Prof. John Stackhouse’s Weblog

A few correspondents have asked me what I think of the new “Evangelical Manifesto,” recently released by a group of evangelical leaders (including—full disclosure—some friends of mine).

Another friend, Prof. Alan Jacobs of Wheaton College, grumps in the Wall Street Journal about how boringly moderate it is, among other sins. But let’s just see if that’s such a bad thing.

The nice people at Merriam-Webster tell us that “manifesto” means “a public declaration of intentions, motives, or views: a public statement of policy or opinion.” Jacobs wants the writing to be “punchy” and the document to be “short,” although he recalls that the most famous manifesto ever, the communist one, amounts to a small book.

Still, this one is twenty pages, and when I read it, I wondered why anyone would care what I thought about it. It strikes me as completely sensible, moderate, intelligent, a bit wordy here and there, and kinda dull.

And isn’t that a pleasant change!
Read the rest of this entry »

A month ago I showed my film-making son Trevor the bizarre and troubling movie by Terry Gilliam, Brazil. Trevor recently wrote about how much he disliked the film, especially its ending, and how, a month later, he’s still thinking about that film and its message. And he’s glad he saw it after all.

Check it out here.

More and more of us are spending more and more time commuting. “Super-commuters”–those who take 90 minutes or more each way–are now in the millions in North America. What are we doing during those hours upon hours in our cars, buses, trains, and the like?

Some of us are getting dumber: listening to (bad, which is to say, typical) talk radio or pop music; fuming at other drivers while trying to shave a few minutes off the commute; or simply letting our minds idly flit from one vaguely anxious or annoying or trivial thought to another.

Let’s get smarter.

Read the rest of this entry »

A number of American evangelical leaders, among whom I count several friends, recently wrote an open letter to President Bush urging a Middle East policy that includes “a viable, independent, secure state.” Indeed, they say that their support for such a state is a matter of mere “historical honesty” and is “the only way” to end violence in that region.

I have to raise two cheers for this declaration, but not three.

Read the rest of this entry »

One of my favourite magazines is Books & Culture, a sort of Christian New York Review of Books. Its editor, John Wilson, is perfectly suited to his job: generous, clear, and demanding toward his authors, and in his editorials astonishingly erudite, invariably wise, and never, ever dull. If you’re tired of “dumb” religious media, here’s one to restore your faith in, well, faith.

Your servant happens to have a piece published in the most recent number, offering some provocations regarding evangelical views of missions. And there’s lots more in the archives, including a terrific evisceration of Richard Dawkins’s The God Delusion by mega-philosopher Alvin Plantinga.

I’m betting that anyone who likes this blog will really like this magazine. Check it out!

I was preparing this morning for my fourth interview on the life of Jerry Falwell when I thought I’d look into the strange case of his taking on the Teletubbies. This was a man, after all, who took on pretty big foes: Bob Guccione and Penthouse, Larry Flynt and Hustler, the liberal news media, the Democratic Party….

So what was he doing “outing” Tinky Winky?

Almost every article I looked at this week mentioned Falwell going after Tinky Winky, the purple, “magic-bag”-toting Teletubby as a covert normalization of homosexuality among the preschool set. And how risible everyone seemed to find it: Jerry Falwell attacking a cartoon character who couldn’t possibly be taken seriously as a symbol of gay pride.

–Except that Falwell was right.

Read the rest of this entry »

We used to joke that “if it’s in print, it must be true.” But now we seem to think that our dominant medium, TV, makes things unreal. I don’t think that this is just a function of the “distrust of authority” wave that has swamped cultures around the world–notwithstanding the King of Thailand’s pathetic outlawing of disrespectful videos on YouTube. I think the line between fact and fiction on TV has blurred weirdly in the direction of fiction–as it has in the related media of film and popular music, and celebrity in general.

I got thinking about this driving home this afternoon from the studios of Global TV. For those outside Canada, Global TV is one of our national networks–indeed, a network that jumped from its regionally modest name of “CanWest” to the ambitious “Global” in one fell swoop. Yes, a bit unusually megalomaniacal for a Canadian company, I agree.

I was there to tape a short segment for Canada’s finest Christian TV show, “Listen Up,” hosted by Lorna Dueck. (I sympathize with those who think that to call it “Canada’s finest Christian TV show” is to damn with faint praise. But Lorna is a fine journalist by any measure and this is a pretty good show–despite her occasional lapses in the selection of guests…!)

Anyhow, while I was getting made up, I found myself between one Global news anchor, Deborra Hope, and another, Kevin Newman. And while they looked a little unreal in their perfect makeup, hair, and clothes, they were nonetheless real people getting ready to go to work. They bantered with the make-up artist, they politely made conversation with the odd duck in the room (yes, the theological professor), they discussed a current event or two–just like people at your job.

And I came away thinking, “Why am I surprised at this experience?”

Read the rest of this entry »

By now we’ve all heard the latest about Ted Haggard, former pastor of New Life Community Church in Colorado Springs, Colorado, and former head of the National Association of Evangelicals. Brother Haggard–and he is my brother in Christ, as my Bible reminds me–was found out as having had sexual relations with a male prostitute in Denver. He resigned in disgrace, and has since been in counseling.

According to the Denver Post, the four pastors in charge of overseeing New Life Church in the wake of this disaster recently made a surprising–to some, an astonishing, and to others, an absurd–announcement. One of them, Rev. Tim Ralph of Larkspur, Colorado, was quoted as explaining Haggard’s three-year relationship with the man thus: “He is completely heterosexual,” Ralph said. “That is something he discovered. It was the acting-out situations where things took place. It wasn’t a constant thing.”

Read the rest of this entry »

If you don’t know about Irshad Manji, author of The Trouble with Islam Today, then you probably should. Her website is here.

Irshad is a rare bird indeed: Islamic, liberal, reformist, feminist, lesbian. The New York Times calls her “Osama bin Laden’s worst nightmare.” She is articulate, passionate, vivacious, sweet, and almost unbelievably courageous. (One of the first photos on her website is a shot of her with Salman Rushdie, not everyone’s favourite Muslim in, say, Iran.) Read the rest of this entry »

I’d really like to know. I’m still mostly a print guy–I subscribe to a dozen magazines and read more of them on-line (as well as Google News daily), especially through the excellent Arts and Letters Daily digest.

My university-age sons enjoy blogs, however, as do many of my students. So that’s what I’d like to know from anyone who happens upon this blog: Why do you read them? Why do you respond to them? And what would you like to see in a blog like this?

Here’s what I’m afraid of: that I’ll spend time blogging that could better be spent reading and thinking, and then writing less, but of better quality and to a bigger audience.

Am I just technologically behind the times? I’d really like to know.