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Miniature from a Book of Hours: The Pentecost, Jean Poyet, c. 1500 https://t.co/pOF2aXd8CS #cmaopenaccess #MedievalArt pic.twitter.com/putKu9ooAL

— CMA: Medieval Art (@cma_medieval) June 6, 2020

Following a week of record breaking coronavirus case counts, the South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control identified 542 more people infected with the virus, they said Monday.

The announcement marks a new single-day high in reported cases, the third time in four days that the state has broken that record.

“This comes after a week in which we reported the highest numbers in cases that we’ve seen yet,” DHEC’s Dr. Brannon Traxler said.

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Each day, DHEC releases more data about the #coronavirus. Since Friday, SC has reported over 1,000 positive cases. Check out this map for a break down. https://t.co/NbFpTLygOi

— The State Newspaper (@thestate) June 8, 2020

The very least we can do is make a concerted effort to legitimize the pain and anger of African Americans, while defending the constitutionally protected right to protest. But this must also be paired with an unconditional condemnation of looting, stealing, smashing, burning, and destroying lives and property — none of which is protest, and all of which will succeed only in further rending the social fabric while giving would-be authoritarians pretext to crack down in the name of the public good.

If that much proves impossible for us to manage, we will have failed. And in that failure, we will have demonstrated before the world that we did all of this to ourselves.

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The complicated reality of America’s unrest, from @DamonLinker:https://t.co/8AUZ4DI7wI

— The Week (@TheWeek) June 6, 2020

Inasmuch as there are canonical texts of American education, Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World is one of them. But students may wonder why their teacher presents as “dystopian” a text that reads, in 2020, like an operating manual for the technocratic American Dream. The taming of reproduction and heredity by science; the banishment of boredom, discomfort, and sorrow by entertainment and pharmacology; the omnipresent availability of attachment-free sex; the defeat of death, sort of, by blissed-out euthanasia: Huxley foresaw not our fears but some of our deepest aspirations.

To read and teach Brave New World as dystopia is at best an oblivious atavism, at worst a piece of deluded self-flattery. As a character (not even an especially bright one) observes in Michel Houellebecq’s The Elementary Particles (1998), “Everyone says Brave New World is supposed to be a totalitarian nightmare, a vicious indictment of society, but that’s hypocritical bullshit.” The only thing Huxley got wrong, the character adds, is society’s acceptance of genetic caste stratification. In reality, we expect “advances in automation and robotics” to render such attine division of labor as obsolete as the sundial, the cotton gin, and the dot matrix printer.

It’s easy to look back at Huxley’s novel and attribute the radiant, meaningless future toward which it so fearfully looked as the realization of the dreams of scientists — including Huxley’s own brother, the eugenicist Julian Huxley — with their Promethean curiosity and procrustean “solutions.” But Huxley fretted about the machinations of industry as much as he did about scientists: Brave New World is peppered with the surnames of Henry Ford, Sir Alfred Mond, and Maurice Bokanowski. Huxley seemed convinced that when the last irregularity was removed from the human condition, and the last inconvenience stripped from the human experience, it would be scientists’ and industrialists’ hands wielding the plane. But where the scientists pursue knowledge for its own sake, or in service of the good as they see it, the tech titans pursue it the better to sell us what we want. How well the would-be Aldous Huxleys of our day understand that — and how much blame they place on us and our appetites — is the subject of this essay.

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Since you’re already thinking about our dystopian future, why not think about me thinking about our dystopian future? Special bonus audio track! https://t.co/sDTbtEsvYV

— Stefan Beck (@stefanmbeck) March 12, 2020

We remember that throughout Scripture, God shows particular care for those who are most vulnerable, he commands authorities to be characterized by righteousness and justice, and he holds nations accountable for how they treat the least powerful groups and persons in their societies.

We recognize the pervasiveness of sin, we acknowledge that the bloody history of racially motivated violence in the United States continues to this day, we denounce any doctrine of racial superiority, and we join the many calls for systemic change in a nation that has often failed to uphold God’s vision of justice and has persistently worked against people of color. We pray that local officials will exercise their authority to pursue justice for Mr. Arbery, Ms. Taylor, Mr. Floyd, and countless others whose stories have been neglected.

