faithasawayoflife

reading the end of poverty

i'm beginning to read jeffrey sachs book, the end of poverty (forward by bono). george hall, a yale economics prof and fellow member of bethesda lutheran here in new haven and I are doing a book reading group over the next couple months.

a blog reader sent me a review from the wall street journal that argues his book is, while noble in its ambitions, ends up looking "a lot less like a guide to ending poverty than a bible for employing aid bureaucrats, and there is a very good chance that it would end up doing more harm than good."

i've complained before (here) about the need for the usa to give more to development aid. we give the largest percentage of money by far (almost double the next largest donor nation, japan), but we're by far the farthest from giving .5 % of our gross domestic product. we currently give about 15 billion and would have to give nearly 55 billion in order to reach .5%. the commission for africa, chaired by british prime minister tony blair, recently released a very detailed report and as part of its recommendations is seeking a commitment of 1% from rich nations to support international development. according to a helpful nytimes article on the commission report, britain, france, spain, ireland, belgium and finland have already committed to this goal. the usa, however, has said it will not and its new budget figures place us aid at around .2% .

bill wrote a comment on my blog post referenced above saying that how generous the usa is depends on how one calculates. fine. we are a nation where philanthropy in some measure makes up for stingy government spending. we're supposedly nervous, constitutionally nervous, about giving over control of how our money is spent. but the issue, i think, is that the amount of money needed is so huge that it is only going to be possible to have adequate money to build infrastructure to eliminate extreme poverty (those who basically are dying) when governments decided that it is in our common interest to do so, and we put up substantial money towards that end.

more on this as we read, and welcome your thoughts

C28 and EDUN -- jesus at the mall

this from my colleague david w. miller: a new company called C28 that has as its mission to open christian stores in malls. they sell clothes and accessories aimed broadly at the adolescent and early adult market. one of their stores is here:

one of their key logo items is this:

notw stands for "not of this world." his aim: provide something hip but that expresses something rooted in christian ideals rather than wearing an ambercrombie or old navy or nike logo on one's shirt or hat or whatever. fine, sort of. i guess i'm more interested in subverting the whole marketing thing of 'i've got to have that latest cool thing' even if in this case it is a 'christian' thing. but does the label make something christian? what about jesus saying that the strict religious people of his day were white-washed on the outside but rotten on the inside? where are the clothes made? what is the profit structure of the company?

along these lines, it is worth noting that bono and his wife, ali, have started their own clothing line and it does not have hip christian symbols on it, exactly. the name of the brand, edun, is nude spelled backwards, and more importantly, I think, is very close to eden. bono has more than once said that it wasn't god who kicked us out of the garden of eden but we who kicked god out in a fit of adolescent hubris. we've screwed up ourselves, our relationships with others, and with the earth, but we can also by grace grow up and act differently. that is what edun is about. growing up as friends of god who wish to do something that changes the inequality between clothing producers and clothing consumers. this is deeply tied to bono's nonprofit organization data (debit, aids, trade. africa) that aims to highlight that poor african nations need fair trade as much as charity. here is a bit more info from the saks fifth avenue

anon and peace

Veggie Tales Faith as a Way of Life

so phil vischer did come, and did conquer yale divinity school with a fantastic lecture about humor, cultural change, and the christian faith today. I loved it, and we're going to post the whole talk on our website here (but it is not up yet). it is well worth the read.

basically, what was so interesting was his analysis of culture, including the cynical culture of the generation after the sixties, the generation of the high divorce rates and dislocation from mr rogers and beaver cleaver. that just was never reality for many in my generation (yes, phil and i were both born in 1966--only difference is i'm not funny. really.) our generation made everything a joke. until we had kids. then we had to find something real but not sacharine that we could pass along to them. something that was really hopeful, and that meant something that was real. and it had to be funny.

he did that with veggie tales. here is a teaser from his intro.

"VeggieTales is something that, on paper, makes no sense at all. It is a series of children’s videos where limbless, talking vegetables act out Bible stories.

Try raising money with that pitch.

It was created in a spare bedroom by a guy who got kicked out of Bible College after only 3 semesters - for failing chapel. A guy who had no money, no connections, and no idea what he was getting himself into.

