Running Heads

From the editors of Cascade Books and Pickwick Publications at Wipf and Stock Publishers

Author: Chris (page 1 of 18)

Favorite Albums of 2015

I do this every year.  It’s never the same number of albums. I just start putting together a list. When I run out of things to put on the list, I usually top it off to a round number. This year I got to about 36. I scrounged around for four more that were good enough.

Requirements for inclusion:

  1. Gotta be on Spotify. That’s about all I listen to any more. Sorry, no Taylor Swift (not likely to have made it even if available) or Adele (a slam dunk had it been made available).
  2. I’ve gotta like it.
  3. I’ve gotta have listened to more than one of its songs more than a few times.

Enjoy.

  • Active Child, Mercy
  • Alpine, Yuck
  • Astronauts, etc., Mind Out Wandering
  • the bird and the bee, Recreational Love
  • Bop English, Constant Bop
  • BORNS, Dopamine
  • CHAMPS, Vamala
  • City and Colour, If I Should Go Before You
  • Disclosure, Caracal
  • Eilen Jewell, Sundown Over Ghost Town
  • EL VY, Return To The Moon
  • Ex Cops, Daggers
  • Florence + The Machine, How Big, How Blue, How Beautiful
  • Foals, What Went Down
  • Golden Rules, Golden Ticket
  • Grimes, Art Angels
  • Houndmouth, Little Neon Limelight
  • Howling, Sacred Ground
  • Indigo Girls, One Lost Day
  • Jamie Woon, Making Time
  • Jose Gonzalez, Vestiges & Claws
  • JR JR, JR JR
  • Kelela, Hallucinogen
  • Kendrick Lamar, To Pimp a Butterfly
  • The Late Call, Golden
  • Lord Huron, Strange Trails
  • The Maccabees, Marks To Prove It
  • Oddisee, The Good Fight
  • Oh Wonder, Oh Wonder
  • Other Lives, Rituals
  • Parlour Tricks, Broken Hearts/Bones
  • Passion Pit, Kindred
  • Patrick Watson, Love Songs For Robots
  • Punch Brothers, The Phosphorescent Blues
  • Sufjan Stevens, Carrie & Lowell
  • Tove Styrke, Kiddo
  • Until the Ribbon Breaks, A Lesson Unlearnt
  • Vetiver, Complete Strangers
  • The Weeknd, Beauty Behind The Madness
  • The Weepies, Sirens

If you are on Spotify, I’ve got these albums in a list (see below as well). Have a listen around. If something comes out between now and the end of 2015, and it meets the rigorous criteria outlined above, I’ll add it to the list here and on Spotify.

Runners at AAR/SBL: Last Reminder

All-comers casual run along the Freedom Park Path Trail on Saturday Nov. 21st at 7am. Here are the details:

When: Saturday, November 21st, 7am

Where: Meet in the lobby of the Hyatt Regency Atlanta (265 Peachtree St NE.).

What: Run on some streets until we connect to the path. Follow path to Jimmy Carter Presidential Library and Museum. Turn around and head back to hotel. About 5 miles. You can turn around sooner or continue past the planned turnaround spot, if 5 miles is not your preferred distance.

Who: You, me, and anyone else who wants to run before the conference frenzy hits us. Contact me if you need more info: chris[at]wipfandstock[dot]com.

View route map for Freedom Trail From Hotel on plotaroute.com

Runners at AAR/SBL 2015

All runners—no matter how fast or slow!—in Atlanta next month for the annual AAR/SBL conference, you are invited to join me and others on a casual run along the Freedom Park Path Trail on Saturday morning at 7am. Here are the details:

When: Saturday, November 21st, 7am

Where: Meet in the lobby of the Hyatt Regency Atlanta (265 Peachtree St NE.).

What: Run on some streets until we connect to the path. Follow path to Jimmy Carter Presidential Library and Museum. Turn around and head back to hotel. About 5 miles. You can turn around sooner or continue past the planned turnaround spot, if 5 miles is not your preferred distance.

Who: You, me, and anyone else who wants to run before the conference frenzy hits us. Contact me if you need more info: chris[at]wipfandstock[dot]com.

