It’s getting hard to know what to do if you are a fundamentalist these days. Should you try to change the school system? Or should you pull out of it in order to seal yourself off in a sectarian community of homogeneous beliefs?

One strategy is to bring prayer into schools “to demonstrate the importance of religion”.

OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) - A state lawmaker wants voters to amend the state constitution to allow prayer in schools, a proposal that critics say is unnecessary.

Democratic Sen. Tom Ivester of Elk City has introduced Senate Joint Resolution 8, which would send his proposal to voters in the state. The first-term lawmaker says the measure is needed to demonstrate the importance of religion.

If that was the actual motivation of the proposal, is it not more rational and constitutional to have a religious studies course? Besides, religion has been an important aspect of many public school curricula in social studies and history courses. Demonstrating the importance of religion and practicing religion are two distinct things. Someone should send Sen. Ivester the memo about this simple fact.

Since that won’t work, why not wage war against the school systems since they will not openly endorse Bible based Christianity? That’s the strategy someone else is proposing.

Exodus Mandate Project founder and director retired U.S. Army Chaplain Lt. Col. E. Ray Moore explains here:

“The Call to Dunkirk is a special emergency effort to try to get other ministries, churches, pastors, and the major Christian right and pro-family movement to join with us and the other K-12 home-school ministries in rescuing the children from the public schools during the year 2009,” he says.

“The real target of the liberals and the left has always been the children. And we can see in California where the conservatives won Proposition 8 — the vote [was] 52 to 48 [percent] — but…when Proposition 22 was voted on [in March 2000], they had a 61-percent margin of victory. So the culture is turning against Christianity and against the pro-family movement primarily because we’ve allowed our children to be educated in their schools,” he adds. “They’re converting our children; we’re not converting them.”

Perhaps it is the penchant of conservative Christianity to eschew critical thinking and education in general that is the problem. The oddity here is that, as with the cohort of home-schooled students at Patrick Henry College, the goal is to indoctrinate kids with immutable propositions in order then to send them into an alien world for which they lack the ability to navigate or understand. Yet the goal is for this naive and ignorant group of kids to change said world.

But Moore and Ivester may be right about one thing, the church is doing a poor job of educating kids. Indoctrinating will only create a facade of stability in the foundations of knowledge without developing the skills to critically engage a powerful set of structures that are counter-factual to what they are taught. The goal should be to develop an equally powerful set of critical tools to train kids in the discipline of discernment. However, this means a critical engagement of what they are being taught.

Teaching and indoctrination cannot truly co-exist. That is the problem, not what the schools may or may not be teaching kids.

I have already posted my top 15 albums of the year here. Here are a few other random favorites.

BOOKS

• Fiction - The Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler
• Social Theory - The Sacred Canopy by Peter Berger
• Social History - The Age of Abundance by Brink Lindsey
• Education - The Decline of the Secular University by C. John Somerville
• Sociology - Soul Searching by Christian Smith with Melinda Lundquist Denton

What amazes me about this list is that I did not read a single work of biblical theology or systematic/dogmatic theology. In part it is because of what I have needed to read for my dissertation. The other part is that I have lost much interest in theology due to its inherent lack of practical application to human need. It is an aesthetic venture for me anymore. It is interesting, but greatly irrelevant to do or to spend too much time consuming due to the very practical needs and responsibilities expressed in the Gospel. This may be more of a topic for discussion in the coming year.

BLOGS

Two stand out this year.

The Immanent Frame and Cato @ Liberty. The former hosts simply the best thinking in the sociology of religion and the latter contains the best political thought on the web.

MOVIES

I did not see many movies released this year, but Iron Man was very good. THX1138 and Brazil were the best I saw this year.

TELEVISION

The only two shows with any real redeeming values are The Biggest Loser and Little People, Big World. The former only results in amazing outcomes for people who are in serious physiological and psychological needs and both are met at the same time. The latter is perhaps the only family in the media that is not over-exposed and not dysfunctional. The Roloffs are great to watch not because they are little people, but because they are healthy people with a healthy family.

One more thought on “best of lists”. They are evidence of abundance and relative affluence. One who needs to find food or evade injustice has not the time nor energy to consume such artifacts of leisure - including irrelevant posts on the web such as this.

