Archaeology and the Bible: Sorting through Fact from Fiction

Camels as beasts of burden in the Bible

"In its early stages, religion means certainty about many things.

But... he is most religious who is certain of but one thing,

the world-embracing love of God." 

- Charles Hartshorne

Bible bashing is not an activity that can be found here at Relevancy22. The Bible is considered God's Holy Word to mankind that is authoritative and inspired but not inerrant. As such, this site does work at conveying to readers how the Bible may be read without adding the forced doctrine of inerrancy (a doctrinal creed that comes courtesy of the Evangelical Theological Society's Chicago Statement of 1980), without losing its spiritual authority in our lives when reading of God's wondrous story of redemption for creation and mankind. That this spiritual recount is inspired by His Spirit and guided by His hand placed upon the passions and burdens of His people over  a very long period of time. That it began as oral history in the form of story telling, religious poems, hymns, songs, incantations, or recitals; to people who were weary, joyful, hopeful, religious, not religious, fearful,  or superstitious; and conveyed by priests, prophets, community leaders, country folk, bedouins, villagers, city folk, foreigners; who may have been oppressed, humbled, persecuted, enslaved, and exiled, to name a few circumstances and instances.

So today's topic will review two kinds of reading of the Bible - one that is not-inerrant as versus one that is inerrant - by using an archaeological discovery which is acting like a fast spreading wildfire of public opinion and news. At the outset it is important to notice that we didn't say an "errant" reading of the Bible because that type of reading can be true of both groups - both for the one not holding to inerrancy as well as for the one holding to it. So what does this mean? Well, for the scientist - or archaeologist in this case - rather than to describe something in "error" the preferred term might be "anachronism," meaning something that is unique, different, or a-typical, of what you are studying. That is, one's findings, or discoveries, or calculations, have turned up a salient, singular, result that requires further investigation. And in the case of archaeology, more than in the case of physics or chemistry, those findings may still be hiding in the dirt. And so you wait. You hypothesize. You reflect on patterns and meaning to what is known and what is not known.

a·nach·ro·nism
  [uh-nak-ruh-niz-uh m] Show IPA

noun

1.

something or someone that is not in its correct historical or chronological time, especially a thing orperson that belongs to an earlier time: The sword is an anachronism in modern warfare.

2.

an error in chronology in which a person, object, event, etc., is assigned a date or period other thanthe correct one: To assign Michelangelo to the 14th century is an anachronism.

Which in this case is whether camels (both the one-hump variety and the two-hump kind) were domesticated in Abraham's day (that is, from Genesis 11 onwards). And if they weren't then why are they described in Genesis (and the Pentateuch) as being present and being used as beasts of burden? Now this isn't new news for those studying ancient biblical ruins, times, or events... but it is to us non-archaeological types that read the news and react to its discourses when it runs afoul of our thinking, prejudices, biblical systems, conventions, and philosophies. It can dissettle us. And when it does we may have one of three reactions: (i) stay calm by reading onwards while reflecting upon the meaning of the discovery; (ii) say "yeah, I suspected this all along!" and excitedly push on into the story as it reflects our pet beliefs, idiosyncrasies, or skepticisms; (iii) or, react in disgust and anger saying, "Confound it, those liberals are at it again, telling me my Bible is wrong, and I am wrong! Anathema on all science and archaeology!" Which is my poor attempt at being humorous over a very serious subject for many, which may hold very serious implications if preferred readings and traditional interpretations of the Bible are being forthrightly challenged to the degree that it requires personal, if not system-wide change and rethinking.

Which begs the question, how are we to read the Bible? Especially if what we're reading may not be true but filled with authorial largesse more concerned with great story telling than historical accuracy. Which hits at the nub of the problem as any new discovery may conflict with our own private interpretations of a very complex book we know as the Bible. A book spoken, sung, and much later written, by burdened story tellers wishing to convey how God came to them and spoke to their hearts redemptive truths. Truths that required telling - whether it was wanted or not. Perhaps at story teller's own peril or community standing. And, unlike modern day storytelling, the ancients weren't particularly worried about facts, more probably because of their mindset, and just as likely because there were no resources to verify them as there is today in our digital age of "ready online information." As such, biblical story tellers were not buttoned down by the convention of historical accuracy. Rather, they were more concerned in telling of God's great passion, burden, and heart, by using whatever conventions they could to drive home the point which the Lord had so placed upon their heart.

So when we, as modern day readers, come to this very ancient process of oral tradition that was much, much later written down and then imperfectly preserved through the long centuries of personal and national disruption created by ethos wars, cultural exiles, and civil disobedience, we should not expect a "Star Trek type of Bible" dropped out of the sky into our lap to read unmarred by the many disjointed personalities, events, past traditions, and interpretations of the ancient story tellers. To read the Bible is to try to read, and interpret, its narrative while holding in abeyance its many anachronisms, which are no threat to God or His Word. Thought they may be to us and our biblical systems and doctrines which we have built upon select readings of the Bible's "airs and atmospheres." For the scholar, as for the biblical reader in general, the trick is to read its center, and there find God's message of redemption. Of personal sacrifice and love for a creation and for mankind gone off track because of sin and desire. Its spiritual message is deep, and wide, and pregnant with meaning for the empty lives we would live without the presence of our kind Lord and almighty Saviour.

With that said, here are four articles, or reference links, which you may further explore as related to this topic. The first is the finding itself. The second by Huff Post is written as sensationalism journalism... else, "who would ever want to read about the dry dusty topic of archaeology anyway!?" The third article is from Peter Enns who we regular follow for his level-headedness. And the fourth, and final article, is from an inerrant reading of the Bible as it tries to piece together its meaning for inerrancy (which, in my opinion, typically rearranges the facts to better line up with a more evangelical reading of the Bible, of which the magazine Christianity Today is a mouthpiece for).

As alway, Peace in the name of our Incarnate Lord Jesus,

R.E. Slater

February 21, 2014

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Introduction of Domestic Camels to the

Southern Levant: Evidence from the Aravah Valley

http://archaeology.tau.ac.il/ben-yosef/pub/Pub_PDFs/Sapir-Hen&Ben-Yosef13_CamelAravah_TelAviv.pdf

Tel Aviv University, Vol. 40, 2013, 277–285

"It was recently suggested that the introduction of the camel to the southern Levant occurred in the early Iron Age (late 2nd–early 1st millennia BCE). Our study of faunal remains from Iron Age sites at Timna, together with previous studies of Late Bronze and Iron Age sites at Timna and Wadi Faynan, enable us to pinpoint this event more precisely. The new evidence indicates that the first significant appearance of camels in the Aravah Valley was not earlier than the last third of the 10th century BCE. This date accords with data from the Negev and the settled lands further to the north when the low chronology is applied to the early Iron IIA...." 

