By: Russell Chun on March 27, 2023
Ready or not MAGA hats, t-shirts and banners will be resurfacing again in preparation for the U.S. Presidential Election. Whether you agree or not, the above slogan speaks to Duffy’s comment. “Our analysis of Donald Trump’s success in the United States showed how ‘nativism’ –the sense that your own people, those born in the country,…
By: David Beavis on March 26, 2023
“Just do buy it.” Living in Portland means visiting the Nike employee store at least once. Nike is based in Beaverton (a suburb of Portland). Many of the congregants at the church I serve at work are Nike employees. About a year ago, I got my first Nike Employee Store pass. I entered the store…
By: Noel Liemam on March 26, 2023
“Why We’re Wrong About Nearly Everything: A Theory of Human Misunderstanding,” by Bobby Duffy, reminded us how much we needed to look to each other for guidance and at the same time to be vigilant about seeking what matter most. And not only that but the truth may never be the common knowledge or what…
By: Jean de Dieu Ndahiriwe on March 25, 2023
We are consumers. In Matthew 9, we see Jesus having compassion on crowds that came to him as sheep without a shepherd. In July 1990, I was in Kigali and attended Reinhard Bonnke in a crowd of thousands of others hungry and passionate to hear and hope in Jesus. In September of the same year,…
By: Kally Elliott on March 25, 2023
“If you don’t like TikTok it’s because you haven’t spent enough time on it. Once they figure out which mental illness you have, your celebrity crushes, and which cute animal you like the most…it gets really good.” (random internet meme) This meme is not only humorous, it is true, and it’s talking about me. I…
By: Jana Dluehosh on March 24, 2023
It is not lost on me that most of our books this semester has been about being wrong, or solving a problem or a “how to” book. Pursuing a doctorate (imposter syndrome not withstanding) takes a certain level of confidence and belief in ourselves that we have something the world needs. What if we are…
By: Esther Edwards on March 23, 2023
I must confess, just by reading the title, I did not envision this book to be on my desired “must read” list of books for the semester. Why? Because I don’t like to think I’m wrong about nearly everything. I went to the doctor this week and stepped on the scale. Shockingly, it showed that…
By: Scott Dickie on March 23, 2023
It appears that authors who feel compelled to tell the rest of us that we are generally misinformed and delusional are witty and entertaining writers. That is probably a necessary ingredient in a book that is repeatedly telling us how wrong we are about most things! In this respect, Duffy’s “Why We’re Wrong About Nearly…
By: Roy Gruber on March 23, 2023
Patrick Deneen serves as a professor of Political Science at Notre Dame University. His book Why Liberalism Failed offers a scathing review of the current state of cultural alienation and emptiness that the author attributes to liberalism. Often, failure comes from one or more issues detrimental to an effort. Deneen offers a counterintuitive premise for…
By: Pam Lau on March 23, 2023
My parents were first generation Christians who each experienced a radical life change when they accepted Christ. My mother converted from Judaism to Christianity through a neighbor who convinced her Jesus was the Son of God; while my father walked the aisles to “Just As I Am” at a Billy Graham Crusade. To say my…
By: Jenny Dooley on March 22, 2023
I tell myself stories. They are usually harmless assumptions about why people do, say, or believe certain things which are confusing or cause me distress. The stories can be positive or negative. When telling myself a story I usually try to make it a good one. I recognize my storytelling arises out of uncertainty, my…
By: Eric Basye on March 22, 2023
Liberalism has failed because liberalism has succeeded. As it becomes fully itself, it generates endemic pathologies more rapidly and pervasively than it is able to produce Band-aids and veils to cover them. The result is the system rolling blackouts in electoral politics, governance, and economics, the loss of confidence and even belief in legitimacy among…
By: Shonell Dillon on March 22, 2023
I am guilty of staying too long in what is familiar. When the CD era came about, I was still trying to carry around my box of cassette tapes. I was not an “out with the old in with the new” kind of person. I was what one might call “ole school”. As advancements started…
By: Andy Hale on March 22, 2023
“Progressive,” “Fundamentalism,” “Liberalism,” “Conservatives,” and “Neoliberals” are all terms that are thrown around often as a label for a particular way of thinking or belief system; equally as often, they are used as grenades to lob at the other side for their “extreme” or “woke” agendas. However, like many words, a large segment of the…
By: Greg McMullen on March 21, 2023
In my teens my parents divorced, remarried, and relocated. I was still in high school and just recently lost my football scholarship. I was in a world of emotional hurt and destruction and all alone. The next four years was devastating for me as I tried to bury all the hurt and despair I was…
By: Kristy Newport on March 21, 2023
After reading Vincent J. Miller’s book, Consuming Religion: Christian Faith and Practice in a Consumer Culture, I was ready to sign up for his class at Georgetown University. Miller makes some interesting observations regarding Christian consumer culture. He states he wrote his book out of “a profound concern about the corrosive and destructive consequences of…
By: Tim Clark on March 20, 2023
“I hope this book will show you what a varied and extraordinary place the world really is” [1] Some families are sports families. Some are music families. Others are into animals, or the outdoors, or food. The Clarks are film people. Movies are something we all love, so every year my family settles into our…
By: Jennifer Vernam on March 20, 2023
For me, there was one pressing issue which surfaced in our reading this week. This was the discovery of our resistance to clearly identify (and deal with) our delusions due to our fear of losing community. It was concerning, but also articulated something I have sensed to be true, and this gave it language. In…
By: Travis Vaughn on March 20, 2023
Are Atlanta Hawks fans (and executives) delusional, allowing “our emotional responses (to) influence our perceptions of reality”[1]? Are the Hawks spending too much time thinking about what might go wrong, prompting the front office to make some drastic changes (e.g., firing their head coach half-way through the season)? Or is the perceived mediocrity of the…
By: Chad McSwain on March 19, 2023
Other than playing sports and rolling my eyes at the person trying to make the class behave for the substitute teacher, I am not sure when I understood the necessity of leadership. No doubt I had lots of experiences of leading and being a follower, I do remember the first time that leadership was a…
