Congrats to a Messiah Alum

Alex Lentz

Congrats to Alex Lentz on his chance to fulfill his dream of playing professional baseball. Here is a tidbit from the York Dispatch:

The York Revolution became a bit more “political” this week.

Of the 42 hopefuls who participated in York’s open tryout on Saturday, 24-year-old Alex Lentz is the only one who earned an invitation to the team’s spring training.

Revs’ baseball operations manager Andrew Ball confirmed the catcher’s invitation on Monday night.

Alex was a political science major at Messiah, which you can read more about Alex here. I had the privilege of getting to know Alex in high school since his family attended our church at that time. Great kid, and couldn’t be happier for him. All the best!

An Impressive Word of Encouragement

Thanks to several of my Messiah friends and the Messiah College Facebook page for pointing out this video this morning from Joni and Friends. In the video, Joni Eareckson Tada speaks about the work of the Collaboratory, and how they’ve partnered with her ministry to reach out to people with disabilities around the world. Check it out!

We’ve Got Great Alumni

Here is the latest example of our great alumni in the Department of Information and Mathematical Sciences here at Messiah College. In the controversial rankings of 4th through 8th grade teachers in New York City, class of 2005 alumna Kelly (Toolan) Hudson is listed as the 10th best mathematics teacher in the city. She’s also the second 8th grade teacher listed. Like all rankings, the methodology is fair to discuss. The methods seemed to be an attempt to model the benefit a teacher gave their students on standardized testing. Other variables were controlled for. While I’m not a fan of basing everything on standardized tests, I do think that this methodology does not take away from the honor that this ranking bestows. Congratulations, Kelly!

Can Glenn Beck Read?

Dr. John Fea

I’m not so sure after the uproar of the last week or so. It all started with a post by my friend and colleague John Fea. Dr. Fea is the chair of the Department of History here at Messiah College, a thoughtful Christian, and an exemplary historian specializing in early American History. He is very careful to approach his craft in a way that allows his beliefs to inform his work, but never to turn his work into propaganda in support of his views. The furor erupted over what, in my opinion, is a gross inability of Glenn Beck to let the facts stand in the way of a good story that he could gain publicity from.

The kerfuffle is based on an interesting piece by Dr. Fea on Patheos a week or so ago. Dr. Fea points out that President Barack Obama has cited his faith as a part of his policy-making and life at a level that is somewhat unprecedented. In fact, after citing some examples, Dr. Fea makes the statement:

Obama may be the most explicitly Christian president in American history.

Now, this is not a proclamation, of course. Dr. Fea qualifies the statement with “may be”, but Beck and his disciples seem to have not been able to read that part. They have accused Dr. Fea of stating that Obama is the most explicitly Christian president in American history. Here is the whole paragraph in context:

Obama may be the most explicitly Christian president in American history. If we analyze his language in the same way that historians examine the religious language of the Founding Fathers or even George W. Bush, we will find that Obama’s piety, use of the Bible, and references to Christian faith and theology put most other American presidents to shame on this front. I think there may be good reasons why some people will not vote for Obama in November, but his commitment to Christianity is not one of them.

Worse than just missing  the “may be”, they also seem to not know what explicitly means. How Beck, and his disciples, read this as an endorsement of Obama’s theology is beyond me. Dr. Fea does not even say that Obama is, in fact, a Christian, let alone an exemplary one. He is simply saying that Obama has been more public about his claimed faith. He also says that Christians can’t really find fault with his commitment to Christianity as a basis for voting against him. Can we find fault with his personal theology? Sure. Can we disagree with how he thinks his faith should be worked out in policy? Of course. Do we have any real evidence that he is not a Christian or is not committed to his faith? No. Sorry. I didn’t vote for him in 2008, but I have no doubt that he is a Christian, and find claims that he is a Muslim laughable.