(the article continues at the link provided)

* * * * * * * * * * *

Archaeologists Carbon-Date Camel Bones,

Discover Major Discrepancy In Bible Story

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/02/06/carbon-dated-camel-bones-bible_n_4737437.html#slide=1024672

February 6, 2014

Researchers Lidar Sapir-Hen and Erez Ben-Yosef from Tel Aviv University have discovered what may be a discrepancy in the history laid out in the Bible.

Using carbon-dating to determine the age of the oldest-known camel bones, the researchers determined that camels were first introduced to Israel around the 9th century BCE.

The Hebrew Bible, or Old Testament refers to camels as pack animals as early as the story of Abraham. Though there is no archaeological evidence of Abraham's life, many in the religious and scientific communities, including Chabad and the Associates For Biblical Research, cite the 20th century BCE as his time of birth. If the new evidence is correct, however, this suggests discrepancies between the Bible and human history as explained by science.

The researchers scoured ancient copper production sites in the Aravah Valley, where camel bones were only present in sites active in the last third of the 10 century and the 9th century BCE. Sapir-Hen and Ben-Yosef write in their report:

"[The camel bones] demonstrate a sudden appearance of camels at the site, following a major change in the organization of production in the entire region."

This suggests that camels were introduced to the region abruptly, perhaps by Egyptians along Mediterranean trade routes.

Dr. Robert Harris, an Associate Professor at the Jewish Theological Seminary, says this shouldn't come as a shock to the theological community.

“While these findings may have been published recently, those of us on the inside have known the essential facts for a generation now," Harris conveyed to HuffPost Religion through associates at JTS. "This is just one of many anachronisms in the Bible, but these do not detract from its sanctity, because it is a spiritual source, not a historical one.”

Biblical archaeology is understandably an imperfect science. Archaeologist William Dever explained in an interview with PBS several years ago:

"We want to make the Bible history. Many people think it has to be history or nothing. But there is no word for history in the Hebrew Bible. In other words, what did the biblical writers think they were doing? Writing objective history? No. That's a modern discipline. They were telling stories. They wanted you to know what these purported events mean."

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everybody…put the camel bones down

and step away before someone gets hurt

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/peterenns/2014/02/everybody-put-the-camel-bones-down-and-step-away-before-someone-gets-hurt/

by Peter Enns

February 19, 2014

Comments

Camel bones and the Bible have made the news lately, as in this online article, which is pretty sober and worth reading.

The scholarly article that started all this recent hubbub can be found here, which sports the perfectly boring scholarly title “The Introduction of Domestic Camels into the Southern Levant: Evidence from the Aravah Valley.”

Some media outlets, however, have (surprise) gone for the jolt factor, claiming that this is a “new” discovery that reveals that the Bible is a pack of lies, God no longer exists, and portends various apocalyptic scenarios, like the Cubs winning the World Series this year.

Sometimes archaeological finds are unfortunately reported in an exaggerated manner because (1) news outlets are sometimes ridiculous, and (2) archaeological digs need serious funding and without showing some sort of results funding may dry up.

The jolt factor is unfortunate, not only because it can bury truly interesting finds under a blanket or hype, but also because it encourages conservative responses that likewise are geared more to responding to hype than the scholarly issues behind it.

For example, the quick response to the camel bone “discovery” at Christianity Today claims to lay all this camel nonsense to rest, counseling that we shouldn’t jump to conclusions and that evangelical scholars have our back on this one.

I think we just need to take a step back here and calm down.

The article itself (linked above, written by Lidar Sapir-Hen and Erez Ben-Yosef), is a scholarly article that doesn’t claim to expose the heretofore unknown issue of camel domestication in the Patriarchal period, which is an almost universally understood anachronism in Genesis. The authors claim, rather, to have found further evidence for supporting this claim.

Of course, the authors’ argument can be contested, and archaeologists do that–a lot. But responses to the article should not treat this one scholarly study in isolation from what archaeologists have studied and concluded for quite some time: the presence of camels in Israel in the 2nd millennium BC is a problem, and this joins other anachronisms (like the presence of Philistines in Genesis) to suggest strongly that whatever history there is in the Patriarchal stories must also account for the clear 1st millennium BC coloring of those stories [a thousand years later].

This point is not in the least controversial and to suggest that it is–either by those reporting the findings or those wishing to contest the findings–is bad form, and misleading.

In this respect, the CT response is a bit disappointing to me, for a couple of reasons.

First, its readers will not gather from it just how well ensconced in the academic study of the Bible (including by evangelicals) the notion of anachronisms in Genesis is. It suggests that all this camel business is just the latest attempt on the part of a sensationalistic media to discredit the Bible. That is false.

Second, the article also suggests, not too subtly, that the archaeologists who did this field work aren’t very good at their job. One problem, we are told, is that they limited themselves to one small geographic area and didn’t consider the full range of evidence of camel domestication elsewhere.

But their study was intended to focus on the Levant–where the Patriarchs were–not “elsewhere.” I’m willing to bet that the authors of the article know very well what is out there beyond the patch of real-estate they were working on and how to interpret their findings in light of that larger scope.

We are also told that, “Archaeologists usually remember that ‘absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.’” “Usually” subtly implies that these archaeologists have forgotten this dictum of archaeology, but I seriously doubt that is the case. I’m sure this isn’t their first rodeo, and we should assume they are weighing a lot of evidence in drawing their conclusions.

Also this slogan can become–and in fact has become, in my opinion–a clever way of evading difficult conclusions by holding things perpetually at bay. After all, sometimes absence of evidence IS evidence of absence. But the CT article subtly suggest that evangelical scholarship takes the more rigorous academic high ground of not jumping to conclusions like Lidar Sapir-Hen and Erez Ben-Yosef are.

Anyway, bottom line as I see it:

1. Camel domestication in the Patriarchal period (early 2nd millennium BC) in general is a problem with or without this recent article.
2. It is perfectly OK to hope that perhaps more evidence will be forthcoming to support the Bible’s depiction of 2nd millennium life, but as it stands the presence of anachronisms in general in Genesis is not seriously disputed and cannot be tabled simply by “refuting” this one article.
3. The presence of anachronisms does not in and of itself render Genesis historically valueless, but it does likely tell us something about the time when these stories were written and the perspective of the writers [that is, the Genesis story was written much later - res]. A helpful analogy I first heard from Daniel Fleming at NYU is that Genesis is like a Renaissance painting of Madonna and Child: Mary and Jesus look like Italian nobility.
4. Any credible defense of the historical accuracy of Genesis needs to take seriously anachronisms and other indications of later authorship rather than feel the pressing need to hang historical accuracy on 2nd millennium authorship. To try to make that case in essence undoes several centuries of biblical scholarship, which I feel is highly ill-advised.

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The Latest Challenge to the Bible's Accuracy:
Abraham's Anachronistic Camels?
http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2014/february-web-only/latest-challenge-bible-accuracy-abraham-anachronistic-camel.html?paging=off

by Gordon Grovier

Christianity Today

February 14, 2014

Despite the latest study of bones, evidence indicates the

iconic desert animals do belong in Genesis.

Like the nose of a camel under the tent, archaeological research has raised new questions about the Bible's version of ancient history.

