All posts written by Micheal Hickerson

What’s on your summer reading list?

By on May 8, 2012 in Resources with 0 Comments

Just a brief post today, because Tom and I have been busy with other things. Perhaps because of my busy schedule, I’ve been thinking ahead to summer, when I will have more time for reading — or, at least, I imagine I’ll have more time. Two weeks ago, I shared my reading list focusing on how academics perceive evangelicals. My family has a vacation scheduled for June, and my hope is that I’ll make a big dent in that reading list while sitting by the beach. (Yes, that’s how much a nerd I am. No Hunger Games for me, please – I have ethnography to keep me occupied!)

What’s on your summer reading list? 

Does “real thinking” reduce religious belief? [Updated]

By on May 1, 2012 in Christian Thought and Practice with 6 Comments

Last week, one of The Atlantic‘s Study of the Day articles spurred a lively conversation on our Facebook Wall. To give you a sense of the study, see the following tweet, which I hope was the result of sloppy nonexistent copy-editing.

(Unfortunately, one can’t simply assume that poor editing can be blamed for this laughable tweet, because The Atlantic – once a reliable bastion of religion reporting in the secular media – has fallen on hard times. Witness, for example, this atrocious and error-ridden article about Invisible Children’s Kony2012 campaign, which GetReligion dissected a few weeks ago. How bad was the article? It describes Mark Driscoll as an “Emerging Liberal.”)

The study, of course, was not at all about “real thinking,” but about analytical thinking, which is one mode of thinking out of many. The study doesn’t surprise me. In Dan and Chip Heath’s book Made to Stick, they examine the impact of analytical thinking on charitable giving, and it’s not good. There’s a reason why charity campaigns use stories and not logical arguments.

While I’m not surprised at they study, I’m also not too troubled by it. The poorly written tweet – “real thinking reduces religious belief” – gets  the nature of thinking wrong, but I think the study coverage of the study gets the nature of religious belief wrong, too. Further, when considering claims of ultimate truth – whether religious or otherwise – one ought to be skeptical. Greater skepticism could have prevented many tragic decisions over the years. Skepticism, however, should not be our permanent position on every article of belief. There are things worth believing in with your whole heart, mind, soul, and strength.

Analysis is not the only way of thinking

There is a reason why we don’t plan romantic evenings around math conferences. Or try to teach a child to ride a bike with an explanation of rotational velocity. Analytical thinking is important and valuable, but it’s not the only way of thinking. Sometimes, it’s completely inappropriate to the situation and counterproductive.

For example, consider the act of writing. It’s extremely difficult, perhaps impossible, to write anything of length while simultaneously editing yourself for spelling and grammar mistakes, much less fact-checking your claims as you write them. There’s a reason why they’re called “rough drafts.” If your goal is to write 500 words on your dissertation this morning, you’ll have to abandon the analytical mode of thinking for a while.

Analysis, in the wrong circumstance, can even be life-threatening. There’s a reason why trauma surgeons spend so many years increasing their knowledge and honing their skills. When the victims from a near-fatal car accident arrive in the OR, it’s time to act, not to analyze, except in the most basic where-is-this-blood-coming-from way. The rapid, intuitive response of a trained professional is not the absence of “real thinking” — it’s the pinnacle of thinking. Continue Reading…

How Academics See Evangelicals: A Tentative Reading List

By on April 24, 2012 in Christ and the Academy with 5 Comments

Christ Church Cathedral at Oxford

Christ Church Cathedral, Oxford, which is both a cathedral and a college chapel

Last week, I asked for recommendations for resources on how academics view evangelical Christians. Thank you for all of your great suggestions! In addition to the comments on the blog, I received several more suggestions by email, as well as a generous offer: T. M. Luhrmann, whose book When God Talks Back inspired by post and research project, contacted me and offered to send me a review copy of her copy. I’ll be writing at least one post about the book later this year, most likely in June.

Image credit: Wikipedia

So, here is the tentative reading list I’ve assembled from your recommendations, in no particular order. Do you have any comments or further suggestions? 

I also plan on looking at Paul Bramadat’s The Church on the World’s Turf : An Evangelical Christian Group at a Secular University if I can find a decent price on it, as well as the Evangelical Studies Bulletin, which came recommended by James Sire. I’m not sure if ESB fits my original request, but when Dr. Sire recommends something, I read first and ask questions later.

Any additional suggestions? In addition to Elaine Ecklund’s excellent book, does anyone know of research on the interactions between scientists and evangelicals?

What Do Academics Think of Evangelicals?

