Friday, August 31, 2012

Style and Formatting Notes

For those following the dissertation saga, these are some notes from my style and format reviewer that I need to incorporate into the final manuscript:


DMIN Final Project Style & Format Review


Student’s Name: Clint Schnekloth                                           Date: March 5, 2012

I enjoyed reading the first two chapters of your final project.  Your submission meets the necessary requirements for Turabian and Doctor of Ministry writing standards. 

Please see the comments below and throughout your paper for details regarding changes you should make for the first draft.  Within your paper, initially I will alert you to a needed correction by placing a comment in the text.  Subsequently I may highlight places that require similar corrections, although please note that not all places requiring correction have been marked.


1.     Front Matter:
·      The blank page should be followed by an abstract. 
·      Use the page number function in MS Word so that the page number falls exactly 1 inch from the bottom of the page.

2.     Format:
·      There should be two line spaces (rather than three) above a subhead.
·      The chapter number should be given in numeral form.

3.     Style:
·      Capitalize “Church” when it refers to the Church universal.
·      Avoid the use of “we” with no clear referent.  Instead, use “people” or “believers” or whatever applies.
·      Avoid directly addressing the reader: use “one may notice” rather than “you will notice,” for example, and avoid colloquial “dialogue” with the reader such as “You will see . . .”
·      Avoid posing questions to the reader.  Rephrase as declarative statements.  See page 13 of the DMin Style Guide on “Questions/Question Marks.”
·      Avoid the use of the first person unless you are inextricably connected to the situation or event you are describing.
·      Avoid beginning your sentences with “I believe” or “I will suggest,” as the reader will assume that all statements in the paper are the author’s (your) delcarations.  If you prefer to soften the language a bit, maintain objectivity by writing “It seems that . . .” rather than “I suspect that . . .”

4.     Footnotes:
·       “Ibid.” cannot appear as the first footnote on a page.  Use the short format instead.
·      The footnote number should be placed at the end of the sentence unless there are multiple footnote numbers in a single sentence.
·      For all footnotes, add the city of publication (and the state abbreviation if the city is not well known).
5.     Grammar:
·      Avoid using contractions in your paper.
·      An ellipsis should be a set of periods with spaces between, like . . . this.
·      Use “and the like” or “and so on” in place of “etc.”
·      Commas and periods belong inside quotation marks; semicolons and colons belong outside.
·      Some of your sentences are not complete and need to be revised.

6.     Quotes:
·      Each quote must be introduced, usually by presenting the author’s last name (e.g., “Carson writes, ‘ . . .’”).  Add the author’s first name and the name of the text when quoting it for the first time.
·      Use the block quote format if you have five full lines or more.
·      Quotation marks should not be used around a block quote.

7.     Numbers:
·      Note 1: Write out all numbers between one and one hundred, and any number that can be written as two words.  This includes ordinal numbers like “first” or “twentieth.”

8.     Bibliography:
·      Delete any line spaces at the top of a page.
·      Entries by the same author should be ordered alphabetically by title.  You may alternatively order the books by date, but then you need to apply the same pattern to all sets of books by the same author in your bibliography.
·      Each website reference should have an author, a title (which could be the title of the article or the title of the page) in quotation marks, the url address, and the date accessed.
·      For website references, break up the url address so that you don’t have a lot of empty space at the end of a line.



Wednesday, August 29, 2012

The Final Dissertation Bibliography

For those who are curious, this is the actual bibliography for my dissertation. It is no longer theoretical or "padded." These are the books that are actually cited and used in the dissertation proper.


BIBLIOGRAPHY
Adorno, Theodor. Minima Moralia: Reflections from Damaged Life. New York: Verso,
            2005.

Benjamin, Walter. The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproducibility and Other
            Writings on Media. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2008.

Blascovich, Jim and Jeremy Bailenson. Infinite Reality: Avatars, Eternal Life, New
Worlds, and the Dawn of the Virtual Revolution. New York: HarperCollins, 2011.

Bogost, Ian. Persuasive Games: The Expressive Power of Videogames. Cambridge, MA:
The MIT Press, 2010.

Borgmann, Albert. Power Failure: Christianity in the Culture of Technology. Grand
Rapids, MI: Brazos Press. 2003.

Boyd, Danah. Taken Out of Context. PhD diss., University of California Berkeley, 2008.

Brock, Brian. Christian Ethics in a Technological Age. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans,
2010.

