Christmas. Present. Tear off the wrapping paper and enjoy receiving the items – only for the interest to fade within days (or sometimes hours).

Many of us like to be generous at Christmas. We love to see our children’s faces light up with joy when they receive something they included in their letter to Santa. We love giving special gifts to a spouse or significant other. (Christmas is also one of the most popular times to give engagement rings.) And then there are gifts for teachers, coworkers, staff, and others you might want to thank.

The problem is that many of these gifts are wasted. According to The Australia Institute, nearly a third of Australians will receive a gift they never use. The total value of these unwanted gifts is $980 million, or nearly $1 billion. And a lot of that ends up in the landfill, along with all the other Christmas-related paraphernalia.

How to reverse this trend? A great way is to focus on Christmas sustainability. Here are seven tips for an amazing, joyful and lasting season.

1. Food, glorious food

Who doesn’t love food, especially at Christmas? Even if you don’t indulge yourself, you’re probably entertaining, so food gifts will come in handy.

“Food giveaways are a great option if you’re looking [the budget]and also a big favorite for teachers, grandparents, and anyone who says, ‘Oh, you’ve got nothing to bring me,'” says decluttering and organization coach Lauren Winzar.

She suggests items like gingerbread, fudge or chocolates, baked goods, a mix of dry ingredients with a handwritten recipe, and flavored popcorn (with a favorite DVD attached).

Each year, Mia Swainson, author of Happy Planet Living: Simple Ways to Live a Climate Positive Lifestyle and Make a Big Difference, picks with love the fruits of her vegetable garden and makes jams and marmalades. His preserves are a work of art sought after by family and friends – and perfect for Boxing Day brunch.

2. Support a local author

Buy a book. Yes, making a book involves resources.

But physical books can be read and re-read, offered and sold. Or you can gift a certificate to an online store such as Booktopia which includes e-books.

The creatives have worked hard over the past few years and need your support. And many titles promote sustainability – and also help improve financial literacy.

3. Experiments

What to give someone who has everything? Probably not more stuff, which could lead to more clutter.

Winzar suggests giving experiences.

“The gifts least likely to be left in the dust or pushed to the back of a closet are expendable experiences,” she says.

From movie tickets to movie subscriptions and even sites like Redballoon, there are plenty of ways to deliver experiences to people. Even better: organize an experience where you can do something together to build your relationship by enjoying something together.

4. Shop Op

Would you, could you buy gifts from an op store? I did this for many, many years. And I will do it again.

Many operation stores even have Christmas displays with gift items ready for purchase. I often find unique items that aren’t easy to get in retail stores – often brand new. And once something is beautifully packaged, it will look so special that no one will even know you bought it for a bargain.

5. Gift wrapping

If you’ve ever cleaned up after Christmas Day, you know there’s a lot of paper and packing material. And unfortunately, much of it is not sustainable. This shiny, sparkly wrapper may look great under the Christmas tree, but it’s destined to sit in a landfill for many years to come once the Christmas sparkle loses its magic.

I like to use plain brown kraft paper. I embellish it with ribbons (leftovers from other gifts), or tie it with plain twine and decorate with fresh ivy.

We also write the recipient’s name directly on the paper rather than using glittery gift cards (which usually fall out anyway). You can also use children’s artwork that they have lost interest in – they may even be proud to use it. Or embrace the Japanese tradition of wrapping with fabric.

6. The sustainable table

We often want our Christmas table to be a bit special, especially if we are hosting people we may not have seen in a while.

But before you go out and spend a fortune on shiny new things you might only use once, consider some durable options. Could you make your own sweets?

Rather than receiving pieces of plastic toys they’ll soon tire of, create your own with small tokens of things found at ops stores or elsewhere. Invest in quality Christmas decorations and reuse them every year.

Or buy used tree and table decorations. And celebrate the season by incorporating seasonal flowers (eg hydrangeas or agapanthus).

Christmas is a season of joy. The best gifts have meaning. And the best events are those where people come together with joy. And what could be more joyful than to celebrate sustainably?

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IItalian microbial ecologist Alma Dal Co died last week (November 14) at the age of 33. of the youngest to have been appointed assistant professor at the university.

