A Plea for Civility in the Public Forum

I have been troubled lately by the responses of many of my conservative brothers and sisters in their efforts to draw attention to prominent and controversial political issues. It all started with a two-hour video of a recent town-hall meeting on the President's health care plans right here in Brevard County, Florida. I was distressed when I saw members of the liberal opposition being shouted down when they attempted to voice their approval of a public option. I then witnessed a woman rudely berate the AARP spokesperson for her failure to ensure that enough microphones were available for all (the woman had apologized for that up front and assured the audience that she had tried to get enough mics but couldn't.
I could go on....
I have witnessed the same scenario from other videos of town meetings across the nation that I've watched. Conservative speaker rises, makes blanket accusations of rising socialism to uproarious applause, then sits down. Another, more liberal member of the audience rises to challenge the statement and is insulted or does not get the chance to speak.
The final straw was the recent well-publicized incident in the halls of Congress where South Carolina Representative Wilson publically accused President Obama of lying.
Can we talk? I praise God that we have a form of government where opposition is seen as healthy and that we are able to express our disappointments in healthy ways. But what I have seen from many Christians is nothing less than a wholesale violation of scripture done in the name of freedom of speech. I also am witnessing a phenomenon that is positively un-American, one which we Christians associate with the worst excesses of the opponents of liberty: gagging those with whom we disagree. And if we can't stop them from speaking, let's just accuse them of lying.
I am appalled.
We have violated Romans 13:7 which commands us to render honor and fear to authority - whether we like them or not. Let's not forget that the Roman Imperator of Paul's day was all but absolute in power.
We have turned our back on I Peter 2:17 which also calls the body of Christ to honor the king and to show respect to authority.
We have forgotten the command that our witness to the world must be accompanied by gentleness and respect (I Peter 3:15).
We have also forgotten that, to paraphrase Augustine, our citizenship is in a heavenly city and that if we become too engrossed in the earthly city we will become disillusioned, for it will never totally accommodate the kingdom of God. We seem to forget that one hallmark of liberal theology that begat the social gospel movement was the belief that we could bring in the kingdom of God if we worked just a little bit harder for social and political change.
Now I'm not fundamentalist in the sense that we should abandon culture and politics and retreat into our holy huddles. On the contrary, as a history professor I am painfully aware of what happened in our culture, and in the political arena when we jumped ship in the latter 19th century.
I don't mind protest. I agree with Jefferson's assessment that a little revolution is healthy. But I don't think he had in mind the lack of civility that seems to be the norm today.
I am re-reading H.W. Brands' majestic biography of Benjamin Franklin and was fascinated by Franklin's assessment of the role of printing in the public form regarding opposing viewpoints:
Printers are educated in the belief that when men differ in opinion both sides ought equally to have the advantage of being heard by the public; and that when truth and error have fair play, the former is always an overmatch for the latter....
I also become concerned when Christians I know seem to know more about the political perspectives of their favorite talk show host and very little about what the Scriptures have to say about government and our responsibilities toward it. We seem to forget that every network is run by sinners. My perspective as a Reformed Christian also teaches me that all our motives and actions are tainted by sin and cannot be completely trusted. Our Founding Fathers recognized this truth or Constitution would look very different.
We have such short memories.... and few of us read anymore. If we did, we'd know how much abuse was heaped upon President Washington when he took a neutral position in the war between France and Britain in the mid-1790s. The insults he endured from those who saw his decision as a betrayal of our former Revolutionary war ally almost convinced him to return home after his first term.
We also need to remember that as much as we love Jefferson, he was touted as being an "anti-Christ" and that the US would become a godless nation if he were to become president. It didn't, of course, but that didn't stop the insults.
Come to think of it, we've never really mastered the art of civility, have we.
It's time for Christians to set the example and stop conforming to the world but be transformed by the renewing of our minds. It's time to stop setting aside the command of God to pursue our own traditions.
Isn't it time for us to heed Santayana and remember the lessons of history so we won't have to repeat them?