Two researchers at Tel Aviv University (TAU) studied the bones of camels found in an area of ancient copper mines in the Aravah Valley, south of the Dead Sea. Using radiocarbon dating and other techniques, they determined that camels were first used in the mining operations near the end of the 10th century BC.

They state that this is the first evidence of domesticated camels in ancient Israel.

This would be almost 1,000 years later than the time of the patriarchs, when camels first appear in the Bible. The most memorable account is the story of Abraham's servant, Eliezer, in Genesis 24, who is sent by Abraham to find a wife for his son Isaac. He finds Rebecca, who not only draws water from a well to quench Eliezer's thirst, but also waters his 10 camels.

Their study was quickly used to claim that the Bible was written or edited long after the events it describes. Headlines included:

The Mystery of the Bible's Phantom Camels

Camels Had No Business in Genesis

Will camel discovery break the Bible's back?

Study of camel bones suggests Bible may be wrong

Camel archaeology contradicts the Bible

But evangelical scholars say the claims are overblown.

The use of camels for copper mining is an important discovery. "But to extrapolate from that and say they never had domesticated camels anywhere else in Israel in the 1,000 years before that is an overreach," said Todd Bolen, professor of Biblical Studies at The Master's College in Santa Clarita, California. "The conclusions are overstated."

While it has been difficult for archaeologists and historians to pin down the exact time and location when camels were domesticated, there is evidence to suggest that the Genesis accounts are not a biblical anachronism.

Two recent academic papers written by evangelical scholars—Konrad Martin Heide, a lecturer at Philipps University of Marburg, Germany; and Titus Kennedy, an adjunct professor at Biola University—both refer to earlier depictions of men riding or leading camels, some that date to the early second millenium BC.

Among other evidence, Kennedy notes that a camel is mentioned in a list of domesticated animals from Ugarit, dating to the Old Babylonian period (1950-1600 BC).

He concludes, "For those who adhere to a 12th century BC or later theory of domestic camel use in the ancient Near East, a great deal of archaeological and textual evidence must be either ignored or explained away."

In an interview with Christianity Today, Kennedy said that he noticed archaeologists who work in Israel and Jordan seem to date camel domestication later than those who work in Egypt and Mesopotamia.

"[Israel] doesn't have much writing from before the Iron Age, 1000 BC," he said. "So there aren't as many sources to look at. Whereas in Egypt, you have writing all the way back to 3000 BC and in Mesopotamia the same thing." Based on Egyptian and Mesopotamian accounts, Kennedy believes domestication probably occurred as early as the third millennium BC.

He also believes the TAU researchers not only ignored evidence from outside Israel, they also assumed too much about their own research. "All they really tell us is that at that particular place where they were working they found some camel bones that they interpreted as in a domesticated context between the ninth and 11th centuries BC," Kennedy said. "It doesn't tell us that camels couldn't have been used in other nearby areas earlier than that."

Archaeologists usually remember that "absence of evidence is not evidence of absence." The absence of evidence for Hittites once fueled some 19th-century debates over the Bible—until the vast Hittite empire was discovered in Anatolia. Questions about the Book of Daniel once focused on the absence of the prominently featured Belshazzar from Babylonian king lists—until it was discovered that Belshazzar was actually the son of Nabonidus, and co-regent.

The many media reports which unquestionably accepted the TAU findings is also testimony to the fact that mainstream archaeologists and Bible scholars believe the Bible was written or assembled in the first millennium BC. They are highly skeptical of any historical information that predates that period.

Bolen also observed that archaeologists at TAU support a low chronology for the United Monarchy of Israel, which minimizes the importance of David and Solomon, and typically weights archaeological evidence more strongly than the biblical account.

"They're thinking of this in terms of strengthening their position on the low chronology," he said.

Ironically, one of the most-recent critiques of the low chronology came from another archaeologist working in the same Aravah copper mine area. He determined that the bulk of the industrial-scale mining probably occurred during the 10th century BC, the time of David and Solomon, and not later, as had been thought.

Gordon Govier is the editor of ARTIFAX magazine, and executive producer of The Book & The Spade radio program.

Exloring Evolution Series: Early Atmospheric Oxygen Production in Earth History

Photo showing one-billion-year-old weathering profiles from Michigan. Ancient soils like these provide
evidence for low atmospheric oxygen levels through much of Earth's history. Credit: Noah Planavsky.

The ups and downs of early atmospheric oxygen

http://m.phys.org/news/2014-02-ups-downs-early-atmospheric-oxygen.html

Feb 19, 2014

A team of biogeochemists at the University of California, Riverside, give us a nontraditional way of thinking about the earliest accumulation of oxygen in the atmosphere, arguably the most important biological event in Earth history.

A general consensus asserts that appreciable oxygen first accumulated in Earth's atmosphere around 2.3 billion years ago during the so-called Great Oxidation Event (GOE). However, a new picture is emerging: Oxygen production by photosynthetic cyanobacteria may have initiated as early as 3 billion years ago, with oxygen concentrations in the atmosphere potentially rising and falling episodically over many hundreds of millions of years, reflecting the balance between its varying photosynthetic production and its consumption through reaction with reduced compounds such as hydrogen gas.

"There is a growing body of data that points to oxygen production and accumulation in the ocean and atmosphere long before the GOE," said Timothy W. Lyons, a professor of biogeochemistry in the Department of Earth Sciences and the lead author of the comprehensive synthesis of more than a decade's worth of study within and outside his research group.

Lyons and his coauthors, Christopher T. Reinhard and Noah J. Planavsky, both former UCR graduate students, note that once oxygen finally established a strong foothold in the atmosphere starting about 2.3 billion years ago it likely rose to high concentrations, potentially even levels like those seen today. Then, for reasons not well understood, the bottom fell out, oxygen plummeted to a tiny fraction of today's level, and the ocean remained mostly oxygen free for more than a billion years.

The paper appears in Nature on Feb. 19, 2014.

"This period of extended low oxygen spanning from roughly 2 to less than 1 billion years ago was a time of remarkable chemical stability in the ocean and atmosphere," Lyons said.

His research team envisions a series of interacting processes, or feedbacks, that maintained oxygen at very low levels principally by modulating the availability of life-sustaining nutrients in the ocean and thus oxygen-producing photosynthetic activity.

"We suggest that oxygen was much lower than previously thought during this important middle chapter in Earth history, which likely explains the low abundances and diversity of eukaryotic organisms and the absence of animals," Lyons said.

The late Proterozoic—the time period beginning less than a billion years ago following this remarkable chapter of sustained low levels of oxygen—was strikingly different, marked by extreme climatic events manifest in global-scale glaciation, indications of at least intervals of modern-like oxygen abundances, and the emergence and diversification of the earliest animals. Lyons notes that the factors controlling the rise of animals are under close scrutiny, including challenges to the long-held view that a major rise in atmospheric oxygen concentrations triggered the event.

