Twitter & the Iowa caucuses

I participated in the Iowa caucuses tonight in support of Barack Obama, who blew away Edwards, Clinton, and the rest of the field.

I caucused for the first time in 2004 for Howard Dean, and both experiences were intriguing and fun. This time around I was “elected” (I use quotes because it’s no big deal, seriously) as a delegate for Obama to the county convention. The whole process is actually quite convoluted (At the county convention, delegates are chosen to attend the state-congressional-district convention, at which point delegates to the national convention are picked. You follow?)

Anyway, I live-twittered my time at the caucus, and below you’ll find a redacted timeline of my tweets. The folks at Townhall.com organized a cool citizen-journalism effort via twitter, e-mail, and text messaging to report caucus results, which I participated in as well. I digress.

6:25pm → This place is packed
6:51pm → All the young people I see are in the Obama camp
6:56pm → What if all these neighborhood people came to our church?
6:59pm → This would be fun if it was also a candidate look-alike contest. I found Hillary.
7:05pm → Overheard - “People over here [in the Obama camp] just look sensible.” [This is actually a quote from my brother]
7:06pm → Here we go…
7:14pm → 264 people here.
7:26pm → Obama has 97 out of 264 before any debating.
7:32pm → Richardson and Biden have disbanded… No Kuccinich support at all
7:35pm → This elementary school bathroom smells like cupcakes and urine
7:41pm → No surprise… It’s down to Obama, Clinton, and Edwards. People are trying to convert the leftovers
8:07pm → The results are in: Obama 4, Edwards 2, Clinton 2
8:08pm → I hear a lot of people talking about Obama dominating Iowa. I am excited to turn on the news.
8:10pm → Been talking with a student reporter for the Yale Daily News
8:15pm → I was just nominated as a county delegate for Obama
8:51pm → Wow… Obama won by 7%.

What are your reflections on the caucuses (Iowans), and/or reactions to the results (anyone)? Leave a comment and let me know!

• Bearing the Cross in the Global Economy analyzes a recent report about workers in China who make crucifixes and other religious items to be sold in the West. “The image of women toiling away in sweatshops while handling an icon of the suffering body of Christ is quite striking.” See also, The Consumptive Church: The Religious Industrial Complex. 12/03/2007

Back to Rosebud

I’d like to begin this post with a joke Tom told me:

Tom: You know how we know the indians were here first?
Jake: How?
Tom: They had reservations.

Kind of makes me miss the podcast (although there are talks of a summer episode).

On a serious note, I am heading back to Rosebud Indian Reservation for the fourth time in the last year on Saturday. I am going with four other leaders and fifteen high school students to the town of Parmeleee for a week.

The trip will be very much like last year, except this time we have fewer students and we’re not sleeping in a high school gymnasium.

When I think of the extremely poor state of the reservation and the horrible living conditions, it makes me sick. I just pray that our time there positively affects the community and that we bring a feeling of love and compassion.

Badiou on immigration

In my religion seminar class “Paul as Contemporary Cultural Theory,” we are reading the book Saint Paul: The Foundation of Universalism by Alain Badiou. Badiou himself is French, and he speaks from his own vantage point, but I find what he says in the early pages of the book to be particularly relevant to current discussion regarding immigration in the US.

Badiou says:

Moreover, this is the norm that illuminates a paradox few have pointed out: in the hour of generalized circulation and the phantasm of instantaneious cultural communication, laws and regulations forbidding the circulation of persons are being multiplied everywhere.¹

In other words, in an era when global travel, trade, and communication is soaring, our need to stamp down on immigration becomes heightened. Badiou later says, “Deleuze put it perfectly: capitalist deterritorialization requires a constant reterritorialization.”² Now, here’s the kicker:

How clearly Paul’s statement rings out under these conditions! A genuinely stupefying statement when one knows the rules of the ancient world: “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female” (Gal. 3.28)!³

And all of this from a self-proclaimed atheist.

1. Badiou, Alain. Saint Paul: the Foundation of Universalism. Stanford, California: Stanford UP, 2003. 10. ↩
2. Ibid., 10. ↩
3. Ibid., 9. ↩

Conference Presentation(?)

