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Movie Reviews

The Chorus (Les Choristes)

 

It's not a new plot idea. Kids languish in an orphanage. New teacher comes and gets them energized. There's no real plot surprise here, it's all in how it's done. And 'The Chorus' is done in such a way that makes it seem real and heart-warming at the same time.There's precious little sugarcoating. It's mostly struggle, and conflict, with just a few moments of tenderness to make it even bearable.

The music teacher Clement Mathieu (Gerard Tugnot) is admittedly depressed as he shuffles into the dilapidated-looking French boys' orphanage in 1949. He's failed at being a professional musician. It seems that nobody really wants to pay to listen to his music. He's put his compositions away, in a leather satchel, and hidden them in the closet of his bare room at the orphanage. Metal bunk bed, wooden dresser, straight chair. The only woman around is the maid, who is seen little and heard from even less. 

Editorials

Remember that you are dust

I walked down Grace Street in Richmond twenty years ago, and about two blocks away from St. Paul's Episcopal Church I began to see people with dirty foreheads: all sorts of people, some smartly dressed for work on their lunch hour, some rather shopworn and tired.  It wasn't until hours later that I realized that the source of the "dirt" was Ash Wednesday worship, so distant was this day in the liturgical calendar from my Presbyterian experience.  Now Presbyterian churches galore, including our own, have Ash Wednesday worship. We ministers smudge the foreheads of worshipers and say: "Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return."  

Book Reviews

Lliving on the Borders of Eternity

Living on the Borders of Eternity, by Robert Bluford, Jr.; Historic Polegreen Press: Mechanicsville, Va.; 500 pages, paperback. ISBN: 0-9754215-0-6,

 Cost: $24.95, shipping and handling included.

 

Here is a little quiz. Pick out the people who are not Presbyterian in this list: Andrew Jackson, Woodrow Wilson, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Ronald Reagan, John Foster Dulles, John C. Calhoun, John Witherspoon, John Glenn, Jimmy Stewart, Fred Rogers.

Voices

Lenten Prayer #1

Lent 1:  Genesis 2:15-3:7

Prayer after reading of the garden’s Keeper

 Maker:

for gardens and walls;

for Eden and our homes to the east;

for your talk with us and ours with you;

Voices

Water, water and more waater

The water that overwhelmed Indonesia, Sri Lanka, parts of India and Thailand, and killed thousands of people caught the attention of the world. The immensity of the tragedy was difficult to comprehend. The power and strength and force of the water were overwhelming.

Voices

World v. God: God’s Defense

What have people been saying about God and the Indian Ocean tsunami?  I have seen quite a few “Why did you let this happen, God?” articles, from both inside and outside the church. There is, of course, nothing wrong with such pieces: such accusatory questions have precedent, even in the Scriptures. To ask this question of God in a time like this is not an impiety, but an understandable longing to see more clearly in the often-murky pool that is human existence.

Voices

Lent Devotional #1 – The Temptation of Power

Reflections on Matthew 4:1-9, First Sunday in Lent

I am haunted by the story of the temptation of Jesus in the wilderness. So was the Russian novelist, Fyodor Dostoyevsky. Early in his novel, The Brothers Karamazov, Ivan tells Alyosha of a poem he has written he calls "The Grand Inquisitor." In the prose/poem Jesus returns to earth in human form, but it is not to Nazareth in Galilee. It is to Seville in Spain in the midst of the Spanish Inquisition of the 16th century.

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Davidson College Proposal

Davidson College Trustee By-laws Proposed Revision
by The Ad Hoc Committee of the Davidson College Board of Trustees
 September 21, 2004

ARTICLE I
Number, Election and Qualifications of Trustees

1.  The ownership, management and control of Davidson College are vested in the Trustees of the College, who shall be elected for a term of four years and in such manner that, as nearly as practicable, the Trustees will be composed of members elected as follows:

Editorials

Angles of Approach

We may look at the contributions of Shirley Guthrie to the Presbyterian Church, to the church catholic, to his students and colleagues, and to his family and friends from many angles. In the appreciative articles honoring him and his work, the Outlook, with the advice of his colleagues at Columbia Seminary, has represented those angles of approach to this profound thinker and teacher of great simplicity, who by God's grace (he would most certainly say) had a beneficent and transforming effect upon multitudes. Wherever his students preach and teach, Shirley's influence is spread to people in the pews, who themselves begin their own theological reflection -- even if they are shy to call it that.

Voices

Barth and Guthrie

Professor Edward Dowey occasionally remarked that Karl Barth’s theology “is a secret known only to God and a few seminary professors.” Dowey attributed the comment to Leonard Trinterud, who, along with Dowey, served on the committee that wrote The Confession of 1967, and in part the comment may reflect the resistance they both encountered in the church to the Barthian perspective in the confession.

Voices

Shirley Guthrie: Great theologian

Shirley Guthrie was, in my opinion, one of the great theologians produced by American Presbyterianism. He did not do the things that theologians often do to gain national and international fame. He did not, by saying things that had never been said before, found a “new school of theology” with its own distinctive label.

Voices

Remember Shirley Caperton Guthrie Jr.

“He taught us how to live and how to die.”
Charles Cousar

 

In early summer 2004, it became apparent to family and friends that Shirley Guthrie was not feeling well. He was having some digestive problems and had limited his eating to soup and light food in the hope that this would be of help.

