Christian Ethics, PhD

Common Sense Methodists?!?!

2011-06-16T17:47:00.008-04:00

Convinced as I have been--and, it must be admitted, remain--that the Methodist church's adoption of sacramental grape juice in place of wine was a grievous error, thanks to Jennifer Woodruff Tait's fine new book, The Poisoned Chalice, I promise never again to consider it a nonsensical or untheological one.

This is a good history of the movement that resulted in the substitution of grape juice for wine in the churches that were to become The United Methodist Church, giving due credit to people whom it is easier to caricaturize, especially for those of us that disagree with them. Woodruff Tait debunks the myth (common among us sacramental oenophiles) that the movement was driven largely by relatively shallow social and cultural concerns rather than substantive moral, theological, or symbological ones.

That is not to say that the moral and mystagogical theology expressed by the grape juice devotees is persuasive or impressive in any way. But Woodruff Tait manages the historian's delicate job of portraying the occasionally ridiculous comprehensibly, at times sympathetically, and without overt mockery. (One sometimes catches a playful smile barely hidden behind the hand, but it is never a smirk.)

More importantly, Woodruff Tait isolates and draws out the many interwoven threads that manifested themselves in the movement towards sacramental grape juice--the interaction between theology and science, rationality and sobriety, hygiene and social utility. The confluence of concerns is rich and sometimes surprising, and Woodruff Tait's deft handling of the material makes it somewhat less incomprehensible than it might otherwise be.

She relates this cultural constructs accessibly and engagingly, and the book would be easily and profitably read by anyone interested in any one of the many concerns it engages.

If one had to name a complaint (and one has to, in order to have one's reviews taken seriously), it might be that there seem a relatively few primary texts being worked with here. Each chapter covers a different facet of the same few texts, intelligibly and persuasively, but one occasionally wonders whether a broader selection of writings from the period would tell the same story. (Surely if one broadened the sample a bit, one would find those nonsensical and untheological voices arguing from sheer stupidity--Fred Phelps is but the most modern incarnation of an old phenomenon.) Still, a scholar does have to work within limits in order to learn or to say anything meaningful, and this hardly seems a complaint worth making.

As I read, I could not help but think of companion readings (not to supply the book's deficits, but because good reading always invites company). Those who are primarily interested in the history of the period should read this alongside Christine Rosen's Preaching Eugenics (especially if the author's references to the eugenic concerns of theologians and pastors seem too fantastical). Intellectual historians might profitably follow this with Amy Laura Hall's Conceiving Parenthood, for the sequel to American Protestantism's love affair with scientific hygiene and purity.

Theologians and ethicists might read this with Thomas, with whom a comparison is never unprofitable (indeed--those familiar with the Summa might have recognized the concern for the effects of alcohol on reason as one of Thomas’s concerns and, perhaps, chuckled at the picture of rabidly Protestant ministers unknowingly propagating Thomistic moral theology) or, for contemporary issues with perhaps a similar constellation of concerns (scientific orthodoxy, social justice and the common good, purity, the effects of technological innovation), Rayna Rapp’s Testing Women, Testing the Fetus or Maura Ryan’s Ethics and Economics of Assisted Reproduction.

Integrity + Equality = ???

2011-06-15T14:54:00.002-04:00

Lovely thoughts from a wise friend on how gender equality may have changed the way one intentionally cultivates marital fidelity:

In the Shadow of Modesto

It's true that the standard "adultery prevention" tips, as laudable as their intentions are, do cast women in a single role--that of tempter. As the frequency and type of co-ed interactions increases, it is certainly true that the temptation to infidelity would increase, just as the possibility of more predatory interactions would increase. (A sad truth for women--the more doors that open for them, the greater the chance that a wolf is lurking behind one of them.)

But women are more than tempters. They are colleagues, friends, bosses, shipmates, advisers, counselors, superiors, and dependents. Christian men who are sincere about cultivating the virtues of marital fidelity--both in their own lives and in broader society--need to figure out how to do this in the context of an exploding web of co-ed interactions that can no longer be simply avoided.

I might also add the conversation over how women might cultivate those same virtues--personal sexual morality and respect for marital integrity in the broader society--is a complicated one indeed. Adding in the dynamic of the all-too-prevalent incidence of sexual assault, abuse, and harassment only increases the complexity of the conversation. I'm not sure I'm up for it.

The Living Christ in Memphis

2011-05-12T09:37:00.000-04:00

Surprising and lovely story this morning on NPR (yes, NPR):

Memphis Churches Leading The Way in Disaster Relief
(Red Cross cautiously pleased. "It's not necessarily a bad thing.")

Aside from my amusement at the Red Cross spokeswoman's clear unfamiliarity with the legitimacy and efficacy of interfaith cooperative efforts, this story prompted two thoughts.

First, thank you, Memphis churches for offering a clear witness to the gospel. Thank you for being the Body of Christ right there in your hometown.

Second, I've been receiving some criticism from my evangelical friends--or rather, from my evangelical friends who tend conservative on political matters--about my public statements to the effect that, if the church does not feed the hungry, heal the sick, and bring relief to the poor, I'm happy for the U. S. government to pick up the slack.

I want to state clearly and unambiguously that the day news stories like the above are no longer news--the day NPR says, "Churches are solving the poverty problem? So what? That's not news," the day Red Cross has no choice but to say, "Well, of course churches are providing the bulk of the shelter/food/clothing here. They always do"--is the day I start campaigning vigorously for an end to all government aid to the needy.

Any and every tax cut you ask me to vote for, I will.

Any and every government program you want to cut, I will be your fiercest lobbyist.

Seriously.

Go ahead. Get busy.

Instantly Erroneous

2011-05-02T08:17:00.003-04:00

I've been perusing the usual news sites last night and this morning, along with news sites I don't normally visit, thanks to the furious barrage of links and comments and speculation on my friends' facebook pages.

I've discovered that Fox News was reporting that Usama bin Landen [sic] was confrimed [sic] dead. Half an hour later, someone thought to become a professional and the two misspellings were corrected.

I've seen several websites (including wikipedia) announce confidently that Osama has been dead for a week; most of those sites now report that he was killed on May 1, 2011.

Some sites are currently reporting that Osama has been buried at sea, citing Islamic tradition and a general disinclination among the world's leaders to pollute their soil with his remains. Other sites are reporting that the US is maintaining its custody of his body in order to ensure acceptance of its claim to have killed him. I'm sure when an official statement is made as to the disposition of Osama's body, everyone will revise his website accordingly.

Some of my friends, especially those disinclined to trust anything with a liberal provenance, are already generating conspiracy theories to account for the discrepancies between Obama's official announcement and the maelstrom of unsubstantiated "facts" that overtook cybernews outlets while we were all waiting for that announcement.

Peace, be still, my friends.

There is no need for such speculation.

The explanation is far simpler and far more troubling.

The intentional impermanence of cyberspace combined with the demand for incessantly instantaneous news has created an ethos of irresponsibility in online reporting. Getting it out trumps getting it right.

In print media, the error abides; it gazes up at one, accusingly, preserved in library archives (what is the new microfiche?) for posterity. The penance only perpetuates the failure: the necessary published retraction ensures that there are two artifacts instead of one. The damage to the reporter's and the paper's reputation was tangible.

There is no failure in online reporting. There is no retraction, no mea culpa. There is only perpetual revision. Reputation need not matter.

And, of course, affiliation counts for more than accuracy these days anyway, doesn't it? One's political leanings (whether implied or avowed) are far more important for developing a loyal readership than one's accumulated record.

And if there is no more accumulated record? So much the better.

DNE

2011-04-20T16:02:00.002-04:00

Childish ≠ child-like.

Discuss.

Is It Schadenfreude If They Deserved It?

2011-04-14T14:25:00.002-04:00

I never take joy in the suffering of others, even when that suffering is deserved.

But . . . sometimes . . . I allow myself a hearty nod of approval when someone is given the gift of logical consequences:

Paper Mill Ghostwriter Loses His Law License

Stop Knocking the Old Folks

2011-03-30T16:19:00.004-04:00

When my husband and I returned to Duke for our PhD work, we found ourselves free to choose a church for the first time since . . . well, for the first time, honestly.

When we were MDivs at Duke, we attended churches where one or the other of us was assigned as a student intern, or we attended the church of a fellow seminarian whose ministry we wanted to support.

When neither condition applied and we were free (or was it obligated?) to choose, we warily and dutifully did the rounds of all the United Methodist churches in Durham.

We were open to a fairly wide range of styles of doing and being church--contemporary or traditional or "blended," program-driven or people-oriented, faithfully struggling or humbly succeeding: it was all, at least potentially, good.

The only churches we rejected out of hand and without a second glance were churches where someone came up to us after the service, grabbed us by the shoulders, and staring into our eyes gushed, "We need people like you in this church."

By "people like you," they meant, of course, young people. (And, in my husband's case, young, attractive people.)

These churches had bought the line that youthfulness was a sign of spiritual value, a more wrongheaded notion than which I've rarely encountered. Our presence qua young people--quite apart from our spiritual maturity, our faithfulness, our integrity, our willingness to tithe--was judged to be an asset to the church.

Honestly, after teaching young people for the better part of two years, I have to question this notion.

There's nothing wrong, of course, with attending to the spiritual needs of young people. Churches with enjoyable youth activities, accessible teaching for younger folk, and a commitment to integrating adults-in-training into the work of the church are certainly doing right by their kids. (The church in which I was raised deliberately made space for older teens and college kids on their various committees, and I briefly served on the worship committee there.)

But churches that wish to fill their pews with young folk because they believe a church full of young folk is necessarily and certainly a healthier congregation than one full of older folk are just plain wrong.

I have taught classes of between eight and twenty-five students, spoken at our college's chapel, and mentored both individual students and student groups.

And I should say, lest what follows be read as the uncharitable rantings of someone who hates working with undergrads, that I love my kids--from the grumpy, reading-averse footballers to the academic all-stars, from the kids for whom that C+ is a hard-won accomplishment to the ones that email me to ask for more reading, and even, especially, the plagiarizers, for whom I always hope good will come from the confrontation.

But their youth is not an asset in and of itself. It is, in fact, a challenge, even a need, that must be addressed.

They cannot be taught without being entertained.

Their fragile egos require exceptionally delicate handling.

Some of them--particularly the well-educated ones--are desperately ill-acquainted with work, especially physical labor.

Most importantly, they are thoroughly trapped by superficial expectations of worth--they will listen only to hip, attractive, controversial, or charismatic folk, and will utterly dismiss the wisdom of the frumpy, the awkward, the weak, and the weathered. They are not completely lacking in respect, but they have horrendously distorted notions of who is worthy of respect, whom they should trust, whose lives are worth imitating. Counter-intuitively, they are frightened by genuine novelty. If it doesn't come dressed in the costume they have been conditioned to prefer, it is not to be borne.

A church full of young people may look like a church teeming with life and vitality. But it is also a church teeming with neediness, immaturity, and folly. (Perhaps a daring folly and a receptive immaturity, but perhaps not.)

I just gave the homily for the mid-week Lenten service at our church. Our church membership is delightfully varied in many ways--a great range of ages, educational levels, maturity, and spiritual gifts. But this particular service (lunchtime, very liturgical, contemplative) seems to have connected with more older folk than younger folk. (Perhaps more teenagers would come, if it weren't during school hours, but perhaps not.)

As I was preaching, I felt keenly the difference between speaking to young folk and speaking to people with some years on them.

I spoke very simply, without being especially vivid or entertaining. And yet most of the faces I saw were attentive, open, engaged, thoughtful.

Every single person over the age of seventy had a kind word to say to me afterwords--not because I had done anything particularly well, but because they knew the importance of kind words.

And everyone over the age of forty that knew me already made sure to say hello to me--not because I was cool or famous or in any way wonderful, but because they respected our acquaintance and knew how to maintain it.

There were, of course, younger folk there, too, and their presence was a blessing. But their presence was a blessing quite apart from their youth--they happened to be particularly awesome young folk. Their youth added nothing to the worship service; it was, instead, their maturity in spite of their youth that made their presence a pleasure.

To put it bluntly, it's the little old ladies that keep the church standing--both literally and metaphorically.

Older members of the congregation know how to build community. They are not afraid of work, even if their bodies don't always cooperate. They take financial matters seriously. And they are more open to change than young folks. (No, I'm serious. Youth is attracted to frivolous novelty--change for change's sake. Considered, purposeful, thoughtful, and potentially permanent change is difficult for them. But you convince a seventy-year-old of the reasonableness and worth of a particular change? Watch out.)

If there are no gray heads in your congregation, you have a serious problem.

If you have a congregation full of gray heads, do not despise them. There is life and wisdom and growth there.

Biblical Preaching Can Get You Killed

2011-03-24T15:42:00.004-04:00

Despite manifold witnesses to the contrary, just war theorists--that is, people who believe that war can be justifiable, whether by the classic Just War Theory criteria or otherwise--continually insist that pacifism--that is, the refusal to kill even in defense of justice--is an abdication from political responsibility.

Consider this excerpt from the penultimate sermon preached by Archbishop Oscar Romero:

Brothers, you come from our own people. You are killing your own brother peasants when any human order to kill must be subordinate to the law of God which says ‘Thou shalt not kill’. No soldier is obliged to obey an order contrary to the law of God. No one has to obey an immoral law. It is high time you recovered your consciences and obeyed your consciences rather than a sinful order. The church, the defender of the rights of God, of human dignity, of the person, cannot remain silent before such an abomination. We want the government to face the fact that reforms are valueless if they are to be carried out at the cost of so much blood. In the name of God, in the name of this suffering people whose cries rise to heaven more loudly each day, I implore you, I beg you, I order you in the name of God: stop the repression.

Does his call to lay down arms sound like an abdication from politics to you?

No, it didn't sound like it to the ones who depended on those arms to perpetuate their political power, either.

That's why they killed him. The very next day.

Consider joining with the Salvadoran poor in commemorating the life of Oscar Romero.

And if you're a church in search of a pastor, consider exactly what you mean by "biblical preaching."

DNE

2011-03-05T17:27:00.002-05:00

Restraint ≠ repression.

Discuss.

Female = Feminist?

2011-03-03T13:09:00.003-05:00

A friend of mine currently blogging over at Theology PhD Mom is in the midst of an interesting and helpful series of posts on the academic job market.

She raises a very interesting point in this post about the not-entirely-realistic expectation that female theologians are conversant with feminist theology.

I know the important names, the basic thrust of their work, and the kinds of concerns that may be common to those who label themselves feminists, but I have far less expertise in feminist theology than I do in, say, philosophical ethics, scripture, systematics, Thomism, or Wesleyan theology.

Of course, in some sense, I do feminist theology, whether or not I do it in concert with explicitly feminist theologians, simply by dint of being a woman. In a more significant sense, I do feminist theology because some of the issues, approaches, and convictions that tend to be of particular concern to women are part of my intellectual landscape. (That is, I am more likely than my male colleagues, on the whole, to notice, theorize, or write about some of the sorts topics that feminists tend to notice, theorize, and write about.)

But I have never identified myself as a feminist theologian.

Despite never having identified myself as a feminist, or even admitted to being conversant in feminist theology, I have been asked by colleagues to "present the feminist perspective," to give a lecture on feminist theology, or in other ways to speak for or about feminists in academic settings.

I have finally stopped graciously apologizing for my lack of knowledge and interest. The last time a (male) colleague asked me to give a presentation on feminism, I answered, "Hey, you know what would be awesome? Let's do something really wild. Why don't you present on feminism, and I'll present on masculinity."

He didn't take me up on it.

Sentences You Should Fear

2011-01-20T14:53:00.003-05:00

I have become quite an expert at catching instances of academic dishonesty.

In fact, I've caught more plagiarists without the help of my school's detection program (SafeAssign, Turnitin, etc.) than with.

I say this not to brag, but to preface the following list: those sentences I'm mostly likely to say right before I catch you. I put this list in order of ascending frequency.

"Gee, that's not how the book put it." When a student, even a good student, knows more about the topic than the author he's supposed to be summarizing, analyzing, or assessing, I tend to assume that student has done a little outside "research." So I start doing a little "research" of my own.

"Gosh, this would have been a great paper for the other class this student is taking/took last semester/would have taken as a freshman." I do know what classes are being offered elsewhere in the school, you know. And sometimes, your other professors and I chat about, like, what we're teaching. Recycling paper is good and will lead to a cleaner and better future for all; recycling papers can only lead to your downfall.

"That's . . . not . . . what I assigned." Sometimes, an essay that doesn't address the assignment but is in other ways a sound effort is just a bad essay. Other times, it's a bad deal--that purchased essay didn't exactly do it's job. And the funny thing? About two sentences into our conversation about your paper (and we will have one), I can tell which of these it is.

"This is a rather astounding improvement over the last paper." This sentence almost never, in itself, provokes The Conversation. I've actually had students who work on their writing and improve it over the course of the semester. (No, really! Some people do that. Have you considered that as an alternative to . . . no? Well, it was worth a try.) But it almost always provokes a little one-on-one time with the search engine.

"Wow, this is a grammatically correct sentence." You know who you are and why this makes me start googling. This corollary to the previous (both falling under the "There's no way that student produced this paper" category heading) is distinguished primarily by the suspect sentence's isolation from its surroundings. That pearl of great price--grammar--shines all the brighter when it appears in the midst of the compost bin that is your usual writing. I always google the pearl. And I usually find that it has an original owner that is not you.

"Darn that thesaurus function on Word." This one is kind of fun, actually. When I reconstruct the sentence that would have existed before your thesaurus use rendered it nonsensical, I can figure out whether you're 1) a bad writer or 2) a bad writer and a plagiarist. If the probable ur-sentence of the tortured sentence is itself confused and mangled, that's a sure sign that it actually originated with you. (I never attempt to reconstruct the mental pattern that produced such a sentence. I prefer to live in a land of logic and reason.) If the reconstructed sentence is logical, grammatical, and germane to the essay, I go a-hunting.