Now, one might ask if the problem is that Beck views Dr. Fea as a liberal shill for Obama. The answer is clearly a resounding no, if you take the time to read the rest of the article. Here is the last two paragraphs of the original:

Unfortunately, for all of his religious rhetoric, Obama the president has failed to articulate the faith-based political vision he promised us that night in the tiny village of Grantham, Pennsylvania. His handling of the recent contraception issue was a disaster. He missed a wonderful opportunity to explain his health care proposal—disparaged by the GOP as “Obamacare”—as a direct extension of his Christian convictions to care for the poor and the needy. He has failed in his promise to reduce abortions in the United States and, as a result, protect the weakest and most vulnerable of the “least of these.” His plan to tax the richest members of society is driven by populist rhetoric, but it lacks a prophetic edge informed by the radical implications of Jesus’s teachings in the Gospels.

If Obama wins in 2012, we will see his true colors on matters of faith and policy. Without another election to worry about, he can either turn toward secularism or provide a vision of faith-based political action that would be quite different from what the Christian Right and his GOP rivals are offering. Will we get the Obama of the Compassion Forum or the Obama of the last three years?

This is certainly no endorsement of Obama. This seems to be Dr. Fea calling for Obama to actually deliver on the rhetoric in which he is so “explicitly Christian”. Somehow the few comments I read through seemed to miss this entirely. Perhaps they never bothered to read the second page of the piece? I wish that his pieces would be one page, but it is always worth clicking for page 2 when needed. To raise a furor about this radical professor without actually taking the time to read the whole piece and actually evaluate the claims is another sign of what is wrong with our current political climate, and why I have no way to argue with those Christians who have decided to withdraw from the voting/political process. (see this post from yesterday)

The only redeeming quality about the furor is that perhaps some have read the whole piece and realized that Beck is wrong in his characterization of Dr. Fea. I want to also point my readers to read the whole thing, but also to consider the response of Dr. Fea. After dealing with an inbox and voice-mail box filled with vitriol from those who believed Beck’s lies and misrepresentation, Dr. Fea offered grace-filled response on his blog. Here is a taste, but I suggest that reading the whole thing will give a more balanced perspective on the type of faculty I get to work with here.

I do not want to dwell on this too much.  As a writer I realize that in the United States people are free to disagree.  I guess that comes with the territory.  But I would like to at least make two comments:

1.  I continue to stand by my argument about Barack Obama being the most explicitly Christian president in American history.  Perhaps I could have said this more clearly, but I do not know of any president (certainly not Washington, Adams, or Jefferson, the three presidents who I focused on in my book Was America Founded as a Christian Nation?) who has talked more openly about his Christian faith than Obama.  If future historians judge Obama’s rhetoric in the same way that today’s historians judge the rhetoric of George Washington or John Adams or any other president, they will conclude that Obama has used his faith as part of his public rhetoric to a much greater extent than these Founders.  When I wrote this I was not making a statement about whether Obama utilizes Christian faith correctly or not.  I was rather making a statement about how explicitly Christian Obama’s rhetoric happens to be.

I do not agree with many of Obama’s policies.   Some of my agreements stem from my Christian faith.  I tried to reference some of my disappointment with Obama in my Patheos piece.  But when Obama says he is a Christian, I take him at his word.  I think Jesus said something about he who is without sin cast the first stone.

2.  After what happened to me today I am even more deeply convinced about the need for civil dialogue in America.  You can read the comments for yourself, but I would say that most of the 800 comments on The Blaze have nothing to do with the argument of my piece.  They instead focused on the controversial headline.

But even if some of Glenn Beck’s followers did read the whole piece and concluded that they disagreed with my argument, the level of vitriol I have experienced today has made me concerned for our country.  How can democracy flourish without civility, respect for those with whom we differ, and a sense of mutual understanding?  I continue to believe that the answer lies in education, particularly in history and the other humanities.  It is these disciplines that have the potential to bring meaningful change to the world because they are rooted in virtues such as intellectual hospitality, empathy, understanding, and civility.

