Linsanity and Asian American Christianity

Linsanity and Asian American Christianity, by Carl Park (The Gospel Coalition, 15 February 2012)

Excerpts:

By now, especially after his game-winning shot vs. Toronto on Tuesday night, many of us have seen or read about Jeremy Lin, the came-out-of-nowhere starting point guard of the New York Knicks. Some of the stories and blogs are about Lin the Asian American, and some are about Lin the Christian. Some, like my friend Michael Luo's very personal piece in The New York Times, are about both. In his article, Luo talks about a "species" of Christianity, Asian American Christianity, and wonders why he, a Christian and an Asian American, connects differently to Lin than he does to Tim Tebow. He asks, and starts to answer, What is Asian American Christianity?

Link: Linsanity and Asian American Christianity

Helping Pilgrims:The Smart Way to Mecca

Helping Pilgrims:The Smart Way to Mecca (The Economist, 13 February 2012)

Excerpts:

The holy city is also notoriously tricky to get around: each year more than 2m Muslims converge on it and often have a hard time finding their tents in the giant camps whose alleys are not well marked. "Some people get lost for days before being able to rejoin their group," says Habiburrahman Dastageeri, a 31-year-old German-Afghan, who has yet to go on his own haj, but has already struggled with the umrah, a less complex, and less crowded, pilgrimage to Mecca that can be performed at any time of the year.

The experience inspired the computer scientist to develop a smartphone app which helps hajjis to avoid stress so they can focus on their religious duties. The app, currently available only for iPhone, though an Android version is in the works, is called Amir, which means "guide" in Arabic (among other things). It offers a check-list to ensure the pilgrim is fully prepared before setting off to Saudi Arabia. It also includes interactive tutorials, for instance on what to do while walking seven times counter-clockwise around the Kabah, the Black Stone, or how properly to stone the Devil. Once they arrive, pilgrims can use Amir to check where they are and to locate their tent. On top of that, the app has a buildt-in emergency button so people in need can easily be located by an ambulance or the police.

Link:Helping Pilgrims:The Smart Way to Mecca

The Faith and Fate of Jeremy Lin

The Faith and Fate of Jeremy Lin: An Interview with Jeremy Lin (Patheos.com, 3 March 2010)

Excerpts:

As an Asian-American, this basketball phenom at Harvard is blazing a trail. As a Christian, he's striving to walk in faith.

Jeremy Lin was raised in the San Francisco Bay Area, and led his basketball team at Palo Alto High School to the state championships in his senior year. At Harvard University, Lin has built a national following, has been hailed as one of the finest point guards in the nation, and stands poised to enter the NBA as a high draft pick and the first Asian-American to achieve prominence in the NBA.

Lin is among those receiving the highest number of votes for the Bob Cousy award, given annually to the nation's most effective point guard. He has been profiled in Time, Sports Illustrated and ESPN: The Magazine, as well as countless basketball magazines and newspapers from the United States to China. He spoke with Timothy Dalrymple in his dorm room at Harvard University.

Link:The Faith and Fate of Jeremy Lin: An Interview with Jeremy Lin

Nag Hammadi codices: a new interpretive approach

Nag Hammadi codices: a new interpretive approach (Past Horizons: Adventures in Archaeology, 9 February 2012)

Abstract:

The texts of the Nag Hammadi codices have commonly been treated as mere witnesses to Gnostic texts in Greek mainly from the second and third centuries. A new research project will now challenge this approach by interpreting the Coptic texts of these codices within the context of their probable production and use in fourth- and fifth-century Egyptian monasticism.

Link: Nag Hammadi codices: a new interpretive approach

Mindful Eating as Food for Thought

Mindful Eating as Food for Thought, by Jeff Gordinier (New York Times, 7 February 2012)

Excerpts:

TRY this: place a forkful of food in your mouth. It doesn’t matter what the food is, but make it something you love — let’s say it’s that first nibble from three hot, fragrant, perfectly cooked ravioli. Now comes the hard part. Put the fork down. This could be a lot more challenging than you imagine, because that first bite was very good and another immediately beckons. You’re hungry.

...

Continue this way throughout the course of a meal, and you’ll experience the third-eye-opening pleasures and frustrations of a practice known as mindful eating. The concept has roots in Buddhist teachings. Just as there are forms of meditation that involve sitting, breathing, standing and walking, many Buddhist teachers encourage their students to meditate with food, expanding consciousness by paying close attention to the sensation and purpose of each morsel. In one common exercise, a student is given three raisins, or a tangerine, to spend 10 or 20 minutes gazing at, musing on, holding and patiently masticating.