We repent of the ways that we as Christians have far too often failed to adequately stand against the evil of racism and violence: diminishing its severity, averting our gazes, and even perpetuating such injustice deliberately or complicitly.

We realize that for many of our brothers and sisters, the revelation of these deaths is but another reminder of an everyday reality, and that even now as we lament the loss of these lives, many others are overlooked while being subjected to cruelty and death due to the color of their skin. Even still, we remember that ​“nothing is covered up that will not be revealed, or hidden that will not be known.”

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In little more than ten years St. Paul established the Church in four provinces of the Empire, Galatia, Macedonia, Achaia and Asia. Before AD 47 there were no churches in these provinces; in AD 57 St. Paul could speak as if his work there was done, and could plan extensive tours into the far west without anxiety lest the churches which he had founded might perish in his absence for want of his guidance and support.

The work of the Apostle during these ten years can therefore be treated as a unity. Whatever assistance he may have received from the preaching of others, it is unquestioned that the establishment of the churches in these provinces was really his work. In the pages of the New Testament he, and he alone, stands forth as their founder. And the work which he did was really a completed work. So far as the foundation of the churches is concerned, it is perfectly clear that the writer of the Acts intends to represent St. Paul’s work as complete. The churches were really established. Whatever disasters fell upon them in later years, whatever failure there was, whatever ruin, that failure was not due to any insufficiency or lack of care and completeness in the Apostle’s teaching or organization. When he left them he left them because his work was fully accomplished.

This is truly an astonishing fact. That churches should be founded so rapidly, so securely, seems to us today, accustomed to the difficulties, the uncertainties, the failures, the disastrous relapses of our own missionary work, almost incredible. Many missionaries in later days have received a larger number of converts than St. Paul; many have preached over a wider area than he; but none have so established churches. We have long forgotten that such things could be. We have long accustomed ourselves to accept it as an axiom of missionary work that converts in a new country must be submitted to a very long probation and training, extending over generations before they can be expected to be able to stand alone. Today if a man ventures to suggest that there may be something in the methods by which St. Paul attained such wonderful results worthy of our careful attention, and perhaps of our imitation, he is in danger of being accused of revolutionary tendencies.

–Roland Allen, Missionary Methods: St. Paul’s or Ours; A Study of The Church In The Four Provinces, Chapter One

“A man does not need to know much to lay hold on Christ. St. Paul began with simplicity and brevity.”
-Roland Allen pic.twitter.com/sKNHXmPYQq

— Philip Nation (@philipnation) September 5, 2018

George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four was first published #OnThisDay in 1949.

The idea for the book had come to him in 1943. Themes in an early outline included 'the nightmare feeling caused by the disappearance of objective truth'.https://t.co/RaNNcUkD6j

— History Today (@HistoryToday) June 8, 2020

Almighty God, by whose Spirit the Scriptures were opened to thy servant Roland Allen, so that he might lead many to know, live and proclaim the Gospel of Jesus Christ: Give us grace to follow his example, that the variety of those to whom we reach out in love may receive thy saving Word and witness in their own languages and cultures to thy glorious Name; through Jesus Christ, thy Word made flesh, who livest and reignest with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

Prepare for our 2019 theme of Missional Ecclesiology by reading the works of renowned missiologist Roland Allen. https://t.co/ooybDZd4VF pic.twitter.com/YNHu2CgwBm

— The Telos Collective (@TelosCollective) July 31, 2018

O Lord God Almighty, eternal, immortal, invisible, the mysteries of whose being are unsearchable: Accept, we beseech thee, our praises for the revelation which thou hast made of thyself, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, three persons, and one God; and mercifully grant that ever holding fast this faith we may magnify thy glorious name; who livest and reignest, one God, world without end.

The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the holy Spirit be with all of you. 2Cor13:13 #TrinitySunday pic.twitter.com/Z0JPQqdoJn

— Tom (@1207go) June 11, 2017

When I am afraid, I put my trust in thee. In God, whose word I praise, in God I trust without a fear. What can flesh do to me?

–Psalm 56:3-4