Will Samson

Name The New Miley Cyrus Memoir

If you have kids, or at all a culture watcher, you know the name Miley Cyrus, aka Hannah Montana, the daughter of Billy Ray Cyrus, and a 15-year old rock star/actor who is already well on track to be the next media billionaire.

Recently, it has been reported that she penned a seven-figure deal to write her yet-to-be-named memoir. (WaPo story here). This gotten me wondering - what would you name her memoir? Here is first idea I came up with:

All I Really Need To Know I Learned In Kindergarten ... Which Was Ten Years Ago, By The Way

Feel free to contribute your own suggestion in the comments section.

Emergent / Emerging Church Survey

If you consider yourself part of the conversation/phenomenon that is the Emergent/Emerging Church, I would appreciate ten minutes of your time.

I am collecting preliminary data for a more detailed social network survey in the fall. The survey involves the Emerging / Emergent Church, and the people who tend to be connected to that conversation. If you would be willing to help out, Click here to take survey

This is a convenience sample, and is not meant to be scientific. However, if you would be willing to help out, it should take less than ten minutes to answer just a few short questions, and I would really appreciate it.

The survey will be open until Tuesday, 22 April. Thanks!

In Defense of Rev. Wright

Thanks to the rancor of Sen. Clinton, there seems to be no end to the controversy surrounding Rev. Jeremiah Wright. And, thanks to the media coverage of this issue, there seems to be no one in this country who doesn't think that they have seen this sermon. But how many have seen the actual sermon, as opposed to tightly control snippets? Below is a ten-minute clip from that sermon. It is worth your time to listen to it. What I am most struck by is the fact that it sounds no different than anything I have written on this blog countless times. I welcome your thoughts:

Quaker Summer Wins CT's "Book of the Year" Award

I have thought that Lisa's book from last year, Quaker Summer, was one of her best. Apparently, the folks at Christianity Today thinks so as well, since they just awarded her the 2008 Book of the Year for Fiction. Woohoo! Congratulations, Lisa!

Check it out: The 2008 Christianity Today Book Awards

Levels of Knowledge

I am preparing for a lecture next week, and I wonder if you all could help me with my data gathering. I am looking for a good statistic on increases in level of knowledge since:

1. The invention of Gutenberg's printing press
2. The publication of "The Origin of the Species"
3. The invention of the computer
4. The commercialization of the Internet (1992)

I am sure that data is out there somewhere, but I have had a hard time finding it. So, I turned to the wisdom of the crowds. Any help you can give would be appreciated.

This Sunday @ Joseph-Beth: You're Invited

Creation and Kingdom:
A Discussion on Everyday Christian Ethics

Joseph-Beth Booksellers
Sunday, March 9th at 4pm

Does living in the suburbs make it harder to follow Christ? How is care for the Creation related to the right worship of God? How can believers offer the blessings of God’s reign to their neighbors? How can the lessons of Christian history teach us to care for others? Join us for a panel discussion with noted local authors on diverse ways of following Jesus and serving others in contemporary life. Topics will include

• Care for creation
• Sabbath keeping
• Christian hospitality
• Poverty and Christian Mission
• Urban ministry
• Suburban spirituality

Participants will include

Dr. Christine Pohl is Professor of Church in Society at Asbury Theological Seminary. She is the author of Making Room: Recovering Hospitality as a Christian Tradition and co-author of Living on the Boundaries: Evangelical Women, Feminism, and the Theological Academy. Dr. Pohl has extensive experience in urban ministry, and specializes in Christian Social Ethics.

Lisa Samson is an author of “grown up” inspirational fiction. Her newest book is Embrace Me, and her 2007 Quaker Summer was named one of Publishers Weekly’s “Best Books of the Year.” Her other recent titles include Hollywood Nobody, Straight Up, Club Sandwich, and The Living End. She wrote Justice in the Burbs: Being the Hands and Feet of Jesus Wherever You Live with her husband Will.

Will Samson is a doctoral student of sociology at UK, and recently the co-author of Justice in the Burbs with his wife, Lisa. Will’s particular interests include social justice and ethics, mountaintop removal, and local food production.

Dr. Norman Wirzba is presently Professor of Philosophy at Georgetown College. A Christian theologian focusing on the doctrine of Creation and agrarian philosophy, Dr. Wirzba is most recently the author of Living the Sabbath: Discovering the Rhythms of Rest and Delight and The Paradise of God: Renewing Religion in an Ecological Age. He has written several articles for the Christian Century, and is the editor of Art of the Commonplace and co-editor of the Essential Agrarian Reader.

Kyle Potter will moderate the discussion. He oversees the Religion section at Joseph-Beth and holds an M.Th. in Applied Theology. Kyle’s research interests include Christian mission, hospitality, and monasticism.

British Coverage of Don Blankenship

Interesting story in a British paper about Don Blankenship, the Chairman of Massey Energy and the evil genius behind mountaintop removal mining. Here is the opening paragraph:

Is Don Blankenship the baddest guy in America? He is the chairman of Massey Energy, the company that blows up the mountains of West Virginia because that is the cheapest way of mining coal. A big man of 58 with a jutting moustache, he is a real-life version of Daniel Day-Lewis as the ruthless oilman of There Will Be Blood, nominated for an Oscar.

Click here to read the whole story.

Atlantic Monthly Article on Suburbia

There is a fascinating article in this month's Atlantic Monthly on the coming changes to American Suburbia: The Next Slum?

Review of The New Christians, by Tony Jones

 A Great Introduction to the Emergent Church

A review of The New Christians: Dispatches from the Emergent Frontier, by Tony Jones

---

Tony Jones' latest book, The New Christians: Dispatches from the Emergent Frontier is a must-read for anyone wishing to understand a growing movement of the Christian Church.

Jones is a part of what has been called the Emergent, or Emerging Church. More than a movement, or a even Reformation, it is best viewed as a conversation among those who see God's work in the world as unable to be contained within the rationality debates that dominated Western Protestantism in the 20th Century. This is a conversation taking place across denominational lines and among real people, and Jones excels at bringing the voices of those real people into this book. The reader will hear from some usual Emergent suspects, like Tim Keel and Karen Ward, as well as a trucker, some mainline women and others. The ability to put, as another reviewer stated, "flesh and blood" on the participants in this broad conversation is one of the greatest strengths of The New Christians. It is, in essence, an ethnography of the church that is emerging.

Along the way, Jones manages to hit on many of the main points of the Emergent Church, including its refocusing on both theology and praxis. Chapter 5, in particular, was terrific reframing of the truth debates, during which he called for a reading of the "whole Bible, the glory and the pathos." In this very balanced work Jones takes on both the conservative critics of the Emergent conversation, as well as what he characterizes as the "legalisms of the left."

The tone of this book was direct but not confrontational. It is an honest, open invitation to find out more about this growing phenomenon. If you wish to truly become conversant with the Emergent Church, The New Christians is a great place to start.

1 in 100 American Adults in Prison

As a cultural marker of the sad state of our nation, more than 1 in 100 American Adults are incarcerated. That places America at the top of the heap in the world in terms of imprisoned adults per capita.

We're number one.