Religion By Major

Check out the results (or see some detailed data) of a nation­al sur­vey of 3,680 stu­dents by UCLA’s High­er Edu­ca­tion Research Insti­tute [which] found that reli­gious com­mit­ment runs strongest among fine arts, edu­ca­tion and human­i­ties majors and low­est among biol­o­gy, his­to­ry and soci­ol­o­gy majors.

I found one excerpt fas­ci­nat­ing: In addi­tion, Astin found that arts and human­i­ties majors were twice as like­ly to exhib­it signs of “spir­i­tu­al dis­tress” — ques­tion­ing beliefs, strug­gling to under­stand evil, wrestling with reli­gious upbring­ing — as busi­ness or com­put­er sci­ence stu­dents.

Still, Astin said it is pre­ma­ture to label all sci­en­tists or com­put­er whizzes as spir­i­tu­al­ly hol­low. Most of these aca­d­e­m­ic dis­ci­plines sim­ply don’t prompt or pro­mote spir­i­tu­al reflec­tion, he said.

Implic­it in there is the notion that stu­dents who don’t exhib­it signs of “spir­i­tu­al dis­tress” can be sup­posed to be “spir­i­tu­al­ly hol­low”. Inter­est­ing. I won­der how much of that is Astin’s real per­spectve and how much of that is the byprod­uct of the inter­view­er’s line of ques­tion­ing.

Also of note: Stu­dents who par­ty fre­quent­ly are more like­ly to stop attend­ing reli­gious ser­vices, and “spir­i­tu­al­ly com­mit­ted” stu­dents gen­er­al­ly earn high­er grades.

Stu­dents who score high on mea­sures of spir­i­tu­al com­mit­ment gen­er­al­ly are health­i­er, hap­pi­er and more involved in com­mu­ni­ty ser­vice.

Thanks to World Mag­a­zine blog for unearthing this link!

Ordination

First the baby update: Dana is doing well. My mom (who is cur­rent­ly vis­it­ing) has dressed her in an out­fit that I appar­ent­ly used to wear, and that’s rather charm­ing. Any­way, there are new pho­tos online.

Now for the per­son­al news: Mon­day evening at 6:30pm I’m going to be ordained as an Assem­blies of God min­is­ter.

In case you’re curi­ous about the admin­is­tra­tive back­sto­ry, this means that I’ve now maxed out my min­is­te­r­i­al cer­ti­fi­ca­tions. I’ve been a licensed min­is­ter for a num­ber of years, and I’m now being upgrad­ed to full ordi­na­tion. It’s like going from a mas­ter’s to a Ph.D., except that I did­n’t have to write and defend hun­dreds of pages of aca­d­e­m­ic dri­v­el.

Instead, I mere­ly had to defeat three nin­jas in armed com­bat. Pret­ty stan­dard stuff for a col­lege min­is­ter, I have to say.

Ordi­na­tion does­n’t real­ly change any­thing for me as far as my min­is­te­r­i­al func­tions (the Assem­blies of God has been erod­ing the dis­tinc­tions between licens­ing and ordi­na­tion) or legal stand­ing (I could offi­ci­ate at wed­dings, for exam­ple, before this), but it is pret­ty cool.

Get­ting ordained reflects a sort of com­mit­ment to the move­ment. It’s not the same thing as going from being engaged to being mar­ried, but that’s not a hor­ri­ble anal­o­gy. Con­tin­u­ing the metaphor, it’s a bit unfor­tu­nate from a com­mit­ment per­spec­tive that the Assem­blies of God can be a bit of a tart…

Seri­ous­ly, it’s a great move­ment (with some admit­ted­ly deep flaws) and I’m proud to be receiv­ing my ordi­na­tion from them.

Who Are the People In Your Neighborhood?

I stum­bled across this ear­li­er today while get­ting a satel­lite pho­to of my apart­ment. It’s a demo­graph­ic sum­ma­ry of my zip code. You can do one for yours as well. Inter­est­ing stuff.

Great Meeting Last Night

Last night’s Chi Alpha meet­ing was off the charts–Curt Har­low spoke and did an excel­lent job!

