We don’t have cable or satellite, so we had to get one of those converter boxes. The switch to the digital television signal has proven beneficial for this sports fan. I’m slowly falling in love with Universal Sports, a network of NBC that shows year-round the sports they usually only air during the Olympic Games. Normally, I have to wait four years to watch water polo on television, and even then, it’s usually aired for just a half an hour on a Saturday afternoon. Today I got to watch two whole matches from the World League on the Universal Sports network. Too bad the US lost in the bronze medal game. Still. Water polo! On a non-Olympic year! Huzzah! 5 meters and backhands and exclusions and drives galore!

Thomas Nelson is publishing The American Patriot’s Bible. (Go to the web page now and see if you can spot the typo while it’s still up. Seven points to the first person who spots it.) I’ve never been a fan of the special interest Bibles—e.g., Men’s Study Bible, Women’s Study Bible, Power Forward’s Study Bible, Heirloom Tomato Farmer’s Study Bible—but the American Patriot’s Bible seems to go too far. My belief is that the Bible should continue to prophetically speak to all nations. In my understanding of the cross and the resurrection, ethnic and national boundaries mean very little to God. I don’t mind books and discussions about how the leaders of our nation have been shaped by the Bible or what they said about the Bible. I simply don’t think that such information belongs in a Bible.

(HT: Chris Spinks and Scot McKnight)

It’s over here.

Yesterday Carey and I brought home our new pet and 2008 Christmas present to each other, Apollo. He’s a five-year-old lab mix adopted from the Pasadena SPCA. Before anyone asks, we named him after the Apollo Space Program and not the Greek god or Rocky Balboa’s arch rival.

More photos here.

This past Sunday, the Christian calendar marked the Ascension of the Lord (I know, it was really on May 21, but I’m a part of a protestant church that doesn’t go to worship services throughout the week, so we celebrated it on the Sunday). This weekend was also Memorial Day weekend in which people in the US remember those soldiers and sailors who died while in military service. I wonder how many congregations in the US made some mention or had some special moment in the service for Memorial Day this past Sunday, but did not mention or did not observe the Ascension?

From the essay, “Seminarians,” by Martin Marty in the most recent Sightings:

We historians are not given the gift of foreseeing, but as for seeing – as in Sightings – I learned long ago to look at trends and signs that don’t fit headlines or on cable. Thus, decades ago, while many chroniclers thought that “death of God” theology was a cosmic challenge, it occurred to some of us that “high-rise apartments and the long weekend” would do more to assault the world of Sunday Schools, church attendance, and the parish as a center of communal life. Today those trends continue, and the higher-rising of apartments and the longer-yet weekend keep playing their part. Forget the current “new atheism,” so readily reported on as an assault. Notice instead patterns of leisure like Sunday marathons and soccer, patterns of work in which 24/7 job demands increase, and now, of course, “the economic crash” that colors all prospects.

And I’m not impressed. Did they read the book? Thankfully, an article in Esquire says that the trailer does not reflect the film that well—the film is much closer to the novel in its pacing and dialogue. According to the article, the film, like Cormac McCarthy’s novel, offers no explanation for the post-apocalyptic setting. The trailer makes it look like another post-apocalyptic action story like, I Am Legend, rather than a beautiful story of the love between a father and his son in the midst of a harrowing future. I hope that the trailer truly does not give us a good picture of the film and that The Road merely goes down as another example of a bad trailer for a good movie. My hall of shame includes trailers for The Truman Show and Cast Away, which gave away significant plot points that the films try to keep hidden for, you know, dramatic purposes. The trailer for Master and Commander made a cerebral epic look like Gladiator at sea. Then there is the all-time king of a bad trailer for a good movie: The Princess Bride. “It’s as real as the feelings you feel”? A saxophone? Really?

A couple of friends have posted this story on Facebook. CNN reports:

The more often Americans go to church, the more likely they are to support the torture of suspected terrorists, according to a new survey.

More than half of people who attend services at least once a week—54 percent—said the use of torture against suspected terrorists is “often” or “sometimes” justified. Only 42 percent of people who “seldom or never” go to services agreed, according to the analysis released Wednesday by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life.

White evangelical Protestants were the religious group most likely to say torture is often or sometimes justified—more than six in 10 supported it. People unaffiliated with any religious organization were least likely to back it. Only four in 10 of them did.

I find these results disheartening. Is it really true that the more people are supposedly exposed to the story of an incarnated and crucified God, the more likely they are to support torturing others? (The outliers seem to be the mainline denominations who do not support torture as much as their evangelical and Catholic family.) I cannot think of any real Christian justification for torture. Over on First Things—a journal no one would consider a bastion of liberal Christianity—Russell E. Saltzman roots his rejection of torture in a human being bearing God’s image:

I’ve been trying, like many Americas, to think this thing through. There is the altogether practical question: Did torture help us? Did it make America safer? Was the information really good, helpful, in thwarting terrorists? Did it actually in fact spoil pending plots? Frankly, the evidence is mixed.

But I really don’t care. Whether torture “worked” or not as an interrogative tactic is far from the main question. I’m a pastor. I think as a pastor, which is to say as a parish theologian. I don’t care if these guys shrieked like little girls on the playground and blubbered out plots for everything from the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre to knocking over Bagdad candy stores as juvenile delinquents. Torture is morally wrong. It is morally wrong, theologically speaking, because it is an attack upon the imago Dei, upon the image of God inherent to every human life.

One could just as easily rooted a rejection of torture in the words and actions of Jesus. “Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you.” (Lk 6.27) How in the world can we worship a savior who endured the torture of lashings, a crown of thorns, nails in his hands, and crucifixion and think that it is morally acceptable to torture someone else? For those who have ever asked, “What would Jesus do?” can you really imagine that Jesus would strap a person to a board and subject him or her to “controlled drowning”? In mounting a Christian defense against torture, one could have used Paul and Peter as well: “Do not repay anyone evil for evil, but take thought for what is noble in the sight of all.” (Rom 12.17) “Do not repay evil for evil or abuse for abuse; but, on the contrary, repay with a blessing. It is for this that you were called—that you might inherit a blessing.” (1 Peter 3.9) I am outraged. I am outraged that my country would torture others and I am outraged that my sisters and brothers in the faith are more likely to support torture than the general public.

My Christian family’s support of torture is a terrible witness to the watching world.

Yesterday, I listened again to Krista Tippet’s interview with Jaroslav Pelikan on Speaking of Faith: The Need for Creeds. Later in the day, I did some reading of Pelikan on the internet. Two quotations of his have been ringing in my ears. The first I found on numerous pages:

If Christ is risen, nothing else matters. And if Christ is not risen—nothing else matters.

The second quotation comes from the Speaking of Faith interview. As Pelikan and Tippet discussed the Maasai Creed, he refers to the important feedback loop evangelism creates. As we reach out and express the Christian story in ways that make sense to different cultures, we find that we understand new aspects and see new angles of the story.

[I]t is not enough to Christianize Africa. We have to Africanize Christianity.

Unpacking the riches in these two quotations could take a lifetime.