Professor Joe Knippenberg of Oglethorpe University gets to the root of Georgetown’s decision to bar evangelical student ministries from participating as affiliate groups on campus:

There’s the root of Georgetown’s conflict with its erstwhile evangelical affiliates. It demands that everyone subscribe wholeheartedly to a thoroughgoingly pluralistic vision and suspects that the evangelicals don’t.

But that’s apparently not good enough for the authorities at Georgetown, who seem to want everyone to love pluralism with all their hearts, souls, and minds. Of course, if everyone affirms pluralism in this way, what you really end up with is a kind of deep uniformity, not genuine pluralism at all. Yes, there are differences, but everyone regards them as accidental and superficial, not worth shouting about, let alone (perish the thought!) fighting over.  

Yesterday, the Fourth Circuit held that in a GOP challenge to Virginia’s open primary law, the Plaintiffs had standing and the claim was ripe.  The GOP is arguing that the open primary violates rights to free association inasmuch as Dem voters could throw votes to a candidate who does not reflect the goals of the GOP membership.

The Richmond Times Dispatch has this article, and I have a case summary up at the SCAL Blog. 

Because 2006 is the centenary of his birth, the English poet  John Betjeman has gotten a spot of attention recently, including this link-rich John Derbyshire essay for NRO.  There’s also lots of audio available on this BBC Radio 4 webpage.

It happens every once in a while. You discover something that is really special, that should be incredibly successful, but unaccountably, isn’t. A very well read friend made me aware of the fiction of Lars Walker. He writes mostly about Vikings during the period when Christianity contended with pagan religions, but he also has a contemporary novel (which happens to deal with Viking lore!).

I cannot give a high enough recommendation to Lars Walker’s The Year of the Warrior. I had to wait for it, but it was completely worth the wait. The narrator of the story is a young Irishman taken captive to sell as a slave by Vikings. They give him a tonsure to make him look like a priest so he’ll fetch a higher price. A newly converted Viking nobleman buys him because he needs a priest for his village. The Irishman decides to play the part of the priest in order to survive and the action flows from there.

Wonderful historical saga. Interesting insights about the Christian faith and its relationship to political power. Some beautiful battle sequences, too. Fully developed characters. Worth reading in every way.

So why the lack of bestseller status? I have a guess. The Lars Walker novels are published by Baen, which really specializes in sword and sorcery/science fiction. The covers of the Walker books have that look to them, but they are actually much deeper. I think the normal Baen reader is disappointed by the lack of standard genre stuff when they buy the book. But you, dear reader, will not be disappointed. You shall be blessed.

Yours truly turned 25 today. What I’m most excited about is that my car insurance rate will decease.

Wait, I’m giddy about insurance? I must be getting old…

Mama’s don’t let your babies grow up to go to Mercer University. William Underwood became the interim president at Baylor University after Robert Sloan was forced to resign. The first thing he did was fire David Jeffrey (the Christianity Today/First Things favorite whom I once asked for his favorite novel and he replied, “In what language?”) as Provost, which was heady stuff for an interim executive.

After it became clear he wouldn’t get the Baylor gig on a permanent basis, Underwood accepted the top job at Mercer University in Macon. I missed his inaugural, but an unkind person emailed me his fall convocation address and frankly, it caused me to lose sleep, not because it disturbed my own embrace of the Christian faith, but because there were young people there to hear it.

Without my J.D. and Ph.D. work, I would have bought a lot of the bullhockey for sale in the speech.

Underwood opens with the usual story of the warfare between science and religion in which religion receives its comeuppance. Afterwards, good religionists can only hold their beliefs lightly. See, because that whole Galileo thing has shown up the ignorance of the church for all time.

I checked Underwood’s footnotes to the speech in which he credits a 2006 book that relies on A.D. White’s famous polemic against science from the late 19th century. Of course, let’s not trouble ourselves with the fact that reputable historians of science say the presentation of the relationship between science and religion as warfare is a dishonest one made for political advantage (See Ronald Numbers and David Lindberg on this score).