Just for fun - one of my favorite spots! (Click on this title and see why!)

Last year about this time I went home to Honolulu, called my wife and stood before the camera waving to her while I talked to her. Closest I've come to Skype, I think:) Image takes about 10 seconds or so to reach Florida.

In Tribute to the Jailer

When I was stationed on Okinawa shortly after the earth began to cool, I made friends with a young second lieutenant and former Vietnamese linguist known to those of you who visit his blogpage as The Jailer. He is one of the most godly men I know and his family also reflects the fragrance of Christ as few others I have known.
Two days ago he took command of the USAF Honor Guard. For those of you who may not be acquainted with the Honor Guard, let me just say that you can count on one hand the number of military positions with greater prestige and public visibility than this one (with the possible exception of the Thunderbirds and the Blue Angels). Anyway,in honor of the man who has everything but gives it all in the service of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Way to go, Jailer! How you shine for Christ and for our country!

God's Judgement and Historical Interpretation

Wow! I can't believe how long it's been since my lst post!!
Anyway, I've been reviewing God's Judgment: Historical Interpretation and Christian Faith by Stephen Keillor. The book attempts to answer a question that Christian historians/history teachers either answer glibly or not at all: Does the Bible have anything to say about how God judges nations today? Many of you have probably heard comments about 9/11 being some kind of judgment of God on America for its immorality and turning from him. And that may be true. It's difficult, however, to make a case since God has not told us as he did the prophets which nations he is judging and why. Is he actively judging or just using natural events in his work? Does his judgment also include restoration? How do we know?
Yet the Old and New Testament both provide examples and models that show us when and how God "sifts" the conduct of nations over long periods of time. Keillor uses the Hebrew idea of misphat (sifting) as a template for evaluating how God judges. He then discusses aspects of US history and asks whether these case studies exhibit God's judgments or not.
What do you think? I'm trying to cull Keillor's insights into a lesson plan(s) for my own history students and I'm interested in your own thoughts.

I read a fascinating article about a year ago from the Atlantic Monthly called Is Google Making Us Stupid?. Nicholas Carr candidly admitted an increasing inability to concentrate for very long while reading. It got me to thinking about my own tendencies. I too, have been experiencing something eerily similar to Carr's own difficulties in concentration. Like him, after a few pages in the best of books, I become antsy and lose attention. I close the book, get up, do something else, and try to refocus. I flip through a few pages and ask myself "how long is this chapter?" Fifteen minutes later it happens again.
Contrast this with my own wife who can sit through Dickens, Bronte, Austen, or Eliot for hours on end.
Carr spends much time on-line doing research for his own calling. So do I. We both see the sirens luring us into the rocks. Information is cut and pasted in short bites, with little proof or "unnecessary" detail, uncluttered by evidence, and loaded with bright colors and images.
Yep, Bright lights, big city.
And it's turning my brain to mush.
I'm beginning to understand what my students go through when they open works which they are cordially demanded to absorb. And although I have adjusted to life on the web, they have grown up with it and have been (mal)nourished by it.
Carr's gut reaction (and that of others he has spoken with) is that our brains are actually being rewired in ways that change the way we think and process information. His article reminded me of an updated version of Neil Postman's classic Amusing Ourselves to Death.
Now, of course, I know that there are some procedural methods of ensuring that our students don't overuse the web in research - limit the number of internet sources, teach them how to identify evidence, and how to think critically. Beyond these, how do we help our students and ourselves to renew rather than rewire their minds from the dangers of the google monster?

Your truth place or mine?

I know this doesn't have much to do with history or social studies but it has been on my heart recently.

I recently did an in-service with the teachers at the small Christian school where I teach. One point I wanted to emphasize was the link between our thinking and our actions a la Francis Schaeffer's How Should We Then Live theme verse "As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he." Why is there statistically such a small margin of difference between the way our churched students behave and the way unchurched young people act? Part of the answer, I think, lies in the post-modernist tendency to relativize truth to "what matters to me." In doing so, we can then justify our behavior that "I felt like God wanted me to do this or that." or I felt that what I was doing was alright." Worse yet, it's the student who gossips in the hallway right after the lesson I gave on how to show love by the way we talk.