"Despite the new ideas about animal origins, we suspect that oxygen played a major if not dominant role in the timing of that rise and, in particular, in the subsequent emergence of complex ecologies for animal life on and within the sediment, predator-prey relationships, and large bodies" said Lyons. "But, again, feedbacks always rule the day. Environmental change drives evolution, and steps in "the progression of life" changes the environment." [similar to the idea of an "anthropocene age" today that posits "industrial mankind as a geophyical force affecting earth's sustainable environment." - r.e. slater]

No single factor is likely to be the whole story, and there is much more to be written in the tale. Lyons and coauthors, along with research groups from around world over, are focusing current efforts on the timing and drivers of oxygenation in the late Proterozoic, favoring a combination of global-scale mountain building, evolutionary controls on the way carbon is cycled in the biosphere, and concomitant climate events.

"We are faced with a lot of chicken-and-egg questions when it comes to unraveling the timing and sequence of oxygenation of the ocean and atmosphere," Lyons said. "But now, armed with new and better data, more sophisticated numerical simulations, and highly integrated investigations in the lab and the field, Earth's oxygenation history seems much longer and more dynamic than envisioned before, and we are getting closer to understanding the mechanisms behind such change."

More information: Study paper: http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nature13068

Provided by University of California - Riverside

The Loudest Christian Voices are the Humble, the Peacemakers, the Hopeful, and Grace-Givers...

The Changing Face of Christian Politics

http://m.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/02/the-changing-face-of-christian-politics/283859/

by Michael Wear

February 17 2014

In the closing days of 2013, Representative Steve King summed up the year in religion and politics well. After a year in which Christian leaders and organizations mobilized to pressure Congress on immigration reform, King was ready to take off his gloves: "We might lose [the immigration] debate in this country because of the sympathy factor, and it's also added to by a lot of Christian groups who misread the scripture, and I'm happy to take on that debate with any one of those folks."

As a frequent speaker at "values voter" conferences, King must have felt odd positioning himself in direct opposition to Christians. Then again, 2013 was a year defined by Christian leaders seeking to realign themselves politically to meet the challenges of a new century and changing culture.

Christian political engagement is changing in this country as believers seek to untangle their faith from the worldliness of partisan politics and ideology. The melding of Christianity and partisan politics has been 40 years in the making, but the costs of that entanglement have only become clear to Christians over the last decade.

In response to changing cultural mores in the 1960s and '70s, religious leaders like the Reverend Jerry Falwell—who had previously spurned partisan political engagement—called Christians to "stand for what is right" through the acquisition of political power. "In a nation of primarily Christians," they reasoned, "why are we struggling to influence our nation's policy decisions?" Soon, Christians became aligned in practice and perception with the Republican Party, pursuing almost exclusively a one-party strategy for political victory.

Conservative Christians learned that the power to elect a candidate is different than the power to govern. How could they could elect a nation's president, but lose its politics?

In the 1980s and '90s, the power of the religious right was a defining feature of American politics. Ronald Reagan, a Republican, famously told a group of conservative Christians that "you can't endorse me, but I endorse you," the type of flattery that nearly gave his audience the vapors. Bill Clinton, a Democrat, ran for president making rhetorical concessions on the issue of abortion (it should be "safe, legal, and rare"), and while in office he signed the Defense of Marriage Act and made school uniforms a cause célèbre. But although Pat Buchanan and Pat Robertson influenced Republican presidential primaries as favorite candidates of the religious right, it was George W. Bush who finally cracked the glass ceiling and was elected as the first president leaders of the Religious Right could claim as "one of us."

But conservative Christians learned that the political power to elect a candidate is different than the political power to govern. Sure, the White House hosted James Dobson each year for what amounted to a "kissing of the ring" session to mark the National Day of Prayer that Dobson's wife Shirley established a non-profit to support. Bush called for a "culture of life" at major public forums, and made a push for a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage during his second term. Yet the substantive, lasting policy victories conservative Christians hoped for were not achieved: Abortion remained legal, no federal amendment to bay gay marriage passed, and school-sanctioned prayer time remained unconstitutional. Moreover, as the original leaders of the religious right moved out of leadership, the next generation of pro-GOP voices for conservative morality were not religious leaders, but political advocates: Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Ralph Reed, Tony Perkins (a former Louisiana state senator).

As George W. Bush's approval ratings plummeted during his second term, many Christians who had been invested in the Religious Right movement began to reconsider their partisan posture in politics. In my conversations with Christian leaders and voters, I've found that there are two common motivating factors for this change. First, the political issues that draw Christian concern go beyond what the political system has suggested. Christian organizations have supported issues like prisoner rehabilitation, international development, immigrant services, and healthcare for literally centuries in this country. The legacy of Christian political activism in America spans not just the culture wars, but America's founding, the abolition of slavery, and the advancement of civil rights. To Christian leaders, and many Christians themselves, it was incomprehensible that they came to occupy such a small space of our political discourse. How could it be that they could elect a nation's president, but lose its politics?

But Christians also faced a similar and still more pressing question: How could it be that they could elect a nation's president, but lose its people?

Two books in the late 2000s helped answer that question.  In 2007, Unchristian, a book written by Gabe Lyons and David Kinnaman based on original research, sent shockwaves through the church that continue to resonate. They found that young non-Christians have profoundly negative views of Christians. For instance, among 16- to 29- year-old non-Christians, Christians were viewed as "anti-gay" (91 percent), judgmental (87 percent), hypocritical (85 percent), sheltered (78 percent) and—surprise—"too political" (75 percent).

In 2010, respected academics David Campbell and Robert Putnam's landmark book, American Grace, concluded that partisan politics was directly to blame for the rise of religiously unaffiliated Americans. "The growth of the nones," Campbell argued, "is a direct reaction to the intermingling of religion and politics in the United States." Jonathan Merritt was more blunt in his assessment of the impact of a partisan faith: "As American Evangelicals have become more partisan, American Christianity has suffered as more shy away from the faith."

Pastors increasingly found that a partisan politics was pushing people away from faith  and causing tension among those in their churches. Things had to change.

For Christians, this research confirmed what they were experiencing in their own lives: an open antagonism in the culture toward Christian ideas and doctrine; a sudden change in conversations when they mentioned their faith; the assumption of their politics that came with a knowledge of their faith; the sudden need to make clear that they were "not that kind of Christian."

The posture of Christians in politics that has begun to emerge in the wake of this realization is, well, otherworldly. These Christian leaders tend to be younger—Millennials and Gen-Xers—but you can find baby boomers in their midst. Most of these leaders are new to the scene, but their role models are older leaders who have been able to recalibrate and adjust their approach as the times have changed. They are pastors in America's cities and suburbs where they serve at the bleeding edge of our society's most pressing challenges, but they are also entrepreneurs, artists and politicians. They seek influence, but their ultimate commitment is faithfulness. They have their political preferences, but they're willing to work with anyone. And they're willing to disagree with anyone.