View route map for Freedom Trail From Hotel on plotaroute.com

I Just Felt Like Running

Over eight years ago I arrived in Eugene with my pregnant wife and a new job. Up to that point in my life I had never been much of a runner. In fact, I actively resisted it, much to my wife’s chagrin (she has had running as a part of her active lifestyle ever since I’ve known her). But my managing editor, and therefore kinda my boss, asked if I’d like to go running with him at trail not far from our new house. He even had some hand-me-down running gear that he gave me. So I started to run every once in a while, again much to my wife’s chagrin (being pregnant she was not able to run much, right at the time I started to take it up!). Something took hold. It was the company for sure, but also the culture of running that is woven into the fabric of Eugene.

Eventually I started to run during my lunch hour at work with my colleague and office-mate Charlie Collier. Charlie had run several races in the past but was looking to pick it back up after some time away. Running with Charlie got to be a pretty regular thing. Two to five times per week we would go out from the gym near our office and make our way to the river path or Pre’s Trail. The first time he and I went on a run together, we followed a route of about 3.75 miles that crossed the river twice. At the second bridge, with about a mile to go, we both were out of gas. We walked across the bridge and then picked up the running from there. We got to a point in our running where stopping was not necessary. Later we were able to push a little further and run a route that stretched to just over 5 miles. After several months (maybe even a year or so), we made it a goal to run that route in less than 40 minutes. It took a while, but we did it. Charlie, having run more than I and knowing the personal milestones for races, suggested we try to run a 5K in less than 20 minutes. And so we started training for my first race. On Valentine’s weekend 2011, Charlie blew by me in the last stretch of the race. (This has become a constant theme of mine. I don’t manage race paces well.) Neither of us broke the 20-minute barrier, but we were only seconds off. From that point on, I’ve been hooked on reaching certain goals. Just last month I finally went below 20 minutes in a 5K! It’s the only goal I’ve reached. I’m still working on under 90 minutes for a half marathon (I need to trim three minutes) and hitting the qualifying standard for my age group for the Boston Marathon. My one and only attempt at a marathon was not fun and I’ve had nagging pains ever since. But now that Charlie has done it, I might have to give it another try some time.

All this to say, I see myself as a runner now. And like Forrest Gump, running with company is not a bad thing. (I miss running with Charlie, by the way, now that he’s moved to Portland.) I know there are several folks who attend AAR/SBL every year who also enjoy running. Last year I organized a run for conference goers. A small handful showed up on Saturday morning to run along the San Diego harbor. It was beautiful! This year in Atlanta I am putting together another Saturday morning run. It will be a casual run along the Freedom Park Path Trail section of the larger Stone Mountain Trail. All speeds and abilities are welcome. I’ve mapped out about 5 miles, but the path can be shortened or extended as runners wish. In another blog post to follow shortly, I will provide all of the details. If you are a runner and attending AAR/SBL, set aside Saturday morning at 7am to join us!

What is a woman?

I am in the middle of proofreading an exciting new book from Cascade Books. Thinking Woman: A Philosophical Approach to the Quandary of Gender by Jennifer Hockenberry Dragseth is a helpful philosophical inquiry about women.

Source: http://mtmary.edu/majors-programs/schools/hsse/jennifer-hockenbery.html

Here are a few paragraphs on the method and design of the book:

This is a philosophical book, not a sociological study or a political treatise. This book explores a “What is X?” type of question, namely “What is a woman?” The book’s method follows that of the ancient philosopher, Socrates. Socrates’s method, which he advocates for both men and women philosophers according to Plato, was to ask a question, hear an answer, discuss the answer, detail the limits or problems of the answer, and then continue with another possible answer. This is the method that is used in each chapter of the book.

As such, this book is an invitation to the reader to a philosophical dialogue on the question: “What is a woman?” The book is by no means comprehensive or exhaustive. I have limited the conversation to four major theories that are active in contemporary Western feminist discourse. These theories are Gender Essentialism, Gender Neutrality, Gender Existentialism, and Gender Fluidity. Gender Essentialism is the theory that women have an essential and unique nature that is both biologically and psychologically different from the nature of men. Gender Neutrality is the claim that women have the same essential psychological and intellectual nature as men despite biological differences in sex. Gender Existentialism is the theory that women, although biologically different from men, have intellectual and psychological habits that differ from men only because of cultural factors. The theory of Gender Fluidity claims that both gender and biological sex are constantly changing categories that are culturally defined.

Each chapter presents each system by introducing some of the women thinkers who most famously articulated the theories. Because their views were born in the context of their lives, the lives and historical context of the thinkers are important. Each chapter presents the biographies as well as the ideas of the women who were the main architects of each theory. Included also is a description of the ways the specific theory influenced the feminist struggle to help women thrive. Importantly, each chapter shows an area of contemporary public discourse where the theory remains a dominant voice. This demonstrates that each theory is still very much alive. Each chapter concludes with a discussion of the possible objections to the discussed theory before summarizing the main points of the chapter.

