Good Saturday, I hope you're enjoying this long Labor Day weekend! Yesterday, I went to Old Town Winchester with Gi Gi, David, Sapphira and Zoe. We sipped on lattes at Espresso Bar and Cafe, then hung out in their back courtyard where we met some really cool students from Shenandoah University.Grant, Emily and Dani are all musically gifted, and treated us to some pretty renditions of Beatles, John Mayer, Coldplay songs. I even forced... uh, er, encouraged Gi to join them. They even took some time to practice and play "The Cup Song" ... and it was pretty cool! It turns out the three are Christian, and we've got an invite for service tomorrow morning at a small church plant where Grant is the worship leader.
Practicing "The Cup Song".
We also hit up a cool indie bookstore, Winchester Book Gallery, where I purchased an Out of Print Clothing "Their Eyes Were Watching God" tee, and then went to Sanaa Gallery & Gift Shop which sells African crafts, art and clothing. I wound up getting a wooden giraffe for Z and a little cheetah pencil for Sapphira. I also got a little banana leaf print of an African woman carrying her baby on her back. I had a ton of fun and have fallen in love with this sweet historical city in northwestern Virginia.
Enough of me, though. Let's get on with the links, shall we? First up, a story from Christianity Today, on whether pastors should call out individual parishoners from the pulpit. I've seen it done, and it was just plain awful.
An Oklahoma pastor spent five minutes of Sunday worship calling out parishioners by name for their flaws—including sleeping.
"You're one of the sorriest church members I have—you're not worth 15 cents," said Jim Standridge, pastor of Skiatook's Immanuel Baptist Church, to one attendee.
A recording of the incident has been watched almost 600,000 times on YouTube. (The full sermon is on Vimeo.)
Should pastors rebuke parishioners from the pulpit? Christian leaders' responses are posted below, on a scale starting with "yes" and ending with "no."
"Prophets such as Amos or Nathan called people to account personally. It's almost refreshing, in this age of feel-good theology, to see a preacher really get worked up over behavior and get morally indignant in the service of the truth delivered to him to speak."
Will Willimon, professor of Christian ministry, Duke Divinity School
"Public matters may necessitate a public intervention to ensure the health of the whole church. But it should be carried out with love, grace, and for the purpose of bringing the sinner to a place of repentance rather than public shaming."
Halee Gray Scott, author, Dare Mighty Things: Mapping the Challenges of Leadership for Christian Women
"Preaching is personal, but it is to the entire congregation. So it is completely out of line to go after congregants by name. A preacher should focus on relevant sins. If I came across three angry husbands in my pastoral counseling, it would show up in the sermons—but anonymously."
Douglas Wilson, minister, Christ Church
To read more responses, click here. Also from Christianity Today, a story on the appeal of... wait for it... Amish romance novels. Yes, there is a such a thing.
In The Thrill of the Chaste, her study of the appeal of Amish romance novels, Valerie Weaver-Zercher takes a blended scholarly and journalistic approach that foregrounds her personal connection to Plain people. As a Mennonite raised in Lancaster County who has Amish ancestry and Amish second cousins in Ohio, Weaver-Zercher wryly notes that her background is perfect for a writer of Amish novels—Amish or Mennonite ancestry, however distant, can be an important selling point for novelists eager to break into the market, and first-hand knowledge of Amish people and their ways (having actually eaten "those smooth, mashed-by-hand potatoes," for instance) is helpful in lending a feel of authenticity to the books. Weaver-Zercher is not about to cash in on her Plain roots, and she admits to ambivalence about the genre, but her background certainly inflects the deeply empathetic approach of this study. She looks at the novels themselves, at the workings of the publishing industry that gives rise to them, at cultural theory, and, significantly, listens to the voices of the genre's dedicated readers. Following upon Janice Radway's widely influential study of romance novels and their readers, Reading the Romance: Women, Patriarchy, and Popular Culture and reminiscent of Amy Frykholm's Rapture Culture: Left Behind in Evangelical America, a study of the readers of the popular Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins books, Weaver-Zercher takes the voices of readers themselves seriously in her analysis of what makes "bonnet books" so popular, among evangelicals in particular.
Ignorance of evangelical "tribal discourse," Weaver-Zercher argues, makes it difficult for outsiders to understand the appeal of the genre (a Business Week article titled "Getting Dirty in Dutch Country" is particularly spectacular in its misunderstanding); "too many outside observers simply miss this point," she writes: "Amish novels turn not on the titillation of the carnal but on the thrill of the chaste." In part, the hypersexualization of contemporary culture (think Fifty Shades of Grey) accounts for the appeal of "clean" reads, as most Amish novels are, but hypermodernity is a factor too. In a world where people are tethered to their iPhones even after ten hours at the office, where everything is sleekly marketed and endlessly commodified and where people feel as lonely and disconnected as I did that cold winter in Germany, the appeal of a slower, simpler, community-focused life is obvious. In that sense, the real longing in the reading of Amish romances is not for a romantic coupling but for a life apart from the hypersexual and hypermodern.
