Unitarians Build a Church for Dragons

In the virtual world Second Life, Unitarian-Universalists have built a real church. Some of the regular congregants are human, and some are not. Bizarre Berry, the creator of First U-U Church of Second Life, wanted to create a real congregation, not just a show building. Catherine Cleanslate, a U-U minister in the real world, sees participation in the Second Life church part of her ministry of "radical welcome."

Other religious groups are colonizing Second Life, but FUUCSL seems to be the only regular congregation so far. Second Life seems made for U-Us, as both have a strong "do your own thing" ideology.

I was trying to imagine what First Presbyterian Church of SL would be like. I don't think it would fly. The world of permanent self-invention – the world of Catherine Cleanslate and those like her – is not really suited for the understanding of the world as fallen and in need of redemption.

And, of course, theological disagreement and moral uplift would not really be in the Second Life spirit. One of big draws of SL, I gather, are the sex clubs. I expect that a crusade to clean up the virtual red light district would seem to strike at the very soul of Second Life.

Second Life jihad, anyone?

A Market Solution to the Asian Bride Shortage

In many Asian countries there is a growing shortage of women. Years of favoring boys and disposing of girls are catching up with them. In South Korea, a market has sprung up in the past few years to find foreign brides for South Korean bachelors (my thanks to regular reader D-rew for this New York Times story). At first the marriage brokers went to ethnic Korean communities in China. Now, though, the brokers are arranging quick marriages further afield. This year's favored source for brides is Vietnam. South Korea is more prosperous than Vietnam, at least temporarily, and the "Korean Wave" of pop culture has made South Korea seem a good place to live.

Until recently this marriage market was unregulated. After a series of scandals involving lies and abuse by brokers and husbands, the Korea government has begun to set some rules, and the etiquette of the market has weeded out some of the bad actors. This market evolves very quickly – Vietnam is getting richer, and may dry up as a source of brides a few years hence. What first struck me about this development is that it is a market solution to a market problem. It was the cumulative effect of many individual actions that created the women shortage in the first place, creating a market that entrepreneurial brokers can fill. To be sure, some rural governments in Korea are sponsoring marriage tours to Vietnam, but they did not make the arrangements in the first place.

I can also see a few unintended positive consequences that might come from this international marriage market. Many Asian nations have exaggerated ideas of their own "racial purity," which they make central to their national identity. South Korea is no exception to this self image. Yet in 2005, 14% of South Korean marriages involved foreigners, up from 4% just five years earlier. Over time, mixing populations that way would undermine the idea that racial purity is essential to national identity – or even that it is ever was very prevalent. A second possible silver lining of Vietnamese women living and prospering in South Korea is that their frequent communications home might spur the Vietnamese people to press for democracy to go along with their increasing capitalist prosperity.

The Asian women shortage is due to the worst kind of sexist discrimination, devaluing of girls, and even deliberate killing. I find it encouraging to think, therefore, that there might be an unexpected silver lining or two to this dark cloud.

The North Carolina YouTube Breakup

The phenomenon of the moment on YouTube is the breakup of Ryan Burke and Mindy Moorman at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Burke found out Moorman was cheating, and set up a public humiliation for her. The innovation is that he advertised it ahead of time on Facebook, and hundreds of people showed up. She came to the Pit, a public square at the university, for a "surprise." An a capella group serenaded her with a somewhat odd choice of song (the Dixie Chick's "I'm Not Ready to Make Nice"). Then he dumped her. She, taken aback, responds with a torrent of condescension. The crowd eggs them on for nearly ten minutes. He walks away first.

There has been some suspicion that the whole thing was staged by both of them. It doesn't look that way to me. I think he is surprised at how much publicity there has been.

I was struck by how they attacked one another. In that sense (and only in that sense) it does not much matter whether her response was spontaneous or scripted. The particular insults they, and the audience, chose were revealing. It is very hard to hear what they are saying, but he appears to call her a slut. At one point the crowd chants "Slut! Slut! Slut!" She responds by asking him if he is gay, asserting that "I am a woman and I have needs," and suggesting that he has a small penis. The crowd then chants "Small penis! Small penis!"