I worked with this type of Christian leader when I worked in the White House faith-based initiative during President Obama's first term. Regardless of the party that received their vote on Election Day, Christian leaders took fire from their traditional partisan allies to work with the Obama Administration on issues like protecting the social safety net, supporting fatherhood, strengthening adoption, and combating human trafficking. Congress's bipartisan passage of the Fair Sentencing Act of 2011 would not have been possible without religious support, and any congressional act on voting rights in the wake of the Supreme Court's decision is unlikely without the support of these Christians. And Christian leaders have been among the most outspoken advocates for immigration reform as well, as I wrote last summer, and as Steve King learned for himself.

This model is exemplified by the evangelicals who worked with Sam Adams--the first openly gay mayor of Portland, Oregon—to create the Summer of Service, which Adams has called the most successful endeavor of his time in office. As Kevin Palau, one of the leaders of the Portland partnership, told The New York Times: "Young evangelicals absolutely want their faith to be relevant .… The world they grew up in and got tired of was the media portrait of evangelicals are against you, or evangelicals even hate you. Young evangelicals are saying, 'Surely we want to be known by what we're for.'"

This idea that Christians should be known what they are for is now a common one. You'll hear it in conferences and church sermons, not just from intellectual leaders, but from pastors at the grassroots. It is a rallying cry especially for younger Christians—their corrective response to the more strident, oppositional faith of the previous generation.

It is also at the heart of Christians' love affair with Pope Francis: This pope is known by what he is for. Just about everyone loves Pope Francis so far. He's polling at 88 percent among all Americans. He was named Person of the Year not only by Time but also by The Advocate, a leading publication for the LGBT community. Obama quoted Francis as part of his case against income inequality, and Obama's former chief speechwriter, Jon Favreau, recently wrote a glowing column praising the pope as "the most hopeful development for world affairs in 2014."

But for Christians, particularly those who feel religion's influence in this country is slipping—as a vast majority of both believers and non-believers do—Pope Francis offers something of a test case: Can Christians still thrive in the American public square while continuing to hold to the basic tenets of their faith?

Yes, Francis is the pope who washes the feet of Muslim girls; who expresses humility first when presented with the opportunity of judging a person, gay or straight; who sneaks out at night to serve the poor—but he is also consistent with traditional Catholic doctrine on homosexuality, women in Church leadership, reproductive issues, and other topics that have brought the Church under criticism in recent years. As Nancy Gibbs suggested in Time, the pope "has not changed the words, but he's changed the music."

However, changing the music may not be enough: attempts to box Pope Francis in have already begun. A close ally of the pope recently spoke out against "manipulation" by the media of statements the pope has made to suggest a break from Catholic doctrine. In The Washington Post, Max Fisher suggested the pope has "preferred symbolic gestures" over "productive diplomacy." A Salon columnist faulted his encyclical on economic justice for not including support for gay marriage and an endorsement of accepting women in the priesthood. As Francis's honeymoon potentially comes to a close, what happens if the pope's policies do not conform to expectations?

These questions aside, it is the case that in 2013, for the first time in decades, the loudest Christian voices were the peacemakers. The hopeful. The grace-givers. Sure, the same-old people who profit from conflict still have their megaphones, but they are starting to be drowned out by those who prefer partnership to opposition and conversation to screeds. And though important internal debates are happening among Christian leaders and in small groups across the country, it is important to note that many of the voices taking this new posture (like Francis) still believe the same fundamental things about Christian doctrine.

So what does this new Christian political posture mean for the culture wars? The last big dust-up of 2013 offers a glimpse. When Duck Dynasty's Phil Robertson made his incendiary remarks in an interview with GQ, one would have to be forgiven for expecting that we were about to have another "Christians vs. gays" battle in the culture wars. And, certainly, there was some of that. But the aftermath also showed the beginnings of a third way, a 21st-century common ground. Some of the most representative Christian articles and blogs on the subject were encouraging introspection on the part of Christians, such as Jen Hatmaker's call for Christians to be "peacemakers" (not habitual culture warriors), and Rebekah Lyons' post on the importance of the words we use, and Christians' need to be "messengers of peace." Wesley Hill's post for First Things, a staple conservative publication, was probably the most surprising and incisive, as he wrote: "… just because someone quotes 1 Corinthians 6:9-11 and is opposed to same-sex marriage doesn't mean that they're speaking up for a theologically informed, humane, pastorally sensitive view of what it means to be gay."

There were also surprising voices questioning A&E's decision to suspend Robertson. LGBT writer Brandon Ambrosino wrote for Time on the bigotry of the reaction to Phil's remarks. "Why," he asked, "is our go-to political strategy for beating our opponents to silence them? Why do we dismiss, rather than engage them?" CNN's Don Lemon—who is gay and has spoken out passionately on air against homophobia and discrimination in the past—also said on air that he opposed firing Robertson. More than the headlines would suggest, many people with different views on LGBT rights came to agree that ending a conversation is vastly different from winning an argument.

A Christianity that seeks to unilaterally impose itself on the nation is unlikely be fruitful, but it is similarly unrealistic and unproductive to force a secular morality on believers.

During the string of retrospectives that greeted the new year, many named 2013 the year of a progressive renaissance. From the continued rise of the religiously unaffiliated, to the progress of marriage equality as a political and cultural force, and the election of Bill de Blasio, many observers have suggested we're entering a new and more liberal era: The old ideas have been tried, found wanting, and Americans are now ready to discard them, we've been told.

Even for those who would welcome a new, enduring progressive era, declaring one does not make it so. I believe the story of 2013 was different. Rather than discarding old ideas, Christians returned to the basics, shedding some of the political baggage and layers of allegiances gained in the previous century to return to their most fundamental allegiance: to Jesus and to people. They are reaching for a new equilibrium between the prophetic and the pastoral, between mercy and justice, the aspiration of holiness and the free gift of grace.

A clear example of this new kind of public posture is the Imago Dei Campaign launched last month by evangelical organizations like Focus on the Family, the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference, Liberty University's Mat Staver, and Roma Downey and Mark Burnett, producers of the History Channel's The Bible, among others. The Imago Dei (latin for "image of God") website declares, "For the image of God exists in all human beings: black and white; rich and poor; straight and gay; conservative and liberal; victim and perpetrator; citizen and undocumented; believer and unbeliever."

As Elizabeth Dias reported in Time, the campaign is an effort to "erode the culture war battle lines that have helped define evangelical discourse for the better part of half a century." It amounts to an admission of sorts on behalf of evangelicals. That they feel they have to launch a campaign to reaffirm a doctrine as old as the book of Genesis, suggests evangelicals have allowed this fundamental principle to become obscured. Like Pope Francis's statements, Imago Dei does not accede on issues like gay marriage—it even reaffirms the view that abortion is immoral—but it does express a new humility, a new acceptance, that would have never occurred under the old partisan paradigm. It offers a pathway for dialogue and persuasion: If gay people are to be afforded dignity as those made in the image of God, what does this require of our rhetoric? What does it require of our laws?

