Category Archives: Culture

Benny Hinn has a deal for you

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benny-hinn-website.jpgThe last time we checked in on televangelist Benny Hinn, he was having a snit with the Nigerian hosts for one of his crusades and fighting with the IRS. Recently, Hinn has been in the news again as the subject of this NBC Dateline piece regarding Hinn’s rather lavish lifestyle and tastes that are, might we say, a tad alien to Christ’s message of sacrificial atonement upon which his business, . . uh, I mean, “ministry” is based.
A $10-million, 7,000 sq. ft. home, $112,000 per month for a private jet, a couple of $80,000 cars, luxury hotel rooms that are 5,400 sq. ft. at $10,800 per night for a “layover.” At least Hinn is generous with his tips, which totaled over $4,500 during a recent three-day period. A salary of half a million to a million dollars per year–plus book royalties. Business, . . . er, I mean the ministry is good, eh?
At any rate, Hinn has now decided that the lease payments for his corporate jet are a tad steep, so he wants to acquire a corporate jet, which he has already named “Dove One.” Hinn is ramping up his money-raising machinery to pay for his new toy, and for a mere $1,000 “donation,” here’s what Hinn promises:

You will receive a beautiful art-quality model of Dove One for your desk or mantle as a constant reminder that you are a vital part of this last-days harvest for souls.
Your name will be placed prominently in a special area of Dove One where I study and pray during my travels, where I will also pray for you and your family as I go around the world preaching the Gospel. Everywhere I fly, your name will travel with me, millions of miles and for years to come, reminding me that you have made it possible for me to go and preach as God has called me to do.

What a deal! ;^)

The story of the open road

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80r.gifAs many of us get ready to hit the road over the holiday weekend, Ralph Bennett in this TCS Daily article provides an excellent overview of the birth of the nation’s Interstate Highway System during the Eisenhower Administration. We tend to take the system for granted these days, but it is truly an engineering and economic marvel that is one of our many blessings for which we will give thanks this holiday weekend.

Politics and the Evangelicals

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Ted_Haggard_(ROAE)3.jpgThis NY Times article reports on the how Ted Haggard‘s evangelical church dealt with the termination and succession issues in the large Colorado church that Haggard had started and had become identified with him. The article concludes that the church ultimately handled the termination and succession reasonably well, although it appears that warning signs regarding Haggard’s behaviour went largely unheeded among church leaders before his public meltdown.
But the more interesting analysis of the current state of the Evangelical movement is contained in this Ben Witherington post, which includes these following observations regarding the dubious political allegiance between Evangelicals and certain elements of the Republican Party:

[T]he alliance between Evangelicals and the hard line conservatives in the Republican party has made it difficult for many Evangelicals to see the difference in our time between being a Christian and being an American, and in particular being a certain kind of an Americanónamely a Republican. The problem is that this reflects a certain kind of mental ghettoizing of the Gospel, a blunting of its prophetic voice on issues ranging from war to poverty, and sometimes this even comes with the not so subtle suggestion that to be un-American (defined as being opposed to certain key Republican credo items) is to be un-Christian. But Christianity must and does transcend any particular cultural expression of itself, otherwise we have the cultural captivity of the Gospel which leads to a form of idolatry. It is one thing to sing ëmy country tis of Theeí, its another thing to have a bunker mentality which makes our countries ills hard to define and our flaws even harder to critique and correct. [. . .]

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A Good Football Coach Steps Away from a Coaching Graveyard

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Dan McCarney.jpgDan McCarney, the “dean” of the Big 12 Conference football coaches, resigned under pressure on Wednesday as head football coach at Iowa State University after 12 seasons.

The announcement barely made a blip in the local Houston media, but Coach Mac’s resignation highlighted many aspects of the troubling direction of major college football.

I am biased about Coach McCarney, who is called Coach Mac by most everyone. As regular readers of this blog know, Coach Mac and I have been friends since growing up together in Iowa City, Iowa, where we played together on City High School’s championship football team in 1970.