Construing the Amish this way all but necessitates a degree of appropriation, which is by definition distorting. Amish values and practices may be appealing as they relate to traditional gender roles and motherhood; hard physical labor and education that ends at eighth grade are less worthy of nostalgia. Quilts, barn-raisings, and bread-baking, with all their appeal to multiple senses, feature prominently in the novels; Amish or quasi-Amish recipes sometimes show up in the back. But in the real world, fewer Amish are able to make a living at farming these days; most of their young folks are probably less chaste than the novels would suggest; and, significantly, Amish-themed novels generally don't engage one of the central commitments of the Amish: nonviolence. As Weaver-Zercher observes, the Amish commitment to nonviolence is downplayed in the novels so that "peace" becomes a private and internal matter, as in the notion of "inner peace." What the novels present is therefore not so much the Amish "as they are" but rather a non-Amish idealization of what readers—especially of the conservative evangelical persuasion—wish they were like.
On Monday, I watched a BBC documentary on the Amish (in an attempt to defunk my brain from Miley's VMA performance), and I have to say, there is a real appeal to that level of stripped down to the essentials, sincere commitment. You can watch it below:
In other far more decadent and frivolous news, Kanye West is beefing with French bakers (H/T: Aja). From Today:
French bakers aren’t saying "bon appetit" to Kanye West’s latest album, "Yeezus."
The Association of French Bakers is upset with lyrics from “I am God,” in which West raps “In a French-ass restaurant / Hurry up with my damn croissants.”
So they penned him a tongue-in-cheek letter begging him to reconsider his stance.
In the letter, the bakers stress that a croissant can’t be rushed, as it is akin to a work of art. They also say they would let the slight pass, but they take his lyrics seriously.
“From the other lines in the song, we have come to understand that you may in fact be a 'God.' Yet if this were the case — and we, of course, take you at your word — we wonder why you do not more frequently employ your omnipotence to change time and space to better suit your own personal whims,” the letter reads.
Yes. This is for real.
Read the letter below.
Regarding Croissants in “I am a God”
Association of French Bakers
900 Rue Vielle du Temple
Paris FRANCETo Monsieur Kanye West:
Congratulations on the birth of your daughter, Nord! This is a truly auspicious time for you — and so it is with great sadness that we must lodge a formal complaint against the song “I am a God” from your new album "Yeezus."
Our organization represents bakers across France, many of whom have taken great offense at this particular rhyming couplet:
In a French-ass restaurant
Hurry up with my damn croissants
Assuming you, as a man of means, dine exclusively at high-end restaurants and boulangeries during your voyages to Paris, it could not be possible that the delay of your “damn” croissants originated from slow service. And certainly, you are not a man to be satisfied with pre-made croissants from the baked goods case reheated and tossed out on a small platter. No — you had demanded your croissants freshly baked, to be delivered to your table straight out of the oven piping hot.
And it was with great joy you ordered croissants — not crêpes or brioches — because only croissants can proudly claim that exquisite combination of flaky crust and a succulent center. The croissant is dignified — not vulgar like a piece of toast, simply popped into a mechanical device to be browned. No — the croissant is born of tender care and craftsmanship. Bakers must carefully layer the dough, paint on perfect proportions of butter, and then roll and fold this trembling croissant embryo with the precision of a Japanese origami master.
This process, as you can understand, takes much time. And we implore the patience of all those who order croissants. You may be familiar with the famous French expression, “A great croissant is worth waiting a lifetime for.” We know you are a busy man, M. West, but we believe that your patience for croissants will always be rewarded.
We could easily let this water pass under the bridge, as they say, but we take your lyrics very seriously. From the other lines in the song, we have come to understand that you may in fact be a “God.” Yet if this were the case — and we, of course, take you at your word — we wonder why you do not more frequently employ your omnipotence to change time and space to better suit your own personal whims. For us mere mortals, we must wait the time required for the croissant to come to perfect fruition, but as a deity, you can surely alter the bread’s molecular structure faster than the speed of light, no? And with your omniscience, perhaps you have something to teach us about the perfect croissant. We await your guidance and insights.
We appreciate your continued patronage of French culture. (Your frequent references to menage perhaps speak an interest in the structure of the French household?) We hope from the deepest recesses of our hearts, however, that in the future you give croissants the time they need to fully mature before you partake. With that, we say, adieu. And our member Louis Malpass from Le Havre wants you to know that he loves “Black Skinhead.”
Salutations cordiales
Bernard Aydelotte
Association of French Bakers
LOL! I do love croissants. Anyway, let's wrap this up with Anna Kendrick singing "Cups: Pitch Perfect's When I'm Gone". It's my theme song this weekend.