“The loss of Alma Dal Co this week is devastating for those of us who knew her, worked with her and were friends with her,” said Michael, fellow microbial ecologist and group leader at Ecole Polytechnique. federal government of Zurich (ETH Zurich). Manhart tweeted. “She was a talented scientist who made valuable contributions to microbial ecology, but more importantly, she was a kind, generous, and endlessly enthusiastic person.”

Dal Co died while spearfishing off Pantelleria, a small island in southern Italy where her parents owned a home. She had gone on a boat trip with a local friend. While the current was too strong at first, prompting Dal Co to stay on the boat, la Repubblica reports the two divers entered once they reached calmer waters, then separated during the dive. After resurfacing and seeing no sign of Dal Co, her friend went looking for her and found her body lying on the seabed. He tried to revive her, but to no avail. An autopsy to determine the cause of his death is underway, la Repubblica adds.

Dal Co was born and raised in Venice, where she developed her love for music, another passion she shared with spearfishing. “If I’m not in the office, I’m at the piano. If I’m not at the piano, I’m underwater spearfishing,” his Harvard University profile page States.

According to his Harvard biography, Dal Co earned a master’s degree in piano from the Venice Conservatory before transitioning into science. She obtained a bachelor’s and master’s degree in physics from the University of Padua and the University of Turin, respectively, before becoming passionate about microbial biology. In 2019, Dal Co completed a PhD in systems biology at ETH Zurich, where she studied how individual cellular interactions shape microbial community behavior. She then did a post-doctorate at Harvard, where she continued her research on complex biological systems and cell-cell interactions. She then joined UNIL in 2021, where she founded her laboratory with a combination of physicists and biologists. The lab celebrated its first anniversary last October and Dal Co recently won a grant to continue its research, according to a Tweeter from the lab. His most recent article, published in March, proposed a model using the molecular mechanisms behind cell-cell interactions to better understand community-level properties and processes.

“Alma embodied the ideals of interdisciplinary science and was a true modern polymath,” according to a statement from the Department of Computational Biology at UNIL. “She enjoyed connecting concepts, ideas, techniques and people across disciplinary and institutional boundaries.”

In addition to tweeting about his research, Dal Co often posted videos of her playing the piano. “I was really glad there was a musician in our department,” Yinyin Ma, an environmental microbiologist, violinist and former Dal Co colleague, wrote in a memory book created by UNIL. “I watched almost all the clips [she] share.”

“His intelligence, his charisma, his enthusiasm and his passion for science will be missed”, concludes the UNIL press release. “The outpouring of grief and support from the local and wider community speaks to the depth with which Alma has touched us all.

Dal Co is survived by his parents, Mario Dal Co and Margherita Turvani.

Max Verstappen put in another compelling qualifying performance to take pole at Yas Marina for the 2022 Abu Dhabi GP.

The Dutchman was in a class of his own, with both Q3 laps good enough for the top grid spot tomorrow.

It was two by two on the first three rows, with Sergio Perezthe Ferrari of Charles Leclerc and carlos sainz more the mercedes a pair of Lewis Hamilton and george russell following Verstappen.

Lando Norris was, as is often the case, closest to the “Big Three” in seventh position, with Esteban Ocon eighth, an impressive Sebastian Vettel ninth in his last GP weekend and Daniel Ricardo completing the top 10.

Here’s how qualifying went.

Q1

Several drivers hit the track early, with both Aston Martins quickly heading to the top of the timesheets.

In his final F1 weekend, Sebastian Vettel clocked a time of 1min 26.285sec and teammate Lance Stroll immediately went a tenth quicker – however, the fastest of them all was Yuki Tsunoda with a 1min 26.135sec.

Soon more heavyweights came out, with Leclerc taking a tenth off Tsunoda in sector 1, half a second in sector 2 and almost 1 second faster at the end of the lap.

A moment later, his championship rival for second place, Perez, beat the Monegasque’s time by 0.4s, before Verstappen beat that lap by 0.066s.

Norris and Ricciardo both looked sharp, 0.8 seconds off the pace in fourth and fifth with half the session up. Their times looked even more impressive when Hamilton was only able to slot between the McLarens on his first effort, with Russell just ahead of Norris.