I moved to Houston with my family shortly after finishing high school and Mac went on to play football at the University of Iowa in Iowa City, but we remained in contact over the years as I went to law school and began a legal career in Houston and Mac went on to the Iowa coaching staff after graduating from undergraduate school.

When Hayden Fry was hired to revive the downtrodden Iowa program in 1979, Coach Mac was one of the only coaches who Coach Fry retained from the previous coaching staff.

As with most of Coach Fry’s personnel decisions, retaining Coach Mac was a good one.

For the following decade, Coach Mac was a part of an extraordinary Iowa coaching staff that not only revived Iowa’s football fortunes, but also produced such outstanding head coaches as Wisconsin’s Barry Alvarez, Oklahoma’s Bob Stoops, Kansas State’s Bill Snyder, Iowa’s Kirk Ferentz and South Florida’s Jim Leavitt.

In 1990, Coach Mac followed Alvarez to Wisconsin, where they took over a 2-9 Badger program and, by 1993, had the team winning the Big Ten Conference championship with a 10-1-1 record, which included a Rose Bowl victory over UCLA.

The next year, Iowa State came calling for Coach Mac and the native Iowan was off to Ames for his first head coaching job.

Over the years, Mac and I have laughed many times about the fact that neither of us really had a clue of what he was getting into at Iowa State. We both knew that the university had long been a coaching graveyard and had eeked out a barely-winning record only a couple of times in the previous 15 years.

Ames is nice little college town, but it is in north central Iowa, pretty much in the middle of nowhere in the opinion of most good college football players. As a result, the football program has always struggled to attract good football prospects, who usually have sexier alternatives to living in central Iowa for four years.

The physical facilities of Iowa State’s football program were poor and the entire football budget at the time was just over $3 million, which was by far the smallest of any public school in the then newly-constituted Big 12 Conference that included such far better-funded programs as Texas, Texas A&M, Oklahoma, and Nebraska, just to name a few.

To make matters worse, Iowa State was a clear second fiddle in the state of Iowa to the University of Iowa, which has a far superior football tradition and an athletic budget more than twice as large as Iowa State’s.

Most folks assume that Kansas State was the toughest head coaching job in the United States before Bill Snyder resurrected it in the 1990’s, but I think a good case can be made that the Iowa State job was even more difficult before Coach Mac took over.

To Mac and Iowa State’s credit, they agreed at the outset that turning Iowa State’s program around was going to be a long-term project. As he did at Iowa and Wisconsin, Mac literally threw himself into the job of rebuilding the Cyclone football program, taking on any speaking engagement and going anywhere to promote Iowa State and its athletic teams.

An outstanding recruiter, Mac and his coaching staff began to expand Iowa State’s traditional Midwestern recruiting base to such football hotbeds as Texas, Florida and California. Mac began to challenge Iowa’s traditional toehold on the best recruits in the state of Iowa.

The progress was slow, though — Mac’s teams lost 42 or their 57 games during his first five seasons.

However, by the 2000 season, Mac and his staff had built a solid foundation for the program. Behind QB Sage Rosenfels (yes, the Texans’ backup QB), Iowa State went 9-3 during that season and won the university’s first post-season bowl game in the university’s 108-year football history (over Pitt in the Insight.com Bowl in Tucson).

That started a 40 game run where Mac’s teams were 25-15, a remarkable feat considering that Iowa State was competing in the brutally-tough Big 12 Conference and playing cross-state rival Iowa each season (Mac’s teams won six of their last nine games against their in-state rival).

By the 2004 and 2005 seasons, Coach Mac had his teams on the cusp of the Big 12 North Division title both seasons only to lose them in an agonizingly close final games in each season.

