Meanderings, 23 September 2023

23 on 23. If you are 23 today (proof needed) I will send you a free copy of our newest book, Pivot.

Reading voraciously: How about you?

very so often, I come across a repeated sentiment expressed by different people at different times. “It’s far more impressive,” they might say, “to read 3-5 excellent books well in a year, than to boast of reading 100-plus books.” While many people today are making Twitter threads tracking their reading through the year, or pursuing lofty Goodreads Reading Challenges in the double or triple digits, these folks see such speedy reading as indicative either of misplaced priorities or even of a failure to read well. If only a small handful of truly good books can be read well in a single year, are the people with long book lists simply poor readers, squanderers of their time? 

Here, I would like to defend voracious reading against its detractors. There is nothing wrong with reading a book or more per week. 

I find myself in an interesting position in these conversations because, more often than not, I share some key assumptions with those who dismiss heavy reading loads as unimpressive. Quite often, these people are defenders of the “Great Books” or the “Western Canon,” advocates of a set of classic and timeless texts as touchstones for educating free citizens. So far, I am with them: along with the likes of Mortimer Adler and more recent defenders like Roosevelt Montás, I can heartily recommend a Great Books reading list to any and all who wish to expand their horizons, challenge themselves, and wrestle with perennial questions. But as someone who has, for most of his life, left libraries with stacks of a dozen or more books, only to return for more of the same, I cannot and will not co-sign an indictment of voracious reading. 

Responding to these critics requires some awareness of both why we read, and what we read. I phrase the “why” and the “what” in this order intentionally, because “why we read” will naturally inform “what we read.” If I am reading with the purpose of learning a particular skill, my reading list will follow from the purpose. If I am reading with the purpose of shoring up ignorance of a particular knowledge area, my reading list will likewise follow. If I am reading for the sheer pleasure of immersing myself in a story, expanding my horizons, and encountering new tales, the reading will follow. 

So, why do I read? That depends. Any given day, I might be reading for a particular research project that requires me to gain familiarity with thinkers, authors, and historical events of which I am ignorant. I might be reading an assigned text for a discussion seminar, or a paper to review for an academic journal. I might be reading to prepare for a course I am teaching in the fall. But on many occasions, I am reading simply for the pleasure of the thing. 

President Biden and the votes in Florida’s Miami-Dade:

Biden got just 53% of all voters in Miami-Dade in 2020, the worst showing since John Kerry’s attempt at unseating George W. Bush in 2004. He lost eleven points from the prior election cycle. Easily the biggest swing in South Florida in recent political history. That meant that Biden had no chance of carrying the state - he lost it by 3.3 percentage points - about 360,000 votes. Florida is a red state, make no mistake about it.

But why did Biden do so poorly compared to Clinton’s result just four years earlier? It’s been a bit of a puzzle to me over the last couple of weeks. So, the purpose of this post is to lay out a bunch of graphs about the religiosity of Florida, especially when it comes to the Hispanics in the state.

To me, there are a couple of big stories that need to be highlighted. The first is that Miami-Dade county is incredibly Catholic. As in, a quarter of the population was attached to a Catholic congregation in 2000 and that has only increased since then. Today, about three in ten folks living in Miami-Dade are on the membership rolls of a Catholic Church.

But there are other stories worth highlighting. The Jewish share of the population has clearly dipped in recent years from 6% in 2000 to 2% in 2020. There’s obviously a migration pattern of folks living in the Northeast (which has a strong concentration of Jews) retiring to Florida. For reasons that I can’t fully explain, Jews are losing ground around Miami.

The other story is the rise in non-denominational Christians in the county.

Ten women pastors in our story.

During Women’s History Month, and especially on International Women’s Day, we have a unique opportunity to correct the marginalization of women’s accomplishments and influence. Those blindspots exist in the church too, especially when it comes to women pastors. Women pastors are not a new phenomenon, but many Christians aren’t aware that there is a long tradition of women pastors in the church. 

Women in history were faithful to their pastoral callings—against all odds. Many pursued ministry against the cultural tide of patriarchy in the church. These tenacious women are a vital part of our Christian legacy. But also, when we celebrate women pastors in history, we open doors wide for women in ministry today. With that in mind, here are ten awesome women pastors from early American history you should know.

Erica Ramirez visits a Texas megachurch, o my:

This year, [John] Hagee celebrates 65 years of ministry, but he has been presenting Matthew as his heir apparent from at least 2006. Apparently (unlike Succession’s Logan Roy), John Hagee is not one for suspense. His appointing Matthew as heir, early, may signal that he understands an operation as large as Cornerstone needs a crystal clear succession plan to avoid collapse in the event of his death. Hagee is a very charismatic preacher, and it’s hard to keep the same preacherly fire with a second generation. But John Hagee is, apparently, “a 5th generation pastor and the 47th descendant of his family to preach the Gospel all the days of his adult life.”  Pastor Matthew Hagee, the website reads, “is following in his father’s footsteps, he is the 6th generation pastor and the 48th descendent of the Hagee family to preach the Gospel.” One gets the feeling that the Hagees understand themselves as a dynasty. This lineage tracing is interesting given Cornerstone Church’s history in Pentecostalism , which historically forwarded the idea that the Holy Spirit could and would call anyone to the ministry. Now, a bloodline logic appears; family politics are readily apparent in charismatic pulpits. 