My Christian faith and my vocation as a historian remind me that we are human beings, created in the image of God, and thus worthy of respect.  My Christian faith and my vocation as a historian calls me to listen to those with whom I might disagree and perhaps even learn something from them.  To do otherwise is a failure to love my neighbor (Mt. 22:39–I did not feel much love from my Christian brothers and sisters who wrote to me today).  My Christian faith and my vocation as a historian teaches me humility and reminds me that sometimes I may need to sacrifice my own deeply held convictions for a better opinion.

Democracy does not require us to abandon our most cherished beliefs.  Far from it.  Democracy implies that we bring our cherished beliefs to the public arena (and the Internet) with vigor.  A democracy offers the opportunity to debate others with whom we differ and try to convince them–rationally and civilly–to come over to our point of view.  As Christians, we are required by God to love our enemies, but in the process we might even learn something from them.  The cultivation of this kind of democratic culture is America’s best hope.

Thanks, John, for being willing to model Christian grace and civility despite the mean-spirited nature of the attacks on him. If Beck (who ironically is a Mormon, which many Christians would classify as outside orthodox faith), had offered the same grace-filled response to Dr. Fea and started a dialogue, the situation might have caused more growth and understanding, rather than furthering the negative nature of politics in the US. I am thankful that there are still moderate voices who seek to understand and reason with others, rather than simply out-shout their opponents. If I had any respect for Glenn Beck, this might have been the final straw. Of course, I lost my respect for Beck long ago, and this situation seems in conflict with his pledge of nonviolence which promised more civility.

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Note: I am intentionally not linking to Beck’s website which helped escalate the issue since driving more hits for him would only compound the problem since it would encourage him to continue making money off of this type of con.

Also, comments that resort to personal attacks or add to the vitriol will not be approved, or will be deleted. Comments adding voices to the discussion in a civil fashion are welcomed.

Advice on Parenting: Let Your Kids Fail

Tim Elmore with Students Who Have Learned to Dress the Part

Thought I’d come back from a somewhat extended paternity leave (more on that at some point) with a post about good and bad parenting. Over at the Huffington Post’s parenthood portal, Mickey Goodman asks if we are raising a generation of kids who are essentially helpless. As a professor here at Messiah College (and even when teaching in graduate school at Virginia Tech) I have experienced helicopter parents firsthand. My parents almost never stepped in to side with me against a professor or teacher. The only exception I can recall was when they got a teacher in junior high or early high school to bump my negative(!) quiz score up to a zero. I still managed an A for the marking period, so I wasn’t too scarred. Some of my students, however, seem to expect that either they or their parents can make any bad grade disappear. This doesn’t work with me, nor is that attitude likely to go over well on the job once they leave the academic world.

Goodman quotes Tim Elmore, who heads a company that attempts to help students self-motivate and prepare mentally for the “real world”, a world where success rarely comes overnight, they are not rewarded for showing up, and they are not excused for mistakes. Here are some of what Elmore thinks we get wrong, and how he suggests we fix it:

Where did we go wrong?

• We’ve told our kids to dream big – and now any small act seems insignificant. In the great scheme of things, kids can’t instantly change the world. They have to take small, first steps – which seem like no progress at all to them. Nothing short of instant fame is good enough. “It’s time we tell them that doing great things starts with accomplishing small goals,” he says.

• We’ve told our kids that they are special – for no reason, even though they didn’t display excellent character or skill, and now they demand special treatment. The problem is that kids assumed they didn’t have to do anything special in order to be special.

• We gave our kids every comfort – and now they can’t delay gratification. And we heard the message loud and clear. We, too, pace in front of the microwave, become angry when things don’t go our way at work, rage at traffic. “Now it’s time to relay the importance of waiting for the things we want, deferring to the wishes of others and surrendering personal desires in the pursuit of something bigger than ‘me,’” Elmore says.

• We made our kid’s happiness a central goal – and now it’s difficult for them to generate happiness — the by-product of living a meaningful life. “It’s time we tell them that our goal is to enable them to discover their gifts, passions and purposes in life so they can help others. Happiness comes as a result.”

