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CNN was kind to broadcast Obama’s acceptance speech and related celebrations live on their website last night, which was great for a TV cheapskate like me (Crystal and I have a small dinosaur of a set that we lug out for the occasional DVD). I watched a decent amount of the introductory fare, but I only caught the first and the last parts of the speech proper. From what I saw, Obama did a fine job honoring those who had helped him in his campaign. I thought his words about John McCain were particularly gracious, and I commend him for that.
Here’s my one thought about the event: this was a church service for many people.
Think about it. There was an opening prayer (concluded in Jesus’ name), special music (National Anthem), liturgical recitation (Pledge of Allegiance), dancing, tears, and an address by a national savior. I think for a lot of folks, last night was akin to a religious experience.
I remember I was just getting ready to begin my freshman year in college. We were on a quarter system then, so classes didn’t start until around mid-September. September 11 was a Tuesday and I was supposed to move in that Friday.
That morning I was sleeping in bed when my mom came into my room to wake me up and tell me that a plane had flown into one of the Twin Towers. I remember acknowledging it but I just went back to sleep. (I know…that was pretty lame of me.) Later I found out that a plane had hit the second tower.
I can remember riding in the car with my dad later that evening and seeing gas stations backed up with lines of cars because there were fears that prices were going to soar. It was a surreal feeling.
What about you?
I saw WALL-E in the theater last night and really enjoyed it. I found Pixar’s creative muscle to be delightfully flexed. It’s not every day you can pitch a robotic love story and have it rake in $62.5 million during it’s opening weekend.
My brother, ever the political pundit, suggested an environmentalist agenda behind the movie. He may be onto something. After all, Josh Harris said the movie made him want to recycle everything.
However, in an interview with World Magazine’s Megan Basham, WALL-E screenwriter and director Andrew Stanton set the record straight:
“People made this connection that I never saw coming with the environmental movement, and that’s not what I was trying to do. I was just using the circumstances of people abandoning the Earth because it’s filled with garbage as a way to tell my story.
I always knew that I wanted WALL•E to be digging through trash for two reasons: One, I wanted him to be the lowest on the totem pole. It’s a janitorial job; it’s the saddest, lowest status amongst his kind; and it just makes him that much more of a lonely guy. Two, trash is really visual. Even the littlest kid understands when there’s stuff in the way and it needs to be picked up, so I didn’t need to spend time explaining his job. And then I just reverse-engineered from there, ‘OK, if there’s trash everywhere, how did it get there?’”
Seth Godin praised the film as a brave move on Pixar’s part.
Have you seen the movie? What did you think?
In a Christianity Today article posted back in February 1999, Mark Noll responded to the following question:
“Considering the biblical injunction to submit to civil government (Rom. 13:1 and 1 Peter 2:13-14), were Christian colonists justified in participating in the Revolutionary War?”
Noll tips his hand from the beginning when he writes:
Only one population in the colonies clearly was justified by classical Christian reasoning in taking up arms to defend itself—the half-million or so enslaved African Americans who were held in bondage as the result of armed attacks upon peaceful noncombatants.
He clarifies his sentiments later:
To the extent that colonists really thought that Britain intended systematic despotism, their going to war could perhaps be justified in classical Christian terms. Armed action to preempt an enemy’s destructive intentions had long been considered moral. But if the problem in Britain was not primarily a malicious conspiracy but insensitive bungling, war would not have been justified.
His conclusion? Here it is:
As a result, Americans fought a war to gain the kind of freedom that Canada, New Zealand, and Australia were simply given after not too many decades. An evil precedent was also established in America for later times of national crisis by employing the Bible eccentrically (instead of theologically) and by worrying about classical Christian justifications for warfare hardly at all. The lesson here is not that America had a uniquely evil history, for the Founding Fathers were morally exemplary on many other matters. It is that using the Scriptures for public disputes requires a full measure of reasoned calm as well as passionate engagement.
What are your thoughts?
Controversial author Shane Claiborne packs an old Baptist church in Pittsburgh to discuss a new book he co-authored called “Jesus for President: Politics for Ordinary Radicals.”
Claiborne spent 10 weeks working with Mother Teresa in Calcutta, India, and has authored the book “The Irresistible Revolution: Living as an Ordinary Radical.”
Tim Challies reviewed “The Irresistible Revolution” last month.
Cedarville University created a stir by un-inviting Claiborne from a lecture he was to deliver at the school in February.
Claiborne has blogged at times at the God’s Politics blog. You can find out more information about him at The Simple Way’s website.
