Radical Civility

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Well, I’ve nearly got the new church web site up to speed and two people have agreed to serve on the web site committee. That’s the good news. The not so good news is that apparently it’ll be impossible to redirect traffic from the old address (northucc.org) to the new one (northchurchucc.org). That’s because the old web site was registered and hosted by Korksoft, which is by most accounts a breath-takingly lousy outfit. I just googled “Korksoft.” As of today, the first link that appears is the Korksoft site itself. The second is a series of reviews about Korksoft. A sample:

“Servers go down constantly. They are too stupid to fix it so they keep rebooting the server. One person supports it all from 3,000 miles away. No after hours support. They delete your online support calls instead of solving. They are in bad standing with the Better Business Bureau. They run out of disk space because they cram everything on one server … thus it’s really slow. Jason Korkin, king of liars lives with his mom and dad.”

The third link is another set of reviews (eighteen of them as of today), which are overwhelmingly negative. The most recent reads:

“Extremely unreliable technical support and hosting service. Our website had been hacked couple of times through out the year and Korksoft was unaware of the problem until we notified them. And the recovery measure was very slow and not up to satisfactory level. Over all, poor technial support and un professional customer service for this company, I would not recommend this hosting service to anyone. It’s not worth the money at all.”

The next several links all excoriate Korksoft in pretty much the same terms.

I mention this because my predecessor as webmaster had so much trouble with Korksoft — downtime, inability to access/update web pages, lack of customer support — that he instructed his credit card company to suspend further payments. I’ve made a few inquiries and without the cooperation of Korksoft, it’s apparently impossible to redirect the old domain or transfer the domain to me so that I can redirect it using my own host (Website Source, which, by the way, I have found to be excellent).

Bottom line: Sites that already link to the old address will direct visitors thither. That ain’t so good. Countervailing that a bit is the fact that a Google search already brings up the new site immediately after the old one, and in a few days I expect will overtake it. But none of this would even be an issue if the owner of Korksoft were a responsible businessman.

From the Army Times, March 6, 2006

Nevada National Guard Sgt. Patrick Stewart gave his life for his country when the Chinook helicopter he was in was shot down in Afghanistan in September.

But those wishing to honor Stewart, who should have his name on the memorial wall at the Northern Nevada Veterans Memorial Cemetery in Fernley, would have a difficult time doing so.

The space reserved for Stewart is vacant. Stewart was a follower of the Wiccan religion, which is not recognized by the Department of Veterans Affairs.

Stewart’s widow, Roberta, said she’ll wait until her family’s religion — and its five-pointed star enclosed in a circle, with one point facing skyward — is recognized for use on memorials before Stewart’s plaque is installed.

“It’s completely blank,” Roberta Stewart said, pointing to her husband’s place on the memorial.

She said she had no idea the pentacle could not be used on her husband’s memorial plaque until she had to deal with the agency after his death.

“It’s discrimination,” she said. “They are discriminating against our religion.”

“I had no idea that they would decline our veterans this right that they go to fight for,” she said. “What religion we are doesn’t matter. It’s like denying who my husband is.”

The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs and its National Cemetery Administration prohibit graphics on government-furnished headstones or markers other than those they have approved as “emblems of belief.” More than 30 such emblems are allowed on gravestones and markers in veterans cemeteries, from the Christian cross to the Buddhist wheel of righteousness. A symbol exists for atheists, too.

(Continued)

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You Should Be a Film Writer

You don’t just create compelling stories, you see them as clearly as a movie in your mind. You have a knack for details and dialogue. You can really make a character come to life. Chances are, you enjoy creating all types of stories. The joy is in the storytelling. And nothing would please you more than millions of people seeing your story on the big screen!

A review of Rod Dreher’s Crunchy Cons

by David Dark
Christian Century, June 13, 2006

I think I might qualify as a Crunchy Conservative. I wear Birkenstocks whenever weather permits. My wife and I worry about our children becoming too much the target market. We buy organic an awful lot. When my friends and I grapple with issues, we ask the age-old question: What would Wendell Berry do? I’ve voted, at various times, for Democrats, Republicans and Ralph Nader. I want to affirm the sacramental integrity of creation without fitting into any facet of Karl Rove’s high-tech totem pole. I want to be a student of wisdom, ever ancient, ever new and ever cosmic.

To my mind, there’s an encouraging sensibility on offer in Rod Dreher’s Crunchy Cons. The subtitle is a bit misleading. Dreher, a writer and editor at the Dallas Morning News, doesn’t appear to put much stock in the right-wing brand or much hope in the Republican Party. He can’t name a career politician (Democrat or Republican) whom he finds encouraging.

He notes throughout the book that it’s generally the so-called liberals who are “the most conservation-minded” as homeowners and stewards of local economies. “I fail to see just what American conservatism has conserved.” And he repeatedly calls into question the “family values” hype that seems to sustain the GOP: “Conservatives are divorcing at the same rate as liberals.”

Amid the static and the noise, Dreher seeks to discern and describe the Crunchy Con character as it emerges beneath the radar of the news networks and the pollsters. The Crunchy Con has begun to suspect that there’s something essential in William Blake’s vision of “dark Satanic mills,” that Jimmy Carter was largely right in his talk of “moral malaise,” and that we often commit murder in our attempts at profitably dissecting whatever corner of hallowed creation we refer to as a resource.

Full review

United Church of Christ minister Dr. Robin Meyers was invited to speak to a group of university students in the immediate wake of President George W. Bush’s reelection in 2004. His remarks, though not originally intended for publication, were transcribed by the students and soon made their way around the Internet. Eventually they became to basis for a book, Why the Christian Right Is Wrong: A Minister’s Manifesto for Taking Back Your Faith, Your Flag, Your Future (Jossey Bass, 2006). Here’s the original talk:

As some of you know, I am minister of Mayflower Congregational Church in Oklahoma City, an Open and Affirming, Peace and Justice church in northwest Oklahoma City, and professor of Rhetoric at Oklahoma City University. But you would most likely have encountered me on the pages of the Oklahoma Gazette, where I have been a columnist for six years and hold the record for the most number of angry letters to the editor.