But Underwood isn’t a scholar, he’s a lawyer (sorry guys) and he’s presenting his client’s case, not the whole truth. How else do you make sense of his statement that the Galileo affair wasn’t resolved until 300 years later, when man walked on the moon? Good heavens, man, Copernicus preceded Galileo!

I look forward to a Christmas speech or a spring talk in which Underwood offers up the insights he’s gained from several evenings with The Da Vinci Code on the nightstand. Should be illuminating.

One more thing. Want to know who Jesus was according to Underwood? A “freethinker.” “Hmmmm. What’s the right expression here? Let me think. Son of God, Savior, I Am, freethinker. Definitely freethinker!”

It seems that the South Carolina Supreme Court and General Assembly are in a fight over who controls expert testimony in the state’s courts.  The General Assembly has amended professional licensing statutes to prohibit physicians and engineers who are not licensed in South Carolina from offering expert testimony.  Such is considered “the practice of medicine” or “the practice of engineering” and thus cannot be undertaken without a valid state license.
Well, with no actual case or controversy before it, the South Carolina Supreme Court suspended the statutory amendments regarding the practice of medicine:

The South Carolina Constitution vests this Court with the authority to make rules governing the administration of the unified South Carolina court system.  S.C. Const. art V, § 4.  In order to prevent a significant impairment to this Court’s duty to properly administer the judicial power of South Carolina, and pursuant to Article V, Section 4′s authority, we hereby temporarily delay judicial enforcement of Act 385 insofar as the Act requires a physician to obtain a license to practice medicine in South Carolina before offering expert medical testimony in a South Carolina administrative or court proceeding.
While we remain respectful of the General Assembly’s voice in matters of practice and procedure in South Carolina’s courts, this Court cannot allow the administration of justice to be substantially impaired.  We are confident, however, that when the General Assembly provides further clarity on this matter, the changes that result will reflect careful consideration and deliberation; will consider and account for the scope of the court’s existing rules and the need for efficient and orderly court administration; and will be subjected to close scrutiny in the Judiciary Committees of both the South Carolina Senate and the House of Representatives.

The Court acted in similar fashion yesterday when it considered a trial court’s exclusion of an engineering expert because he was not licensed in state.  According to the court,  ”Without clear indication from the Legislature that the 2000 amendment was, in fact, intended specifically to limit Rule 702 in this way, we decline to adopt that interpretation.”
We’ll see if the General Assembly tucks its tail on this one, or if it is ready for a fight with the Courts. 

See also SCAL Blog and WISTV.com.

With Ernesto having now been downgraded to tropical storm status, we have reached the eve of the first anniversary of Katrina’s landfall with no hurricanes having hit the continental United States in 2006. This despite predictions from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and from the leading hurricane researchers at Colorado State University that this season would be “very active”. For instance, in their December 6, 2005 prediction, the Colorado State University team wrote

We foresee another very active Atlantic basin tropical cyclone season in 2006. However, we do not expect to see as many landfalling major hurricanes in the United States as we have experienced in 2004 and 2005.

On May 31, 2006, the day before the official June 1st commencement of the hurricane season, the CSU researchers reiterated their prediction:

We continue to foresee another very active Atlantic basin tropical cyclone season in 2006. Landfall probabilities for the 2006 hurricane season are well above their long-period averages.

In NOAA’s May 22, 2006 press release, the agency forecast that

“For the 2006 north Atlantic hurricane season, NOAA is predicting 13 to 16 named storms, with eight to 10 becoming hurricanes, of which four to six could become ‘major’ hurricanes of Category 3 strength or higher,” added retired Navy Vice Adm. Conrad C. Lautenbacher, Ph.D., undersecretary of commerce for oceans and atmosphere and NOAA administrator.