I just sent an email to Mark over at Mission:Think regarding the Conference on Christianity in a Consumer Culture in April 2006 in Minneapolis.

I, along with Tom, proposed presenting a to-be-written paper within the topic of Christianity and globalization. Even if we don’t get accepted, it would still be a fantastic conference to attend and it already has some great speakers. I’ll let you know how things turn out.

Riots in Paris, Cont’d

Megan, who I mentioned in my earlier post about the riots in Paris, left an interesting comment about them. Here’s what she had to say:

The riots are a very interesting subject. Although, I am not in the area where the riots are happening…Parisians talk about the riots all the time. Basically, the issue is that the ghettos of Paris are found in the suburbs (whereas in the US the ghettos are usually in the inner city). The racially focused ghettos are getting pushed out of Paris and into the suburbs.

Recently, an important French Minister made a very nasty remark about these “groups” in the suburbs…This fueled with the terrible death of two teenagers being chased by police in the suburbs has caused a massive snowball affect in many suburbs all over France…and even all over Europe.

One huge difference between American thinking and European thinking is that Americans tend to talk more about racial differences. Issues like racial inequalities, college entrance issues with race, diversity in the schools/workplaces are commonly discussed. Now, there are pros and cons to this.

Well, in France NO ONE talks about race. It is like this huge elephant in the room that no one wants to point out. Well, there are exterior pros to this…France appears to be more accepting, not making issue of the race factor. Well, the second a race factor is brought up (like when the Minister made his comment) all h*ll breaks lose. The French racial minorities have all this burning anger inside of them…and they need a venue to vent this.

In the US, it seems that we over-analyze and over-debate the race issue…maybe a good open communication is a positive thing.

Don’t worry, she is okay. She’s living and going to school in the city and not the suburbs. For a while, though, I was a bit worried.

Riots in Paris

Have you heard about the riots in Paris and the rest of France? If not, get yourself caught up with this Wikipedia article.

Direland says that “far from losing steam, the rebellion is growing and spreading to cities in the south previously untouched. Sunday night in France saw 1408 vehicles burned, some 250 more than the previous night, while 34 policemen were injured by shotgun fire and stones when they were attacked by 200 rioters in Grigny, a suburb south of Paris. In the southern city of Toulouse, police fired tear gas grenades to push back club-wielding rioters. Violent attacks were also reported in Orleans, Rennes and Nantes.”

That was an update from Monday. But why all the rioting? Direland also has a very good post called Why is France Burning? The Rebellion of a Lost Generation.

Aside from all of the social, political, economic, religious and other themes involved, this issue brings up two things for me.

First, the idea of short attention span compassion, which I had been thinking about for a while and Eternal Revolution put into words. With this new crisis and the subsequent media frenzy which it has inevitably spawned, are we forgetting about the millions of people still affected by Katrina and Rita, among others?

Second, a dear friend of mine is studying abroad in Paris this semester. Megan, are you doing alright? How is this affecting you? It looks like they just mandated a curfew. You are in my prayers.

Katrina and God

I can’t get this off of my mind. Like a lot of people in the world, I am struggling with the tragedy of Hurricane Katrina and trying to answer many difficult questions. In my previous post about Katrina, I simply offered up my prayer and pointed people to the Red Cross website. As things progressed, I updated the post and offered some links to what I believe to be interesting commentaries on the theology of Katrina.

I was going to leave the post at that, but it keeps coming back. Tonight, before evening worship, one of the campus pastors asked for our prayer regarding the message (about Katrina) he will be giving tomorrow for chapel. He said that he is struggling to find the right words - if there are any - for this situation.

There has been talk that Katrina is somehow God’s punishment (2) on the city of New Orleans. This idea is not new, we heard it immediately following the events of 9/11 [1]. I was going to devote this post to exploring my own thoughts and theology about Katrina, but I found an amazing commentary that I feel completely sums up my thoughts.