Nevertheless, after Iowa State had gone to only four bowl games in its history before Coach Mac’s tenure, Mac took the Cyclones to five bowl games in six years, winning two of them. Coming into the 2006 season, optimism was high that the Cyclones would again contend for the Big 12 North Division championship and go to yet another bowl game.

Alas, the 2006 season did not turn out as planned.

First, the Cyclones faced one of the toughest schedules in the country, including an initial stretch of Big 12 games at Texas, at home against Nebraska, at Oklahoma and at home against Texas Tech. Iowa State lost all four and were battered in the process, losing six senior starters to season-ending injury.

Lack of depth is a chronic problem at a place such as Iowa State, so a thin and deflated Cyclone team was smoked over the past two weeks by mediocre Kansas State and Kansas teams. That brought out the “what have you done for me lately” crowd in full force, many of whom were calling on Iowa State to fire Coach Mac despite the fact that few of them have any idea how difficult it is to win consistently at the top levels of major college football.

Suddenly, a little over a year after one of Mac’s best wins as a coach, Mac concluded it was not right for him to become a divisive issue for the university. Understanding Spike Dykes‘ advice that “you lose 10% of your support each season” as a college football coach, Mac understood that he was 20% in the hole at Iowa State based on that formula.

So, Coach Mac elected to resign as head football coach at Iowa State, a difficult job that he would have gladly continued to perform for the rest of his coaching days.

Take a moment to watch his performance during the press conference (click the video camera icon on the left side of the page) to announce his resignation — Mac exudes the class and passion with which he handled all of his duties at Iowa State. In this age of cold-hearted and businesslike coaches who are constantly posturing for the “better” job, it is refreshing to watch someone such as Mac, who wears his big heart and humanity on his sleeve.

Thus, 12 years after arriving at Iowa State, Mac leaves the football program in far better shape than he found it.

The football budget has quadrupled in size under Mac, but it remains the smallest of any public institution in the Big 12 Conference (Texas and A&M’s football budgets are at least 4 to 5 times larger than Iowa State’s). Mac worked behind the scenes continually to improve Iowa State’s facilities and they have improved substantially during his time there.

However, Cyclone athletic department officials are now attempting to raise another $135 million for facilities upgrades in an effort to keep up with the seemingly endless arms race of major college football. In one of the more bizarre aspects of Mac’s resignation, that imminent capital funds campaign was one of the key pressure points that prompted the resignation of the best fundraiser in the history of the Cyclone football program. So it goes in trying to keep up with the Joneses in the wacky world of college football.

After coaching the Iowa State team in its final two games this season, Mac will kick back for a few days, but then I suspect that he will back out looking for another opportunity. His motor is always running and he has a passionate love for coaching. Inasmuch as Mac is widely popular among his fellow coaches, I am confident that he will land on his feet.

However, I am not so sure about Iowa State. The institution is caught in the proverbial rat race of attempting to compete with far-better funded programs and the gap between Iowa State’s resources and those of programs such as Texas and A&M are likely to get even larger. The pressure of that competition has now prompted Iowa State’s administration to take what appears to be a huge risk that the program will decline from the solid foundation that Mac painstakingly built over the past 12 years.

Does Iowa State think that it is going to hire someone who will magically recruit better athletes to Ames than Mac? That’s highly doubtful as Mac is one of the best recruiters in the business and Ames is always going to be a difficult sell to all but a few of the best football prospects.

Does the institution think that it is going to hire someone who will coach better than Mac? Maybe, but Mac is a pretty darn good coach and how many more wins does Iowa State really believe it can achieve through slightly better coaching methods? And even Iowa State officials readily concede that it is highly unlikely that they will ever be able to find someone who can match Mac’s tireless enthusiasm for promoting the institution and the football program.

The bottom line is that seasons such as the one that the Cyclones and Mac are enduring this season are inevitable at a program such as Iowa State’s. That is one of the costs of attempting to compete with limited resources at the highest level of major college football.

