Meanderings, 7 September 2024

Good morning! This week at one of our favorite vendors at the Farmers’ Market we saw bundles of sunflowers. They are a sign of joy and summer and harvest all at once. So, get your fill of these sunflowers.

Photo by Sofia Ornelas on Unsplash

Trickle-down theology, with Roger Olson:

”The trickle-down effect” is a phrase usually used with regard to economics. It is the belief that if the rich get richer that will benefit even the poor. “A rising tide lifts all boats.” US president Ronald Reagan used the phrase to support his policy of cutting taxes of the rich. Then candidate George H. W. Bush called it “voodoo economics.” Then Bush changed his mind when Reagan called him to be his vice presidential candidate.

I adopted the phrase to describe how seemingly abstract theological ideas in Christian history have effects on even the uneducated sitters-in-the-pews of churches. The cascade of cause and effect begins, usually, in the universities. Then it trickles down into the colleges and seminaries. Then it trickles down into the popular writers and preachers and their books and sermons. Then it lands in the minds of lay Christians (some educated, some not educated beyond high school). …

So how do ideas affect practices? How one thinks about prayer is an example. Over the years I have heard this cliche numerous times, even from pulpits: “Prayer doesn’t change God; it changes me.” Or “prayer doesn’t change things; it changes me.” A close listening reveals that the speaker means that prayer has the purpose and potential effect of aligning the pray-er with the will of God but it can’t and doesn’t change anything in God’s will or God’s plans or actions.

The modern source of this idea of prayer is Friedrich Schleiermacher, the “father of modern theology,” the founder of liberal theology. In his systematic theology, which was used in many German theology classes, said that petitionary prayer is an immature form of prayer because it makes God dependent on the pray-er when, in fact, God is not dependent on anything or anyone for anything. The essence of religion, including Christianity, is the “feeling” (Gefuehl) of utter dependence on the universe or God.

Every time I hear or read that prayer doesn’t change anything outside the self I shudder, knowing its source and implications.

You gotta love her!

Inspired by her family, over the past three decades, country music legend Dolly Parton has made it her mission to improve literacy through her Imagination Library book giveaway program.

In recent months, it’s expanded in places like Missouri and Kentucky. They are among 21 states where all children under age 5 can enroll to have books mailed to their homes monthly.

On Tuesday, Parton celebrated the expansion of her Imagination Library of Kentucky. The program reaches children in all 120 counties, Gov. Andy Beshear said at the event. More than 120,000 Kentucky children — nearly half of all preschoolers in the state — are currently enrolled to receive books through the program, first lady Britainy Beshear said.

Nokia’s Barbie-brand flip phone:

HMD, the company behind Nokia-branded phones, launched a Barbie-branded phone Wednesday that comes with calls, texts and a classic “flip” design — but no internet or social media apps.

The HMD Barbie Phone is a hot pink device that flips open and shut and sports a bold “Barbie” logo on the back, harking back to the iconic fashion doll collection.

It is the result of a partnership with Mattel, the toymaking giant behind the Barbie franchise, which has produced and sold Barbie toys and accessories since 1959.

The phone is available for purchase in the U.K. starting Wednesday, retailing at £99 ($130.74). A U.S. launch is planned “soon,” according to HMD, which added that it will reveal exact details of the U.S. launch on social media.

Unlike the internet-connected smartphones of today, which are the most widely adopted form factor when it comes to mobile devices, HMD’s Barbie phone won’t be connected to the internet.

The firm is seeking to capitalize on an emerging trend in recent years among mainly Gen Z consumers embracing so-called dumb phones, which lack internet and offer only basic text, call and camera features.

My, I’m not sure we’re ready for bats in the basement:

The 60,000 books in the Joanine Library are all hundreds of years old. Keeping texts readable for that long, safe from mold and moisture and nibbling bugs, requires dedication. The library’s original architects designed 6-foot (1.8 meters) stone walls to keep out the elements. Employees dust all day, every day.

And then there are the bats. For centuries, small colonies of these helpful creatures have lent their considerable pest control expertise to the library. In the daytime—as scholars lean over historic works and visitors admire the architecture—the bats roost quietly behind the two-story bookshelves. At night, they swoop around the darkened building, eating the beetles and moths that would otherwise do a number on all that old paper and binding glue.

The library dates the bats’ entry to the late 18th century. That’s when records indicate the purchase of large leather sheets from Russia, presumably to protect the hall’s desks and tables from the nightly rain of guano. Employees use the same system today, while the books themselves are behind wire mesh, says the library’s deputy director, António Eugénio Maia do Amaral. (The bats’ tendency to pee next to a portrait of the library’s namesake, King John V, is harder to address.)