Verstappen complained that his headrest was broken, while Fernando Alonso had a moment and could only manage 12th in his first run.

Tsunoda, whose impressive time meant he was still tenth, was perched on the weighbridge after being randomly called with five minutes remaining.

All the drivers started with less than four minutes on the clock, with cars queuing at the last corner to try to find space.

Vettel, who had to navigate a slew of nearly stationary cars in the final sector looking for space, took fifth with a time of 1min 25.523sec, while Mick Schumacher leaps to the tenth.

Several big names came out in the third quarter – last week’s poleman Kevin Magnussen was knocked out in 16th by half a tenth, Pierre Gasly was o.o2sec further, Valtteri Bottas in the 18th and both williams of Alex Albon and Nicholas Latifi forming the last row.

Q2

Both Mercedes took to the track in a bid to book a banker, with Hamilton clocking a lap of 1 minute 25.772 seconds, but Russell immediately did better by 0.4 seconds.

There was a slight gap before the rest of the field disappeared, as an impressive Vettel came between the Silver Arrows, before Ocon then moved into second, 0.15s behind Russell.

Sainz, who seemed to be the fastest Ferrari in Interlagos, topped the timesheets with a time of 1min 25.090s, but was soon blown away by the two Red Bulls.

It was No2 team Sergio Perez who now took the lead with a lap of 1min 24.419sec and Verstappen at 0.4sec.

Hamilton then improved, closing within 0.355 seconds of the Mexican in second, while Russell was fourth fastest, half a second behind Perez.

“Three tenths? exclaimed Hamilton when told of his gap to Perez, but in reality the Mercedes looked solid, given the increased wear on its tires on Sunday.

Vettel was fastest of all in the first sector, his time being good enough for the fifth, because behind him the timesheets became a spinning slot machine with laps flying away.

Norris was once again impressive, becoming the meat of a Mercedes sandwich in sixth, while Ocon and Ricciardo also squealed in Q3.

Alonso was eventually eliminated in 11th, Tsunoda in 12th, Schumacher in 13th, Stroll in 14th and Zhou.

Q3

Again Mercedes was first on Yas Marina, with Hamilton lapping first and fastest in 1min 24.678sec.

Sainz was 0.4 seconds ahead halfway through his first race and held on to that margin as he crossed the finish line.

Leclerc was a hair’s breadth – 0.062sec – while Perez had a squirm in the final corner which meant he was three hundredths behind Sainz.

Verstappen then reached the top, almost 0.3 seconds quicker than Sainz, but appeared to be wide on the final corner – however, his lap still stood.

Vettel had his first race five minutes later and on an empty track his lap was good enough for seventh place, 0.973 seconds behind Verstappen.

Ricciardo also made his first attempt but couldn’t do better than Vettel while Ocon set a ninth fastest time.

Leclerc struggled through the hairpin, but made up for it by going just a tenth slower than Verstappen.

Sainz couldn’t improve and remained third, Perez moved into second, before Verstappen extended his margin with 1min 23.824sec – his two Q3 laps were good enough for pole.

Hamilton – who had an oversteer at Turn 14 – and Russell were fifth and sixth despite improving, while Norris, Ocon, Vettel and Ricciardo followed behind.

2022 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix qualifying results

Position	Driver	Crew	Time
1	Max Verstappen	Red Bull	1min 23.824sec
2	Sergio Perez	Red Bull	1min 24.052sec
3	Charles Leclerc	Ferrari	1min 24.092sec
4	carlos sainz	Ferrari	1min 24.242sec
5	Lewis Hamilton	mercedes	1min 24.508sec
6	george russell	mercedes	1min 24.511sec
seven	Lando Norris	McLaren	1min 24.769sec
8	Esteban Ocon	Alpine	1min 24.830sec
9	Sebastian Vettel	Aston Martin	1min 24.961sec
ten	Daniel Ricardo	McLaren	1min 25.045sec
Q2 times
11	Fernando Alonso	Alpine	1min 25.096sec
12	Yuki Tsunoda	Alpha Tauri	1min 25.219sec
13	Mick Schumacher	Haas	1min 25.225sec
14	Spear Stroll	Aston Martin	1min 25.359sec
15	Zhou Guanyu	Alfa Romeo	1min 25.408sec
Q1 times
16	Kevin Magnussen	Haas	1min 25.834sec
17	Pierre Gasly	Alpha Tauri	1min 25.859sec
18	Valtteri Bottas	Alfa Romeo	1min 25.892sec
19	Alex Albon	williams	1min 26.028sec
20	Nicholas Latifi	williams	1min 26.054sec

