AAR Protests the Presence of Cage Fed Chicken at the Annual Meeting Reception

AAR members gathered this afternoon in a protest against the outrageous treatment of chickens in cages at a ranch outside Atlanta.  Chickens destined to fill the plates of hungry students attending the AAR student lunch.

After chanting in a circle to mother Earth in prayers aimed at persuading her and the goddess of the animals to stop the mistreatment of chickens, and gerbils and hamsters, which some in AAR seem particularly concerned for, the protesters took to the fields with every intention of freeing the birds.

Local farmers, so moved by the protests, gave the AAR members present, each and every one, the bird.

And So It Begins… The Practical Implications of the ‘Code of Conduct’ Adopted By the SBL

• What’s a protected class?
• Are protected classes beyond critique?
• Why are some singled out for protection whilst others are not?
• Who decides?
• When is critique deemed harassment?
• By Whom?
• Will all critiques be seen as harassment?
• When did SBL become a society of ‘classes’?
• Isn’t the very notion of ‘class’ itself offensive?
• Will the class system thereby codified by SBL become sacrosanct?
• Which classes will be protected above other classes?
• How will the special interests inherent in these distinctions be treated?
• How will others, in other classes, or outside particular special interests overcome marginalization?

This Is What Every Person With a Beard Looks Like, To Me

This guy has a beard.  So, we know he’s weird and gross.  But he’s turned it into a cage… so he’s super weird.

The Always Brilliant Roberta Mazza on the so Called ‘Gospel of Mary’, At the British Museum

The Political Correctness Police Need to Go

“South Park” dodged a bullet. The show’s 19th season premiere is about PCU, a new frat whose members are political correctness vigilantes set on blasting their sirens before violently “checking someone’s privilege”; a new character, the aggressive PC Principal, spends his time enforcing a microaggression-free campus. When resident smartass Eric Cartman stumbles over his (for once) well-intentioned words, PC Principal beats him unconscious in a school bathroom.

If Comedy Central’s schedule had been a few weeks off, the channel would have been looking at a big, ironic PR problem: On Oct. 26, a Columbia, South Carolina, school resource officer threw a teenage student out of her desk and dragged her across a classroom. The video of the attack went viral. In the absence of a full-on scandal, the juxtaposition nevertheless makes the writers of “South Park” look small-minded and foolish. The episode is a classic PC-police story, and it shows how little the caricature of an uptight lefty has changed in 30 years: These stuck-up people, the line goes, become so opposed to oppression that they start oppressing other people.

Etc. Etc. Let those who have ears…

I, Too, Am a Theology Nerd

Go here to read the provocation for this post’s title.  All I can add is, amen, and amen.  If you wish to understand me, it’s right there.

AAR Wants to Tell You How to Tweet and SBL Wants To Tell You How to Behave: The SBL ‘Professional Conduct’ Code

Chris Brady has already mentioned the appearance of the SBL’s latest foray into group-think.  I’ll simply observe, and you can take it or leave it, that whilst I have absolutely nothing but the greatest respect for the Executives of SBL, I can’t help but feeling that this is simply a sign of the times.  Id est- yet another manifestation of the ever increasing movement towards intellectual conformity as manifested in uniform, controlled, ideology.

Think this way, act this way, adopt this attitude, conform to a standard from above as determined by persons you do not know.  That’s the aim and goal of all ‘Professional conduct’ guidelines.

I suppose in a day when professionalism in general is slipping by the wayside (I’m thinking of public school teachers who wear spanks and jeggings to class each day) and executives wear blue jeans festooned with holes (like Steve Jobs loved to do) and casual Friday has become casual every day (with hardly a parson in the country wearing more than cutoffs and a tank top on Sunday morning) there is indeed a need to remind folk that they should behave a certain way.

And as sad as it is to say it, we do live in a time when women in particular are treated as inferior citizens in the academic world.  And they continue to be harassed and ignored.  Those injustices, and all injustice, needs to be eradicated.  But will a code of conduct achieve that?  What if the good old boy network still wields power when charges are brought and there’s plenty of ‘wink wink nudge nudge’ going on?

But how far is too far?  When does SBL become an island where ‘Lord of the Flies’ is acted out?  How long before certain people are out or certain books are out or certain publishers are out?  It’s already a fact that the poor silly Fundamentalists are marginalized even though, on many issues, they are sensible and deserve a hearing and they are far better exegetes and linguists than their more liberal counterparts who don’t mind who reads scripture how.  They came for the fundies and we were silent.  They came for the minimalists and we stood by.  When they come for you, who will stand with you?

Of course many no longer believe in the reality of the slippery slope, but I can assure you, it does exist.  So, I suppose we do need a code of conduct.  I like the Ten Commandments and the Golden Rule.  But I suppose those are too outdated to be of use to our enlightened society.  Or perhaps I’m just too libertarian to think that more rules will make the world a better place or the SBL a better society.

Quote of the Day

That speech is a failure of which men only praise the diction. – St Jerome

The Man Bun Will Be Everywhere At AAR

It’s already everywhere else where fashion forward thinkers are thinking.  Take a look at these folk and then watch for the man bun on the likes of David Gushee and Ralph Keen and on the SBL side NT Wright and James Crossley and Chris Tilling-

Daily Scripture Reading

A curse on the day when I was born! May the day my mother bore me be unblessed! A curse on the man who brought my father the news, ‘A son, a boy has been born to you!’ making him overjoyed. May this man be like the towns that Yahweh overthrew without mercy; may he hear the warning-cry at dawn and the shout of battle at high noon, for not killing me in the womb; my mother would have been my grave and her womb pregnant for ever. Why ever did I come out of the womb to see toil and sorrow and end my days in shame? (Jer 20:14-18)

Not Everyone Loves the Smart Phone