last question before q & a from Hind's talk on Return of the Public

Matthew Taylor: A kinda counter-proposal if you like or a different way of looking at this, which is that the one thing that has grown to fill the gap in newspapers left by the decline in investigative journalism has been opinion. There's been a massive growth in opinion: opinion in mainstream media, opinion on the internet of course, and so for me the worry about your proposal is that yes stuff will be commissioned, but it will be commissioned on the same basis it seems that most journalism works, perhaps the way journalism always works, which is I'll start from the story and the story has got to be one which polarizes the matter cause a non-polarizing story is not an interesting story. So journalism has an inherent polarizing quality to it because there is no real disagreement or the people or the supermarket or the government is generally trying to do the right thing is not a story. And so what you lead to is a slightly greater hubbub of people whose interests lies in polarizing disagreements. Now for me the problem is, in terms of public engagement, is less about a lack of information or even less about a diversity of information, it is the construct of most debates is of this form. It is of the form where I saw "I stand for fairness, and Dan stands for unfairness" to which Dan replies, "No, Matthew stands for unfairness; I stand for fairness". And I would say, this is not an exaggeration, 95% of disputation as presented as in the media and politics has that form. What that means is that if you're a member of the public and you're very busy, it's entirely opaque. So you therefore have to rely upon other ways of adjudicating, which maybe comes down to emotions. Who's face do we like most? Who's most like us? Whatever kinda emotional link we can make, and of course we have lots and lots of evidence that people make most of their personal judgments on the this kind of emotional basis. So for me the challenge is not this lack of information, lack of opinion, it is how can you try to structure debates in order that as it were the sides are encouraged to agree about what they disagree about. In order that the public can say "Well in this battle between Tesco and the local community", rather than listening to these attempts to disparage each other and claim some of the things for each other's case, actually both sides are gonna work together to say actually these are genuinely the things we disagree about and therefore the public is in the position to make an informed choice on the basis of a consensus about what it is that is actually at the heart of the matter. Now for me that would be potentially a much more liberating kind of experience than having Tescos are all evil, ministers are all evil, whatever. There's no shortage of that I don't think.

Dan Hind: What you described is in a sense a rejection of pluralism. I mean you're saying that what we don't want is a situation people come as advocates for a position and use all means fair or foul.

Matthew Taylor: I think pluralism needed to be based upon probably a kind of shared set of values and upon a certain kind of paternalism which has disappeared in society.

Dan Hind: Well that's a maybe, and I think you're historically actually right. But the notion that outs a contending public debate where people come in a gladiatorial way with a point of view and seek, as I say, by any means to fool their opponent and then a public decides on the basis of which argument is still standing. Here it seems to me a perfectly adequate approach to matters of public concern where I think as you say the kind of paternalistic model of pluralism falls down is that it says, "You know what we're gonna have a very exciting debate, but we've chosen who the speakers are". So there's someone in the background usually a public servant of some description who's saying "Matthew represents a legitimate point of view and differs with Dan who represents a legitimate point of view" and somewhere in the wings there's a bunch of people saying, "Yea, but they're talking beside the point." Now I'm more in favor of plural debate, more in favor of a clash of competing ideas, and more in favor as it were where the journalists, the researchers are gonna be interested. They're gonna have a dog in the fight. They're wanna get their next commission, they're gonna wanna build their career. But it gives us an opportunity I think to have a pluralist debate which isn't in any way rigged before hand. You remove as it were the impresario who puts on the show. And that's where I think I differ from kinda traditional pluralism. Because at the moment I think our notions of balance are to some extent managed, and I think our notions of what constitutes legitimate debate are subject to prior restraint if you like, and I think that's a major problem. Very quickly to go about your point the proliferation of opinion. Opinion proliferates I think cause it's cheap. We can go home after a long day and we can do an opinion piece on our blog or we can forward something on our twitter feed. It's quick to do. But finding stuff out is more expensive, and again I have faith that people if they have the power to do it will pay people to find stuff out. So we won't pay for opinion so much, but we'll pay for fact.

Source.

Ron Paul on WikiLeaks

Rethinking News: Sources III

For Rebekah. Cont. from...

Sources III is a stupid. We're gonna subtitle this one, back to basics, a.k.a. back to news... (a.k.a. is fyi one of my favorite acronyms. Exampli gratia, e.g. is as well. It's beautiful, it rolls of the tongue. I hate though id est, what's the deal with that? It sounds horrible and i.e. just looks pretentious, particularly when people use it incorrectly. No?).

