American Spectator Pig Roast!

As a longtime contributor the American Spectator web site, I’ve been invited to the magazine’s pig roast for the last few years.  It takes place in Madison, VA at Al Regnery’s country place.  On the first three occasions, I couldn’t go, but this year it was possible to build a business trip around it.

Wow.  What a party.  I was there for five hours.  Once I got used to the nearly continuous sound of gunfire, it was pretty good.  I think I stopped flinching after each shot at about the two hour mark.  Have I mentioned that conservatives like their guns???!!!

Seriously, it was a great event.  I got to meet a number of people whose writing I’ve enjoyed for many years, including Jim Antle and my personal hero, Wlady Pleszczynski.  And Jeffrey Lord!  His columns are like great conversation and the man in person makes a wonderful party companion.

Obama and the Uh’s, Ah’s, and Ummm’s

Much has been made by some conservative pundits about Obama being teleprompter dependent and how he racks up the speech pauses when he goes off the cuff. One might recall Rush Limbaugh compiling just the “uh’s” in an Obama appearance for comedic effect or Hugh Hewitt wondering how many of the awkward pauses he would accumulate during the first debate.

I don’t think the issue is that Obama is ‘prompter dependent or that he is inarticulate off the cuff. I followed him closely during the Democratic primary season and found him smooth whether working from prepared remarks or not.

The reason he has begun to seem halting is simple. Obama runs effortlessly to the left because that is his comfort zone. When he can give the “workers of the world unite” rhetoric and promote his reasons for dovish foreign policy, he is at home, talking to his people about what they all believe. That’s why he was so good in the primaries.

But in the general, he faces a different problem. He can’t roll the same way. He has to think carefully about what he says because all kinds of Americans are paying attention. Those pauses are necessary because the wheels do need to turn. He HAS to find the nuance in order to avoid appearing radical.

Just a little note to the moderates . . .

Encouragement

I didn’t appreciate at the time what an elite group of kids I went to class with in high school.  The coming of Facebook has changed that.  Now, I can see what those kids from the AP classes, where I was an underwhelming underperformer, have done with their lives.  What I’m finding is that many are very successful in life.

A newscaster in Detroit, a surgeon, a talented artist, a commercial musician . . . There are many winners.  What has depressed me is the extent to which these old peers of mine aren’t very much like me.  We could have great conversations, but they would be unlikely to agree with me about religion, politics, and values.  REM was the cutting edge at the time.  One of their songs was “Life and How to Live It.”  That group doesn’t have a lot in common with me on that topic, except perhaps in the sense that we’ve blazed some interesting trails.

But there was one guy in the class I considered to be the best of us.  Even as a teenager, he was brilliant, wise, thoughtful, and caring.  I’ve wondered through the years where he has been and what he’s done.  He has a very common name so googling doesn’t help much.

Today, I got a friend request on Facebook.  It was from him.

He’s in seminary.

It was a good day.

Hurricane Ike Damage Photos: HBU Before Clean-Up

Hurricanes Hate Signs

We’ve got a gallery displaying all the damage here.  It’s terrible in the sense that much has been lost that has been replaced, but I’m also mindful that destruction often precedes creativity and growth.  Hence, the idea of creative destruction.

Facebook Conversation with an Old High School Classmate

From John, with whom I’ve not spoken in at least twenty years:

Thanks for reaching out! Looks like things are going super great for you and your family out there in Houston! I’m glad you like the music too!

I read your blog about the reunion and your faith — good read! Yes… reunions… a middle age (pre-middle age?) rite of passage or milestone. One that I don’t mind missing. Though I’m glad it happened. Makes me realize the paradox of how people don’t change and yet how people do change. How’s that for vague, cloudy relativism!?!