The uncomfortable solutions:

“We need to let our kids fail at 12 – which is far better than at 42,” he says. “We need to tell them the truth (with grace) that the notion of ‘you can do anything you want’ is not necessarily true.”

Kids need to align their dreams with their gifts. Every girl with a lovely voice won’t sing at the Met; every Little League baseball star won’t play for the major leagues.

• Allow them to get into trouble and accept the consequences. It’s okay to make a “C-.” Next time, they’ll try harder to make an “A”.

• Balance autonomy with responsibility. If your son borrows the car, he also has to re-fill the tank.

• Collaborate with the teacher, but don’t do the work for your child. If he fails a test, let him take the consequences.

“We need to become velvet bricks,” Elmore says, “soft on the outside and hard on the inside and allow children to fail while they are young in order to succeed when they are adults.”

You can read the whole post here.

I Knew Him Way Back When

Peter K. Greer

I don’t usually turn to CBN or the 700 Club for my news, but they had a nice piece on microfinance  yesterday that featured my college friend Peter Greer and the microfinance organization he founded, HOPE International. We were in an outreach group together back in those days at Messiah College, but I don’t think I can take much credit for the good work he is doing. I will say that I have proudly donated to his work several times over the last few years and believe in the power of what he is doing! I can’t post the CBN video here, but be sure to check it out here. You can find previous posts about HOPE by clicking the HOPE International category above.

Recognition for Messiah College

Once again, Messiah College is making the news for good things going on on campus. This time the men’s soccer team is being recognized as one of the most dominating men’s sports programs in the country. Admittedly, I’m not sure “hercampus.com” is the most prestigious of recognitions out there, but I’ll take good press where we can get it! (though there generally isn’t a shortage) Here is the blurb about Messiah:

7. Messiah Falcons Soccer

NCAA Div. III Champions: 2000, 2002, 2004-2006, 2008-2010

Following a frantic purchase of 30 men’s soccer socks (they had forgotten to pack their game socks for the tournament!), the Falcons upped the dramatic ante on the field as well.  During the 2010 title match, sophomore Dan Squire scored with less than five minutes remaining in regulation to tie.  A minute and a half into the game’s extension, senior midfielder Geoff Pezon blasted a low, hard goal to end it for good. Messiah seized a thrilling 2-1 victory against Lynchburg College and the program’s eighth national title.

(btw, Geoff Pezon was a student of mine in Calc II, and a pretty smart engineering major)

The Mathematics of the Game SET

The Cover Image for the Game SET

SET is an extremely addictive, fast-paced card game found in toy stores nationwide. Although children often beat adults, the game has a rich mathematical structure linking it to the combinatorics of finite affine and projective spaces and the theory of error-correcting codes. Last year an unexpected connection to Fourier analysis was used to settle a basic question directly related to the game of SET, and many related questions remain open.

So begins a recent paper on the elegant mathematics of the card game SET. For those of us who enjoy card games that require logic and quick thinking, rather than simply luch, and the mathematical beauty and surprising interconnectedness of different mathematical fields, this paper is interesting. Warning: you need a certain level of algebraic understanding to follow the paper (having had an algebraic structures course beyond “linear algebra” in college will help). The paper starts out by giving the background of the development of the game, and how it is played. Then the authors turn to problems of algebraic interest regarding the game and show how to answer some of these questions.

Personally, I love the game. I was introduced while visiting my graduate alma mater (Virginia Tech) by a former student here at Messiah College who was in graduate school at Tech. She introduced my wife and I to the game, and I fell in love. For those familiar with the game SET, or would like to try it out, it is available online here.

John Fea on the Democracy and this Election Cycle

South Carolina Republican presidential candidate debate, 16 Jan. 2012, in Myrtle Beach, S.C. (AP Photo/David Goldman)

Several great posts from John Fea about the election cycle and how Christians can think faithfully about the role of government and the process of democracy. John is the chair of the Department of History at Messiah College (where I am on the faculty and teach statistics). I’ll highlight two of them here, but you can check out more on his Patheos channel or his blog, The Way of Improvement Leads Home. He’s had a lot of good things to say!