On average, the north Atlantic hurricane season produces 11 named storms, with six becoming hurricanes, including two major hurricanes. In 2005, the Atlantic hurricane season contained a record 28 storms, including 15 hurricanes. Seven of these hurricanes were considered “major,” of which a record four hit the United States. “Although NOAA is not forecasting a repeat of last year’s season, the potential for hurricanes striking the U.S. is high,” added Lautenbacher.

As this entry at Wikipedia describes, both the CSU and the NOAA teams have lowered their preseason estimates. And I am aware that we are are relatively early in the hurricane season, and that this post could prove to be dramatically wrong. Blogger Brendan Loy, for example, points us to this August 16 post from hurricane expert Dr. Jeff Masters, who in turn writes

Peak hurricane season starts about August 18 and runs through October 18. The worst part of hurricane season is in front of us, and I do anticipate that conditions will get active. Witness 1998, when only one named storm occurred prior to August 19, and 10 named storms and 7 hurricanes formed by the end of September. A similar pattern of activity occurred in 2000, with only two named storm by this date, and a season total of 15 named storms. So, those of you who doubt NOAA and Dr. Gray’s predictions of 15 named storms this season need to put your skepticism on hold.

But I am willing to risk the embarrassment of premature evaluation to say the following:

If the relatively non-politicized corps of hurricane researchers couldn’t get the 2006 hurricane season right just days before it began, then why are we supposed to believe that the uber-politicized cadre of so-called climate experts are correct about the existence and/or impact of global warming years and decades from now?

[As a pre-emptive strike against those who might claim that I am conflating weather with climate, please examine the linked May 31 document from CSU, which states, "Our research team has shown that a sizable portion of the year-to-year variability of Atlantic tropical cyclone (TC) activity can be hindcast with skill exceeding climatology." Also note that the NOAA press release expressly says that, "The north Atlantic hurricane seasonal outlook is a product of NOAA's Climate Prediction Center, National Hurricane Center and Hurricane Research Division."]

…and a VLOG to prove it. I guess you could put this in the category of things to do in seminary when you’re bored. These are not your parents’ Bible stories and you need not be a theology student to get a chuckle out of this site. One of the creative contributors to the VLOG, Paul Hannum, died this month at age 45 from surgical complications. If you’re new to The Real Old Testament, drop in here for an overview.

At The American Conservative, Heather Mac Donald laments the rhetoric of the religious conservative. The link will take you to the complete article. There’s much there to chew on. In part, she says….

Skeptical conservatives—one of the Right’s less celebrated subcultures—are conservatives because of their skepticism, not in spite of it. They ground their ideas in rational thinking and (nonreligious) moral argument. And the conservative movement is crippling itself by leaning too heavily on religion to the exclusion of these temperamentally compatible allies.

Conservative atheists and agnostics support traditional American values. They believe in personal responsibility, self-reliance, and deferred gratification as the bedrock virtues of a prosperous society. They view marriage between a man and a woman as the surest way to raise stable, law-abiding children. They deplore the encroachments of the welfare state on matters best left to private effort. ….

Nonbelievers look elsewhere for a sense of order, valuing the rule of law for its transparency to all rational minds and debating Supreme Court decisions without reverting to mystical precepts or “natural law.” It is perfectly possible to revere the Founding Fathers and their monumental accomplishment without celebrating, say, “Washington’s God.” Skeptical conservatives even believe themselves to be good citizens, a possibility denied by Richard John Neuhaus in a 1991 article. …

What Heather is calling “skeptical” sounds more like secular conservatism to me. If current cultural trends continue, the religious conservatives will be the subculture within the movement and she’ll no longer have that issue to wring her hands over. For the sake of this discussion, I suppose it all depends on where you think moral authority comes from.

Update: There’s some interesting chatter on this topic at Right Reason.

According to this website, the movie will finally hit theaters on September 22.  I’m looking forward to it, as the cast appears stellar, but more importantly to see how true it sticks to the book.  I only hope the range of emotions I experienced while reading the book are replicated in the film.