ABC Religion & Ethics - This one is so new, that it wasn't even an option when I first posted on sources. Huff pointed me to the post where he first found out about it. The site is SOF meets CNN. It's a multimedia conglomeration focused on faith-related topics. Their start-up post. Of the theologians and experts they've amassed, some are quite good. Just to remind you, that's Australian Broadcast Company, not our ABC. Their RSS feeds aren't customizable yet. They're supposed to have stuff by like Hauerwas and Žižek, but I haven't seen anything yet.

Project Syndicate - This is the ultimate op/ed section on the web.If you click on anything on the right, the column or series RSS button will appear on the top right center which you can click to subscribe to something more specific. I love Raghu Rajan, although I don't follow him on here (I do follow his blog Fault Lines). Again, that's if you find something that you like. Their wiki page.

Foreign Policy is one you might like. Don't read it myself except for "the Call" blog. I'd say it's good, 'cept Bernanke was the #1 pick and Obama #2 for their "FP Top 100 Global Thinkers" contest which is the sorta fluff piece we all secretly love.

Another I don't read at all is CFR's Foreign Affairs except for that podcast. Why mention it? Well, it's the corporatist choice. It's influential. I do love who with the whole conspiracy thing they're purportedly one-work government in the hands of a few wealthy families, but Obama who was on in the CFR is a "socialist" to right-wingers, so I'm not sure if you put those two together what that makes.

Now here's my take on the whole thing. Foreign policy and economics is a giant game with a bunch of players full of nothing but bullshit. They don't have the slightest clue with what's going on. Neither do we, so our part in the game is to try and figure it all out. Eventually, obvious candidates for bs start popping up. Probably a nicer way to phrase that is that people looking at the same data can come to very differing conclusions, but when writers are getting paid to act like they sound like they know what they're talking about I say it moves into bs.

The New Yorker - The Libra within my really appreciates the New Yorker. Started reading the occasional article in uni, especially with Dr. Morgan.

Worldmag.com -> Community -> Commentary - Alright, a word of defense. With this feed I do a LOT of browsing, mainly for one author, Anthony Bradley. He also has a blog that I'm subscribed to (The Institute), but I'm not sure how much you'll enjoy that. Bradley is a theology professor. He gets a lot of attention cause he's black and Reformed.

Speaking of Faith - Hour long NPR program once a week, comes on Sundays here? Ranges from mindbogglingly boring to insanely fascinating? We've all heard it right? The blog is even more interesting, cause it includes stuff related that they don't put in the program for media reasons.

As mentioned, I read the Freakonomics Blog.

Paul Krugman - I want you for a time to subscribe to this guy. He is a neo-Keynesian so you'll probably disagree with a lot of what he says, but it's still worthwhile reading material. He also has a blog.

Threat Level - This is a column for Wired monitoring governmental, business and cyber threats. I also check out Wired Science. That's not as spectacular, and they have a ton of other stuff too. It's fun, but I strongly recommend you subscribe to Threat Level.

Forgotten Stuff

Cristian Science Monitor had a reputation for non-sensationalized journalism. They've recently obviously moved exclusively to online. I always enjoyed reading their papers back in the day, but haven't checked it out.

Rethinking News: Sources II

For Rebekah. Cont. from...

To continue the metaphor, it's not that one should be eating these per se, it's that they're better prepared. A note about the format. I'm posting feeds off first. The other links vary, but if you hover your mouse over them, they'll include a little description so that you can figure it out. (I do that a lot, don't know if anybody has ever noticed.).

Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures & Commerce - This one is a rare jewel. Kev turned me back on to these vids with "Secret Power of Time". So there's these animated presentations that give you a little jolt of "AHH!" The other part is the who's who of intelligentsia trying to sell their books by giving a little spiel on them. If you haven't noticed, thus far there's been summarizing here of these. Maybe even a little commentary in the future. They also got plain lectures. They host though diversity, from leaders in British's Conservative Party to Neomarxist to you name it. Here's the site, and if you don't wanna put this in your reader, you can subscribe on youtube.

Wine Library TV: Changing the Wine World - Watch this to give you a tasty-taste. If you're still not convinced, peruse a few others. I cannot recommend this to you enough.

Here's one of your past loves: the Economist. I only subscribe to the Asian and China feeds. However, they also got a News Analysis feed.

Leithart.com - OMW BFF, this is like TOTALLY my fav blog. It's the best! You have gotta try it out!

Leithart is a Reformed pastor who just posts on some interesting stuff in interesting ways.

