By Ben Sasse, Wall Street Journal

Humans are social, relational beings. We want and need to be in tribes. In our time, however, all of the traditional tribes that have sustained humans for millennia are simultaneously in collapse. Family, enduring friendship, meaningful shared work, local communities of worship—all have grown ever thinner. We are creating thicker, more vehement tribes around our political differences, I believe, because there is a growing vacuum at the heart of our shared (or increasingly, not so shared) everyday lives.

Loneliness is everywhere in the U.S., across every sector of society. A survey of more than 20,000 American adults conducted earlier this year by the health insurer Cigna and the market research firm Ipsos found that a majority of us are lonely, based on responses to the UCLA Loneliness Scale. The highest scores were reported by the youngest adults, ages 18 to 22. The researchers describe it as a “loneliness epidemic.”

None of this should surprise us. Americans today have fewer shared projects than our parents and grandparents did, and we belong to fewer civic groups. Because we change jobs more often, we have fewer lasting work friendships. We delay marriage, have fewer children and live in larger homes, more separate from those of our neighbors. We move from place to place for relationships, economic opportunity and better weather—and we end up with economic opportunity and better weather.

The Harvard social scientist Robert Putnam chronicled the collapse of associational, neighborly America in his book “Bowling Alone” (2000). In the nearly two decades since, the smartphone has further undermined any sense of place by allowing us to mentally “escape” our homes and neighborhoods. We can instantly connect with the supposedly more exciting lives of others. These moments add up, until we’re in an almost permanent state of dissociation, punctuated only by the most urgent demands of life, to which we tend halfheartedly.

None of us wants to be left out. The same isolation we felt at the edge of the cafeteria or as the last kid picked for kickball causes everyone to yearn for a group. Even though political ideology is a thin basis for intimate connections, at least our cable news tribes offer the common experience of getting to hate people together. As relational nomads, it’s far easier now to be together against something than for something. It’s not as fulfilling, but at least we’re not totally alone.

To read entire essay, click HERE

By Yascha Mounk, The Atlantic

On social media, the country seems to divide into two neat camps: Call them the woke and the resentful. Team Resentment is manned—pun very much intended—by people who are predominantly old and almost exclusively white. Team Woke is young, likely to be female, and predominantly black, brown, or Asian (though white “allies” do their dutiful part). These teams are roughly equal in number, and they disagree most vehemently, as well as most routinely, about the catchall known as political correctness.

Reality is nothing like this. As scholars Stephen Hawkins, Daniel Yudkin, Miriam Juan-Torres, and Tim Dixon argue in a report published Wednesday, “Hidden Tribes: A Study of America’s Polarized Landscape,” most Americans don’t fit into either of these camps. They also share more common ground than the daily fights on social media might suggest—including a general aversion to PC culture. Continue reading →

Mural of the late Salvadoran Archbishop Oscar Arnulfo Romero in Panchimalco, on the outskirts of San Salvador. Photograph: Jorge Dan Lopez/Reuters

Gerhard Ludwig Cardinal Müller, First Things

As the disciples were on their way to the Mount of Olives after the Last Supper, Jesus told them, “All of you will be scandalized because of me this night, for it is written in scripture, I will smite the shepherds and the sheep of the flock will be scattered.” Some two thousand years later, on the evening of March 24, 1980, Archbishop Oscar Romero began to say Mass at the chapel of Divine Providence Hospital in San Salvador. As he finished preaching the homily and turned toward the altar, he was shot. The day before, the archbishop had called for the Salvadoran army to refuse to carry out any more extra-judicial killings ordered by the Junta. Earlier that month, he had anticipated the consequences of this public act. “You can tell them, if they succeed in killing me, then I pardon them, and I bless those who may carry out the killing.”

Romero’s death, like that of Christ, remains a stumbling block. The gospel is not a tidy theory that explains the world, a spiritual technique for facing life’s challenges, or a program whereby mankind can redeem itself—by violence or by peace. No, the Cross contradicts all who attempt to decipher the world without God or to submit it to human control. It urges us to place our trust in him to whom we owe our life and being. That the Innocent One should suffer and die for the guilty is the ultimate scandal of human history. God’s grace alone frees us from sin and enables us to collaborate in building his kingdom.

