Military Goats In The News

Regular readers of Mad Padre (you know who you are) will agree that there is nothing that warms the heart more than that noblest of creatues, the military goat. For centuries goats have been faithful companions and mascots to regiments, and this blog will always pay this proud breed the homage it so richly deserves.

Today's military goat in the news is Taffy, the mascot of 2nd Battalion, The Royal Welsh, who was on hand to greet spectators at the London Olympics. This image courtesy of the UK MOD's website. Sadly, British Army Training Unit Suffield, where I currently work, does not have a goat.




Picture: Sergeant Alison Baskerville RLC, Crown Copyright/MOD 2012]

The Royal Welsh have been accompanied to battle by faithful goats since the Revolutionary War.

Lorna Dueck On The Religion Of Our Leaders

A lot of posts today, partly because I'm catching up from a few weeks away and partly because I've got a bit of my blogging mojo back.



I flagged a column in the 2 August Globe and Mail that was worth sharing. The author is Lorna Dueck, a journalist and Christian, writing about the ongoing media controversy about Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper's religious beliefs. Harper is a member of the Christian Missionary Alliance (CMA), a protestant evangelical denomination, and some have openly speculated that Harper's personal religious beliefs will drive his majority government's actions and legislation.


Dueck's response is to admit that there will always be some overlap between the Christian's personal beliefs and the world that Christian inhabits. She uses the theological (as opposed to it's, well, economic, meaning) word "economy", which means applying the bible's teachings to all areas of life, with Christ as the bible's cornerstone, subject to the Christian's interpretation of the Bible.


As Dueck notes, interpretation is a difficult and ongoing matter, and for most Christians is not as rigid as critics of fundamentalism might suppose. By way of example, Dueck gives the recent decision of the CMA to allow the ordination of women, despite isolated scriptural texts (eg, 1 Timothy 2:11-15) which appear to forbid the practice. The decision to not be guided by this text alone, as the CMA and many other churches have done, is set by a more complex process of interpretation that includes the wider picture of women's important role in the nascent church as seen in the New Testament, Jesus' refusal to discriminate against women in his teaching and conduct towards them, the role of the church in contemporary society, etc.


So a fear of Harper's evangelical hidden agenda may not recognize the difficulty that Christians, even conservative Christians like the CMA, can have in determing an "agenda". Christians will disagree amongst themselves on the application of scripture in the economy of their lives. So should people worry about the relgious beliefs of their leaders? Dueck says yes, but only so much (and the rest of this post is all from Dueck's piece).



"The worry comes when power is introduced and issues can be forced, rather than debated. Rightly so – when it comes to government, we fear being manipulated by any suggestion of such power applying a spiritual economy to issues that concern our private or public lives."



"It is true that Mr. Harper is quiet on the issue of his faith – even his denominational insiders will tell you that – and from my experience of travelling in the media, I think it’s a wise decision. Canadian literacy on faith application is low."



"It’s quite a different story in the United States. Last month, Michelle Obama was quoted in The New York Times on her interpretation of Christianity. “Our faith journey isn’t just about showing up on Sunday,” she said. “It’s about what we do Monday through Saturday as well … Jesus didn’t limit his ministry to the four walls of the church. He was out there fighting injustice and speaking truth to power every single day.”



"If Jesus is the cornerstone that Mrs. Obama, Mr. Harper or any other person of political influence have in their economy of how the system of life functions, it will affect the way they approach their job. History is full of good and bad examples of how Christian faith was applied by people of political power, but in the case of our current concerns, I would predict this means an endless array of applications, both in personal disciplines and public worldview."



"The story of Jesus Christ is essentially about the fact that God loves people deeply and for all of eternity. God has not ignored the need for our renewal and regeneration, and the fact that the divine name shows up in political life from time to time is simply evidence we are not dealing with a wisp of imaginative hope, but a persistent fact of human existence."

Notable Quotable: Richard Polt On The Lifeworld

This Sunday's NYT had a great essay by Richard Polt, professor of philosophy at Xavier University in Cincinatti, challenging determinist and behavioural claims by scientist's such as Edmund O. Wilson that our huamnity is much less unique and exalted than has been traditionally supposed.

Polt's basic claim is that our actions are not simply driven by genetics or behaviour, but occur within the "lifeworld", the realm of meaning.

"So why have we been tempted for millenniums to explain humanity away? The culprit, I suggest, is our tendency to forget what Edmund Husserl called the “lifeworld” — the pre-scientific world of normal human experience, where science has its roots. In the lifeworld we are surrounded by valuable opportunities, good and bad choices, meaningful goals, and possibilities that we care about. Here, concepts such as virtue and vice make sense. Among our opportunities are the scientific study of ants or the construction of calculating machines. Once we’ve embraced such a possibility, it’s easy to get so absorbed in it that we try to interpret everything in terms of it — even if that approach leaves no room for value and meaning. Then we have forgotten the real-life roots of the very activity we’re pursuing. We try to explain the whole in terms of a part."

As Polt writes, the idea of the lifeworld is not necessarily a justification for religion. One can have a meaningful life without religion. But the lifeworld is the realm where ethics, choice, morality, identity, and spirituality manifest themselves, and it is a realm, he notes, that cannot be simply explained by a reductionist science.