In the conclusion, the book does not advocate for a specific theory of woman as being true or correct. Rather the conclusion acknowledges that the concept of woman is complex. Each of the four theories says something obviously true. Thus, understanding women requires holding all four theories simultaneously while acknowledging their contradictions. However, all four theories also clearly fall short of a comprehensive account of women. Thus, understanding women requires continuing dialogue with women and those who are interested in them.

Look for it to be available in the next month or so. It would make for a great reading assignment in all sorts of university and college courses.

Symposium on Race and Racism

A week ago at this time I was somewhere over the Rockies on my way to Chicago and the Symposium on the Theological Interpretation of Scripture at North Park Theological Seminary. The three days at North Park were full and lively, with several great sessions on the topic of Race and Racism. Eventually the papers will be published in the annual journal Ex Auditu from Pickwick Publications, hence my presence there. Below you will find a teasing excerpt from each of the main papers. Keep in mind these are pulled from larger essays and the essays themselves may undergo revision before they are published some time next Spring. The title of the presentation may not be the title of the published essay, and so because of this, I am only providing the speakers’ names.  You can follow links to find out more about who they are, where they work, etc. Videos of all of the sessions of the symposium are here.

Lisa Sung:

The very employment of racial concepts and categories, in the absence of critical historical awareness—using “race” terminology in unmarked, unqualified, and ultimately non-deconstructive ways—comprises a naive realism, and is evidence of the power of socialization—the extent to which the church and its teachers are still captive to a “false consciousness”—the positing of a racial scheme as value-neutral, substantive explanatory concepts, one that conceals its historical origins and essential logic as a classificatory scheme underwriting a stratified social order which secured dominance by assigning persons to newly created status groups to which the goods of society would be disparately allocated.

Bo Lim:

If the Cross is the Lynching Tree, and the lynchee is the Suffering Servant, then salvation for Americans rests upon their acknowledgment of our racist past, most exemplified in the mass terror lynchings of African Americans. The inability to see Christ as the first lynchee results not merely from a lack of information but a lack of faith. Yet those who see that Christ was lynched on a tree can claim, “But he was wounded for our transgressions, crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the punishment that made us whole, and by his bruises we are healed” (Isa 53:6).

Love Sechrest:

The goal of allyship is not for people in privileged groups to be shamed, punished, or retaliated against, but to eliminate the conditions that dehumanize us all, to restrain evil in our midst, and to seek our common good. Each and every one of us needs to be able to see what and who have been previously invisible as we cautiously move towards inhabiting the kinds of relationships that give honor to the gospel, risking pain but persisting in our desire to build the Beloved Community.

Ray Aldred:

By entering into the shared narrative of the Treaties as equals, the possibility exists for a shared identity that does not necessitate the eradication of identity. Instead it is an opportunity to embrace the past and be open to a future of walking together in the Creator’s land in a good way. Treaty functioning as a shared narrative allows for a re-envisioning of history and becomes a tool for healing.

Kyle Small:

Coming up from the turbulent waters of initiation is new life, indeed a white person with a white body can participate differently. Rising from the drowning, ascending from hell is a rejection of Caucasian as an identity marker. The word is drowned in the depths and will not return. The initiation is a participation in something other than whiteness currently understood. The journey to hell exposes the fullness of white privilege and supremacy practiced by white-followers of Jesus. The journey down discloses the full white consciousness. The pain, misery, and shame that will occur to a white body that enters hell will emerge from the depths out of breath and seeking help from divine participants who are image-bearers-of-many-hues.

Néstor Medina (old CV):

Since the middle of the twentieth century, hermeneutics has changed at a faster pace in great part because the Eurocentric character of theology, biblical scholarship, and philosophy has been challenged. Those other cultural groups previously absent from prevalent versions of Christian scholarship and theology brought forth critical new approaches to interpretation, which reclaim the role of gender, social location, racial-ethnic background, and cultural tradition in the biblical text, from its original production when it was written to its reading and interpretation in multiple settings today.

Emerson Powery:

Are translations responsible to present ancient tensions in new ways to help “address” our contemporary concerns and conversations or should they translate what “they see,” which is always interrelated in complex ways with how translators view their own contemporary world. It is not only language that changes, however; perspectives, in this case, with regard to ethnic conflict also changes. So are translators responsible to present ancient tensions in new ways to “address” (indirectly) contemporary conflicts?