The good folks over at Touchstone Magazine reproduce a letter from Georgetown University Chaplain’s Office to the Affiliated Ministries (evangelicals, including InterVarsity).  Here are the crucial paragraphs:

As a result of our new direction for the upcoming academic year, we have decided to not renew any covenant agreements with any of the Affiliated Ministries. This will become effective immediately. As any previous covenant agreements ended with the 2005-2006 academic, your ministries will no longer be allowed to hold any activity or presence (i.e. bible studies, retreats with Georgetown students, Mid-week worship services, fellowship events, move-in assistance, SAC Fair, etc.) on campus. As well, there will be no Affiliated Ministry presence or participation at our annual Campus Ministry Open House held at the end of August.

Additionally, all websites linking your ministries to a presence at Georgetown University will need to be modified to reflect the terminated relationship. Your ministries are not to publicize in any literature, media, advertisement, etc. that Georgetown University is or will be an active ministry site for your ministry/church/denomination.

While we realize this comes as a great disappointment, please know that we are moving forward with this decision only after much dialogue with the Lord. We have enjoyed working with your ministries in various capacities over the years and will always keep your ministry in our prayers.

If true, it’s appalling.  Any information on why they decided to do this would be quite welcome.

Congratulations to the Columbus, Georgia, team on becoming the Little League U.S. Champions today.  The team plays Japan for the world championship tomorrow at 3:30.

WaPo headline:  Iran Opens Heavy-Water Nuclear Reactor.

According to Forbes, our “drunkest cities” are as follows:

1. Milwaukee

2.Minneapolis-St. Paul

3. Columbus, Ohio

4. Boston

5. Austin, Texas

6. Chicago

7. Cleveland

8. Pittsburgh

9. Philadelphia and Providence, R.I., in a tie

My guess is if you did the rankings on a football Saturday, Athens, Georgia would be tops.  Just my observation as a visiting fan. 

According to this Pew poll (as reported in the NYT), the percentage of Americans who think the GOP is “friendly” to religion fell from 55 to 47 percent, with drops especially noticeable among white evangelicals and Catholics.  It’s just speculation, but it seems likely that the drop comes from a frustration that the GOP is happy to have religious conservatives’ votes, but doesn’t really want to press their issues.  (No doubt, the “Plan-B” thing won’t help).

The drop in Catholic attitudes should be especially worrisome to GOP Presidential contenders, who need churchgoing Catholics to win states in the Midwest.

Reason has the scoop on how the Libertarians might actually gain a seat in Congress. 

FDA Eases Limits on Plan B Sales

Women may buy the morning-after pill without a prescription – but only with proof they’re 18 or older, federal health officials ruled Thursday, capping a contentious three-year effort to ease access to the emergency contraceptive.Girls 17 and younger still will need a doctor’s note to buy the pills, called Plan B, the Food and Drug Administration told manufacturer Barr Pharmaceuticals Inc. (BRL)

The compromise decision is a partial victory for women’s advocacy and medical groups that say eliminating sales restrictions could cut in half the nation’s 3 million annual unplanned pregnancies. Opponents have argued that wider access could increase promiscuity.

Over the weekend I read Between Two Worlds- Escape From Tyranny: Growing Up in the Shadow of Saddam. The author, Zainab Salbi, pens her account of living in Saddam’s psychological prison as the daughter of his personal Boeing 747 pilot. Those of you who saw the movie Downfall should also find this story interesting as well. Both reveal the frightening pathology of tyrants and their toadies. This book has been out for at least a year but I just discovered it. You can hear Salbi’s NPR commentary which was aired in December 2005.

