How do Newspapers still exist?

How do Newspapers still make money? The fact is you can get more information and sometimes more reliable and better quality information from Wikipedia and other internet sources such as RSS. Then why do Newspapers still make money? What's the point?

Christendom and Kingdom of God Part II

So if the Kingdom of God is the new focus of post-Christendom Christianity what does this mean?

I have a proposal: where as the old Christendom paradigm was based on a Roman Imperial M.O. ("Constantinian") the new paradigm is not post-Christendom but rather a new Christendom paradigm based not on the Roman Imperial M.O. but a liberal-socialist model (not quite marxist or anarchist but a stange blend of the two, with classical liberalism on the side).

Why?

Usually the language of KoG is used to associate the notions of social justice and politicial ciritque with the gospel. Although I believe that justice and critique are part of the gospel (even the word 'gospel' contained political connotations in the first century Roman world) I wonder if such a strong association between the KoG and a radical socialist Christendom has potential. Potential to change paradigms and potential to expand a often highly individualized gospel based on justifying phantom sins (by phantom sins I mean preaching forgiveness without going into the depths of what we need forgiveness for or the outcome of forgiveness).

And is this the right potential anyways?

I think there is more to say about this new Christendom paradigm, which draws from the radical reformation but is distinct from it by rejecting it's two-worlds dualism.

Christendom and Kingdom of God

Recent missional and other Christian writers have attacked a church paradigm called 'Christendom'. This cultural paradigm for the church assumes that the church should have some sort of cultural control on state and society. The critique of this view has long been part of the traditions of the radical reformation and has since flourished in certain evangelical-glocal Christian circles.

Now I have to say I agree with the critique almost entirely, at least the parts I understand of it. I totally see how being ecclesial-centric can actually harm both our ethics and seriously damage any worthy christology. Yet what I find interesting is how often in these anti-Christendom literatures they speak about the centrality of the Kingdom of God (KoG). The KoG, a term founded heavily in the synoptic gospels and sparsed through the New Testament is a term referring, clearly in study of the gospels, to a non-spatial political-spiritual entity where the entire Cosmos is put under the reign, or rule, of God through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth. I make this distinction from a view of the KoG being a nation-state type entity rather than it being a 'religion-with-out-religion' (Caputo) and politics-without-politics that it truly resembles.

My point here is how spot on these new writers are when they contrast Christendom (which essentially is a Imperialist way under the guise of Christianity) with the Kingdom of God (which is a biblical idea about the anti Imperial community of Gift which comes through the work of Christ).

My rant is now over, but I will flesh these ideas out in the future more.

Slavoj Zizek as a commodity fetish.

Next time you're in a chapters look at how many Zizek books there are in the philosophy section. He's become a cultural commodity, part of pop culture philosophy (or philosophy of pop culture). It's interesting the ways he's described by reviewers. Just go to Amazon and read some of them. He's called things like 'scandalous' and 'counter-intuitive' and any other word under the sun made to present as the Rock Star of Philosophy. A regular marxist commodity fetish.

Interesting Video

More on Dead Denominations

I was thinking about this whole dead denominations thing a bit more and I think I can explain what's happening better. Younger people see God's work as more holistic than older generations. What I mean by that is they see the work of God in things like taking a friend out for coffee who is going through a rough time as giving to God, they see sponsoring a child through World Vision or Compassion as giving to God, they see personally giving money to missionaries (or through agencies like Gospel for Asia) as giving to God. But giving tithes on sunday morning? They don't see that as so sacred as the older generations do because they see giving as being a way the live not something they do only at church. Sure they might throw in a couple bucks here and there, but certainly not 'ten percent' (which is not really a biblical eccliessiological thing anyway).

This will certainly lead to denominational break downs within the next few decades.

Shiny Things

Two bigs things in the history of Money happened in the 20th Century. The end of the supremacy of the pound, and the beginning of the supremacy of the American dollar. But even bigger than these two things is something that happened in the 1970s when Gold parity with dollars lost it's momentum. Now I'm no historian, but the fact is Gold has been a motivating factor behind human behaviour and politics for thousands of years. People who had gold in the past always had access to food and land, or the potential access to food and land. Gold was extremely valueable.

Why? Why is Gold so valuable? Why has gold become the cause of the deaths and lives of millions, the recreations and destructions of whole civilizations?

Why?

Because it's shiny!

WE LIKE SHINY THINGS.

It's absurd.

Expecting Life

The average age expectancy worldwide is 70. In doing research for a few posts ago I discovered that for most of human history the life expectancy was very low. For instance in ancient Rome it was between 20-30 years, in the Medieval Caliphite it was up to 35 and in the early 20th Century it was still very low at 30-40 years. Suddenly by today it has doubled. How? Well, lots of reason. Disease eradication. Low infant mortality (before the Industrial revolution the infant mortality rate was over 75% meaning 3 out of every four children would not live past five).