AAndrew Doyle is a dangerous man, and this is a dangerous book. Don’t take my word for it: the guy’s own pals think he’s one to watch. Like the homie he’s telling us about who called him a “fucking nazi”. True, vodka martinis had been taken and proof of the friend’s fascist inclination was Doyle’s vote to leave the EU and his satires of progressivism, but you can never be too careful.

So it was with some trepidation that I opened my copy of The New Puritans during a recent hospital stay. I had lost patience with a John Grisham caught in the store, who was largely concerned about the racist and stupid character of everyone south of the Mason-Dixon line. When did the courageous master of the populist pulp of the South turn into a sneering liberal fanatic? A move to the right was in order, so it was Doyle’s book.

Throughout the Nazi polemics, The New Puritans is something of a disappointment. It’s a better read than Mein Kampf and less esoteric than The myth of the 20th centurywalk inthere, but it’s quite light on old blood and soil. Turns out Doyle isn’t a Nazi at all, just a standard John-Stuart-Mill liberal. The New Puritans, far from being a tract on Aryan racial purity, is a warning against the authoritarian tendencies of identity politics. Boy, are there will be red faces at the next Britain First reading group.

A broadcaster and stand-up comedian, Doyle is also a recovering academic with a doctorate in “Renaissance discourse on gender and sexuality.”, which takes some recovery. It did, however, give him intimate insight into a political insurgency that, in just a few short years, has gripped the heights of government, law, medicine, education, journalism, the arts and business. private enterprise.

The architects of this movement are “the new puritans” and their religion is critical social justice, Doyle’s term for what is more commonly known as wokeism. They are “a prohibitionist and precisionist tendency that seeks to reshape society according to their own ideological fervor”. Their bigotry, philistinism, and the malevolent exercise of power over others remind Doyle of the Salem witch trials and the vicious little girls whose “lived experience” sent 19 innocent women to the gallows.

Where Abigail Williams and her pointing acolytes saw witches, their ideological descendants see racists and transphobes. They do therefore by applying a doctrine called intersectionality, which asserts that interlocking systems of oppression are the basis of Western societies. They harness the power of social stigma to punish transgressors and skeptics. It’s a culture of undo – “a punitive and performative mass denunciation in order to destroy lives and enforce conformity” – and today it rages on Twitter rather than a colonial settlement in Massachusetts.

Besides punishment, the New Puritans exercise prior restraint by banishing speech they or they disapprove of as harmful, a practice known as safetyism. Doyle notes how this regularly involves privileged taxation their preferences on lower orders. “To imagine“, he vwalk ines, “Debrett’s Guide to Etiquette Having Been Rewritten by a Person with Histrionic Personality Disorder.”

Critical social justice, in Doyle’s analysis, is applied postmodernism

Doyle traces this “conformity frenzy” to where wise thinkers go to grants and wise thinkers go to pensions: higher education. Critical social justice, in Doyle’s analysis, is “postmodernism applied”. It turns out that half of our young people are sent to closed ideological workshops to be catechized in neo-TueThe xist critical theory of the Poundland post-structuralists was not such a good idea after all. Having learned that reality is constructed through language and that language is a tool of oppression, a generation of arts and social science graduates “brought this ideology into adult life and institutions. they or they busy now”. This has led to a “civilizational threat” in which “the goal is not to criticize society as it is, but to engineer an entirely new pseudo-reality by imposing limits on language, thought, and Perception.”. Again, religious nuances are plain: “Theirs is a belief in the perfectibility of mankind.”

