Philocrites : Chris Walton on religion, liberalism, and culture

Update for readers: Why is it getting so quiet around here?

Wednesday, August 6, 2008

Video of Knoxville UU church's rededication service.

Knoxville TV station WBIR broadcast Sunday's rededication service at the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church, which reopened one week after a gunman opened fire in the worship service, killing two and injuring six. A three-minute video segment, featuring TVUUC's minister Chris Buice and UUA district executive Annette Marquis, is available at KnoxNews.com.

You can find links to news coverage of the rededication service at uuworld.org's blog "Unitarian Universalists in the Media," where I've been rounding up news coverage related to the Knoxville shooting.

Posted by Philocrites on 6 August 2008 at 3:30 PM | 1 comments

Wednesday, July 30, 2008

Ah, Italy as the Transcendentalists saw it!

by Philocrites

Looking for a lovely vacation next March? Why not tour Italy with a group of Unitarian Universalists and learn more about the Transcendentalists while you're there? The Rev. Jenny Rankin, one of the ministers at the First Parish in Concord, Mass. (where I once worked as high school youth programs director), is leading a ten-day expedition March 19 through 29, 2009. "Our itinerary includes Rome, Pienza and Florence, and is packed with visits to important classical sites such as the Pantheon, the Forum, the Vatican, Margaret Fuller's and Emerson's apartments in Rome, as well as visiting Theodore Parker's gravesite and the Brancacci Chapel in Florence." Ah! I've always wanted to see Italy in the spring. Maybe when Philo Jr is older.

There are still spots available on the tour. Learn more at the First Parish website.

Posted by Philocrites on 30 July 2008 at 5:10 PM | 8 comments

Boston Globe: Knoxville shootings rattle UUs.

by Philocrites

Michael Paulson's Boston Globe story about Unitarian Universalist reactions to the Knoxville church shootings mentions the cascade of blog posts about the shootings in the UU blogosphere, but doesn't quote any of them. His blog post about the story, however, points to Philocrites, Orcinus (where UU co-blogger Sara Robinson offers this tribute to UU values), and coverage by UUA.org and UU World.

Posted by Philocrites on 30 July 2008 at 8:48 AM | 1 comments

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Obama the 'Magic Negro'

Obama also is running for an equally important unelected office, in the province of the popular imagination — the "Magic Negro."

The Magic Negro is a figure of postmodern folk culture, coined by snarky 20th century sociologists, to explain a cultural figure who emerged in the wake of Brown vs. Board of Education. "He has no past, he simply appears one day to help the white protagonist," reads the description on Wikipedia.

He's there to assuage white "guilt" (i.e., the minimal discomfort they feel) over the role of slavery and racial segregation in American history, while replacing stereotypes of a dangerous, highly sexualized black man with a benign figure for whom interracial sexual congress holds no interest. . . .

Like a comic-book superhero, Obama is there to help, out of the sheer goodness of a heart we need not know or understand. For as with all Magic Negroes, the less real he seems, the more desirable he becomes. If he were real, white America couldn't project all its fantasies of curative black benevolence on him.

David Ehrenstein, Los Angeles Times 3.19.08 (via TAPPED 8.13.08) (08.13.08)

Jack Bauer, America's leading interrogation policy intellectual

The most influential legal thinker in the development of modern American interrogation policy is not a behavioral psychologist, international lawyer or counterinsurgency expert. Reading both Jane Mayer's stunning "The Dark Side," and Philippe Sands's "Torture Team," it quickly becomes plain that the prime mover of American interrogation doctrine is none other than the star of Fox television's "24," Jack Bauer.

Dahlia Lithwick, Newsweek 8.4.08 (07.31.08)