I've yet to try any of the recipes on this: Stephanie Clayton's blog. Also Kev's wife and my friend Esther have a blog that they sometimes post appetizing junk (RSS). They're much more eclectic than a "cooking" blog though, and have DYI posts, neat vacation ideas, and stuff.

I'd imagine you'd like photography blogs. I don't have any except Michael Shivers which is not a typical photography blog.

Oh yea! ESV: Book of Common Prayer Daily Office Lectionary. They have other devotional type stuff too. There are other translations online as well. The one I linked on is about 10-15 minutes(?) and quicker if you just read them. So you can just plug your laptop into the Bose and go on cooking or cleaning, etc. Of course, it never hurts to take a time-out and unplug either. I haven't been able to get a hold of one that has the daily liturgical stuff, but I'm looking.

Rethinking News: Part V

Alright I'm wrapping this series up, FINALLY! There's this post, another sources post, and a post on theory and Christianity. Maybe a few more. This post is basically to preach and tie up a few interpretative strings.

Thus far has obviously been about not simply news (current events coverage) but our sources for other types information, virtual social interaction, and interpretive aids. There's no fixed boundary, and news agencies themselves incorporate all four. That's because we need meaning for the current events coverage, which these extraneous sources supply. Your task is to direct the flow of what you want and need. It's a hit-or-miss scenario; all sources are to some extent unreliable; no such thing as always hitting, which is why it's a good idea to incorporate highly alternative sources despite requiring a personal filtration touch. Still some are reliably reliable.

Cultivating understanding of issues is a long-term process. At times you'll be unmotivated and that's cool. There are natural rhythms to our engagement, unless we're junkies. On some issues one would have to eat-and-breathe to have the understanding one ideally desires. Most likely we aren't that dedicated. If you're not for instance devoutly reading the Investor's Business Daily every morning, chances are you never will.

I'm the wrong person to talk to. I'm intellectually lazy and don't engage the level of discourse I should. I'm happy with my fries and double cheese burger news. Do what I say, not what I do, and I say be a snob about the level of discourse you surround yourself in, though not to the point that you alienate the folks you have to live with. Find people who are better at it than I. Also there's little dedicated watchdog journalism in what I'm going to recommend. That's a deficiency on my part. Pick your raison d'etre issues and find groups which monitor them. More so than finding "reputable" sources, I hope you find ones you trust or I'll have wasted a perfectly good post for nothing.

Interpretation is not a solitary activity. We are affected greatly by others. It's not determinative (hopefully), but it is a HUGE factor. A crucial aspect of this is open discussion with folks. Now, some people don't enjoy this. That's okay. However, you do need some form of interactive engagement. More so than this, it needs to be with those who will question what you think, otherwise you're going to either fall into groupthinking or an internalized struggle (protest?) that leaves you feeling isolated. OTOH - people need encouragement and affirmation as well. So really you need a mixed bag of engagement. Too often I see folks who simply stagnate. They're smugly comfortable in how they've resolved the tension of their viewpoints and only engage in "safe" conversations. Conversation should move to community that challenges us in being more fully human (I really wish I remember who I was ripping that off of, probably one of those damn post-evangelicals.). Thinking through requires that we defend and question our understandings. Reading a whole bunch of stuff that resonates with you is opinion formulation not thinking.

Be Mr. Universe:

You can't stop the signal, Mal. Everything goes somewhere, and I go everywhere.

or Mrs. or Ms. Universe.

Evangelicalism

Pop Quiz: Guess what metropolitan area or city has the most evangelicals according to Barna?

For some unknown reason I wanted to look at what constituted evangelicalism and came across Bebbington's work. It's weird as the search words my subconscious conjured for Google led me straight to him. Intrigued, I dug a little more, the familiarity ended up being from exposure when Moeller referenced him 6 years ago while I was ranting about Evangelicals' anti-intellectualism. It stopped my ranting and grabbed my attention then too, a new shiny toy concept. Anyways, Bebbington identifies four marks of conversionism, activism, biblicism and crucicentrism within Evangelicalism.

To clarify, let me state how I understand these terms. As neutral as possible, biblicism is a view of the Bible as the Word of God, a view of inerrancy, and a hermeneutic of literalism and illumination by the Holy Spirit (proof-texting, empty clichés, christocentric, and letterism). Conversionism is beating the dead horse view that humans need to have a personalized, transformative encounter w/ God culminating in this experiential, individualized relationship. It seems to range the spectrum from a formulaic "sinners" prayer, à la Graham to this "profound" quasi-mystical attunement w/ disgruntles (noticeably expectations not being met). As for activism, I actually prefer the term missional instead, but activism is evangelism, social work, and cultural engagement with an emphasis on confession of Jesus. Mind you, these are my words not his. Crucicentrism is an atoning power of the cross fixation. Some of what I read is that this is especially in the context of a Christocentric read of the Bible.