And, the final and most frequent precursor to your visit with the academic dean:

"Oh, look! Wiki!" Nowadays, I read the relevant Wiki page(s) right before I start grading. It just makes the whole process faster.

Perhaps this list will make you reconsider your attempt to skirt the requirements of your course. Or perhaps it will simply make you a better plagiarizer. Either way, I will consider it a success. The former is better for your soul, which is, of course, more important than your intellect. But the latter is not lacking in a kind of scholarly merit--the skills of a successful (as opposed to lucky) plagiarist are genuinely intellectual skills that may serve you later in life.

A Good Introduction

2011-01-15T17:41:00.003-05:00

This entry is a review of Catholic and Christian: An Explanation of Commonly Misunderstood Catholic Beliefs, by Alan Schreck

Written with a frankly apologetic aim that is laudable for its consistency, honesty, and gentleness, this primer on Catholic belief and practice is readable, friendly, and well-organized. Schreck has an eye on Protestant critiques of Catholicism and answers those critiques in an ecumenical and conciliatory manner—sometimes correcting misapprehensions, sometimes explaining in language that might be appealing to Protestants, yet never apologizing for Catholic distinctives. He is careful, for example, to appeal to scripture to argue against sola scriptura and for the ongoing work of the Holy Spirit in directing the Church.

At times, this ecumenical spirit (as well as, no doubt, his attention to accessibility) leads him to make claims that are less than intellectually satisfying. When he insists in the section on prayer to the saints, for example, that “All Christian prayer . . . is directed to the Father through Jesus Christ, who is the ‘one mediator between God and man’ (1 Tm 2:5)” (158-159), one desperately longs for the “ultimately” that one knows should be in there. It is patently true that prayers and petitions are addressed to the saints and to Mary, and to say that “all prayer” is “directed to the Father” cannot satisfy the Protestant who knows that he objects to the practice nor the Catholic who makes petitions to her beloved patron saint. Similarly, the affirmation that Mary was saved from sin through no merit of her own, just like all humans must be, with the only exceptional part being that her salvation was wrought before her birth, will not cause Protestants to recoil any less from the declaration that Jesus was not the only human to have lived a sinless life.

(The only time I was myself a bit . . . snarly . . . was when he denied the existence of Junia and trivialized "deaconesses" with the distance quotes.)

But Schreck’s project is not to bring all Protestants to full communion with the Catholic Church—it is but to explain Roman Catholic belief and practice accurately and appealingly, and this he does very well.

As an ethicist, I cannot fail to be disappointed in the absence of a chapter dealing with Catholic ethics. While the attentive reader can collect scattered references to the sources, aims, and logic of Catholic moral theology into a reasonable understanding of how it works, there are few references to specific teachings, principles, or emphases. It should not be difficult to construct such a chapter, and John Paul II’s ethical writings would be a crucial resource for this project, given his ability to balance authority and accessibility in his writing.

This was a required text for the class I am teaching this semester (that is, I was required to require it), but I am quite happy with it nonetheless. It is accessible and sound, and I would recommend it outside the classroom to anyone (Catholic or Protestant) who is not well-versed in the Catholic faith but wants to be.

Twitter, Thomas, and the Tipping Point

2010-10-08T10:28:00.005-04:00

I love when my dissertation topic makes news.

Twitter, Facebook, and social activism: newyorker.com

"Um, Sarah? It doesn't mention you or your dissertation anywhere in that article."

I know. Malcolm Gladwell probably has no idea that he's talking about my dissertation topic (or one of them) in the above piece, but he is.

The above is a wonderful explanation of the difference made in social activism by the quality of social ties among participants. "Weak-tie" connections--that is, your acquaintances, casual friends, and those third cousins you only see every couple years at funerals and such--are great resources for the kind of social change that depends on large numbers of people doing very little. When all one is changing is fashion, one only needs large numbers of people to create a tipping point.

The kind of social activism that requires genuine sacrifice, that depends on well-organized and well-trained members, that risks grave danger, that drives substantive, long-term change cannot make use of these "weak-tie" connections. The Civil Rights Movement, Gladwell says, could not have happened without "strong-tie" connections--genuine friendships, the kind that foster trust, mutual encouragement, and solidarity in the face of challenge. The kind of leverage required to "tip" centuries of injustice toward something different does not come from a mass of loosely connected people doing nothing more substantive than throwing their spare change at a problem.

Twitter, Facebook, and other emerging social media cannot create the latter kind of ties, and only where such ties are maintained by many other means can they participate in the strengthening of them. (My parents love seeing pictures of their grandchildren on my personal blog, but if that was all they had of their grandchildren, it would be a severely attenuated relationship.)

Gladwell probably doesn't know it, but he is thinking right along with Thomas Aquinas.

For Thomas, there is a difference between the passions and the virtues. The passions are immediate, pre-rational responses to the world: the instinctive cringe when the hand encounters a hot object, the smiling warmth when a mother sees her beloved children after a day apart, the burning tension when a co-worker's insult is overheard. These passions can be misguided, of course (as when a new neighbor prompts the breathless energy that ought to be reserved for one's wife), but they can also be entirely wholesome and good (as when a stranger's distress prompts an easy gesture of assistance).

Passions are entirely different than virtues, however. Virtues require reasoned intentionality--they are the deliberate and conscious analogues to well-ordered passions. The mother who smiles at her sleeping child is instinctively recognizing the goodness of her offspring; she loves him with all the ease and warmth that the passions inspire. The mother who speaks gently to her tantruming child, who changes the third set of vomit-stained sheets that night, who haunts the cold and impersonal principal's office until the bullying is addressed, who cooks her nine thousandth family meal with the same care she did her first, that mother is loving her child with something more morally significant.

That kind of love is harder. It takes determination; it takes reflection; it takes character. In some cases, it requires intentionally resisting the passions. Only the mother who knows what is good for her child can do it; only the mother who wants to do good for her child will do it; only the mother who consistently chooses to do the good for her child will find herself capable of doing it even when her instinctual responses are to scream, lash out, give up, or chase happiness elsewhere.

That is the difference between the passions and the virtues: the one is easy, immediate, and instinctive; the other is difficult, sustained, and achieved only with deliberate, long-term intentionality.

And friends--real friends, not the kind that "like" your status updates or "follow" your tweets--are a crucial part of the process of forming the virtues. Good friendships with good people struggling to form the same good virtues ease the journey. They commiserate, they correct with gentleness and persistence, they offer concrete assistance, and they gratefully receive one's own offers of assistance.

Those are the kinds of friends you want with you when you're sitting out on your front porch every evening so that the drug dealers will stop coming around. Those are the kinds of friends you want with you when you file the police report against your corrupt employers. Those are the kinds of friends you want with you when you're trying to find just one more reason not to pick up that needle again. Those are the kinds of friendships you need more of.

"Oh, Sarah, you are so right! I'm going to forward this to all my friends on Facebook!"

Please don't.

Well, okay--yes, do. I like watching my hit count go up.

But then turn off your computer. Go.

Go take your extra zucchini to your neighbors. Or call your mother. Or have coffee with your college roommate. Or make cookies for your children or your co-workers or your grandmother. Or make cookies with your children or your co-workers or your grandmother.

Go do stuff with real human beings. The cyber-beings you've been hanging out with lately won't hold your hand while you're facing down real trouble. Go find the ones that will.

Overheard

2010-09-23T13:36:00.004-04:00

An actual in-class exchange:

"These prophets are pictured as giving counsel, advice, or correction to the king. So, you have Nathan rebuking David over the affair with Uriah, Elijah pronouncing judgment on Ahab for . . . everything, and Huldah counseling Josiah when-- Anybody notice the prophetess in our reading for today? Huldah, the prophetess, one of the instigators of Josiah's reform?"

"I noticed her, Mrs. Sours."

"Really?"

"Yeah. I read it and noticed that you always make us read the stories that have women in them."

"Sneaky, aren't I?"

Opinionation

2010-08-10T16:36:00.004-04:00

Pace Stanley Fish, who is always worth reading, even when he's wrong, plagiarism is a big moral deal.

Fish offers several cogent arguments to the contrary in his recent "Opinionator" piece, "Plagiarism Is Not a Big Moral Deal," the most insightful of which is that professional standards are not the same as moral imperatives.

This resembles the principle that appears in legal theory as the difference between mala prohibita and mala in se: that is, the difference between merely procedural crimes (e.g., driving down the wrong side of the road) and crimes that are morally objectionable in themselves (e.g., murder).

In the latter case, the law recognizes acts of moral significance. In the former case, moral significance (if there is any) is the creation of the law--if there were no traffic law, there would be no moral significance in choosing which side of the road to drive down. This is part of why traffic violations that result in no harm to person or property are minimally punished. They're not a big deal. We punish them only because having a system of traffic regulation is, overall, a good thing, not because there is an eternal moral imperative to drive on the right side of the road.

Fish wants us to view plagiarism as something like a malum prohibitum: something that violates the merely procedural dictates of a self-contained community.

But my language begins to betray me already.

Fish does not use the word "community" in reference to academia--only in reference to golfers. Academia is "our house," a "guild," a "context of practice," a language game which students must learn to play.

It is no accident that Fish does not call academia a community. A community is more morally weighty than a guild or a "context of practice."

Fish's overall point, by the way, is not that plagiarism shouldn't be punished--it is that there is no philosophical warrant for valuing originality. And in this, he is correct.

But codes against plagiarism are not about protecting original work. Standards of proper citation do not exist to protect the originator of an idea. That's the difference between plagiarism codes and copyright law.

Standards of proper citation exist to cultivate habits of worthy discourse within the academic community. (And, yes, I am just silly enough to pretend that something called "the academic community" exists, or at least could.) They exist to train us to participate in the tradition of academic discussion.

Proper citation trains us in courtesy--we acknowledge our intellectual debts both for the sake of our intellectual parents and for the sake of our current conversation partners. In the former sense, our intellectual parents may have a stake in the conversation in which we are quoting them; proper citation courteously invites them into that conversation, as it were. In the latter sense, citing our sources allows our current conversation partners to understand most fully what we are saying. We do our conversation partners the courtesy of aiding their investigation into our arguments.

Proper citation trains us in truth-telling. As the previous point suggests, when we acknowledge our intellectual debts, we allow for the fullest possible understanding of our claims and arguments. This transparency may make our arguments vulnerable; perhaps the scholar whose phrasing we found so felicitous was known for eliding fact and assertion, or perhaps the "varied" studies we are marshaling to prove our points were all funded by the same super-conglomerate. Proper citation is a kind of full disclosure, the kind of openness that is necessary for excellent discourse.

Proper citation trains us in respect. Acknowledging our intellectual debts is a kind of justice--giving someone her due, as Thomas Aquinas put it (more or less, somewhere-or-other). If we have been taught, our teacher has earned something from us--not the recognition of his originality, but the recognition of his generosity in teaching us (however remote or impersonal the mode of teaching).

And proper citation trains us in diligence. Students and scholars who plagiarize are not, in general, trying to claim false credit for original thoughts--they are trying to get out of doing hard work. Charitable description, thoughtful analysis, and persuasive rhetoric are difficult practices to master; proper citation is itself, as Fish acknowledges, a kind of skill that one must master. Anti-plagiarism codes are designed to identify and, yes, even weed out those who do not care to do that work, to learn those skills.

Respect, truth-telling, courtesy, diligence--these are all morally weighty terms. If Fish is right that originality is not a terribly interesting or valuable thing, he misses that it is the least of the things proper citation is designed to cultivate.

Exclusivity

2010-08-01T10:09:00.005-04:00

Why is "exclusive" a positive adjective when applied to celebrity wedding locations, clubs, parties, and educational institutions, but not religions?

Even where one suspects that privacy might be a reasonable desire--a wedding, say--no one troubles to be troubled by the substitution of the word "exclusive." A private wedding and an exclusive wedding are two very different things.

Exclusivity in this sense depends on the deliberate cultivation of the desire to be included. That is, it's not an exclusive wedding if no one but the invitees wants to come. It's not an exclusive college if no one applies. Exclusivity requires desirability. One must constantly and conscientiously widen the circle of people who want to be included, even as one narrows the circle of those who are.

Exclusivity in this sense also depends on the opacity and difficulty of the entrance requirements. If it were clear how to dress to get the bouncer's approval, everyone could do it, and then it wouldn't be an exclusive club.

Race, family heritage (often conceived either in ethnic or religious terms), and income level are among the most effective inclusion requirements, because they are easy to evaluate and difficult or impossible to change.

Social connectedness is less straightforward, and it works just as effectively for exactly that reason. If no one with sufficient standing within the community is willing to vouch for a newcomer, he remains on the outside. But "sufficient standing within the community" comes from a complex computation of largely unarticulated factors. Who knows how to become an Important Person, important enough that one's coattails are worth riding?

All of this is frankly disturbing.

But no one is disturbed.

To become a Christian, all one has to do is want to become a Christian. To become an acknowledged member of the Body of Christ, all one has to do is declare oneself willing to follow its head, the Crucified and Risen One, and willing to be called upon to live up to that public commitment.

Christianity is the only "exclusive" group whose standard and method of inclusion is so clear, so straightforward, and so entirely in the hands of the person desiring membership.

And yet its brand of exclusivity is the most vilified.

Children With Home Computers Likely to Have Lower Test Scores

2010-07-01T12:11:00.003-04:00

Children With Home Computers Likely to Have Lower Test Scores

The title of the above article is completely misleading and false, so ignore it. A better title might have been "Access to Computers Not a Cure-All; May Even Cause Harm."

The findings of the study are interesting: children from disadvantaged homes who gained access to computers performed measurably worse on end-of-state testing than children from disadvantaged homes who had no computers.

Not only is access to technology not a panacea, it actually exacerbates the educational disadvantage. The researchers were appropriately modest in their conclusions--"In disadvantaged households, parents are less likely to monitor children's computer use and guide children in using computers for educational purposes"--but I think one could reasonably draw several stronger inferences from the study.

1. Parents matter most. Again and again, failed educational reforms and scientific studies have shown that parental involvement is the one factor that can never be ruled out. Any educational reform (I would even expand this and say any reform, because I'm an ethicist and we like to sensationalize like that) that doesn't involve strengthening the family will probably fail.

2. Parenting well requires setting limits. Presumably, the children in the disadvantaged households used the computers as they saw fit. They were wrong. Children do not have infallible instincts for what they need, what is good for them, what will bring them safely to adulthood. Children need parents who guide them not only through positive modeling and suggestions but also through limit-setting. Saying yes to what's good is vital, and parents do well to phrase things as positively as possible. ("Oh, sure, you can play that game--just as soon as your homework is done." "Umm . . . let's find a more appropriate show to watch." "Well, let's make a date for you to play x-box with your friends on Saturday instead of today.") But saying no to what's bad is just as vital. ("You must never, ever surf the internet when I'm not at home.")

3. Technology is rarely the answer. Technology cannot fix injustice, historical or actual; it cannot redress wrongs; it cannot make us more moral people. If we are not already the kind of people who will raise our children conscientiously, who are intellectually curious, who have self-discipline, who are generous with the needy, who will pay a just wage, technological advances will at best fail to alleviate--and will sometimes positively exaggerate--our social failings.

4. This particular piece of technology--computers--comes pre-programmed, as it were, with a tendency toward harm. The irony is too delicious not to enjoy: information technologies tend to make us less intelligent. Absent some sort of external, imposed structure (a parent's insistence that we finish our homework first, a determination to balance our checkbooks by hand anyway, a conviction that "some things just shouldn't be blogged"), we are worse off with computers than without. It behooves us, then, to develop and pursue practices of restraint with regard to their use and proliferation.

Builders In Ministry

2010-05-24T13:19:00.002-04:00

I've just become a contributor to Southwestern College's Builders In Ministry blog--a blog that celebrates and discusses the ministries of friends of Southwestern.

Feel free to pop over just to view my post, or to see what various ministries Builders are involved in!

Anorexia and Autonomy

2010-05-06T11:29:00.003-04:00

Rudolph Bell's book Holy Anorexia is an important example of the fruitfulness of cross-disciplinary study in religion.

His study probes the theological, historical, and psychological meaning of extreme fasting behaviors in medieval women whose asceticism was usually seen as evidence of holiness. Avoiding the facile ascription of mental illness to these women ("Oh, they must've been, like, anorexic or something!"), he nonetheless takes his cue from current psychiatric evaluations and treatments of (modern) anorexia nervosa.

Anorectic behavior comes about in response to an intricate yet convoluted web of signals a modern girl (anorexia generally arises in females and during adolescence) receives in regard to her appearance. Thinness (and physical beauty more broadly) is one of a few traits consistently approved and rewarded in young females, yet the steps that a girl might take to achieve those rewards may prompt correction, disapproval, or intervention from parents or such other authorities as educators or medical caregivers. The twin incentives of societal approval and parental opposition feed the anorexic girl’s choice to control her own body through self-starvation—all the more so as her successes in weight loss and self-assertion mount.

Analogously, a medieval woman had fewer avenues of expressing or embodying holiness than were available to men, and the ascetic practices which might identify a woman as holy could just as easily have been viewed as evidence of heresy or demon possession as of beatitude. The “holy anorexic” is confirmed in her path of self-starvation both by the ascription of holiness conferred on account of her suffering and by the suspicion aroused by her extreme practices of asceticism, especially where that suspicion is allayed or countered through divine intervention.