I marvel at the tendency of modern American Christians to think that we can arrive at biblical truth through a kind of osmosis. Josh McDowell noted in a recent video that Bible studies for the over-25 crowd seem to start with the question "what does this passage mean to me?" without first asking "what does the passage say," followed by "what did the passage mean at the time it was written (interpretation).

Perhaps part of the problem may be what Os Guiness pointed out in his book "Fit Bodies Flabby Minds." In the US particularly, there has been the tendency since the Second Great Awakening, to allow everyman to be his own interpreter, cast off all past wisdom, and even become proud of his/her spirituality in doing so. It's when you ask a person "what does your church believe?" and are met with the response "Oh, we just preach the Bible." I don't think any of us can interpret the scriptures so objectively completely free from cultural or personal biases. At worst, such a belief invites arrogance. At best, it leads to sloppy thinking.

I know part of this seems to be disconnected. But does anyone else sense that our Christian students have completely different notions of what constitutes truth than do we?

Biblical Integration (or whatever you want to call it)

A couple weeks ago I asked a question on another blog about what the readers thought about the issue of Biblical integration in academia - particularly in history courses. I was mildly disappointed by the lack of response - and those who did respond seemed either not to understand what I meant by Biblical (or Christian) Integration in the subjects we teach. Those who did understand what I said were skeptical of any approach that could do this principle justice - at least from what they had seen, the application of Biblical integration was sloppy at best, and dishonest at worst.
At its worst, it seems to take this approach:

Lesson on math
A verse from the Bible that a teacher digs out that has some sort of reference to a math issue
End of lesson
Is there another answer to this or are we hopelessly incapable of demonstrating that Jesus is indeed Lord of all of knowledge? Here is part of my reply on that blog:

A couple months ago I finished a history (published just last year) of the rise of the animal rights movement in England in the late 18th century, a battle in which many evangelicals participated. Their defense of the created order under God is certainly one that any teacher, Christian or not, could use in a science or history classroom (I used it today to illustrate the strands of reform that accompanied the movement against the English slave trade). The scriptural principles these defenders employed in moving anti-cruelty legislation were sound. The book’s examples became an opportunity for me to ask my 9th graders the question “how would you defend against animal cruelty on the basis of Scripture?” (I teach in a Christian school). I wasn’t surprised that none of them really could but was encouraged as they tried.This, I think, is one example of what I meant by “Christian” (or biblical) integration. It’s asking how people have lived (and are living) their lives, pursuing their callings, and changing their worlds while living out the Faith.In Government, I have used ML King, Jr.’s Letter from the Birmingham Jail to discuss the basis of the non-violent wing of the Civil Rights movement from the perspective of Dr. King’s theology. You would be amazed how many teachers believe and teach that Dr. King’s original inspiration was primarily Gandhi’s nonviolent resistance against British rule. Without ignoring that valuable evidence, I want students to understand the consequences of applying (or failing to apply) biblical truth to the situations of history in which the actors find themselves. Hopefully, these students will enter college with an appreciation of the role that theology has played in history at a time when that discipline has been marginalized.I certainly understand the reticence of many who have seen a poor “patchwork” effort in both curriculum and instruction. I hope that our continued dialogue on this issue both here and on my own blog can help us improve our ability to recognize every area of knowledge as under the Lordship of Christ.

What do you think? What are the limitations of this approach to learning and scholarship?

Program or process?

