The OOC

Interesting background on the Thanksgiving standard:

So how did “We Gather Together” get from a 17th-century Dutch songbook to 20th-century American churches and schoolrooms?

One answer is Dutch settlers, who brought it with them to the New World, perhaps as early as the 1620s. The hymn stayed alive in the Dutch-American community throughout the centuries, says Emily Brink of the Calvin Institute of Christian Worship in Grand Rapids, Mich. In 1937, when the Christian Reformed Church in North America–a denomination that began with Dutch immigrants who sang only Psalms–made the then-controversial decision to permit hymns to be sung at church, “We Gather Together” was chosen as the opening hymn in the first hymnal.

So the Methodists don’t have a corner on the market of great hymns, after all! 😉 The article goes on to say that the hymn “has has all the elements that make a hymn great,”

• accessible melody
• catchy “incipit” or opening phrase
• a message that unfolds through the stanzas and carries the congregation with it to an uplifting conclusion

I suppose it overlooks what I would consider a fourth necessary tenet: scriptural association and authority, though that’s maybe included in the third one. I wonder what our own hymnwriter-in-residence Greg R. would say.

Interesting story out of the UN. W’ve discovered a $100 laptop for the poor. I want to avoid cynicism, and so I’ll say this: What other things might we be able to produce more cheaply than we do now that will bring even more benefit to the world’s poor than a laptop with all its bells and whistles? Food supplies? Human care? Practical education?

Susan B. asked me after worship today if I had a list of news resources that people in the congregation like to use (the subject was inspired by a sermon discussion that we had in the Milligan House about a year ago). I posted a list in this space last year, but I thought I’d revisit it, this time with a focus on print publications.

• City Journal: A quarterly magazine of urban affairs, published by the Manhattan Institute.
• The Economist: Authoritative weekly newspaper focusing on international politics and business
• news and opinion.
• BreakPoint WorldView Magazine: applies a Christian worldview to current events, cultural and social phenomena, and other topics discussed across the neighbor’s fence and around the water cooler, to equip believers with sound biblical thinking and apologetics.
• The New Criterion: a monthly review of the arts and intellectual life. Written with great verve, clarity, and wit, has emerged as America’s foremost voice of critical dissent in the culture wars. A staunch defender of the values of high culture, The New Criterion is also an articulate scourge of artistic mediocrity and intellectual mendacity wherever they are found: in the universities, the art galleries, the media, the concert halls, the theater, and elsewhere. Published monthly from September through June.
• WORLD Magazine: weekly newsmagazine, published 50 times a year. WORLD includes sharp, full-color photographs and offers complete coverage of national and international news, all written from a Christian perspective.
• First Things: published by The Institute on Religion and Public Life, an interreligious, nonpartisan research and education institute whose purpose is to advance a religiously informed public philosophy for the ordering of society.
• National Review: one of the United States’ most politically influential publications, a conservative political magazine founded by author William F. Buckley, Jr., in 1955
• The Weekly Standard: magazine is published 48 times a year, a “must read” for anyone interested in American politics and American life. Also has insightful international coverage.
• The Wall Street Journal Weekend Edition: More digestible version of one of the best newspapers in the world.

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I don’t understand how allowing “for an honest discussion about the strengths and weaknesses of evolution, which … is accepted with blind faith by mainstream scientists.” is a bad thing in the classroom. It takes as much, if not more, faith to believe in evolution than creation or design. The mechanism of that design is not being stressed. They are only calling for a discussion of the reliable and non-reliable teachings of evolution. Unfortunately, many of the evolutionary theories being taught in today’s classrooom have been dismissed by scientists many years ago. What is being taught in evolutionary textbooks is not what scientists today actually believe. It’s time to bring the classroom up to speed with the laboratory. Way to go Kansas Board of Education for putting archaic teaching on the shelf and allowing for progress in science to begin.