Posts from March 2007
Preaching to the Choir (links, 3-29-07)
A blog-heavy set of links today:The Chicago Tribune has a new blog (or Web log as they continue to insist on calling it) on religion: The Seeker. This is mostly news-based. It's an interesting development. I'll check later to see if other newspapers do something similar. An online acquaintance (and sometime debating partner) writes the thoughtful and genuinely curious evangelical blog Brain Cramps for God. He doesn't post prolifically, but what he writes is usually well written and consider. He's also an unusually graceful person to argue with. Fr. John Fenton, formerly of the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod and now a priest in the Antiochan Archdiocese of the Orthodox Church, maintains Conversi ad Dominum, a blog for liturgy and tradition enthusiasts. I've often enjoyed it.For something a little less doctrinally precise, check out the sometimes moribund University of Chicago divinity students' group blog, Habakkuk's Watchpost.
Posted by Benjamin Dueholm at 5:35 PM 0 comments
Wednesday, March 28, 2007
Speaker: Sister Julie Vieira
Yesterday I posted a link to the exciting blog A Nun's Life. Today I learned that the blogger Sister Julie Vieira, IHM (that's the Servants of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, her order--a new one to me), has accepted our invitation to speak at 'Through a Glass Darkly.' She's been a member of her order for ten years and currently works at Loyola Press in Chicago. We are very pleased that she'll be joining us. Check back for more information.
Posted by Benjamin Dueholm at 1:02 PM 0 comments
Our Preacher
Meet Dr. Doug Sharp, our preacher for the May 4th conference. He is Professor of Christian Theology at Northern Baptist Theological Seminary, where he is currently teaching a class called "The Cultural Captivity of the Church" (an appealing title to my Lutheran ears). He is the author of The Hermeneutics of Election: The Significance of the Doctrine in Karl Barth's Church Dogmatics and No Partiality: The Idolatry of Race and the New Humanity. He brings extensive academic and parish experience to the pulpit of Bond Chapel.His faculty website, linked above, includes some interesting links. Check out the Gospel and Our Culture Network in particular. We are pleased and proud to welcome Dr. Sharp to the conference.
Posted by Benjamin Dueholm at 12:53 PM 0 comments
Tuesday, March 27, 2007
Church Online (links, 3-27-07)
A Nun's Life is the blog of Sister Julie Vieira, IHM. It's attracted a lot of attention lately as a fascinating union of monasticism and modern web-based media. It's not to be missed.Asbury Theological Seminary New Testament scholar Ben Witherington III has a personal website with a lively and informative blog. Blogging has produced academic stars in many fields, but scholars of religion seem not to have made as much of an online impact. Our own Martin Marty Center is something of an exception, with a monthly Religion and Culture Web Forum on various topics. Our keynote speaker, Lauren Winner, has a good site with information on books and upcoming appearances. Political liberals who want to talk and read about faith have a great site in Street Prophets. While there does not seem to be any equivalent group-driven site of similar status for politically conservative Christians, there are a vast array of individual blogs that address politics from that perspective. Evangelical Outpost is a prominent example, from which you can link to many, many more.
