Eaton's blog

It's been a while for Growing Up Goddy - the blog's been on hiatus for a little over a year now, due in part to some technical hiccups that necessitated some restoration work. But mostly, I've been dragging my heels because I've been grappling with the question brought up a few posts ago: If I no longer consider myself a Christian, and other posters do, will it become a source of conflict? Will it undermine the original purpose (to act as a middle-ground for the curious)? Will my morbid fascination with bad religious kitsch seem, well, meaner if I can't clarify that I'm actually one of the faithful? I'm not sure, really.

But I'm back and the blog is back and hopefully things can get rolling again. I'm looking forward to it.

At last night's debate, John McCain directly challenged Barack Obama's position on abortion, articulating a clearly pro-life position without the "Culture of life" euphemisms that we've been used to for the last few years.

For a lot of pro-lifer voters, I imagine the moment with McCain was encouraging: high visibility, direct, and unapologetic. Also, utterly unsuccessful. As best as we can tell from polling results after the debate, his comments on abortion alienated and annoyed far more voters than they convinced. The pivotal moment, at least in my mind, was when he replied to Obama's statements about allowing abortions when a mother's health was threatened.

My wife and I saw Prince Caspian on the big screen this afternoon. It was worth a matinee, and it's cool to see the special effects team that brought the Middle Earth trilogy to life use their talents to realize a series that always been closely related, at least to me. In Narnia, as in Middle Earth, the first rule of warfare is to make sure the forest full of sentient, angry oak trees is on your side.

Aside from the slightly wooden performances from the children who play Narnia's kings and queens in exile, it was an enjoyable film that will probably ensure that the franchise makes its way to at least the fourth or fifth book. The Last Battle is unlikely to ever make it to screen due to its relatively grim and disjointed apocalypse theme, but A Horse And His Boy would still be pretty cool.

A few years back, when I had long since abandoned political conservatism but still considered myself a Christian, one of my persistent frustrations was the profoundly flawed ideological litmus tests the Christian right applied to political figures. Having married themselves to the Republican party in exchange for token gestures on pro-life issues, the Christian right accepted the assumption that Democrats (with a few exceptions) were agnostics, atheists, and anti-religious. Conservative Republicans, on the other hand, supported "family values" and were considered good Christians.

It's a bit of an understatement to say that the blog has been silent. I don't like that -- there are certainly things I'd like to talk and write about -- but I've been a little uncertain since explaining that I no longer consider myself a Christian. I began this blog as an "insider" from Christian culture, relatively speaking at least. Although it's been a long time since I fit the mold of a conservative protestant youth, I considered myself part of the larger body of Christians united by relatively orthodox belief. I hoped that I could reach in both directions with this blog, touring through the often-baffling world of Christian Culture for the outsiders while giving those still inside the culture a glimpse of what things were like outside. I didn't want to bash Christianity: rather, I wanted to dissect the parts of the culture that had little or nothing to do with the "heart" of the faith.

Last week, I was traveling for work. While it's never fun being away from my wife and the comforts of home, I do enjoy my co-workers a lot, and I love the work that I do. We do technical training workshops, and sped a lot of time explaining relatively arcane geekery and making it accessible to newcomers.

Around 7:00 in the evening, after the training sessions for the day were over, I was standing in the hotel lobby, talking shop with one of the attendees. I was halfway through a nice imported lager when a fresh-faced, apple-cheeked youth walked up to us wearing a spiky haircut and holding a pad of paper.

"I don't mean to interrupt, but would you mind answering a few questions for a survey about spiritual beliefs I'm doing?"

Discussions in other forums spawned by my previous post seem to have boiled down to an essential question.

How do we establish the trustworthiness of Christianity's claims about Scripture in a way that multiple, contradictory claims by other faiths are not all rated as equally trustworthy?

So far, the person who started the conversation with me keeps appealing to presuppositional dodges: "If we first accept that Scripture is true..." isn't a very reassuring start to a discussion of why Scripture is trustworthy. I wouldn't normally press this particular point, but the original question was his and I'm hoping that I can salvage something out of it.

Anyone out there who has something to offer, please chime in. It's not an attempt at a sucker-punch; I'm just trying to suss out how reasonable this expectation even is.

It's been quite a while since I posted anything here, and I'm afraid that the reasons are a bit complex. There are a number of pieces I find myself wanting to put together, some of which even fit with the mission I scribbled down for the site when I started it. (A review of Franky Schaeffer's book, 'Crazy for God,' and an article exploring Francis Schaeffer's role in the birth and growth of the Christian Right are both on the table. For now I've just got a link to the MeFi thread I started on the topic...)

Most of the things that are occupying my thoughts, however, are a bit more vague and not entirely pleasant. For quite some time I've seen myself as fundamentally Christian -- someone who accepts the essential exclusive-truth-claims of Scripture. I hammer away at many aspects of Christian culture that I perceive as damaging and destructive, but I always explained this as trying to protect the essential core of Christianity.

More and more, though, I've come to the conclusion that this essential core I have been defending is not, in fact, Christianity. It's not the chewy nougat center of orthodox doctrine: it's basic human decency, a bedrock of moral and ethical care for others that I believe any decent human being needs to hold onto. One of the fundamental difficulties faced by Christians is that Scripture, when read on its own terms, contradicts many of these basic, fundamental principles.

Ann Coulter is no stranger to controversy, and that seems to be the way she likes it. Many feel she's less a political pundit than a 'shock artist' -- something like the Andrew Dice Clay of the US political scene. Some of the things she says read like hyper-aggressive charicatures of Christian doctrine. Her throwaway comments about bombing Muslim nations and forcing their leaders to convert to Christianity are famous, for example. Few thoughtful Christians I know demonstrate anything but embarrassment when she's brought up -- her consistently spiteful attack-dog style often crosses lines of traditional Evangelical taboos, too. Yet she's still regarded as 'part of the team' by many conservative Christians.