His position is that if she had sexual relations with another man, she deserved whatever humiliation he could think of. He appears to have no self-knowledge or critical reflection. Her response is also entirely in sexual terms. Neither of them makes reference to any deeper aspect of their relationship – no emotional connection, no intellectual engagement, not even the material gifts they gave one another. And no love.

Ryan Burke is clearly an ass. She is no prize, either. What is most striking to me about the whole spectacle, though, is that their entire relationship seems to be sexual, and they have no qualms about parading that in public.

May the Wilberforce Be With You

The film "Amazing Grace" opens in two days. I was favored to see a preview last week. I commend the film highly. The ads suggest that the movie is about the song, but it isn't. The film is about the long struggle of William Wilberforce to end the slave trade in Britain. Friday, the day the film opens, is the 200th anniversary of the crucial vote in Parliament.

Let me say a bit about the movie first. Ioan Gruffudd does a pretty good job as Wilberforce. There is also a courtship story in the middle with a gorgeous Romala Garai as the eventual Mrs. Wilberforce. I thought the best performance came from Benedict Cumerbatch as Prime Minister William Pitt the Younger, friend and close ally of Wilberforce's. Bristol Bay Productions made the film, following "Ray" and "The Chronicles of Narnia." Bristol Bay is not a Christian company, but, as we were told at the preview, it is full of Christians, and they have a mission to make decent films about moral triumph. "Amazing Grace" was one of the stories that Bristol Bay was created to make.

William Wilberforce is a hero of evangelical politics. I think he is all but unknown in this country due to his "right" religion and his "left" politics. He falls between the stools of American ideological polarization, which is a double pity – he should be a hero to both sides, and the sides shouldn't be divided into these camps, anyway. I think Wilberforce exemplifies the kind of "God's Politics" that Jim Wallis has in mind in the book of that title.

I had long wondered why it took more than twenty years for Wilberforce and the other abolitionists to succeed. What derailed the movement toward abolition for years was the French Revolution, and the subsequent war with France. Though there was no logical connection between the two, the slave powers succeeded in painting abolition as sedition, because abolitionists were critical of existing government policy in wartime.

"Amazing Grace" is not a great movie, but it is quite good. It is, though, the best movie about a great story, and a great model for religious politics today. I will be going with a colleague to opening night, taking vanloads of family and students. I urge you all to see it, too.

Natural Selection Speed Dating

This one writes itself. CNN.com had a story about a special speed dating event in New York. The rules were not clearly specified on camera, but it appears that the women had to be young and beautiful, based on a judging panel's estimate of their photographs. The men had to have a net worth of a million dollars and (or?) income of at least $200,000 per year, with a higher minimum for older men.

Yes, it really was called Natural Selection Speed Dating. Paula Zahn's summary: "Deep cleavage meets deep pockets."

The organizer said they are planning a follow-up speed dating event, Sugar Mamas and Boy Toys.

The Curriculum is the Untapped "Identity" Resource

I missed you all yesterday, as I was on a retreat with college students and colleagues. The topic was that current college favorite, "identity." We talked about our personal identities, our group identities, the identity of the stereotypical Centre student, and how these all connected. Students talked quite a bit about how their various identities shaped who ate together, who played together, who joined which social groups together.

Near the end of the retreat I as struck by the fact that almost nothing had been said about the curriculum. Yet as I reflected on my own college experience, what I learned in class actually had as deep an effect on me as any social experience I had in college. In fact, the best social experiences were based on talking about ideas that we had studied in class. In the last class I taught before the retreat, two newlywed alumni came back to talk about marriage. Again and again they came back to how things they had learned in their classes applied to their new life and work.