To read entire article, click HERE.

AP: At recent awards show appearances, you went out on stage and talked publicly about your faith. Is it an especially important time to do that?

Pratt: I don’t know that I am so much more motivated by where the world is or if it’s just what I’m feeling called to do right now. I think it’s a combination of both things. … That kind of a message, it might not be for everybody. But there is a group of people for whom that message is designed. And nothing fills my soul more than to think that maybe some kid watching that would say, ‘Hey, I’ve been thinking about that. I’ve been thinking about praying. Let me try that out.’ That’s like the only way I feel like I can repay what has essentially been a giant gift in my life.

AP: Does it feel like a risk sometimes in Hollywood?

Pratt: No, not at all. … I think that there’s this narrative that exists out there that Hollywood is anti-Christian or anti-religious, but it’s just not the case. They are kind of not anti-anything. They are kind of pro whatever is authentic to you. And I like that. Because it’s authentic for me to be pro-Christian, pro-Jesus. That’s my thing. I like it. And I’ve never had anyone try to shame me, to my face. Maybe they go say it behind my back. But if that’s the case, go ahead. You can say whatever you want about me – to my face or behind my back. I’m not going to change.

To read entire interview, click HERE.

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Lauren Daigle’s new album debuted at Number Three on the charts, ahead of major rappers and pop stars.
Photo: Jeremy Cowart

Lauren Daigle’s album, “Look Up Child,” debuted this month at No. 3 on Billboard’s all-genre album chart and had the best first week sales of any Christian album in nearly nine years, according to Billboard. Daigle, who is performing at this year’s Dove Awards on Oct. 16 and is nominated for an American Music Award, talked with The Associated Press about why she likes Chance the Rapper and breaking down the walls to Christian music. ***

AP: You have a song called “Losing My Religion,” tell me about the meaning of that song.

Daigle: I had realized there are so many moments where I let that expectation dictate my ability to perform, my perfectionism. And as much as we want to create a white picket fence, it’s not real. It’s a facade. And I think the sooner we realize that people can be messy and people are fragile, the more we actually start to see through the eyes of God, or the God that I know. We experience kindness for humanity. We experience joy for humanity. And we run toward them instead of building all these barriers. And so that’s what “Losing My Religion” is. It’s taking down all the boxes, taking down all the fences, and it’s living as pure and as whole as possible.

***

AP: Do you want to change people’s understanding of what Christian music can be?

Daigle: Chance the Rapper got to do stuff with all these gospel artists. So profound. I love that, right? And that was something I wanted to bring in as well. Like elements where people who weren’t necessarily church people, or Christians, or whatever the title is, who don’t really dive into that kind of music can hear something and it be compelling enough and it be strong enough to where they are drawn in and feel welcomed and invited.

Read entire story HERE

Larry Norman, the founder of Christian rock, never entirely endorsed the genre. Illustration by Bráulio Amado; photograph by Michael Ochs Archives / Getty

By Kelefa Sanneh

The New Yorker

In 1957, less than a year after the end of the Montgomery bus boycott, the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., took a part-time job as an advice columnist. His employer was Ebony, and his ambit was broad: race relations, marital problems, professional concerns. In the April, 1958, issue, King was asked to address one of the most polarizing issues of the day: rock music. His correspondent was a churchgoing seventeen-year-old with a musical split personality. “I play gospel music and I play rock ’n’ roll,” the letter read. Its author wanted to know whether this habit was objectionable.

King’s advice was characteristically firm. Rock and gospel were “totally incompatible,” he explained: “The profound sacred and spiritual meaning of the great music of the church must never be mixed with the transitory quality of rock and roll music.” And he made it clear which he preferred. “The former serves to lift men’s souls to higher levels of reality, and therefore to God,” he wrote. “The latter so often plunges men’s minds into degrading and immoral depths.”