I’m posting two posts I put up on American Spectator’s blog. I think they’re of interest to the SA crowd: (more…)

From CMS: In a move that critics denounce as a ‘backdoor draft,” the US Marines and Army are recalling to active duty thousands of men and women who have been discharged for several years. According to the Associated Press, thousands of Marines are being recalled because of “a shortage of volunteers” to serve in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Up to 2,500 Marines will be brought back at any one time, but there is no cap on the total number of Marines who may be forced back into service in the coming years as the military battles the war on terror. The call-ups will begin in the next several months.

This is the first time the Marines have had to use the involuntary recall since the early days of the Iraq combat. The Army has ordered back about 10,000 soldiers since the start of the war.

WorldNetDaily has an interesting article up linking increased crime and racial tension in the inner cities to increased illegal immigration.   Here is a taste:

National crime statistics released by the FBI show homicides up 5 percent last year. But the real story, say experts, is what is happening in urban pockets across the country, where murders – increasingly across racial lines – are way up.

In Philadelphia’s 12th Police District shootings have almost doubled over the past year.

In Boston, the homicide rate is soaring.

In Orlando, the homicide count has reached 37, surpassing the city’s previous record.

All of this follows a national trend of decreasing violent crime through 2002. 

 In 2005, jurisdictions with populations between 50,000 and 250,000 saw homicide increases of about 12.5 percent – far larger than the big cities, says David Kennedy, director of the Center for Crime Prevention and Control at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York.

“Those numbers tell only part of the story,” he said. “Serious crime is concentrated in certain areas within poor black and Hispanic neighborhoods. For people who live in the Trinidad area of Washington, in the Nickerson Gardens housing complex in South Los Angeles and on Magnolia Street in Boston, the citywide statistics have always been meaningless. Their neighborhoods are war zones.”

More people are noticing that much of the violence is at least partly racially motivated and tied directly to the rapid increase in Hispanic population over the last decade – much of it due to illegal immigration.

I just got back from watching Little Miss Sunshine, which is something I haven’t done since January 2005, i.e., watching a movie at a theater. My return to the land of the sticky floor was good. I highly recommend this movie; it is really one of the best films I’ve seen in a while. It has some highs and lows, in the way you feel, but the characters and cast make you glad that you’re sitting there and watching. Steve Carell really shined in this movie, taking the opportunity to add depth to a character while avoiding the potential typecast as a comic actor, although his character in this movie is funny. If you see a movie in the coming weeks, make sure this is one on your list.

We’re looking forward to hosting Steve in a couple of weeks.  His speech at Cumberland is at 11:00, rather than 12:00.  I’m sure there will be more “reminders” in the coming weeks.

Does anyone know of a non-liberal (prefer conservative, but non-liberal would suffice) organization that tracks international human rights abuses and proposes solutions.  Or any articles on how to address human rights abuses that doesn’t involve the new world order.

I got a kick out of United States v. Cohen, decided last week by the Fourth Circuit.  It seems everyone is ADD or ADHD and is on some sort of drugs for it.  Well, Cohen tried to use ADHD to get around an appeal waiver in his plea agreement.  That might work in the Ninth Circuit, but the Fourth didn’t buy it.  A summary of the opinion can be found here.

Within striking distance: (via RCP)

The news of Rick Santorum’s political death may have been greatly exaggerated. He has not won re-election yet but he has gained traction. The junior senator of Pennsylvania has gone from being tagged as DOA to being within striking distance.

And he did it the old-fashioned way: retail politics — reaching out to the electorate one on one.

Democrat challenger Bob Casey Jr.’s 18-point lead over the Penn Hills Republican has diminished. Not vanished, mind you — Casey is still ahead by 6 to 7 points in recent polls — but the momentum clearly is on the side of the senator.

Robert Sloan paid attention to the big buzz about integrating faith and learning throughout the 90′s.  He certainly didn’t invent the concept, not even at Baylor where Provost Donald Schmeltekopf had already tilled the field waiting for seeds, water, and determination to back up his early evangelism of the concept.  What Robert Sloan did, though, was to put money and his reputation behind the project to transform Baylor into a great Christian university that was simultaneously a research university.  Whether or not U.S. News and World Report acknowledges it, a lot has happened at Baylor.  Student board scores are up, graduate programs are churning out Ph.D.’s and Baylor is winning some serious research grants. 