One of my projects over the past few years has been to write a history of the college. I was impressed with how long Centre has had a distinctive identity, and shaped students in a distinctive way. Many factors go into that identity, but the curriculum always holds its own as a shaping force.

When we think about how our teaching shapes lives, the faculty are comfortable with the idea that we are making "critical thinkers." When we start talking about our teaching making good citizens, we get more nervous. To think that the curriculum should help make students into more virtuous people is to invite resistance. Yet the alumni attest it all the time.

The curriculum does shape student identity, whether we intend it or not. I think we should intend it, and choose our curriculum accordingly.

Luke and Logan

I have been watching "Gilmore Girls" faithfully with Mrs. G. and our girls since its inception. I have enjoyed the show's wit, speed, and it must be said, fine-looking women. This season, the last, is probably the weakest. Still, we must watch, to see how they resolve the two great marriage plots of Lorelei (mother) and Rory (daughter) Gilmore.

As a sociologist I have particularly enjoyed "Gilmore Girls" because it is one of the very few ever to show rich people as more than caricatures. Lorelei's parents are Connecticut Old Money. Lorelei has both resisted this influence, and benefited from it. Her main romance has been with local working-class diner owner Luke. However, rich-boy Christopher, the boyfriend of her teen days who fathered Rory, has returned as a rival. Meanwhile young Rory, at Yale, has been torn over the years between hard-working scholarship boy Marty and reckless rich kid Logan.

At the beginning of this season, Christopher swept Lorelei off her feet, took her to Paris, and talked her into eloping. Logan, meanwhile, has been off in London learning the family business, leaving Rory in school at Yale.

I think the conventions of television require that both titular girls end up married. At this point in the series, the real contestants are on the field. SO, accepting these assumptions, there are four possible outcomes for mother's and daughter's husbands, respectively:
1) rich, rich
2) rich, poor
3) poor, rich
4) poor, poor.

The writers have it in their hands to make any of these men sympathetic enough – to make them, in other words, the right choice. The playing field was level at the start of the season.

I would have been most interested if the writers had had the nerve to take the first solution – rich, rich – which would in many ways have been the most class appropriate. Mrs. G. argued, though, that this is just not possible in American television world, and I think she is right.

At some other moment in history it might have been possible to take the fourth option – poor, poor – though it is hard for me to think when that might have been. The novel, movie, and television examples I can think of from the past usually have at least one of the heroines ending up with money.

So we are left with the middle two as the most likely. On the whole, I have been thinking the most likely outcome was 3 – poor Luke, and rich Logan. Some clues at the outset were that both men were more central to the last few seasons than their counterparts. Moreover, in the recent crisis of Lorelei's father's heart attack, the suitors got to show their true character, and Luke and Logan came through with shining colors.

I think this solution is, on the whole, the most appropriate. The rebellious independent woman finds the person who matches her entrepreneurial character and the place she has made for herself in the community. Thus, Lorelei and Luke. And the reckless rich kid is civilized by the ever-decent, and ultimately socially conforming granddaughter of her Old Money grandparents. Therefore, Rory and Logan. American individualism is honored, but in the end family and tradition win, in updated form.

We will see how the string plays out. That is my call.

Smart Men Marry Smart Women 5: The Deeper Point

Christine Whelan thinks the main point is that smart women marry at the same rate as other women, just later in life. This is an important point, and probably true or nearly true. The deeper issue than whether smart women will marry, though, is whether they can get all the education their brains can use, and launch their high-achieving careers, and still have kids at the same rate as other women.

I think smart men are coming to see that women who want lots of education and high-powered careers can also have kids – and given the right supportive husband, they will have great kids.

Whelan approaches marriage as being primarily about the man and the woman. The deep sociobiological, social, and, for most couples, personal impetus for marriage, though, is to have and raise children. There have always been highly educated and high-achieving women. Until recently, though, that path did present very high obstacles to having and raising children. The women knew it, and the men they might marry feared it. One solution has been happy childless marriages of high achieving partners. These are fine marriages, and I am not in any way disparaging them. But most men, and especially most women, do wish to have a life with children, integrated with all their other work.

