Coming Soon to a Xmas Stocking Near You

This fake commercial so reminds me of some of the gifts my relatives actually give each other.



[Video Link]

Of course, what counts is the thought--and Jesus!

On the Bodaciousness of the Bible

From a card I just sent to my Godson:

"I've personally, ultimately found the Bible ... to be the most intriguing and engaging Story I've ever read of

murder and the meaning of life, creation and crime, Truth and treason, wars and worship, honor and brutal honesty, deception and destruction, action and adultery, envy and evil, violation and vengeance, suspense and seduction, the silly and the supernatural, sin and sacrifice, romance and redemption, edification and escapes, fighting and forgiveness--and most of that's just by the time you get through Genesis!"* *a couple years ago, I recall hearing Bishop N. T. Wright say something similar, but failing to track down the exact quote from him, I had to try to come up with something else.

Update on Life and this Whole "Blogging" Thing

Well, as I look back on what I've blogged so far, I see it's been MUCH more infrequent than I had originally envisioned.

This blog largely originated out of my having left four-and-a-half years of employment with the Institute on Religion and Democracy (IRD) to begin a masters program at Harvard Divinity School (HDS) and missing the opportunity for the outlet I had had for public writing and commentary.

However, I've found grad school to be WAY too time-consuming to allow for as much blogging as I might like. I honestly don't know how others, like Methoblogosphere titan John the (other) Methodist manage to do it. While I expect future posts to continue to not be all that frequent, I am not completely giving up on the Lomperian Review.

If you would like be notified by e-mail when new posts are added to this blog, please e-mail me with "BLOG SUBSCRIBE" in the Subject line.

I also added an RSS-feed thingy on the side, though I'm still not sure how that is supposed to work.


With all of that being said, I suppose it's time for some more substantial post content.

Life in New England's been going pretty well. But here are a few things that have surprised me.

1. A lot of local people really DO talk with the stereotypical, replace-your-Rs-with-Hs accents. At first I thought they were just joking around, when folk were in fact quite earnest about pahking theih cah in Hahvuhd Yahd.

2. A rather disproportionately high number of women up here have tattoos.

3. Apparently, people in New England (at least the Boston area) have not yet gotten the memo that cars now have this awesome new invention called "blinkers" or "turn signals." This state-of-the-art technology turns on a flashy light that lets other cars know when you're about to change lanes, so that you can give fair warning before SWERVING RIGHT THE FREAK IN FRONT OF THEM!! If any readers know anyone who is now, has ever been, or ever may be a resident of New England, please tell them about this invention to make sure no one gets left out.

4. It's freaking cold up here! As the weeks go on this Southern boy's getting increasingly annoyed at those dang pilgrims for being too lazy to have pointed their ship just a few more degrees to the South.

5. Having lived in Chicago and DC and visited New York several times, the public trains in Boston are hands-down the loudest internally.

6. According to a recent tour, the community surrounding Harvard looks down on the University as a bastion of conservatism, since "only" 70+ % of the students voted Democratic in a recent Presidential election. (the number would be nowhere near that low if you singled out the Div school)

7. It's interesting to see theological liberals as well as theological conservatives around here say that there's not great differences between the numerous Unitarian Universalist congregations around here and so many of the mainline Protestant congregations in the area.

8. Regional reputations notwithstanding, even people here can be quite friendly. Though it's still not okay to say "hi" to people on the street you don't know like it is in other parts of the country.

9. While this region served as a key incubator for such heterodox movements as Unitarianism, Universalism, and Christian science, central seeds of the Holiness movement can also be traced to here.

10. If you're blessed to live in a city with a street-grid system, don't take it for granted. Boston/Cambridge's confusingly non-straight windedness has greatly heightened my appreciation for DC's well-ordered, oh-so-logical grid layout.


As for the theological environment of HDS, before I left I assured fellow evangelicals that I doubted I would encounter anything here more radical than the various crazy things I was sent around reporting on for IRD. So far, this prediction has held true.

Also, despite having been here over a hundred days since the start of this semester, the Bible still remains my final authority on matters of doctrine and morals, and I can still recite the Nicene Creed without crossing my fingers behind my back.! :)

UMC (today) on Beginning- and End-of-Life Ethics

Here's a somewhat belated review of the last General Conference of the United Methodist Church in terms of pro-life concerns, put in historical context.

I must have written this out of IRD Withdrawal Syndrome (IWS).

I wrote about the same topic in a couple other places right before I left that job for grad school. But this latest article isn't quite AS narrowly focused on abortion, and also says more about the Southern Baptist Convention's dramatic position change on abortion.

There seems to be growing recognition that despite its public claims to represent ALL American United Methodists, the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice (RCRC) represents no more than a small minority in the positions it advocates in our name. (for more details on that, see here)

Predictions Part II: US Senate

I expect the Dems to win:
AR - the state GOP really seems to have problems recruiting strong candidates to send to Washington
CO
DE
IA
IL - the state GOP still hasn't seemed to recovered from the self-destruction wrought by its corrupt Governor six years ago
LA - a huge missed opportunity for the GOP
MA
MI
MT
NC - GOP incumbent Libby Dole's 11th-hour ad entirely focusing on one guy associated with the "Godless Americans PAC" holding a fundraiser for her opponent smacks of desperation, especially the way in which the ad's close seems to (falsely) present her Sunday school-teacher opponent as saying "There is no God!" While the merits of the ad could be debated further, the fact that it's been widely condemned in the state press indicates that a risky attempt by a trailing incumbent to shake up the race has only backfired.
NH
NJ
NM
RI
OR - Republican Gordon Smith's incumbency, centrist positions, and support from newspapers and Democrats across the state probably won't be enough for him this time to overcome the Democratic wave in this blue state
SD (another one that could have been a lot closer with a strong Republican candidate)
WV

and the GOP to win:
AL
GA
ID
KY
ME
MN - the largely left-leaning Independence Party candidate may attract enough anti-GOP voters wary of foul-mouthed-comedian-and-pundit-turned-Democratic-politician Al Franken to save incumbent Norm Coleman's political career
MS (x2)
NE - arguably a missed open-seat opportunity for Democrats
KS
OK
SC
TN
TX
WY

So the next Congress should have a Senate breakdown of 58D - 42R (assuming that Lieberman doesn't get expelled from the Democratic caucus).