That would have been encour­ag­ing enough, but we had a high-water mark in atten­dance (all the peo­ple who some­times show up showed up at once, and we had six first-time guests). That was extreme­ly grat­i­fy­ing. I try not to be dri­ven by num­bers, but I def­i­nite­ly like hav­ing more bod­ies in the room…

Changed Message Archive Format

I went nuts today try­ing to fig­ure out a prob­lem with this website–I could­n’t cre­ate an entry with a link to Den­nis’ mes­sage. For some rea­son Mov­able Type (the soft­ware that main­tains this site) would­n’t save any­thing with the link text in it. It drove me up the wall!

Any­way, I wound up recon­fig­ur­ing the entire way that I archive mes­sages on this site before final­ly decid­ing to change the text direct­ly in the data­base.

I men­tion all this to explain why the front page is all links to past messages–a tem­po­rary byprod­uct of the afore­men­tioned recon­fig­u­ra­tion. It will pass as new con­tent is added.

Ministry With a Baby

First: Paula’s in charge of upload­ing pic­tures now, so if there’s a delay in new pho­tos be sure to send her an email to keep her on track. 🙂

Sec­ond: We’re very for­tu­nate: Dana was born over Spring Break, so I was able to com­plete­ly devote myself to help­ing Paula that week. After that, we had guest speak­ers sched­uled for the first two weeks of the Spring Quar­ter, so I haven’t had to obsess about mes­sage prepa­ra­tion. Most peo­ple don’t real­ize this, but prepar­ing ser­mons takes a LOT of time. I’d say I spend 15–20 hours a week pol­ish­ing up my mes­sage for Chi Alpha, and I should prob­a­bly spend more. Any­way, the bot­tom line is that I’ve real­ly been avail­able to help Paula out and still keep on top of all my min­istry respon­si­bil­i­ties.

We’re very blessed to have Dana–she sleeps a lot and does­n’t cry too much. Some­how I wind up get­ting the sleep that I need. Woohoo!

On a com­plete­ly unre­lat­ed note, this com­ic made me laugh out loud. I rarely read Get Fuzzy, but on a lark I swung by their web­site today. I’m glad I did.

Polyhedral Prophets

Usu­al­ly when Chris­tians talk about role­play­ing games you can expect a lot of heat and very lit­tle light (art­ful­ly mocked by the Dead Alewives’ clas­sic bit Dun­geons and Drag­ons). That’s why I was so thrilled to run across the arti­cle Role­play­ing the Faith which con­tained sev­er­al fas­ci­nat­ing links.

Role­play­ing is a part of geek cul­ture, and Stan­ford is a bit of a geek cam­pus, so I thought these might inter­est some of you: Reli­gion and Role­play­ing, the Chris­t­ian Gamers Guild, and Tra­cy Hick­man’s essay on Ethics in Fan­ta­sy (for the record, Hick­man is a Mor­mon).

Something Completely Unrelated to Dana

I not­ed ear­li­er that one of our our alum­ni was a final­ist in the Miss Sin­ga­pore Uni­verse com­pe­ti­tion.

The finals are Sat­ur­day. Paula and I can’t wait to find out if she’s Miss Sin­ga­pore Uni­verse. Paula was quite close to Ade­line last year, and miss­es her so much she actu­al­ly began cry­ing while look­ing at pho­tos of her online.

Any­way, I stum­bled across the offi­cial page today. She’s the first gal (top left pho­to).

Of course, we already have two Miss Uni­vers­es in our house…

Top 100 April Fool’s Day Hoaxes

In hon­or of today’s very spe­cial nature, I thought I’d men­tion The Top 100 April Fool’s Day Hoax­es down­load sight . There’s some fun­ny stuff there.

Dana — Boogie Queen

I got out my web­cam today and shot a few sec­onds of Dana wig­gling, and put togeth­er a short video: Dana — Boo­gie Queen (WMV file, 1 MB). Yes, it’s cheesy. I’m her dad­dy and I’m allowed to do that! As I’m sure I’ll have to explain to her when she’s 16 and finds this while doing a van­i­ty search…