That’s not a particularly pleasant reality, but it’s dubious decision-making to take big risks based on an emotional reaction to a disappointing result that is inevitable. That appears to be precisely what Iowa State is doing in letting Mac get away. Wouldn’t embracing a good coach who understands the institution’s limitations and has competed effectively in spite of them be far less risky and much more likely to result in continued success?

Ironically, the Cyclone family now finds itself looking for a new head coach who has the depth and characteristics of . . . well, Dan McCarney. Iowa State will be extremely fortunate if they find one.

They play for keeps at the Country Music Awards Show

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faith_shock.jpgOne does get the impression from the video below that country-music singer Faith Hill does not believe that former American Idol Carrie Underwood should have received the Best Female Country Singer Award at Monday Night’s Country Music Awards Show in Nashville.
The Hill-McGraw public relations machine was in full gear afterward.

Troubles in the pulpit

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pulpit.jpgIt was not a good week in the church business last week.
First, as this Findlaw article reports, the Baptist General Convention of Texas is trying to figure out what happened to $1.3 million that was raised to help start hundreds of churches in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas. Apparently, three pastors reported that they had started 258 churches in the Valley over the past decade, but only “five to 10” of those churches actually exist. Yup, those things happen even in the pulpit, folks.
Meanwhile, the Ted Haggard affair moved into the mainstream of the pre-election gamesmanship while distracting most from the real issue, which is the risk of elevating personality over worship within the megachurch movement in the U.S. (Ben Witherington has insightful comments on that issue here). The Richard Dawkins interview of Haggard below reveals that Haggard is indeed wound pretty tight, but my sense is that Dawkins does not come off looking any better than Haggard. I mean really. Why should Dawkins care that Haggard or his ilk talks to people about what Dawkins considers to be myths? Nobody is forcing these folks to go to church and it’s not as if Dawkins suffers from a lack of forums in which to express his views. In that regard, here are the letters that Haggard and his wife Gayle wrote to the New Life Church congregation upon his removal from the church and which were read to the congregation yesterday. Gayle’s letter includes the following observation, which is pretty remarkable under the circumstances:

For those of you who have been concerned that my marriage was so perfect I could not possibly relate to the women who are facing great difficulties, know that this will never again be the case.

Finally, from a far different and more civil time, Ann Althouse brings us this very clever interview between Woody Allen and Billy Graham. I particularly enjoyed Allen’s answer to the question from the audience on his worst sin. Don’t miss it.

A Wonder of West Texas

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balmorhea_hlarge_9a.hlarge.jpgThe New York Times discovers one of the many remarkable features of Texas — the oasis in the West Texas desert known as Balmorhea. 200 miles from El Paso near Pecos, Balmorhea has a remarkable 3.5 million gallon, spring-fed pool that supports a varied aquatic ecosystem, including tiny tetra fish, huge catfish and rare pupfish. Scuba divers say that the water clarity is unparalleled, but the remote location of the park means that the park is never crowded. Read the entire article and learn about one of Texas’ treasures that even many Texans know nothing about.

A fascinating peek at the descent into Alzheimerís

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William Utermohlen.jpgWhen he learned in 1995 that he had Alzheimerís disease, William Utermohlen, an American artist based in London, began his final project — drawing self-portraits during his descent into dementia and ultimately Alzheimer’s. This NY Times article reports that Utermohlen’s work is being exhibited this week by the Alzheimer’s Association at the New York Academy of Medicine in Manhattan:

The paintings starkly reveal the artistís descent into dementia, as his world began to tilt, perspectives flattened and details melted away. His wife and his doctors said he seemed aware at times that technical flaws had crept into his work, but he could not figure out how to correct them.
ìThe spatial sense kept slipping, and I think he knew,î Professor [Patricia] Utermohlen [William Utermohlen’s wife] said. A psychoanalyst wrote that the paintings depicted sadness, anxiety, resignation and feelings of feebleness and shame. [. . .]
Mr. Utermohlen, 73, is now in a nursing home. He no longer paints.
His work has been exhibited in several cities, and more shows are planned. The interest in his paintings as a chronicle of illness is bittersweet, his wife said, because it has outstripped the recognition he received even at the height of his career.