Our life expectancy is nothing short of a miracle. Yet to not know that shocks you when viewing the history of human life.

Check this out for more info on some health related stuff. Or the wikipedia article.

Ikonic

On the total opposite end of Peak Church is something like this: Ikon

It's an interesting little church-which-is-not-a-church in Ireland, influenced by Poststructuralism. Check it out: its a website that lets you edit it. It's a wiki! I can't really explain more of it, but if you check it out you will see the cool stuff they are doing. You probably have seen nothing like it.

Dead Denominations

I was accidently reading a book today when I came upon an interesting fact. The largest denomination in the US, the Southern Baptist Convention, gets 80% of it's money from those who were born before 1946. Oy Vey! That means, if the life expectancy of the US is 78 by 2024 the SBC will become basically bankrupt. How will they pay for seminaries, churches, missions etc? No money!

Then again I can understand why this might happen. I am someone who sees giving as something good, virtuous and also neglected. Yet I do not view tithing (AKA giving money to the church) this way, as I feel God could probably do more with my money if I gave it to people to feed the hungry, clothe the needy than by paying my churches electricity bill or to buy and new and better computer system. Thus I will give, but to do good, to give where I feel God would want me to and therefore NOT church.

Now I have a confidence that God can do the impossible, but that doesn't mean that he will not does this mean he will save denominations. Perhaps denominations are at an end, or near end.

Ironically 2025 is when Peak Coal is supposed to hit. Maybe we will simultaneous reach Peak Church!

African Authority

BREAKING NEWS:

Only a few days ago the African Union agreed to create the African Authority, an executive branch of the current AU government. This might have huge ramifications on how we do politics with Africa.

'Reports say the creation of the Authority is seen as a stepping-stone towards achieving a Federal Government for the Continent, which is the ambition of Libyan Leader Muammar al-Gaddafi' - GBC, July 3, 2009

AU to Become African Authority

Jesus and His Wife

When I was in Montreal last summer (beautiful city - beautiful time of year) I was sitting in a park when a guy came up to me and sat down. People usually do not come up to me like that so I was surprised. Not as surprised as when he asked me the next question:

"Do you think Jesus was married to Mary Magdalene?"

Now to me the question was quite hilarious. First of all it was not 2005, and I thought people would be over it by now. Secondly because I had done some research into conspiracy theories discovering how many of them come from an anti-semitic, anti-liberal text called "Protocols of the Elders of Zion", a poor excuse for a plagiarized text by the Tsarist secret police in the early twentieth century.

Now this year I realized that such weirdness happens more often than you think. In fact it has always happened. Take Acts 17, where Paul explains the Christianity to some of the people of Athens. In the end some of the Athenians reject Christianity on the basis that it puts it's hope in the resurrection. An interesting thing I found out is that the Greeks, confused about what Paul had meant, believed that resurrection was in fact the consort, or wife, of Jesus (a la Zeus and Hera).

It seems like these types of confusions have a long history.

Suburbia

The American creation of the 20th Century has been excessively praised as the fulfillment of the American Dream and a goal for all nations to create. Simultaneously it has been accused of an almost idolatrous individualism, shelterness and a hotbed of materialism and consumerist values. To some it is the a great humanist endeavor, to others a crass commercial creation of the bourgeouis.

But are both approaches to simplistic to describe the reality and effects of suburbia?

What do you think?

Canadian Maglev

A few years ago researchers in Japan set the world record for fastest speed for a high-speed train at over 550 km/hr. Liberal leader Micheal Ignatieff has suggested that if he go elected he would build one of these high-speed trains (maybe even Maglev) from Quebec-city to Windsor, Calgary to Edmonton and maybe even one from Victoria, BC. to Edmonton.

Now this idea is at the root of my recent posts dealing with Canada, that and Canada day a few days ago, so I've been chewing on it a lot.

What do you think about? If it regularly goes approx. 500 km/hr that would mean you could get from Windsor to Toronto in about 45 minutes.

Is it a good idea?

A Fair Country

I watched an interview by John Raulston Saul today about his book A Fair Country. In it he argues the way Canada functions is more a kin to the Metis and Aboriginal traditions than the European and American ones. He cites our language as being misleading and suggests we need to rework our cultural mythology to acknowledge how Metis we actually are.

What do you think?

Pale of the Settlement

Doing some research into Jewish history and found at that during the last century (give and take about 2 decades) of the Russian empire Jews were forbidden to settle beyond something called by historians the "Pale of the Settlement". The region, which corresponds to what are the most European of the former soviet republics, at it's height was home to over 5 million Jews (apparently 40% of the world population of Jews at that time). Near the end of the 19th century reforms allowed nearly 2 million of the Jews living on the Pale to migrate to the US.

Today the American Population of Jews is over five million, and New York City has more Jews than any other city in the world.

Interesting.