Top 8 Albums of the Decade 2000-2009

Disclaimer: Above all this decade has defined and refined my taste in contemporary music. This is the music that has most effected me over the last ten years. These are the albums that have given me the most to chew on musically and bands that have proved their longevity (and by that i mean: no one-offs (”Muse”, i’m looking at you…)).

Read the rest of this article…

Book Review: ‘Serve God Save the Planet’

Inexplicably, many christians are set squarely against Environmentalism. It’s hard to understand why the same type of rhetoric usually reserved for Evolution and Abortion is leveled at climate change, but it’s there. Over the last decade, while this old-school evangelicalism slowly ages and digs in its heels, a growing number of christians have ’switched sides.’ “Creation Care“, “Earth Stewardship“, “Christian Environmentalism”, whatever name you want to file it under at the Family Bookstore, the movement towards establishing a christian environmental ethic is becoming increasingly, if not mainstream, less fringe. In “Serve God Save the Planet” J. Matthew Sleeth makes a moving, articulate, and convincing case for why christians need to care about the environmental impact their lives have on our planet.

Read the rest of this article…

Expressions of Christianity in S. Korea

The BBC has an interesting article about the explosive growth of western-style megachurches (AKA “christianity”) in South Korea. Membership at the most mega-church of all: 750,000. To put that in perspective in America the largest 15 churches combined do not make up even half that number. Yoido Full Gospel Church in S. Korea’s membership is more than 15x greater than that of Joel Osteen’s empire. Serious numbers. Not only that, but S. Korea sends some 20,000 christian missionaries to other countries (Iraq, France, the United States, etc.). Much has been said in recent years of the rise of global christianity (a bit of a misnomer: christianity has always been global) and most projections estimate by 2050 (PDF) the numbers of christians in Africa, Asia and S. America will absolutely dwarf western christians.

According to the BBC article, a big (controversial) chunk of American Christianity – namely prosperity theology – has spread into S. Korea. I wondered what else we exported and how the S. Koreans were making it their own. My friend Nathan, who is Catholic, has been living in S. Korea for a number of years and agreed to answer a few of my questions.

Fightme: Do S. Koreans with traditional beliefs feel threatened by the rise in christianity?

Nathan: I wouldn’t say people feel threatened. Christians follow most of the social aspects of the [traditional] holidays, as most of them call for respecting your family’s dead. Most protestant churches there are very, very evangelical. They set up speakers outside subway stations, and will have high schoolers walk up and down the subway trains. Many of the protestant churches are quite competitive both with each other, and especially with Catholics and Buddhists. The overall effect of this is that often they badmouth other denominations excessively. There will be entire portions of a sermon dealing only with how another denomination is wrong and thus bad.

Fm: Is Catholicism a growing force as well?

N: There is a big divide between Protestants and Catholics. Most Catholics will agree that we are all Christian, but the Protestants of Korea will argue strongly that Catholics are not Christian. I am not sure how this came about, and it may in some way be because of the words used for denoting them in Korean. They mean “Christian” and “Catholic” — most people are not raised realizing that Catholics are one of the many types of Christians.

Fm: Does S. Korean christianity have a distinct Korean-ness to it? what does Korean christianity look like as it is lived out in the community?

N: Protestants who really follow their faith can be quite strict. They do not drink, smoke, gamble, or use the sex industry at all. There are very few people who are that strict. Especially among men in management, drinking/whoring are a strong part of the Korean culture, but that is another discussion. Catholics are fine with gambling, drinking and smoking, as long as they are done responsibly. Doing any of them to an amount that causes health, social, or monetary issues is still seen as a sin. Priests will take groups out drinking after a hard day preparing for some event, but this is not big time drinking. Usually just a beer or two along with dinner. There seem to be more people on average [than in America] who are well-educated about their particular church’s beliefs, however there are also many people that give lip service. Many people go to church for business reasons, and among 20-somethings, it is often seen as a singles club activity where your main goal is to just pick up women. As to the church mentioned in the article, many people I knew attended. Out of the 5 I can think of offhand, 3 were going there just to find a marriage match.

Fm: Any other thoughts?

N: Overall, I think Asia in general is on a Christian (inclusive) upswing. Korea itself is poised to be the next hub for what could and probably needs to be a strong round of missionary and evangelical work. There is a good base there that could refresh other churches worldwide, and hopefully fuel many conversions in the rest of Asia, China in particular.

Other resources: “Does Global Christianity Equal American Christianity?”, Christianity Today

The Gospel According to Harry Potter

The Boston Globe has an interesting story* about the growing acceptance of the Harry Potter mythology into the Library of Christian Allegory**. Initially enraging to evangelicals, the series has been grudgingly embraced by many as another pop culture picture of Jesus. Now i’ve heard it said that every narrative is the same narrative: Creation-Fall-Redemption. And every story lives somewhere on that continuum. (Except for those crazy Surrealists!) I’m no lit major, so maybe that point is arguable, but it seems true in most fiction i’ve read. Though that could be because i am drawn to that story for obvious reasons.

Read the rest of this article…

More Sprawl Please.

My friend Nina dated this guy that we nicknamed The Sprawler. One day he just showed up with her and proceeded to sprawl out on the couch as if he was in his dorm room. Shoes on? Check. Arms over the back of the couch? Check. Sprawling.

Those of us in “the city” often lament sub/ex-urban sprawl. Like an uninvited guest parking lots and strip malls stretch across the landscape putting their gym shoes all over farmlands and creekbeds. With names like “Woodglen Rivers” and “Fieldstone Vistas” pre-fab communities spread out from freeway to freeway necessitating more cars and more wal-marts and less small towns and down towns. Milwaukee’s not too bad – drive in any direction for 20 minutes and you’re out of the suburbs and into the glacier-carved rural settings that make wisconsin such a beautiful state. It’s a losing battle though. Someday i imagine a mass of suburbs sprawled out from milwaukee to chicago and maybe even from milwaukee to madison. Maybe not in my lifetime, but perhaps in the next century many of the small farms and rural villages will be abandoned and absorbed into Chicawaukee and Milwadison.

Seems too glum? Thanks to news like this: A popular suburban restaurant petitions to the city to tear down a couple surrounding houses and put in more parking lots. Supposedly this will reduce, among other things, customers “urinating on people’s lawns.” I’ve got news for Wauwatosa: now you will have triple the amount of urinating. More congestion, more drunk drivers, more noise, more heat in the summer thanks to all that blacktop. It’ll be glorious. I’m including an artist’s rendition of the “ideal” parking situation for Mo’s Pub, and I think you’ll agree it’s pretty great — a boon to the community some might say.

My dear suburbs, it’s time to rethink sprawl. Instead of more parking lots and strip malls further and further out why not start rebuilding and reusing the stuff you put up 30 years ago? I know we can’t eliminate sprawl – there will always be sprawlers – but we can minimize it and slow it down a bit. Also: get your feet off the couch.