Recently I read Josh McDowell's "The Last Christian Generation." He has become increasingly alarmed that most of our churched young people are becoming less and less like the Jesus they worship and more and more like their unchurched peers, both in what they believe and how they apply biblical principles to their lives. I was intrigued by his contention that many youth ministries in our churches are program rather than process driven. I think what he means by program driven is that we invite young people to an activity, throw a Bible lesson at them along with some very fun stuff, and then send them home. Some of my students seem to confirm that this is how it's done. I'm not a church youth leader, so I want to be fair to those hard-working and little-appreciated youth leaders out there. Is this really the case?
By process, I think Josh is referring to the growth in Christlike character based on the word of God, in the power of the Holy Spirit. Unless our youth ministries make this the focus of their ministries rather than activity and Bible knowledge, the future of our Christian young people looks bleak.
I've noticed it even in my own school. Whether in chapel services or Bible courses, our emphasis on specific application of Bible truth has been weak. Even my own worldview course does not have room for application. So, what happens is that my students get a head full of knowledge, but I have no idea if they really know what to do with it.
I think I'm waking up now.
Yesterday, for our regular chapel we did something we've never done before. After about 20 minutes of excellent student-led worship (which is normal) we broke the entire student body up into small groups of 5-6. We selected the most godly students we knew and trained them in the basics of leading small groups. Then, we gave them a study on love with a strong emphasis on application. Each student wrote down a specific act that they were to do every day the following week as an application of the scriptures they studied. The leaders will informally touch base with them next week to ensure a minimum of accountability.
I have no idea what will happen next. I do know that after meeting with the leaders that they were excited about this new approach and wanted to continue it at least twice a month. Perhaps some of you out there have tried a similar approach.

Peanuts, regulation, and Upton Sinclair's Jungle

Heard on NPR this morning the disturbing story of the massive recall of peanut products from a Plainview peanut processing plant. Everything ever produced there since it opened in March 2005 has to come back. An article in the Houston Chronicle pointed out that inspectors discovered "dead rodents, rodent excrement, and bird feathers in a crawl space above a food production area of the Peanut Corp, of America's Plainview plant.
The article also mentions that there are only 34 inspectors to cover 17,000 food manufacturers in Texas.
The painful part is that the company had not applied for a license in the 4 years it has existed (which is why no one visited).
What timing - I'm just getting ready to deal with the Progressive era on Monday in one college glass. Oh, boy! Having recently read Upton Sinclair's "The Jungle" and its lurid descriptions of meat processing at the turn of the 20th century, it all reminds me that perhaps it is time for a breath of fresh air. With the allegations of poor oversight on the part of the SEC in the Bernie Madeoff case, we seem to have forgotten the lessons of those days of 06(1906, that is!). I hear so many Christians decrying government regulation and the taxes that support it. Well, this is our answer. Who are we kidding? A healthy dose of the "T" in the Calvinist TULIP acrostic (total depravity) should help us understand that we all have a strong tendency to get lax when no one is looking (gee, ya think our students don't cheat if we aren't paying attention?). Anyone who teaches post-Reconstruction US History or even the first Industrial Revolution can find plenty of room for skepticism in the human ability to work without accountability. And like many an industrial worker during that era, it appears that we are still working for....peanuts!

A Geography Bee!

Roberta "Bobbie" Kelly, the student activities coordinator of the ACSI Ohio River Valley region has a great opportunity for those of you teaching in grades 3-8 or who know someone who does:
Last year ACSI undertook the task of creating a Geography Bee to add to our ACSI events. The program is designed for students in grades 3-8 and is designed to create interest in the area of Geography. If you are interested in hearing more about this program – and perhaps being in on the first year it is offered, get in touch with her at bobbie_kelly@acsi.org

Welcome to Jesus and Clio!