Bruns, Axel. Blogs, Wikipedia, Second Life and Beyond: From Production to Produsage.
New York: Peter Lang, 2008.

Carr, Nicholas. The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains. New York:
W. W. Norton. 2008.

Crouch, Andy. Culture Making: Recovering Our Creative Calling. Downer’s Grove, IL:
InterVarsity Press, 2008.

Coupland, Douglas.  Marshall McCluhan: You Know Nothing of My Work!. New York:
Atlas and Company, 2011.

De Certeau, Michel. The Practice of Everyday Life. Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1984.

Dehaene, Stanislas. Reading in the Brain: The New Science of How We Read. New York:
Penguin, 2009.

Detweiler, Craig. Halos and Avatars: Playing Video Games with God. Louisville, KY:
Westminster John Knox Press, 2010.

Dickerson, Matthew. The Mind and the Machine: What It Means to be Human and Why
It Matters. Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos Press, 2011.

Doctorow, Cory. Makers. New York: Tor, 2010.

Edwards, Denis. Breath of Life: A Theology of the Creator Spirit. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis
Books, 2004.

Estes, Douglas. SimChurch: Being the Church in the Virtual World. Grand Rapids, MI:
Zondervan. 2009.

Fowler, Robert M., Edith Blumhofer, and Fernando F. Segovia, ed. New Paradigms for
Bible Study: The Bible in the Third Millenium. New York: T & T Clark, 2004.

Friesen, Dwight. The Kingdom Connected: What the Church Can Learn from Facebook,
the Internet, and Other Networks. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books. 2009.

Gee, James Paul. What Video Games Have to Teach us About Learning and Literacy.
Second Edition. Hampshire, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007.

Gibson, William. Neuromancer. New York: Ace, 2004.

Go Make Disciples: An Invitation to Baptismal Living: A Handbook to the
Catechumenate. Minneapolis, MN: Augsburg Fortress, 2012.

Goody, Jack. The Domestication of the Savage Mind. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1977.

Guder, Darrell. Missional Church: A Vision for the Sending of the Church in North
            America. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1998.

T. J. Gorringe. A Theology of the Built Environment: Justice, Empowerment, Redemption.
            Cambridge University Press, 2002.

Halavais, Alexander. Search Engine Society. Cambridge: Polity. 2009.

Harmless, William. Augustine and the Catechumenate. Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical
            Press, 1995.

Hoffman, Paul. Faith Forming Faith: Bringing New Christians to Baptism and Beyond.
            Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2012.

Illich, Ivan. In the Vineyard of the Text: A Commentary to Hugh’s Didascalion.
Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1993.

Innis, Harold A. The Bias of Communication. 2nd Edition. Toronto: University of Toronto
Press, 2008.

Jacobs, Alan. The Pleasures of Reading in an Age of Distraction. Oxford University
Press, 2011.

_______. Shaming the Devil: Essays in Truthtelling. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans,
2005.

Jenkins, Henry. Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide. New York
University Press, 2006.

Jenson, Robert. Essays in Theology of Culture. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1995.

_______. Systematic Theology: Volume One: The Triune God. Oxford University Press,
2001.

Johnson, Maxwell. The Rites of Christian Initiation: Their Evolution and Interpretation.
Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press, 1999.

Kärkkäinen, Veli-Matti. Pneumatology: The Holy Spirit in Ecumenical, International,
            And Contextual Perspective. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2002.

MacIntyre, Alasdair. After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory. University of Notre Dame
            Press, 2007.

McCluhan, Marshall. Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man. Corte Madera, CA:
Gingko Press, 2003.

_______. The Medium is the Massage. Berkeley, CA: Ginkgo Press, 1967.

McGonagal, Jane. Reality is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can
            Change the World. New York: Penguin Press, 2011.

Moltmann, Jürgen. The Spirit of Life. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1992.

Murray, Iain H. Jonathan Edwards: A New Biography. Edinburgh: Banner of Truth
            Trust, 1987.

Pariser, Eli. The Filter Bubble: What the Internet Is Hiding from You. New York:
Penguin Press, 2011.

Pettegree, Andrew. The Book in the Renaissance. New Haven, CT: Yale University
Press, 2010.

Postman, Neil. Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show
Business. New York: Penguin Books, 2005.

Rushkoff, Douglass. Program or Be Programmed: Ten Commands for a Digital Age.
            Berkeley, CA: Soft Skull Press, 2010.