Voices

Teacher to the end: A Student’s Remembrance of Shirley Guthrie

Those of us who entered seminary in the latter years of Shirley Guthrie’s career are grateful that this teacher never relinquished his passion for sharing his gift with the church. Already a professor emeritus by the time I entered Columbia Theological Seminary, Shirley gave little evidence that he had laid aside his calling to instruct.  Indeed, his beloved wife Vivian knew that, in many ways, the seminary classroom was his first home.

Voices

A tribute to Shirley C. Guthrie from a pastor and friend

In the fall of 1963, I entered Columbia Theological Seminary right after finishing Presbyterian College. Professor Felix Gear’s favorite phrase for us new students, “theological tadpoles,” was a compliment in my case.  Shirley Guthrie took me under his wing as he did for the other 100 new “tadpoles” who wanted to learn what it means to be a Reformed theologian.

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‘We Are Not Alone’: Church Life After A Disaster

After a hurricane, one of the first reactions is, "Look at this mess! Do something, fix it."  And a reaction that takes longer is, "I might not be able to fix this on my own after all."

In the months since Florida hit the four-fecta -- hammered by four hurricanes in just six weeks -- Presbyterians in the affected areas have learned some lessons. They have learned to measure progress by standing atop a highway overpass and counting how many blue tarps still are covering roofs. They understand what it means to an elderly church member when a Presbyterian comes knocking on the door -- if there is still a door -- to check on them and find out what they need.

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Tsunami aftermath: God’s people respond

The news is shocking. Entire families swept away, villages devastated. One person surviving, the person standing a step away washed to sea. Parents feeling their children ripped from their arms by the force of the wave. Families with no certainty and no bodies to bury. A priest one minute distributing Communion during worship, the next telling parishioners to run.

And what lies ahead? Starvation, grief, homelessness, disease.

Editorials

Tsunami: Humankind as Job

Harrowing images assail us; newspaper reports tell of mega death, miraculous rescue, fragile hope. The peoples of earth offer assistance to nations devastated by earthquake and wave. No one asks how such a thing could happen in a world created by God. 

We live with the uneasy assurance of science that unstable tectonic plates produced an earthquake eight times more powerful than the explosion of a hydrogen bomb.  Yet what do we say about the Creator of the rolling spheres, and of the roiling deadly seas.  

           Therefore we will not fear though the earth should change,
           Though the mountains shake in the heart of the sea;
           Though its waters roar and foam,
           Though the mountains tremble with its tumult. (Psalm 46:2 -- 3)

Book Reviews

The Reformation: A History

The Reformation: A History, by Diarmaid MacCulloch, Viking, 2003. 700 pages

When I picked up McCulloch's magisterial history of the Reformation, I thought perhaps I would spend a couple of hours dipping into it. I was in for a surprise. This large work of nearly 700 pages became almost an obsession for me as I engaged in a dialogue with this British theologian who has given us a passionate and opinion-filled discussion of the events we call the Reformation.

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When Lightning Strikes

Local television and radio stations across the width of New York State issued warnings of a series of rolling thunderstorms approaching the area. Some of them might be severe, the announcers said, possibly with tornado force gales. Just after 8 p.m. lightning hit the walls of the sanctuary of First Church of Pittsford, producing a blast like a freight train driving full speed into a depot at the end of the line.

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ACSWP, PC(USA) “reconciling letters” on Hezbollah trip

After keeping silent since their return from a controversial trip to the Middle East this fall, some members of the Advisory Committee on Social Witness Policy have released a letter -- and, in turn, received one from top leaders of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.).

The exchange of letters -- and of a summary of "highlights" from the October 14-31 fact-finding trip, which included a meeting with the leaders of Hezbollah, a group the U.S. State Department has identified as a terrorist organization -- includes both an explanation for the Hezbollah meeting and some acknowledgment of regrets.

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Reconciliation in Middle East and in denomination; letters report review ACSWP trip

Several weeks of intense dialogue between Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) leaders and members of an Advisory Committee on Social Witness Policy (ACSWP)-led delegation that held a controversial mid-October meeting with Hezbollah officials in southern Lebanon has culminated in an exchange of letters.

A joint statement to the Presbyterian News Service on in mid-December included the two letters and a brief report of the delegation's Oct. 14--31 visit, which included stops in Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Israel/Palestine and Egypt. The Oct. 17 meeting between the Middle East "fact-finding" delegation and leaders of Hezbollah -- which is on the U.S. government's list of terrorist organizations -- created a deluge of protests from numerous Jewish groups and Presbyterians around the country. The meeting was widely televised on Arab networks.

Editorials

Dr. King and The Outlook

It is fitting for The Presbyterian Outlook to salute the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday by remembering what tireless advocates Dr. E. T. Thompson and Rev. Aubrey Brown were for racial integration and justice.  (Thompson was the Outlook's first editor and professor of church history at Union Seminary in Virginia; Brown was editor from the 1940's to the 1970's.)  This paper stood tall on these matters when such beliefs were dangerous to espouse.  

When Thompson was tried for heresy in Mecklenburg (now Charlotte) Presbytery, everyone understood that the sub-texts of that trial, ostensibly about the faithful interpretation of Scripture, were his positions on integration and ethics. Because of the malign interweaving of biblical inerrancy with segregation in the South, people who agreed with Thompson and Brown were labeled communists by fundamentalist Presbyterians.

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