By on April 17, 2012 in Christ and the Academy with 11 Comments

During the past few weeks, one of the darlings of the book review circuit has been T. M. Luhrmann’s When God Talks Back: Understanding the American Evangelical Relationship with God. Luhrmann, an anthropologist at Stanford, spent several years attending Vineyard Churches around the country — not out of spiritual interest, but as an anthropological study. Here she is on NPR, describing a key part of her thesis: that evangelicals train themselves to perceive God:

They learn to experience some of their thoughts as not being thoughts from them, but thoughts from God that they hear inside their mind,” she says. “They’re also invited to pretend that God is present. I take that verb from C.S. Lewis — he has a chapter of Mere Christianity entitled ‘Let’s Pretend.’ … These folks were invited to put out a second cup of coffee for God, they prayed to go for a walk with God, to go on a date with God, to snuggle with God, to imagine that they are sitting on a bench in the park with God’s arms around their shoulders and they’re talking about their respective days.

I have heard and read many reviews and interviews with Luhrmann — more than I can gather together here in this post. Sometimes, it sounds like she is on to something, while at other times, I think she may be reading too much into her experience with the Vineyard, which is, after all, only one slice of the large evangelical pie.

There seems to be an increase in academic interest in evangelicals — by which I truly mean an academic interest, applying the same qualities of analysis, consideration, and detachment to evangelicals that academics apply to their other subjects, as opposed to polemical or apologetic interest. I’m starting a new reading project, which I hope will result in some kind of writing project, to review recent academic writing about evangelicals by academics, whether Christian or not. And I’d like your help in choosing my reading list.

What books and articles would you recommend that I include in this project? I’m primarily interested in serious, thoughtful books by academics looking at the contemporary world of evangelicalism, both inside and outside the academy. Authors who disagree with evangelicals are fine, but I’m not at all interested in anti-Christian apologetics that happens to written by academics. Since my interest in contemporary attitudes, that would exclude most history, as well – which is too bad, since that’s where much of the best writing about evangelicals can be found.

So, with all these qualifications, what would you recommend?

Easter Isn’t Over

By on April 10, 2012 in Christ with 2 Comments

Resurrection from the Isenheim Altarpiece

The Resurrection, from the Isenheim Altarpiece by Matthias Grunewald (1506-1515)

Over the weekend, a friend asked me a good question about the resurrection:

Why does it say “He is risen“? Shouldn’t it be “He has risen”?

Most modern translations actually use “He has risen” in places like Matt. 28:6. But “He is risen” still holds a central place in our Christian vocabulary. Just to cite two examples:

Christ is risen! He is risen indeed! 

Christ the Lord is Risen Today!

My guess was that either a) grammar has simply changed since the 17th century, or b) the present tense is expressing a present reality. Jesus Christ IS risen. The resurrection is not simply an event in the past that happened once, such as Caesar crossing the Rubicon. It is an ever-present reality. Even today, Christ is risen.

In one simple sense, Easter is not over. In the church calendar, we have seven full weeks of Easter, which is a much better feast than the one-and-done day that we’ve reduced it to. So, continue to celebrate Easter until Pentecost. More Peeps for everyone!

In another sense, though, Easter will never be over. The Lamb That Was Slain has risen, is risen, and already reigns. The resurrection is not simply a resuscitation or anything as weak-kneed as a “spiritual” rebirth that “lives in our hearts.” Jesus’ resurrection body is not the same as his body before death — for one thing, he can appear and disappear at will — but it’s not something less, either, such a shade or ghost.

By the way, the Rev. John Piderit, S. J., has written an interesting post for the Oxford University Press blog, of all places, that asks, “Could the resurrected Jesus have been filmed with an iPhone?” 

A Hymn for Good Friday

By on April 3, 2012 in Christian Thought and Practice with 0 Comments

What are your favorite worship traditions of Holy Week and Easter? For me, I love singing “Christ the Lord is Ris’n Today” on Easter morning, along with “Were You There?” anytime of year. Last Sunday — Palm Sunday — my family took part in an old tradition that was new to us: processing around the church sanctuary waving palm branches to celebrate Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem. Though our small Lutheran church in suburban Kentucky has little in common with Jerusalem, it became Jerusalem symbolically for a few minutes on Sunday morning.

At Regent College, way back in 2003, I completed a masters in Christianity and the arts. I chose Regent, in part, because it allowed students to complete a “creative” thesis, a portfolio of artwork instead of a traditional, er, “uncreative” academic paper. As you may have gathered from my post a couple of weeks ago, poetry has been important to my for a while, and I enrolled at Regent intending to complete a collection of poetry.

While there, I became interested in the theology and practice of community, and I began to explore the idea of poetry written for other people. I began to notice that, for example, many of Auden’s poems were dedicated to or written for specific people, and he took his role as Professor of Poetry at Oxford seriously as a “community poet,” to be enlisted to write poems for the personal milestones of his colleagues. So I began to think of ways that my poetry could serve other people, rather than merely express my own thoughts and feelings. Continue Reading…

Repentance and Lent

By on March 27, 2012 in Christian Thought and Practice with 0 Comments

More Downtown Tulips

Sometimes, though, it can be hard to think of repentance when the tulips are starting to bloom.