And somehow, quite unexpectedly, it became not only the best-selling Christian direct-to-video series in history, but ultimately the best-selling direct-to-video series of any kind, with more than 40 million videos sold to date. In 1999 and 2000 VeggieTales videos outsold every other kids property in the world, including Barney, Pokemon and Scooby-Doo. Even last year, after 11 years in the market, VeggieTales was Warner Brothers’ top-selling kids video series.

But the VeggieTales phenomenon went beyond the sale of videos. Teenagers and college kids embraced Bob the Tomato and Larry the Cucumber. VeggieTales parties sprouted up on college campuses – first at Christian colleges, as you might predict, but then at places like the University of Michigan and Texas A&M.

A CNN poll found VeggieTales among the top-10 most-watched videos on college campuses nationwide. Larry the Cucumber T-shirts were sighted at dance clubs in downtown Chicago. And perhaps most astonishingly, VeggieTales was directly parodied in a 2-minute animated spoof on Saturday Night Live, and referenced in 3 different episodes of The Simpsons.

All of this might lead the casual observer to say, “What the heck?!?”

Well. Telling the complete story of VeggieTales would require much more time than we have before us tonight. Since this is Yale, I decided to craft a shorter version of the story, using very large words. Remembering though that I was kicked out of Bible College before I’d had a chance to learn many very large words, I concluded that my only remaining option was to tell the story simply, using simple words, and chance the consequences.

In the next 20-30 minutes I will focus in on the question I am asked most frequently: What made VeggieTales so successful? Many people who watch the videos would answer, “They’re so funny!” But there are many funny things in the world. SpongeBob is funny. South Park is funny. Saturday Night Live is funny. Jim Carrey is funny. Making people laugh doesn’t necessarily create societal impact or launch a phenomenon.

Others would say, “It’s the lessons. The great biblical teaching!” The lessons are certainly a part of it, but the majority of American kids under age 12 attend a religious service in any given week, and one would assume they’re getting “great biblical teaching” there as well. Yet Sunday School classes don’t seem to be launching cultural revolutions at a very prodigious rate.

So what is it? Well, my response would be that VeggieTales succeeded because of the humor and the teaching, but, more specifically, because of a certain style of humor and a certain style of teaching that, when taken together, met a huge untapped need for a generation whose own attitudes and worldview were in radical upheaval. In other words, it was the right thing in the right place at the right time. It was exactly what people didn’t know they were looking for."

thanks, phil, for the inspiration and for the encouragement as we at the yale center for faith & culture seek how to find our style of doing theology live.

anon, and +peace

blog birthday

happy birthday to my blog. hope you are enjoying the journey. here and here are my first posts one year ago today.

i love cheese cake and eat it for breakfast on my birthday. not today, but perhaps tomorrow, in honor of blogcito.

really, phil vischer is here

the big tomato is really here today. the previous engagement was snowed out.

more after his talk and dinner tonight.

i previously blogged about his visit here.

one of the most important editorials of our life time

sunday's new york times featured a really important, no, a life or death editorial. too often, the editorial page is mere ranting and insult trading, and sometimes rises to the thoughtful and inspiring. rarely has ink been split on this page, or the page of any newspaper, for as compelling an argument.

that argument is this, quoting the last paragraph:

"One hundred years ago, before we had the medical know-how to eradicate these illnesses, this might have been acceptable. But we are the first generation able to afford to end poverty and the diseases it spawns. It's past time we step up to the plate. We are all responsible for choosing to view the tsunami victims in Southeast Asia as more deserving of our help than the malaria victims in Africa. Jeffrey Sachs, the economist who heads the United Nations' Millennium Development Project to end global poverty, rightly takes issue with the press in his book "The End of Poverty": "Every morning," Mr. Sachs writes, "our newspapers could report, 'More than 20,000 people perished yesterday of extreme poverty.' "

So, on this page, we'd like to make a first step.

Yesterday, more than 20,000 people perished of extreme poverty."

And here is the book (due out in April from Penguin) we all need to "read, ponder, and inwardly digest" as martin luther was fond of saying, so that its argument moves us, individually and as a nation of unparelleled weath, to stand up and say, "thousands shall not die daily for preventable causes when we can prevent it."

(click for larger view)

a movement is growing that may have a chance--a real chance--to end poverty that literally crushes thousands daily.

anon, and +peace