A strange thing happened along the way, though.  Sloan himself was forced to resign only to see the vision continue to bloom.  He stayed on as Chancellor for a year or so, basically occupying a fund-raising and figure-head role.  He is now headed off to Houston to take over as president of Houston Baptist University, a school that characterizes itself as having no problem with the direction Sloan tried to take Baylor. 

What may have been the most important part was that he was a symbol, or perhaps less euphemistically, a security blanket for those who wanted to see the university stay true to the 2012 vision Sloan pushed so hard.  When David Jeffrey was fired as provost and Francis Beckwith’s tenure was denied, there were rumblings.  First Things spectacularly jumped ship and Christianity Today clammed up after having given extensive coverage earlier.  

Sloan’s departure will take the focus off him by both critics and supporters.  Baylor will now be judged not by Sloan’s presence, but by its faithfulness to the vision it continues to embrace rhetorically.  Final word on Beckwith’s tenure appeal should come down in late August.  That will be one powerful indicator of Baylor’s heart and soul.  After all, Beckwith (formerly my boss) is a prototypical faith and learning guy.  

For his part, Sloan is still presidential.  He has refused to publicly criticize anything done by his interim successor Bill Underwood (now at Mercer) or his permanent successor John Lilley.  After 27 years at Baylor as student, athlete, teacher, preacher, distinguished prof., dean, and then president, he bleeds green and gold.  But he has taken on a new opportunity and Baylor will stand or fall without him.

He starts at Houston Baptist immediately and has already done a public exit interview with the Waco Tribune-Herald.  There’s some interesting stuff here personally, spiritually, organizationally, etc.  It’s a good read.  

The conclusion is my favorite part:

Q: What are your departing words to the Baylor family?

A: God bless Baylor. We love Baylor and we love Waco. Our greatest passion for Waco is that it be willing to take some risks and to grow and develop. For Baylor, there should be no question, historically or in terms of our obligation, as to what Baylor’s identity is. Certain features of it really are not even debatable. Legally and historically, Baylor was founded as a Christian institution in the Baptist tradition and being faithful to that should not be up for grabs. Having a faculty and staff that have those commitments should always be of primary concern because it’s the people that really are the institution and what the faculty and staff are determines the experience of the students. Baylor should always seek people that don’t merely accept her identity, but embrace it.

Of course, there’s another question beyond what Baylor will do without Sloan.  What will Sloan do with Houston Baptist?  That should be the fun part.  Chairman Mao wanted to let a thousand flowers of revolution bloom.  I’d settle for a dozen or so more in Christian higher education.

According to press reports, Merck & Co. lost the second federal trial over its withdrawn painkiller Vioxx on Thursday and must pay $51 million to a retired FBI agent who had a heart attack after taking the drug for more than two years.

What I find interesting is that the actual damages were $50 million and the punitives only $1 million.  I’m curious what the Plaintiff actually put on the board for compensatories.  I’m sure most of the the actuals had to be pain and suffering, etc.–but that is still a hefty amount for a retired person, 71 years of age, who did not die from the heart attack. 

Thoughts??

I happen to live in Athens, Georgia, which is a charming little city that becomes far more interesting once college football season begins.  We rent a house in the Five Points area which is close to the football action and full of fraternities and sororities. 

I can’t wait until that fall air brings the mercury steadily down, down. 

Can’t wait until the streets of the neighborhood fill with parallel parked cars from out of town. 

Can’t wait for the can’t-think-about-anything-else excitement that overtakes Athens starting every Thursday. 

Can’t wait for the normally brutal local sports talk radio to improve as the broadcasters begin talking about something that actually interests them.

Can’t wait to see my own favorite squad — the Crimson Tide — take the field and continue reversing the nightmare of the third millennium.