The Rev. Joel Hunter, pastor of Northland Church in Longwood, FL, has been removed as the incoming president of the Christian Coalition, after the Board of Directors disagreed with his plan to broaden the organization’s agenda. “In addition to opposing abortion and same-sex marriage, Hunter, 58, wanted to take on such issues as poverty, global warming and HIV/AIDS.”

Hunter, author of Right Wing, Wrong Bird: Why the Tactics of the Religious Right Won’t Fly With Most Conservative Christians, said

My position is, unless we are caring as much for the vulnerable outside the womb as inside the womb, we’re not carrying out the full message of Jesus. They [CC leadership] began to think this might threaten their base or evaporate some of their support, and they said they just couldn’t go there.

and

There are many Christians, especially in their twenties and thirties, who don’t care about liberal and conservative. They just see that if you’re going to love your neighbor, you have to address things like the environment.

Hunter is apparently the second leader to almost become president of the CC in about a year (although I’m having trouble finding who the previous one was).

via Washington Post.

I must confess that I love REI, the locally-based national chain of outdoor equipment stores. They have just what I want, in at least ten varieties.

A few months ago, I went looking for a new Nalgene bottle, and came home with a $35 assortment of contraptions. First, there’s the basic bottle, to which I added an insulating sleeve and a Gription bottle top, which is basically a springloaded sippy top and a beefy handle:

Amy was looking through the REI catalog just now, and came across iPod-compatible gloves, which have a conductive patch on the tip of the index finger and thumb to work with your iPod’s click wheel (which senses electricity from your body). Yuppielicious, and a great addition to a wardrobe that already contains an iPod-compatible jacket and earphone hat.

Yesterday, I braved the cold air and clear roads to purchase a product that my yuppie lifestyle desperately demands: ear warmers I can wear to work that won’t mess up my hair like a hat would. They’re called, rather unfortunately, Earbags, and they were designed in Sweden to meet the needs of the cold-eared, aestheically-aware yuppie.

I have to stand outside for about an hour a day between my bus commute and various supervision duties, so Earbags are ideal for me. The iPod gloves are a bit over the top, but otherwise, I rather like the immense array of choices to serve my yuppie lifestyle.

I think all this choice makes gift-giving more complicated. It’s not that people already have everything, but that they want such a specific type that it would make more sense if we all just bought ourselves what we wanted. Some would say that takes away from the spirit of the Christmas season. Humbug. You can still exchange meaningful gifts, even if we’ve gotten away from the “You got me just what I wanted!” magic of Christmases past.

Most of the gifts we’re giving this year are through WorldVision or Heifer International’s gift catalogs, which let you donate something to a needy family in the developing world, in honor of the person you’d otherwise be buying yuppie junk.

I still find the Thanksgiving-to-Christmas shopping season a great time to buy stuff, because the prices are good, and, more importantly, I’m confronted with the sheer absurdity of it all. When I went to REI’s hat and gloves section yesterday, they had probably 80 kinds of gloves. Everything is marketed as the perfect gift for some specific type of person.

I think holiday gift shopping will start to wane as people become more and more unable to buy things for others in the face of near-infinite consumer choice. Last year there was a huge buzz about gift cards, and there are now numerous websites that let you swap out unwanted gift cards. It’s becoming a charade. How much longer will it continue, and how will holiday shopping change? Tell me what you think in the comments.

“What is hateful to you, do not to your neighbour: that is the whole Torah, while the rest is the commentary thereof; go and learn it.”

Hillel the Elder
Babylonian Talmud, Shabbath 31a

Today is a snow day in Seattle, meaning that there is no school, so Amy and I get to stay home. There’s almost no snow on the roads in our neighborhood, but we apparently live in a relatively warm part of town.

More blogging soon. If you want to see what snow in Seattle looks like, check out some Flickr pics taken by people who live in snowier neighborhoods (fancy search link via Metroblogging).

IMG_1877.JPG, originally uploaded by Aaron O..

Photo of 66th Ave NE facing east during snowfall.