Lewis Brogdon:

Because [Onesimus was not a Christian in the house of a Christian master] is ignored as an exegetical and theological issue, the impact of the conversion of Onesimus is lessened. Instead great emphasis is given to Philemon’s benevolence and the return of a wayward slave. . . . This is both a distorted and limited reading of the letter. In my reading of Philemon, exclusion and its role in the unconverted condition of a house slave is an important theological issue. I believe that Onesimus departed and was not a Christian because of Philemon’s practice of selective inclusion. In this sense, the conversion of Onesimus serves as an indictment against Philemon and the church. In addition, the return of Onesimus as a Christian takes on a different kind of significance that what is argued by slave-flight interpreters.

Ten Commandments of Debate

This has made the rounds on the internet for some time under various titles. It ought to be mandatory reading for anyone posting a Facebook comment or standing to ask a question during a session at an academic conference.

Source: http://www.relativelyinteresting.com/10-commandments-rational-debate-logical-fallacies-explained/

Source: http://www.relativelyinteresting.com/10-commandments-rational-debate-logical-fallacies-explained/

Persons over Projects

So I did an impromptu interview the other day in our office about my work as an editor. I wasn’t at all dressed or shaved for the occasion, but it was fun and it gave our media guy a chance to play around with his new toys and editing software. Here’s a piece he put together:

Oh, and there was this as well…

 

Mashing it up: A List

Merriam-Webster defines “mash-up” as “something created by combining elements from two or more sources.” They give further definition to three kinds of mash-ups, for which the Internet can provide countless examples: music mash-ups, movie mash-ups, and web mash-ups.

Lately it’s been a distraction of mine to read Twitter mash-ups. My favorites are the Twitter accounts that mash together philosophers/theologians/etc. with some current cultural persona or theme. On Facebook today I came across a link to St. AugOsteen (a mash-up of St. Augustine and Joel Osteen). I’m going to use this blog post to start a list of these Twitter mash-ups. I could use your help. I only know of a handful. There are bound to be more out there. If you know of any that I’m missing, please leave a comment and I’ll update the post by adding them to the list.

Convictional Differences

In 1974 a secular atheist and a Christian theologian set out “to discuss discordant elements that divide our own society into fragments and to discover” ways of working together “that can make even discordant elements one.” Twenty years later James M. Smith and James Wm. McClendon Jr. believed “that the times [had] at long last caught up with [them]” in two important ways:

1) “Philosophers can no longer be dismissed as threats to the faith or religious believers as soft-headed dogmatists”; and 2) “there has been a growing dissatisfaction with the general approach to the theory of knowledge called ‘foundationalism’ . . . . there is a much greater tendency today to examine the credentials of claims in terms of the disciplines or communities within which the claims are made.”

And so these two “unequally yoked” authors took on the task of revising their twenty-year-old book. Now, twenty-one years on, I can think of few other books that are as relevant to our times. Still today—and maybe even more so than the 70s or 90s—“differences in those beliefs that guide our lives, that make us who we are . . . are indeed the stuff of arguments, manifestos, estrangements, revolutions, and wars.” Many are asking again Smith’s and McClendon’s guiding questions.

“Why are differences in convictions so intractable, so impervious to appeals to evidence or rational argument? And is there a method by which this intractability can be overcome, a method by which convictions can be justified not only to those who already hold them but to those who presently hold other, rival convictions?”

I cannot recommend enough their book-length answer to these questions. Click through and pick up a copy of Convictions: Defusing Religious Relativism (rev. ed.; Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2002; orig. Trinity, 1994) right now!

One last lengthy excerpt to further make the case that this is a book you should read:

Convictions are the beliefs that make people what they are. They must therefore be taken very seriously by those who have them. This means that to take any person seriously we must take that person’s convictions seriously, even if we do not ourselves share them. If we regard integrity and a certain degree of consistency as important elements in being a person, we should neither expect nor want others’ convictions to be easily changed or lightly given up. On the other hand, if we have a true esteem for our own convictions, we will want them to be shared in appropriate ways by anyone whom we regard. A certain tension appears here. If persons who hold opposed convictions are to come to share common ones, then some sort of exchange must take place in which the disparate partners communicate with, persuade, change one another in significant ways, so that one or both become significantly different persons than they were.

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