Month: June 2014

Is Hobby Lobby a Christian Company?

According to Jonathan Merritt, there is reason to question Hobby Lobby’s claim to be a Christian company. Writing in The Week, Merritt takes H0bby Lobby to task for buying much of their cheap craft merch from China, a nation with an abysmal human rights record.
Merritt asserts in his conclusion:

If you want to call your business “Christian,” by all means, go right ahead. But those who live by the label must die by it as well. You cannot call your business “Christian” when arguing before the Supreme Court, and then set aside Christian values when you’re placing a bulk order for cheap wind chimes.
Every time you buy a decorative platter from Hobby Lobby with a Bible verse stamped across it, you have funded the company’s fight against the HHS contraception mandate. But you’re also sending a chunk of change to a country that forces people to abort their children, flouts basic standards of workplace dignity, and denies more than a billion people the right to worship.

To his credit, Merritt invited Russell Moore of the Southern Baptist Convention to provide an alternative point of view on Merritt’s page. Moore sharply disagrees:

The Greens cannot control the decisions made by the Chinese government. They can, however, direct their own actions. And, as Americans, they can participate in a democratic republic in which the people are ultimately accountable for the decisions of their government. Buying products from companies that operate in a country that aborts children is not the same as being forced by the United States government to purchase directly insurance that does the same.
Someone with a conscientious objection to the death penalty isn’t implicated in capital punishment because she buys oranges from Florida, where capital punishment is practiced. She would reasonably, though, protest if she were forced to sell lethal drugs to the state for that purpose or if she were compelled to pull the switch on the electric chair.

This topic is interesting to me. Avoiding the exploitation of workers is a Christian value but I am wondering how any company can avoid this kind of situation. Merritt’s point is that Hobby Lobby should be held to a higher standard if the owners of the company insist on the using the label Christian.
I have reservations about any company using the label Christian, in the same way as I wonder what Christian music is or about other uses of Christian to modify something other than a disciple of Jesus. Merritt’s essay makes the topic more practical and relevant to the business choices companies make. Does it matter whether or not a company does business with a Chinese company or a company in a nation which respects human rights?
Again, Merritt cut himself and jumped in the shark tank. Hope he survives this one.
 

Mark Driscoll to Congregation: Stay Off the Internet

From Mark Driscoll’s sermon dated June 8 on the Mars Hill Church website:

Now, some of you may have heard we’re a Reformed church. Don’t Google it, don’t blow your head up. We love Jesus, read your Bible, stay off the Internet. It’s all shenanigans anyways.

Admittedly, this is a very short part of a very long sermon but I am starting to wonder if this represents a more significant development at Mars Hill Church.
Over the weekend, and then again today, I have heard from sources near Mars Hill that some in the congregation are being warned to avoid blogs and media that have carried articles deemed to be critical of Mars Hill.  One source (6/17, now multiple sources) told me that the accuracy of information is being questioned and false information is being told about me and others.
One hallmark of a controlling organization is the attempt to construct social reality for members. If these sources are accurate, such an effort is troubling.
What makes these claims even more problematic is that Mars Hill will not respond to honest requests for information. Their last response to me was:

We have received your requests, and will not be responding with any comments now or in the future.

On that occasion, at least I received a response. Most of my questions have gone without any answer. If my sources are correct (and I am open to learning that they are not), then Mars Hill is accusing bloggers and other media of printing unbalanced and inaccurate information, while, at the same time, refusing to provide basic responses to the questions from those same sources.
 

Glenn Beck Wants $20 to Tell You What You Can Find Out Free

Mr. Beck is certainly a showman, and he has a big show planned for July 22, 2014.
We Will Not Conform is a live telecast to movie theaters around the country on the evils of common core educational standards. Despite being championed initially by conservatives like Mike Huckabee, Common Core has become associated with nearly everything evil, thanks, more often than not, to Mr. Huckabee’s allies in the conservative camp.
In this Hannity segment (click for video), Beck describes the upcoming event. According to Beck on Hannity’s show, common core is about control and manipulation and making money. As an aside, with a $20 ticket price, Beck’s effort to fight against common core seems to be about making money. In contrast to Beck’s claim, Huckabee says that the common core conservatives love to hate is not what the creators of common core had in mind. Huckabee said in February:

I’m convinced that the term Common Core needs to disappear from the lexicon of education policy. It’s a toxic term because it’s come to mean things that most of us can’t stomach, like top-down federal intrusion into the local schools where you live. But Common Core as it was designed had nothing to do with the federal government. It was conceived and controlled by elected governors and state school chiefs to keep the federal hands from interfering. It only dealt with 2 subjects, math and English, and in those 2 subjects, established only state-initiated standards in those subjects, and intentionally did not write or even suggest curriculum. It set voluntary goals—VOLUNTARY goals—controlled by local school boards. Unfortunately, the locally controlled and very simple creation of standards in math and English, created so that students would be measured by comparable regardless of geography has been hijacked by those who took the label Common Core and applied it to curriculum, subjects other than math and English, and even unrelated things as personal data collection. As a result, Common Core as a brand is dead and hopefully the perversions of it will die as well.

Thus, Beck’s (and David Barton’s) use of the label common core only adds to the confusion. I imagine Beck’s cadre of faux experts will scare people about public schools, but don’t expect to come out of the event enlightened. Beck’s misuse of history, and of course David Barton’s many documented historical misadventures disqualify them right off the bat. If you want to get scared about education, just go on You Tube and look up common core. You’ll be just as confused but it won’t cost you $20.

Underneath it all, there is more to this than opposition to standards, and questionable claims about making all kids the same.

Mike & The Mechanics – The Living Years

Say it loud, say it clear…
[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uGDA0Hecw1k[/youtube]
I wasn’t there that morning
When my Father passed away
I didn’t get to tell him
All the things I had to say
I think I caught his spirit
Later that same year
I’m sure I heard his echo
In my baby’s new born tears
I just wish I could have told him in the living years
 

Opposing Views Posts Mark Driscoll's Missing "Jesus Makes Mistakes" Sermon Segment

Opposing Views’ writer Michael Allen posted an article last night which discusses Mars Hill’s ambivalent reaction to the “Jesus Makes Mistakes” segment of Mark Driscoll’s sermon on Acts 6:1-7. Preached publicly on May 4, the sermon featured Driscoll’s speculations about the boyhood of Jesus had he rode a bike, or played baseball. Mars Hill edited the section but then stood by the content. The church leaders also said the editing was nothing unusual even though the edits made the video shorter than any other video in the series. Former Mars Hill Media Team members also contested the official explanation of the edits. After defending the content, Mars Hill issued a copyright complaint with YouTube who acted again me to remove the video clip.  An account of the situation and a transcript of the segment was posted here on May 19.
The missing segment has now been posted on LiveLeak:

 
Some have asked me about the significance of this story. I think a media empire posing as a church is relevant to the ongoing conversation about celebrity pastors and celebrity status in Christianity. In this situation, local listeners who heard the sermon live were buzzing about it. The decision was made to delete the content in order to “edit the best possible version of the message for distribution to the other Mars Hill locations, and our online audience,” in the words of Anthony Ianniciello, executive pastor of Media & Communications to the Christian Post.
There is something troubling about this. Only the pastors who are rich and famous have a media team which can surgically edit out embarrassing moments or questionable statements. The local pastor rises and falls on what he says and can’t take back. When (and it is when, we all make mistakes) a local pastor says something troubling, he must personally repair the problem big or small. If he makes too many of them, and there is no media team to save him, he eventually faces questions from those he serves.
On the other hand, I feel some tension because I also favor creating quality media products. I like listening to produced music even though I know it is the best version of the several times the song was recorded. I suppose if we are thinking about sermons as media productions and church as ministrytainment, then it makes sense to provide an edited version of sermons.
Some additional tension I feel is that I am reflecting about a system of church which I have not experienced but am skeptical about. I say this then as an observation from afar. It seems to me that the multi-franchise model of church provides a structure where celebrity status for the central media figures in the brand is inevitable. I know it works for many people, but I don’t find appealing the idea of watching a jumbotron of a person I don’t know preaching to other people miles away at some other time. Mars Hillians who like this please forgive me but I think the structure of the church has encouraged some of the concerns many of you are now expressing.