Posted by Benjamin Dueholm at 6:23 PM 0 comments
Monday, March 12, 2007
Christianity on Film
Sophie Scholl: The Final DaysThanks to a timely promotion on my Netflix queue and two releases at The Music Box, I've been able to devise a brief Lenten film series (or film fastival if you prefer the pun). The first is Sophie Scholl: The Final Days, out on DVD now. I'll follow up with posts on Becket and Into Great Silence in the coming weeks.Sophie Scholl: The Final Days is a 2005 German film about the last four days in the life of an anti-Nazi student activist in 1943. The main character (played with terse dignity by Julia Jentsch, which more than coincidentally sounds like Judi Dench), her brother, and two friends write and distribute leaflets protesting the war and the treatment of the mentally ill, Jews, and occupied nations. They take the foolhardy step of scattering their latest publication at the University, where the janitor catches them and hands them over to the police.What follows in the interrogation, near-release, re-interrogation, confession, trial, and execution of the main character is a tight and almost alarmingly unsentimental and unspectacular depiction of tyrrany and martyrdom. Based largely on interviews and transcripts, the film lets the events and words speak mostly for themselves, and what emerges is a portrait of an uncomplicated and deeply courageous young woman. There is a minimal soundtrack, so no music nudges the viewer into deeper emotion; the visual flourishes are few--a recurring image of blue sky through windows, two shots of cascading papers--and the only moment that feels truly over-the-top comes when a relatively sympathetic Gestapo interrogator washes his hands after Scholl rejects his suggestion that she recant, blame her accomplices, and save her life.From a Christian perspective, of course, the film is about a martyr. Sophie Scholl's faith was part of her witness against the Nazi regime, and the film integrates it into the story without weepy or mystical undertones. Viewers must confront the brutal fact of her condemnation without any aids to their piety. From all appearances, she threw her life away on an ineffectual protest. Unlike Dietrich Bonhoeffer (the martyr most often used by Lutherans to absolve the church's hideous sins under Hitler), Scholl did not leave any great works of theology that could be colored in their reception by her heroism. Her life and death were her only witness, her only work.So even more than Bonhoeffer, Sophie Scholl's is a case that sharpens the analogical meaning of Christian martyrdom. In the Lutheran tradition we tend to revere the saints and martyrs as examples of faithful living rather than as intercessors on our behalf. Those of heroic faithfulness do not earn their laurels by accomplishing anything in particular (it is hard to imagine that the actions of the White Rose hastened the end of the war in any way) or by amassing any merit, but by posing the terrible question to us: What does it mean, in your time and place, to be faithful in this way?Ultimately, I think, this has something to do with Incarnation. In the Heidelberg Disputation, Luther insisted that God can only be grasped while hidden in suffering--i.e., the 'Theology of the Cross.' The hidden suffering of people like Sophie Scholl bore witness to the continuing presence of Christ in a world consumed by hatred. The makers of Sophie Scholl: The Final Days have earned our gratitude by presenting such a life's testament without fanfare or fantasy.
Posted by Benjamin Dueholm at 3:19 PM 0 comments
Wednesday, March 7, 2007
A Brief Update
Unfortunately, our founding blogger has been injured and may be out of action for a while. I hope to put up some links and posts to stimulate conversation on our topics of the church and the media in the coming days. Stay tuned, and keep Matt in your prayers.
A blog-heavy set of links today:The Chicago Tribune has a new blog (or Web log as they continue to insist on calling it) on religion: The Seeker. This is mostly news-based. It's an interesting development. I'll check later to see if other newspapers do something similar. An online acquaintance (and sometime debating partner) writes the thoughtful and genuinely curious evangelical blog Brain Cramps for God. He doesn't post prolifically, but what he writes is usually well written and consider. He's also an unusually graceful person to argue with. Fr. John Fenton, formerly of the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod and now a priest in the Antiochan Archdiocese of the Orthodox Church, maintains Conversi ad Dominum, a blog for liturgy and tradition enthusiasts. I've often enjoyed it.For something a little less doctrinally precise, check out the sometimes moribund University of Chicago divinity students' group blog, Habakkuk's Watchpost.
Posted by Benjamin Dueholm at 5:35 PM 0 comments
Wednesday, March 28, 2007
Speaker: Sister Julie Vieira
Yesterday I posted a link to the exciting blog A Nun's Life. Today I learned that the blogger Sister Julie Vieira, IHM (that's the Servants of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, her order--a new one to me), has accepted our invitation to speak at 'Through a Glass Darkly.' She's been a member of her order for ten years and currently works at Loyola Press in Chicago. We are very pleased that she'll be joining us. Check back for more information.
Posted by Benjamin Dueholm at 1:02 PM 0 comments
Our Preacher
Meet Dr. Doug Sharp, our preacher for the May 4th conference. He is Professor of Christian Theology at Northern Baptist Theological Seminary, where he is currently teaching a class called "The Cultural Captivity of the Church" (an appealing title to my Lutheran ears). He is the author of The Hermeneutics of Election: The Significance of the Doctrine in Karl Barth's Church Dogmatics and No Partiality: The Idolatry of Race and the New Humanity. He brings extensive academic and parish experience to the pulpit of Bond Chapel.His faculty website, linked above, includes some interesting links. Check out the Gospel and Our Culture Network in particular. We are pleased and proud to welcome Dr. Sharp to the conference.