Satterlee, Craig. Ambrose of Milan’s Mystagogical Preaching. Collegeville, MN:
Liturgical Press, 2002.

Scharen, Christian and Aana Marie Vigen. Ethnography as Christian Theology and
Ethics. New York: Continuum, 2011.

Shirky, Clay. Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations.
            New York: Penguin Press, 2008.

Smith, James K. A. Desiring the Kingdom: Worship, Worldview, and Cultural
Formation. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2009.

Sontag, Susan. On Photography. New York: Picador, 1973.

Stephenson, Neal. Anathem. New York: Harper Perennial, 2010.

Sweet, Leonard. Viral: How Social Networking Is Poised to Ignite Revival. Colorado
            Springs, CO: Waterbrook Press, 2012.

Thomas, Douglas and John Seely Brown. A New Culture of Learning: Cultivating the
Imagination for a World of Constant Change. Self-published, 2011.

Turkle, Sherry. Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from
Each Other. New York: Basic Books, 2011.

Ward, Pete. Participation and Mediation: A Practical Theology for the Liquid Church.
London: SCM Press. 2008.

Weinberger, David. Everything is Miscellaneous: The Power of the New Digital
Disorder. New York: Holt Paperbacks, 2007.

Wolf, MaryAnne. The Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain.
            New York: HarperPerennial, 2007.

The Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults, rev. ed., International Commission on English in the Liturgy (Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press, 1988).

Websites

Adam, AKM. “Spirits in a Digital World.”
January 20, 2012).

Boyd, Danah. Taken Out of Context. PhD diss., University of California Berkeley, 2008.
            http://www.danah.org/papers/TakenOutOfContext.pdf (accessed January 16,
2012).

Daily Prayer. http://www.lchwelcome.org/spirit/office/office.php (accessed January 21,
2012).

Disseminary. http://disseminary.org (accessed January 16, 2012).

Forde, Gerhard O. “Radical Lutheranism.”

Media Ecology Association. “Media Ecology 101: An Introductory Reading List.”
            http://www.media-ecology.org/media_ecology/readinglist.html (accessed January
16, 2012).


The North American Forum on the Catechumenate. http://www.naforum.org/wordpress
(accessed January 16, 2012).

The North American Assocation of the Catechumenate. http://www.catechumenate.org
            (accessed August 28, 2012).

Second Life. http://secondlife.com (accessed January 16, 2012).

St. Matthew’s-by-the-Sea Chapel. A Place for Peace for All in Second Life.
http://stmattsinsl.wordpress.com (accessed January 16, 2012).


Saturday, August 25, 2012

The Sublime in the Ordinary

Two weeks ago I stepped out of the Willard Walker Hospice House in Fayetteville, having spent a couple of hours with a parishioner there. A heavy rain had just passed. It was very late in the evening, just around midnight. Some of the noisier forest creatures had gotten back to work at their singing and chirping and croaking, and though the heat of the city was still in the air, the rain had washed the oppressive radiant heat away, and everything smelt fresh and alive. 

As I walked to the car, I thought, "This, exactly, is why I do what I do." I had some jazz, Andrew Hill I think, playing in the car, and I drove home with the windows down. I don't consider myself particularly mystical, but that was one moment, of which there are more and more, when I felt "the whole world charged with the grandeur of God" (Gerard Manley Hopkins).

Do you have these moments? Do you find yourself, suddenly, in the midst of very mundane matters, simply overwhelmed--with gratitude, with grace, with awe?

I know for sure such transcendence cannot be forced. Yes, we can coax a simulation of transcendence out of all kinds of situations. Just sing a praise song, modulate it up on the last verse, keep repeating the verse a few times and build the volume, and you can get that special feeling down your spine. You know the one. The one where tens of thousands of people are calling the Hogs simultaneously, and you all shout in unison, "Wooooo Pig Sooie, Razorbacks!" Yeah, that tingle.

But that feeling, as powerful as it is, isn't what I'm talking about here. That's the transcendence you expect. There's no mystery. It is evoked during worship. It is drummed up at football games, or the conclusion of a symphony. 

The transcendence I'm talking about is the one that creeps up on you, takes you completely by surprise, because it simply arrives in the middle, sui generis (as compared to pig sooie). In the case of my late night at hospice, it was, after all, just a pastor going home after an evening at hospice. I was spending time saying goodbye to a beloved parishioner. The rain was over, the storm had passed. I was just doing my job. It might have been any evening, any day. I've had the same kind of feeling come up while shoveling snow, or washing the dishes, or sitting out on the front porch contemplating the neighborhood.

