Meanderings, 3 August 2024

One of Kris’ and my favorite areas of the USA is Northern Michigan. Last week we spent time in Petoskey — of Hemingway fame — enjoying the Lake, the Green, the flowers, the blue skies, the relaxed way of life in Northern Michigan, and, yes, the inundation of vacation tourists going to and fro. We drove up to Sault Ste Marie, watched three boats go through the “Soo” (why not?) Locks, and simply enjoyed long stretches on the road mostly devoid of cars and the bustle of Chicagoland traffic. (Which, by the way, we did experience coming home — a solid one-hour slowdown south of Lake Michigan.) Northern Michigan has a love affair with Kilwin’s ice cream, fudge, and its ubiquitous cherries. Two years in a row we were captivated by a hotel room with floors that were definitely sloped.

Not (a, or our) hotel.

Gladys West and GPS:

Schoolchildren around the world are told that they have the potential to be great, often with the cheery phrase: “The sky’s the limit!”

Gladys West took those words literally.

While working for four decades as a mathematician and computer programmer at the U.S. Naval Proving Ground (now the Naval Surface Warfare Center) in Dahlgren, Va., she prepared the way for a satellite constellation in the sky that became an indispensable part of modern life: the Global Positioning System, or GPS.

The second Black woman to ever work at the proving ground, West led a group of analysts who used satellite sensor data to calculate the shape of the Earth and the orbital routes around it. Her meticulous calculations and programming work established the flight paths now used by GPS satellites, setting the stage for navigation and positioning systems on which the world has come to rely.

For decades, West’s contributions went unacknowledged. But she has begun receiving overdue recognition. In 2018 she was inducted into the U.S. Air Force Space and Missile Pioneers Hall of Fame. In 2021 the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences presented her its Webby Lifetime Achievement Award, while the U.K. Royal Academy of Engineering gave her the Prince Philip Medal, the organization’s highest individual honor.

West was presented the 2024 IEEE President’s Award for “mathematical modeling and development of satellite geodesy models that played a pivotal role in the development of the Global Positioning System.” The award is sponsored by IEEE.

The waiting game of the whistleblower — a good read:

It’s been three years since she blew the whistle on her former megachurch employer Andy Wood and Lori Adams-Brown told me she’s still waiting.

She’s waiting for a transparent investigation rather than the one that exonerated her former pastor but was challenged by whistleblowers.  

She’s waiting (and working on) full healing.

And she’s waiting for the greater culture to change to provide better support for whistleblowers who speak up about abuse in powerful institutions.

“So often it’s the survivors themselves that are bearing the brunt of that and they’re already exhausted,” she said. “Is there going to be more of a time when people who haven't directly experienced this, who aren't still getting triggered and traumatized and discredited because they're speaking about their own story, where more people come in?”

Lori is no stranger to bearing difficult burdens. She grew up as a missionary kid in South America. As an adult, she served in Indonesia, worked in tsunami relief, sometimes living in uncertain conditions. Her background has given her important skills and resilience for hard times. And yet, she told me her whistleblowing journey has been long, hard, and painful. She shared some of her story with journalist Julie Roys. Lori also has a fantastic podcast called “A World of Difference,” where in these episodes she shares more of her whistleblowing experience.

She has a desire to use her own painful story to help other whistleblowers just as many advocates have helped her.

“We had skills from our time overseas that taught us to wait through adversity, but we would not be standing today if it weren’t for the people that waited with us and helped us in ways we never knew we would need,” she said. “You can’t survive it without support.”

Here are some ways she and I discussed in which whistleblowing is an agonizing waiting game. At the end of this newsletter, Lori gives some tips for coping.

[SMcK: Lori learned, too, the reality that whistleblowers will be treated with indignity and false narratives.]

David French, orthodoxy and orthopraxy. Many today would argue that orthodoxy is a form of legimating what one practices rather than a “orthodoxy leads to orthopraxy” — it’s best to talk about correlations.

What is it that will define the destiny of the American church? Will it be the beliefs of the church or the conduct of the church? The two concepts are so distinct within Christianity that they have different names — orthodoxy (right belief) and orthopraxy (right conduct).

Ideally, the two concepts shouldn’t be that distinct. Right conduct should flow from right belief. For example, honesty should flow naturally from the belief that lying is wrong. In reality, however, we know that people are much more complex, that theology does not always dictate morality and that sometimes the most religious people are among the most immoral — in direct defiance of the beliefs they proclaim.

Let’s make this less abstract. In 1998, the Southern Baptist Convention issued a bold statement of belief — it passed a resolution on the moral character of public officials that clearly stated, in no uncertain terms, “Tolerance of serious wrong by leaders sears the conscience of the culture, spawns unrestrained immorality and lawlessness in the society and surely results in God’s judgment.”

Yet in 2016 and 2020, Southern Baptists were a key part of the evangelical coalition that overwhelmingly voted for Donald Trump, one of the lowest-character men ever to run for president. They’re expected to do so again in 2024. In this case, the denomination declared an orthodoxy, but utterly failed at orthopraxy, and its compromised conduct is now, sadly, far more relevant to American life than its lofty ideal.

I have been wondering this last week if the same phenomenon under the Carter-Reagan years will occur in these years of the Trump-Biden years. In other words, as Southern Dems shifted toward Republicans will Southern (and Northern) Republications shift toward the Democrats in this election? Is there a poll on this?

Good sketch of Joseph H. Jackson by Will Franks.

Does that person give “the ick”?

“The ick” is among the more than 3,200 words, terms and phrases added to the Cambridge Dictionary so far this year.

Meaning “a sudden feeling that you dislike someone or something or are no longer attracted to someone because of something they do”, the term has gained prominence online in recent years after being used on reality show Love Island.

Usage examples given by the dictionary include: “I used to like Kevin, but when I saw him in that suit it gave me the ick”, and “If you suddenly feel repulsed by someone you’re dating, that’s the ick talking”.

Another term often used on social media and in texts that has made it into the dictionary is “IYKYK” – an abbreviation for “if you know you know”, used to suggest there’s shared knowledge or a shared joke with the reader that others might not understand.

Also popular online, “chef’s kiss” was added too; it is used to describe something deemed perfect or excellent, and it also means the movement “in which you put your fingers and thumb together, kiss them, then pull your hand away from your lips” as a way of showing that you think something or someone is perfect or excellent.

That seven-headed serpent and the Bible:

What do a Mesopotamian cylinder seal, a Greek vase, and the Book of Revelation have in common? Seven-headed serpents. The only issue is that scholars are not certain why. Publishing in the journal Near Eastern Archaeology, Christoph Uehlinger of the University of Zurich believes a small stamp seal discovered at Tel Hazor in northern Israel may finally provide a clue as to how the myth of the seven-headed serpent was transmitted between cultures across the millennia.

While there is no way to know whether the small seal is Israelite or Phoenician, one thing is certain: Its iconography of a hero fighting a seven-headed serpent connects it to a long tradition of similar mythological depictions. The scene, carved into the seal’s face, depicts a warrior grasping a seven-headed snake with one hand while attacking it with a spear in the other. Behind the warrior are three hybrid creatures, including a griffin, a scarab with feathered wings, and a winged cobra. Other discernable features include two monkeys and an Egyptian-style ankh. Excavated on the acropolis of Tel Hazor, the seal dates on stylistic and stratigraphy grounds to the eighth century BCE….

Appearing across multiple cultures over the course of four millennia, the theme of the warrior fighting the seven-headed serpent is certainly a pervasive one, but also one with an interesting habit of disappearing from the textual and archaeological record, only to reappear centuries later in a different place. But it is objects like the Tel Hazor seal that may hold clues for how such myths travel. Showing up in eighth-century BCE Hazor, the seal hints at the transmission from Ugarit to the Northern Kingdom of Israel, from Isaael to Judah, and from Judah to the biblical authors. At the end of the day, the seal reminds us that in archaeology, we are only ever working with part of the picture.

Melanie Howard’s conclusions about dissent on Christian college campuses.

What, then, are the implications of these biblical examples for understanding the place of protest, dissent, or critique on Christian college campuses today? First, the prevalence of such examples suggests that Christian college students, faculty, staff, and administrators have a rich faith tradition upon which to draw in considering ethical issues related to dissent. Rather than relying solely on political positions for or against such protests, Christian college communities can turn to the Bible to inform their deliberations on the topic.

Second, the sheer variety of dissenting activities in the Bible corresponds to a similarly great variation of critiques witnessed on college campuses, whether that dissent takes the form of student protests, lone faculty critiques, or organized “teach-ins” on compelling issues. For campus administrators who might be hoping to exert tight control on what dissent looks like on their campuses (e.g. no large gatherings, no disruptions to regularly scheduled events), the biblical witness might be unsettling. That is, the Bible highlights a wide variety of (often disruptive and disobedient) activities that it describes without censure. The implication for student life staff and college administrators, then, might be to help channel students’ energies for dissent in positive directions that align with the biblical witness rather than to be quick to quash dissenting activity, even if it interrupts the status quo.

Finally, however, the Bible offers some helpful parameters that suggest that not just any protest or dissent is necessarily warranted. Many of the biblical examples enumerated here suggest that such critiques are often motivated not by petty preferences but by a sense that actions being demanded by human authorities or conventions conflict with a deeply held conviction that God commands a different course of action.

These motivations may also help to offer some parameters for engaging in dissent or protest on college campuses today. That is, protests that are motivated more by selfish desires might not meet the standard for appropriate motivation described in examples of protest from the Bible. However, those protests that are motivated by a desire to promote justice and the full flourishing of all life would seem to be more in line with biblical examples. Thus, examples of dissenters from the Bible can offer modern protestors assistance in considering how their own motivations for protesting align (or not) with the biblical model of protest for the sake of a greater good.

The debate about freedom of speech and the place of protesting on college campuses is not likely to be resolved anytime soon. However, for Christian college campuses that are wrestling with such questions, the Bible emerges as a helpful conversation partner for considering the wide variety of issues involved in the conversation. In a time of increasing polarization and secularization of campus politics, Christian higher education is positioned to benefit from the rich resources that its faith tradition offers in the form of its holy text.