First, some thoughts about how Christians should think about democracy. Here is a taste:

Alexis de Tocqueville, the great 19th-century observer of the political culture of the United States, equated American democracy with a system of morality. He wrote that “the majority [in America] possess a power that is physical and moral at the same time, which acts upon the will as much as upon the actions and represses not only all contest, but all controversy.” In a democracy the will of the majority becomes the highest good. Sometimes the convictions of the majority will be compatible with Christian ethical teaching, but sometimes they will not.

American history abounds with examples in which democracy as a moral system has come into conflict with a competing moral system informed by something other than the will of the majority. In the mid-19^th century, for example, democracy manifested itself in the political principle known as “popular sovereignty.” In the context of westward expansion, popular sovereignty meant that the people of a given territory could decide whether or not slavery would be permitted within their boundaries. Such a belief in popular sovereignty meant that it was possible that slavery could extend throughout the continent as long as 51 percent of the people in a given territory thought it was a good idea.

You can check out the rest here.

More recently, Fea offered an opinion piece in reflection on the South Carolina Republican debate and the rhetoric of war. Here is a taste:

Nearly all the candidates on the stage in Myrtle Beach have claimed to be people of faith. Rick Perry is an evangelical Christian. Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich are Catholics. Mitt Romney is a Mormon. Ron Paul does not wear his faith on his sleeve, but he is a Baptist. All of these faith traditions believe that human beings are created in the image of God and thus have inherent dignity and worth.

During the debate, both Gingrich and Romney lauded their “pro-life” record. But anyone who listened carefully would have smelled hypocrisy.

When asked about whether he would have pursued and killed Osama Bin Laden, Ron Paul said that he would, but he did not see how this issue was relevant to the 2012 presidential election. Paul decried American war-mongering and said that if he were president he would do his best to keep the United States out of foreign wars. He then said that U.S. foreign policy should be based on the “golden rule”–do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” He was booed for even making such a suggestion.

Sensing an opportunity, Newt Gingrich called Paul’s remarks “utterly irrational.” He then invoked former U.S. president Andrew Jackson, a South Carolina native: “Jackson had a pretty clear-cut idea about America’s enemies: Kill them.” The crowd went wild. As Fox News cameras flashed to the audience, television viewers could see South Carolina Republicans rise to their feet, fists-pumping, cheering on the Catholic presidential candidate with a supposedly impeccable “pro-life” record who just used the killing of another human being and a reference to one of the most ruthless military leaders in American history to score political points.

Not to be outdone by Gingrich’s utter disrespect for human life, Mitt Romney, seeing the kind of support Gingrich’s remark received from the bloodthirsty crowd, said, in regard to the Taliban and Al Queda, “these people declared war on us. They’ve killed Americans. We go anywhere they are, and we kill them.” More applause: Kill ‘em! Kill em!

I am not a pacifist. On rare occasions I believe war is appropriate in order to preserve peace and maintain justice. I believe that evil exists in the world and it must be confronted. I supported George W. Bush when he sent American troops to hunt down Osama. Yet the flippant way in which these GOP candidates disregarded human life on Monday night deeply disturbed me. I hope it might disturb any Christian. Life is sacred because it comes from God. These candidates should think twice before disrespecting God’s highest form of creation in order to get applause lines and votes. Shame on them!

Check out the rest here.

A Response from Dr. LaGrand

Dr. James LaGrand

In amongst the relative uproar about Frances Fox Piven’s October talk here at Messiah College, some rather slanderous things were lobbed at Dr. Jim LaGrand and the choice of the College Republicans to rescind an invitation to a scheduled speaker. (See the comments section on this post.) Dr. LaGrand is co-advisor for the Messiah College Republicans, and certainly has the conservative credentials to warrant that position. With his gracious permission, I am sharing a stock letter that he has sent to the numerous inquiries (to put it gently) about the decision. It is lengthy, but I think he deserves to be quoted in full, and not have his words twisted. (I commented on another angle of this situation earlier today.)

