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I’m done with blogging. 

I started blogging at the Anti-Manicheist the day or so after I lost my job as a professor of Economics  at a University in Mexico.  It was a place for me to pour my creative energies into and to explore different sorts of interests. 

Now, I believe I’m pretty close to getting another teaching job as a professor of Economics and I don’t think I need to blog anymore.  I want to pour more of my energies into teaching and working on projects that will get published. 

If you’ve been a lurker, please say hello.  I’ll still be interacting with people who comment and who knows maybe some of the ideas I’ve developed here will actually catch on…

 blessings!

dlw

The Sad Truth of the Matter is that Falwell and Robertson have consistently displayed an ugly judgmental heavily politicized face of Christianity to much of the world.

I am sure he is probably weeping about that fact in Heaven right now.

dlw

Kelly Candaele, the Producer of “A League of their Own” with Tom Hanks, Geena Davis and Madonna has written a very interesting commentary on Spiderman 3. 

The makers of Spiderman 3 scorn politics. Despite a rampaging destructiveness that sweeps across New York, there is no sign of the government outside of a desultory police force. There is no Mayor to bolster morale, no Governor to declare an emergency and certainly no President to scramble Air Force fighter jets. Rudy Giuliani should be outraged. Politicians, it is implied, would only make things worse. In other superhero moves like Superman and Batman, politicians were portrayed as corrupt at worst and benign at best. In Spiderman 3, the everyday wielders of political power are banished completely.

There is a curious religious dynamic at work in Spiderman 3 that reinforces the absence of viable social networks. Spiderman’s struggle with the dark seductions of power is an isolated and individual one. His triumph over internal evil takes place alone in a Cathedral tower, the church bells literally stripping him of the black sin of hubris. If power corrupts, then masculine power (women gather round when Peter Parker wears the black Spiderman suit) corrupts absolutely. This is comic book Nietzsche, Christianity feminizing — through sympathy, guilt and forgiveness — Spiderman’s temporary embrace of the will to power.

…

But Spiderman 3’s central and perhaps subliminal message is reactionary and anti-democratic. The mass of people are inert, victims of vast forces that are beyond their control. The debris of shattered windows and skyscrapers caused by these warring forces descends from above — as does deliverance. This is the antithesis of the democratic promise, that people freely joining together in a common cause can make history and determine their own fate.

dlw:He then holds up hope that the upcoming Harry Potter movie will preach a more democratic ethos.

dlw

This is an extremely interesting article.

It gets into the pressures put on people who wish to expose the underbelly of this religion that boasts celebs like Tom Cruise and John Travolta.

It seems like a quite concerted group, as they did manage to get favors from authorities in London for the opening of a new £20 million Scientology centre there.

Scary, but not surprising.  It seems lots of religions have sought to wield political favor to pave the way for their advancement. 

I hope we can learn to seek an alternative route for Christianity that is far more Christ-like in overcoming evil with good without hypocripsy or fanaticism. 

dlw

Some think that the upcoming film, September Dawn, on the Mountain Meadows Massacre, the slaughter of 120 men, women and children by Mormons 150 years ago on Sept. 11, 1857, could be the beginning of the end for Mitt Romney’s candidacy for president.

It seem “political” movies are here to stay.  Controversy makes for free publicity and film is an effective mass-media for changing people’s mental associations.

dlw

Jim Wallis at God’s Politics asks for our input on questions for the Democrat Presidential Candidates at their Pentecost 2007.  I gave them the following question. 

Given that we have so many excellent candidates to choose from in the presidential primaries, what is the rationale for only allowing primary voters to vote for one candidate?  When you have several candidates to choose from, would it not be a simple amendation to the rules to allow primary voters to vote on behalf of at most three candidates?

I see it like this, I, like many Christians today, care very much about reducing poverty so when three top-notch candidates, like you all, support a truly significant reduction of poverty in the US and the Two-Thirds World, I would like to be able to vote for all three candidates.  Can you please call on all of the upcoming state primaries to allow us to vote for up to three candidates?  This would be a simple but significant change in our democracy, nothing more complicated like instant runoff voting. 

thankyou!

We’ll see if it (perhaps in a trimmed down version) gets asked.

I know that Hillary is currently in the lead, but I think that supporters of Obama and Edwards may be more likely to support each other, rather than Hillary.  And even if the party machines would be unlikely to make the change, it should still be part of a nat’l debate.  We most definitely could use better quality presidential candidates than much of what we’ve been given as of late…

dlw

Blair is finally doing the right thing by stepping down next month as Prime Minister.