Link: Mindful Eating as Food for Thought

Mr Daisey and the Apple Factory

Mr Daisey and the Apple Factory (This American Life, 6 January 2012)

Abstract:

Mike Daisey was a self-described "worshipper in the cult of Mac." Then he saw some photos from a new iPhone, taken by workers at the factory where it was made. Mike wondered: Who makes all my crap? He traveled to China to find out.

Link: Mr Daisey and the Apple Factory

Shit Christians Say To Jews (Youtube)

Thomas Aquinas Music Video (Youtube)

The stunning trio of Bambi, Vicki, and Angelica sing the popular Bananarama tune with lyrics about the great philosopher Thomas Aquinas. Vicki is the cool one. Angelica is the smart one. Bambi is blonde.

Buying the Body of Christ

Buying the Body of Christ, by Rowan Moore Gerety (Killing The Buddha, 3 January 2012)

Excerpts:

Nineteen clicks of the mouse, the electronic brandishing of a credit card, thirteen dollars of my savings. A box of communion wafers was on its way to my apartment. Five days later, it arrived: five hundred whole-wheat discs emblazoned with a cross, packed like bags of Lay’s into two puffed plastic sacks. The size of a half-dollar, an eighth of an inch thick. My roommate, a lapsed but confirmed Catholic, couldn’t get enough of them, inhaling one after the other as if to bring some junk-food jingle to life. Analogies to Styrofoam notwithstanding, they are a low-fat snack. (In Quebec, they have even been marketed that way; prior to consecration, the host is only bread.) I watched him toss the wafers back like popcorn—the unrealized body of Christ, purchased on the Internet.

The wafers I bought were manufactured by the Cavanagh Company of Greenville, Rhode Island, which now makes 80 percent of the “altar breads” consumed in the US. The automation in Cavanagh’s facility is on par with that of Pepperidge Farm or Frito-Lay: they use custom-converted versions of the wafer ovens that turn out cream-filled vanilla wafers, and bake according to a patent-protected process that gives their wafers a sealed edge—to avoid crumbs. Cavanagh’s engraving plates stamp crosses and Christian lambs in their dough, while other companies use the same equipment to emboss their wheaten products with trademarks and brand-unique tessellations. Their batter is tested with an electronic viscometer. Their flour blend is a trade secret.

Link: Buying the Body of Christ

How Luther Went Viral

Social Media in the 16th Century: How Luther Went Viral (The Economist, 17 December 2011)

Excerpts:

It is a familiar-sounding tale: after decades of simmering discontent a new form of media gives opponents of an authoritarian regime a way to express their views, register their solidarity and co-ordinate their actions. The protesters’ message spreads virally through social networks, making it impossible to suppress and highlighting the extent of public support for revolution. The combination of improved publishing technology and social networks is a catalyst for social change where previous efforts had failed.

That’s what happened in the Arab spring. It’s also what happened during the Reformation, nearly 500 years ago, when Martin Luther and his allies took the new media of their day—pamphlets, ballads and woodcuts—and circulated them through social networks to promote their message of religious reform.

Scholars have long debated the relative importance of printed media, oral transmission and images in rallying popular support for the Reformation. Some have championed the central role of printing, a relatively new technology at the time. Opponents of this view emphasise the importance of preaching and other forms of oral transmission. More recently historians have highlighted the role of media as a means of social signalling and co-ordinating public opinion in the Reformation.

Now the internet offers a new perspective on this long-running debate, namely that the important factor was not the printing press itself (which had been around since the 1450s), but the wider system of media sharing along social networks—what is called “social media” today. Luther, like the Arab revolutionaries, grasped the dynamics of this new media environment very quickly, and saw how it could spread his message.

Link: Social Media in the 16th Century: How Luther Went Viral

The 'Iranian Schindler' who saved Jews from the Nazis

The 'Iranian Schindler' who saved Jews from the Nazis, by Brian Wheeler (BBC News, 21 December 2011)

Abstract:

Thousands of Iranian Jews and their descendants owe their lives to a Muslim diplomat in wartime Paris, according to a new book. In The Lion's Shadow tells how Abdol-Hossein Sardari risked everything to help fellow Iranians escape the Nazis.

