Here and There #36
Birds, birds, birds; "American" Bibles; labels for various Christians; causes of mental illness among teens; and Great Britain.
I’m posting this somewhat shorter, but somewhat more-in-depth set of articles/essays, just as Merna and I are about to head off on a two-week-long adventure involving, we hope, lots of good bird-watching and general experience with wildlife. More about that when we return. In the meantime, here are some things I’ve been reading lately. This means, too, that you may not hear from me for about two weeks or so.
Merna and I have been bird-watching together since college days, esp. Merna’s senior year when she took a course in ornithology. We’re not in the class of these birders: someone’s now reached an incredible lifetime goal of seeing 10,000 different species. It takes a lot of travel and a fair amount of technology to reach that goal!
Did you know that there was an Eisenhower Bible? I didn’t. Nor did I know that DJT’s son Eric is hawking a different KJB “American Bible” than his father. Read all about it—and also about Thomas Jefferson’s approach to Scripture (in case you didn’t already know what he thought about the Bible). The always readable Esau McCaulley has an excellent article on the Christian response to national bibles.
There’s a lot of debate about Christian labels these days. What label should one use if you’re no longer an “evangelical,” for instance. Actually, then, the debate is about sublabels, on the theory that “Christian” is too broad. Maybe so. At any rate, Katelyn Beaty weighs in and suggests that she’s a post-evangelical. Judging by the quantity of positive responses, she speaks for quite a few, because the term implies moving on from something else, as the term “evangelical” did in the 1950s, in contrast to “fundamentalist.” Now, John Hawthorne has taken what he describes as a high-altitude view of evangelicalism in the last 70 years or so, in response to reading Sarah McCammons’s book The Exvangelicals. The historical perspective is helpful. In response (at least in part), Chris Gehrz now weighs in on where “evangelical” Christian colleges and universities will be in the next few years. Note: because I’m still deeply interested in higher education, all of these strike me as important perspectives.
Back to birding! Ed Yong, who was one of the most reliable guides to medical science during the pandemic has spent some time in recent months getting into bird-watching. He thinks it has helped him get in touch with reality, something with which anyone who spends significant time in the outdoors will agree! (Gift link.)
The social scientist/psychologist Jonathan Haidt has been agitating for us all to be more aware of how the use of electronic handheld gadgets are transforming our world—and us, and especially our children, and not for the best. He has new book out, The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness. I’ve not read the book. There are several reviews out already (as is frequently the case in our age of instantaneous response). In Nature, something of a flagship magazine (online and in print), the review claims that Haidt overstates the available evidence and that, essentially, the causes of the mental health epidemic are more complicated. Somewhat similarly, a review in the Washington Post says that we shouldn’t rush to the conclusions that Haidt draws. And, to round things out, another review in The New York Times argues along the same lines: a single cause is unlikely to be the culprit. Haidt has responded on Xwitter, briefly, and promises a more complete response on his blog; when he has done so, I’ll post that. (Thought: we tend to like simple, or single, explanations for events/developments in our lives and our culture; simple explanations are rarely complete; but they’re also not likely to be completely wrong. Can you see the world as gray? I hope so, because it is.)
Abortion is one of those phenomena that we think has a singular cause; this leads to the conclusion that we can legislate it out of existence (or at least come close). Karen Swallow Prior, no liberal she, argues that presuming that abortion is a single person’s choice is a mistake. The subtitle of her essay, “Abortion is a failure not just of individuals but also of the village,” encourages you to read the entirety.
What’s happening in Great Britain, especially in regard to government, economy, and society? Sam Knight, a longtime observer of the British political scene has a long essay that, if you want to read it that way, in his treatment of the last 20 years in Great Britain also has implications for what “conservatives” would like to see happen in the U.S. (Link is to a PDF.)