The struggle for autonomy looms large in Bell’s renarration of these saints’ vitae. While his efforts to offer a psychoanalytic reading of these women are unimpressive—particularly in the absence of any serious or consistent engagement with the problem of collaborative authorship present in virtually all of these texts—his identification of the persistence of themes of self-assertion in the face of parental, religious, or social conflict is helpful.

When one is obliged to suffer the removal of one’s autonomy—whether in the form of a forced marriage, opposition to taking religious orders, or physical or sexual abuse—choosing another form of suffering—starvation, disfigurement, isolation—functions as a reassertion of one’s autonomy. The relationship between suffering and consent is inverted, transforming utterly the meaning and experience of them both. In the first case, the injury is all but identical with the removal of choice; in the second, the retrieval of autonomy is identical with the (chosen) injury. That the chosen suffering is further rewarded by its association with otherworldliness, whether of the divine or demonic sort, only amplifies the sense of transformation.

Despite his misstep in attempting to psychoanalyze historical figures with fragmentary, consciously scripted, and/or heavily edited literary works as his only evidence, Bell's work is enormously important for his having probed this intersection of autonomy and suffering. Many modern discussions of suffering (and its relief) are dependent on inchoate assumptions about exactly this relationship, and any work that prompts a more intentional examination of the topic is worth a read.

A College Instructor's Advice To Parents of Middle and High Schoolers

2010-05-05T14:49:00.004-04:00

Reading.

Reading.

Reading.

That's the one thing my kids just don't do. (My college kids. Not MY kids. I punish MY kids by taking away their books. And it, like, works.) Undergrads just don't read.

And it's the one thing that covers over a multitude of intellectual gaps.

They may hate history, but if they read historical novels, they'll pick up a little of it. They may hate Shakespeare, but if they read history, they can get a sense of who he was and how he was important. They may hate philosophy or ethics, but if they read Sci-Fi, they'll get a little taste of political and social theory. They may hate grammar, but if they read, they'll see it in action and they'll absorb some of it. They may hate doing science experiments, but if they read about science, they'll at least keep up with scientific advances and they'll know what a scientific argument sounds like.

Reading, reading, reading.

Are you worried about preparing your kids for college? What classes they take matters, yes. Extra-curricular activities aren't a bad idea. Test prep matters more than it should. But the most effective preparation is reading.

Let them read. Make them read. Pay them to read. (I'm serious. It appears to work.) Fiction. History. Sci Fi. The newspaper. Time, or the Economist. Just. read. something.

Thinking about what they read is the other thing my students don't do. They don't know how, because they don't even know how to summarize what they've read. And summarizing is the first step to analyzing. Having to organize your thoughts enough to tell someone else about it (verbally or in writing) is the first step to thinking, really thinking, about it.

So make your kids write about what they read. Pay them for their reading, only after they've written for you a basic summary of the book. Have them start a blog expressly for writing about their reading. Or have a family blog where you all talk about what you read!

Teach them the difference between formal and informal writing, if you have time. The blog format is good for that, too. You can make them use correct grammar, even in an informal style. And then whenever they're writing a formal assignment, you can say, "Well, that would be perfect on your blog, but in formal writing, you should . . . "

Honestly, if you do those two things, reading and writing, you are setting them up for permanent, lifelong success, no matter what your scope and sequence look like, no matter what high school they go to, no matter what their test scores are.

They will not fail to get into a good college if they are widely read and if they can construct sentences with basic grammar and if they can chain sentences together into coherent thoughts.

And even if they don't go to college, they'll be better at EVERYTHING they do than people who don't read. They'll read their mortgage contracts with more intelligence. They'll recognize specious political arguments (unless all they read is specious political theory). They'll persuade their bosses and co-workers more effectively. They'll sound more intelligent in interviews.

They won't be able NOT to.

Trust me. I'm seeing what your kids do when they leave your house.

I can tell the readers. I really can.

(I can also tell the ones that had to do chores when they were growing up. But that's a matter for another blog entry.)

Disaster Relief

2010-01-13T10:56:00.002-05:00

I do enough ragging on United Methodists in this space that I feel it worthwhile to brag on them when they get something right.

The United Methodist Committee on Relief is a good example of Methodists getting something decidedly right.

UMCOR is a surprisingly effective and efficient organization for mobilizing disaster relief, largely due to its commitment to using 100% of directed donations for the projects the donor designates.

Administrative and overhead costs are entirely funded through a one-day denomination-wide offering (One Great Hour of Sharing), expressly for the purpose of eliminating the need to fund these costs through directed donations. UMCOR also does little advertising outside of the denomination--a double-edged sword, allowing it to funnel more money to where it's needed, but preventing them from gaining the widespread recognition of the American Red Cross, UNICEF, or World Vision.

It also emphasizes indigenous Methodist-affiliated churches as centers of relief distribution and coordination. (As Gustavo Guttierez has famously said, if you want to know how best to help the poor, try asking the poor. If you want to know how best to help victims of disaster, try letting them coordinate and distribute things.)

If you attend a United Methodist church, please consider giving generously to the One Great Hour of Sharing offering this March. It will keep UMCOR nimble, active, and ready for the disasters and emergencies that will strike, that will always strike this side of the eschaton.

And if today's news--the photos, the reports, the desperate, urgent need--moves you to contribute to disaster relief in Haiti, please consider donating through UMCOR. There is already an UMCOR field office in Haiti, and The United Methodist Church has a long-standing relationship with churches and organizations there through which relief aid will be coordinated and distributed.

And, as always, pray. Pray while you're writing the check, to be sure! But do not neglect to pray.

The Dark Side (so to speak) of Liberal Support for Obama

2009-11-24T12:11:00.004-05:00

The findings of the experiment summarized in this article are sad and, for the most part, unsurprising: our political inclinations influence our perceptions. No surprise there, of course.

The particular form that influence takes in this case is, likewise, the opposite of shocking. The experiment demonstrates (or supposedly does--the article does not mention if or where it has been published) that the skin tone of a biracial man (President Obama) is perceived differently depending on one's political orientation, on one's presumed evaluation of his politics.

Conservatives appear to perceive Obama's skin color as darker both than liberals perceive it and than it actually is. That is, Obama's blackness is so magnified in the eyes of conservatives (who are presumably more inclined to evaluate Obama negatively as a political leader) that it is not only constitutive of their overall perception of him (there is no way for them to perceive him other than as a black man) but disproportionately emphasized in their ostensibly objective physical (visual) perception of him.

Depressing, obviously, but hardly shocking, right? Something in the nature of studies that show overeating causes weight gain, or that the proverbial fat meat really is greasy?

This article deserves more attention for two reasons, however.

First of all, the author's disinclination to probe the other side of the coin is troubling. Conservatives see Obama as blacker than he really is, and liberals see Obama as whiter than he really is. The author of the study (the interviewee) seems careful to mention both sides of this equation when asked an open question, but the journalist seems disturbed only by the first half. The final two questions (and answers) of the interview aptly highlight why it's a problem that conservatives see Obama as darker than he is.

There is no corresponding question dealing with why it might be a problem that liberals see Obama as lighter than he is.

And that is the second reason: it is a problem that liberals see Obama as lighter than he is, and (apparently) to a greater degree than conservatives make the opposite mistake (five times vs. two times more likely).

The author of the study explains the phenomenon well: "Which means that liberals, who are going to think that Obama is generally good and generally American, may have these subtle associations linking him to the concept of white, which is reflected in their representativeness ratings. The opposite would be true of conservatives."

But the implications he and the journalist ponder together lament only the conservative side of the equation: "It suggests that there are still deeper challenges to overcome before we can truly understand the perspective of someone we disagree with."

What challenges remain, however, in the presence of someone we agree with?

It is not good news, in other words--nor even neutral news!--that liberals do not perceive Obama as darker than he is, because they still perceive him as whiter than he is. Liberals and conservatives alike still participate in the racist dichotomy, even if liberals participate in the dichotomy in a way that allows them, ultimately, to support "even" a black man for president, if they agree with his policies.

If, for example, pictures of Alan Keyes or Clarence Thomas were substituted, liberals would, presumably, commit the error that conservatives commit regarding Obama: black skin = bad man, white skin = good man. The fact that they are able to see men who agree with them as participating in whiteness to some degree is small consolation. They still frame their approval in terms of whiteness.

The study also raises the question whether a blacker black man could achieve the same success. Is President Obama's success made possible only because of his biracial heritage? If it were impossible to code him as even partially white--if his speech patterns, his skin color, his physical shape were more insistently associated with Blackness--would it prove impossible to code him as intelligent and capable for any but the most rigorously race-conscious liberals (that is, those conscious of and attentive to issues of race)?

It is an accomplishment--with congratulations due both to President Obama and to the American people--that the Oval Office no longer has a "For Whites Only" sign on the door.

But it remains a bittersweet accomplishment, in light of this study. Even Obama's presumed supporters need him to participate in whiteness to some degree.

I do not envy him the tightrope he must walk, and my respect for the relative grace with which he walks it mounts daily.

No Longer Forthcoming!

2009-11-19T13:45:00.002-05:00

I'm happy to report that a book review that I wrote three years ago is finally being published!

Scottish Journal of Theology 64.2

I was starting to worry that this was some new kind of passive-aggressive rejection: an acceptance letter followed by . . . . nothing.

These are, however, Presbyterians and not Methodists. They got to it decently and in good order.

Strong Words

2009-11-18T09:28:00.005-05:00

I am an ethicist because I enjoy exercising my feelings of righteous indignation from time to time.

Usually, this leads me into trouble. I hear about an issue, a case, an action, a legislative agenda, and I immediately take a stand, pronounce judgment on all who are in obvious and morally culpable error, and then stand around somewhat shame-faced and backpedally when the situation proves more complex than I had initially understood.

In this case, however, I don't mind taking righteous indignation out for a spin.

Tweets, Facebook posts, and bumper stickers now bandy about a prayer, ostensibly wishing for a change of administration come November 6, 2012, but literally wishing, in the words of Psalm 109:8, for the shortening of the President's days so that "another" will "take his office."

First and foremost, this is a plain and embarrassing example of the biblical illiteracy of the church.

That Christians are passing along this verse without understanding the context in which it appears is a testament to how little and how poorly Christians read scripture.

Few of those who pass along this meme take the time to read Psalm 109 in its entirety. The psalm is one of the "cursing" psalms--prayers that God punish the wicked or defeat the psalmist's enemies.

This particular gathering of curses is impressively specific and thorough: the psalmist wishes upon his adversary vicious enemies, financial ruin, death, poverty and homelessness for his children, and permanent damnation upon his soul.

It is an embarrassment to the church that so many people are passing along a verse whose context they don't know; it is an even more troubling embarrassment that they are not curious enough to find out.

But one doesn't need to know the context to know that this verse has no innocuous intent. "I'm just praying for someone else to become president! Like, next Election Day!" comes the quick response to any perceived question or correction. "I'm not praying that anything bad happen to him!"

This response betrays nothing but splendid, willful ignorance--not only of the context but of the plain sense of the verse in question.

To pray that someone's "days be few" is to pray that they die. Soon.

(I recommend that you ask people who disagree with this statement whether they believe in the literal interpretation of scripture. If they really do take scripture seriously, they will squirm. If they don't squirm, call them theological liberals.)

There is no possible alternative interpretation of the literal meaning of that phrase. This verse wishes for someone's early and imminent death. To advocate using this verse in prayer is to advocate praying for someone's death. There is no way to sidestep this issue. And there is no excuse for allowing people to try.

Some people with no particular interest in Jesus, no habit of prayer, and no substantive commitment to Christian scripture, are passing along this meme because it seems cute and funny to them. Delighted to find such an apt expression of their own sentiments in an otherwise charmingly old-fashioned book, they pass it along as if passing along a useful and attractive sweater that doesn't happen to flatter their particular figure.

They are abusing and deriding scripture, albeit unknowingly, but one can't expect otherwise from people who have no reason to take scripture seriously.

Many of the people who are passing it along, however, are people of prayer and professed biblical faith. They claim, in other parts of their lives, to take scripture seriously. Their participation in this meme needs to be named as the insult to scripture that it is. People who claim to value biblical faith must be called to shun vacuous and unserious uses of scripture. It is an embarrassment to the faith that Christians can be so publicly ignorant of their own scriptures and can permit or perpetuate sloppy interpretations of it.

If such displays of biblical illiteracy are an embarrassment, how much more shameful is the actual content of the meme.

One would think it should go without saying that praying for a political adversary's death is unbecoming to a Christian.

One would think it should go without saying that even if one admits that there might be circumstances in which praying for someone's death could be appropriate--say, under conditions of extreme persecution, inescapable abuse, or unrelenting tyranny--that even the worst of the current administration's failures and policies hardly rise to this level.

One would think it should go without saying that if one ever found oneself in a such circumstances, casual or triumphant pronouncements of one's tragic prayer are hardly the order of the day.

But if one thinks those things, one has not sufficiently reckoned with the doctrine of total depravity. Pace dear Thomas Aquinas, who is otherwise my guide in all things ethical and ecclesial, human reason and intellect bow to the deformed will with alarming consistency. One sees what one has willed to be there; one investigates as one intends to conclude; one reasons as one wills. Once one has cast one's lot with those who find nothing wrong with praying for the death of a political enemy, one is emotionally committed to reason that one has done rightly, even in the face of the plain sense of scripture.

The level of self-justification that arises in the face of any attempt at biblical correction is disheartening.

All the same, the effort at biblical correction is not wasted. It may be unsuccessful, especially in this particular instance. Once one is raised to a level of hypocrisy in which one can publicly pray for the death of a president with whom one disagrees after spending eight years arguing that the office of president must command respect irrespective of its holder (because that was just about the only refuge left for persons of a certain political persuasion), one is most likely immune to fraternal correction, no matter how gently or lovingly offered.

But it is not wasted.

I understand that some issues are too complex, too nuanced, too fraught to speak strongly or decisively. There is a reason that the General Conference of the United Methodist Church cannot offer clear and conclusive admonitions on such topics as abortion, homosexuality, or war.

But even Methodists can find a few topics on which to speak clearly and strongly. (I might wish that abortion, rather than gambling, was such a topic, but at least we picked something!)

Even ethicists who've learned to temper their strong words with the knowledge of previous missteps can and should find a few topics for which strong words are required.

It is my sincere hope that all Christians who take scripture seriously will object, publicly, to its public abuse. I hope all Christians will call other Christians to account for perpetuating this shameful meme and will call non-Christians to understand how poorly it represents the Christian faith.

Some News

2009-05-05T14:51:00.002-04:00

I am excited to be able to share a professional development: I have accepted a Fellowship from the Wilke Institute for Discipleship at Southwestern College, in Winfield, Kansas, and will be moving there this summer.

The Fellowship was jointly awarded to me and another doctoral candidate, with whom I will share the teaching responsibilities, stipend, and housing that come with the fellowship.

Fortunately for that last bit, the other doctoral candidate is named Stephen Sours, and we're used to the shared housing part.

A Good Death?

2009-03-13T17:07:00.003-04:00

"Heart attacks are the number one killer of middle aged men!"
"20,000 people per year die needlessly because of the lack of effective treatment for this disease."
"20% of eighty-year-olds who will die this year will die of complications from Alzheimer's."
"Pancreatic cancer accounts for only 1% of the annual cancer diagnosis rate, yet 15% of the annual cancer death rate."

Fundraising for scientific charities or research, advocacy for federal funding, and bioethical arguments concerning medical technologies or public policy goals will often quote statistics concerning the death rate for a particular condition or set of circumstances.

(I just made all those statistics up, by the way. This is not the blog to read for accurate scientific data.)

These statistics are deployed in order to convince the listener/reader of the urgency of the need for donations, funding, excellent students to enter the field, policy changes, or whatever is being sought. "20,000 people per year? Oh, that's terrible." "What? The number one cause of death? That's where our research dollars need to go!!" "Such a high proportion of deaths? We must do something about that."

Because the answer to the implied question--"How many people per year should die of this or that condition?"--must, of course, be, "None, if we could prevent it!"

30,000 children under the age of 5 die every day from starvation-related causes. (That's one statistic I didn't make up, actually.) How many children should die every day from starvation-related causes? If your answer is not a resounding "NONE!" you are an inhuman monster.

How many people per year should die of pancreatic cancer? None, if we can prevent it.
How many people per year should die of AIDS-related illnesses? None, if we can prevent it.
How many people per year should die of MRSA? of heart disease? of leukemia? of renal failure?

None. Of course.

But the argument takes a different turn when you begin to ask a different question. Of what should people die?

What should be the number one killer?

In some cultures and in some times, the answer to this question was more clear. People should die in battle, if they could arrange it. Or they should die while on the hunt, or with their families, or in service to the gods. When one acknowledges that one must die, it is not too difficult to imagine better and worse ways to die.

Francis Bacon changed the course of history when he challenged the world to "call no disease incurable." Medical sciences--indeed, all the sciences--were given free reign. Any stricture, any obstruction, any challenge to biotechnological progress began to be considered an unfair or irrational or superstitious refusal to save people that could be saved.

After Bacon, the answer (largely implicit) to the question (largely unasked) "What should be the number one killer?" is a resounding, "Nothing." There are only bad and worse ways to die.

For the braver among us, those willing to conjecture about our own deaths, the answer might be "Old age." When pressed, most of us would like to die peacefully in our beds, having been cogent and independent up until the very end, with a minimum (if not a complete absence) of any kind of suffering or disability.

In its more temperate moments, that is the (more likely to be stated) goal of medicine, as well.

But as Joel Shuman notes in the essay "The Last Gift," the WHO and the Department of Health and Human Services do not recognize "old age" as a cause of death. Something specific must be named.

Thus every recorded death in the United States must have a medical condition, problem, or failure as its cause. And when every death is a medical failure, there is no death that might not be prevented or forestalled with technological improvement. Heart failure is a condition, a problem--not a natural terminus. Liver failure is not what happens when one's body has reached its natural capacity to filter its blood--it is the result of specific medical processes, any of which might be susceptible to our control.