Posted by Benjamin Dueholm at 12:53 PM 0 comments
Tuesday, March 27, 2007
Church Online (links, 3-27-07)
A Nun's Life is the blog of Sister Julie Vieira, IHM. It's attracted a lot of attention lately as a fascinating union of monasticism and modern web-based media. It's not to be missed.Asbury Theological Seminary New Testament scholar Ben Witherington III has a personal website with a lively and informative blog. Blogging has produced academic stars in many fields, but scholars of religion seem not to have made as much of an online impact. Our own Martin Marty Center is something of an exception, with a monthly Religion and Culture Web Forum on various topics. Our keynote speaker, Lauren Winner, has a good site with information on books and upcoming appearances. Political liberals who want to talk and read about faith have a great site in Street Prophets. While there does not seem to be any equivalent group-driven site of similar status for politically conservative Christians, there are a vast array of individual blogs that address politics from that perspective. Evangelical Outpost is a prominent example, from which you can link to many, many more.
Posted by Benjamin Dueholm at 6:23 PM 0 comments
Monday, March 12, 2007
Christianity on Film
Sophie Scholl: The Final DaysThanks to a timely promotion on my Netflix queue and two releases at The Music Box, I've been able to devise a brief Lenten film series (or film fastival if you prefer the pun). The first is Sophie Scholl: The Final Days, out on DVD now. I'll follow up with posts on Becket and Into Great Silence in the coming weeks.Sophie Scholl: The Final Days is a 2005 German film about the last four days in the life of an anti-Nazi student activist in 1943. The main character (played with terse dignity by Julia Jentsch, which more than coincidentally sounds like Judi Dench), her brother, and two friends write and distribute leaflets protesting the war and the treatment of the mentally ill, Jews, and occupied nations. They take the foolhardy step of scattering their latest publication at the University, where the janitor catches them and hands them over to the police.What follows in the interrogation, near-release, re-interrogation, confession, trial, and execution of the main character is a tight and almost alarmingly unsentimental and unspectacular depiction of tyrrany and martyrdom. Based largely on interviews and transcripts, the film lets the events and words speak mostly for themselves, and what emerges is a portrait of an uncomplicated and deeply courageous young woman. There is a minimal soundtrack, so no music nudges the viewer into deeper emotion; the visual flourishes are few--a recurring image of blue sky through windows, two shots of cascading papers--and the only moment that feels truly over-the-top comes when a relatively sympathetic Gestapo interrogator washes his hands after Scholl rejects his suggestion that she recant, blame her accomplices, and save her life.From a Christian perspective, of course, the film is about a martyr. Sophie Scholl's faith was part of her witness against the Nazi regime, and the film integrates it into the story without weepy or mystical undertones. Viewers must confront the brutal fact of her condemnation without any aids to their piety. From all appearances, she threw her life away on an ineffectual protest. Unlike Dietrich Bonhoeffer (the martyr most often used by Lutherans to absolve the church's hideous sins under Hitler), Scholl did not leave any great works of theology that could be colored in their reception by her heroism. Her life and death were her only witness, her only work.So even more than Bonhoeffer, Sophie Scholl's is a case that sharpens the analogical meaning of Christian martyrdom. In the Lutheran tradition we tend to revere the saints and martyrs as examples of faithful living rather than as intercessors on our behalf. Those of heroic faithfulness do not earn their laurels by accomplishing anything in particular (it is hard to imagine that the actions of the White Rose hastened the end of the war in any way) or by amassing any merit, but by posing the terrible question to us: What does it mean, in your time and place, to be faithful in this way?Ultimately, I think, this has something to do with Incarnation. In the Heidelberg Disputation, Luther insisted that God can only be grasped while hidden in suffering--i.e., the 'Theology of the Cross.' The hidden suffering of people like Sophie Scholl bore witness to the continuing presence of Christ in a world consumed by hatred. The makers of Sophie Scholl: The Final Days have earned our gratitude by presenting such a life's testament without fanfare or fantasy.
Posted by Benjamin Dueholm at 3:19 PM 0 comments
Wednesday, March 7, 2007
A Brief Update
Unfortunately, our founding blogger has been injured and may be out of action for a while. I hope to put up some links and posts to stimulate conversation on our topics of the church and the media in the coming days. Stay tuned, and keep Matt in your prayers.
posted by Worship in Crisis at
4:03 PM
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