First, thanks to Jailer for introducing me to this particular Blog format - much more user friendly than my previous blog and hopefully, it will generate much more discussion than the other. I'll be learning as I go and welcome your feedback as we grow. This blog is designed as a forum for Christian teachers, public and private who want to interact with other teachers in any of the myriad disciplines that are part of our educational system - anywhere in the world! Primarily, my discipline has been History but this forum is welcome to any and all who share the vision of Christian teachers who want to encourage and sharpen one another in our calling to train the next generation of Christian citizens and lovers of Jesus Christ. Originally, my vision came out of my isolation. At my previous school (Pine Castle Christian Academy, Orlando) I taught alongside only two other high school teachers. Now, I am one of only two social studies teachers who manage the entire social studies curriculum for the middle and high school grades. I often wonder if there is anyone else out there who feels as isolated as I have for the past three years. I've looked for a venue to share ideas, frustrations, snippets of what I've been reading, and have found nothing really for anyone in the social studies arena. So, here it is. Still, I'd like to emphasize that this blog isn't limited to scholars in my discipline. If you have a heart for God, for your students, and for honest scholarship this is the place for you. Sure, there are organizations such as the NCSS and many Christians are a part of them, but there is nothing that truly allows Christian teachers to network informally. So, if there is anyone out there, help me end the isolation and in true koinonia, use this forum to strengthen each other. Each of us has strengths, gifts, insights, and experiences that we can all profit from to make ourselves better scholars and better disciples of our Lord. So, if you have insights to share, this forum is for you! Let's hear from you!One of the first entires I'll be making in the very near future will deal with Christian historiography. What does it really mean to be a Christian and a historian? What are the opportunities and dangers inherent in a Christian interpretation of history?More to come on that!
Oh, by the way, Clio was the Greek muse of History. Imagine that! We have our very own muse. Very cool! And we intend to keep her.

Resources to keep your Christian Integration sharp

Here is an excellent resource just for the US history teacher. http://www.amazon.com/Religious-History-America-American-Colonial/dp/0060630566/ref=sr_1_8?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1215181409&sr=1-8

This next is one is primarily for the students. Unfortunately, it is out of print but is written by the best Christian scholars (Mark Noll, George Marsden, Harry Stout, Edwin Gaustad, etc.). As you can see, you can get it used for very little cash. It has loads of primary sources and discusses aspects of America’s religious history as no secular text would even touch. If you decide to get a copy, I’ll be glad to send you the questions I use for several of the readings. I recommend practically anything by the above authors. Marsden is superb on the history of American fundamentalism and Mark Noll's specialty is antebellum America (Check out his book America's God from Jonathan Edwards to Lincoln - pretty detailed treatment). Harry Stout wrote a book a couple years ago called Upon the Altar of the Nation: A Moral History of the Civil War. If you go to Amazon you'll find a mint. http://www.amazon.com/Eerdmans-Handbook-Christianity-America-Mark/dp/0802835821/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1215181685&sr=8-1

Now here's an author that is controversial but a superb historian and an evangelical Christian too. His name is Steven Keillor (no relation to Garrison although he is from Minnesota!) and has written several books, the most recent being God's Judgments: Interpreting History and Christian Faith. Well-documented and poses some fascinating questions on how we can look at the judgment of God as an aspect of history. Case studies include 9/11 and the Civil War among others.

There are many others I could recommend - several anthologies about interpreting history from a Christian perspective but these will keep us all busy for a long time.Enjoy!http://www.amazon.com/Gods-Judgments-Interpreting-History-Christian/dp/0830825657/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1215612161&sr=8-1

The Courage to Teach

The Courage to Teach is probably the most significant book about teaching I've ever read. Parker Palmer first wrote this 240 page gem ten years ago and received such favorable acclaim from teachers that he, along with colleagues formed the Center for Courage and Renewal which has reinvigorated thousands of teachers all over the US.
The current edition (just came out in 2007) also includes a CD featuring Palmer and others discussing both his book, its impact, and the work of the Center.
What first attracted me to the book was the back of the jacket. I'd like to share it with you:

"I am a teacher at heart, and there are moments in the classroom when I can hardly hold the joy...But at other moments, the classroom is so lifeless or painful or confused - and I am so powerless to do anything about it - that my claim to be a teacher seems a transparent sham....If you are a teacher who never has bad days, or who has them but does not care, this book is not for you. This book is for teachers who have good days and bad, and whose bad days bring the suffering that comes only from something one loves, It is for teachers who refuse to harden their hearts because they love learners, learning, and the teaching life."

