August 8, 2006

Some people in America are scared silly of Christianity, but many of the most frightened know very little about it. They throw around terms like fundamentalist and evangelical with very little knowledge of their meaning, and this is before they enter the dark thicket of Preterists, Amillennialists, Prelapsarian Arminian Claims Adjusters, etc.

Here, then, is a handy reference guide to some of the key terms, concepts and groups.

A human rights lawyer, Ralston Deffenbaugh has since 1991 been president of Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service, an agency of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, the Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod and the Latvian Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. He previously represented the Lutheran World Federation at the United Nations. He has worked for the Refugee Council USA and has served as an observer of political trials for Amnesty International.

Last summer I was invited by a hospice chaplain to accompany him on a visit to the family of Maria Durand de Perez, a Mexican woman who had died a few weeks earlier in the border town of San Ysidro, California, at the astonishing age of 111. Knowing that I had once worked as the pastor of a Spanish-language church, the chaplain, whose name is Andy, thought that my presence might prove helpful to Angela, Maria’s 78-year-old daughter, who was mourning the loss of her mother deeply.

In 2004, about a year into Operation Iraqi Freedom, as the insurgency was gathering steam, journalist Deborah Scranton was offered a chance to embed herself with a military company that included members of the New Hampshire National Guard. She declined but made an intriguing counterproposal. She offered to give the soldiers light, mobile video cameras so they could record their experiences.

There are a priori reasons to dislike Superman Returns. Superman is always a little campy in his tights and red Underoos. And how can the film measure up to such cool and thoughtful superfare as X-Men or Spider-Man? Improved computer graphics and younger, handsomer heroes do not a great superhero film make.