In a decision with major implications for church-affiliated colleges and their employees, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously held today that the First Amendment precludes the application of federal employment-discrimination laws to religious institutions’ personnel decisions involving workers with religious duties.

Many federal appeals courts and state courts had previously declared that there exists a “ministerial exception” to employment-discrimination laws rooted in the First Amendment’s clauses protecting religious freedom. Today’s ruling, however, is the first in which the Supreme Court formally recognized the “ministerial exception” as legal doctrine.

 

The other interview was with British philosopher A. C. Grayling and former Canon Chancellor of St Paul’s Cathedral in London Giles Fraser. They were discussing Grayling’s The Good Book: A Humanist Bible, which is just what its title suggests. What I wanted your opinion on is why anyone should consider this a “version” of the Bible? (As it was presented by the BBC’s John Humphrys who moderated the discussion.) Listen to the discussion which opens with a comparison of Gen. 2:15-17 with the opening lines of Grayling’s work.

15 And the LORD God took the man, and put him into the garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it. 16 And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat: 17 But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.

The Good Book

Chapter 1

1. In the garden stands a greed. In the springtime it bears flowers; in the autumn, fruit.

2. Its fruit is knowledge, teaching the good gardener how to understand the world.

3. From it he¹ learns how the tree grows from seed to sapling, from sapling to maturity, at last ready to offer more life;

4. And from maturity to age and sleep, whence it returns to the element of things.

5. The elements in turn feed new births, such is nature’s method, and its parallel with the course of humankind.

Of course this is not a translation or even a version of Genesis. It contains “truths” that I would suggest one could glean from the Bible and through natural revelation. This book that Grayling “modestly” offers (as the Canon pointed out, how modest can you be with your name on the spine of a book calling itself a “Bible”?) is intended to be a moral guide and text. Fraser rightly points out that the Bible is much more thank being about morality, it is about salvation. When Humphry said, but isn’t being saved all about doing good he was quickly corrected by Fraser. In fact, Fraser made my favorite point about the Bible, it is about real life and people, it is violent and messy with lots of things going on. That, to me, makes it far more compelling than a moral treatise (although the latter is no doubt better for battling insomnia).

Clearly Grayling is simply generating sales with the title of his book and perhaps it is the BBC’s fault for presenting this as a face-off between the KJV and the “Humanist Bible.”  Still, it irks me that this should be presented as a “version” of the Bible. Its not.

On the other hand, I can firmly recommend the version of the Bible that my daughter gave me for Christmas: The Brick Bible: A New Spin on the Old Testament. This is the print version of BP Smith’s http://www.thebricktestament.com/. This is as valid a version as the many graphic novels out there (or R. Crumb’s Genesis). I recommend it, but it is not the complete Old Testament. Ruth is missing, for example. And Smith has made certain interpretations with which I disagree. For example, he seems to depict Jonathan and David’s love for another as something more erotic than platonic. True, 1 Sam. 20:41 does say that they kissed and we know that they had a love for one another that went beyond that of a man for a woman and it is very much the trend to interpret this as a sexual relationship, but I am not convinced of that. My point? Not so much that Smith’s representation is wrong but that we can have a discussion about his interpretation. We cannot do that with Grayling’s “version” which isn’t.

Score:

LEGO Builders 1 — Philosophers 0

 

1. Not very progressive is he?

And does it help that the first one is actually a billboard put up by a church, or that the ad agency responsible for the second one is run by a Jewish man?

via Comics I Don’t Understand » Offensive or Not?.

 

Some religious beliefs and practices — including belief in God and regular prayer — increase with years of education, the research found.

 

A 2-to-1 ruling by the appeals court in that circuit last year took away the right of Wisconsin, and potentially other public colleges and universities, to support some student activities while denying funds to organizations for worship services, proselytizing, or other activities that explicitly involve the practice of religion. Wisconsins rules permitted the funding of many activities organized and run by religious student groups. But the rules barred activities related to prayer or proselytizing. Among the activities that Wisconsin told a Roman Catholic group could not be financed leading to the litigation were summer training camps with Roman Catholic Masses, a program to bring nuns to campus to help students determine if they have the calling to be priests, and the distribution of Rosary booklets.

