Meanderings, 4 March 2023

Good morning from the end of Winter, the beginning of Spring, and everything in between — here in the northern suburbs of Chicago! The arrival of Revelation for the Rest of Us this week was a highlight. Thanks to Cody Matchett for writing with me, and to our generous endorsers.

John Fea, The Jesus Revolution and its political impact:

Last weekend The Jesus Revolution, a widely distributed film (2475 theaters) about a 1970s spiritual awakening among hippies in southern California, grossed nearly $16 million. The film was no match for Ant Man and the Wasp or Cocaine Bear, but it still exceeded all box office expectations. …

There were roughly forty years between the First Great Awakening and the American Revolution.  During that time, according to Lurie, God allowed the seeds of evangelical revival to grow until they finally blossomed into a Christian nation. And if revival created the soil for the birth of the United States in the 1700s, Laurie argued, it can also create the soil for the reclamation of America as a Christian nation in the twenty-first century. 

Forty years (roughly) is also the amount of time between the Jesus Revolution that Laurie experienced in the 1970s and the birth of the MAGA movement. So one wonders: Is the rejection of public health regulations, the questioning of climate science, and the genuflection before a corrupt, deceitful, twice-impeached president the real fruit of the Jesus Revolution? In his White House speech, Laurie said that revivals always come with moral change. The obvious question: Is Trumpism the moral change the Jesus Revolution brought to the United States?

Recently, when a podcaster asked Greg Laurie about Lonnie Frisbee’s failures as a spiritual leader Laurie said, “God uses flawed people.” Hmm . . . it seems like I’ve heard that line before.

A lengthy, valuable study of Haiti and missions and a nation in free fall.

Self-driving vehicles and safety:

An article of faith among proponents of autonomous vehicles is that the vast majority (94 percent is the figure often cited) of traffic crashes are caused by human error. Cyclists make up a relatively small portion of overall road deaths in the United States, but they’re killed at higher rates than vehicle occupants. Aside from a slight dip in 2020 when we drove less early in the pandemic, cyclist fatalities have risen for over a decade, and in 2021 the annual total jumped five percent to an all-time high of nearly 1,000, according to preliminary data from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA). …

But an autonomous vehicle will never be distracted by a text message; nor will it drink and drive or road rage, says Anne Dorsey, a software engineer in Waymo’s behavior division. Removing humans from the driving task, or dramatically reducing their role, could save thousands of lives and countless injuries every year, especially among vulnerable road users like cyclists.

That’s the promise, anyway. But autonomy’s safety benefits aren’t yet proven, and even if they do pan out, a decade of halting development progress suggests that rolling out true self-driving vehicles on a scale that could achieve those gains will likely take far longer than what the AV industry has promised. In the meantime, car manufacturers are pushing forward with advanced driver assistance (ADAS) technology, offering “autonomy lite” features like the ones in that Porsche. But that approach comes with its own issues: Studies and surveys suggest that the misleading marketing and tech terminology is often so confusing that a frightening number of drivers treat their cars as self-driving when they’re not.

It may sound a bit critical, but gas-bag praying is not my favorite form of public praying, and part of that is what I have learned from Cranmer and the BCP. John Stackhouse knows, though he might need to read To You All Hearts Are Open. (Just sayin’)

Professors tend to be long-winded.

(I'll give you a moment to collect yourself after absorbing that shocking news.)

I can't think of another profession in which someone as a matter of common practice gets to speak for a solid hour—or three hours, as I do most Monday nights, for my once-a-week course on Ethical Reasoning. (By the time I get to hour three, I'm pretty sure I could say anything and the weary students would just write it down, poor things.)

It therefore came as a bracing challenge to be asked to keep my ideas to a paragraph—maybe two—when I started guesting on radio shows thirty years ago.

And TV interviews? I was once trying to explain to NBC Nightly News in the U.S. just why presidential candidates Al Gore and George Bush were both shifting in their campaign rhetoric from the typical references to God to specific references to Jesus. I gave the briefest possible answer I could, and received this encouraging reply.

"Yes, that was just fine, Professor." Experienced interviewers are usually so gracious, "But—" Ah! Here come the "notes"—"we need it even briefer."

"How brief?" I asked, instantly full of dread.

"Well, your answer was thirty-seven seconds long. Can you get it under twenty-five?"

When I turn, as I do most mornings, to the Anglican Book of Common Prayer, I am grateful for, if also amazed at, Thomas Cranmer's unparalleled economy and accuracy of expression. The great Archbishop of Canterbury compacts theology into such astonishingly small spaces—while rarely sacrificing clarity and usually including a truly amazing range of content.

The collects—set prayers that bring together or collect our thoughts on a matter, usually in the form of a petition on behalf of the Church—conclude in a formula that never gets old because it says so much.

The collects address the Father with doxology and then pose the day's request. Those elements vary a lot. But the collects always land on the figure of Jesus—and then the Trinity—thus:

—All we pray and all God the Father does for us is mediated somehow ("by," "in," "through," "to," "for") "Jesus Christ our Lord; who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen."

America’s happy places:

Research shows that in some cases, money does lead to happiness. In fact, a 2021 University of Pennsylvania study found a correlation between happiness and income growth, even past an annual income of $80,000. This is in contrast to previous research that found happiness stagnated after an individual earned $75,000. However, not all places can offer the same level of happiness, as some cities offer more economic opportunities and a better quality of life than others.

To uncover the happiest places in America, we analyzed the 200 largest cities, 164 of which had available data. We looked at 13 different metrics across three categories: personal finance, well-being and quality of life. For details on our data sources and how we put all the information together to create our final rankings, read the Data and Methodology section below.

Key Findings

• California cities dominate the top 10. While cities like Sunnyvale and Fremont offer the No. 1 and No. 3 highest earnings for individuals, these Western cities score highest in the quality of life category. Specifically, top 10 California cities had lower percentages of people living in poverty, higher marriage rates and lower violent crime rates.

• Birmingham is the least happy city. This Alabama city ranks in the bottom five across metrics such as personal bankruptcy filings per capita, life expectancy and the percentage of residents living in poverty. Newark, New Jersey and Memphis, Tennessee follow as the second- and third-least happy cities.

• Top 10 cities have high marriage rates. Residents who’ve said “I do” make up the majority of the population in all but one city: Arlington, Virginia, where the marriage rate is 44.0%. Frisco, Texas, which ranks No. 5 overall, has the highest marriage rate study-wide (62.6%).

Gratitude for grief:

Sometimes Christians have a hard time talking about our grief. We think we need to be happy all the time. Like our witness to Christ depends on it. Seeing the news from the Southern Baptist Convention yesterday, even though it’s no surprise, still made me sad. And mad. It’s just one snap shot of the condition of the church. And I think we need to grieve that. Maybe right now that is what we need to do as a church. Lament to God. I have been journaling to God some since the new year and this is a short meditation on the personal grief I’ve been carrying in my experiences with church the last few years. And practicing gratitude for it. Grief does something for us and we can embrace that.

I am going to try and practice gratefulness for grief. It’s been over three years of carrying a grief. Much joy and newness has been given in it. Because there was much death. Today, I am grateful for that agony that refused to let me stay numb. The agony that woke me up to then die to faux blessings in my life. To false belonging. To success. And to even being the one to give my kids the “right” path to the faith.

Die to the wealth I thought I’d fashioned in my spirit. To take up heaven. To take up mourning. To see the others there, dying too.

Today, sitting with the sadness that our family doesn’t have a church home, that one cannot seem to be found, that as we search I carry the shame of the label troublemaker, resistor, woman into new spaces. How will I be seen? Will I be seen?