Days 10,11 and 12 - Shouting, nosehair, snoring, bums and lost internet connections
well, this is going to be an interesting weblog to write, mainly because the internet connection at the school is now down for everyone, so i am typing [if that is what you can call it] from an internet phone booth. Talk about your different experiences...here I am in a phone booth, waiting for my bus, typing on this metallic keypad that gives the feel of an old telegraph machine. Ah, the wonders of our age. Okay, lots to catch up on.
When last we were together, I was still in the middle of the conference?
I learned a great deal about the British way of shouting down your opponents. This first is to treat their paper they just presented, one which presumably they have spent hours upon and which they have sought to present some aspect of God as an act of worship as the rough equivalent of Russian toilet paper. I have never seen such disregard for quality academic work in my life. The next thing to do is to bring in the academic version of the hired assassins, the philosophers. One very brilliant and passionate theologians had about ten philosophers come in just for his paper. The result was a lot of heated interchange (from the philosophers end), a lot of irenic banter from the presenter, and a sense of stunned silence by the three Americans in the room who knew nothing about the fifty year squabble that began with this presenters father and with one of the philosopher?s mentors. I tell you, the Hatfield and the McCoys have nothing on British academic circles. I was worried that blood was going to be found on the carpet outside the room. Its own thing to take your work and faith seriously, another all together to have your blood pressures rise to 210 over 160, all over points that were really not major. Ah well, if you can?t win, you might as well at least bludgeon your opponent. The funny thing is that almost all of the attackers, during all four days, were Scots, a country where less than 2% of the people actually attend church. You think maybe, just maybe, they could spend their time and energy on something, oh, I don?t know, that will actually advance the gospel????
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