And this makes sense at one level. I think of Evangelical churches and I think of alter-calls at the end of services rather than the Eucharist. (Like to joke that Baptist don't actually have "church" except four times a year, they have chapel.). Sometimes their associative mental image is with JWs and Mormons. Revivals and tracts. There's conversations about Christians at least "being a witness" every time you meet someone and more typically manipulative strategies for "winning" friends and strangers to Christ (e.g. flirt to convert, okay bad one. A better one though is the "be their friend so that".). Forcing the Bible to speak to "all aspects of life" is common, and there's a lot of publicity about their refusal to cede on any point they interpret as contrary to the Word of God. Ironically, the term "missional" finds currency in critiques of the Evangelical church, many of which are overstated but some highlight the problematic nature of such a universal marker. It's problematic to characterize the Evangelical church by "activism" strictly as you have many exceptions like seeker-sensitive churches or loosely where the term loses any distinguishing capacity and so flexible as to easily fit even an atheistic hermit in the desert. I really feel at a loss here not being able to reference Bebbington's work for his understanding. Bebbington's definition stems from in-depth historical analysis; whereas I guess I just always thought of it as this offshoot of fundamentalism, whom more and more quit caring about their "sins", a trajectory it's still on. From what I've seen now though... NOPE. Way more complex and diverse, with a far richer history and more sophistication than merely different than mainline and black churches. Of course it has exploded wide open now with evangelicalism as a global phenomenon.

I'll comment later on other issues, but Bebbington was the only common definition with a lot of variations. The Barna Group has a similar 9-point criteria for identifying Evangelicals. One of these, a continuous personal commitment to Jesus, is a self-perceived existential condition. The other 7 though are reflective of a theological distinctiveness, plus an ambiguous one that I interpret as a qualitative experiential marker.

1. Heavenly afterlife because of confession and accepting of Jesus
2. Faith has a high priority.
3. Proselytization
4. Satan's existence
5. Eternal salvation through grace precluding works
6. Sinlessness of Jesus
7. Scriptural inerrancy
8. God's omnipotence, omniscience, and perfection as Creator and Lord

It should be noted that their criteria for identifying born-again Christians as opposed to a full-on evangelical is the existential condition and the first theological marker. Listen, we're all thinking it, so I'm just gonna come out and say it. Barna is a bunch of sectarian classist. Huh? You were thinking something different? Oops, guess it's just me. Alright, perhaps that's a good way to think of the congregation, but to start sifting through its members. I mean folks who've participated in Evangelical communities their whole life aren't "real" Evangelicals. Please. There needs to be a degree of disconnect in the categorization at the congregational level and its descriptive application at the level of persons. That's where it fails. Plus personally, I think the notion of 100% identification is absurd, realizing some of you may disagree.

A third approach is the World Evangelical Alliance's". This one requires a finer interpretative brush than I care to pull out, so if you want the full she-bang I suggest you read it yourself. All I'll say is that it starts off with this generic definition of "evangelical" and then unpacks that in a way that is more recognizably Evangelical. It's not very helpful, and I think the ecumenical tone is the most significant clue as to why they went that route. It does have going for it though before I poo-poo everything. It weaves through incidental and defining characteristics and beliefs in such a way that unlike Dr. Academic's and Mr. Ideologue's defs would resonate with more folks who sit in the pews and might personally articulate themselves. At least that's my guess. *shrug* The dilemma there is a susceptibility to self-awareness birthed from limited exposure of the Church. The danger is abuse for excluding other while the benefit is they're often times better equipped to recognize and acknowledge other Evangelicals. Unfortunately, this disassociation can especially extend to such superficial sentiments as the others aren't demonstrating the "walk" or due to feeling anxiety fear or are labelled "nominal".

Also examined urbandictionary.com. I picked "Evangelical movement" rather than "evangelical" cause the "evangelical" entries actually kinda made sense, which was not what I was looking for.

A group of fat, lazy, unintelligent, uninformed extreme right-wing conservatives overly concerned with pointless social issues and ignorantly blissful of the truly important matters at hand that could actually affect our lives.

-Class, explain to me the class structure of ancient rome.

