Half-Way Covenant

Half-Way Covenant: Conceived by New England Puritans in 1662 as a means to incorporate partial church membership, the Half-Way Covenant offered a viable alternative for congregants to participate in ecclesiastic circles without having had an authentic "conversion experience." Reverend Solomon Stoddard advocated this doctrine in order to extend the church's influence throughout the Puritan community, which was becoming evermore impious due to the growing commercialization of New England in the late seventeenth century. The central problem, however, rested with the third generation of Puritan settlers, whose religious affinities seemed increasingly aloof. Less parishioners received baptism, and thus, the rights to exercise the church's fundamental dogma. Therefore, ministers preached warnings of moral decay, otherwise known as "jeremiads" after the ancient Hebrew prophet Jeremiah, as a great fear of societal declension swept through the colony. Often cited as one of the first religious crises in early America, the controversy surrounding the Half-Way Covenant served as a precursor to the First Great Awakening, which entailed Reverend Jonathan Edwards delivering his notorious Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God sermon in 1741.

How Racial Slavery Spawned Racism

How Racial Slavery Spawned Racism: It seems logical to assert that racial slavery spawned racism. Yet as the "peculiar institution" of racial slavery solidified in America between the 18th and 19th centuries, the ideology of racism grew to substantiate the cheap labor demands of Southern planters like Landon Carter. In American Slavery, American Freedom (1975), historian Edmund Morgan argued that colonial Virginia initiated the first laws to suppress free blacks. Indeed, slavery had existed for thousands of years prior to the founding of America. In the Old World, it mainly centered on prisoners of war and basic criminals while in the New World, it became racialized. Historian Winthrop Jordan claimed that racial slavery was only about 150 years old by the time it reached colonial Virginia in 1619. And it was after Nathaniel Bacon's infamous rebellion in 1676 that Virginia planters largely went from holding white indentured servants to driving black slaves. But race was not necessarily their primary motivation in making that transition. In fact, it was their deeply-rooted beliefs in protecting property rights that brought about this act. To colonial Virginians, the threat posed by landless whites proved more pernicious than that of enslaved blacks. Ultimately, as historian Oscar Handlin contended, the aura of inferiority that surrounded American slavery in the South had less to do with one's race and more to do with one's status as a slave.

Against Boredom

Against Boredom: Amen, amen, I say to you. For what would Christ do? Would He save you from becoming one of the dead? Perhaps that is all in your head! Maybe it is better to focus on this life. Of course, you could always end it with a knife. As Nietzsche once wrote, "Against boredom, even gods struggle in vain." It's that feeling when everything becomes one and the same. Is not Christian love the product of fear? That question will certainly provoke a sneer. The image of Christ on the Cross surely proves that question wrong. And it even makes the laundry list of complaints by atheists not-so-long. Yet whenever I look at my watch, I see my life slipping away. I hope I do not expire today. But there is one thing I would like to do before I go. And that is simply to take it slow. With one life to live, unless you are a Hindu. It can very easily turn into absolute poo. Yet I cannot afford to let that take place. For if I do, I will be on my way to Hell with great haste.

The Daft Punk Story

The Daft Punk Story: As an electronic music duo from Paris, France, Daft Punk has certainly pushed the limits of the electronica genre to new heights. Thomas Bangalter and Guy Christo have taken elements of older electronic groups such as Kraftwerk and Tangerine Dream, and given them a wholly postmodern feel. Like Kraftwerk, Daft Punk sees an explicit connection between electronic music and robots. As a result, Bangalter and Christo frequently dress as robots in their music videos and during live performances. The atmosphere that stems from such antics is very conducive to the deliberate nature of their music. In fact, most of Daft Punk's songs follow a pattern of progression and regression that seeks to invigorate the technologically-oriented minds of their fan base. For instance, the song "Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger," which is on display in the above video, has a musical score littered with crescendos, decrescendos, and repetition symbols. In short, it is this kind of musical notation that defines the electronic genre today.

Christianity and Communism

Christianity and Communism: One of Christianity's major tenets emphasizes the inherent sacredness and equality of a community. Whenever people gather in the name of Christ, He is present. This divine sacrality merits attention insofar as Christians comprehend the full implications of what they worship. Take the archetypal image of the Last Supper, for example. It highlights equality in a communal setting, as God Himself is effectively on the same level as His disciples. And in doing so, it lends itself to an ideology like communism, which understands the civic virtue of a community in a more secular, albeit atheistic, fashion. An image of the Soviet Politburo could just as easily be superimposed over the Last Supper. Given that Christianity is fundamentally antagonistic toward socio-economic hierarchies, it is essentially analogous to the classless society that communism endorses. In fact, Christianity, as an agent of inversion, seeks to level all hierarchical orders that inevitably rise from social constructions of knowledge like gender, race, and class. The True Levellers, who assumed their name from a passage in Acts of the Apostles, were a prominent social group during the English Civil War that called for a leveling of the property distinctions in England, which they perceived as the root of all class consciousness. This kind of thinking found its way into separatist Christian sects such as the Pilgrims. When they conceived of their Plymouth Colony in America through the Mayflower Compact, the Pilgrims understood the necessity for equalizing social conditions among members in their community. The dire circumstances that befell them in early America forced the Pilgrims to put aside their petty differences and bind together in a collective effort to survive. The problem is, of course, communism ceases to function as a workable ideology in a society driven largely by notions of private property and individualism.