One example Doyle gives of applied postmodernism is Schedule B of the NHS policy, which combines religious literalism with a zeal to inculcate pagans. Since “the NHS welcomes patients according to their gender identity, and not according to their biological sex”, Appendix B states that “if a patient complains that there is a man on her ward, she should be told that is not true; the are no men present”. The Jesuits used to say, “Give me the child for the first seven years, and I’ll give you the man.” The priests of the new religion say, “Give me a health bureaucracy and a Stonewall training, and I’ll give you a woman who’s too scared to interrogate the man in the next bed.”.”

Doyle has been so maligned as a right-wing demagogue that you might expect The New Puritans to be one of those anti-snowflake polemics. However, he offers a conditional defense of ’80s PC culture, which he says “achieved truly progressive results in terms of social consciousness without resorting to the kind of censored police intervention or ‘cancel culture’ “crowd-driven retribution that we see today.”. In fact, Doyle considers the heirs of the PC-crazed tabloid columnists of the 1980s to be the white-crazed progressives of the 1980s. 2020, which seizes on highly individual incidents, dubious anecdotes and obvious myths to peddle hysteria about societal fate. Just as the fear of crime increases as the frequency of crime decreases, “the relentless focus on victimization has apparently intensified as social attitudes have progressed”.

The more I read, the more I began to recognize myself

Doyle plays a Reverse Uno on his progressive critics, saying that they are the real reactionaries. Their ideology “encourages its adherents to deny the progress our devotion to liberal values ​​has made”. The New Puritans have “avoided the traditional socialist goals of correcting economic inequality and redistributing wealth and replaced their with an obsessive focus on race, gender and sexuality”. So-called anti-racists and gender radicals have in fact, “allowed rehabilitated racial thinking to flourish” and promoted “extremely conservative views about what it means to be male and female”. Those whose political awakening – and/or jobs – depend on resisting long-defeated fanaticisms cannot recognize how successful that resistance has been in changing society. They would lose their goal and their Powerful. “As the reactionaries of the French Revolution”, Doyle presumes, the new puritans are “troubled by the transformations they have seen in their lives and yearn for a return to the olds”.

Where I have to part with Doyle is his confidence that the brakes can still be slammed on the hell-bound handcart. “Armies of the Unpersuaded“, he assures us, “are far more abundant than the New Puritans would have them have we believe.” That’s how you know Doyle is a liberal. Only a Liberal could fathom Britain in 2022, where tweeting color jokes and statements of biological facts leads to a police raidand find reasons to hope. If that’s not enough, he believes we need more “civil discussion” and “find a way to relearn how to talk to each other.””. No no no. I want to crush my enemies then troll their without mercy on Twitter.

Which brings me to my real problem with The New Puritans: he left me the feeling, as the children say, very seen. I started by nodding at Doyle’s criticism of people whose politics I hate, sucking in all that sweet confirmation bias as he documented their lazy thinking, intolerance and lack of empathy for their opponents. But the more I read, the more I began to recognize myself. The more I had to reckon with was how lazy, intolerant, and harsh my own thinking had become. The more I felt embarrassed by mental fortifications like “my adversaries are enemies of a free society”, “their prescriptions will destroy western civilization” and all my other lazy self-justifications. When Doyle touts the need “to instill critical thinking at all levels of our educational institutions”I wonder if they or they offer evening classes.

The New Puritans is a book that refuses to flatter even its intended audienceand for this I have half felt and half admired. It’s a thoughtful and insightful introduction to a grim new orthodoxy, its terrifying but never alarmist narrative, its analytical commentary without being sadly academic. The strength of his call to arms is that it is more of a call to debate. In this debate The New Puritans is a gunfight of uncompromising reason but reason with compassion. Andrew Doyle has written a masterful broadside against revival that will baffle the anti-revival as well, offering both the radical notion that rather than being identities, we embrace our status as individuals. I told you it was a dangerous book.

OneMarketData, a high-performance enterprise-wide solution for tick data, analytics and visualization, has upgraded its OneTick Tick Analytics platform with the launch of OneTick Academy.

The new offerings improve how clients can deploy large-scale tick analytics to drive trading and monitoring programs while benefiting from an unparalleled level of customer experience and support.

These services cap a period of continued global growth and technological advancements that have enabled the company to meet the most complex client requirements for trading, analysis, market data and monitoring.

The upgraded version of the OneTick Tick Analytics platform was designed to improve and simplify the way customers consume data, write analytics, and administer their OneTick deployment.