 

As a fairly young Christian I thought of repentance for my sins in terms of being sorry for things I had done. I was really, sincerely sorry, yet kept doing the same things over and over again. You may have been there yourself. Then I heard a wise teacher say, “Repentance is not being sorry for the things you have done, but being sorry you are the kind of person that does such things.” – M. Robert Mulholland, Jr., The Deeper Journey: The Spirituality of Discovering Your True Self, p. 23

This morning, I listened to my friend and former Faculty Ministry colleague Kenny Benge preach a sermon on “Ancient-Future Worship” during Lent. (See Robert Webber’s book for more about the idea of “Ancient-Future Worship.”) It truly was an Ancient-Future experience, because I listened to him via podcast from his church’s website. During his sermon, Kenny drew a contrast between morality and moralism, which I think was taken from C. S. Lewis’ Mere Christianity. Morality is the law of right and wrong that is woven into the fabric of the universe. Meanwhile, moralism is our futile attempt to control our lives (and the lives of others) in order to become “so good” that we no longer need the cross of Christ. Continue Reading…

Who are your favorite novelists?

By on March 20, 2012 in Book Reviews with 5 Comments

Last week, I asked you about your favorite poets. So, this week, it seemed like a good idea to ask:

Who are your favorite novelists?

Here are a few of mine. Note: to limit my list, I’ve left off a few writers who seem to be on everyone’s favorite novelist list. I’ve also tried to identify writers whom I will read, no matter what they write. That is, if they have a new book out, I’m buying it and reading it, no questions asked.

Michael Chabon: If you’ve only read his famously precocious debut novel, Wonder Boys, you’ve really missed his remarkable development as a writer. Chabon has embraced two aspects of his own personal identity – his Jewishness and his love for “genre” fiction – to create a series of novels that delve into the experience of American life through the lens of various genres. See my review of The Yiddish Policemen’s Union for more.

Wallce Stegner: I’m not sure if someone with the literary pedigree of Stegner can really be called “underrated,” but I hear his name mentioned much less often than other writers of his generation when great American novelists are being named off. In terms of pure writing, I’ve not encountered anyone who can write character and setting like Stegner.

Ursula K. Le Guin: Le Guin’s “soft” science fiction gets to the very reasons I enjoy science fiction & fantasy – she uses speculation to explore what it means to be human. Only in the past couple of years have a realized how much I enjoy her novels.

Robert V. S. Redick: A new writer, with only three published novels so far, Redick has written what I’ve called my favorite contemporary fantasy series. (Since then, Game of Thrones may have displaced it, but it’s still number two.) Redick’s writing is good, and he avoids many of the common tropes one finds in fantasy.

Enough about my tastes. Who are YOUR favorite novelists?

Who are your favorite poets?

By on March 13, 2012 in Christian Thought and Practice with 15 Comments

The Age of Anxiety

The Age of Anxiety by W. H. Auden

Poetry appeals more directly to the whole person than prose does. It stimulates our imaginations, arouses our emotions, feeds our intellects and addresses our wills. Perhaps this is why poetry is the preferred mode of communication of the prophets, whose purpose depends on capturing the attention of the listeners and persuading them their message is urgent. — Tremper Longman III, quoted by Tom Grosh

Is there anything better than a good mail day? In yesterday’s mail, I received a new pair of glasses, a 2-pack of David Seah’s Emergent Task Planner stickypads, and my new copy of W. H. Auden’s book-length poem The Age of Anxiety: A Baroque Eclogue, edited with a foreword by Alan Jacobs. It was a very good mail day, indeed.

One of my high school English textbooks included Auden’s “The Unknown Citizen,” which led me to seek out more of his poetry, and he soon became my favorite poet. Looking back, I have to wonder how much I even understood, much less appreciated, his clever, difficult, and formal verse when I was so young. My senior picture from high school shows me posing next to three books: Auden’s Selected Poems, Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man, and…(sigh) Catcher in the Rye. I suppose I’m lucky that only one of these books now embarrasses me. Continue Reading…

Henri Nouwen: A Creative Response (from Loneliness to Solitude)

By on March 6, 2012 in Christian Thought and Practice with 0 Comments

I’m concluding my series on Henri Nouwen’s book Reaching Out: The Three Movements of the Spiritual Life with the final chapter from his first section, which deals with the movement from loneliness to solitude. For several days before I began reading this chapter, I had not responded well to events at home, such as my children acting like children, for goodness’ sake. Nouwen’s words at the beginning of this chapter (entitled “A Creative Response”) caught me up short:

As long as we are trying to run away from loneliness we are constantly looking for distractions with the inexhaustible need to be entertained and kept busy. We become the passive victims of a world asking for our idolizing attention. We become dependent on the shifting chain of events leading us into quick changes of mood, capricious behavior and, at times, revengeful violence. Then our life becomes a spastic and often destructive sequence of actions and reactions pulling us away from our inner selves. (34)

Continue Reading…

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