Whelan notes in passing what others who have studied high-achieving mothers make central to their research (especially if the researchers are themselves high-achieving moms): you need lots of help. Nearly all mothers who successfully raise children have helpful husbands, or the functional equivalent. Many of the women Hewlett interviewed at the highest levels of their careers bluntly say that in addition to a supportive husband they needed to "hire a wife." This seems to me a reasonable solution, and being that nanny is as honorable a kind of work as the professional careers she enables.

The deeper point of why smart men marry smart women more than they used to is that both of them realize that they can still have their smart careers and have smart children.

Smart Men Marry Smart Women 4: The Baby Elephant in the Room

The critical issue for high-achieving women is not so much whether they will ever marry, as whether they will ever have children.

As I noted yesterday, Christine Whelan is arguing, in Why Smart Men Marry Smart Women with Sylvia Ann Hewlett. Hewlett reported in Creating a Life that at midlife, 1/3 to 1/2 of the highest-achieving women had no children, vs. about 1/5 of other women. Whelan disputes that there is a gap at all, citing an article by Garance Franke-Ruta in The American Prospect. Franke-Ruta contrasts a Current Population Survey analysis with Hewlett's more focused National Parenting Association survey. According to Franke-Ruta, the CPS shows that married high-achieving women are just as likely to be mothers as other married women. The reason that other women have more kids altogether is that the high achievers are less likely to have kids out of wedlock than other women are.

So what does this comparison mean? Let us take it as given that high-achieving women do marry at about the same rate as other women, and the married women among them have kids at about the same rate as other married women. That is not quite the end of the story. Hewlett also reports that a large minority of the high-achieving women who did have a child wished that they had started early enough to have more. And even Whelan takes for granted that if high-achieving women have kids, nannies and day care are a "given." Yet most mothers would like to be home with their babies, even if they want to return to full-time work later. This, I think, is why Hewlett found that 1/5 of professionally trained women were not working in their professions – most were home with their kids at that stage in life.

That last point is a crucial one: Hewlett does not say that women have to choose either high achievement or marriage and kids – as Whelan charges her with. Rather, Hewlett says that women can have it all – education, marriage, kids, career – but probably not all at once. If they plan, they can have it all eventually, but some things have to come before others. And the most imperious item on the list is having kids. The biological clock is less forgiving than the timetable for any other item on the list.

I think Whelan, who is 30 and proudly announces her engagement in the Acknowledgements, has not had to deal with the tragic sense of baby hunger that Hewlett's 50-something high achievers have. Whelan quotes with approval from Ann, an unmarried 30-year-old medical resident:

"As a doctor, I'd advise women to think about having their kids when they are younger, in their early 20s. But this just isn't practical for high-achieving women. And it's a disconnect that lies in our biological challenge of reproduction."

As Hewlett shows, the brave reliance of younger women on medical technology (and wishful thinking) to solve the problem of finding husbands and having babies after school and career are well-launched is setting many of them up for heartache.

You can have it all, but not all at once. The main issue is not whether smart women will find smart men to marry, but whether both of them will find one another in time to have smart kids.

Smart Men Marry Smart Women 3: The Main Point

"High-achieving women marry at the same rate as all other women; they just do so a bit later in life."

This is the main point of Christine Whelan's Why Smart Men Marry Smart Women. Whelan looked at the Census Bureau's Current Population Survey, and the work of U. of Washington economist Elaina Rose on the decreased likelihood that educated women would marry. Rose found that 25 years ago, women with graduate degrees were 13.5% less likely to have married by 40 than the least educated (less than high school) women. By the 2000 census, Rose found, the "success penalty" had largely disappeared. The CPS shows that women with advanced degrees and/or who earned $55,000 per year or more (in the top 10% of earners nationally) are just as likely to be married as other women who work full time.