Designed based on customer feedback and market demand, the latest version of OneTick includes:
• APIs, in particular REST, Python and ODBC/JDBC
• A new machine learning (ML) integration
• Superior data collection, especially for Kafka & AMQP (RabbitMQ)
• Enhanced analytics, including those related to ledger processing and crypto transaction analysis
• Enhanced visualization to support monitoring and control displays

As part of its upgraded platform, the company also launched OneTick Academy to provide customers with a new level of customer experience and service.

The holistic e-learning resource provides release notes that cover the history of improvements in each major and monthly release of OneTick; short two-minute “how-to” micro-learning guides delivered via video that cover new and existing OneTick features; and a library of all OneTick training courses available on demand.

The Academy exemplifies OneTick’s ongoing mission to empower its customers by making its features easy to use, easy to find, and easy to understand.

“OneTick has always been committed to a customer-centric approach. As a company at the forefront of data management and analytics, our recent platform upgrades and the introduction of OneTick Academy solidify our position as a technology innovator focused on customer success,” said Ross Dubin, SVP, Global Head of Sales, OneMarketData.

“For more than 15 years, our goal has been to provide comprehensive solutions that reduce complexity and can be deployed to handle all of our customers’ needs as easily as ticking a box, and these new offerings reflect that promise to our community. OneTick,” he said. said.

“We are proud to have been continuously recognized for providing the technology, flexibility and scalability that financial institutions need to manage all their data and regulatory needs, and we are delighted that these new services will introduce a new level of service and an improved experience for our customers,” he added.

The former first lady said “leadership matters” but ruled out running for president herself in the future.

November 15, 2022

Michelle Obama says the Democrats’ defeat in the 2016 US election “still hurts”, but that she and her husband had “put a marker in the sand” with his presidency.

The former first lady said “leadership matters” but ruled out running for president herself in the future.

Ahead of the release of her new book, The Light We Carry, she gave an exclusive interview to BBC Breakfast in which she discussed the ongoing political polarization in the UK and US.

She told presenter Naga Munchetty that the US electorate’s decision to replace Barack Obama with Donald Trump “still hurts” and had made her wonder if her tenure had mattered.

“When I’m in my darkest moment… my most irrational place, I could say, well, maybe (it didn’t matter). Maybe we weren’t good enough.

“But then I look around when there is more clarity… and I think more rationally, I think well… today there is a whole world of young people who think differently about themselves because of work that we did.

“And that’s where you can’t allow the great to be the enemy of the good.

“You know, did everything work out for the eight years we were there? Absolutely not. That’s not how change happens. But we put a marker in the sand. We pushed the steering wheel forward a bit.

“But progress is not a steady upward climb. There are ups and downs and stagnation. This is the nature of change.

“And that’s why the work we’re doing today is about empowering the next generation, the generation that we’re passing the baton to, and making space for them to leave their mark in history.”

Obama said it was important to have leadership that “reflects the direction we want to go as a people” and that allows the general public to “feel seen.”

The Light We Carry is out tomorrow!

I wanted to share with you a little excerpt from the audiobook. Listen and pre-order your copy at https://t.co/IZWLMRGTn5. pic.twitter.com/MFi6vywWWk

— Michelle Obama (@MichelleObama) November 14, 2022

“Leadership is important,” she said.

“Voices at the top matter if we can continue to be sensitive to voices that want to lead through fear and division.

“That’s why government is important, democracy is important. The vote counts. So I think it starts with having leadership that reflects the direction we want to go in as a people.

When asked which question she disliked being asked the most, she replied: “‘Are you going to run for president?’ I hate it.

“Are you?” said Munchetty.

“No, I’m not. I’m not going to introduce myself,” Obama replied.

– Obama’s book, The Light We Carry, is out now.

RNS

Phoenix pastor Caleb Campbell has a theory about the growing number of Americans being labeled as Christian nationalists.

Most would rather go to Cracker Barrel than storm the Capitol.

Participants sing along with the band at a Turning Point USA event earlier this year. PHOTO: Courtesy of Caleb Campbell

Many see themselves as good Christians who love their country. But somewhere along the way, they started to think that being a good American and being a Christian were one and the same thing.

