Magic Statistics

U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein voted against confirming John Roberts as Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court because Judge Roberts didn't talk enough about his feelings. Or at least that's how James Taranto of OpinionJournal.com interprets Sen Feinstein's remarks during debate:

I attempted to get a sense of his temperament and values. And I asked him about the end-of-life decisions: clearly, decisions that are gut-wrenching, difficult and extremely personal. Rather than talking to me as a son, a husband, a father—which I specifically requested he do—he gave a very detached response.

This reminds me of an exchange between Lionel Tiger, Prof of Anthropology at Rutgers University, who is probably best known for coining the phrase male bonding, and Barbara Ehrenreich, social activist/feminist/writer. The exchange occurred during a debate on the decline of males in Western societies. Ms Ehrenreich tried to goad Dr Tiger into revealing his emotions–his feelings–as part of their discussion.

EHRENREICH: I want to get at another level here. I want to explore your feelings about these things. You say the "decline" of males–there's a sad tone to that. I would feel sad, as a mother of a son, if males suddenly started "declining" in some serious way. Do you reel [sic] loss and regret and nostalgia? Why call it a decline? Why not say, Let's go boldly forth in this more egalitarian and somewhat de-gendered world?

TIGER: A more attractive picture to be sure, but not, however, I think, quite as accurate a rendition of the emotional consequences of what's happening. I'm not interested in characterizing my own personal psyche in this matter, solely because I think it's of zero interest to anyone. What is of interest is the fact that, as you suggested, young men and women are very concerned about these matters, one reason being that they no longer have a set of rules that they think are emotionally and morally worthwhile. Now, why should people have rules? If you study anthropology, you realize that human beings generally try to have rules, notions of how to behave. What we saw in the Clinton-Lewinsky business was some astonishing confusion between personal and public life.

EHRENREICH: You certainly got away from the issue of how you feel about it. See, I'm willing to say how I feel.

TIGER: I'm wholly uninterested in your feelings.

That's exactly my view of Justice Roberts' feelings–and the feelings of public officials about any public issue. Don't tell me what you feel; I don't care. Tell me what you think, and why.

I'm glad Judge Roberts didn't emote on national television for the U.S. Senate Judiciary Commitee. The interesting question to me is: Why does Sen Feinstein think Judge Roberts' feelings are important?

EnterStageRight.com posts an interview with Dr Tiger here. For a critical profile of Ms Ehrenreich, click here. (The latter is my source for the text of the exchange with Dr Tiger.)

Mark Noll, the leading Christian historian of our day and an evangelical Protestant, is interviewed today by Carl E. Olson, editor of Ignatius Insight, the online magazine of the Roman Catholic publishing house Ignatius Press. The discussion centres on Prof Noll’s latest book, co-authored by Carolyn Nystrom, Is The Reformation Over? An Evangelical Assessment of Contemporary Roman Catholicism.

Mr Olson asks a perceptive question that actually has occurred to me in the past, but I haven’t been able to decide how to think about it:

IgnatiusInsight.com: Almost all of the theological issues (Marian doctrines, the sacraments, the ordained priesthood, ecclesiology, etc.) that Evangelicals find troublesome about Catholicism are also areas of disagreement between Evangelicals and Eastern Orthodox (and the ancient Oriental churches). What sort of challenge does this pose to an Evangelical assessment of the historical validity of core Evangelical beliefs such as sola fide, sola scriptura, and total depravity?

Noll: There is a growing wedge of well-informed evangelicals very aware of the implications of this question (those working on the InterVarsity Press series mentioned earlier [Ancient Christian Commentary], for example, or Daniel Williams of Baylor, a Baptist who has written two books challenging evangelicals to value tradition much more highly). And there have been a steady trickle of converts to Orthodoxy from evangelical churches over the last quarter century (including two young men from my own congregation of the Evangelical Presbyterian Church). But by and large, Eastern Orthodoxy remains terra incognita to the huge mass of evangelicals and so the nice theological challenges, as you’ve posed them, have barely begun to register.

Prof Noll’s answer, it seems to me, amounts to, "We’re thinkin’ about it". Not exactly a satisfying response, but in all honesty that would be my response, too. However, I do consider it a challenge to evangelical Protestantism that needs to be resolved.

Yesterday this blog had, by a wide margin, the most hits ever in its two months of existence. The total number of visitors was 95 according to SiteMeter and 102 according to StatCounter. (Those two always have slightly different counts and I have no idea why.) That is well over the previous high of 62 visitors on 12 September, when Rebecca, posting at Theologica, linked to my piece on Robert Funk and the Jesus Seminar. (A lot of Theologica readers ventured over here.)

Why did my hits jump? Because I linked to a story on the front page of the Washington Post yesterday morning. On the page for each of its online stories, the Post has a link to a Technorati search for blogs linking to that particular story. Web surfers reading the Washington Post online can very easily find and visit blogs linking to the Post. That’s what happened to Magic Statistics yesterday.

So, if you want to get more visitors to your blog, link to a story at The Washington Post.