I happen to think this kind of transcendence, this intuition of the sublime, is an unfortunately unremarked part of Christian faith. Eric Auerbach, a rather fascinating literary critic and philologist of the last century, put it this way, "Scripture created an entirely new kind of sublimity, in which the everyday and the low were included, not excluded, so that, in style as in content, it directly connected the lowest with the highest" (Mimesis, 154). Both in style and substance, the Christian Scripture ranges widely from the lowest to the highest, from clumsy Greek to poetic Hebrew, from transcendent architecture to bawdy and elicit goings-on in dingy tents.

The transcendent, the sublime, in this understanding (and I think this is or ought to be a deeply held Christian conviction) is found as much, maybe even more, in the work of the ordinary craftsman rather than the incredible genius. At the very specific level, we might say that although we can all recognize the extraordinary beauty of Crystal Bridges, for Christian faith, the truly sublime is located as much or perhaps even more in ordinary beauty of the built environments of our own homes. If the only beauty of faith is linked to the geniuses collected at Crystal Bridges, then the faith is misunderstood, distorted. The sublime is also found, must certainly be found, in the drawings my children bring home from school.

Which reminds me of the other transcendent experience I had, this one just this week. A work crew was at our house shoring up some piers under our house. The site leader for the job was asking me a set of questions about a window on our house, and it was clear from his questions that when he examined our house, he looked at it, always, from any angle, as something he knew how to build, and could see how others had built. He noticed, for example, that the bricks around the window were not original to the house. The window bricking had at some point been re-laid. And I thought to myself, "When he looks at our house, he knows how to build it. All of it, any of it." And suddenly, this very ordinary craftsman standing before me in dirtied jeans and a hand-ripped tank top was transfigured, made new. And so was I.

[for those without a subscription to the Northwest Arkansas Times, this is a reprint of my column for August 25th, 2012]

Saturday, August 18, 2012

Space is dancingly experienced


“Space is dancingly experienced.” R. Schwarz, The Church Incarnate (Chicago University Press, 1958), 27.

Consider worship as a “built environment.” Often when we think about built environments, we focus on the architecture. And certainly architectural space is one aspect of built environments. But liturgical arts should and can encompass even more than simply the church building or the sanctuary, because in fact the whole world and everything that is built is part of human experience and thus a part of Christian experience. T.J. Gorringe, in the first book ever written on the theology of built environments, writes, “Christianity brings to all debates about the structures of the world through which we reproduce ourselves—economics, social and criminal justice, but also town planning and building—its understanding of God become flesh, ‘whereby and according to which’, as von Balthasar says, they build” (A Theology of the Built Environment: Justice, Empowerment, Redemption, Cambridge University Press, 2002, 3).

            The church considers not only redemption in Christ through his resurrection, but also the restoration of all creation. Consider all the various ways that space as a whole can be “dancingly experienced.” This would include the sanctuary, narthex, and church building, obviously, but also the way communities move in the space, and also how communities move in daily life, on their way to and from church, and so much more. Ask: how are the grounds of our church themselves exemplifying a Christian theology of the built environment? Do our cars? Our bikes? What kinds of practices of the built environment are we practicing that let new creation shine through in everything we do and build?

            Furthermore, Gorringe argues that “a Trinitarian theology eliminates any fundamental distinction between sacred and secular… we find in Scripture, classically in the Magnificat, a preference for the everyday, the modest, humble and ordinary, and we cannot but take account of that in reflecting on the built environment… Christianity, I shall claim, is wedded to the little tradition…. Which for the most part comes to us only in scraps, in folk memories, songs, tales, and ballads, in pamphlets crudely written” (Gorringe, 8-9). Such a thesis offers the intriguing possibility that all the little tradition things most of our congregations are engaged in from week to week—printing bulletins, worshipping churches hastily constructed, with worn carpet, and stained glass poured by amateurs. All of these, rather than being inadequate in comparison to what Christianity typically aligns itself with—the “Great Tradition,” are then in fact exemplary of Christian faith precisely in their mundanity.

            Consider this insight. Then consider it again. Then consider it again. Repeatedly consider it and it might properly reconstruct everything you thought you knew about Christian worship and the built environment, what counts as art, as beauty, as faithful, as true.