-uhhhhh. . . Jesus?

-well, close enough.

This reflects my basic view.

Relevance

It'd be really cool to right now be make that Rush sound of paper ruffling in front of a microphone, no? Anyways, I think it's a cool sound effect.

Quiz Answer: If you guessed "Lost" Angeles, you're correct! In fact, they have more than New York, Chicago, and Boston combined. I personally am not ashamed to admit I didn't see that coming. You? Esther might of known, but I'm gonna make an educated guess and figure most of you didn't. The point being Evangelicals defy stereotyping.

As Barna argues there's a difference between media's portrayal of Evangelicals and their own subcultural reality and self-perception. As for media misrepresentation, they can take a ticket and get in line for all I care. Admittedly, it does influence profoundly outsider and self-perceptions, but that doesn't abnegate our responsibility for our own understanding. Still it'd help if they stopped using code. Call a conservative a conservative if that's what your fronting and stop underhandedly referring to Evangelicals as conservatives. More significant is the difference between self-perception and where they're actually at. Closing this gap increases understanding and channels the frustrations and areas of complacency voiced and quietly ruminated by those in the movement and its critics. IOWs it facilitates constructive responses to issues with Evangelicalism.

BTW - to give you an idea of how it shifts the landscape. Using Barna's definition only 8% of the population is Evangelical, with these having no denominational specificity (so they can be Coptics or Catholic nuns). Wow, that's unexpected as their criteria wasn't anything I didn't think most Evangelicals believed anyways. Pew with a lot of dancing puts it at 26.3%, barely above Catholics at 23.9%. Most media surveys rank it much higher based on purely self-identification. The issue of the term's ambiguity, rather than its fluitity, is that people then are more individually interpretative from isolated internalized experiences and viewpoints, media portrayals, and sloppy reasons.

So, what do you think an Evangelical is?

Some folks wanna exclude the Pentecostals, or at least Oneness Pentecostals. It seems everyone has an opinion, but the majority of charismatics and cessationist Evangelicals think they're under the same roof. Apparently the PCA is too, which surprised me. I don't know why since Schaeffer was and actively part of what would become the PCA. Soft idealization? Don't know why seriously. Interestingly, the PCA is the only denom affiliated with both the NAE and the NCC. The AM is only in the NAE, though they're in the Anglican Communion and thus by extension(?) in the NCC. (I'll get to the significance in a bit.

Part of the problem is I don't know enough. All four were crafted using criteria that functionally focused upon their implicit purpose. Any purpose I've got is a muddled, convoluted mess half of which is buried. There's no abductive element to my reasoning; they're just "not satisfactory", and I can't elucidate why. It does seem best to suggest a model which uses multiple definitions to target recognized groups we're certain of. So any culturally in an Evangelical church and a definition for those non-associated but clearly Evangelical minus those clearly not Evangelical in a church. This is different than the Barna methodology, which screens people through a theological filter. What I'm talking about is say excluding an Atheist or Catholic or Episcopalian who goes merely due to their spouse. Meanwhile criteria for an Evangelical church is weighed heavily by associative relations like the NAE and historical developments and less so purely for theological conformity. Of course, this isn't a strong differentiation, as often those historical developments are driven by doctrinal issues and acknowledgement by associative relations are underlied with theological similarity.

Importantly though, one shouldn't conflate Churches with members, as they not reflective in scale. This is a chief failure of Barna and Bebbington's criteria. They too strongly predefine the Evangelical and end up only being able to be challenged by those looking precisely as they expected. Rather judge the churches and allow the congregations to work it out. On the other hand, we should tighten our consideration of membership qualifiers to compensate for inflated rolls, and allow even tighter definitions for more nuanced and accurate labels.

Anyways, that's kinda some of my thoughts from the last week, take what you will. I think I've gone as far as possible with couch-potato research. Then next step is to pick up some more substantive sources than news articles and websites or do some research or get some feedback/opinions from other people, preferably those who actually know or are Evangelicals. Or I could get lucky and discover a breakthrough I've overlooked that has all the answers.

So, what your take on the whole Evangelical phenomenon? Comments on definition? Challenges facing the movement? Unfair caricature and portrayals? Anger, frustration, confusion? Anything I got wrong (factual corrections especially welcomed, trying to get a better sense of all this and as I'm not Evangelical)? Thoughts on movies, the World Cup? Which by the way, did anyone noticed they shortened the duration of those camera shots during the final? Huh‽ Must of done some homework and got their act together.

A descent read for disenchanted evangelicals.