Colleen Carroll Campbell, who has written extensively about Alzheimer’s, observes that the disease “embodies everything we fear most about aging — weakness and dependence, humiliation and oblivion.” Nearly half of Americans over the age of 35 know someone personally who is at some stage of dementia, and as Americans are living longer, Alzheimer’s is claiming more victims. About 4.5 million Americans suffer from Alzheimer’s today, which is more than double the number who had the disease just 25 years ago. Utermohlen’s paintings provide us with an important perspective on this insidious disease as we confront the difficult issues that result from it.

The Amish Way

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amish.jpgThe first two paragraphs of Rod Dreher’s op-ed in the Dallas Morning News says it all:

Is there any place on earth that more bespeaks peace, restfulness and sanctuary from the demons of modern life than a one-room Amish schoolhouse? That fact is no doubt why so many of us felt so defiled ñ there is no more precise word ñ by news of the mass murders that took place there this week. If you’re not safe in an Amish schoolhouse … And yet, as unspeakable as those killings were, they were not the most shocking news to come out of Lancaster County this week.
No, that would be the revelation that the Amish community, which buried five of its little girls this week, is collecting money to help the widow and children of Charles Carl Roberts IV, the man who executed their own children before taking his own life. A serene Amish midwife told NBC News on Tuesday that this is normal for them. It’s what Jesus would have them do.

Read the entire piece. What a magnificent expression of true faith.

Garrison Keillor’s Dallas adventure

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garrison-keillor.jpgWell, it doesn’t look as if Garrison Keillor will be placing Dallas on his travel itinerary again anytime soon.
According to this Jacquielynn Floyd/Dallas Morning News column, the author, humorist, syndicated columnist and creator of National Public Radio’s venerable Prairie Home Companion show visited Dallas a week ago to promote his latest book, Homegrown Democrat. Highland Park United Methodist Church near the Southern Methodist University campus sponsored Keillor’s visit, and over 1,000 of Keillor’s adoring fans showed up for his hour-long lecture. The evening apparently went quite well — the audience laughed and applauded throughout Keillor’s talk and he even stuck around afterward to chat and sign a few copies of his book.
But Keillor apparently had a different view of how his trip to Dallas went. The following is what he wrote at the end of his Chicago Tribune column this week:

. . . our country has taken a step toward totalitarianism. If the government can round up someone and never be required to explain why, then it’s no longer the United States as you and I always understood it. Our enemies have succeeded beyond their wildest dreams. They have made us become like them.
I got some insight last week into who supports torture when I went down to Dallas to speak at Highland Park Methodist Church. It was spooky. I walked in, was met by two burly security men with walkie-talkies, and within 10 minutes was told by three people that this was the Bushes’ church and that it would be better if I didn’t talk about politics. I was there on a book tour for “Homegrown Democrat,” but they thought it better if I didn’t mention it. So I tried to make light of it: I told the audience, “I don’t need to talk politics. I have no need even to be interested in politics–I’m a citizen, I have plenty of money and my grandsons are at least 12 years away from being eligible for military service.” And the audience applauded! Those were their sentiments exactly. We’ve got ours, and who cares?
The Methodists of Dallas can be fairly sure that none of them will be snatched off the streets, flown to Guantanamo Bay, stripped naked, forced to stand for 48 hours in a freezing room with deafening noise. So why should they worry? It’s only the Jews who are in danger, and the homosexuals and gypsies. The Christians are doing fine. If you can’t trust a Methodist with absolute power to arrest people and not have to say why, then whom can you trust?

Dallas Methodists are the same as German appeasers of Nazi genocide? As Floyd’s column relates, Keillor is probably at least exaggerating about what occurred during his visit.