The question for 2014 is whether political and cultural forces will support or undermine this new equilibrium. Will Christian humility on controversial issues be welcomed, or will a full renouncement of their beliefs be demanded? Can our politics build upon the unlikely alliances of the immigration-reform movement to continue relationships on areas of common ground, or will we force groups into boxes using ideological litmus tests? Can we insist on a truly inclusive America, or will parochial interests and short-term political battles distract us?

I think we will look back at 2013 as a turning point in the Christian project to live out and project a holistic, positive, and hopeful faith. It was a year of establishing new norms, in religious life and in the life of our nation. 2014 will be about how we negotiate living with this new normal. A Christianity that seeks to unilaterally impose itself on the nation is unlikely be fruitful, but it is similarly unrealistic and unproductive to force a secular morality on believers.

What will be required of our political and religious leadership in this year is not diversity alone, but an understanding of diverse groups of people, with the knowledge that neither women nor men, gay people or straight, black, white, Latino, native, nor any other ethnicity or race, religious nor atheist—none of these various segments of the American population are going away. We need leaders, and people to support them, who recognize that the question for this century is not "how do I win?" but "how can we live together?"

For Christians and for all Americans, answering this question should be the central political project for 2014 and beyond.

Exploring Evolution Series: Discovering Convergent Evolution between Disseparate Living Things

How evolution shapes the geometries of life:

Scientists solve a longstanding biological puzzle

http://m.phys.org/news/2014-02-evolution-geometries-life-scientists-longstanding.html

Feb 17, Biology/Evolution

New research suggests that the shapes of both plants and animals evolved in response to the same mathematical and physical principles. By working through the logic underlying Kleiber’s Law (metabolism equals mass to the three-quarter power) and applying it separately to the geometry of plants and animals, researchers were able to show that plants and animals display equivalent energy efficiencies. Credit: Loretta Kuo

Why does a mouse's heart beat about the same number of times in its lifetime as an elephant's, although the mouse lives about a year, while an elephant sees 70 winters come and go? Why do small plants and animals mature faster than large ones? Why has nature chosen such radically different forms as the loose-limbed beauty of a flowering tree and the fearful symmetry of a tiger?

These questions have puzzled life scientists since ancient times. Now an interdisciplinary team of researchers from the University of Maryland and the University of Padua in Italy propose a thought-provoking answer based on a famous mathematical formula that has been accepted as true for generations, but never fully understood. In a paper published the week of Feb. 17, 2014 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the team offers a re-thinking of the formula known as Kleiber's Law. Seeing this formula as a mathematical expression of an evolutionary fact, the team suggests that plants' and animals' widely different forms evolved in parallel, as ideal ways to solve the problem of how to use energy efficiently.

If you studied biology in high school or college, odds are you memorized Kleiber's Law: metabolism equals mass to the three-quarter power. This formula, one of the few widely held tenets in biology, shows that as living things get larger, their metabolisms and their life spans increase at predictable rates. Named after the Swiss biologist Max Kleiber who formulated it in the 1930s, the law fits observations on everything from animals' energy intake to the number of young they bear. It's used to calculate the correct human dosage of a medicine tested on mice, among many other things.

But why does Kleiber's Law hold true? Generations of scientists have hunted unsuccessfully for a simple, convincing explanation. In this new paper, the researchers propose that the shapes of both plants and animals evolved in response to the same mathematical and physical principles. By working through the logic underlying Kleiber's mathematical formula, and applying it separately to the geometry of plants and animals, the team was able to explain decades worth of real-world observations.

"Plant and animal geometries have evolved more or less in parallel," said UMD botanist Todd Cooke. "The earliest plants and animals had simple and quite different bodies, but natural selection has acted on the two groups so the geometries of modern trees and animals are, remarkably, displaying equivalent energy efficiencies. They are both equally fit. And that is what Kleiber's Law is showing us."

Picture two organisms: a tree and a tiger. In evolutionary terms, the tree has the easier task: convert sunlight to energy and move it within a body that more or less stays put. To make that task as efficient as possible, the tree has evolved a branching shape with many surfaces – its leaves.

"The tree's surface area and the volume of space it occupies are nearly the same," said physicist Jayanth Banavar, dean of the UMD College of Computer, Mathematical, and Natural Sciences. "The tree's nutrients flow at a constant speed, regardless of its size."

With these variables, the team calculated the relationship between the mass of different tree species and their metabolisms, and found that the relationship conformed to Kleiber's Law.

To nourish its mass, an animal needs fuel. Burning that fuel generates heat. The animal has to find a way to get rid of excess body heat. The obvious way is surface cooling. But because the tiger's surface area is proportionally smaller than its mass, the surface is not up to the task. The creature's hide would get blazing hot, and its coat might burst into flames.

So as animals get larger in size, their metabolism must increase at a slower rate than their volume, or they would not be able to get rid of the excess heat. If the surface area were the only thing that mattered, an animal's metabolism would increase as its size increased, at the rate of its mass to the two-thirds power. But Kleiber's Law, backed by many sets of observations, says the actual rate is mass to the three-quarters power.

Clearly there's a missing factor, and scientists have pored over the data in an attempt to find out what it is. Some have proposed that the missing part of the equation has to do with the space occupied by internal organs. Others have focused on the fractal, or branching, form that is common to tree limbs and animals' blood vessels, but added in new assumptions about the volume of fluids contained in those fractal networks.

The UMD and University of Padua researchers argue a crucial variable has been overlooked: the speed at which nutrients are carried throughout the animals' bodies and heat is carried away. So the team members calculated the rate at which animals' hearts pump blood and found that the velocity of blood flow was equal to the animals' mass to the one-twelfth power.

"The information was there all along, but its significance had been overlooked," said hydrologist Andrea Rinaldo of Italy's University of Padua and Switzerland's Ecole Polytechnique Federale. "Animals need to adjust the flow of nutrients and heat as their mass changes to maintain the greatest possible energy efficiency. That is why animals need a pump – a heart – and trees do not."

Plugging that information into their equation, the researchers found they had attained a complete explanation for Kleiber's Law.

"An elegant answer sometimes is the right one, and there's an elegance to this in the sense that it uses very simple geometric arguments," said physicist Amos Maritan of the University of Padua. "It doesn't call for any specialized structures. It has very few preconditions. You have these two lineages, plants and animals, that are very different and they arrive at the same conclusion. That is what's called convergent evolution, and the stunning result is that it's being driven by the underlying physics and the underlying math."

Provided by University of Maryland

Phys.org - http://m.phys.org/

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Center-Set v. Boundary-Set Maintance - "The Ties that Bind that Must be Broken," Parts 1-3

There is No Spoon: Christian Boundary Maintenance

http://johnwhawthorne.com/2013/11/25/there-is-no-spoon-christian-boundary-maintenance/

by John W. Hawthorne

November 25, 2013

I have been fascinated with the idea of social networks since taking a great course in grad school when social network analysis was just beginning. In some ways, the question of who’s in and who’s out is a connecting thread that runs across my career.