There is, then, no natural limit to the reach of medicine. There is nothing that might not be prevented with a little more research, and thus there is nothing that should not be prevented. Any impediment to progress is morally equivalent to a death sentence for those suffering from whatever ailment may be helped by a proposed course of action.

It is appalling that 30,000 children per day die of starvation related causes. It should prompt urgent and concerted effort on behalf of the world's governments and NGOs against immediate and emergent causes (drought, crop failure, natural disaster, war), as well as against more subtle and possibly intractable causes (tyranny, poverty, greed).

But it is appalling not because all deaths are appalling. It is appalling because this earth provides more than enough food for us all, and because technology permits us to transfer the fruits of this abundant patch of earth to that distressed patch of earth, and because international diplomacy gives us the chance to convince even the worst tyrants to allow emergency aid to the starving. These deaths are appalling. These deaths are a result of human sin, or at the very least, of human inertia.

But is it possible to conceive of medical causes for death that are not appalling? not urgent? not inhumane?

There will always be a "top ten list" of causes of death. There will always be a top ten list of causes of death. Is it possible to conceive of a list that will not be a list of looming enemies?

If it is not possible, if there is no death from which we do not look to medicine to save us, we are in grave danger, though we do not know it.

Medicine becomes, in such a case, our god, and there is no end to the sacrifices it may demand of us.

A Good Class

2008-04-11T10:18:00.001-04:00

My students nearly came to blows this week, arguing over the ethical implications of a serious reading of Revelation.

It doesn't get any better than that, does it?

Books in Review

2008-02-07T14:47:00.000-05:00

I don't recall whether or not I had a specific textbook on the Historical Jesus Problem in Intro to the New Testament. I remember the professor's lecture on it (very clearly), and I remember some books I read on the topic in subsequent years.

But I can't remember whether we had a book in NT 18 that explained the debate.

If not, that's likely because Mark Allan Powell's Jesus As a Figure in History wasn't published yet.

This is a surprisingly good textbook for introducing seminary students, religion majors, and beginning biblical students to the field of Historical Jesus research. Powell is detailed, clear, thorough, and--what was perhaps the most surprising--unfailingly generous in his descriptions of scholars and their methods. It would be a useful addition to any introductory New Testament syllabus.

Books in Review

2008-02-06T12:45:00.000-05:00

Joseph Amato's Victims and Values: A History and a Theory of Suffering has been a frustrating book to read.

It was frustrating primarily because I was desperately interested in an excellent treatment of his thesis: that the modern conception of and pursuit of justice is impoverished by its dependence on an inadequate understanding of the relationship between suffering and justice. Amato's treatment certainly raised issues, but without the sort of care and discretion that one must adopt when preparing to slaughter sacred cows.

Amato rightly (I believe) diagnoses certain problems with socio-political discourse in the US. The public discussion of justice, where it occurs, has become "a game of pick your victim," as Eugene Weber says in the intro to the book. Injustice and suffering--whether historical or actual, present or potential, rightly or wrongly perceived--are understood to create a debt which the public must honor. Indeed, virtually any kind of suffering is at least potentially the business of the state, whether as arbiter of competing claims to remediation (as in tort law), the administrator of whatever recompense is owed (as in welfare or medicaid), or the party ultimately responsible for inflicting suffering (as in our history of racial injustice).

Amato traces, with varying precision and insight, the historical development of this way of approaching the relationship between suffering and justice. At times, the story he is trying to tell gets lost in the details, but his point is primarily genealogical. It is not "natural" or inevitable to respond to reports of suffering the way we tend to do in the US today. We are the heirs of a philosophical sea-change that began, really, with Bacon, but since Amato is not particularly interested in medicine, he names other Enlightenment figures as the primary actors. Bentham is the obvious front-man: his articulation of utilitarian rationalism changed the way even non-utilitarians approach discussions of justice and suffering.

Unfortunately, when Amato moves from the historical to the contemporary, his argumentation fails. Or, rather, he fails to draw on the data in a way that would convince any that don't already agree with him. He relies on generalities and broadsides, abandoning his earlier practice of relying on texts.

(Reading society, as he purports to do in his final chapters, is both easier and more difficult than reading texts. One has fewer restraints on the interpretations one may advance; on the other hand, one's opponents are similarly unconstrained.)

Yet the questions he raises, particularly in chapter 8, are spot on. The relationship between suffering and recompense, dessert and justice, remuneration and retribution, is one that begs to be investigated. Public policy tends to act on too hazy an understanding of how suffering and justice are related generally and in a particular policy or law. How, for example, is Affirmative Action related to Jim Crow or slavery? More generally, what is the relationship between a people's historic suffering and an individual's demand for justice? What is justice, when the injustice has been so vast as to be irremediable and unforgivable?

These questions are urgent and immediate. Unfortunately, I doubt anyone given to rely on the modern understanding of suffering--that it gives me a claim to innocence, a moral vantage from which to demand something, a right to force others to attend to my perceived needs--is going to find Amato's book anything like persuasive.

In the "It's a Nice Gesture, But . . ." Category

2008-01-19T10:34:00.000-05:00

Our winner is: Trinket Round-up Day!

A Minnesota hospital system, eager to show how serious it is about containing drug costs and making prescription decisions based on science alone, has conducted a hospital-wide purge of notebooks, pens, post-it notes, and the like with drug ads on them.

This very admirable gesture netted over 18,000 items, all of which are now banned--that is, doctors are banned from accepting such items as gifts from drug company reps.

One hopes that lavish cruises, expensive dinners, and opulent parties are likewise banned, but such was not specified. In fact, one suspects that drug companies will find ways to "work with the system" (read: work around the system) in order to do what they've always done.

Predictably, a pharmaceutical industry spokesperson called the trinket sweep "Draconian."

But personally, I found the last two lines of the article to be the most telling:

Many of [the hospital's] items will be going to the health system of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Cameroon, which has three hospitals, and several rural health centers.

Irons said there shouldn't be a conflict of interest in Cameroon because the advertised drugs aren't available there.

Books in Review

2007-12-10T16:46:00.000-05:00

The Body in Pain: The Making and Unmaking of the World, by Elaine Scarry, begins with an absolutely brilliant account of the interior structure of torture--how it accomplishes what it intends, what it, in fact, intends quite apart from what it purports to intend, how embodiment is configured in the interaction between torturer and victim.

That we are now having something of a national . . . well, debate is too strong a word, isn't it? . . . thought exercise maybe? (of course, it's only a thought exercise for us) on the subject of torture only makes Scarry's chapter seem eerily prescient (the book was published in the mid-nineties).

She then moves to an equally important reading of the structure of war. Following Carl von Clausewitz, she makes the simple (but hardly simplistic) statement that war is an injuring contest whose physical consequences are held to certify the right of the "winner" to author reality for both parties. Each aspect of that statement (injuring, contest, consequences, winning, authoring reality) receives thorough attention, especially to the ways in which the statement's accuracy is masked (whether intentionally or incidentally) in speech about war (histories, media reports, propaganda, personal accounts).

My respect for Scarry's accomplishment in these two chapters is only partially mitigated by the three chapters that follow. The conceptual lenses by which she is able to read war and torture (and later, capitalism) so keenly are themselves less persuasively described.

For Scarry, bodily pain is the ground of creation/civilization and disembodiment is its product. One makes--coats, bread, speech, ideas--in order to alleviate an uncomfortable awareness of one's body (hunger, vulnerability to injury). The made thing, as long as it perdures, gives benefits the force of which is to remake the body of the maker (resistance to cold, increased mobility, ability to communicate with those outside the range of one's physical capacity) in a manner that disguises the limits imposed by human embodiment.

While this analysis has much to recommend it, Scarry's account of pain and creation are too narrow. Pain is not the only experience in which we become attuned to the fact of our having a body; pleasure serves that function, too. (Thomas's account of pain is much more convincing--it is one of the passions, not the paradigmatic fact of human existence.)

And pain is not the only creative prompt. This is, of course, a theological as well as an experiential claim. (Scarry addresses this objection, incidentally, by claiming that apparently gratuitous acts of creativity are only possible in the presence of a cultural abundance itself produced by pain, a claim which has merit but is not sufficient to explain the phenomenon of creativity.) If we are the children of a God who creates out of peace, out of completeness, without external compulsion, then our creativity likewise may not always require the goad of suffering. (I am obviously borrowing from David Hart's book here.)

I must also find fault with her reading of the Old Testament as compared to the New--like all post-Christian liberals, she depends on a trite and anti-Judaic reading of both texts. The "Christianity is an evolutionary improvement on Judaism" motif is too tiresome for words, and the variation played here is neither subtle nor plausible. The Old Testament god functions in the role of torturer; the violence and cruelty of religion is mitigated by the embodiment of god narrated in the stories of Jesus of Nazareth. If god has a body, the concept of god is destabilized in humanity-affirming ways. We make room for peace and democracy and (a Marxist version of) the American way.

I have other, more minor, quibbles with Scarry's work, but these will suffice. In truth, however, none of these quibbles can undermine my respect for what she has accomplished in her first two chapters. Would that I could make these two chapters required reading for participation in civic life!

Science Reporting

2007-12-04T11:14:00.000-05:00

I've been interested by a slight change that's been happening recently in science and medicine reporting. I've only noticed it in online AP articles, but perhaps those of you who watch TV or read other news sources can tell me how widespread the phenomenon is.

An example is this article. Like most science reporting I've seen, it mentions the results of the study, where the study was published, and a one-sentence "take-away" message from an "expert" in the field.

Unlike most science reporting I've seen, it mentions the methodology of the study and its source of funding.

I think this is an important step nearer to the sort of transparency that should characterize the communication of science to non-specialists. I have noticed several popular health trends for which the warrant was a single, poorly-designed study (or rather, ones for which the study was not designed in a manner which suggested an appropriate or effective course of action), inadequately or inaccurately reported by popular news sources.

Having the methodology and the potential for bias spelled out so clearly as in this article is a real service to the health consumer, as well as the merely-interested-in-medical-science non-scientist.

I've also noticed that the AP is being more transparent about the relationship between their "expert" sources and those who might have an interest in how a study is reported. Such an example does not appear in the article I linked above, but I've noticed many "expert opinions" tagged with such phrases as "suggests so-and-so, who was not involved in the study" or "commented so-and-so, who had not yet read the report in its entirety."

Again, this seems like a promising and appropriate move toward more transparency. Good thing, that.

Professional Ethics?

2007-10-18T12:05:00.000-04:00

I am watching this judicial showdown with great interest.

First of all, by one reading, I, too, belong to a professional organization (i.e., The United Methodist Church) that has its own professional licensing procedures (The Board of Ordained Ministry). Although my organization's professional licensing procedures are not in any sense overseen, supervised by, or practiced at the mandate of any federal or state legislation, there is at least one major circumstance in which my authorization as a pastor is linked to my authorization to provide a legal service: that is, marriage.

What if my professional organization's licensing procedures were in conflict with the state's guidelines concerning the practice of performing marriages? This could potentially come up, given that my professional organization currently forbids its members to officiate at weddings that are considered legal in some states. I am not aware of any cases where my professional organization has exercised its authority in this matter (the UMC is not exactly known for its episcopal backbone), but what if it did? Would the state recognize the right of a professional organization to set its own ethics, even to the inconvenience of the state or its citizens?

This problem is much more acute in the case of medical practitioners whose ethics conflict with the state's interest in carrying out its business. And the scalpel cuts both ways, politically speaking: at present, doctors are permitted to refuse to perform or refer for procedures or treatments to which they have a moral objection, even where state law has recognized access to those procedures and treatments as a civil right. Generally speaking, those who would be in support of the Medical Board's attempt to do an end run around the law with regard to the death penalty tend to be highly critical of practitioners' attempts to do an end run around the law with regard to abortion and certain forms of birth control.

I'm very, very curious to see how it will play out.

Christian Bioethics?

2007-10-15T11:24:00.000-04:00

This past week, I began a four-week lecture series in a local church's Sunday School class. The parish, a significant portion of which is comprised of doctors and lawyers, had requested a class in Christian bioethics.

Believing they were expecting a four-week class in "which side to come down on" ethics, and hoping to problematize their approach somewhat, I decided to focus on biblical portrayals of health and sickness for the first three weeks of the class. We won't get to "Issues in contemporary medicine" until the last week.

The first class focused on Old Testament depictions of health. I depended heavily on observations by Norman Wirzba and Ellen Davis on the holistic nature of the Hebrew concept of Shalom--a concept that included human health, of course, but also the health of the land, of the people's relationship to its God, of the politics of the people, and of interpersonal relationships among the people. Not just health, but justice, mercy, forgiveness, love, economic responsibility, and environmental stewardship are encompassed in the biblical concept of health and wholeness.

We looked at texts like Isaiah 65 and Leviticus 26 to ground our understanding of God's desire for all of creation to share in God's Shalom. I'm hoping that they begin to see that "health," as we moderns understand it (i.e., the absence of pathology in an individual body), is a paltry substitute for Shalom.

Better to live on the corner of the roof . . .

2007-10-09T13:44:00.000-04:00

Marital Strife Makes You Sick.

Duh.

Conflicting Goods?

2007-09-06T11:48:00.000-04:00

I've often been suspicious of the starring role played by the principle of autonomy in most medical ethics treatises.

So it's interesting--to say the least--to hear a presidential candidate propose a solution to our country's health care dilemmas that proposes limiting patient autonomy in a substantial way--or at least penalizing the irresponsible exercise thereof.

John Edwards (Does anybody else keep accidentally calling him Jonathan Edwards?) recently proposed health care policy that would mandate certain preventative measures, including annual checkups and mammogram screens.

Now, this is a very interesting proposal. In many ways, it naturally follows from the combination of the logic of the market and the logic of liberalism, both of which also depend on autonomy as their chief good. Medicine has been almost completely subsumed into both--it has become an enterprise almost completely dominated by its economic side, and government intervention into and regulation of the practice of medicine is taken as normative. (Ask even the most ardent libertarian whether he'd like his son to be operated on by a doctor who was not board-certified.)

So, assuming medicine to be a predominantly economic enterprise, and assuming government responsibility to make this economic enterprise run well, it makes sense for the government to exercise its authority by incentivising and disincentivising behaviors that have economic consequences within the system.

This means you have three disciplines or systems which derive their internal logic from a primary commitment to autonomy, combining in such a way that virtually demands a limitation of individual autonomy. Fascinating.

In all honesty, though, as much as I loathe Edwards' proposal, I think he is the first candidate whose proposals show that he understands the complexities of the health care problem. Few of the other proposals I've seen seem to take seriously the complex interplay of economics, psychology, law, and biology that comprises health care. I'm not sure he adequately addresses the dynamics of the patent system or litigiousness, but he has covered more bases than most people.

The only bit of utter cluelessness came when he said, in response to the question of whether people would find this too invasive, "We mandate public education—public or private—and no one minds that."

Now, I know he's only homeschooling his kids this year so that they can spend time together as a family while he's campaigning. So he's not a hard-core homeschooler. But still, you'd think he'd have heard of a movement of a couple million people who decidedly "mind that." Or maybe have read of the violent resistance that attended the introduction of compulsory schooling?

Books in Review

2007-09-01T11:04:00.000-04:00

Hector Avalos, in Health Care and the Rise of Christianity, makes the case that a study of the health care milieu in which Christianity arose is necessary for understanding the attraction that Christianity might have had for, particularly, the chronically ill in the Greco-Roman world.

Avalos helpfully surveys Jewish and pagan sources for indications of the values and practices surrounding sick members of those societies, particularly with respect to chronic illness. The survey of pagan culture is particularly helpful (at least for this non-Classicist) in that it enumerates the different health care options available to inhabitants of the Roman world, as well as the likely cross-pollination between Jewish monotheism and Roman paganism.

I am not conversant enough with Classical sources to know whether his presentation of health and sickness in the Roman world is accurate, but I was disappointed with his survey of Judaism. He dealt almost exclusively with the canonical texts, and seemed to weigh the New Testament critiques of Pharisaism rather more heavily than may be warranted. He did not seem to make use of more modern (and more charitable) studies of Jewish culture in the Second Temple period.

Additionally, his reading of the canonical texts was deeply problematic. He seems to have found in the texts a deep concern for protecting the state (meaning, especially, the levitical priestly hierarchy) from the burden of the chronically ill and underproductive. He takes the strict regulations concerning purity and contamination to be less interested in regulating the spread of contagious illnesses than in isolating and stigmatizing those with chronic illnesses which left them unable to be economically productive. His evidence for this interest is scant--he makes the point that the gradated requirements for thanksgiving offerings after healing (as in Leviticus 14) acknowledge the possibility that chronic illness may render a person economically unproductive, but he implies that levitical regulations are intended to marginalize those persons who have become poor.

He seems to have missed the deep concern for the poor and economically unproductive evident throughout, especially, the priestly code. The passage in question, for example, could be read as a particular effort to include those who have become poor through chronic illness and to mitigate the effects of their disadvantaged position. Economic disadvantage and unproductivity, in other words, is not an impediment to participation in the liturgical life of the community. Chronic illness is, to be sure, but there is little to no evidence that the Jewish community isolated and stigmatized the economically unproductive on a regular basis. Contagion and purity concerns are a much more convincing read of the levitical regulations regarding blood and bodily fluids.

That said, his more basic point is quite sound: whether or not such was the intention of the levitical code, and whether or not the Second Temple Jewish community practiced the levitical code exactly as written, the effect of the canonical regulations concerning chronic illnesses was to create a sub-group of people who would be particularly interested in the healing ministries of Christian missionaries, as well as the theological commitment to non-isolation of "sinners" and lepers.

Both Judaism and paganism, by Avalos's read, created a demographic group of disaffected members of society that would be attracted to Christianity precisely because it rejected (at least in its canonical texts) the very practices that had isolated them from their own societies. This partly explains, Avalos contends, the tremendous growth in the first decades after the death of Christ.

Psychologists Scrap Interrogation Ban

2007-08-20T10:17:00.000-04:00

Well, I really like how the APA was thinking here, in the proposed ban. Even though it was ultimately not carried, I liked what they were trying to do.

I'm not sure that they've read their history, though. The Methodist Episcopal church of the nineteenth century passed a ban on ordained pastors owning slaves. The first person to challenge that ban--a Bishop Andrew--was remonstrated and threated with expulsion. All this did was lead to the formation of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South.

I fear that if any such professional organization were to try to enforce such a ban (like the AMA's ban on doctors' participation in executions), we would simply find ourselves with two national professional organizations where once there was one.

Terminal Does Not Equal Disposable

2007-08-08T19:35:00.000-04:00

A federal appeals court decided yesterday that terminally ill patients do not have a constitutional right to access highly experimental treatments for their (terminal) conditions, following a longstanding tradition among bioethicists that refuses to see terminally ill patients as disposable.

(Yahoo article here)

While a dissenting judge was appalled at the court's apparent willingness to interfere in what she considered a private choice to pursue life at all costs, I think the writer of the majority opinion and the FDA spokesperson who commented on the decision had the better view of the status, if you will, of terminally ill patients.

The FDA spokesperson was quoted as saying that the decision appropriately balanced the needs for public safety and access to as yet unproven treatments. In her view, then, the terminally ill patient is still a member of the public whose safety the FDA was founded to protect. Like all other patients, the terminally ill patient can be taken advantage of by researchers (whether unscrupulous or merely overoptimistic) and can be harmed by lack of proper scientific knowledge. Their desperate circumstances must not be seen as an excuse to forgo the normal protections and safeguards which are given to the general public (even if the same circumstances lead them to wish to forgo those protections themselves).

The writer of the majority opinion implied the same valuation of the terminally ill patient--their deaths could be hastened by an unapproved treatment, and that premature death would be as much a tragedy as if it were a non-terminal patient.

While the desire to extend every possible opportunity for a terminally ill person to be healed is laudable, it often goes along with a more sinister (and usually unarticulated) re-valuation of the place of the terminally ill person in society. Virtually every time it is proposed that rules, procedures, standards, and policies be different for the terminally ill patient, the difference is intended to mark a separation of the dying patient from the general public, even when the differences are intended to benefit the dying patient. These special policies and procedures proclaim, "The dying person is a different kind of person. The normal rules don't apply."

If this breaking of the "normal rules" meant an increased participation in the life of the community (as in some monastic orders, where the community rushes to the bedside of the dying brother or sister to be with him or her in death, even if it means that the liturgical practices of the community are interrupted), I would be for it.

But it never does, does it?

A Philosophical Disease: Bioethics, Culture, and Identity

2007-07-06T15:31:00.000-04:00

A Philosophical Disease is a Wittgensteinian critique of Western biomedical culture. Carl Elliott engages the intersection of language and our construction of reality, morality, and relationality.

For an example of how this sort of critique works, Elliott's discussion of the construction of gender is paradigmatic. There are a number of medical conditions--including birth defects, genetic abnormalities, and medical mishaps--which render a person's sexual identity . . . well, complicated.

In one part of the Dominican Republic, one such condition is sufficiently prevalent that there is a name for it: guevedoche. (Penis-at-twelve.) Individuals with this genetic condition are genotypically male, but appear female from birth through puberty. Most guevedoches, although they had been raised as females, make the transition to male societal roles after puberty--including marrying women and taking jobs usually given to men. It is not so much that this culture is blase about gender roles (quite the opposite); it is rather that their experience with a particular condition allows them to code for a third gender, as it were. They have the experience of it, they have a name for it, and they have cultural practices which surround it.

By contrast, the US has retained a more strict understanding of the world as divided into male and female. Thus, their cultural practices surrounding the same genetic condition--or conditions in which gender identity is similarly ambiguous--are different. They have a medical name for the condition (5-alpha-reductase deficiency), but not for persons afflicted with the condition. Indeed, the cultural experience of such conditions is so rare that medical practices surrounding these conditions tend to involve surgery to make the genitalia match the individual's perceived sexual identity. (That is, if the individual feels more "female," the genitalia are surgically altered to match that feeling.) American language and experience is almost exclusively bound by the male/female dyad, such that surgical intervention is required to make one's biology match the linguistic and philosophical convention.

Elliott similarly investigates the way language about identity intersects with psychiatry. These chapters were some of the most interesting, as that intersection has received far less attention than it should in the bioethics literature. How does severe depression affect competence to consent? Do emotional ties reduce or enhance rational decision-making? Why do we have an intuitive sense that a willingness to sacrifice oneself is morally praiseworthy, while a willingness to profit from someone's sacrifice is morally reprehensible?

This is, in addition, an eminently readable book. The motivated amateur could certainly tackle this book, although it is geared toward an academic audience. If your interest is in the culture of medicine--not just the hot topics in bioethics, but the culture in which these topics get discussed--this is a book worth reading.

2007-06-26T09:16:00.000-04:00

Something the Lord Made

Even though this movie was recommended by a normally reliable source, I can't say that I had terribly high expectations of it--at least not after looking at the back matter. An HBO film? With, well, Mos Def?

I mean, I thought it would be "loosely based" and formulaic (like Remember the Titans or some such), with stupid dialogue and trite sermonizing. But, I thought, at least it would deal with "important issues" or something, so it would be worth watching.

It was none of the things I had thought.

Well, yes, it dealt with "important issues" (see here for the historical background), but so gently and subtly that it didn't feel like an "important issues" movie.

It was not at all formulaic, either. And the dialogue was restrained, well-written, appropriate.

And Mos Def did an outstanding job. His Vivien Thomas was gentle, subtle, restrained, yet completely compelling.

I keep using those words--gentle, subtle, restrained. That's how I would characterize the whole movie, actually. With the exception of Alan Rickman's southern accent (which is about as successful as Kevin Costner's British accent in Robin Hood), nothing was larger-than-life or overdone. It felt real--no small feat for a movie portraying incidents of another era, one with high probability for emotionalism and sermonizing.

If I had one negative thought about the movie, though, it was that Vivien Thomas was a rather "safe" black hero. He was a man who suffered quietly the insults he was offered more often than not, who accepted with gratitude the recognition he was finally given (decades late and still fairly inadequate), and who cared more about the life-saving work he was doing than what he had to endure to do it--or how his using his gifts benefitted and enriched everyone but himself.

Yes, his character is a shining example of Christ-like virtue (patient suffering and self-giving in the face of others' vainglorious pursuit of "success"), but he may have been rather too easy on Blalock and Johns Hopkins--and, by extension, us. It was too easy for Blalock to enjoy the material and societal benefits of his association with Thomas (who enjoyed only the moral satisfaction of his work), and to atone for it at the end of his life with the recognition that "I have some regrets."

And too easy for us. As James Cone supposedly said at a recent AAR conference (I'm getting this third-hand, so my apologies if I'm getting the story wrong), "You white theologians always wanna talk about Martin. When are you gonna talk about Malcolm?" If our pantheon of civil rights saints is limited to figures like Vivien Thomas and, yes, even MLK, we (white America) are letting ourselves off rather too easily.

What Mike Pressler Should Have Done

2007-05-31T18:56:00.000-04:00

Or, Why I'm Not Rallying Around the "Innocent" Lacrosse Players

Don't get me wrong. I'm happy that three men are no longer under an undeserved indictment, that what appears to have been a cruelly false accusation has been set right, and that the legal system has proved itself able to negotiate a complex case with relative justice.

But I don't particularly care for the triumphalist tone being bandied about: "Innocent Lacrosse Players Vindicated!!" "Finally, Justice for the Dear Sweet Boys Who Never Did Anything Wrong!" "Mounting Pressure for Duke To Apologize to the Clearly Wronged Former Lacrosse Coach!"

Uh, no. Especially not to that last one.

Mike Pressler tolerated an atmosphere among his players that should never have been tolerated. This permissive attitude is what led to the night which remains an embarrassment to the University, irrespective of whether a felony was committed.

Had Pressler done, say, something like this a long, long time ago, this painful night might never occurred. And, more importantly, those boys might have had a chance to grow into real men. I fear that now, they never will.

The Sacrificial Lamb

2007-05-30T14:40:00.001-04:00

Chinese Food and Drug Chief Sentenced to Death

I was wondering how China was going to navigate the ever-increasing scandal of contaminated food and drug products. Actually, I was wondering how the US was going to navigate it--whether the dire need for an expanding market would trump basic food and drug safety issues.

But now that China has helpfully "solved" the problem via the classic "scapegoat" method, we can all get back to our regularly scheduled global capitalism.

"Lybrel says 'You don't need a period.'"

2007-05-20T07:16:00.000-04:00

"Surveys have found up to half of women would prefer not to have any periods, most would prefer them less often and a majority of doctors have prescribed contraception to prevent periods.

. . . . . .

Most doctors say there's no medical reason women need monthly bleeding and that it triggers health problems from anemia to epilepsy in many women. They note women have been tinkering with nature since the advent of birth control pills and now endure as many as 450 periods, compared with 50 or so in the days when women spent most of their fertile years pregnant or breast-feeding."

I really thought we had moved past early-eighties feminism, where women had to become honorary men in order to be equal.

Did you notice how the justifying moves go? A) Most women don't want to have periods. B) There are women for whom menstruation presents a medical problem. C) Therefore, this product is okay. D) And plus, we've conquered the inconvenience of childbearing and lactation. This is just one more inconvenience to conquer!

So, once again, a potential (hypothetical? rare?) medical problem is used to justify the development of a product that will be prescribed to the population at large, apart from any medical need. Another wildly profitable product for pharmaceutical companies--because of our incapacity to endure any sort of inconvenience.

Why are women's bodies so to be feared and despised?

Nuns Continue Calcium Study

2007-04-26T15:21:00.000-04:00

I know this was supposed to be a sweet story about a bunch of grandmotherly-type ladies who have been contributing to scientific knowledge for decades, but I couldn't help thinking how it exemplified the sort of gender blindness that plagues biomedical research.

Let me give you an example of what I mean.

What are the top three symptoms of a heart attack--do you know?

[Takes responses from the audience]

Yes, that's right. Chest pains, tingling arms, and shortness of breath.

Actually, that's also wrong. Those are the top three signs in men. In women, it's totally different. Bet you didn't know that, did you?

Bet you also didn't know that most pharmaceuticals are not tested on women of childbearing age--men and post-menopausal women (if women are included at all) form the research pool for most drugs. Between a woman's monthly hormonal fluctuations and the possibility that she might be/become pregnant during the study, she is considered a completely undesirable subject for research.

Even if the drug in question is likely to be prescribed to women of childbearing age.

Isn't that interesting?

Anyway, back to the nuns. According to the article, this study has been the source of the government's recommendations for calcium intake for women for decades. The study population is comprised exclusively of nuns--a very convenient study population, the researchers noted with glee, because of their lack of family commitments. (Women with families tend to be too busy for such an involved longitudinal study.)

Hmmm . . . does that make you think anything? Lack of family commitments, lack of family commitments . . . hmmm . . . Gosh! These seem to be women who don't have children!

So, "scientific" recommendations about women's calcium intake are primarily based on a study whose research population is comprised exclusively of women whose bodies have never done what over 80% of women's bodies will do some time in their life.

Anybody see a problem here?

It's the same problem as the pharmaceutical studies, really. The normally-functioning female body is seen as an impediment to proper research, so it is ignored during the period of research. Presumably, if they think of it at all, scientists are assuming that pregnancy is something that is "added on" to a "normal" female body. So, if we know what "normal" women need, then we can just slap on some extra pregnancy recommendations onto that.

There seems to be no understanding whatsoever that pregnancy and childbearing (much less childrearing) might change a woman's body such that her needs are completely different from these darling nuns' needs. That pregnancy and childbearing are not conditions superadded onto a "normal" body--they are constitutive of "normal" for the vast majority of women.

You'll forgive me, then, if I don't ask "How high?" every time the "latest nutritutional study" says "Jump!"

The Next Stage

2007-04-18T03:36:00.000-04:00

I have finished Preliminary Exams (called Comprehensive Exams at other schools) and am now officially ABD.

My advisor has already alerted me to several job listings for which I am now eligible to apply. Scary!

I'm published. . . at least in cyber-space.

2007-04-10T08:26:00.000-04:00

The above title links to a paper I delivered at Christmas Conference, 2006, for the John Wesley Fellows, those people who are being and have been funded by AFTE, A Fund for Theological Education.

The paper (click on "Sours" for a pdf download) concerns Thomas Aquinas' understanding of the body and its goods, with some comments on how he might contribute to a theological conversation about bioethics.

What am I again?

2007-04-09T08:14:00.000-04:00

Reading an oldish (1970s) review article this morning, I came upon a curious designation for practitioners of my academic field: ethician.

Ethician.

Ethician.

Is that what I am?

Hmm. What a strange word! Perhaps it's intended to convey a discipline in which participants are both students and practitioners of their discipline--like physician.

Still, I think I'm glad it didn't stick. I prefer ethicist.

Incidents in the life of a grad student

2007-04-02T06:39:00.000-04:00

I begin prelim exams today. I will defend April 17th.

I should have been blogging about all the things I've been reading to prepare for the exams. But, alas, no go.

The good news is that after exams, I'll start preparing to write my diss. That, I'll blog about. Stay tuned.

An Update on Stem Cells

2007-02-01T17:50:00.000-05:00

This article over at First Things is tendentious and controversial. And it's dead right. Do take half an hour and read it carefully. Thanks to CrimsonLine for reminding me why I like First Things so much.

My own opinion: Embryonic stem cell research is an egregious waste of scarce resources and an unconscionable privileging of the desires of the haves to the detriment of the have nots. For that reason alone the research should not receive a single penny of taxpayer dollars; it is completely disingenuous to paint this solely as a religious/pro-life battle.

(Although it certainly is that.)

FDA Approves Canine Diet Drug.

2007-01-06T07:26:00.000-05:00

Well. Nothing like ignoring root causes.

And letting profitability drive research.

2006-12-14T07:41:00.000-05:00

It's the week after Christmas Conference--our annual retreat with the people who are funding us, along with people who are being and have been funded by the same source--and so it's time for me to make my fast-becoming-annual plug for Wesley Ministry Network. (The scholar who is heading it up, Craig Hill, was funded by the same program, and updates us on his progress every year.)

This program is a video series much like the Disciple series, only with a broader focus: Disciple is predominately a Bible study, while WMN ranges all over. It's also much shorter, so that participants don't have to commit to an entire school year. But the basic principles are the same: in-depth, high-quality teaching, done by top-level scholars who care about the church and its ministry, along with serious reading and preparation by the participants.

If you have anything to do with your church's education program, and are tired of "How does that make you feel?" bible studies, please consider the Disciple series, followed by the Wesley Ministry Network series. Disciple should come first, not because it's better, but because biblical literacy is crucial to any theological thinking. But as a follow-up to Disciple I, for those whose appetite has been whetted for serious thinking about their faith, WMN is ideal.

It's shorter, so you don't have the seriously committed laypeople that Disciple I tends to produce going "out of commission" for an entire year. (I recommended that participants drop all but one other small church commitment the year they did the study with me. Two if they were retired or stay-at-homes.) I'm glad to see that Disciple now has short-term studies that can serve the same purpose. I didn't like the way Disciple II, III, and IV would suck graduates in rather than pushing them out to serve in the church.

Do look into them both. Seriously.

2006-12-08T07:15:00.000-05:00

Well, aside from the sexism, the frontier-era machismo, the religious liberties violation, and the part where he all but said that police officers have more important things to do with their time than protect and serve, I think this is a grand idea:

Pennsylvania town mulls mandatory arms requirement.

Good thing there are no United Methodist seminaries in Cherry Tree, PA.

Yikes.

2006-12-04T14:47:00.000-05:00

Medical Paternalism? Or appropriate incentives-offering?

Employers Push Employees to Choose Healthily.

Discuss.

2006-10-28T17:50:00.000-04:00

Dove Evolution

Now, it's probably true that Dove has simply found a more devious way than most of marketing their beauty products. It's probably not the case that they care about your daughter's self-image.

But for now, I'll take it.

Reading Thomas

2006-10-28T12:28:00.000-04:00

Reading Thomas is a dangerous thing.

I find his style engaging and thoroughly understandable. (There are those who will take this as evidence of mental deficiency on my part, I know.) At the end of the day, his systematics suits me less because of what he says than because of how ruthlessly interrelated it is.

There is nothing piecemeal or situational about Thomas. Everything is set in the context of . . . well, everything. One reads his moral theology and realizes that he is covertly doing Christology. One reads his eschatology and realizes that he is covertly doing ethics. There is nothing that he writes that has not been brought into thorough and exhaustive conversation with any- and everything else he writes.

This makes it very difficult to write on Thomas.

I started a year ago by reading the Treatise on Happiness and the Treatise on the Virtues from the Summa Theologica(having already read the fourth section of the Summa Contra Gentiles, several important selections on nature and grace, a smattering of his political theology).

Hauerwas made a passing comment--"Now, where this all really gets interesting is in the Treatise on the Passions. That's where you see how it all hangs together."

So, I decided to read the Treatise on the Passions.

And I didn't see how it all hung together. Not because it wasn't clear, mind you--just because there was more to it. I found myself thinking, "Well, yeah, but . . . I really need to read the Treatise on the Incarnation to know how this all hangs together."

So, I decided to read the Treatise on the Incarnation.