The first significant snowfall I’ve seen within the city limits. I predict chaos to ensue.

The current issue of the New York Press has a positive article about Troy Lyndon’s Left Behind: Eternal Forces, the game in which you command post-rapture converts who are fighting the forces of the antichrist (you can also play for the other side).

When I first read about the game, I was not happy. Left Behind Games’ own description of the action was not reassuring - it indicated that Christian-vs.-non-Christian violence was a major element of the gameplay.

Troy Lyndon has released a statement clarifying the role of violence in the gameplay in light of some apparent mischaracterizations:

Recently, much controversy has ensued due to published articles in the media which discuss the violence in our upcoming game, Left Behind: Eternal Forces. However, references to “praise the lord and pass the ammunition” or “kill in the name of God” or others were made by journalists spreading misinformation, which is absolutely not true. And for this reason, I have published this statement.

There is no blood or gore in Left Behind: Eternal Forces. The game is designed to be a classic battle between good and evil, but it does not gratuitously depict violence or death.

Others are concerned about the pre-trib religious doctrine believed by the Left Behind authors. Left Behind is not the Bible, it is a fictional story and accordingly, situations resulting from the stories’ post-apocalyptic time-frame are used to encourage gamers to think about matters of eternal significance, a topic largely ignored by modern games.

Because our game is a ‘strategy’ game, never does a player click a key or press a button to actuate a first-person violent act. Instead, control is managed by the player in much the same way as an animated chess game would be when pieces fight for position, except that in ‘real-time’ strategy games, many pieces fight for position at the same time.

Well, Troy, that’s good to hear. I’m glad our worst fears were unfounded. I hope you understand, though, how we could have been confused, and I still think the game is a terrible idea. Whether it pits Christians against non-Christians directly or through “strategic” action, it’s wrong, and it shouldn’t be sold. The game places Christians as trigger-men targeting non-Christians, which is utterly unacceptable and shameful.

Radical Congruency is undergoing a domain transfer as well as a server move, so pardon the angle-bracketed dust.

When you start worrying about things like how much carbon dioxide your car emits, where your electricity comes from, who made your clothing and under what conditions, and how much the coffee farmer got paid for your $3.50 latte, you have a problem.

That problem is living in the space between apathy and obsession, the space where we realize that potentially every consumer decision we make has ethical implications. It can be irritating to have to think about the social, economic, and environmental impact of every aspect of our lifestyle, but it’s becoming harder not to think about it.

It’s great that more and more people are buying TerraPasses and fair trade coffee. It’s great that people are recycling, using compact fluorescent light bulbs, and avoiding clothing produced by child labor.

But I’ve noticed a new type of fundamentalism cropping up when we discuss issues of ethical consumerism. It’s rooted in a desire to hold each other accountable, but it quickly becomes judgmentalism.

Bob and John and a group of us were talking about this over dinner at the Revolution Conference a few weeks ago, and the question came up: How do you decide when your car is too big? How do you decide, as a church, when someone’s car is too big? Are these decisions we can make in community, or only on an individual basis?

It’s hard enough for people of faith to hold each other to agreed-upon standards of conduct and ethics. Even if we all agree that certain things are wrong and to be avoided completely (such as adultery, theft, and lying), we struggle with talking to and listening to each other’s judgment - and that’s on the clear issues.

Ethical consumerism issues are much more difficult, because they occur on a spectrum. No one is a perfect ethical environmentalist, and no one’s consumerism is the complete embodiment of environmental and social evil. We all make choices about what we buy and use, and none of us make ideal choices all of the time. We can’t, so we have to choose. I buy fair trade coffee, but not if Starbucks is the only thing around.

So how do we hold each other accountable for these “shades of good” or “spectrum ethics” issues? I would suggest that we don’t, but that we model progress in the direction we want to go. You buy a smaller car. I’ll buy fair trade coffee and a TerraPass. Maybe next year we’ll adopt each other’s practices, and we’ll all be better off.

For now, though, I think a good deal of encouragement and tolerance is in order.