Tonight, I join ranks of those who are angry, because I have watched as the faith I love has been taken over by fundamentalists who claim to speak for Jesus, but whose actions are anything but Christian. We’ve heard a lot lately about so-called “moral values” as having swung the election to President Bush. Well, I’m a great believer in moral values, but we need to have a discussion, all over this country, about exactly what constitutes a moral value. I mean what are we talking about?

Because we don’t get to make them up as we go along, especially not if we are people of faith. We have an inherited tradition of what is right and wrong, and moral is as moral does.

Let me give you just a few of the reasons why I take issue with those in power who claim moral values are on their side:

When you start a war on false pretenses, and then act as if your deceptions are justified because you are doing God’s will, and that your critics are either unpatriotic or lacking in faith, there are some of us who have given our lives to teaching and preaching the faith who believe that this is not only not moral, but immoral.

When you live in a country that has established international rules for waging a just war, build the United Nations on your own soil to enforce them, and then arrogantly break the very rules you set down for the rest of the world, you are doing something immoral.

When you claim that Jesus is the Lord of your life, and yet fail to acknowledge that your policies ignore his essential teaching, or turn them on their head (you know, Sermon on the Mount stuff like that we must never return violence for violence and that those who live by the sword will die by the sword), you are doing something immoral.

When you act as if the lives of Iraqi civilians are not as important as the lives of American soldiers, and refuse to even count them, you are doing something immoral.

When you find a way to avoid combat in Vietnam, and then question the patriotism of someone who volunteered to fight, and came home a hero, you are doing something immoral.

When you ignore the fundamental teachings of the gospel, which says that the way the strong treat the weak is the ultimate ethical test, by giving tax breaks to the wealthiest among us so the strong will get stronger and the weak will get weaker, you are doing something immoral.

(Continued)

I’m not scared of dyin’
And I don’t really care
If it’s peace you find in dyin’
Well then let the time be near
Just bundle up my coffin
‘Cause its cold way down there
And when I die
And when I’m gone
There’ll be one child born
And a world to carry on

My troubles are many
They’re deep as a well
I swear there ain’t no heaven
And I pray there ain’t no hell
But I’ll never know by livin’
Only my dyin’ will tell
And when I die
And when I’m gone
There’ll be one child born
And a world to carry on

Give me my freedom
For as long as I be
All I ask of livin’
Is to have no chains on me
All I ask of livin’
Is to have no chains on me
And all I ask of dyin’
Is to go naturally
And when I die
And when I’m gone
There’ll be one child born
And a world to carry on
– Words and Music by Laura Nyro

After a few days’ experimentation, I felt comfortable enough with E-zekiel to go ahead and order it. I thought it might take as long as 72 hours for the church’s new domain name to take effect, but by last evening it was already available on the web: just click http://northchurchucc.org. Now I just need to get the old domain, northucc.org, redirected so that it points to the new site. And more importantly, I need to bring aboard three or four volunteers and divide between them the work of updating various parts of the site.

In the pages I’ve written so far, I’ve deliberately adopted an informal, conversational tone. This is particularly evident in the About Us section I composed as a kind of stopgap until someone, presumably the pastor or moderator, writes a more permanent version. Even then I’d like to have a few people write similarly conversational short essays in which they describe the church and congregation from their own angle of vision. The idea is for visitors to get some sense of what the people at North Church are like. I’d like to avoid as far as possible a tone that seems in any way homogenized or “official.”

A couple of Sundays ago I met with my church’s Evangelism Board to discuss revamping the web site. I told them about the E-zekiel platform, asked them to tell me what sort of target audience particularly interested them, and underscored the need to get three or four other members to assist me. Otherwise it’ll be impractical to keep the web site updated as it ought to be. They heard me out, answered my questions, suggested some members who might be willing to help out.

And named me Chair of the Web Committee, which they voted on the spot to create.

And voted me a full member of the Evangelism Board, which apparently the church rules allow them to do.

Anyway, I told them that after I turned in my grades from spring quarter, etc., I’d get started on the projected. Today I finally got to it. So far I’m using E-zekiel on a thirty-day trial basis, so I haven’t needed to transfer or purchase a domain name. But here’s what the new site looks like.

Comments on the piece in yesterday’s Inside Higher Ed continue. They still reflect a mix of people who see mental illness in the same basic category as any other and those who don’t. The second group seems to regard the views of the first as driven by political correctness. For instance:

While I feel for Mr. Magloe, it sounds like he’s not capable to serving students. And students, I hope I don’t need to remind folks, are a fairly important reason for the existence of colleges and the hiring of faculty. So, tenure or not, he’s not “owed” a professorship. He should find another line of work.

That led me to post a second comment:

Remembering The Students

During my 1999 hospitalization, a 21-year old woman was admitted after she attempted suicide. She was diagnosed with bipolar disorder. Her mother was devastated; it sounded as if her daughter’s life was over. As the woman — I’ll call her Anne — recompensated, she was told of her diagnosis and she too wondered what it meant for her future.

It happened that Anne learned that I had bipolar disorder, so she asked me about my experience with it and we had a number of conversations. By then I had reached a point where I could get passes for several hours; I stopped at a bookstore and bought her two of the most useful works I knew of on the subject.

Anne was an OSU student. The following spring she took a course from me, purely and simply so that she could look, day in and day out, at an adult with bipolar disorder. She found it gave her hope.

(Continued)