Whelan is arguing against Sylvia Ann Hewlett, whose Creating a Life: Professional Women and the Quest for Children brought the scary news that the highest achieving women were less likely to marry and have children. Hewlett showed a strong success penalty; Whelan says it has disappeared. How can we judge between the two?

First, they can both be right on the main point: there used to be a success penalty, but it has diminished. Hewlett, reporting mid-90s data, showed that the highest-educated and highest-paid women were only 60% married at 40, vs. 67% of all women. This is a gap, but not a huge one. It is plausible that a decade later, most of this gap has closed.

Second, Whelan compares high-achieving women with other women who work full time. Most women, especially highly educated ones, do work full time, so this is not a bad comparison. It is, though, not the same as comparing all women. Hewlett found that a fifth of highly educated women were not working full time. A real apples-to-apples comparison would have to include all women.

Third, and most importantly, the main point of Hewlett's book was that the highest achieving women miss having children, not marriage. Most of the high-achieving women that she talked to, especially the ultra-high achievers (earning more than $100,000 per year) had no children or fewer than they wanted to. Few of them had planned to end up that way; childlessness was a "creeping non-choice," the unintended outcome of a high career focus through their main childbearing years.

High-achieving women are marrying at higher rates. Whether they are having as many kids as they want to is another matter. And the subject for tomorrow's post.

Smart Men Marry Smart Women 2: SWANS Won't Fly

Christine Whelan begins Why Smart Men Marry Smart Women with a cute story. She describes Beth, who took out an ad in 1970 looking for a man who wasn't afraid of a "Ph.D. in a miniskirt." She found her man. She then wrote a couple of bestsellers: A Baby … Maybe? about educated women choosing to have children, or not, and Boy or Girl? about sex selection. Then Beth and her husband had a child. The birth announcement reproduced the two book covers, with "Yes" in answer the first title, and "Girl" circled in the second.

Christine Whelan is that child.

Whelan's best shot at pop sociological immortality of her own is the acronym SWANS – Strong Women Achievers, No Spouse. She even holds the trademark on the acronym and phrase; the title page notes that they appear in this book under license.

There are several interesting findings and ideas in this book, but I don't think SWANS will be one of them. For one thing, it is too cutesy. She has to torque the phrase too much to fit the acronym she wanted to get to. For another, the point of her book is to offer hope to SWANS that they don't have to stay that way. Those promised Smart Men will come along and turn them into SWAWS, which just doesn't have the same sizzle.

SMMSW doesn't sing, either.

How about Smart Women And Men, Paired?

And then the next stage, Smart Women And Men, Parents? But that will be the subject of a later post.

Smart Men Marry Smart Women 1

For years I have been telling students that smart men marry smart women. I mean that in a double sense. On the one hand, men who are smart and well educated tend to marry women who are smart and well educated. On the other, if a man is smart, he will look past physical appearance, which fades, to brains – because brains endure. Men who figure this out early get first pick of the smartest women.

In fact, today is the day in the sociology of family life class when we first talk about this idea. It will not be the last time.

Christine Whelan has just published Why Smart Men Marry Smart Women. As you can see, this was "must reading" for me, even if we are in the middle of the term. Whelan presents some interesting new research showing a change in the marriage patterns of the most educated women, a change for the better. I will be blogging on this book, and this idea, all week.

Today I just want to share one finding from a Harris Interactive poll that Whelan commissioned for the book. In answer to the question, do you want (or have) a spouse who is less capable of earning a good income than you, as capable of earning a good income as you, or more capable of earning a good income than you?

About 61% of the women say "as capable of earning a good income as me";

Among the men, there is a bell curve, with a quarter saying "more," a quarter saying "less," and half in the middle.

Here is the most interesting finding, though: among single men, 73% say they want a wife as capable of earning a good income as they are. Only 3% say she should be less capable. This bodes well for high-achieving women.