Rick Phillips, on the Reformation21 blog says[2],

A week ago I was interviewed by a local reporter, and he asked me if I would like to ask God why tragedies happen. I responded that I did not need to ask God, because the Bible tells me already. He was surprised, and followed up by saying I surely believed that God was not involved in such things. I responded that, no, I believe God is sovereign over all things and his providence is governed by holiness, wisdom, goodness, and love.

Well, what do I think now? Do I believe this of Hurricane Katrina? The answer is Yes. The Bible describes God’s sovereignty as comprehensive and complete. Jesus said that not even a sparrow falls to the ground without the Father’s will (Mt. 10:29). Paul stated that God has “determined allotted periods and the boundaries of [mankind’s] dwelling place” (Acts 17:26). Both of these statements make it impossible that God was ignorant of Hurricane Katrina and her destruction or unable to intervene to prevent the disaster. Therefore, God is necessarily sovereign over such events, which happen only with his knowledge and will.

But does this perspective shatter the Bible’s statements about God’s holiness, goodness, and love? The answer is No.

The first reason is that God’s sovereignty does not remove contingent causes. There are plenty of reasons for Katrina other than God’s supposed neglect or vindictiveness. Katrina resulted from natural causes having to do with the weather. Though I know little of this science, I gather that the El Nino and long-term weather patterns are responsible for Katrina. So is there is no moral cause for this disaster? Yes, it was our first parents’ sin that caused the original paradise world to be warped so that things like violent hurricanes happen. Paul explains, “The creation was subjected to futility… For we know that the whole creation has been groaning in the pains of childbirth until now” (Rom. 8:20-22). Paul’s point was that the creation itself longs for its rebirth in the new heavens and new earth, since the Fall has placed it under the curse of death. One aspect of that curse is the violence of nature, as seen in Hurricane Katrina.

What about the people of New Orleans? Was Katrina God’s swipe of judgment at “Sin City”? We do not have warrant to claim that this was a specific judgment like Sodom and Gomorrah. Moreover, if we think New Orleans was worthy of God’s judgment, we need to remember that we also are worthy of judgment. Indeed, in this sense, I am personally responsible for Katrina – just as is our whole sinful human race. I am reminded of G. K. Chesterton’s answer to an essay contest that asked, “What is wrong with this world?” He submitted the shortest answer: “I am.” So if Adam and Eve are responsible for Katrina, and if sinners in the path of Katrina are responsible, then so am I responsible for this being a cursed world under the bondage of death. In short, sin – Adam’s, yours, and mine – is responsible for the violent natural order that brought Hurricane Katrina.

The other reason Katrina does not disprove God’s holiness, goodness, and love is God’s purpose in even the worst events. I quoted Acts 17:26 as proving God’s comprehensive sovereignty. But Paul goes on to show God’s purpose in exercising his sovereignty: “that they should seek God, in the hope that they might feel their way toward him and find him” (Acts 17:27). Because of sin, everyone is destined to die. But God works in the affairs of this world to draw already dying people towards life in him. God permits trials large and small to call our attention to what matters most: our eternal destiny. Without suffering, the truth is that we will go on ignoring God to our eternal destruction. God wants Hurricane Katrina to result in multitudes of otherwise dying people seeking him and finding him so as to gain eternal life – for this we should labor and pray.

Because God is sovereign over tragedies like this with a purpose of grace, we should respond not with anger at him but with abiding hope and praise. This is not a senseless tragedy, because God will bring good through it for those who trust in him (Rom. 8:28). The most horrific, wicked, and evil event ever to happen on the planet earth was the judicial murder of the holy Son of God, Jesus Christ – an event in which God was completely sovereign and man was completely guilty. But the cross was made by God the most blessed, glorious, and holy event ever to happen on the planet earth. Likewise, Katrina was a terrible event. But God will bring good from it. Through death he offers resurrection life, if we will turn through faith in Christ to the sovereign God of holiness and grace.

I will continue to pray for the victims and survivors.

What are your thoughts about Katrina? Feel free to leave a comment.

[1] I don’t agree with this at all. See commentary below.
[2] Phillips, Rick. Was God Responsible for Hurricane Katrina? September 4, 2005.