Link: The 'Iranian Schindler' who saved Jews from the Nazis

Global Christianity A Report on the Size and Distribution of the World's Christian Population

Global Christianity A Report on the Size and Distribution of the World's Christian Population (Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life)

Abstract:

A comprehensive demographic study of more than 200 countries finds that there are 2.18 billion Christians of all ages around the world, representing nearly a third of the estimated 2010 global population of 6.9 billion. Christians are also geographically widespread – so far-flung, in fact, that no single continent or region can indisputably claim to be the center of global Christianity.

A century ago, this was not the case. In 1910, about two-thirds of the world’s Christians lived in Europe, where the bulk of Christians had been for a millennium, according to historical estimates by the Center for the Study of Global Christianity.2 Today, only about a quarter of all Christians live in Europe (26%). A plurality – more than a third – now are in the Americas (37%). About one in every four Christians lives in sub-Saharan Africa (24%), and about one-in-eight is found in Asia and the Pacific (13%).

Links:

• Website
• PDF of Full Report
  

Ramayana Row Divides India

Ramayana Row Divides India, by Sudha Ramachandran (Asia Times, 10 November 2011)

Excerpts:

India's liberal intellectual tradition has received a stunning blow with the removal of an essay that celebrates diversity from Delhi University's BA history (honors) syllabus. The decision marks the "surrender of academic freedom to political pressure", eminent Indian historian Romila Thapar has lamented. The essay in question is the late A K Ramanujan's Three Hundred Ramayanas: Five Examples and Three Thoughts on Translations. Written in 1987, the essay drew attention to the "astonishing" number of "tellings" of the Indian epic, Ramayana (the story of Ram) over the past 2,500 years in different languages, regions and mediums.

"Just a list of languages in which the Rama story is found makes one gasp: Annamese, Balinese, Bengali, Cambodian [Khmer], Chinese, Gujarati, Javanese, Kannada, Kashmiri, Khotanese, Laotian, Malaysian, Marathi, Oriya, Prakrit, Sanskrit, Santhali, Sinhalese, Tamil, Telugu, Thai, Tibetan - to say nothing of Western languages. Through the centuries, some of these languages have hosted more than one telling of the Rama story. Sanskrit alone contains some 25 or more tellings belonging to various narrative genres. If we add plays, dance-dramas and other performances, in both the classical and folk traditions, the number of Ramayanas grows even larger," Ramanujan wrote.

Link: Ramayana Row Divides India

Synagogue rises from ruins in German town with Jewish tradition

Synagogue rises from ruins in German town with Jewish tradition, by Igal Avidan (Deutsche Welle, 8 November 2011)

Excerpts:

Jews had lived in Speyer for 1,000 years, before being deported and murdered in the Holocaust. A former church has been converted into a new synagogue, which is making the community visible once again.

"We are here and we don't want to hide from anybody," said Daniel Nemirovski, who manages the affairs of the organization known as the Jewish Community of Rhineland Palatinate.

Here, on the pastureland not far from the main station in Speyer, is the former home of the Catholic St. Guido Foundation. After it was closed in 1996, it suffered the same fate as an adjacent church. In that same year, new immigrant Jews founded their cultural association.

Frankfurt architect Alfred Jacoby converted the abandoned church into a synagogue for the area's new Jewish population. He finds it particularly appealing to be involved with this re-establishment of Jewish life in the area. "My design has connections with the Christian history of Speyer," he said.

Link: Synagogue rises from ruins in German town with Jewish tradition

Blessing a Building — Building a Blessing: How the New Synagogue in Mainz Has Its Cake and Eats It Too

Blessing a Building — Building a Blessing: How the New Synagogue in Mainz Has Its Cake and Eats It Too, by Gavriel Rosenfeld (Jewish Daily Forward, 29 September 2010)

Excerpt:

The construction of a new synagogue is always an occasion for celebration, so it was with particular pomp that the Rhineland city of Mainz recently dedicated its new synagogue and Jewish community center. The dedication ceremonies, held September 3, featured an array of German politicians, including German President Christian Wulff. Many of them blessed the new building and underscored its symbolic significance. Yet, while the synagogue received its share of blessings, it also gave physical expression to them in its architectural form. Designed by the German-Jewish architect Manuel Herz, Mainz’s striking new synagogue complex traces its inspiration back to the third “blessing” in the Amidah — the Kedusha. The connection between the word and the synagogue’s appearance is not immediately obvious. But Herz’s drawings for the building reveal that its sawtooth form partly derives from the jagged pattern produced by the word’s five Hebrew letters: kuf, daled, vav, shin and hay.

Link: Blessing a Building — Building a Blessing: How the New Synagogue in Mainz Has Its Cake and Eats It Too