If we are suffering illness, poverty, or misfortune, we think we shall be satisfied on the day it ceases. But there too, we know it is false; so soon as one has got used to not suffering one wants something else. - Simone Weil (1909 - 1943)

2009 celebrates John Calvin’s 500th birthday. After having been officially called out of my “nerd closet” on Facebook today, the fact that Princeton Seminary’s reading plan to read Calvin’s Institutes in a year sounded appealing to me legitimated that claim. However, it will be a Web 2.0 enabled program which sounds cool:

We will not be sending out daily readings of the Institutes via email. They will be available on iTunes, RSS, mobile phones, and this website. Another option would be to buy a paper copy of the Institutes and use the Reading Guide to follow along.

I am seriously considering taking the plunge since it has been a while since I spent a little time with John Calvin. It would also be interesting to see how I read through it now given that my theological worldview and dispositions have changed so radically since I first read it.

Find more information here. Anyone else taking the plunge?

Thanks to BRC for posting it today.

Here is a new site dedicated to the birthday event as well.

Rev. Robert “Monty” Knight pastor of First Christian Church in West Ashley, S.C. understands that non-entanglement of the state with religion is what actually helps, not hinders, the success and development of religion contrary to what many evangelicals who would like to see some version of a theocracy at large in the United States. On the issue of the court of South Carolina blocking the issuance of Christian themed license plates he writes:

“I am…a conservative evangelical Christian minister,” Knight writes. “And I am quite prepared to explain why the court’s decision does not discriminate against Christians. Both the ‘non-establishment’ and the ‘religious freedom’ clauses in the First Amendment protect and promote the freedom, vitality and integrity of many different kinds of Christians as well as those who profess other religious convictions or, for that matter, no religion.”

Knight is absolutely right. If we are to give any stock in Rodney Stark’s application of rational choice theory in the religious marketplace (his sociological model is data driven and supports an economic set of predictors for religions that succeed) then non-entanglement of the state in the religious market leads to greater success, especially for smaller religious groups and various sects. We could further argue that sectarianism is one of the factors that leads to continual growth and sustainability of religions. Without a free religious market, sects cannot evolve the way they have in the United States.

Stark goes on to make the claim that Europe was never really Christianized in large part because of the political monopoly on religion that catholics and protestants have maintained. Sects were always crushed in order for the normative state-endorsed religion to maintain is power share in the religious economy. Even after the Reformation signaled massive sectarianism in Europe, the Protestant religious hierarchy assumed the same level of political dominance in their respective regions. Hence the anabaptist movement which is arguably the first authentic and successful sectarian movement at the time. There a primary issue was the political dominance of the Lutherans and it resulted in rather horrific bloodshed for years.

This is the evidence that those who want America to be some version of a theocracy simply cannot know or choose to ignore (for what other end is there for intentional entanglement of evangelical Christianity with the state?). The more that American state becomes a function of or conduit for specific religious dogma, the less effective and potent will be the very religion that they would like to see not only be dominant, but be normative for the society.

One only needs to read Owen Chadwick’s classic text on the secularization of Europe and Stark’s recent work on the topic for evidence of what happens when a religious monopoly is supported by the state. It simply kills religion in the sovereign bounds of said state. Even Rome knew this. Rome was rife with various religions and quite tolerant of religious belief in order to maintain civil order. Apparently Jesus was quite aware of this too. Alas, the theocratic evangelicals are, to be blunt, either too stupid about these facts or too power hungry to know the difference. What they want will kill the very Kingdom of God they wish to establish in the bounds of the United States.

I have seen numerous post-Christmas morning reflections on the booty that folks have received. I always find such reflections a strange mis-direction of the meaning of Christmas. It is as if leading up to the day it is about awaiting the coming of Christ. But immediately after that day it turns into a number of reflections on “stuff”. So, what “stuff” did my wife and I receive today? Nothing. Literally no things at all. Not a thing from each other and not a thing from another family member. Not even a card.

Since we have been married we have never exchanged gifts as a matter of principle. Neither of us feel especially attached to cards since we find it odd to say “I love you” with the words and pictures someone else crafted who could care less about us. We literally view ourselves as so joined that our life together is the gift and we are but mere participants in it. What we give to each other is each other - literally. Since we have been married, since our very first Christmas ten years ago, we have given each other time. We do something special together. We have never purchased any “thing”, but will do something together to make a memory that lasts. Our first Christmas was doing absolutely nothing but staying in our humble first apartment in seminary housing. We watched a couple of movies (one of them was PCU) and went for a long walk on a very cold day. There were very few people out. The world was ours. It was the first time that time itself was something that we owned.

Today marked the first year our oldest son was old enough to enjoy the experience of receiving gifts. Our youngest was pretty happy too. The entire day was about spending time with our boys and each other. We did nothing else. They did nothing else. We played with their new trains. With the exception of a short movie (standard fare for afternoon “down time”) we did not flip on a TV. The greatest gift that any human being can give or receive is the unconditional love and embrace of another human being. It is even more pronounced inside the sacred boundaries of the family.

So that is what we gave each other today. We gave each other the gift of time made sacred. What better gift to give each other in remembrance of a day in which the eternal crossed the fragile plane of the temporal and in an instant made that which was profane, perfect. We gave and received the gift of grace this Christmas as we have the previous nine together. What better gift is there to give than the gift humanity itself was given on Christmas day? Christ redeemed time for us that we may give time for grace to each other.

 A wreathed garland of deserved praise,
Of praise deserved, unto thee I give,
I give to thee, who knowest all my wayes,
My crooked winding wayes, wherein I live,
Wherein I die, not live : for life is straight,
Straight as a line, and ever tends to thee,
To thee, who art more farre above deceit,
Then deceit seems above simplicitie.
Give me simplicitie, that I may live,
So live and like, that I may know thy wayes,
Know them and practise them : then shall I give
For this poore wreath, give thee a crown of praise. 

George Herbert (1593-1633)

Bible bible bible bible. Bible bible bible bible bible bible bible. Bible bible bible bible bible. Bible bible bible bible bible bible bible. Bible, “Evil one Satan evil one, bible, evil one, Jesus”. Bible bible bible bible bible bible. bible bible bible bible bible bible. Evil one, “Jesus Jesus Jesus Jesus. Jesus Jesus Jesus Jesus Jesus Jesus, bible bible bible bible.”

Bible bible, bible bible bible bible. Bible bible bible bible bible bible. Bible bible, bible bible bible. Bible bible bible bible bible bible bible bible. Sin sin sin sin sin sin sin sin sin sin. Sin sin sin sin sin sin sin sin sin sin sin sin. Sin sin, sin sin sin sin sin sin sin sin sin sin sin sin sin sin sin sin. Saved saved saved saved. Sin sin sin sin sin sin sin sin sin sin sin sin. Bible bible bible bible bible. Bible bible bible bible, bible bible bible bible. Bible bible bible bible, bible bible bible; bible bible bible bible bible. Sin evil sin evil. Sin evil sin evil, sin evil sin evil sin evil sin evil. Bible.

A Top 10 was not going to happen this year. Besides “Top 10″ is hackneyed. If you think something should be here and is not, I can probably guarantee that I heard at least part of it. Or, it is not in my genre mix right now so I did not listen to it at all. So this is what I liked this year and you should find it in your soul to like it too! Why? It’s good music. And there are only two kinds of music, good and bad. The following in is ascending order from better to best so read on.

Darker My Love - 2
Yes this album is totally derivative of anything that Jesus and the Mary Chain did especially later in their career. But damned if that is not cool shit. This is a great album for fun, but with a decidedly psychedelic kind of grooviness that a band like The Dandy Warhols might deliver. It’s an album lack lacks pretense and gets its groovy mojo from the wells of space and a tad of the discotheque. It’s also one of a few on this list that went unnoticed by and large. Good albums that will stick around in my mind deserve props. And as I write that I have the track “Blue” from the album pounding in my brain. Nice touch.

Experimental Aircraft - Third Transmission
It’s both shoegazey and post-punk NYC style even though they are from Texas. Dream pop with an attitude, but they have established their own identity here unlike the Fleeting Joys who can’t shake the mimicry they share with the late great My Bloody Valentine. They do a nice job of mixing the elements of punkish low-fi that the dinginess of the East Village is all about with some of the spaciness of London. Plus, the drum sound pounds clearly though everything similar to the big sound of Secret Machines. It makes for a nice synthesis of the purity of space and the grime of the wet city street.

Brad Sucks - Out of It
Dude likes Beck. Dude also happens to enjoy a bit of Jack Johnson over a drink. What better way to celebrate than to splice the two together. Brad Sucks, a one man band with no fans, does exactly this in one of the catchiest albums of the year. If you don’t enjoy this, your soul needs a rhythmic bypass. This is kind of what I was looking for Beck to do this year. But since Beck has kind of lost his sense of humor and irony and is now getting more and more melacholy, Brad gives an uplift. Good clean fun for all occasions!

Magnetic Morning - A.M.
What could possibly go wrong in a collaboration between Swervedriver’s Adam Franklin and Interpol’s Sam Fogarino? Nothing really. Sure the audacious cover of a young girl in a very awkward “f me” position on a couch is attention grabbing, but the image almost betrays the transcendent shoegaze, dream pop flavor of the album. But rather than bore us with drone and ambiance, it’s the melodic interplay that catches the ear. the chord progressions on the short but sweet opener “Spring Unseen” and especially “No Direction” fuse pop sensibility, but go somewhere so much better than expected.

David Byrne & Brian Eno - Everything That Happens Will Happen Today
So what can get better than the legendary ambient sound-craft of Brian Eno with the uber-creative impulse of David Byrne? Not much else on this wonderful album where two creative minds click and meld together incredibly well in an amazing group of songs that blend very well together. The opening track Home takes you there, or someplace like it. One of the best songs of the year and the album does not disappoint from that point onward. Not a new collaboration for these two, but it certainly is their best. Fantastic addition to 2008.

Portishead - Third
Like moth to flame, I pursued this abstract piece of artistry. It is hard to understand where this one starts and begins, but it is totally not what you expect from a record. the melodies are almost non existent, but there is some kind of Boards of Canada meets Laurie Anderson magic that happened with Portishead here. they came back after a long absence, but left a big dent in the music world with this piece. It is more to be appreciated and discovered than simply enjoyed. And it is worth the effort you have to put into it, in order to get the most out of it.

Spiritualized - Songs in A&E
After a really disappointing foray into white man meets Gospel music in a secular suit with Amazing Grace, Jason Pearce gets back to business in a newly enlightened frame of mind. There is definitely a return to some of those Spaceman 3 days here, but it’s a definitive look forward. Gone are the songs about having beer for breakfast or other musings on dark introspection. Rather, we hear the strength of the soul’s ability to overcome the fragility of the body and human circumstance echo through strained vocal lines.

Meshuggah - ObZen
There is something very accessible and catchy to Meshuggah’s latest set of tunes. After two drops into the bucket of the Devil’s furnace of cryptic abstraction, they return to something of their pre-2000 brutality with grotesque flair. With clean chromaticism, poly-rhythmic delight, and endless pounding of their mega de-tuned 8 string guitars to burst through machine like drumming, it’s all a metal fan could ask for. Actually it’s probably too much for most metal fans, but Meshuggah does not cater well to poseurs or those with a soft disposition.

The Verve - Forth
After a few albums alone that started out really well and then fizzled, Richard Ashcroft proves to us how much he needs Nick McCabe to make the music work. There is a real sense that this one picks up right where Urban Hymns left off. There are definitely post-shoegaze moments of pop here, but then songs like Valium Skies show how great songwriting is still beating in the hearts and dreamy brains of these blokes. It is a pleasure to hear that unique sound once again. Few albums are more cleanly produced. The production sounds kind of like the cover.

Deerhunter - Microcastle
In many ways this is an album in three distinct parts. The first is a great homage to a psychadelic indie rock trip that carries clear if intricate melodies and enough groove to keep things moving Aquarian age style. The soft middle is as if the band took a tab of acid and went back to the recording studio for an late night of tripping. The album closes with a bookend of tunes more straight ahead in a distinct garage trajectory. It ends a little more post-punk than Aquarian but with an obligatory jam section in the fantastic “Nothing Ever Happens”. It’s overall a fantastic exploration of texture and sound that can’t be missed.