And now I find myself thinking, "Well, yeah, but . . . this really all depends on what he thinks about the Beatific Vision. Can't really see how it all hangs together unless you read his eschatology."

So, I'm starting to read . . .

. . . well, I hate to say it, but I think I'm reading . . .

. . . too much Thomas.

2006-10-24T18:24:00.000-04:00

A lighthearted look at the difference between what sells movies and what earns academic merit: Indy denied tenure.

I have no words.

2006-10-23T15:29:00.000-04:00

New definition for ATM: Automated Tithing Machine

Journalistic Ethics

2006-10-12T07:11:00.000-04:00

Here's how I imagine the conversation went.

- Bob, we've gotta have something about the Amish thing in here.
- Stan, we've got three minutes until press time.
- C'mon, we can't go to print without it. Can't somebody throw something together?
- Nobody's had time to write anything yet!
- We've gotta have something.
- Hey, how 'bout a photo essay? You only need one paragraph for that. And people like photos.
- Great. Make it happen.

And so, this week's Time Magazine includes a photo essay on the Amish mourning their children.

A photo essay on the Amish.

A photo essay on the Amish.

Did this not scream "problem" to anyone? How is it that no one said, "Uh. . . guys, aren't those the guys who don't like their picture taken?" Or maybe someone did say it. Wonder what the response was.

And I wonder who decided that newsworthiness covers over a multitude of sins. And that "what sells" is a close enough substitute for newsworthiness that it can, too.

Why I won't be teaching business ethics

2006-09-21T15:15:00.000-04:00

Business students most likely to cheat.

Teaching Christian Ethics is fun. Teaching Christian Ethics is about taking a bunch of people who already follow the rules and challenging them to get really radical. Challenging them to get beyond just following the rules.

Sure, there's some cheating--they don't all already follow the rules, and the stress certainly does get to some of them. But the basic presumption among people who take Christian Ethics is that something like "following the rules" is a good thing.

What on earth do you teach people who don't even follow the rules they already know about? Who think that "following the rules" is something idiots, wimps, children, or prudes do? Who pride themselves on their own cleverness in cheating successfully?

How do you even talk to them?

Duke forbids exotic dancers - News

2006-09-20T13:51:00.000-04:00

Students criticize reinstatement of the policy

Is it even worth trying to respond?

Student leaders are objecting to regulations that prohibit exotic dancers at official university events, calling it "moralistic" and "paternalistic."

I mean, really. The regulation is so pathetically circumscribed that I object to it on the opposite grounds. The judicial representatives admit that the regulation has no impact on private on campus parties, much less off-campus residences. It only applies to "open" parties, where everybody's invited.

I'm a little ashamed to go to a school where strippers may be hired for on-campus parties, as long as they aren't "advertised."

2006-09-16T10:17:00.000-04:00

When I was an undergrad, I did a stint as a teacher and residence advisor at a summer boarding school. This school had a niche preparing international students to enter American schools, so we always had a strong contingent of internationals, particularly from Thailand.

I helped teach writing (with another, more experienced ESL teacher) to these kids, and I quickly learned about the differences between American and non-American education. Essay-writing in the U. S. is a strange business. Children who have no exposure to any sort of scholarly research on a novel are expected to craft arguments about that novel, after a single read-through and with nothing but their opinions to guide them.

My Thai students frequently commented, when learning of their assignments, "But I don't know anything! How can I write this kind of essay? I'm not old enough to give my opinion!"

I have recently found myself feeling just like those students. The transition from "writing papers for a class, which no one but the professor will see, which will receive grades and then be thrown into the fire to be burned" to "writing articles, which will be published for all the world to see, and will constitute a permanent record, allowing things that I wrote ten or twenty years ago to come back to haunt me" has not been an easy one. I find myself thinking, "But I don't know anything! How can I make constructive proposals?!" Where I used to write with ease and fluency, I now write only with great and painful effort.

From time to time, I evaluate my knowledge base a little more realistically. I actually do know a few things, and I might have something remotely interesting to contribute to The Conversation. But most of the time, I am keenly aware of my knowledge deficits.

How about you? Has grad school sharpened your sense of your own inadequacies, or do you claim mastery in your discipline? Or can you remember a time when you started to feel more competent as a scholar than you felt, say, during your third year of doctoral work?

Suffering for the Lord

2006-09-10T19:09:00.000-04:00

Oh, Really?

2006-09-01T07:41:00.000-04:00

I once took a class, as an undergrad, called "Folkloristics."

I had more fun in that class than in any other class I've ever had.

That's not to say that I liked that class more than any class I've ever had. I had fun. Most of that fun very, very subtly at the teacher's . . . in fact, the entire discipline's expense.

The point of the class was to take verbal and written constructions of any sort--stories, myths, jokes, newspaper articles, anything--and discern the hidden political (in the vague sense--not in the actually-related-to-governments sense), semi-historical, and emotional content of the construction.

So, we looked at the traditional Beauty and the Beast story and decided that it was a morality tale designed to get girls to love the husbands being forced on them by their families, no matter how beastly the husbands' behaviors. It buttressed the lamentable insititution of arranged marriages, palliating the victims with the tepid platitude, "But he's not as bad as he looks, and you're doing something good for your family."

We looked at the urban legend which inspired the "Stranger Calls" movies--a babysitter receives a telephone call from a stranger, only later to discover that the call is coming from (cue scary music) inside the house. We discerned that it was a tale designed to frighten principally mothers, to urge them not to surrender care of their children to babysitters, who can't be trusted not to know when someone is smothering, decapitating, or otherwise harming the children, and who probably enabled the whole operation by sending the kids to bed unnecessarily early.

And so on.

The point was that nothing was what it was--it was whatever you found it convenient to be. As long as you used the right code words in describing what it really was, you decided what it really was.

I discovered very quickly what the code words were.

I felt a little bit like Jane Austen. Not in that I was a brilliant intellect, a devastatingly incisive observer of human character, or even terribly literate. But she wrote novels that were, simultaneously, a sharp critique of the sorts of sentimental novels of her time and the height of what sentimental novels could achieve.

I didn't speak or write one word in that class that wasn't a mockery of all it stood for. I willfully imposed the most spurious possible interpretation on anything that came my way. None of what I said had any basis or justification other than my own desire to say something.

I recounted a joke that my father-in-law told my husband and I, early in our marriage. (Why don't Baptists ever have sex standing up? Someone might see them and think they're dancing.) I uncovered his "hidden" motivations. He thought he was telling us a funny joke; what he was "really" doing was authorizing our sexuality, which had been legitimated through marriage, and proposing a method for dealing with our religious differences (I grew up Baptist, they were Methodists).

I compared the two amateur videos taken at our wedding, and uncovered the "hidden" structuring principles behind each one. One, taken by "Aunt Vicki," had a subtle but discernible (to my trained eye, of course) desire to tell a story of how my husband's side of the family felt about our marriage. She thought she was recording a happy family event--but in fact she "really" was documenting their approval of it. Her camera angles, her inclusions and omissions (and we could tell what she omitted because of the other video), her voiced-over interpretations of the events all combined to betray her effort to legitimate the marriage by displaying its emotional acceptance.

The other video, taken by "Anita's boyfriend, what's-his-name," had other intentions. He thought he was doing a favor for his girlfriend's friends; what he was "really" doing was legitimating the marriage by displaying its adherence to the traditional form of the liturgy. His camera angles, inclusions and omissions, etc., all constructed a story whose "real" purpose was to show that the marriage had taken place: I had walked down the aisle; the groom was in the proper place; the pastor did say the usual hocus-pocus at the appropriate time; there were witnesses; there was a tasteful number of attendants; etc. etc.

Did you notice the code words? I'll bet you could do it now, too. Try these: "authorize," "legitimating," "hidden motivation," "privileging a story," "power differential," "societal traditions."

I got a 100 in the class. Did you catch that? I didn't just get an A. I got a 100. I was without flaw. There was not a single error in any one of my contributions. I had no deficiencies.

And in what was I not-deficient? In wrestling meaning from cultural artifacts. In "teasing out" what was "really" going on. In short, in imposing my will on people and cultures and leaving them no possible way to answer me.

How could my father-in-law say, "Well, no; I really was just telling a joke!" I had shown what he was "really" doing, whether or not he knew it. How could "Aunt Vicki" say, "But I had to change batteries--that's why I omitted the sermon!"? I had shown why she "really" did it.

Now, I'm grateful to have been made to realize that, for example, news articles aren't just news articles--that their placement on the page, whether and how they are illustrated, etc., all have an effect (often an intended one) on the reader. Or to be able to see how an advertisement is constructed--Our product will save you from the embarrassment when your mother-in-law arrives; Our product will make you more sexually attractive to the Swedish Synchronized Swimming team; instead of Our product will clean your clothes reasonably well or Our product tastes good. It's useful to recognize propaganda.

But it troubles me, deeply, that I have been given power with no restraints. There were no limits to what I could prove. There were no limits to how forcefully I could twist the meaning of an event. I had tools in my toolbelt, but nothing and no one to ensure that I was hammering nails rather than heads. Intellectual power with no restraints is no less dangerous than political power with no restraints. Demagogues and tyrants aren't terribly different. It's just that the latter leaves more visible proof of his power because it is wrought on bodies rather than on minds and wills.

I don't like to toot my own horn. . .

2006-08-30T11:27:00.000-04:00

So I'll let R. R. Reno do it for me.

Ok, so it's not MY horn that he's tooting; however, the strong implication is that my perspicacity in choosing Duke is highly commendable.

Not incidentally, all the people he mentioned at Duke have recommended that I read Reno's book(s). So I guess the feelings are mutual.

In praise of speed bumps

2006-08-28T13:16:00.000-04:00

I know that journalists have to report on both sides in order to claim objectivity or balance for their work. And I realize that whenever there is any law is proposed, someone must oppose it, if only for form's sake.

But I have to admit: the "con" side reported in this article doesn't strike me as particularly cogent.

The difference between therapeutic or reconstructive surgery and elective or (merely) cosmetic surgery is well-established, in theory, practice, and insurance codes. I find it hard to believe that the law being proposed would somehow eliminate this long-standing distinction to the detriment of those who actually need care. The proposals on the table put procedural speed bumps in the way of minors seeking elective surgery. Not even roadblocks--speed bumps.

I can't fathom the person who can't tell the difference between a sixteen-year-old seeking reconstructive surgery after a radical mastectomy and a sixteen-year-old seeking breast implants in order to make the cheerleading squad. The proposed law does not even keep the latter from doing it; nor does it take away her parents' authority to direct her medical care. It just says, "Whoa. Slow down." (Honestly, she needs someone to tell her that her wellbeing does not, in fact, depend on those implants. If her parents don't, perhaps the shrink will.)

2006-08-24T15:33:00.000-04:00

Just in case you were wondering . . .

Graduate stipend not enough? You could always sell your reproductive services. Sound a little odd? Wait'll you see the fee structure:

Surrogacy Fees

Egg Donation Fees

I found the following site via an advertisement at the McCalls sewing pattern website. Yes. I was shopping for skirt patterns and saw an ad: "Surrogate Mothers Wanted. First Timers. Stay Home with your Family. $18K to $25K."

I could more than double . . . almost triple my annual income by gestating. Doesn't sound like near as much work as grading an extra section of papers for a tenth of the income.

2006-08-16T18:48:00.000-04:00

MeChurch

I absolutely cannot stop laughing.

Thanks to Jana for sending this via email.

Update:

I just caught sight of the tag: IngniterMedia. Obviously, this fauxmercial is a parody of hyper-accomodating churches in general, but "IgniterMedia" does seem to be a reference to the United Methodist Church's current ad campaign, produced by Igniting Ministries. If you'd like to watch some of those spots, try here.

I actually like some of these. Or, rather, there are two things that strike me as "not as awful as I feared" about some of these.

One, they are precisely not the sort of commercials the spot above is parodying. Watch "The Gift." A woman goes all over her town, leaving various-sized packages in a number of different locations. After giving away numerous gifts (some hard to deliver), she comes home and is surprised to find a medium-sized package on her own doorstep. The voiceover proclaims, "If you're looking for ways to share your gifts with others, and possibly even receive something in return, . . . " (and so on). I think that's a vision of a real church. Sure, it doesn't mention Jesus. (Ok, so that's a big problem.) But it doesn't picture church as a place where "it's all about you."

Two, they are also not the commercials that the UCC is currently running. I've only seen one of them, but it sickened me. It "worked" by a harsh, thinly-veiled criticism of other churches and denominations, proudly proclaiming, "We're better than they." That was truly repugnant. (Oh, and that one also failed to mention Jesus, didn't it?)

I think IgniterMedia's next fauxmercial should parody that commercial. "MeChurch. We're better than everybody else."

2006-08-09T10:20:00.000-04:00

Professors, pastors,

. . . and others in high-demand jobs, consider using this the next time you are away from your email:

Dr. So-and-so Such-and-such is out of the office until This-particular-date. She is being held in a secure undisclosed location with severely restricted access to email until then.

She is, alas, unable to: read drafts, write letters of recommendation, write reviews, evaluate book proposals, grade long-overdue incompletes, offer tenure evaluations, discuss grade changes, sympathize with your plight, share in your joys, ponder with you the wonders of life, imbricate, aspirate, mediate, interpolate, intoxicate, inculcate, adjudicate or exfoliate. Rest assured she would like to do all these things, really she would, honest; but Powers Far Greater Than She forbid it.

(Sent along to me via email.)

2006-08-02T08:10:00.000-04:00

Is this a good thing, or a bad thing?

I was rejected twice yesterday.

The second rejection I not only understood but positively courted. I was in a jury pool for a medical malpractice trial that was slated to last two months or more. The details of the case involved a premature infant who did not survive, doctors who may or may not have made good care decisions, a mother who may or may not have smoked a pack and a half a day during the length of her pregnancy, disputes about causation, disputes about medical judgment, etc., etc.

Since I know more than I care to and have rather strong feelings about malpractice law, action theory, medical paternalism, and the ethics of maternal substance abuse, I felt no guilt about sharing my extensive education and strong convictions concerning the disputed facts of the case.

The principles bid a hearty and cheerful adieu to me and my strong convictions.

But the first rejection, I have to admit, stung a bit.

It was for a criminal case involving a charge of Driving While Impaired and Running a Red Light. It was only supposed to last a day and a half. The judge gave a stirring lecture about the solemn responsibility of jury duty, giving each party a fair hearing and participating most directly in our democratic process and so on, and I was rather . . . ok, I admit it, moved. I really wanted to do this.

The jury selection started with some very general questions designed to weed out people with clear and insurmountable biases.

Have you ever been the victim of excessive force by a police officer, such that you would have problems believing the testimony of this police officer?
One gentleman had been the victim of police brutality as a teenager--he even remembered the officer's name, thirty-five years later--but didn't feel any general prejudice against police officers, so he was retained.

Have you ever served on a jury before, and was there anything in that experience that gave you reservations about the criminal process?
Several had served on juries before. All thought it was an acceptable criminal process.

Were you the foreman of the jury on which you served?
None had been. But I took quiet note of the question. What did this have to do with removal for cause? Why would serving as the foreman be cause for dismissal?

Have you ever been charged with this offense?
None had.

Have you ever lost a loved one to a drunk driver?
Two people had, and confessed themselves unable to think of the defendant as innocent, even without hearing any facts in the case. The judge lectured them sternly about burden of proof and the defendant's right to a fair trial, but they persisted in the face of his disapproval and got themselves removed for cause.

Another man claimed to have lost four college friends, but he believed himself able to give the evidence its proper weight and had no partiality for either side. He was retained.

Do you know any of the parties in this case?
One woman knew the defense attorney, because he was her brother-in-law's attorney as well. She was not immediately dismissed, however, because she was not privy to the details of her brother-in-law's case and felt no bias toward or against the defense attorney.

And so on.

And then we were asked about our places of employment and our spouse's place of employment. The prosecutor asked various clarifying questions of us all: Do you like your job? In the course of your job, do you evaluate other employees and make decisions about hiring and firing? (Again, I quietly noted the question.)

And then she got to me.

DA: Please state your name, your marital status, your occupation, and your spouse's occupation if appropriate.
Me: My name is Sarah Sours; I'm married; and my husband and I are both students at Duke.
DA: What do you study?
Me: Theology and Ethics.
DA: Your Honor, the State would like to thank Ms. Sours for her time, and ask that she be excused.
Judge: Thank-you, Ms. Sours, for your time; you are excused.

Well. That was an adventure. The gentlemen who thought that their past experiences might not be a hindrance to their objectivity were fine, but my occupation--which is, of course, a preoccupation with the relationship of justice and mercy, precisely the drama that would be played out in miniature in that trial--was enough to prompt a peremptory challenge. She used one of her few peremptory challenges on me. Because I study theology.

Hm....

It wasn't the student part. She kept a med student, an undergrad, and a technology student.

It might have been the "strong leadership" part. If they were weeding out jury forepersons and people who hire and fire, they might want to weed out someone with enough leadership and personal presence to stand in front of a large classroom. And, actually, as soon as I said, "Theology and Ethics," about five of the potential jurors swiveled their chairs around to look at me. But then again, they kept the investment banker who had served as a marine infantry officer.

I suspect it was the theology part.

We don't want pastors and theologians deciding matters of justice and mercy. 'Specially not women pastors.

No siree. That would be dangerous.

2006-07-31T09:29:00.000-04:00

Be afraid. Be very afraid.

As a theologian-ethicist, I hear a lot of "What's this world coming to?!" statements. Certainly, I have a professional obligation to perpetuate them myself. (And I haven't hit my quota for this month--I might not get my Christmas bonus this year!)

Most people, upon meeting me for the first time and discovering my occupation, offer such statements.

"I can't believe that the President is going to VETO that stem cell bill. The President of the United States is going to veto funding that will save people's lives. What's this world coming to?"

Or,

"I can't believe how utterly vampiric this world has become. People are culturing vaccines in aborted fetal tissue. What's this world coming to?"

Or,

"Stupid d@mn Gay Marriage Amendment. It's not gonna pass. How can people not know how wrong this is? What's this world coming to?"

Or,

"Stupid d@mn Gay Marriage Amendment. How did it ever get proposed?! How can people restrict our freedoms like this? Oh, the Spanish Inquisition is upon us again! What is this world coming to?"

And so on.

Frankly, I think all these comments are slightly off.

It is not a certain medical or sexual issue that heralds the downfall of life as we know it.

It is this patent grant.

What is this world coming to??

2006-07-28T12:42:00.000-04:00

Duke Names New Lacrosse Coach

My favorite quote from this article:

"John Danowski is a great coach, on and off the field," Alleva said. "He’s well known in the lacrosse community not only for his championships but also for his character and integrity, and for bringing out the best in his players."

Oh, thank goodness. We could use a little of that around here.

I wonder how hard they looked at coaches who knew how to "bring out the best in their players" and yet weren't eight-time conference champs.

2006-06-30T09:59:00.000-04:00

The next lecture of the conference was given by Cheryl Bridges Johns, a Pentecostal (Church of God) theologian.

She gave a very general lecture on what salvation means in the Pentecostal traditions, but she used the very helpful lens of her attempt to engage liberation theology with charismatic traditions.

Her most striking statement--and the one that subtly undergirded all she said--was more-or-less as follows: "Those who are influenced by liberation theology tend to emphasize the plight of the poor, and affirm the dignity of the poor, while holding in contempt the religion of the poor."

One can immediately see her point. Of all the Christian traditions, Pentecostalism and Catholicism simply include more low-income and poverty-stricken people than the others (I suspect that's both in total numbers and in percentages.) Yet these are the two least "respectable" faiths in academia--particularly as they are expressed within less educated or less economically comfortable communities. You may remember the kerfluffle when Candidate Kerry attended Eucharist (cameraman in tow) immediately after the Vatican announcement that pro-choice candidates should refrain. One of the staff members of his church gave an interview justifying the priest's choice to serve Kerry Eucharist. He spoke glowingly of the intellectual and political sophistication of his church's members, and practically crowed, "We're not Saint Around-the-Corner."

Those faithful Catholics who are less sophisticated, less educated, and less well-off than this man, who find peace and strength and life at Saint Around-their-Corner, were found by him to be lacking. I'm sure he would look with equal disdain on those who attend Around-their-Corner Assembly of God. As far as such men are concerned, the poor should be helped out of both their material poverty and their religious superstitiousness.

Now, to be fair, my husband pointed out that Gutierrez, for example, would be aghast at such a statement; he once gave a sermon at Duke in which he advised that anyone wishing to help the poor should first live with them and . . . prepare for a shocker, here . . . ask them whether and how they should helped.

But Johns was going even farther in her lecture. She was suggesting that not only do the poor know something about what kind of help they need. They also may know something about our salvation that we need to hear from them.

How very provocative.

2006-06-29T07:45:00.000-04:00

I've just returned from the annual Center of Theological Inquiry conference in Sedona, Arizona, and will attempt to share with you my educational experience. (I have already shared my airline experience elsewhere.)

If you don't know anything about CTI, the short, short version is that it is one of many (Lilly-funded) efforts to bridge the gap between church and academy. It takes intellectually-inclined pastors and puts them together with high-quality, church-oriented scholars; presumably this strengthens the ties between both and affords a space for useful cross-pollination. The annual meeting features presentations from those scholars, centered around whatever theme that year's focus has been.

This year's focus was "Salvation and the Church." The lectures addressed whether and how the Church functions in God's salvific plan.

First up was Robert "Jentz" Jenson.

He used our experience of embodiment as a metaphor for the experience of being Christ's Body, the church. Just as, he said, we sometimes experience ourselves as indistinguishable from our bodies, while at other times we experience ourselves as a soul/mind having a body, so also the Body of Christ sometimes experiences itself as indistinguishable from Christ's living presence and other times experiences itself as a Body directed by its head, Christ.

Unpacking that a bit . . .

Our bifurcated experience of embodiment:

Imagine a world-class athlete, swimming the race of his life in the Olympics. He is one with his body. It does exactly what he wants it to; but he doesn't have any awareness of it as separate from his essential being. His mind and soul and will are tied so intimately together with the performance of his body as a body that it does not seem to him that he has a body. He simply is himself, and his self is an embodied one.

Now imagine a world-class scientist with a physically degenerative condition. Her mind and soul and will are simply on a different track than her body. Her body is falling apart--it's not obeying her will, it's not aiding in the performance of her essential being. She is still herself, but her body seems not to be part of that self: it is "other" than herself.

Now, it's important to realize that both experiences are intrinsic to the human experience of embodiment. You are your body, and you have a body. Both statements are wholly true, at all times. But your experience may highlight first one, then the other reality; or your life may seem to include only one (at least, up until death). But neither one is more essentially true of humanity than the other, even though they seem to be contraries.

In the same way, Jensen claims, the church experiences herself, the Body of Christ, sometimes as being Christ's living presence, sometimes as being headed, directed, or even chastised by Christ as her head.

So, like the athlete whose body is in perfect continuity with his will, the Church is in perfect continuity with her head, Christ, and thus experiences herself as Christ-in-and-with-the-world. Since Christ's presence is a saving presence, the church can even experience herself as a saving presence.

But, like the scientist whose body functions (and dis-functions) apart from her will, so the Church is NOT in perfect continuity with her head. She experiences herself as broken, wayward, imperfect, and being corrected. In that case, she is herself being saved--the salvific presence is enacted upon her.

Both of these, according to Jenson, are wholly true at all times; but it is natural to our experience as the Body of Christ that one or the other seems to predominate at any one moment.

My concern with this lecture--which I found thoroughly persuasive, as far as it went--was that in trying to unite the two poles of embodied existence in such a tenuous way (in effect: well, it doesn't look it, but it's true anyway) would lead to incomprehensibility, especially for those whose own theology emphasizes one or the other pole of bodily existence or soteriology.

And, lo and behold, one of the attendees was "provoked" ("But, I mean that in a good way!") that Jenson used headship language of Christ.

Imagine that--headship language of Christ!

2006-06-21T09:16:00.000-04:00

"I am certainly the most fortunate creature that ever existed!" cried Jane. "If I could but see you as happy! If there were but such another man for you!"

"If you were to give me forty such men, I never could be so happy as you. Till I have your disposition, your goodness, I never can have your happiness."
(Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice)

Among all of Austen's strange ideas, this is the one that must be strangest to her twenty-first century readers. That someone's happiness must be dependent upon his character, irrespective of the accidents of history which it produces? That it is not the circumstances of one's life but the disposition of one's soul that determines happiness?

An opinion piece in last week's Time magazine suggested that it was unsurprising and unproblematic that studies show childless couples and empty nesters to be happier than parents in the midst of childrearing. It is normal, the author suggested, to be happier when relieved of burdens and able to pursue one's wishes unencumbered by dependents. Children are a burden, he says--no use pretending otherwise. Sure, they give a certain sublime pleasure to their parents, but those pleasures are few and far between, and easily overwhelmed by the unpleasantness of caretaking.

What a self-absorbed view! What a shallow experience of happiness! I can feel pity for those parents for whom the demands of caretaking are so overwhelming that moments of joy are not possible. And I can feel nothing but awe for those parents who find joy in caring for children who will never attain independence and "full" adulthood, who will always be in need of care.

But what about those unexceptional cases represented by these studies--the "normal" parents of "normal" children, who appear to equate happiness with freedom from burdens, from inconveniences, from dependents and caring? In short, from difficulty of any kind? I suspect that Austen is right (and she takes her cue here from the ancients: Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, Thomas)--that it takes a certain moral fiber to be able to be truly happy. And that moral fiber, if one has it, allows for, or rather produces, happiness irrespective of the immediate presence of pleasure and the absence of pain.

In another book, one of her heroines experiences a moment of joy that is too intense for celebration--she describes it as rather solemn and sobering. Those who have had such moments should not be able to mistake pleasantness for happiness. Perhaps the best reading to be given the studies referenced in the Time opinion piece is that those who were polled failed to distinguish between the two.

But how sad, nonetheless.

2006-06-16T13:43:00.000-04:00

Well, France has the Eiffel Tower

We've got the Grand Canyon; Turkey has Pauline archeological sites.

It's only fair that Namibia get to exploit it's newly discovered tourist niche:
Celebrity Baby Hospital

How would that be counted in your GDP? Tourism? Or medical services?

2006-06-13T10:00:00.000-04:00

Proof That Brilliance in One Field

. . . (say, physics) doesn't lead to any particular knowledge or wisdom in another field (say, economics or politics or anthropology).

Or maybe it's proof of the imperialist imperative of science.

Humans Must Colonize the Universe!

Whichever the case, I was amazed at the sheer fantasy involved in Hawking's prescriptions and predictions. 20 years to a viable settlement on the moon? 40 years for Mars? Hawking is clearly a scientific genius but an economic neophyte and a sociological idealist.

Exactly how much would a settlement on the moon cost? And we're supposed to pay for it . . . how? And how justly will the benefits and the costs be distributed?

Hawking's program is the classic example of a spendy, sexy, scientific solution to an anthropological problem. Our problem is greed and oppression, not lack of available resources. Our problem is selfishness and short-sightedness, not insufficient opportunity. More opportunity and more resources will not reform the character of the people who dispose of them.

2006-06-12T11:22:00.000-04:00

Way back in the Twenties and Thirties, social and biological scientists were looking at fertility rates and noting that the "lesser" ethnic and racial groups reproduced more than the "better" ones. In the words of one respected scientist, "Fertility decreases as one rises the hierarchy of being." (Translation: non-whites reproduce like rabbits because they haven't evolved quite so far away from their animal roots as have whites.)

It was, obviously, a convenient way of marking class, social worth, and intellectual responsibility, as well as encouraging certain behaviors in the respective populations. So, one could encourage immigrants, blacks, and Catholics to reproduce less in order to attain better social status; and one could also encourage limited, planned reproduction among the well off, both so that their "better" genetic stock would be maintained and so that they would not descend into rabbit-like production. The two-child family was both a status marker and a social responsibility.

Today's social scientists are a little more subtle in their efforts to manage reproduction, but there is still a certain social program implicit in various apparently scientific or merely demographic "news" items.

Case in point: The Liberal Baby Bust.

Note the markers of scientific rigor: these comments are based on (cue reverent music) statistics.

Note the lack of even a pretense of charity towards difference: conservatism, patriarchy, Mormonism, and religious fundamentalism are as good as identical, and are highly correlated with high fertility, while progressivism, secularism, feminism, and freedom are all of a piece, and all in danger of extinction-by-reproductive-attrition.

Note the unstated implication: two-children families are once again affirmed to be the most progressive, most intelligent choice.

Foucault was right: the modern nation-state has no need of force. Social programming can be achieved far more effectively and efficiently by the judicious use of a little gentle propaganda.

2006-05-30T22:09:00.000-04:00

The only bright spot to this article is the last three words of the first paragraph.

The really, really sad part is that such an egregiously repugnant platform will make the merely immoral seem moderate by comparison.

2006-05-27T12:27:00.000-04:00

So, I guess the fact that (in the Catholic tradition) widowed persons can remarry and divorced persons cannot does not much matter to these folk.

2006-05-25T07:30:00.000-04:00

It's a cruel world out there

Yes, it is. A recent study suggests that healthy lobsters avoid sick ones like . . . well, like the plague. This is a very effective means of infection control, of course, so we can't blame the crusty old beasts.

I could make some comments about how humans do this too--how modern medicine allows us to shunt the sick off into some other place, where we only have to see them at our leisure--but I won't.

Because, in fact, I think the important part is that it is, to use Thomas's words for an idea with which he may not agree, proper to humans to care for the sick, even at their own peril. It is morally praiseworthy in most societies, and positively obligatory in Christian ones, to risk infection, inconvenience, and intimacy by caring for one whose body is in revolt.

Thomas says that man's proper activity--the activity that distinguishes man from other animals, the activity that is most emblematic of man and therefore whose exercise is most necessary to man's happiness, the activity without which man would not be man--is Reason. Rationality is that activity which man shares with the higher beings (angels, God), and in which the lower ones (animals, even the highest non-human animal) do not participate. It might almost be said to be the imago dei.

Sometimes I buy this, but other times I sense that Thomas was dead wrong.

Sometimes, I think self-sacrificing compassion is the imago dei, man's proper activity, the activity without which man would not be man.

2006-05-22T06:57:00.000-04:00

The Least Stressful Test Ever

Well, I passed my French language exam.

Surprise.

Actually, I did have a scary moment or two. I had been reading Lossky's Theologie Mystique de l'Eglise d'Orient to prepare for the exam. Tough stuff--great writing, very heady. But the exam was two pages of what appears to have been a preacher's manual. It was a pop-level analysis of the Parable of the Dishonest Steward. It had colloquialisms. I almost panicked. But fortunately, my RogerCollins had colloquialisms. I passed.

Fortunately, it wasn't street French. That's indecipherable.

2006-05-18T09:26:00.000-04:00

And in another shocker, research reveals that funding may bias findings.

Surprise.

I wonder who funded this study?

Just kidding.

In all seriousness, y'all knew about this anyway, right? Do you know how it happens? When self-interested profit-making enterprises (read: drug companies) fund studies, they fund the same study in many, many cities. Then, they keep tabs on the studies in all the cities. When a particular city's study is not going well, they *yank the study* before its completion, so that they don't have to report adverse findings. If a study is not completed, it has no findings to report.

Voila.

I'm sorry to say this, Bacon and Descartes, but even the Scientific Method is prey to the vicissitudes of human self-interest.

2006-05-17T08:59:00.000-04:00

Those who make predictions about such things are predicting a precipitous decline in the number of dissertations completed in the next ten years.

Why?

Because of this. Alarming news indeed.

2006-05-15T07:19:00.000-04:00

I'm always . . . shocked? baffled? incredulous? at the arguments offered by reproductive endocrinologists when they are questioned about the ethics of this or that aspect of their work. I'm often led to wonder how our educational system can allow someone that deficient in basic logic not only to graduate from high school but to have an advanced medical degree.

This article on sex selection in the US really contains some doozies.

My favorite, of course, is the most wide-ranging, the one which blesses all:

"In the United States we really guard and cherish reproductive choice and we are very reticent to allow the government to impinge on that."

(This is from the reproductive endocrinologist featured in the article, a Dr. Steinberg.)

Note how "choice" itself is a value--a virtue?--irrespective of the actual choice made. Because we value choice, he's saying, the government is not allowed to discriminate between good and bad choices. What's interesting, of course, is the implication that neither is he. He is a service provider; he is under no obligation to exercise judgment over his clients' choices; indeed, he too must honor their choices, whatever they may be.

Now, even if one grants the inadvisability of government intrusion in certain life choices (I do not, but I'll play along), one does not thereby require that individuals lend their aid to those making choices. It is perfectly legal for a man to drink himself into a coma every night of the week, and twice on Sundays, but no bartender, liquor store owner, or airline attendant is legally required to provide him with a single drop of alcohol. It is perfectly legal for a woman to take an entire bottle of Tylenol in the hopes of killing herself, but it is not legally required that her husband help her with the child-proof lid. It is perfectly legal to fire someone for having red hair. It is perfectly legal to . . .

Well, I could go on. But the point is that legal permission does not on any account equal moral obligation. One cannot point to the law and say, "See, it's allowed, so I must help!" If there is a realm of judgment into which we are reluctant to allow the government, that realm does not suddenly become a judgment-free realm.

But there are others!

The article, of course, brought up some of the ethical problems with Steinberg's work. One was the potential demographic effect: if parents were allowed to choose the sex of their child, demographic imbalance might result. (I am confident, by the way, that whichever way the demographic imbalance swung, it would be bad news for women. Too many men, too few women? The women would become the slaves of the men. Too many women, too few men? The women would become the slaves of the men.)

One ethicist's response to this problem was. . . well, it bordered on hilarity: the particular procedure that Steinberg uses (pre-implantation genetic diagnosis) is too expensive to make much difference in global demographics.

So, poor people in India and China resort to infanticide (they peek at the genitals and kill newborns who have the wrong ones), but rich people can afford to do it differently, so we don't have to worry about them. The moral weight of their act is excused because it is presumed to have little statistical impact. Even if this were the case, we all know better than to do morality-by-statistic, don't we? But in fact, the recent research on this very topic demonstrated that the wealthiest provinces in India have the greatest gender imbalance. Precisely because the wealthy can afford to fly to the United States and do what is illegal in their country.

The article also referenced concerns about waste embryos. (We can talk some other time about how the journalist cast this as a concern only of "conservative Christians.") When a procedure produces five to ten "waste" embryos for every two implanted, oughtn't we be concerned about the reasons people are using it? Can't we prioritize? Doesn't "family balancing" seem a little inadequate to the moral weight of discarding ten embryos in order to implant two?

No, no! Dr. Steinberg responds: "His clients mostly opt to keep fertilised eggs in his eggbank rather than discard them."

Oh, well that changes everything! They're not throwing the embryos away--they're just storing them for all eternity. That's totally different.

Please.

In fact, Dr. Steinberg has a ready response to any ethicist that suggests negatives to his work:

"People have been warning of that slippery slope since the first in-vitro baby was born more than 25 years ago, but we haven't gone down it yet."

Do you remember some of the things people were worried about 25 years ago? I do.

That post-menopausal women would use IVF to bear children.