Not to start a theological discussion, but you mentioned us probably operating under different philosophies. I suppose on some level we do. Your blog made me think of an inconsequential “e-conversation” I participated in on Facebook several weeks ago. Read it if you’re ever TRULY bored:

http://hitrecordandplay.blogspot.com/2008/09/facebook-conversation-about.html

Hope you’re happy and healthy and in the wheelhouse my friend,

John

HIT RECORD AND PLAY: A Facebook Conversation About Christianity

Source: hitrecordandplay.blo…

Hi. I use this blog mostly to figure things out… Email me sometime: letters[at]johncommon[dot]com or just REPLY to a blog entry… Keep the pin in the grenade, John

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Hunter Baker

September 12 at 4:55pm

I’ll check it out and don’t worry, I pretty much enjoy talking about religion, politics, any of it. You can’t get do much graduate work in those areas if you’re thin-skinned.

I had no idea in high school that you were a musician. It sounds like you’ve actually managed to make a career of it, which I know is a serious accomplishment. I’m a writer and have published many magazine pieces and have a book contract, but I’m still very far from being able to make a living at it.

Hunter Baker

September 12 at 5:00pm

John, I checked out the conversation. You seem pretty open, which is extremely refreshing. I do tend to embrace the Christian anthropology, the idea that there is something missing, that we are somehow fatally flawed. I feel it in the moments when I have thoughts I’d never admit to another human being except MAYBE my wife. I feel the selfishness, the pettiness inside me. I know I have to struggle to even think of being noble and loving.

But the “you have a God-shaped hole” stuff was never what convinced me. I’m one of these guys who essentially became convinced of the resurrection of Christ. If you think that really happened, then the rest is how you react to that, not what you think of Christian theology. That’s where I am.

Hunter Baker

September 12 at 5:02pm

Sorry to go on, but I keep thinking of other things. I don’t hold to the faith regardless. I do think Paul was right when he said if this isn’t true, then we are to be pitied. If I stopped believing it, I’d be right out of the game. Goodbye church, hello NY Times.

John Common

September 14 at 1:07pm

Thanks for the thoughtful response, Hunter.

Hunter Baker

September 14 at 4:27pm

Be well, sir. Write any time.

More IKE and HBU

UPDATE:  Forget what I said about electricity.  The university still does not have power.  I’m praying it will be restored on Friday.

I promise to return to blogging about things other than the storm, but right now I’m furtively grabbing a little access outside a Panera that has no food, but does have internet access.  Bless them.

The university has probably just gotten its electricity back by today.  I visited yesterday and checked out the damage.  Our main administrative buildings are in really bad shape.  The good news is that we can largely protect the student experience because of our newer facilities built in the last year.  The less good news is that my office is part of what will likely be condemned and I’ll probably be working from a laptop on somebody’s porch, LIKE NOW.

In seriousness, there is a lot of work to be done.  We’ve made a tremendous amount of progress at HBU during the last couple of years.  We’ll do everything we can in God’s providence to protect that momentum and keep moving forward.  If you want to pray for us, pray for strong support from donors and alumni.  Also pray for good natured and honest insurance adjusters.

And if you should just happen to want to make a tax deductible donation or just keep up with the last information, go to www.hbu.edu.

Hurricane Ike and the Damage Done at HBU

After completing my doctoral work at Baylor University in part under the supervision of SA’s Frank Beckwith, I took a job teaching and as an administrator at Houston Baptist University.  It’s been my privilege to be at the school during a time of growth in the student body and the hiring of many new faculty members.

Last weekend, HBU took a big hit from Hurricane Ike.  Every update I get, the damage estimates seem to rise.  Please consider giving to reconstruction efforts at http://www.hbu.edu.  You can read more from our president Robert Sloan and from the Baptist Standard.

You Gonna Tell IKE?!!!

Our power went out around 4 pm on Friday. The storm came on hard around midnight. We had the kids bedded down in a half bath with no windows. They slept through it. Ruth and I kept watch in the living room, occasionally sleeping a little. The room is full of windows. We did it to be close to the kids.