My dissertation was on people who regularly attend church but never join (I saw them as boundary poachers, although the findings proved more complicated than that). I used network analysis to study three congregations and their relationship patterns in the early 90's (but I didn’t pay enough attention to bridging capital — more [on that] later).

Perhaps that research is what led me to be so critical of the effort we put into maintaining boundaries. I distinctly remember hearing a Focus on the Family broadcast telling of a group of school children playing at a newly constructed playground. Well-intentioned psychologists, it was argued, believed that they didn't want to limit the children's sense of adventure and so didn’t put fences around the school yard. The children, not knowing where the edges were, huddled anxiously in a clump being afraid to venture out. The chagrined psychologists had fences put up and then the children played happily in their new playground.

Parenthetically, I once put my university library staff along with the psych department to work to locate the original source [of this study]. It appears to be apocryphal though regularly repeated in blogs, sermons, and parenting articles. (A google scholar search just now came up pretty empty.)

Trafalgar Square, London, England

Anyway, when I heard the report I knew what was wrong. They were looking in the wrong direction for meaning. It’s not at the edges but at the center. I suggested to a friend (as I have repeated for years) that the solution isn’t to focus on the fences but the build a monolith in the center of the playground and tell the children they can play where ever they want as long as they can see the statue. The picture of Trafalgar square is as close as I’ve come to capturing what I had in mind.

The same ideas apply to Christian identity. If we spend all our time exploring the edges that separate us from others, we’re investing in creating and maintaining boundaries that function to that end. If this boundary weakens, we have to go and repair it right away like a rancher keeping the cattle in.

Instead, we can rest in the New Testament image of the Shepherd who knows His sheep and walks in their midst. They listen for him and move when he moves.

But we keep trying to build fences. I think this is a normal sociological process. We like to be with people like us. So we spend our energies creating points of separation that keep the outsiders out (and the insiders in). It’s an effective form of social control and identity marking, but it is a far cry from the outreach of the Gospel.

Spend just a few days reading Facebook or Twitter and you’ll see this in operation. We find things about which to be offended: how dare you say Happy Holidays instead of Merry Christmas? Women can teach Sunday School but not preach (there was a great blog but I lost it). We have church trials surrounding a Methodist minister who officiated at his gay son’s wedding. We separate the Wesleyans from the Calvinists. We separate over science and faith. Don’t get me started on the Christians engaged in political fights on Facebook, calling each other out for not being True Christians.

In my Spirituality, Faith, and Justice class Thursday night, we were discussing the role of narrative in the pursuit of justice and the common good. This combined readings from Michael Sandel’s Justice and Walter Brueggemann’s Journey to the Common Good. Attending to story can bind us together. The real task, paraphrasing Brueggemann, is to reconstruct community in such a way as not not privilege one group over another but validate all stories.

The Strength of Weak Ties, by Mark Grannovetter

I was attempting to illustrate this by drawing on the distinction between "bonding social capital" and "bridging social capital." In that context, I returned to a classic piece of modern sociology — Mark Grannovetter’s The Strength of Weak Ties. Grannovetter argued that tightly bonded groups are good for social support but bad at building connections. For that, we need weak ties — the acquaintanceships that tell us about job prospects or allow information to be tested against reality.

The tightest relationships are not the most powerful when

we need to broaden our reach within the organization.

For a quick explanation, check out this link from Information Week (where I got the graphic). The implication of the graph is that the energy in a strong tie group is expended inward. This provides a clear sense of who is in and who is out. The energy of a weak tie group is always expended outward — one never knows which of the surrounding circles is the source of potential contacts or information.

In the context of the class discussion, I was attempting to connect this to my prior work on millenials. One of the reasons they are concerned about the church is because they’ve maintained connections through social media with a diverse group of folks from different spheres of their lives. In short, they live in a weak-tie world.

This weekend Zach Hoag filled in on Zack Hunt’s blog (Zack has a cute new baby, but I’m a little biased about smart and beautiful babies since my granddaughter was born). Hoag wrote about the false fronts that are involved in our never-ending search for niceness. We stay away from the real messiness of the world because we’re maintaining face. Erving Goffman was a pioneer in exploring the ways in which we manage cues and props to create and maintain impressions. Boundary maintenance is another outcome of the same process.

One can find people who are less concerned about boundaries. Jonathan Fitzgerald wrote a profile of Nadia Bolz-Weber in the Daily Beast that defies membership in a single group (while acknowledging the danger of creating yet another Christian celebrity). In any case, Bolz-Weber fits a weak-ties model of social capital.

When I was talking to my class last week explaining the notion of social networks, I was struck by a new insight.... The notion of inside and outside are fictions. They’re helpful fictions and we find them comfortable. But they are fictions nonetheless.

I felt compelled to start quoting The Matrix (I’d already done a riff on Life of Brian). I found myself thinking of the boy Neo meets when he visits the Prophet. The boy can bend a spoon with his mind. Then Neo is told “There is no spoon“.

That made me think again about the Weak Ties diagram. The notion that we have all these little circles we’re part of isn’t true. It’s one big circle. And we’re all part of it.

God’s circle is bigger than we imagine and is not bounded by time or space much less by simple distinctions on who gets to preach or who gets to marry or who reads which science books.

What would happen if the evangelical church caught a vision of the bigger circle and the ways in which our stories are being co-written with each of us as influencers in every other story. Yes, I really liked the Day of the Doctors! What if all the energy we expend on separateness was spent building linkages to those different than ourselves?

It’s a great narrative — a storyline that starts at creation and runs throughout history to the restoration of that creation on earth as it is in heaven.

* * * * * * * * * *

Bruegel the Elder, the Tower of Babel, Genesis 11

Ripping Down Towers of Babel

http://johnwhawthorne.com/2014/02/17/ripping-down-towers-of-babel/

by John W. Hawthorne

February 17, 2014

The picture [above] is Bruegel the Elder’s take on the Genesis 11 story of the Tower of Babel. In the scripture, we’re told that there was only one language and the people came together to build a city with a great tower that would reach to the heavens. In response, the LORD comes down to check it out and confuses their languages and scatters the people across the nations.

I’m not a biblical scholar — I’m a sociologist. So my first inclination is to treat this story as a cosmological allegory of “why the people down the road don’t talk like us”. It’s the kind of story that fits within an oral tradition explaining to children why things are the way they are.

But I did do some quick internet research and was pleased to find this entry from the Oxford Bible Studies Online. I was pleased for several reasons. First, the author is Brent Strawn from Candler Seminary at Emory and I’ve been friends with his father and brother for several years. Second, because the piece also used the Bruegel painting as illustration. And Third, because Brent’s analysis is directly applicable to the issue of religious group boundaries I’ve been exploring for several months.

Brent suggests that there are two interpretations of why the tower was a problem. One option is that it has something to do with pride. Building a huge edifice would let everyone know that these were cool people who had things together. He goes on to say that this chapter stands in stark contrast to the calling of Abram; there it is God who does great things through people. The second option Brent explores is the role of fear. They needed the city to protect them from being scattered across the earth (as was God’s plan). The “hunkering down” as he calls it, is in resistance to the world as they found it [and are discovering it].

