied a promotion because of his liberal theology, and our profound lack of racial and ethnic diversity on campus, I was treated like an agitator who was provoking insurrection. It seemed like I was being expected to toe the company line, so I quit.

So, imagine my interest in the recent New Yorker article,
by Hanna Rosin, in which she profiles Patrick Henry College, a fundamentalist Christian school just outside the beltway in Virginia. PHC’s declared mission includes the aim “to prepare Christian men and women who will lead our nation and shape our culture with timeless biblical values and fidelity to the spirit of the American founding.” Not terribly far removed from the mission of numerous Christian colleges. The difference is that PHC is blatantly designed as an incubator for conservative politicos. While the faculty members are well-pedigreed and the students are very smart (many boasting a 1600 on the SAT), the school is heavily endowed by Republican leaders and conservative CEOs who have a vested interest in shaping the country’s ideology. There seems to be a greased conduit from PHC to Capitol Hill and the White House, with Patrick Henry scoring as many internships annually as Georgetown.

Nearly all the students were homeschooled, and come to the college with an evangelical zeal for spreading the fundamentalist gospel of/and conservative Republican ideology. They (or, at least their parents) are also drawn to the extremely rigid moral guidelines and the courtship environment, where romantic relationships are regulated under the watchful eyes of administrators and parents. Students even rebuke each other through campuswide emails for inappropriate displays of affection, or for women tempting their brothers with suggestive attire.

There are only five majors available: government, journalism, literature, history, and classical liberal arts education. The literature major draws mostly women students, who nearly all report that they will not pursue a career, so they can stay home and school their children.

While I would rather play a game of Naked Twister with Karl Rove than send my daughters to such a place, I have no problem with them doing what they do. They have the right to pursue their ideological agenda however they please. What interests me is the manner in which we certify such practices.

What Rosin does not discuss in the article is the problems PHC has had with accreditation. They were denied accreditation by the American Academy for Liberal Education (AALE) based on a biology curriculum that highlights the teaching of six-day creationism (not accepted by the National Academy of Sciences). After breaking ties with the AALE, they finally received accreditation from the Transnational Association of Christian Colleges and Schools, that has certified only about 35 other ultra-conservative institutions. PHC is currently pursuing an application with the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools (SACS), a regional sister to the accrediting body for my university.

If SACS grants them accreditation, it will either mean that PHC has moved away from its militant commitment to a single-minded ideology, or SACS is not fulfilling its declared criteria. Either way, it raises this question: What is the value of accreditation?

If you possess “the truth,” and you are convinced that all your aims are righteous, why would you give a damn about accreditation? I recognize that there are state laws and federal guidelines requiring it, if you accept any kind of support from the government; but it seems like PHC would be quite opposed to any kind of governmental support.

I guess my question concerns the difference between accreditation as compliance/marketing device, and accreditation as communitarian accountability. Receiving accreditation means that your peers at similar universities deem you worthy of certification. If your worldview is so contrary and libertine that you resist any oversight or approval from others, why bother? I suspect that the "more Protestant" an institution, the more reticent it will be to peer-evaluation.

I mean, is it any wonder that those who struggle with accreditation are probably more likely to accuse Democrats of seeking global approval for military acts? By not easily submitting yourself to the review of your academic peers, aren’t you less likely to submit to the will of a body like the U.N.? I don’t think John Bolton is on PHC’s board, but he might be a nice fit.

I am not entirely naïve. I know there are liberal colleges out there doing much the same thing. There are left wing schools where a conservative idea is treated as de facto heresy, and I do not defend them. I find that a repugnant response to the Right. However, in most cases, left-leaning schools demonstrate a greater interest in dialogue and community, where the voice of the minority is structurally—if not always culturally—protected.

So, if Jesus had started a university (perhaps “Fishers of Men Tech”), would he have applied for accreditation. Probably not. And, I suppose, when a faculty and administration reach his level of infallibility they probably don’t need to worry about it either.

Monday, June 20, 2005

ONE MILLION BAPTISMS

The annual meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention begins tomorrow in Nashville.

I'm all a-twitter. Rosy-cheeked and weak-kneed, I await the genesis of a new day.

I look forward to this event every year. It's more exciting than watching TV or tipping a cow, because you are certain to be entertained. You can absolutely count on the SBC to do something asinine, inflaming the public and distancing themselves even further from the people who need them the most. Whether it is a boycott of Mickey Mouse or another misogynistic assault on women, the hits just keep on coming. This year the convention is set to consider a resolution declaring war on public schools.

Last year some of the SBC leaders proposed a similar measure, but it was just a nebulous attack against godless secularism, so it didn't find traction among the rank and file. This year, co-sponsors of the resolution, Voddie Baucham and Bruce Shortt, are hanging the public school attack on the tried and tested issue of homosexuality. If there's one thing we know will cause Southern Baptists to lunge and froth, it's gays and the gay-lovers who defend them.