I remember the raw fear of being awake through the night for Hurricane Elena in Pensacola back in the mid-eighties. This was better and worse. Better because I had experienced severe weather before and didn’t face the unknown. Worse because this storm just went on and on for hours.  I kept wondering when the assault would compound into serious damage to the house.  Kept waiting for that shower of broken glass.

At about 3 a.m., I realized water was blowing in under the back door. Didn’t seem to be enough to worry about. By 6 a.m. it was beginning to accumulate somewhat impressively. We stuffed towels and saran wrap under the door before my wife decided one of us needed to go in the backyard and remove leaves from the path of drainage from the porch. I put on a hard hat and went out into the storm, largely to keep her from doing it.

At first, it was a little thrilling. The wind gusting hard. Rain hitting like b-b’s. I scooped wet leaves. Then I looked up in the pale blue light of early dawn. The landscape of my backyard was different, but I couldn’t quite make out why. In the space of seconds, I realized most of my wooden fence was missing and that a whole section of it was hanging precariously from another section. In other parts, the boards had simply exploded. Suddenly, it occurred to me that this was not a safe place at all.

The storm has passed and I’m now happily watching the NFL at a friend’s house that amazingly has power. I’m grateful, since my house has become hot, dark, and BORING for children. My two little ones were beginning to act out The Lord of the Flies.

We Can Dance If We Want To . . .

You can’t stop it.  You can only hope to contain it.  But why would you try? (HT:  The Thinklings)

A Publication for the City of God

For the last year, I’ve worked at Houston Baptist University where we are striving to push Christian higher education to a new level.  Part of our strategy has been to publish a journal of Christian thought aimed at the educated layperson.

We call it The City.  Please check it out and consider signing up for a free subscription.  We aim to be provocative, thoughtful, and most important, interesting.

The Summer 2008 issue of The City features:

• Louis Markos on Milton and the Thorny Road to Truth
• Tim Keller on Bringing the Gospel to the City
• The Ten Pillars: An Introduction to a Vision
• Patrick Deneen on Culture, Technology, and Virtue
• Joseph Knippenberg on Man’s War with Nature
• Joe Carter on Evangelicals and an Uncertain Manifesto
• Reviews of Anne Rice’s Road to Cana
• George Washington on Church and State
• Ryan T. Anderson Explains Benedict for Baptists
• Hunter Baker on Charles Colson’s Faith
• With Poetry from A.E. Stallings and Jayme Metzgar
• And the Word Spoken by the Rev. John Knox

Pensacola, the 1980′s, and Fundamentalism

My 20th high school reunion was held in Pensacola this summer.  The class of ’88 from Booker T. Washington high school met to share memories and update each other about their lives.  I wasn’t there.  I agreed to a mini-reunion a few months earlier with some of my best friends.  We went to Chicago, ate expensive steaks, walked the streets, took the train, and watched some sports.  It was a good time.  But if I could go back, I’d go to my reunion instead.

There have been a flood of pictures, facebook connections, and renewed contacts thanks to the group from our class that did make the choice to re-connect.  I realize now that my memories of that group have faded.  I wish I could have heard some of them speak, looked at the receding hairlines, observed the wrinkles, found out who achieved their promise, and who is still looking.  Maybe part of why I wish I had gone is because I am no longer a wanderer.  After obtaining four degrees, including a Ph.D. and a J.D., I have finally settled down at a university and have a book contract.  I would have been able to say something about myself rather than being a bewildered thirtysomething, which I was.

I’m burying the lead (or lede as the journalists say).  One thing that has struck me in looking at facebook pages from my high school peers is that many of them seem to remember Pensacola as a hotbed of fundamentalist Christianity.  More than one seem to define their lives in some degree as a reaction against that.