As I said, I’ve been reflecting on the ways in which evangelical groups build artifices to separate those on the inside from those on the outside (for samples, see here and here). And I’ve come to a useful image that helps explain the process.

We tore down the Tower of Babel and then used the self same

bricks to build enclaves of our own desiring.

And we did it for the same two reasons that the Tower was

built in the first place: Pride and Fear.

Pride

Pride comes in when we attract hordes of followers to show that we are right. Zack Hoag has consistently exposed the ways in which the evangelical church (both conservative and progressive) have been seduced by the culture of celebrity. I am not immune. I want page views, retweets, Facebook likes, and recognition. I want people to tell each other about my writing. I want to have access to publishing empires that turns a lecture series into a book and a set of DVDs.

We build our enclaves because it allows us to sit inside our secure walls and lob critiques at those walled enclaves down the block. We hope that doing so will prove how smart we are, how right we are, how close to God we are. Especially if we can demonstrate that by comparison to those wrong-headed folks next door.

Rachel Held Evans posted a great piece today discussing what it feels like to be on the receiving end of the critiques lobbed over the wall. It’s a story of hurt and misunderstanding, of false accusation and presumption. But it also contains some deep introspection to make sure that parallel assumptions don’t result about other groups.

I’ve been reading Christena Cleveland’s Disunity in Christ. It’s a wonderful book (not surprisingly, it’s chock full of good social psychology!). I’m only partway through, but already the implications are powerful. We find comfort and identity through our groups within our walls. But that very comfort and identification contributes to our misreading and misunderstanding the other groups. Our pride causes us to overstate our own position and not really listen to others.


Fear

If pride makes us overstate our correctness, fear calls us to demonize all opposition even if we can’t name them. We build our walls so high that we don’t know what’s out there. We just know it can’t be good because it’s not what we have in here.

This post was prompted by one shared by Peter Enns over the weekend. It was about a conference announcement about a regional meeting of the Evangelical Theological Society. The brochure is titled “The Liberal Seepage into the Evangelical Culture” and shows a scary wolf in sheep’s clothing. I’ll let the word “seepage” go for now (sounds like a medical problem). But the very identification of “evangelical culture” as a thing is the very essence of wall-building. See, THEY are infiltrating into the space WE have created for ourselves. Even if our concerns about them are based on irrationality and exaggeration.

In the words of Elmer Fudd, "Be afwaid. Be vewy afwaid."

Fear take us to funny places. It makes it easy to do things or say things about brothers and sisters we would not otherwise do or say. Because somebody has to. Otherwise, how would we protect the walls from intruders? Don’t you know what the stakes are?

Neither Pride Nor Fear

Christians aren’t motivated by pride. Christians aren’t directed by fear.

We are following in the way of the Christ who sacrificed his status and position to inaugurate a new way of living through death on the cross and launching of a Kingdom at hand. We have an assurance running throughout scripture that we are not alone but have the very God of the universe with us.

What happens if we tear down our walls? I’m still working on this but I think we find that we are able to engage those around us. [We may find] reasonable people who ask interesting questions, who have fascinating life stories, who have real struggles. In short, we find them to be people created in the image of God. People who, if we take Matthew 25 seriously, are both representatives of Christ and perhaps unaware Kingdom-builders (“When did we do that?”).

In short, trusting Christ and his Kingdom journey means that we don’t need walls and boundaries. Because God is already at work building the Kingdom. We’re just along for the ride to offer water when asked.

I’m also reading Prodigal Christianity by David Fitch and Geoff Holsclaw. Their writing both resonates with my thinking and makes me feel like they’ve already said it better. The central thesis of their book is the God went into the Far Country (where we live) and we are called to do likewise.

Going into the Far Country requires trust in God and deep courage. In that way it becomes a matter of testimony to the Greater Story of which we are all apart.

As Mr. Reagan said to Mr. Gorbachev [re the Iron Curtain of Berlin, East Germany], "Tear Down Those Walls!"

* * * * * * * * * *

How Social Networks Can Harness

the Power of Weak Ties

http://www.dashe.com/blog/social-learning/power-weak-ties/

by Jon Matejcek

May 11, 2013

While everyone seems to be expounding with great awe about the speed of change on the internet – especially the uptake of social media technologies like Facebook – it is interesting to note that there are really two factors being discussed:

1)      The social networking technology

2)      The human dynamics related to social networking

The technology hype is natural.  The power of tools like Facebook, LinkedIn, and Yammer, are pretty astounding.  These tools give us a way to connect with people faster and more easily than ever before.

A lot of the Social Media Mavens, however, are really ranting, not about the technology, but about the human dynamics related to social networking.  These dynamics have been around for thousands of years, and have been written about extensively for decades – like in this 1973 article by Mark Granvotter in the American Journal of Sociology, The Strength of Weak Ties.

If we separate the human aspect of social networking from the technology, we can learn a lot more about the power of networks – not just from today’s pundits, but from many years of sociological research on the topic.

For example, Harvard professor Andrew McAfee sums up the Strength of Weak Ties theory nicely, describing how acquaintances with whom we are less familiar are more likely to tell us things we don’t already know:

… People we don’t know all that well are hugely valuable in our work. They’re sources of novelty and innovation (because they know quite different things than we do) and bridges to other social networks (because they know quite different people than we do). 

This implies that digital social tools aimed at facilitating our professional lives might not want to focus too much on helping us stay in touch and work with our closest colleagues. Instead, they might want to help us build, maintain, and exploit a large network of weak ties.

After reading this, I started thinking about this new LinkedIn utility I recently installed.  Initially it seemed like a fairly useless novelty, but I realized that there may be some value in it after all.  If we apply the ‘weak ties’ theory, we might be able to spot people in our network who are both:

a)      Loosely tied to us (i.e., people with whom we don’t share too many connections)

b)      Themselves near the edge of a cluster, with links to one or more other clusters.

Here’s how a typical LinkedIn network might look:

Your weak ties are smaller circles, not at the center of a cluster

I heard more support for the Weak Ties theory while attending a Knowledge Management conference in 2005. At the conference, a representative from Raytheon Corporation spoke about a study they had conducted among their vast employee population.  By taking inventory of employees’ “connections” (this was still a novel concept in 2005), they found that people had grouped into natural clusters.

The clustering of employee groups was not the surprising thing.  The real discovery came when they posed problems for various employees to solve.  They found that the employees near the edge of a cluster were more effective at problem-solving than those in the middle of a cluster.

Why?  Because the people on the edge were more likely to be connected to other network clusters, and therefore had access to information that was not available to people who were “buried” at the middle of a cluster.

Learning and development professionals should remember the Weak Ties theory when designing social learning systems.  It’s not enough for people within functional areas (clusters) to connect.  The real challenge, and value, is to find tools and processes that help people connect  and think “outside the cluster.”

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