“Their whole life has been a mixture of their American civil religion and their Christian religion,” said Campbell, pastor of Desert Springs Bible Church and a self-proclaimed missionary to Christian nationalists.

Caleb Campbell. PHOTO: Courtesy of Desert Springs Bible Church

“Their whole life has been the mixture of their American civil religion and their Christian religion.”

– Caleb Campbell, pastor of Desert Springs Bible Church and a self-proclaimed missionary to Christian Nationalists.

To help fellow Christians distinguish more clearly between their faith and their identity as Americans, Campbell founded a group called Disarm Leviathan and has spent the past year reading Christian nationalist books and attending events like Turning Point USA’s monthly Freedom Night in America party, held at a megachurch in Phoenix.

He also signed up to teach a “biblical citizenship class” led by Patriot Academy, founded by Rick Green, a former Texas state legislator turned Christian “Constitution Coach.” The class mixes details about America’s founding and the Constitution with Bible verses and conservative politics.

Patriotism of God and country remains popular in the United States, according to a recent report from Pew Research. Nearly half of Americans (45%) think America should be a Christian country, including 78% white evangelicals and 62% black Protestants.

Although few people want the US government to adopt Christianity as the country’s official religion, according to Pew, many Americans worry that the religion will lose its influence in the culture. This fear, Campbell says, has led growing numbers of his co-religionists to adopt a more extreme form of patriotism between God and country, more focused on winning the culture war than chasing after Jesus.

Campbell expected many of the people in Christian nationalist circles he encountered to be angry political supporters. But instead, most were kind-hearted people who thought they were doing the right thing for God.

“It was an aha moment,” he said.

Charlie Kirk, middle, founder of Turning Point USA, presents Kyle Rittenhouse, right, in front of a cheering crowd during a panel discussion at the 2021 Turning Point USA America Fest event, Monday, Dec. 20, 2021, in Phoenix. The panel discussion, titled “Kenosha On Camera,” comes a month after Rittenhouse was acquitted of charges in the fatal 2020 Kenosha shooting. IMAGE: AP Photo/Ross D Franklin/File Photo.

At the time, Campbell had focused on arguing with Christian nationalists, trying to convince them of their ideology – popularized by The politicians, pastors and online activists – is incompatible with the teachings of Jesus. But this approach did not work. He began to think of them as “Aunt Betty” – a loved one who is bewildered and fearful.

“Aunt Betty watches a whole generation of Americans deconstruct their American civic religion, and it freaks her out,” he said.

Campbell instead decided to approach Christian nationalists as a missionary, “leading with kindness and generosity”. What Christian nationalists needed, he decided, was conversion, not confrontation.

“I started to think, how can I actually bring Jesus into this person’s life, because they’re being sold a version of Jesus that’s not biblically accurate and will end up disappointing them,” did he declare.

He is particularly concerned about what he called “seeker-sensitive Christian nationalism” that seeks to attract new worshipers through worship services that praise Jesus and “own the libs” at the same time.

“It’s a brilliant church growth strategy,” Campbell said.

“I’ve been in this business long enough to know that if I got an American flag the size of a car dealership, put it in front of my building, and did a series of sermons ‘why biblical justice wouldn’t isn’t social justice, “I could get 1,000 people,” he said.

Rather than helping people deal with their anxieties about cultural change or focusing on people’s faith, Campbell argues, this strategy fuels anger by giving believers someone to blame for their problems.

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This kind of scholarly-sensitive Christian nationalism has been on display over the past year at Freedom Night in America, a monthly revival and political rally hosted by Turning Point USA director Charlie Kirk in Dream City, a mega -Phoenix church not far from Campbell’s. congregation.

The Freedom Night services, which are carried by both Dream City and Turning Point, have featured Kirk and conservative figures like the writer Eric Metaxas, fox and friends host Peter Hegseth and John Coopersinger of the Christian group Skillet.

The events resemble a typical mega-church service, starting with some worship songs, followed by some announcements, an offering, and even an altar call. But instead of a sermon, there is a speech by Kirk, who is often joined by a guest.