The Presbyterian Schism Begins in Earnest

This week the New Wineskins Association of Churches met at First Presbyterian Church in Orlando to discuss leaving the Presbyterian Church (USA) and joining the Evangelical Presbyterian Church. Officially, they were lamenting how unfaithful the PC (USA) is, and the EPC was there to "stand with" the New Wineskins dissidents. But the main agenda was clear. In fact, it is clear that New Wineskins, which began as a conservative ginger group, has turned into the main vehicle of the schism. The leaders of New Wineskins and the EPC have been talking about a merger since at least the 2006 General Assembly, which adopted the Peace, Unity, and Purity report.

151 congregations have signed on to the New Wineskins essential tenets. 130 of them sent representatives to the Orlando meeting. The EPC has 182 congregations with 75, 000 members. This compares to the 11,000 congregations and over 2 million members of the PC (USA). The EPC appeals to dissidents in the mainline denomination more than the larger Presbyterian Church of America does because the EPC will (in theory) ordain women, while the PCA will not.

New Wineskins has sensibly not insisted that its member churches leave the Presbyterian Church (USA), nor that they join the Evangelical Presbyterian Church. Instead, co-moderator Dean Weaver proposed two "faithful options": leave the denomination for a better one, or stay in place as a dissident congregation (which is what they are doing now).

The EPC, for its part, has made a sensible proposal as well. They invite any New Wineskins congregations, as well as other dissident congregations not part of New Wineskins, to form a non-geographical New Wineskins Presbytery for a five-year transitional period.

I don't think all the New Wineskins churches will leave the PC (USA), nor even all the congregations that sent representatives to the Orlando meeting. Still, if even half of them join the EPC, they will make the latter denomination half again larger. And the New Wineskins leaders will go from marginalized dissidents in the old church, to instantly prominent leaders of the new.

I am distressed that the New Wineskins folks are trying to leave already. They feared that bad things might happen as a result of the PUP report. I, too, am waiting to see if the "local application" of the church's essential tenets really will degenerate into "local option," as some conservatives fear – but it hasn't happened yet. I remain hopeful that by returning to the traditional Presbyterian standards of the Adopting Act of 1729 we will, instead, turn back some of the politically correct excesses that beset the church from the other side. In any case, though, I think we should all work for a good outcome, and wait to see what it really is.

It is probably inevitable that some of the New Wineskins churches will leave. I think that if the overwhelming majority of a congregation want to go, the Presbyterian Church (USA) should let them, and wish them godspeed. The congregation should buy their building for a reasonable amount. The PC(USA) will most likely be losing a good location, and should suck it up. If the big church is reasonable with dissidents, there will be fewer of them. I don't want them to go, but I don't want the denomination to be a dog in the manger, either.

My Nominee for Best Super Bowl Ad: Chevrolet "Ain't We Got Love"

I have been surprised in the post-mortem on the Super Bowl commercials that my favorite has been so little mentioned: the Chevrolet "Ain't We Got Love" ad. This one is a compendium of forty years of pop songs mentioning Chevrolets. Some of the songs are performed by the original singers, some by regular people (ok, actors playing regular people).

Advertising is designed not just to sell a product once, but again and again. The other ads are trying to insinuate their product into the popular consciousness. This one proves it.

Raspberry Worries that Black Marriage Past the Tipping Point

Longtime Washington Post columnist William Raspberry was at Centre College last night. In his public lecture he talked about the efforts he has made to promote strong homes to help children learn. He has started a program called Baby Steps in his home town of Okalona, MS, and he promotes the idea elsewhere. He did not elaborate in his talk on what he means by strong homes, so I asked him afterwards. In particular, I wondered what he thought about the extraordinarily low African-American marriage rate today.

Raspberry shared my concern that there is a crisis today in black marriages. In fact, he went further than I would. Raspberry fears that there are not enough African Americans in the younger generation who have made strong marriages like his. He says it appears that black America may have gone past the point of no return on establishing a strong marriage culture.