Although visitors tend to be very curious about the bats, library employees mostly leave them in peace to do their jobs. As such, less is known about them than you might expect, given that they live in a knowledge repository. Two types have been identified: European free-tailed bats and soprano pipistrelles, both small and nimble species. Although no one sees them hunt, it’s easy to imagine them free diving from the painted ceilings and slaloming between the gilded balusters.

My friend John Hawthorne supplemented and clarified and intensified by Tuesday’s Substack.

Public schooling’s aim in the USA has been…

The people who founded public schools in the U.S. were not household names like George Washington. Rather, they were local community leaders. They tended to disagree ferociously about many issues, but there was one idea that united them. One primary purpose of their schools, as the founders of a public school in Deptford, New Jersey declared on December 5, 1774, was to bring together “the Children of the Rich & Poor.” These ambitious municipal leaders were far from alone. There was widespread agreement that public schools—real, American public schools—had to do more than just teach the three Rs. They had to foster a bold new equality among America’s rising generation.

To be sure, that vision usually did not cross the color line. Early public schools were either rigidly segregated by race or (often) for white children only. But not always. In the case of the first public schools in New York City, for example, an ambitious 1795 law declared that the public schools would be for “the children of white parents or descended from Africans or Indians.”

Passing that law, however, was far removed from making integrated American public schools a reality. As I argue in my new book, Mr. Lancaster’s System: The Failed Reform that Created America’s Public Schools, public schools had a long, messy beginning, evolving in fits and starts between the 1770s and the 1830s. Even with all the messiness, however, the people who created America’s public schools did not dispute one central goal. In cities and villages, North and South, one vision of public education was preeminent. As the founders of Philadelphia’s modern public-school system insisted, public schools would provide an “equality that no other system can afford.” Their main goal was a new kind of school: “Public Schools for the education of ALL CHILDREN, the offspring of the rich and the poor.”

In the first few decades of America’s nationhood, this vision was ubiquitous.

… exactly what it should have been.

666: Well worth your reading, and I read this on the day a famous American pastor published (and sent to me) a book on eschatology that revives, well, not what you will read immediately below:

“Calculate the Number of the Beast”

This calls for wisdom. Let the person who has insight calculate the number of the beast, for it is the number of a man. That number is 666. (Re 13:18)

John ends his description of the beast from the earth by calling for some class participation, he wants them to “calculate the number of the beast” (v this would be accomplished through a process called gematria. In Ancient Greek there were no numbers, only letters of the alphabet that each have a numerical value (like we understand Roman numerals today). So John is inviting them into a bit of musing, using the number he has provided, to try and guess who John is talking about.

Interestingly, McKnight and Matchett point out that the word translated from the greek as beast or wild thing is the word thērion which has a numerical value of 666. This, like several other passages that we have already studied, also seems to be a reference to the king of Babylon himself, Nebuchadnezzar, in Daniel 4:28-33:

King Nebuchadnezzar… said, “Is not this great Babylon, which I have built by my mighty power as a royal residence and for the glory of my majesty?”
31 While the words were still in the king’s mouth, there fell a voice from heaven…you shall be driven from among men, and your dwelling shall be with the beasts of the field. And you shall be made to eat grass like an ox, and seven periods of time shall pass over you, until you know that the Most High rules the kingdom of men and gives it to whom he will.”

The King of Babylon became the beast because he claimed the power of God, but was merely a man. Certainly the number 666 contains a call to look back into Johns world in order to recognize the beasts in our midst today.

But with that said, many scholars have pointed out that there are variations of both the name Nero and Domitian that also add up to the same number. Here’s a word from Revelation for the Rest of Us:

“This was likely all great fun for the first readers of Revelation. Calling someone 666 requires imagination—as well as flexibility. That number can be used for any of the anti-God beastly powers that design strategies for death and destruction. Like Babylon, 666 does not point to one person at one future moment in history but to all political tyrants who have the powers to establish the way of the dragon and oppress Team Lamb.”

John’s message to the seven churches, and to us, is a call for discernment. He invites us to read between the lines (V9-10 “whoever has ears, let them hear”) of what he is saying and ask ourselves:

“Who is like the beast today?”
”Who is pressuring us to conform to the powers of this world, rather than the subversive power of the Lamb?”
”Are we aligning with leaders and systems that exploit, oppress, or deceive under the guise of righteousness and religion?”

The book of Revelation is not a prophecy of doom or a cryptic puzzle to solve. It is a mirror held up to each of us, challenging us to examine where our true allegiances lie—are we with the Lamb, committed to His way of self-giving love, or have we unwittingly pledged ourselves to the ways of Babylon? The choice is before us every day, and it requires vigilance, discernment, and above all, faithful allegiance to the Lamb, who conquers not by force, but by love.