It’s Hagee the Elder who calls the troops to culture war in a tight 40-ish minute sermon. First, Hagee noted that salt is meant to preserve meat from deterioration, thus– he reasons–when God calls Christians to be salt and light, he is calling them to preserve their cultures from spiritual deterioration. Christianity, he says, “is not retreat or escape; it is being salt and light, and it is evangelism.” Christianity, he continues, is like being thrown into the furnace; it’s like being thrown into the lion’s den and walking out alive. In implicitly referencing Hebrew Bible stories, Hagee positions Christians as protagonists over and against unbeliever, politically-connected antagonists. Then he depicts the nation as corrupt, public schools and district attorneys who don’t prosecute crimes as corrupt; “our president and his son” as corrupt. “The world is an insane asylum,” Hagee thundered; the answer to all the above problems is for “We the People to rise up in righteous rage.” The tone of this section reminded me of nothing so much as the iconic scene in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, where Burl Ives decries, “mendacity and lies.” The Americana of the use of “We the People” was unmistakable. Rising up in rage is not a mandate I want to hear in this context, but more than 20,000 people probably heard it. To conclude his section on contending against the forces of evil plaguing America, Hagee used the language of Psalm 91 to note that “a thousand may fall at your side, ten thousand at your right hand”– language that invokes the protection of God in war.

Beth Barr on the patriarchal bargain:

My students thus are learning that in the nineteenth-century (1) women, from the U.S. to Asia, faced broadly similar inequalities because of their sex and (2) women, from Sojourner Truth to Qiu Jin, recognized the subordination of women within their particular historical context and spoke out against it.

What my students haven’t learned yet is a third continuity: that some women during the suffrage era recognized the legal, economic, and cultural subordination of their sex and—instead of fighting against it—supported it. Qiu Jin’s words, “Don’t tell me women aren’t the stuff of heroes,” stand out to us because they are extraordinary. Most ordinary women during the timeframe of my class, 1832-1928, did not actively participate in the suffrage movement. Many of them worked against it, arguing that women should not have the right to vote.

I’m going to stop here, for today, and let you think about the implications of this. Despite some recent conversations on social media, it isn’t a surprise to scholars why so many women declined to support the suffrage movement and actively worked against it. We know that the most effective opponents to suffrage were not men; they were women. Indeed, the reason the suffrage victory was so tremendous was because the odds were stacked against it.

I’m concluding this post with a short bibliography. I am aware that many of you will be uncomfortable with my discussion of the patriarchal bargain. At the same, I think you should understand it. As I have said before, my goal isn’t to change your mind; it is to tell you what I know.

So what is the patriarchal bargain for women? It is the strategies and coping mechanisms employed by women to navigate gendered constraints without challenging them. Or, as sociologist Lisa Wade wrote: “a patriarchal bargain is a decision to accept gender rules that disadvantage women in exchange for whatever power one can wrest from the system. It is an individual strategy designed to manipulate the system to one’s best advantage, but one that leaves the system itself intact.”

Jericho in the news:

The United Nations World Heritage Committee voted Sunday to list the Tell es-Sultan archaeological site in Jericho as a “World Heritage Site in Palestine.”

The decision was made at a conference held in Riyadh, UNESCO said on its official X account, formerly known as Twitter.

The Palestinian Authority welcomed the decision, while Israel expressed ire.

The newly designated site, located in Jericho in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, contains ruins dating back to the ninth millennium BCE. Jericho itself is one of the oldest continually inhabited cities in the world.

The Palestinian Authority Foreign Affairs Ministry welcomed the decision, lauding it as an acknowledgment of Jericho’s “cultural, economic, and political significance” and a testament to “10,000 years of human development,” according to a statement published on Sunday….

But the Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs expressed its disapproval of the decision, saying it saw the action as “another sign of Palestinians’ cynical use of UNESCO and politicization of the organization.”

Venomous:

A venomous snake delayed the start of an AFLW game in Blacktown, Australia by half an hour as players waited for a snake catcher to remove it from the field.

The red-bellied black snake, which the Australian Museum says will only bite under extreme circumstances, was spotted on the field before Greater Western Sydney Giants played Richmond Tigers in the AFWL, the women’s Australian football league.

“It’s pretty interesting,” said the Giants’ head of women’s football Briana Harvey during the delay, according to the AFL.

“There’s a little red-bellied black snake on the ground at the moment, just in one of the far pockets. Obviously for the safety of everyone here we need just to halt the game for the moment.”

Once the snake catcher arrived he picked up the snake by its tail, held it up for the cameras and put it in a container to take safely away from the game.

After the delay, the Giants sunk to their third consecutive loss of the season as Richmond completed a 19-point victory.