Bush and Cheney show no signs of admitting they did wrong, much less letting go of their political power.

dlw

written by Mike Schulz 

It gets at both the greatness of the awesome scenes and its horrific developments.

“Yet nothing will quite prepare you for the staggering embarrassment to come. After being exposed to the space goo, Spider-Man’s latent hostility is awakened, and he transforms into a dark-suited avenger. Peter, however, transforms into a doppelgänger of Eddie Murphy’s Buddy Love in The Nutty Professor. Narcissism in full throttle, he struts around and, in general, makes an alpha-male spectacle of himself, yet the film can’t decide if this new Peter is meant to be dangerous sexy or just dorky; women laugh as he passes them on the street, yet Gwen, Miss Banks, and a jazz-club hostess all swoon. This extended Staying Alive parody is then followed by a horrifically staged sequence in which Peter - now a hipster pianist/dancer (!) - makes a fool out of Mary Jane in her workplace, and Raimi hits such awkward notes that you don’t know where the movie went; it feels as if the director suddenly abdicated his duties, leaving Keenen Ivory Wayans to take over.

Sequences this unremittingly terrible not only make you question the fun you had previously - you want to ask, “Was the whole movie this awful?” - but also ruin your enjoyment of the rest of the film. Questions that might’ve been ignored in waves of brilliant effects and earned sentiment become all too pertinent: How did Venom learn of Sandman’s ailing daughter? Why does Sandman join Venom’s quest to kill Spider-Man - wouldn’t he just want to take the money and get home? Why is the action suddenly interrupted for an extended, unfunny bit between Jameson and a grade-school extortionist? And while Spider-Man’s final confrontation with Sandman is suitably epic, why does the sequence climax on an astonishingly maudlin note? (It feels like the first cinematic battle royale that could conceivably end in a hug.) “

There’s gotta be something wrong with a world where such a movie can take a whopping 382 million worldwide in its opening weekend.  Here’s hoping it flatlines…

dlw

I care a good deal about Christianity in Europe, but I get a little sanguine about its prospects, sometimes, as perhaps is the case with my ps regarding the implics of the French presidential election in the last post.  My sanguinity stems from a belief that political-economic crises can result in changes in world-views that will be more fertile for the spread of Christianity.  This is what happened with the fall of Communism in Ukraine and so when things seemingly fall apart with Socialist Europe, I likewise want to see signs that barren lands will bloom again, as secularistic humanists may turn their eyes back on the teachings of Christianity.

But articles, like “Continent in Crisis” help me to see the seriousness of the situation in Europe.  It is a book review of Philip Jenkins’ “God’s Continent: Christianity, Islam, and Europe’s Religious Crisis“, which gives a quasi-sanguine spin to “Christian” Europe’s imminent collapse under the weight of secularization and Muslim immigration, and David Pryce-Jones’ “Betrayal: France, the Arabs and the Jews“, which argues that France has mucked up relations with both Jews and Muslims through its imperialist aims to gain significant influence in the Middle East.    

I am sometimes spell-bound at where the future will take Europe.  It cannot stay as it has been, and it seems all sorts of deep conflicts are stirring within it.  I became especially drawn to European culture during my time in graduate school in Economics at Mich State and remained interested during my time in Mexico and during my sojourn as seminary student in Sweden.  Someday, I hope to interact with Europeans in my ministry/profession.  Who knows, maybe I’ll live there…

We will see…

dlw

 

Well, I’ve been blessed to be in a community of sorts with the other posters at Orange Ukraine, Taras H of Ukrainiana, Levko at Foreign Notes and occasionally even uber-reporter Taras Kuzio, as I learned more about their country and difficult time of crisis in the past month. 

I am glad now to say that it seems like they have turned a corner.  I am confident that the new elections will happen and that a new balance of power will emerge.  I believe Ukraine will be blessed with reforms that will reduce its corruption and enable its wealth to be shared more evenly.  This will especially be important for its churches that are brimming with earnest believers but often quite poor.  They will be better able to provide for themselves and bless others in their communities.

So I’m going to be letting go of Ukrainian politics and focusing more on securing myself a position for next year, perhaps at the Northwest Nazarene University in Idaho.

We will see… 

dlw

ps, I am somewhat perversely elated at the election of the conservative Sarkosy as president of France.  Why?  Well it seems that France is beginning to get Religion, especially among the immigrants whom they have a hard time enculturating, and the loss of the socialist candidate to Sarkosy may help subvert the hold of the dominant secularistic mentality in french minds.  But, we will see!

dlw

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