It seems that "homosexual activists are aggressively working to transform the moral foundation of our culture," and "any school district that recognizes homosexual clubs or treats homosexuality as an acceptable lifestyle is a clear and present danger to all of its children and is violating the community’s trust." The resolution goes on to advocate a complete exodus from the public schools, creating paranoid enclaves of righteousness in our Christian schools and homes.

Damn gays have to be stopped. If they continue feminizing our children, how will we teach them to torture prisoners and bomb abortion clinics? How will we keep all our uppity women in check if our men get all girly on us? If our children become homosexual, how will they learn to grow up and disgrace the institution of heterosexual marriage at a higher-than-average rate like the rest of us evangelicals?

Bobby Welch, president of the convention, would like to set a goal for this next year of one million new baptisms. It seems that Southern Baptists have experienced a substantial downturn in new converts over the last year or so. I wonder why? Maybe it's because they have strayed so far from Christ's message of unconditional love and forgiveness - in order to advance an aggressive culture war on liberals, infidels, and homosexuals - that the average person sees little difference between them and the people they seem to hate.

Until something fundamental changes, most of the baptisms will be for those who were first immersed in the religion of cultural conservatism, not for those transformed by the extravagant love of God.

Monday, June 13, 2005

SHAKEN, NOT BROKEN

I spent last weekend with my family in Madison, Wisconsin. While none of us actually live in Madison, at least two or three of us will be there over the next month or two.

Nearly 30 years ago, aboard the U.S.S. Lexington, Rick was coming up a ladder at the same time a hatch was coming down. Hatch met head and the result has been three decades of increasingly debilitating seizures. After marrying an incredible woman (my sister), and trying every kind of therapy and medication available, he was accepted as a candidate for a temporal lobectomy at the VA hospital in Madison. He begins with a procedure tomorrow that is designed to open the skull and insert a device designed to make intracranial EEG recordings that are then used to determine exactly where the surgery should be performed. He could emerge seizure-free, but there are obvious risks. It's brain surgery.

Rick has a talent for changing the way those around him view the world. Mostly, he messes with you by refusing to engage in predictable conversation. He is always ready with a one-liner or an odd perspective, delivered in his droll near-mumble. He never responds, "I don't know" to a question. Maybe, "Don't make me lie to you," but never a conventional reply.

If someone begins to rub his shoulders, he is likely to give them the sharp rebuke, "You have exactly 30 minutes to stop that."

And if you mistakenly drink from his water glass, expect to hear, "Don't worry about it, these sores mean nothing."

He is partially responsible for turning me from an insufferably self-righteous apologist to a rhetorical beggar that masquerades a little less frequently as a Pharisee. One summer afternoon, about 20 years ago, when I was at the height of my "I-got-me-some-religion-and-it's-better-than-yours" stage, he stood in my parents' kitchen and declared, "It's not what you're saying so much as how you're saying it." He was right, and I started making changes. I use that line with my students now.

I even wrote a song about him, that will be on a new CD (available soon).

I have a brother who lives down south
He's taking it on the chin
The rug was pulled out from under him
He doesn't know where to begin
He doesn't know
What he's gonna do

His hands are as rough as Mexico
And his dreams are falling flat
He lives next to a Texaco
He swears he'll make it back
To where he wants to be
Sometimes he doesn't see

That he's shaken, not broken
Taking the things unspoken
And making them true
And with a heart as big as Texas
He'll make room for you

He wanted to teach like anything
But the seizures get him down
He likes to hear Bob Dylan sing
And he knows where he's bound
If he weren't around
I don't know what I'd do

Well, he's shaken, not broken...

He smokes without a filter
And he loves without reserve
When things are out of kilter
He's got a belly full of nerve
To do the math
Off the beaten path

Well, he's shaken, not broken...


Saturday evening I stood with Rick on the shores of Lake Mendota, having a chat while he smoked one of his trademark unfiltered Camels. It was a good talk, but what struck me about it was the utter lack of desperation or avoidance. There was no anxiety about the conversation. We had always been honest with each other, and we had never witheld affection on account of machismo. There was no call for a relational crescendo. We had reached fortissimo with a fermata...no stopping us until the Conductor directs otherwise. It was a good way to leave him.

I had no end-of-life epiphanies. I don't think you should have to "live like you are dyin'." You don't need to go skydiving, or Rocky Mountain climbing, or try to go 2.7 seconds on a bull named Fu Manchu. You just need to live with the kind of reckless passion and honesty that, when you face the end, leaves you strangely, yet comfortably, quiet.