Fleet Foxes - Fleet Foxes
Not for those who are not fans of Brian Wilson. To say that this album is not scarily similar to something he would have written misses completely the most influential musician of the 20th century other than Elvis. Wilson is really why the Beatles are what they are to us today because he invented a sound with Pet Sounds that we heard afresh a few years ago with Smile!. Someone has to carry that torch and boy do the Fleet Foxes do that with flair and honesty. A simply gorgeous sounding album from start to finish that makes one yearn for some distant shore away from where-ever you are. It’s another installment to something ca. 1969-1972 and done extremely well. College kids can share a new CD with their parents that their parents should be able to like just as much with a smile.

Sigur Rós - Með suð í eyrum við spilum endalaust (With a Buzz in Our Ears We Play Endlessly)
For their fifth album the Icelandic dream gazing fellows give us something a little more straight forward and accessible with great results. Yes, we can actually characterize most of the songs on this release as “catchy”. The average listener in the world cannot understand a word, but it does not matter does it? With far more acoustic sounds, Sigur Rós finds a way to re-invent music. There is a sense that they trimmed this one down to deliver music with a little less aplomb and progressive exuberance. Again, they craft beauty out of soundscapes in places we can only expect just because we have heard them do it before.

M83 - Saturdays=Youth
Many experiments with bringing back 80’s new wave have come and gone in recent years. Most of them were boring after a short and steep peak if interest. M83 has staying power. They bring a dream-pop element and fuse it with dance pop electronica to give the 80’s an update with edge. They are new wave of that by gone era mixed with the edge of the 90’s goth moment and the recent nostalgic riffs on the past, but with their own somewhat gothic identity. In short this is an addicting album. If I was unsure what I wanted to hear, all year long this was kind of a default. It’s so rich and yet does not require a lot of mental commitment to enjoy. Good for any kind of listening situation from the background to a cocktail party, to the restful descent into sleep it makes a nice environment to live in.

Annuals - Such Fun
This is nothing short of abso-fucking-lutely brilliant. Few recordings pack as much arrangement and instrumentation without over crowding the flow and melody of the music than this album. Amazingly catchy songs spill out of atmospheric yet intimate production. “Hot Night Hounds” with its layered percussiveness has a reminiscence of Paul Simon’s The Rhythm of the Saints but well-grounded in the indie music of right now. Yes they will be compared to Arcade Fire. But they have so much less pretense and self-importance with what they do. There is a simplicity that governs the structure of what are fantastically written songs that most people can find something to enjoy and appreciate which makes them a bit closer to the New Pornographers. But don’t get caught up in the comparisons. Annuals have made their own name here and bring something fresh and unpredictable to the table.

Margot & the Nuclear So and So’s - Animal!
“Margot” actually released two albums this year. Not Animal! is in many ways a companion to Animal! as it includes alternate takes on five of the same tunes, and a modest sampling of b-sides. The production and arrangement on this release, the release the band wanted all along, is noticeably better. This is one of those December releases that virtually all lists must have missed. If they passed over it, they have lost their souls in preparation for the Grammy awards celebration of mediocrity along the way. “Margot” offers us a collection of tunes that easily hearkens back to some of the better days of Pink Floyd sprinkled with the OK Computer Radiohead, and a deliberate sprinkling of American folksiness to keep all indie fans content. It all comes with enough of the currency of postmodern mixing of grand instrumentation and texture to stab you a bit with post-punk alt vibes. If that sounds like both an interesting and anticipated merge of influences, it is. More than that, they pull it off with their own identity and execute it so, so well. It’s a great trip that deserves some attention at the beginning of 2009 and will probably receive it. Look for a second printing (they have released it on vinyl and iTunes and will probably re-release in other formats later) and for this to wrongly appear on best of lists for 2009. But that’s better than not appearing at all since it absolutely should. To my critical ears, it topped the offerings for 2008 and deserves a late push into the top spot this year.

N.B. I don’t like TV on the Radio. I was not a big fan of Return to Cookie Mountain and I am not a fan of Dear Science which is a bad dance album, a bad electronica album, and a bad R&B album which all waters down a poor indie offering. Not sure why people dig this at all! I tried, but I did not inhale.