Presidential Predictions

While I'm putting this up later than I had planned, here are the Lomperian Review's first quadrennial electoral vote predictions.

First of all, while there's been lots of speculation about many states potentially breaking with long-established partisan alignments, there have remained many that each camp has been able to easily count on without spending a dime, with interesting regional concentrations:

Obama's base = California, Connecticut, DC, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island, and Vermont (200 electoral votes),

McCain's base = Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Oklahoma, Texas, Utah, Wyoming (104 electoral votes, about half of Obama's starting point)


Now comes the prediction for the states that have ever been considered swing-able in the Obama-McCain contest.

Obama gets:
CO - the polling consistent showing Democratic wins here for President and the open Senate seat are remarkable for a state that in 2004 had two GOP Senators and supported Bush over Kerry
FL - though I would have initially thought McCain would have a natural advantage in a state whose primary he won while the Democrats didn't campaign there. By now he may be kicking himself for not asking the GOP Governor there to be his running mate.
IA - McCain's strong opposition to ethanol subsidies led him to sit out the famous caucuses of this purplest of states
ME - (including Maine's contested rural Congressional district)
MI - the McCain campaign's early pullout spelled end of story there, Palin's protests notwithstanding
MN - the GOP could probably get this bipartisan state with a strong national wind, but no such wind is in sight this year
MO - "As goes Missouri, so goes the nation" has held true for over a century with only one exception
NH - this last bastion of New England Republicanism shows no signs of stopping its decisive blue-state conversion since 2004
NE's 5th congressional district, which basically gets its own electoral vote - I read Obama had 15 paid staff on the ground to seek this single electoral college vote, and there've been signs it may be paying off
NM - despite the GOP's nominating its most pro-immigration candidate possible, the overall Tancredo-driven tone of its primary seems to have had a terrible effect on the entire GOP brand name, driving away this Hispanic-heavy border state
NV
OH
OR/WA - I've never been able to tell these Pacific Northwest states apart, but in either place McCain's hopes of reversing the GOP's decade of decline seems to have been dashed fairly early
PA - dumb comments by Obama and Murtha about "bitter" and "redneck" voters notwithstanding, for the forseeable future this seems destined to be one of those states that the GOP keeps trying really hard to get, only to come up short
VA - the state infamously divided between its "real" and "unreal" zones has a Democratic trend going back at least to 2001, which exploding growth in its most liberal areas outside of DC
WI
TOTAL = 295 electoral votes

McCain gets:
AZ - It's not common to lose your own state unless the candidate and the state are on far opposite ends of America's political spectrum (think Romney-Massachusetts, Gore-Tennessee)
GA - Former Georgia Republican Congressman Bob Barr's Libertarian Party challenge seems to have faded; see also SC comments about galvanized African-American voters
ID - remember that talk about how as the provoker of the largest political rally in the potato state's history, Obama may be the one who could convert this one party state? Me neither.
IN - I predict this GOP-leaning state will be close but no cigar for Obama
MT - I initially had this in the Obama column, given decisive Democratic statewide victories in the last three election cycles, and Obama's radio dominance in this driver-heavy state, but then concluded that this election is not dramatic enough to completely erase the roughly 20-point GOP advantage from 2004 in a state where the Democratic Governor has to run on things like bipartisanship and NRA support
NC - surprisingly close in the polls, but I doubt that as liberal a Democrat as Obama can win a state where even Democrats like John Edwards feel the need in their statewide campaigns to promise to not be too different from Jesse Helms. See also comments about that other Carolina.
ND - Obama may get so close, yet so far away
SD - ditto
NE (minus one - see above)
SC - I've seen punditry saying that this could be tipped simply by Obama galvinizing the state's significant black population. But the simple fact of the matter is, African-Americans constitute nowhere near to a majority of the population of this deep-red state, whose statewide Democrats of recent years have been notably to the right of the national Party mainstream.
WV - very Democratic state, but if Gore and Kerry were far too socially liberal for its voters then Obama should be as well
TOTAL = 243 electoral votes

Only time and Tuesday will tell how good of a political-crystal-ball-reader I am.

Prayers for Andrew Weaver

I have just learned that Andrew Weaver passed away last weekend after an extended sickness.

Weaver was an ordained member of the California-Nevada Conference of the United Methodist Church, and for a while was Associate Publisher of Zion's Herald magazine (now called The Progressive Christian). Within the denomination, he was best known in recent years for his campaigning against the Bush library/institute coming to Southern Methodist University and his numerous articles, speeches, and mass e-mails strongly critiquing the United Methodist renewal movement broadly, and those of us associated with IRD/UMAction (with whom I was employed until recently) particularly.

One can go elsewhere to read the details of these controversies.

But what is more important now is prayers for his wife and other loved ones during this sad time of loss.