The two main points that he main in his public lecture were (1) we all partly agree with the positions we oppose, and (2) people who disagree with us are not necessarily knaves or fools. With that wisdom in mind, it would be proper humility, I suppose, to think that perhaps the black marriage pattern is not all that bad. Maybe, contrary to what I think, the low black marriage rate is not as bad for African Americans as a similar rate would be for other ethnic groups. And maybe, contrary to William Raspberry's fears, young African Americans have not gone past the tipping point, but will create a revival of marriage.

I wish that prominent African Americans who have made strong marriages would go on the stump to promote such a revival. I have applauded Bill Cosby for doing so in the past, for which he has taken much heat.

I think it would help if Bill Raspberry himself took a leading role in the movement.

Darwin Says " Marry, Marry, Marry Q.E.D."

When Darwin was 29 he had returned from his voyage on the Beagle. He wanted to get on with the ambitious career of natural science that he had set for himself. But first, he must answer a much bigger question than the origin of species: should he marry? Being of an analytic turn of mind, Darwin drew up a pro and con list. (I have highlighted a few choice considerations):

Marry

Children (if it Please God)
Constant companion (and friend in old age) who will feel interested in one
Object to be beloved and played with. Better than a dog anyhow
Home, & someone to take care of house
Charms of music and female chit-chat
These things good for one’s health—but terrible loss of time
My God, it is intolerable to think of spending one’s whole life, like a neuter bee, working, working, and nothing after all—No, no, won’t do
Imagine living all one’s day solitary in smoky dirty London House
Only picture to yourself a nice soft wife on a sofa with good fire and books and music perhaps
Compare this vision with the dingy reality of Great Marlboro Street, London

Not Marry

Freedom to go where one liked
Choice of Society and little of it
Conversation of clever men at clubs
Not forced to visit relatives and bend in every trifle
Expense and anxiety of children
Perhaps quarrelling
Loss of Time
Cannot read in the evenings
Fatness and idleness
Anxiety and responsibility
Less money for books etc.
If many children forced to gain one’s bread (But then it is very bad for one’s health to work too much)
Perhaps my wife won’t like London; then the sentence is banishment and degradation into indolent, idle fool

Marry, Marry, Marry Q.E.D.

Darwin promptly married his cousin, Emma Wedgewood, and they had a long fruitful, and notably happy marriage.

This whole story is charming. "Better than a dog anyhow" may enter the family lexicon.

I was struck by two particular lines. The great London clubs, the successors to the coffee houses that I have written about often, were truly attractive for the conversation of clever men. They were not quite third places, because of their exclusive membership, but they did offer varied conversation of a large enough group of informed men. The downside for me, and other "clever men" today, is that the clubs did not include the conversation of clever women.

In contrast to the clubs, Darwin draws a picture of the ideal type of the home scene of a knowledge class man of the Victorian era: " a nice soft wife on a sofa with good fire and books and music perhaps." We know that the Darwins did have much intelligent conversation at home, and that Charles Darwin respected Emma Darwin's opinion. He loved playing with his children, too. Darwin is a model for an engaged husband and father who sustained his prodigious schedule of work and thought.

Marry, Marry, Marry; Converse, Converse, Converse; Work, Work, Work. Q.E.D.

The College and the Coffee Shop

The New York Times has a story dear to my heart: "Rural Colleges Seek New Edge and Urbanize." They tell of rural colleges and universities adding urban amenities, including denser adjacent housing. Their aim is not just to serve students, but to turn the college town into "a small city in the country that is not reserved for only the young." Hendrix College in Conway, Arkansas, a partner in Centre's consortium, is featured. When I visited Hendrix I found the coffee house on the edge of campus. It is a fine one, but at that time it was the only thing like it anywhere near campus.