That excessive numbers of waste embryos would be created. (Current estimates on the number of stored embryos ranges from 100,000 to 400,000. No estimates exist on the number of embryos simply discarded.)

That such embryos would be treated as research material.

That people would use the technology to select for the sex of their baby.

I wonder what would count as evidence that we're on that slope.

2006-05-10T12:04:00.000-04:00

I'm not sure they're ready for him!

Stanley Hauerwas told me this morning that he's finally being translated into French. They--whoever "they" are--are translating The Peaceable Kingdom; he is going to Paris in the fall for an academic Hauerwas extravaganza.

This truly boggles the mind. I really think he will hit them like a depth charge. I can't think of any theologian less amenable to the French mindset than Hauerwas.

But we both hope that he'll catch on.

He hopes that his work will help break up the logjam between liberals and conservatives, as well as finally move France past the Revolution, where it is still hopelessly mired.

I hope that French-speaking Europe will suddenly be looking for Hauerwas students (e.g., ME) to teach in their schools.

2006-05-08T07:03:00.000-04:00

So That's Where He Got It!

One of the many things I enjoyed about David Bentley Hart's The Beauty of the Infinite was his analysis of the modern market mentality.

As I've written in a fuller review elsewhere:

Where most Christians criticize the market for being too "materialist," he accuses it of disguising or rejecting material reality. What the market buys and sells is not "things" and "stuff," but novelty, popularity, or happiness. (Looking at advertising throughout history is always an enlightening activity.) It is not the physical, material worth of an object that determines its price, but its immaterial value. The reason for this, he says--and this is a brilliant point--is that material needs can be fulfilled, at least for a time. When you've eaten enough, you leave the table. But when your needs are not physical or material, they are eternal, and will never be satisfied. You'll always buy more--especially when your need is for novelty!

I thought this was (as I said) a brilliant point, but it was not original! Apparently, Hart has read his Thomas. (Big surprise.)

From the Treatise on the Passions, ST I-II 30.4:

I answer that, as stated above, concupiscence is twofold; one is natural, the other is not natural. Natural concupiscence cannot be actually infinite: because it is of that which nature requires; and nature ever tends to something finite and fixed. Hence man never desires infinite meat, or infinite drink.
[Thomas then makes the point that humans desire food in successive infinity--that is, we will get hungry again--rather than actual infinity.]
But non-natural concupiscence is altogether infinite. Because, as stated above, it follows from the reason, and it belongs to reason to proceed to infinity. Hence, he that desires riches may desire to be rich, not up to a certain limit, but to be simply as rich as possible.

In other words, any desire that is prompted from our animal nature is a desire that belongs in the natural order of things, and will be limited. I hunger, I eat, I am filled. I feel cold, I clothe myself, I am warm. Any desire that comes from our reason, however, which pertains to our infinite soul and is designed to perceive things as rational beings (God, angels) perceive them, is at least potentially infinite in scope and duration. But as his example makes clear, either the object of the desire or the working of the Reason may be wrong. My fallen Reason may perceive something as good, though it is, in fact, bad, and lead me to desire it infinitely.

But there is a second way in which infinite vs. finite desires may be parsed: whether they are means or ends.

Another reason may be assigned. . . . Because concupiscence of the end is always infinite: since the end is desired for its own sake, e.g., health: and thus greater health is more desired, and so on to infinity. . . . On the other hand, concupiscence of the means is not infinite, because the concupiscence of the means is in suitable proportion to the end. Consequently those who place their end in riches have an infinite concupiscence of riches; whereas those who desire riches, on account of the necessities of life, desire a finite measure of riches, sufficient for the necessities of life, as the Philosopher says.

This starts to sound like Augustine (although he's taking it from Aristotle, of all people!!): whatever object is desired as an end will be desired without limit. But the implication is that placing the wrong object in the position of "end" will lead to an inordinate desire of it. There are appropriate ends to desire--good health, happiness, friendship, and, ultimately, God. These things ought to be desired as ends, and certainly God ought to be desired infinitely. Placing that which ought to serve as a means in the place of the ends--money, food, reputation, "stuff"--disorders their pursuit, such that one pursues them with the infinite desire with which one ought to pursue the truly good (ultimately, God).

Brilliant stuff.

2006-05-05T06:57:00.000-04:00

Well, I don't envy Broadhead his job.

When I'm in front of my ordination board, I talk about vocation and giftedness. I say things like, "My calling is clearly to teach pastors. My seminary professors--particularly the ones who were ordained themselves--made such a difference in my understanding of the pastoral life that I want to share it. Seminary professors are crucial members of the ministry of the church."

And so on.

Really, in my heart of hearts, I just. don't. want. to deal with this. I have no interest in playing nursemaid and policeman to a bunch of over-privileged, over-grown toddlers. I'd rather be teaching remedial grammar to second-career pastors than remedial ethics to well-educated undergrads.

Now, I'm not naive about the problems that go on in seminaries. (Our own institution dealt in its recent history with a professor and one of his graduate students leaving their respective spouses for each other.) But it's a different set of problems. And dealing with them is different when there is an underlying agreement that something called Christian Ethics might exist, even if we don't always know what it is and how it relates to us.

When everything's up for grabs, you can't even begin the conversation.

2006-05-02T07:03:00.000-04:00

So, Children and Family ethics specialists out there, tell me:

Is this a good thing, or a bad thing?

I wonder when the studies on the "Brangelina Effect" will start.

2006-05-02T07:00:00.000-04:00

And now you can be there too!!!

Duke has put last week's lecture/debate on their website: yes, an audio recording of THE WHOLE EVENING.

I think this Internet Age thing might not be so bad after all.

2006-04-27T08:42:00.000-04:00

Two nights ago, I attended a lecture/debate featuring Richard Hays and Bart Ehrman. They used The DaVinci Code as a jumping off point to discuss the classic issues of biblical scholarship: whether the Gospels tell us anything reliable about Jesus, whether the Church has suppressed all but the "orthodox" views of Jesus, whether text corruptions have obscured what we can know about the authors' intent.

Although I learned nothing new in terms of content--I am familiar (to put it mildly) with both scholars' work, and NT studies will form a significant part of my dissertation research--I did learn a lot about holding such events.

First of all, the room was packed out, standing room only, in the biggest lecture hall the Divinity School has. (We moved to the new Chapel, which was also too small, but I don't think we were supposed to. Don't tell anyone.) Five hundred-odd community people came to hear two scholars debate on the technical details of biblical scholarship. Who'd'a thunk it?

Two, the debaters clearly had fun doing this--and their enjoyment was contagious. They cracked jokes (often at each other's expense, but not in a vicious way), they ruthlessly mocked Dan Brown, they put their whole selves into making their points. It was lively. Imagine that--scholarly debate. Lively.

Three, I really admired Hays's debating style. While he wasn't afraid to toss a well-aimed dart or two (the first audience questioner asked, "From the flyer, I thought we were going to talk about The DaVinci Code, not all this Bible stuff. Why aren't we talking about The DaVinci Code?" and Hays's response was, "Because it's not worth talking about!"), he made a point of speaking about his debating partner with profound respect. While it was clear that they had some serious disagreements on substantive issues, he would make a point, again and again, to highlight commonalities. ". . . And I know this is where Bart and I agree." "I want to highlight the importance of what Bart just said about . . ." At one point: "This is a lot like a presidential debate, in that there's never enough time for the candidates to tell you what they really think about an issue. Of course, the major difference is that Bart and I actually want to tell you what we really think about these issues." In fact, he came off rather better than Ehrman in this respect.

He was able somehow to combine vigorous and actual disagreement with respect in a way that I almost never see done (or done well). Never once . . . well, ok, except for when he talked about Dan Brown. . . did he display any of that pseudo-scholarly snobbery that passes for intellectualism in some circles. He answered unsophisticated questions with grace and gentleness. ("Why can't we just believe that the Gospel writers saw this all in a vision? Why do we have to think they had sources?" "Well, I'd want to focus on the claims that the text makes for itself, and no NT test except Revelation claims to be received in a visionary experience. The author of Luke tells us that he has done research and listened to eyewitness accounts. I think we should take the author's claims for himself seriously when we talk about how he might have written his texts. That doesn't at all discount visionary experiences--but it respects the text a little better, I think.")

It would be worth my while to practice this kind of graceful argument. It's certainly not one of my natural strengths.

2006-04-26T07:34:00.000-04:00

Well, here I am, in my first official, professional-type credit:

ATLA Digital Library

Isn't that exciting?

I actually digitized and manipulated (via Photoshop) all the images in the collection. Every single one of them is "Photo by Sarah."

If you'd like to see some of the images in our sub-collection, try here. Click, on the left, "Browse the collections," and when you get to the search screen, put a check mark in the box next to "Images of mainline protestant children . . ." Then "submit." (I tried to link directly to the collection for you, but it wouldn't let me.)

My favorites, if you page through the collection at all, are the advertisements. Oh, what a hoot!

2006-04-25T13:43:00.000-04:00

A fascinating article on higher education faculty salaries: Chronicle Article on Salaries

A few interesting things:

* Obviously, the male-female salary gap. And this is in education, where people tend to be more liberal than the general population. I'd hate to see stats for businesses.

* The break-down by type of institution. Church-related doctorate-granting institutions have average salaries somewhere in between public and private schools, while church-related bachelors-only schools have the lowest average. I wonder whether that's related at all to political leaning, population served, or denominational politics.

* My reaction to the listing. I'm salivating at the thought of earning a Lecturer's salary at a community college. "Wow!! What would we DO with ALL THAT money?!?! Thirty-five thousand dollars, for just ONE of us!! Wow! We'd be RICH!"

2006-04-22T06:39:00.000-04:00

Killing the Black Body, by Dorothy Roberts

My mentor suggested this book as a "relief" after I finished reading Beauchamp & Childress's Principles of Biomedical Ethics. I've written elsewhere about why I might need "relief" after reading B&C. Roberts certainly offered a challenge to the dominant mode of bioethics (as represented by B&C, whose work is not just the standard read, but the gold standard), but perhaps not challenging enough.

If you're not up on why people might challenge the standard read, the short version is that it is heavily invested in moral reasoning that privileges autonomy or maximizing choice. In Beauchamp and Childress's case, even though their bioethical principles include justice, beneficence, and non-maleficence as well as autonomy, when you read through their chapters on the three other principles, the other principles are defined in terms of autonomy. So, their definition of distributive justice is a distribution that mitigates inequities for which one is not responsible (which one didn't choose). Their definition of maleficence is anything that impinges on the freely chosen life plan of another. Obligations of beneficence are optional when they involve more than minimal inconvenience.

So, ever since the Nuremburg trials, the understandable and admirable goal of various proposed or enforced laws, policies, professional ethics statements, and so on is to protect or maximize the autonomy of the individual chooser. Never again should non-consensual medical procedures be performed; never again should doctors lie or coerce; never again should the search for knowledge justify cruelty. All well and good.

Now, this interest in personal autonomy has channeled the discussion of reproductive liberty into a certain predictable course. When one speaks of reproductive liberty and whether and how it should be abridged by the state, one assumes certain things about reproduction: that it is an activity undertaken by an agent whose choices and life plans must be honored even by those who may not agree with her choices and plans. That which is good, reproductively speaking, is that which enables the agent to make better, more informed choices, or to carry out those choices more effectively and efficiently. Distributive injustice occurs when technologies and information exist, but are not available to a certain chooser because of the selfishness, paternalism, or economic policies of people or nations. (So, even though IVF produces waste embryos, it is good because it helps couples realize a particular goal; failing to offer pre-natal diagnostic tests is a paternalistic refusal to allow a woman to make a choice about the course of her pregnancy; etc.)

Roberts does not challenge autonomy as a pre-eminent value of bioethics; she challenges how the standard read ignores the racial dimension inherent in the discourse of reproductive liberty. She traces the history of reproduction among African-Americans, highlighting how reproductive liberty has been an elusive dream for Black women. (I'll use Robert's self-designation for the rest of this review.) Under slavery, their wombs and the fruit thereof were the property of their masters; Margaret Sanger, late in her career, joined with eugenicists to plant clinics in predominantly black and immigrant areas (Roberts wants to believe that Sanger's motives remained pure, though, despite her evil bedfellows); welfare reform proposals often seek to limit the "irresponsible" fertility of minority women; doctors who treat infertile Black women often push adoption rather than referring them to a reproductive endocrinologist; even members of the early Black Panther movement instructed Black women that it was their duty to reproduce for the sake of the race--no liberty to be had, even in the fight for liberty.

She challenges both classic pro-choice discourse as well as pro-life discourse. Pointing to one practice for disciplining pregnant slaves--digging a hole in the ground just large enough for her belly, so that she could be whipped without damaging the valuable commodity in her womb--she suggests that any discourse which seeks to protect a fetus at the expense of its mother's choices participates in this slave-holding mentality. (I cannot agree with this as a blanket statement, but it is certainly a provocative read on, for example, laws that seek to criminalize prenatal drug use among minority women.) Yet she also suggests that pro-choice activists focus too much on securing birth control and abortion services for minority women, at the expense of efforts to secure pre-natal care and funding for child assistance programs. They assume, in other words, that offering liberty and justice to Black women means offering them ways to have fewer children, not more. When economic reality forces women to choose between food and childbearing, Roberts suggests that offering access to abortion is not enough. The economic reality must be changed, so that the woman can have real choices.

In the end, however, her constructive proposals fail to offer anything new, save a powerful read of the history of reproduction as influenced by racism. Her analysis of the ways in which poor and minority women are overlooked or ignored (and even demonized) in many discussions of distributive justice is convincing. If one is committed to maximizing autonomy as *the* appropriate goal of justice (distributive and otherwise), one will appreciate her challenge to give greater attention to maximizing the autonomy of minority and low-income women. One may wonder how on earth the government is supposed to finance this autonomy-maximization (which necessitates, for example, infertility treatment for any who might want it, including the destitute). But one will have no serious objection to her basic argument: if autonomy is to be protected at all, it must be protected for Black women.

If one would like to hear a more serious challenge to the role of autonomy in the pursuit of the justice, the common good, or individual happiness, it's not here.

2006-04-21T07:35:00.000-04:00

There are two genetics-related stories on my internet news wrapup today. I can't not click on them anymore. (The sad, sad byproduct of taking a class in something--you see it everywhere and have to know about it.)

In the first, Genetics plays role in chronic fatigue syndrome, genes are demonstrated to have a possible health outcome:

The research is being called some of the first credible scientific evidence that genetics, when combined with stress, can bring on chronic fatigue syndrome — a condition so hard to diagnose and so poorly understood that some question whether it is even a real ailment.

But note the secondary function genetics is playing. A condition whose existence "some question" is demonstrated to have a genetic component. It, therefore, can be presumed to be real. This is testimony to the very strong explanatory power of genetics in our culture. If a patient reports symptoms, her report may or may not be accurate and/or helpful. If her genes report an anomaly, now that's something. DNA testing is supplanting even that forensic favorite "the eyewitness" as a sure-fire jury convincer. (Hmm. . . wonder if that will come up at all in a certain upcoming Durham legal battle.)

Of course, this is a subset of a more broad acceptance of the explanatory power of tangible medical data. One of my classmates read a book on "jury nullification"--cases in which the evidence for a defendant's guilt was uniformly understood to be conclusive, but the jury nonetheless acquitted. She said that in the majority of those cases, defense counsel gave some sort of physical, medical evidence that won the jury's sympathy. So, if a defendant claims to have been physically and sexually and emotionally abused all his life, the jury believes this history not to have any mitigating effect. But if the defendant claims some sort of structural injury, which can be shown on, say, a brain scan or a genetic test, juries are more likely to accept that explanation.

Is this a good or a bad thing? I'm not sure I know.

In the second story, Liver Transplant Saves Babies, mothers carrying a genetic defect which is uniformly fatal to their infant sons (but not their daughters) were spared the tragic consequences of their genetic defects. Early liver transplants saved the lives of two baby boys, easily the youngest ever recipients of liver transplants.

Keeley Gibbs knew it was risky to get pregnant. Doctors warned that she and her son born in January could have died. The young woman from Eldorado, Ill., like generations of her family's females, carries the gene for a rare metabolic disorder of the liver. OTC-deficiency is fatal in males, and in utero tests diagnosed the fetus with it. Gibbs wouldn't consider abortion. She survived the pregnancy and birth, and her son, Jacob, received a lifesaving liver transplant at St. Louis Children's Hospital at the youngest of ages, 10 days.

Now, perhaps the broader availability of cadaveric and live-donor livers accounts for the positive tone of this story. The subtext of this story, which you will easily pick up from the full article, is, "Isn't it great that medicine is overcoming genetics?" I'm guessing that a similar article might be written if kidneys were the subject.

I wonder what the tone of the story would be if the affected organ were the heart, or the lungs. The overwhelming attitude toward the more hard-to-come by organs is expressed by the all-knowing, all-powerful writers of bioethics scripture, Beauchamp and Childress: when a resource is scarce, guarding against "waste" is the most pressing moral obligation.

If Ms. Gibbs were the carrier of a genetic anomaly that uniformly destroyed the heart of her male sons, would doctors have been so sanguine about her "choice" to conceive and bear a child? Would she have received more pressure to abort, or at least use IVF combined with pre-implantation genetic screening? Or, if she was rabidly pro-life, to use one of the two available sperm-sorting techniques to bear only daughters? Would there have been some reaction to her failure to make a more "responsible" choice? Some blame-placing that justified keeping her child(ren) off any transplant list? Something along the lines of, "You know, this heart could have gone to a baby that was in a car accident, or had cancer. Some other child will die because this mother didn't use the reproductive technologies that are already out there to avoid this!" Would the afflicted child have been placed on a priority list at all?

2005-10-10T15:37:00.000-04:00

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