Hurricane Katrina

My thoughts and prayers are with all of the victims of Hurricane Katrina. If you haven’t heard yet, Katrina is the deadliest hurricane to hit the United States since 1969. The earlier link has lots of information.

The American Red Cross is organizing their biggest relief effort ever. For information on how you can get involved, visit their website.

Update:

I am very much interested in the theology of Hurricane Katrina. That is, where is God in all of this, and what (if any) is His role? I have begun to compile a list of commentaries that seek to answer these and other questions below. I will continue to update these as they become available.

Russell D. Moore, Christ and Katrina

John Piper, Was Katrina Intelligent Design?

Sam Storms, Katrina, Common Grace, and a Theory about the End of the Age

J. Grant Swank, Jr., Katrina: God’s Popular In A Hurricane

Rick Phillips, Was God Responsible for Hurricane Katrina?

Philip Ryken, Hurricane Katrina: What is the right way for a Christian to respond?

Genocide in Sudan

In 1994, a horrible case of genocide erupted in Rwanda in which nearly a million Rwandans were murdered. A feature film was made in 2004 that tells the story of Paul Rusesabagina,¹ a hotel manager who took in many refugees for which he put his life and the life of his family in danger. Hotel Rwanda is a moving film that brings to light the atrocious events that occured in Rwanda in the mid 90’s. I was only ten years old at the time, and I had actually never heard anything about the genocide until the movie. Because I was so young, I don’t feel so bad for not knowing about it, and more importantly, not doing anything about it. The genocide in Rwanda may have ended, but there is a new situation which demands our attention.

Says savedarfur.org:

Violence and destruction are raging in the Darfur region of western Sudan. Since February 2003, government-sponsored militias known as the Janjaweed have conducted a calculated campaign of slaughter, rape, starvation and displacement in Darfur.

It is estimated that 400,000 people have died due to violence, starvation and disease. More than 2.5 million people have been displaced from their homes and over 200,000 have fled across the border to Chad. Many now live in camps lacking adequate food, shelter, sanitation, and health care.

The United States Congress and President George W. Bush recognized the situation in Darfur as “genocide.” Darfur, “near Hell on Earth,” has been declared the worst humanitarian crisis in the world today.

That this is still going on is simply unacceptable. The UN estimates that fifteen to thiry thousand are being killed every month. “According to recent reports by the World Food Program, the United Nations and the Coalition for International Justice, 3.5 million people are now hungry, 2.5 million have been displaced due to violence, and 400,000 people have died in Darfur thus far. The international community is failing to protect civilians or to influence the Sudanese government to do so. ”

So what do we do? The Bible says tell us to learn to “do good; seek justice, correct oppression; bring justice to the fatherless, [and] plead the widow’s cause” (Isaiah 1:17, ESV). Although it might seem like we are helpless, we can help. Savedarfur.org has a page with suggestions on how to take action, with lots of helpful tools to get you started. I am simply taking the first step by posting here, getting the news out.

While thinking about the whole situation last night, and brainstorming ways that I can raise awareness of the situation in Sudan, I realized that I can use my job as an RA at school to raise awareness. We are required to have a new bulletin board every month, and mine haven’t always been the greatest.² I am going to create a bulletin board about Sudan, with information about how to get involved, how to spread the message, etc. Maybe I can make a packet and have some RAs from every dorm put one up, so that it’s not just in my building.

More information:

http://www.savedarfur.org

BBCNews: Sudan - A Nation Divided (news and continuing coverage)

United States Fund for UNICEF: Crisis in Darfur

1. Paul Rusesabagina, I’ve heard, will be speaking at Luther College (my alma mater) some time in the next academic year. ↩
2. Two examples: “Am I Addicted to Caffeine?” and “A History of the Chicago Cubs.” Not exactly groundbreaking material. ↩

Speed 3: Athenian Antics

“A Greek public bus with about 27 people aboard was hijacked and shots were fired at police. Initial reports said that at least two people apparently armed with shotguns apparently took control of the bus just before dawn.” Full story.

Hopefully it doesn’t happen while I am over there. But hey, it was only “the fifth time a bus has been hijacked since 1999.” Note to self: walk.

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