Meanderings, 12 October 2024

Good morning!

Again, you're invited to join Tommy Phillips and me in a panel discussion about Invisible Jesus in Nashville, October 29 6-8pm CT at Otter Creek Church in Brentwood, TN.

Photo by Antenna on Unsplash

I've shared in this newsletter (Flipping Their Votes and What are They Deconstructing)  that deconstructors are uncovering serious weaknesses in today's church--a renewed fundamentalism, toxic leadership, and legalistic thinking among them. My co-author, Tommy Preson Phillips, and panelists Sean Palmer, and Sara Barton will offer insight and honest discussion moderated by Josh Graves. Everyone who attends (virtually or in person) will have the chance to submit questions to the panel. If you can't attend in person, you can join the live-stream, but only if you pre-order. So don't miss the opportunity to join the stream! You only have until Oct 15! Tommy and I want to make sure the voices of the deconstructors are heard and understood. This is an important event and an important book with that goal in mind. Pre-order and join the stream HERE. RSVP to the in person event in Nashville HERE.

And they got it to grow into a tree!

“Jurassic Park,” and its genetically modified dinosaur escapees, is pure science fiction — it’s never going to happen. But it doesn’t mean that scientists aren’t interested in bringing the past back to life in some form.

Projects to resurrect animals that have gone extinct more recently — the mammoth, dodo and Tasmanian tiger — are reaching an inflection point, although the goal is to create a hybrid approximation of those creatures, not carbon copies.

Researchers are also mining ancient DNA for a potential source of new molecular-based drugs. Still others are reviving historical plants to study their evolution and genetic diversity, which could one day help humans benefit from long-lost species with medicinal properties.

In the 1980s, archaeologists unearthed a pristine seed in a cave in the Judean Desert. Decades later, Dr. Sarah Sallon, founder of the Louis L. Borick Natural Medicine Research Center in Jerusalem, formed a different study team that planted it to see what would happen.

To the researchers’ surprise, five weeks later up popped a tiny shoot, a fragment of which the scientists were able to date: The seed was a staggering 1,000 years old.

Remarkably, the tree thrived and now stands 10 feet (3 meters) tall, although it has never flowered or produced fruit.

Using DNA sequencing, the researchers identified the mystery tree as part of the Commiphora genus, but its exact species is unknown and likely extinct. The team believes it might have a link to a healing plant mentioned in the Bible.

Theobros, JD Vance, and Christian Nationalism:

On July 15, when former President Donald Trump first appeared at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, he brought along two new accessories. One was a large bandage covering his ear, which had been nicked by a would-be assassin’s bullet. The other was Ohio’s first-term senator and Hillbilly Elegy author JD Vance, who was about to debut as the GOP vice presidential hopeful.

Two days later, after paying tribute to his wife, Usha—the child of immigrants from India—and their three biracial kids, Vance portrayed a vision of America that resonated deeply with Trump voters. “America is not just an idea,” he said solemnly. “It is a group of people with a shared history and a common future. It is, in short, a nation.”

To many viewers at home, this seemed like the stuff of a boilerplate, patriotic stump speech. But the words “shared history” lit up a far-right evangelical corner of social media. “America is a particular place with a particular people,” Joel Webbon, a Texas pastor and podcaster, wrote on X. “This is one of the most important political questions facing America right now,” posted former Trump administration official William Wolfe. “Answer it wrong, we will go the way of Europe, where the native-born populations are being utterly displaced by third world migrants and Muslims. Answer it right, and we can renew America once more.”

Vance was embracing one of their most cherished beliefs: America should belong to Christians, and, more specifically, white ones. “The American nation is an actual historical people,” says Stephen Wolfe (no relation to William), the author of the 2022 book The Case for Christian Nationalism, “not just a hodgepodge of various ethnicities, but actually a place of settlement and rootedness.” For this group of evangelical leaders, Vance, a 40-year-old former Marine who waxes rapturous about masculinity and women’s revered role as mothers, was the perfect tribune to spread their gospel of patriarchal Christian nationalism.

Make reading fun again:

When market research firm Circana issued a report on the slump in the middle grade market in July, it was not so much a surprise as a continuation of disheartening news for the category, whose sales began trending downward in 2022. According to the research, print unit sales for middle grade books in the first half of 2024 slid by 5% compared to the same period in 2023 (amounting to 1.8 million fewer units sold)—a larger decrease than in the children’s category as a whole, which had a 2% decline in the same period. Circana data shows that middle grade books remain the only category in children’s that continues to underperform in comparison to 2019 numbers.

More disheartening was the company’s consumer research, which indicates “a negative correlation between increased screentime and reading for fun.” Professionals across the industry have been feeling the impact of this decline. “The reports don’t lie, and I think it’s important to acknowledge the data,” says Cathy Berner, children’s and young adult specialist and events coordinator at Blue Willow Bookshop in Houston and program director for Houston’s Bookworm Festival, Tweens Read, and TeenBookCon.

Still, those invested in kid lit⎯from authors to publishers and booksellers⎯recognize that the numbers don’t necessarily capture the whole picture. Authors still report enthusiasm at bookstore events and school visits. Teachers and librarians still see students eagerly seeking out books. Shifts in middle grade reading habits that came into focus during the pandemic are likely the result of multiple forces, from competing media to politics. And according to some, history tells us that the downswing is cyclical, not terminal. We surveyed authors, editors, and booksellers on the current state of middle grade reading and what might bring readers back to books as a source of fun.

