Seeing signs of revival in hell
Hi again, to the few the proud. I suppose that for someone who has a life, I don't do too badly in my blogging. Nevertheless I'm clearly not keeping you all up on things. I don't imagine that that crushes anybody's day, but here goes an attempt to catch you up with me. As you may know, the title of today's blog is one of the ways I state Dawn and my job description as postmodern missionaries--it's a phrase from faculty mocking of the historian of revivals Richard Lovelace at Gordon-Conwell back in the 1980s.
A. For the life of me, I cannot figure out how to add links--despite the careful, code-riddled instructions in blogger, which I followed to the letter--to people I know and love on here. This blog will remain a backwater until I can do such. I take it that free blogger is remedial, and has been progressively stripped of features--and I can't see that I can subscribe to pay blogger any more. I guess google is getting out of that, or doing it some other way. yes I could go to typepad or squarespace or whatever, but geez louise, i just want a nice little blog on the corner, not a blogomarket.
B. Stephanie and Dave got married last weekend in Louisville. It was fun. It was, not very significantly, but interestingly, the largest group I've spoken to outdoors without amplification since Zambia, about 250. It was, quite importantly, the largest reunion of Dawn's family in I don't know when. I hope that Dawn got that her family is not going to leave her to her responsibilities with her mom by herself. I think Dawn's aunts and cousins will gladly pitch in as they can. It was good to be in Louisville; Dawn likes it okay, but I just love the town.
C. I am nearing the eye-glazing, head-knocking end of Habermas's Between Facts and Norms, which despite the title is his political and legal philosophy. I just couldn't face reading its 515 pages during the run-up to my dissertation, but as I read it now, I think that by and large my critique of his secular modernism stands. There are specific corrections I will have to make to stuff before publishing--it's scary how many points of view Habermas anticipates, how many criticisms you think you'll bring in to trump him, only to find that he's already considered and responded to that--but on the whole I think I get the guy. And I still just think both that there are human universals modernist thinkers are hesitant to acknowledge, and that since everybody has a worldview or religion, some theoretical accommodation will have to be made to them that is not merely patronizing.
D. E. B. Brooks is retiring from the Baptist General Convention of Texas. Waa. He's been the most consistent supporter of postmodern / emerging church stuff in general, and Dawn and I in particular, ever since we came to Dallas.
E. Dawn is now a registered nurse clinician--the nursing equivalent of a 'board-certified' doctor or lawyer. Yay, Dawn!
F. 32 weeks til graduation for jonathan. FAFSA, here I come!
A. For the life of me, I cannot figure out how to add links--despite the careful, code-riddled instructions in blogger, which I followed to the letter--to people I know and love on here. This blog will remain a backwater until I can do such. I take it that free blogger is remedial, and has been progressively stripped of features--and I can't see that I can subscribe to pay blogger any more. I guess google is getting out of that, or doing it some other way. yes I could go to typepad or squarespace or whatever, but geez louise, i just want a nice little blog on the corner, not a blogomarket.
B. Stephanie and Dave got married last weekend in Louisville. It was fun. It was, not very significantly, but interestingly, the largest group I've spoken to outdoors without amplification since Zambia, about 250. It was, quite importantly, the largest reunion of Dawn's family in I don't know when. I hope that Dawn got that her family is not going to leave her to her responsibilities with her mom by herself. I think Dawn's aunts and cousins will gladly pitch in as they can. It was good to be in Louisville; Dawn likes it okay, but I just love the town.
C. I am nearing the eye-glazing, head-knocking end of Habermas's Between Facts and Norms, which despite the title is his political and legal philosophy. I just couldn't face reading its 515 pages during the run-up to my dissertation, but as I read it now, I think that by and large my critique of his secular modernism stands. There are specific corrections I will have to make to stuff before publishing--it's scary how many points of view Habermas anticipates, how many criticisms you think you'll bring in to trump him, only to find that he's already considered and responded to that--but on the whole I think I get the guy. And I still just think both that there are human universals modernist thinkers are hesitant to acknowledge, and that since everybody has a worldview or religion, some theoretical accommodation will have to be made to them that is not merely patronizing.
D. E. B. Brooks is retiring from the Baptist General Convention of Texas. Waa. He's been the most consistent supporter of postmodern / emerging church stuff in general, and Dawn and I in particular, ever since we came to Dallas.
E. Dawn is now a registered nurse clinician--the nursing equivalent of a 'board-certified' doctor or lawyer. Yay, Dawn!
F. 32 weeks til graduation for jonathan. FAFSA, here I come!
posted by Mark at 5:44 PM
2 Comments:
hello! glad the wedding went well and that you're trudging through the habermas. i have a book i want to send you for your meetings with the med students: "rocks of ages" by stephen jay gould about the "non-overlapping magisteria" of science and religion. i would like to see what you think of it.
sorry to hear the supportive guy is retiring. maybe the new one will be ok?
It would be nice if any of those who say that they advocate a relationship of 'nonoverlapping magisteria' would actually give an example of a place where they personally think religion has a compelling magisterium that they themselves are willing to accept, as they accept the magisterium of science in, say, technology or engineering. usually this is said as a polite way of saying, impersonal scientism counts, religion doesn't, and I can consign it to the Greenland or outer mongolia of its own realm--i.e., the Realm of Kooks--and neither have to pay attention to it nor have to admit how contemptuous of it I am.
But perhaps gould does a better job of actually acknowledging a two-spheres doctrine here that actually has some teeth: I would be surprised, but it would be nice to be surprised.
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