Danville, Kentucky, where I live, is a wonderful Norman Rockwellesque small town with a fine little college in it. It does not think of itself, though, as a college town. Town/gown relations have long been friendly and respectful, but not, I would say, intimate. The college had its life and amenities, and the town had a different set. Lately, though, the two have been moving together, in just the way envisioned in this article. The college moved its bookstore into an empty downtown department store. The college worked together with a local entrepreneur to build a new coffee house attached to the bookstore. This coffee house, the Hub, is named for the old department store. I spend hours in the Hub each day. I hold office hours there, and talk to students, colleagues, and friends and neighbors from town.

When my wife sent me this article, she entitled her message "Read it. Read it now." The dessert, she promised, is at the end. And indeed it was. The article ends with John Fry, president of Franklin & Marshall in lovely Lancaster, PA, describing the serendipitous ideal of liberal arts college life in the new kind of college town: “You’re in the coffee shop on a Saturday morning sipping a cup of coffee and you run into a professor, and two hours later you’ve had one of those transformative moments.”

Amen.

Republican Third Place?

In teaching a course about coffee houses, we went to lots of independent coffee houses, and a few chains. The independents were overwhelmingly – no, uniformly – left of center in their feel. The corporate ones were more politically neutral, but even Starbucks feels more Democratic than Republican. I have taken to asking people if they have ever been to a Republican coffee house. So far, no examples. It seems possible that there are some evangelical Christian coffee house ministries that might serve GOP lattes, but I haven't met one yet.

Indeed, it is hard to imagine what, exactly, a Republican "third place" would be like. I know about some redneck bars that have a right-wing stance, but I don't think they are really for party regulars and primary voters. And I suppose the average country club restaurant is more R than D. Still, it is hard to think of the kind of place where Republicans would normally go to hang out and talk about the world with strangers who gradually become acquaintances.

Any ideas?

Gay Fathers Should Breastfeed

Men can breastfeed. Manual stimulation, especially with a breast pump, can stimulate lactation. Men's milk is pretty much as good as women's milk. Breastfeeding builds a bond between mother and child – I think it should have a similar effect for father and child, in the absence of a mother.

Anyone see a downside?

Why Is Super Bowl Sunday a High Holy Day in the Civil Religion?

When I made my civil religion calendar last year the holiday of Super Bowl Commercial Sunday came before Rodent Shadow Day. Such have been the rapid advances in our civilization that in only one year the movable feast of the Super Bowl has gone beyond the day of the ground hog, and is heading toward Forced Romance Day.

Someday, perhaps, it can make it all the way to Fireworks Day on July fourth, a holiday clearly in need of revitalization.

But what is the Super Bowl for? The game is usually not interesting, the commercials have been pawed over before they are even shown, the half-time show is bloated beyond parody. The most memorable moment in recent Super Bowls concerned a “wardrobe malfunction.”

We make a big deal of the Super Bowl because we need what the great sociologist Emile Durkheim called a “collective effervescence.” Every social group, large and small, periodically needs a shared emotional experience to renew our bond with one another. The larger and more spread out the group, the more it needs a collective effervescence. 9/11 clearly was a genuine collective effervescence for the United States.

The Super Bowl is an attempt to manufacture an annual collective effervescence. It is successful in that in creates a common topic of conversation among, say, half the nation. And it does provide an excuse in the new year to get together with friends and do something social for the purpose of doing something social. In Kentucky we spend a week celebrating a two-minute horse race for the same purpose.

Despite being mostly scripted, though, the Super Bowl can work as a collective effervescence for two reasons peculiar to itself. First, there is an actual unscripted football game buried underneath, which carries the possibility of being interesting. And, because it is just a football game, people can get themselves worked up into ritual emotions, without actually caring about the outcome. Indeed, I think the point of spectator sports is to create a bond that is purely social because it is not, in the end, about anything that really matters. And the bond of sports watchers is not only among fans of the same team, but even with fans of opposing teams. The ritual of opposition creates a bond when the thing we are “fighting” about doesn’t really matter.

The Super Bowl, despite being mostly ridiculous, earns its place in our civil religion calendar.