Randall J. Stephens, a religious historian, views the relationship between Christianity and rock and roll as a decades-long argument over American culture, sacred and profane. In “The Devil’s Music,” released last March, Stephens reconsiders the judgments of King and other Christian leaders who viewed rock and roll with alarm. He points out that many pioneering rockers, from Sister Rosetta Tharpe to Jerry Lee Lewis, came out of the Pentecostal Church; for some preachers, he argues, rock and roll was worrisome precisely because its frenetic performances evoked the excesses of Pentecostal worship. In a sermon given in 1957, King, a Baptist, urged his fellow-preachers to move beyond unseemly displays: “We can’t spend all of our time trying to learn how to whoop and holler,” he said. Stephens wants us to think of rock and Christianity not as enemies but as siblings engaged in a family dispute.

Rock’s reputation quickly improved: less than a decade later, King’s protégé Andrew Young declared that rock and roll had done “more for integration than the church.” And by the end of the sixties a small but growing number of believers were helping to invent a style that King might have viewed as a contradiction in terms: Christian rock, which became a recognizable genre and, in the decades that followed, a thriving industry.

Read rest of essay HERE

“In Aretha,” the Rev. Dr. William Barber said at her funeral, “the holiness of the sacred and the secular came together, in a way that could be only ordered by the Lord. Some say that even as the world spins, there is a certain tune to the world’s orbit. Aretha tapped into that tune, and taught us its rhythm.”

Celebrities honored Aretha Franklin, the legendary singer, at her “homegoing” in Detroit. Those who attended the funeral were greeted by a line-up of more than 130 pink Cadillacs on the road leading to Greater Grace Temple, a nod of respect to the singer who had deep affection for pink Cadillacs: “We goin’ ridin’ on the freeway of love in my pink Cadillac,” she sang in her 1985 single “Freeway of Love.”

The Cadillac idea was arranged by Crisette Ellis, wife of the Greater Grace Temple pastor. “My husband said, ‘Wouldn’t it be awesome if we could have a sea of pink Cadillacs parked on Seven Mile Road to greet Ms. Aretha Franklin as she arrives?’” Ellis told NPR.

The service of honor went on for several hours between tributes and songs.

“The greatest gift that has been given in life itself is love. We can talk about all the things that are wrong, and there are many, but the only thing that can deliver us is love,” said Stevie Wonder at the conclusion. “We need to make love great again. Because black lives do matter. Because all lives do matter. And if we love God then we know, truly, it is our love that will make all things matter when we make love great again.”

Queen Lili’uokalani

Happy Birthday to Queen Liliʻuokalani, the first queen regnant of the Kingdom of Hawaii and its last sovereign monarch (1838-1917). She ruled from January 29, 1891, until the overthrow of her rightful rule in January 17, 1893, by unscrupulous sugar barons. While Queen Lili’uokalani had her own armed soldiers, she chose a peaceful resolution in hopes that the situation would be resolved without violence. “I have pursued the path of peace and diplomatic discussion, and not that of internal strife,” she wrote in Hawaii’s Story by Hawaii’s Queen.

She appealed to the U.S. government about the toppling of her reign and found a sympathetic ear with President Grover Cleveland. Though he lobbied for her rightful return to power, annexation of Hawaii was enacted in 1898 by the U.S. Senate and Queen Lili’uokalani was placed under house arrest while non-Hawaiians ruled the islands. (Some of this story can be read HERE.) It is a painful story to read if you believe in self-rule, liberty, and justice (highly recommended is Lost Kingdom: Hawaii’s Last Queen, the Sugar Kings, and America’s First Imperial Adventure by Julia Flynn Siler). Continue reading →

FILE PHOTO: John McCain speaks at a 2008 campaign rally in Defiance, Ohio. REUTERS/Brian Snyder

What follows is he final statement from Sen. John McCain, read Monday by Rick Davis, his former presidential campaign manager, at the Arizona State Capitol in Phoenix, Arizona:

“My fellow Americans, whom I have gratefully served for sixty years, and especially my fellow Arizonans,

“Thank you for the privilege of serving you and for the rewarding life that service in uniform and in public office has allowed me to lead. I have tried to serve our country honorably. I have made mistakes, but I hope my love for America will be weighed favorably against them.

“I have often observed that I am the luckiest person on earth. I feel that way even now as I prepare for the end of my life. I have loved my life, all of it. I have had experiences, adventures and friendships enough for ten satisfying lives, and I am so thankful. Like most people, I have regrets. But I would not trade a day of my life, in good or bad times, for the best day of anyone else’s. Continue reading →