I’m fascinated.  I wonder whether I was just too caught up in other things to notice at that age.  My parents were from different denominational backgrounds and I just wasn’t interested in Christianity.  Today, Christianity is my passion and massively important to me as a scholar.  But back then, it was noise.  I didn’t hear it.  Not really.  I was more concerned with getting a girlfriend or college football or David Letterman.  I wasn’t leading the examined life in any way.  Just trying to have some fun, go to college somewhere, and not mar my PERMANENT RECORD.  Yes, I was a big believer in that.  Not worried about God so much as a paper file that would follow me throughout my life.

If I had any kind of feeling about Pensacola, it was that it was a Navy town.  I remember the handsome guys with short hair driving up to pick up their girlfriends (our girls!!!) in convertibles.  I remember the Blue Angels and the push for young guys like me to consider Naval employment.  I remember the radio stations.  TK 101.5 and WABB.  The way the cool kids were all listening to U2 just ahead of the curve,  REM a little further ahead of it, and the Smiths and the Cure way ahead of it.

But if I push a little harder, I can recall the street preacher standing at the corner across from Albertson’s where I had a summer job as a bag boy.  I can remember him warning of hell and damnation.  Can remember his emphasis on the need for JEEEEEEEEEE-SSUSSS!  At the time, it just annoyed me.  Just kind of embarrassed me.  I understand why some Christians refer to the scandal of the gospel.  It seemed kind of scandalous.  This guy was telling us that we aren’t good enough and that something is wrong with us.

The strange thing is that I’ve come to agree with him.  The style and tone is different, but I do think we all have the something wrong.  That unresolved something.  And I do believe that a man was born who changed everything with his life, death, and resurrection.  I believe there is evidence for it.  Is it a slam dunk?  Is it an unavoidable belief?  No.  But the great philosopher Alvin Plantinga is right when he says that it is warranted.

The Remarkable Andrew Klavan

A few years ago, I somehow came upon the fiction of Lars Walker.  I’m not sure how it happened, but it did.  I became aware that there was a Christian writing fantasy and that he was a guy to consider.  His book The Year of the Warrior touched me.  Though published almost as pulp fiction, I discovered the book contained serious reflection on the nature of faith, religious freedom, and the spread of the Christian faith to pagan cultures.  I went on to read his other books and his blog.  At his blog, he wrote quite a bit about a fellow named Andrew Klavan.

I picked up Klavan’s books and began one of the more rewarding reading experiences of my life.  In particular, I have to single out the Weiss and Bishop detective series for special praise.  Just from reading them, I began to suspect Klavan of being a Christian.

I don’t know if he was one at the time of writing those novels, but he is a Christian now.  He appeared on Uncommon Knowledge with Peter Robinson to talk about faith.  I am usually the type who would much rather read than watch short videos, but this one is an exception.

Here’s the link.

What you will see is a thoughtful man really thinking about life and offering a fascinating story of his Jewish upbringing and being bar mitzvah’d even though he’d been raised not to believe.

John S. McCain: Anatomy of a Speech

John McCain deserves tremendous credit for maintaining his cool while being repeatedly interrupted by protesters. Somehow, he managed not to lash out or show visible irritation. I kept expecting him to yell, “What the hell did you ever do for your country? Don’t you think I deserve to be heard? Have I earned that much?” He soared above it.

On the other hand, I have to rate the first 1/2 to 2/3 of the speech as weak. It had the same uninspiring feeling of a George W. Bush State of the Union. The laundry list, the calling out of ordinary Americans. When he started naming people struggling with recession, I thought of some campaign functionary looking at the poll results. “Cares about people like me” — Check. The first part of the speech had to be endured, sort of like direct mail that repeats the old pattern and the old tricks. You have to wade through it to get to the meat.

The good news is that there was meat. McCain got through the faux SOTU and began talking about what really matters — who he is, what his life has been like, why he is ready to lead. When he talked about that, the tingle started to develop. You could feel it. The contrast sharpened almost painfully. You realized, “Barack Obama has scarcely held a full-time job and we are about to elect pretty words when we desperately need a veteran.” That’s when John McCain scored. Scored points in bunches. He shook off a tired old cocoon and metamorphosed into the great man when he did that.