Beth Barr and hope for Baptist women (who follow the Canadians):

I confess, over the past few years, my hope for the evangelical world has dwindled. I have watched the SBC—a denomination I once believed committed to sharing the gospel of Jesus—become even more committed to a gender theology that privileges male power at the cost of (among others) women and sexual assault survivors. Just watch the powerful documentary For Our Daughters that connects the dots between a theology that elevates men over women and a Christian culture that enables abuse.

For the past two years, as I have researched in SBC archives, my hope dwindled further. Piecing together the hard story of Becoming the Pastor’s Wife has helped me see vividly how the SBC chose their current path. Yes, a culture of racism and patriarchy birthed the SBC; but they could have chosen to reject this past. I know they could have chosen this because I saw evidence of it in the archives. One of my chapters in Becoming the Pastor’s Wife focuses on the different choice the SBC could have made (see chapter 7 above), but let me give you a taste with evidence that didn’t make it into the book. …

Unfortunately, instead of continuing on the path of supporting the vocational calling of women and equalizing power dynamics among church staff and leaders, the SBC did the opposite—championing a gender hierarchy that renders both women and sexual predators less visible, enshrines pay inequity between women and men in ministry (women volunteer while men get paid), and makes gospel a theology that God created women as less than men. (Yes, I know the argument is that women and men are spiritually the same with different roles, but isn’t it time to call this argument what it is? As I wrote in The Making of Biblical Womanhood, “the greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing Christians that oppression is godly. That God ordained some people, simply because of their sex or skin color (or both), as belonging under the power of other people.”)

But what if the SBC had gone a different direction? What if they had followed more in the footsteps of our northern Baptist neighbors, like Canadian Baptists of Ontario and Quebec?

What if, instead of declaring that only men can be pastors, the SBC had been like CBOQ—declaring, “Pastors, both men and women, are set apart to preach the Gospel, teach the word, lead in worship, and exercise pastoral care in Christ’s name”?

What if instead of reducing women’s ministry to unpaid volunteer status, they had supported local churches ordaining women? What if instead of doxxing female pastors with a targeted list used to gain momentum for a constitutional amendment to ban women from all pastoral roles (not just lead pastor), they had celebrated the vocational calling of women with handmaid quilts and ordination ceremonies?

What if instead of hounding gifted Bible teachers like Beth Moore out of their denomination, they had listened to the voices of women like Pastor Ruth Wilkinson? “For over 40 years I’d carried God’s calling to serve Him in His Church—teaching and shepherding,” she said in her ordination testimony. Her journey was difficult and she encountered many obstacles. But, in 2019, she preached her first sermon in a CBOQ church and, 4 years later, experienced the support of a CBOQ congregation laying hands on her. “Every time I stand to preach,” she said. “those hands are on my shoulder. Every time I button up my clergy collar…I know I’m there because I’m sent.” What if the SBC had chosen to support women called by God to preach so much that, like Ruth Wilkinson, female pastors felt empowered to encourage one another with the confident words, “you are sent”?

Let me say that again. While SBC women hear limitation after limitation placed on their ministry, CBOQ women are now hearing the words, “you are sent.”

Is there a gender gap on same-sex controversies? Ryan Burge Speaks.

One of the things that I try to drill into my graduate students in research methods is: every assumption needs to be tested in a rigorous way. Many of the ideas for this newsletter start by simply asking myself the question, 'I wonder if that widely accepted thing people say is actually true?’

Here’s a statement that I have heard a couple of times in the last few months, that just stuck in my brain for a while:

”Women are much more supportive of the LGBT population than men.” That came up in a Q&A session that I did after a talk. The person asked if women were leaving conservative churches more quickly because of their views of same-sex marriage and gender identity. The implication of that question is pretty simple - women are more supportive of non-straight, non-cis folks than men.

Okay, so let me just figure out if that’s true or not.

And, we were just there!

Archaeologists in Turkey have unearthed a 1,800-year-old sarcophagus with inscriptions indicating it belonged to a Roman gladiator named Euphrates.

But instead of finding the gladiator's remains in the tomb, the team discovered the bones of 12 women and men dating to the fifth century A.D., suggesting the sarcophagus was reused roughly 200 years after it was built.

"We know from the inscription on the tomb that it was first used for gladiators," Sinan Mimaroglu, an associate professor and art historian at Hatay Mustafa Kemal University in Turkey who led the excavation, told Live Science in an email. "It was built in the third century A.D."

Mimaroglu and his team discovered the Roman tomb inside the ruins of a basilica on Ayasuluk Hill, a mound in Turkey's western İzmir Province that forms part of the ancient Greek city of Ephesus. In addition to the inscriptions, the lid and interior of the stone coffin feature Christian cross symbols similar to engravings previously found inside imperial tombs in other parts of Turkey and Syria, the news website Turkiye Today reported.

The researchers found three cross reliefs dating to the fifth century inside the sarcophagus and several crosses on the tomb's lid that were likely added in the eighth century, Mimaroglu said. The team is now comparing these crosses to others found in the region in the hope that this will provide more information about the beliefs of the people who carved them.