Thursday Notes

JONATHAN WILSON has a great article on The Da Vinci Code in the May 2005 edition of the Covenant Quarterly. Unfortunately, that journal is not online. However, the good news is that Jonathan has a whole series of online articles addressing the same subject -- partialobserver.com/davinci.

THE LATEST FAD is the McDonald's diet. Out to prove that the documentary "Super Size Me" is a farce, people are eating nothing but McDonald's food and are losing weight in the process. Link

WELCOME TO THE CLUB! -- Texas has now joined California, New Mexico, and Hawaii as states with "majority-minority populations." In other words, these are places where non-Hispanic Caucasians are in the minority. There are a few other states who will soon join our exclusive club. The water is fine. Come on in. Link

TRADITIONAL CHURCHES in Europe appear to be dying, according to a USA Today article. Yet, I'm hearing personal reports from Rob Reed of exploding growth in his La Coruña, Spain evangelical congregation. Stewart and Beth Webster have gone to Sweden to help out with the incredible growth of the New Life Church there. Christianity Today recently ran an article on the awakening in France among both Roman Catholics and evangelicals. Alpha courses are popping up all over Europe. It seems to me that the USA Today article is missing a few key elements of the Europe story.

SHAME ON ANYONE who buys into this! Some growers from Oregon are branding noble fir trees this year hoping that they can sucker consumers into buying "designer Christmas trees."

I am planning that we're going to use the same real tree as last year. It has grown a few inches but it still fits in the same pot. It was a third of the price of the cheapest tree on the market last year. It didn't dry out and drop needles everywhere. It smells great and we can use it over and over again. Start your Christmas shopping now because I suspect that if you buy your non-designer tree in August it will be cheaper than what you will pay in December. And you'll have the added benefit of having bonded with your potted tree all these extra months.

ELCA PRESIDING BISHOP Mark Hanson has called for Roman Catholics, Eastern Orthodox, Anglican, and Lutheran churches to come together to combat a "fundamentalist-millenialist-apocalypticist reading of Scripture." I'm not sure what Hanson, who is pretty liberal in his interpretation of scripture, is thinking. For certainly, while not fundamentalist-millenialist-apocalypticist in their approach, most of those church bodies are not going to be welcoming of the postmodern hermeneutic which seems to dominate the theological institutions of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America.