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Dear [Sir/Madam],

I appreciate your concern for this issue.  Unfortunately, Mr. Mattera’s article has misstated the facts, and so misled people about what happened at Messiah College.

Mr. Mattera misstates the facts when he says there was “pressure” to cancel the speech he was originally scheduled to give.  Rather, it was a decision made unanimously by the 4 student leaders and 2 faculty advisors (including myself) of the College Republicans on our campus.  We reached our decision after studying and discussing every bit of available information about his two most recent speaking engagements—at Kalamazoo College and at the Values Voter Forum.  I very clearly told Mr. Mattera when he contacted me by phone that I watched “every available video recording” of him speaking, including a small portion of the Q&A session at Kalamazoo College.  I also communicated with first-hand witnesses to his recent performance the Values Voter Summit.  From the evidence we compiled (all the evidence available to us), we all became convinced that Mr. Mattera would not effectively communicate conservative ideas for our audience.  The administration had nothing to do with this decision.  It was made by the College Republicans, acting in the best interest in the College Republicans.  I’m sure this was hard for Mr. Mattera to hear.  And I regret that it happened so late after new information came to light.  But none of this justifies him lying about the facts of the matter.

He also misleads regarding the players involved.  Neither I nor the College Republicans (obviously) had anything to do with Frances Fox Piven’s recent visit to our college.  That was a college-wide event.  And likewise, the once-planned Mattera presentation was not overseen by the college—only the College Republicans.

One matter I find particularly astounding is Mr. Mattera’s willingness to characterize me as a “liberal” after charging that I’d insufficiently studied his work.  Anyone who knows me would laugh at his charge.  I’ve written for two publications published by the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, a well-known conservative think tank.  I’m a well-known conservative on my campus—well-known enough to be asked by students to serve as one of the faculty advisors and well-known enough to be asked to serve as a panelist after the Piven event where I systematically critiqued her presentation, including her long-time links to violence.  This fact I relayed to Mr. Mattera when he spoke to me by phone yesterday, but he conveniently left it out of his story.

I teach U.S. history at Messiah College, where my conservative views are often in evidence.  In my U.S. History survey course, I just oversaw a student debate on the merits of the New Deal.  Some of the readings I provided introduced them to the argument about parallels between FDR’s National Recovery Administration to fascist governments’ use of state cartels.  Would a radical or liberal or even middle-of-the-road professor plan such an activity?  I have my students read Margaret Sanger to help uncover the awful links between eugenics and the early-20th-century progressive movement.  And I could go and on….  I’d simply ask you to believe me – I’m no liberal or radical.

Mr. Mattera has for his own selfish purposes twisted this story—even to the point of lying.  It’s not a question of conservatism vs. liberalism/radicalism or free speech vs. repression.  It’s a question of wisdom, of effectiveness, of growing the conservative movement where each of us is placed.  And it became apparent in the past week to all those involved with our chapter of College Republicans that Jason Mattera would not help us reach grow the conservative movement.  Judging from every bit of evidence from his two most recent speaking engagements, we had every expectation that he would turn off more people than he attracted through his deliberately inflammatory, juvenile, and outrageous language.  And then it would be left for us to clean up the mess and the try to rebuild what was broken.

As we conservatives are fond of saying—It’s a free country.  We’re not stopping or discouraging any other organization from hosting Mr. Mattera.  But for our audience at Messiah College, which we’re familiar with, this would have been harmful, and so we canceled the event.  We are in the process of making plans to bring a speaker on campus who would successfully broadcast conservative ideas in our community.

But I would end with a request to you—speaking as a conservative to a conservative.  Let’s not believe everything we read, especially that which would have us devour one another in an emotional frenzy.  And let’s not miss or squander opportunities to effectively and persuasively spread the message of conservatism.

Yours,

Jim LaGrand