Before we left Madison, I took a couple of shots with the digital camera. I wasn't fooling anyone. The pictures were to preserve his image for us, should he not survive the surgery. Rick just grinned and said, "Ahhh, Americans and their gadgets."



Gadgets indeed.

Tuesday, June 07, 2005

STUCK INSIDE A LANDFILL WITH THE STRANGER BLUES AGAIN

The worst part about home remodeling, besides paying for it, is hauling off the debris. There is a certain catharsis in taking a sledge hammer to plaster, and opening up future possibilities. You are making change, and it is dramatic. There’s nothing like the look on your family’s faces when they come home to find that the living room wall, whose existence they had come to assume, is now only a memory. But the task of cleanup isn’t nearly as romantic.

Some months ago, in the midst of our kitchen remodel job, I had a small demolition load that wasn’t quite large enough to warrant a trip to the dump; so I offered some trailer space to my neighbor, Allen. He took me up on it, and we headed off for one of the local landfill transfer stations.

The transfer station is the place trash stops before its final destination. It is the descending colon of the city’s solid waste system. The station I frequent is a loud, foul-smelling barn with a drainage problem and lots of pigeons. If there’s been any measurable precipitation, you can count on wading ankle deep in detritus. There is a rhythm and an unspoken protocol about the place.

  1. Pull on the scale.
  2. Wait for Hank, the sanitation worker with the sunny disposition, to look at you like you are an idiot.
  3. Register your weight, and wait for Hank’s coveted nod of approval to enter the abyss.
  4. Pull into the bowels of the place and unload quickly, while Hank and the guys in the big scary trucks look at you like you are an idiot.
  5. Somewhere in here make several attempts at backing a trailer, while veteran truck drivers scoff, and the incessant warning alarms from reversing front end loaders add to your anxiety.
  6. Drive around and have Hank weigh you again to determine your payment by how much lighter you are. Oh, yeah, while he's looking at you like you're an idiot.
  7. Speed away from the place with the windows down.
  8. Go home and take a China Syndrome shower.

My neighbor, Bill, taught me a nifty drag-off method that reduces time, effort, and disdainful looks from mean trash guys. You attach a chain to some big piece of debris, located near the bottom of the pile toward the front of the trailer. Hook the other end of the chain to the station’s wall, then pull away carefully. If you planned well, this method deposits the majority of your load on the station floor, allowing you a quicker getaway.

On this particular day, Allen and I executed a perfect drag-off, and were back in line for the scale to finish our business. In front of us was an obvious first-timer. He was an older gentleman driving an immaculate pickup, and pulling a questionable trailer full of tons of old house guts. He wore a cheery smile and his own personal hardhat. Hank was going to eat this guy alive.

I chatted with him while we waited. I discovered that he was in his late 70s and had recently undergone heart surgery. The load was from his son’s remodeling project, but he had needed the trailer, so he had offered to deliver it. I helped him navigate the weighing and paying method, all the while wondering how he was going to empty that trailer. I couldn’t let this heart patient suffer the risk to his health and the scorn of Hank, so after consulting with Allen, I offered our help.

He had rigged a drag-off design that managed to dislodge about 20 pounds of the load. The remaining mountain of wet plaster, lath, and insulation proved to be a stubborn burden. After a filthy, exhausting half-hour or so, Allen and I finally emptied the trailer and swept it clean. We turned to go, and the old man pulled out his wallet and started to hand me a five-dollar bill.

“No sir, I won’t take your money,” I said. “We’re all in this together.”

He pushed the money toward me, while his body began to shake in his attempt to choke back the tears. I just patted him on the shoulder and said, “You would do the same for me, if I needed it.” And I turned and walked away, I heard him stifle a sob. I didn’t want to cause him further loss of face, but I was not going to accept payment for doing the right thing.

I guess I turned and left quickly because of the shame. Not the shame he felt, as a man unable to deliver his own load, but the shame I felt for living in a culture where something like this could happen. Where the hell was this guy’s son? Where were his neighbors? Were they unavailable or unwilling? Were they unaware, because he had been too proud or naïve to ask for help?

What impacted me the most was the fact that we live in a society where sacrificial help provokes a grown man to tears. Allen and I didn’t feel like we had done anything heroic or extraordinary. But it was such an uncommon act it overwhelmed him.

Something is wrong. We can do better than this.

To paraphrase Dylan,

Oh, Mama, can this really be the end?
To be stuck inside a landfill
With the stranger blues again.

I’m not suggesting that we should all be imbued with a sense of entitlement, expecting everyone to solve our problems; but we have become so addicted to individualism and market-driven values that we have lost the capacity to accept grace. As a consequence, we dispense less of it as well.

Do you agree that part of our problem today is the inability to accept authentic grace (help, love, mercy…) when it’s offered? What can we do about it?