The majority opinion from the appeals court said that once a state university supports student activities that involve leadership development or counseling, it cant exclude some activities simply because they are religious in nature.

via News: Religion Financed With Student Fees – Inside Higher Ed.

Still, I am not convinced that this is an unalloyed good. If the university is being completely even handed and supporting all groups equally that is appropriate, but is it really in the best interests of either the student groups or the institution to be in a financial relationship?

I would add one further wrinkle and challenge IHE’s title just a bit. If we ask the question a different why does our view change? The student fees are not going to “finance religion,” they are going to support students who are in some way religious. Does that perspective make a difference? Perhaps.

 

This was a leading entry in PepsiCo’s Super Bowl commercial contest. When word leaked out about it, the Catholic Church went bananas.

Pepsi has been trying to squash every occurrence of it on the Web; so, I don’t know how long this will be up.

I cannot confirm that this is the case, that the Catholic Church was upset or that Pepsi is trying to remove the ads, but I wonder if you all think this is funny or sacrilegious? Or perhaps neither.

 

Working out their own variation on the politically charged sci-fi subgenre pioneered by District 9, filmmakers David Gidali and Itay Gross inject a dark dose of civilian paranoia into an Israeli setting with their striking new short film, Secular Quarter #3.

Juiced up by UFOs, the visual-effects-rich clip (embedded above) pictures an alien intervention that takes place in a slightly futuristic Jerusalem ridden with walls and dome-shaped cages.

Avatar producer Jon Landau and other judges at the Jerusalem 2111 International Animation Competition awarded the festival’s $10,000 first prize to Secular Quarter #3 director Gidali and cinematographer Gross for doing the best job of creating an “urban sci-fi vision of the city of Jerusalem” as it might look a century from now.

You can see other entries from the competition at Wired.com.

 

Photo by: Google Earth

The Jerusalem Post (in a section that is in this instance oddly titled “Iranian Threat”) reports that Google Earth images reveal that the Iran Air headquarters has a Star of David on its roof. The building was built prior to the revolution by Israeli engineers and the Jewish symbol has gone unnoticed for over 30 years. Putting images on roofs in hopes that Google Earth will capture it is a recent phenomenon so clearly these engineers were indulging in a private amusement by including the Star on the building that is in Teheran’s Revolution Square.

So if you were to make a statement by putting an image on your roof for Google Earth and the world to see what would you put up there?

 

Beyond Making the Grade - Christian Brady
What do you take away from a college course – what gives it lasting significance or value? In a culture that claims to offer innumerable shortcuts to the easy A, what habits will help you maintain your integrity as you focus on lasting goals

When I was in college we had a faculty member come to our IV meeting and he shared the quote cited in the subject line, which was not attributed then, but I now know is attributed to Hegel. Now when this was presented to us back in the late 80′s the faculty member interpreted the quote in a very positive manner, suggesting that you do not have to be in an “official” capacity doing church work to still be serving and worshipping God. I thought I would riff off this quote for my talk, but I was surprised to find the context to suggest a different interpretation.

“Das Denken ist auch Gottesdienst,” as Hegel said to his housekeeper. “The universal Power,” he says, “is within you. It has not to come and so be present with you; it is you that have turned away from it. It is there all the time; you are not far from it, but you have turned your face the other way.”¹

This is a very different reading than the one presented to us all those years ago. This is where I am asking for help. The above is the fullest citation of this story that I can find and yet the author does not cite his source. In fact, I cannot find any citation for the source, rather the story is simply repeated. Does anyone know the actual source or is this simply apocryphal (albeit in keeping with Hegel)?

Thanks!

 

1. Philosophy, Vol. 10, No. 38 (Apr., 1935), pp. 144-153, Published by: Cambridge University Press on behalf of Royal Institute of Philosophy, http://www.jstor.org/stable/3746734