Palmer delivers what he promises. I think he is a believer (see his other titles on Amazon) and the principles he discusses are certainly biblical. One of the things I most appreciate is that Palmer doesn't speak from an ivory tower. He confesses his own perplexities and failures as an educator. Although Palmer's experience is largely with post-secondary social-science students, much of the work he has engaged in over the years has been with elementary and secondary teachers. In many ways, as he himself states, they have been his mentors.

One of the sections of the book that has meant the most to me is his discussion of paradox. As the book's subtitle indicates, the focus of the entire work is not about technique (there are a thousand and one of those out there) but on the "inner landscape of a teacher's life." Part of the paradox, Palmer says, is about the gifts we possess that we bring to our teaching profession that makes us what we are. The other aspect of the paradox is what happens when I use my gift and it backfires. Here's a passage that scratched where I itched:

....I learn that my gift as a teacher is the ability to dance wth my students, to co-create with them a contaext in which all of us can teach and learn, and that this gift works as long as I stay open and trusting and hopeful about who my students are.
But when my students refuse to dance with me, my strength turns to weakness. I get angry, although my relational nature often keeps me from expressing my anger in clean and open ways. I become sinently resentful and start steppping on the toes of my unwilling dance partners, occasionally kicking their shins. I become closed and untrusting and hopeless far more quickly than need be, simply because they have rejected my gift.....
I need to learn that the pain I sometimes experience in teaching is as much a sign that my selfhood is alive and well as the joy I feel when the dance is in full swing. If I learn that simple but profound truth, I might stay closer to my gift and farther from repressed anger and be more likely to teach in ways that will work for both me and my students.
The root cause of this low point in my teaching was not a failure of technique, though there are techniques that could help me in such moments. The root cause was a sense of self-negation, or even self-annihilation, that came when my students were unwilling to help me fulfill my nature.
It is embarrassing to put it that baldly. I know, intellectually, how naive it is to assume that other people, especially students, are here to help me fulfill myself-naive at best and arrogant at worst. But that assumption is what did me in as that class unraveled and my own growth as a teacher requires that I face such awkward facts.
To become a better teacher, I must nurture a sense of self that both does and does not depend on the responses of others - and that is a true paradox.


Okay, it took months for me to really understand what this meant. But I think I'm beginning to grasp the concept of paradox. I like to do creative things and fun things and have small group discussions instead of lecturing all the time - things I know won't bore the students. That's because I really care about the students and have a passion for my subject as all of you out there do. That is my gift (I hope!). That is also one side of the paradox. I care, I create, teaching and learning matters. Now the other side of the paradox is what happens to me if the students don't cooperate. For me, for example, if I am trying to do something creative and it isn't appreciated I grow resentful. I get hurt and say to myself "why knock myself out for this crowd?" I should just do the minimum and then sling the test their direction. Then I'll just relax and take it easy." But the other side of the paradox is that the reason I get hurt in the first place is because of my gift - because I care. If I decide to just do the bare minimum I am also negating my gift. If I decide "I won't let this bother me" I am also negating my gift and becoming someone completely different than what God created me to be. So, instead of denying that I am hurt or upset and protecting myself against further hurt by not caring anymore, I need to face the paradox head on. Face it, and find creative ways to deal with my hurt without denying either who God created me to be or the needs of my students.

This is a magnificent book - the kind of volume that you can come back to again and again for inspiration and hope and doesn't offer unrealistic quick fixes but principles for the rest of your life.

Here it a link for the book at Amazon:

http://www.amazon.com/Courage-Teach-Exploring-Landscape-Teachers/dp/0787996866/ref=pd_bbs_sr_3?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1215438075&sr=8-3

Here's another link for the Center for Courage and Renewal:

http://www.couragerenewal.org/

Dr. Noll on America and the Bible

Here's a video from one of my favorite historians and thinkers. I recommend any of his books but start with The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind