28May

Dollar–A Good Name for This Guy

Some folks apparently missed the bit in Scripture where Jesus said, “You cannot serve both God and Money.” Mega-rich pastors preaching the false gospel of prosperity are probably one of the biggest things, after pedophile priests, to give Christianity a bad name in the world.

Take the latest controversy regarding the televangelist with the rather appropriate name of Creflo Dollar:

…the finances of the televangelist’s 30,000-member church, World Changers Church International in College Park, Georgia, are under close scrutiny after Dollar asked his followers to buy him a $65 million private jet.

Dollar’s sermons pack his 8,500-seat mega-church, and like any house of worship, the church is non-profit and tax-exempt, reports CBS News correspondent Mark Strassmann.

His ministry has prospered with satellite churches in at least a dozen states and hundreds of thousands of online followers. Dollar owns a multi-million dollar mansion and condo.

Read it all: http://www.cbsnews.com/news/televangelist-creflo-dollar-under-scrutiny-asking-for-65-million-private-jet/

15May

Interstellar: A Wild (If Illogical) Ride

I saw the movie “Interstellar” again recently, this time via On Demand. Let me just say that I really like this movie. Also, before you read much further, be aware that if you haven’t seen this movie already, there are spoilers below.

I’ll start with what makes this a highly watchable and interesting movie. The first half of the movie does a great job of creating an air of mystery. There are creepy events that lend a sense of a ghost story–an unseen entity is manipulating gravity inside the bedroom of the girl Murph, making books move and creating patterns in the dust. Furthermore, this is set against a bleak and melancholic backdrop, as humans are struggling to survive on a dying earth. The acting of Matthew McConaughey and little Mackenzie Foy, in setting up the theme of father-daughter love, was superb. Their relationship is an emotional glue that holds together the entire movie. I thought the scene in which Cooper is launched into space, juxtaposed with images of Murph shrieking in agonized grief at the loss of her father, is one of the most heart-wrenching portrayals in all of cinema.

The rest of the movie kicks into the realm of suspenseful science fiction featuring an epic quest through space and time. The movie has been compared to 2001, and the attempts at “space realism” and Cooper’s psychedelic voyage into the black hole certainly evoked this prior classic. In “Interstellar” there is an inverse of the Hal incident: the superintelligent robot remains loyal and heroic, while a murderous human madman nearly kills them all. Over all, I felt that this movie has more heart than Stanley Kubrick’s nearly wordless and vaguely misanthropic film.

The movie explores the existential dread that humans naturally feel when approaching death. This is what drives Dr. Mann mad. This is the theme echoed in Professor Brand’s mantra, the poem by Dylan Thomas that says, “Do not go gentle into that good night…”

Now I have to mention some downsides. First, while this movie is in many ways a warm and relationship-affirming movie, it is a godless movie. There is no depiction of religion, church-going, or anything smacking of faith in a higher being. Even the small town and farm life that is featured in the opening and closing scenes, while thoughtfully portrayed, seems incomplete: The movie shows some authentic charm–baseball games, school conferences, a main street, and a kindly small town grandpa swilling beer on his Victorian porch–but nary a steeple is to be seen. It’s not anti-God, per se, but merely agnostic. Of course, that’s about the best one can hope for from mainstream movies these days.

Then there is the silly and the illogical. First I give the silly: Love is a force of nature, affirms the teary eyed younger Dr. Brand, played by Anne Hathaway. I felt that this weakened things a bit. Now I don’t want to slander love, which is a great and wondrous thing–within the domain of relationships. God is Love, after all. So I won’t say that it was bad. “Silly” may be too harsh; “cheesy” might be more accurate. Sometimes cheesy is good, but here it made my eyes roll a bit.

Now for the illogical: One major subplot of the movie is that an evolved humanity of the future reaches back through time to help present day humanity avoid extinction. While handily sidestepping the supernatural, this is inherently illogical.

This reminds me of something. C.S. Lewis once opined with characteristic wit, “Nonsense remains nonsense even when we talk it about God” (C.S Lewis, The Problem of Pain). A corollary to this might be, “nonsense is nonsense, even when dressed in science and inserted into a gripping movie.”

04May

Responsive site

We beg your pardon as we transition our affiliated web site to a “responsive” design. This means that at a small screen size, the web pages will shift from the usual two column layout with a navigation bar, to a single column layout with a collapsible navigation menu button. This should make our site more readable on a mobile device. Pages may come down or behave oddly for brief periods of time. This blog, which already has a responsive layout, should be unaffected.

Here is an example of the differences in appearance that you may notice on a smartphone screen:

03May

Minecraft Psalm 23, another video project

We are pleased to announce our second video offering, a bit of (respectful) whimsy that utilizes the creative game of Minecraft:

The Text here is from the King James version of the Holy Bible.

The images are screen shots from a minecraft game.

The music is by Norwegian composer Edvard Grieg (1843-1907), from his Piano Concerto in A minor, Op 16: Adagio section. This is a public domain recording available on the musOpen website. This is an early work, written when he was 24 while visiting Søllerød, Denmark, and is the only concerto completed by Grieg. It is often compared to the piano concerto by Schumann. It is scored for piano, woodwinds in pairs, four horns, two trumpets, three trombones, timpani, and strings. The performers here are the Skidmore College Orchestra.

The Minecraft style titles are thanks to Textcraft: http://textcraft.net/

And of course I am grateful to the inventive folks at Mojang for their creative game.

01May

Church Happens-A Video Project

16Apr

Persecution of Iraqi Christians

This is a story that deserves a wider hearing.

According to the reporter:

There are few places on earth where Christianity is as old as it is in Iraq. Christians there trace their history to the first century apostles. But today, their existence has been threatened by the terrorist group that calls itself Islamic State. More than 125,000 Christians — men, women and children — have been forced from their homes over the last 10 months.

One part I found especially sad is the cultural losses:

Archbishop Nicodemus Sharaf: “I think they burn all the books. And we have books from the first century of the Christianity.”

Lara Logan: “You had from the first century..”

Archbishop Nicodemus Sharaf: “Yes, of the Christianity. When I remember this, I cannot …”(crying) “from the beginning the Christianity, this is the first time we cannot pray in our churches.”

You just can’t get back centuries old manuscripts that are burned. Some things are irreplaceable.

05Apr

Alleluia, Christ is risen!

La résurrection du Christ, 1700, by Noel Coyper, 1628-1707.

04Apr

Allegri’s “Miserere Mei” sung by the Tallis Scholars

In honor of Holy Week:

This beautiful piece was composed by Gregorio Allegri (1582-1652), for performance in the Sistine Chapel on Wednesday and Friday of Holy Week. For a time, according to the oft-told mythical story, the song was the well guarded secret of the Vatican, which forbade its publication, until a 14 year old Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart visited on Good Friday 1770 and later transcribed the entire piece from memory. This is probably not true, but makes a great story (for a full debunking, read Ben Byram-Wigfield’s 1996 essay, “MISERERE MEI, DEUS, GREGORIO ALLEGRI: A Quest for the Holy Grail?”, pg 16, online here). There was certainly a mystique about the music that led such as person as Mary Shelley to gush:

But a thousand times over I would go to listen to the Miserere in the Sistine Chapel ; that spot made sacred by the most sublime works of Michael Angelo … The music, not only of the Miserere, but of the Lamentations, is solemn, pathetic, religious – the soul is rapt – carried away into another state of being. Strange that grief, and laments, and the humble petition of repentance, should fill us with delight – a delight that wakens these very emotions in the heart – and calls tears into the eyes, and yet is dearer than any pleasure.
(From Mary Shelley: Rambles in Germany and Italy in 1840, 1842 and 1843. Vol 2. London, Edward Moxon, 1844), Vol 2, 230–31; as cited in Graham Kelly’s essay for the University of York Dept of Music, “A unique singers’ manuscript from the 19th century: Domenico Mustafa’s version of the Miserere of Tommaso Bai and Gregorio Allegri”, which can be found online here.)

The version heard commonly today is not likely what a guest to the vatican would have heard in Mozart’s time. The “top C” version we all know and love turns out to have been the happy result of an error. For you musicologists out there, the Wigfield essay mentioned above explains this in detail: The received version, as it is widely held today, is a mix of Burney’s first choir with a bizarre second choir, congealed into life in the first edition of Grove’s Dictionary of Music & Musicians in 1880. As an illustrated example, W.S. Rockstro showed the first half of the four-part verse as indicated by Alfieri, but then sticks Mendelssohn’s 1831 record of the first half —up a fourth— on the second half of the verse. Ivor Atkins, for his edition of 1951, took Burney’s first choir and final verse, adding this second choir from Grove’s. The problem is that the Mendelssohn abbellimenti is also a record of the first half, apparently sung a fourth higher than written at the time of his visit. It is this that causes musicologists to squirm with the bass jumping from an F# up to a C, followed by the swift gear change into C minor. This error has been repeated in two subsequent editions, produced by respected academics. The result is strangely beautiful, and probably here to stay. It is, after all, one of the most popular pieces of sacred music. However, it is neither a representation of the performance practice of the Sistine Chapel choir, nor a true reflection of how the piece was ever sung there.

A theological point can be made here, and perhaps I’ll embellish it down the road: Sometimes God uses our mistakes to His greater glory.

03Apr

Ecce Homo

“Ecce Homo” is from the Latinized version of the Passion narrative in the Gospel of John. “Behold the man” cries Pilate to the crowd, as Jesus is on trial for his life. As most know, he was crucified very soon afterward. This scripture is often said or sung as part of the liturgical celebration of Good Friday. Of course God has the last laugh, so to speak, as Jesus comes back from the dead on the third day.

I was led to the following fascinating story. In the village of Borja, Spain, in the Sanctuary of Mercy Church is a fresco entitled “Ecce homo”. It was painted in 1930 by a local artist and by 2012 was in a serious state of decay. Cecilia Giménez, an 80-year-old amateur artist living locally, painted over the fresco in an attempt to restore it. Critics hooted at the result: BBC Europe correspondent Christian Fraser says the delicate brush strokes of Elias Garcia Martinez have been buried under a haphazard splattering of paint.

“The once-dignified portrait now resembles a crayon sketch of a very hairy monkey in an ill-fitting tunic, he says.” You can read more at BBC News. “She had good intentions” stated the city councilor patronizingly as he prepared to meet to discuss the future of the fresco.

Well, it appears that God honors good intentions, and had the last laugh in this situation. The fresco became an Internet sensation and pop icon. The fame garnered by the painting allowed the church to charge admission for the opportunity to view it, and the church has raised 50,000 pounds for charitable causes. See article at The Guardian.

On a small scale, God took the foolishness of a “botched” painting to accomplish great things, just as on Good Friday 2 centuries ago God used the “foolishness” of the cross to perform a great work of atonement and our redemption.

(Full disclosure here: I don’t especially like the new version of the fresco).

28Mar

21 Martyrs of Egypt

In case you missed it, 21 mostly Coptic Christians from Egypt, who were working in Libya, were kidnapped, tortured, and killed by Islamic Extremists. They were offered the chance to recant their faith but refused to do so. They died praising the name of Jesus.

Now they are being essentially canonized by the Coptic Church. You can read about this in Christianity Today:

The deaths of 21 Christians to ISIS will not be in vain as they will be declared martyrs by the Coptic Orthodox Church, the equivalent of canonisation in the Catholic Church.

In a statement, Pope Tawadros II, the head of the Coptic Orthodox Church affirmed that the martyrdom of the 21 will be commemorated every 8th Amshir of the Coptic Calendar, the feast day of the Presentation of Jesus at the Temple.

…Despite their impending death, the Christian men could be heard continuously chanting the words “Lord Jesus Christ”, while some even screamed the name of Yeshua in their final moments.

While the intention of ISIS was to sow fear among those who do not share their beliefs, the courage of the Christians has inspired many to further profess their faith.

Beshir Kamel, whose brothers Bishoy and Samuel were among the martyrs slain by the group, said that his siblings’ martyrdom serves as a “badge of honour to Christianity.”

“ISIS gave us more than we asked when they didn’t edit out the part where they declared their faith and called upon Jesus Christ. ISIS helped us strengthen our faith,” he said in an interview with SAT-7 Arabic.

A new icon has been created by a Coptic American artist, Tony Rezk, and appears on the webpage of the Coptic Orthodox Church of Alexandria, Diocese of Los Angeles, Southern California, and Hawaii.

You can find more about this work here: here. Mr. Rezk gave an interview to the National Review:

“My ultimate purpose was to honor them and the sacrifice that they made. Tertullian, a Christian apologist from the third century, before he joined a non-Orthodox Christian sect, said, “The blood of martyrs is the seed of the Church.” We believe that their martyrdom will help the Church grow stronger. My other purpose was to take out my frustrations on something, as I find that the process of making any kind of art is a relaxing experience.”

Brother James’ Airs

Author: BrJames