At Freedom Night in OctoberDream City pastor Luke Barnett took the stage as the band wrapped up their set, repeating the last line with an old-fashioned worship tune, singing, “You alone are my heart’s desire and I want to adore you”. Barnett then introduced Kirk that night as a professor of religion rather than a conservative activist.

“If there is anyone that I believe God has raised up in America, to share life within the Kingdom, and what it looks like, what it can look like for our nation today, that is our guest tonight, Charlie Kirk,” he said. .

At the start, Kirk quoted Jeremiah 29:27, a popular Bible verse, giving it a new twist. The verse, addressed to the people of Israel during their captivity in Babylon, is often translated as “seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile”, followed by a command to pray. For Kirk, the verse became a call to political action.

“Demand the well-being of the nation you are in because your well-being is tied to the well-being of your nation,” he told attendees.

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Joanna Kline, assistant professor of Old Testament at Gordon College in Massachusetts, questioned the accuracy of Kirk’s translation. On the one hand, he leaves aside the command to pray. It also lacked the original context of the verse, which was intended to tell the Israelites that they would be in exile for decades. This group of people also had no power to make demands.

“Who would they ask? she says.

A Turning Point USA spokesperson said Kirk sees himself as a lay Christian trying to do his part, rather than a pastor or religious leader. In this role, Kirk tries to involve his fellow Christians in shaping the wider culture.

It’s very different from Christian nationalism, the Turning Point spokesperson said, and has long been a Christian practice.

The spokesperson also said Kirk was concerned about the pandemic closures which affected many churches and, in Kirk’s mind, interfered with the right to worship. This showed him the need for political involvement of churches, because although churches stay out of politics, government officials do not leave churches alone.

“His main point is that churches should preach the gospel,” the spokesperson said. “His second point is to make sure churches are able to do that.”

Victor Marx speaks at a Turning Point USA event. PHOTO: Courtesy of Marx

The author Victor Marx, who spoke at a Freedom Night in April, said holding an event to discuss politics in a church on a Wednesday night was very different from holding a discussion about politics on a Sunday morning.

A friend of Kirk who also spoke at a TPUSA event for pastors earlier this year as well as other conservative gatherings, Marx rejected the label of a Christian nationalist.

“To say that our country should be led in every position by Christians – that’s not what I believe,” he said.

For Campbell, his concerns about Christian nationalism have a personal side.

A former skinhead, Campbell first showed up at Desert Springs Bible Church in his early twenties, when he was asked to play drums in the band. The friendship and welcome he found at church changed his life, he said, and he let go of the hatred he had felt in his youth.

He eventually joined the church staff and in 2015 became senior pastor. At the time, the church was predominantly white and did not reflect the diversity of its community. Campbell began working to change that – building strong ties with black and Hispanic churches and working on issues like immigration.

Things went well at first. But Donald Trump’s election in 2016 and accompanying MAGA Christianity began to divide his church. People he had known for decades left to find a congregation that better suited their politics. Some of them ended up going to Freedom Night in Dream City – which led him to attend one of the services there and made him aware of the growth of Christian nationalism.

Campbell wants to help people like her former church members find a better way to live their faith.

Campbell is currently working on a book project inspired by the Alpha Program – a grassroots evangelism method centered on kindness, hospitality and conversation.

“It’s the Alpha program for Christian nationalists,” he said.

Dennae Pierre, a Phoenix pastor and executive director of the Surge Network, which helps churches of different ethnic backgrounds, thinks Campbell is onto something.

Pierre has worked closely with Campbell in the past and watched him lead his congregation through a difficult transition. Although many church members left, she said, Campbell’s congregation also attracted new people who felt ostracized by the merging of faith and politics in other churches.

She too believes that conversion rather than confrontation will help people find something better than Christian nationalism.

“When you think about Christian nationalism, I think there needs to be a process of intentional discipleship, to dismantle what is unhealthy and rebuild people with a more gospel-centered view of what it means to be a Christian,” he said. she declared.

This story was made possible through a grant from the Stiefel Foundation for Free Thought.

master of satire

Comedian David Sedaris at the Royal

Written by: Ann Self | Publish: September – 2022

Becky Savitz’s garden demonstrates a passion for careful stewardship and an enduring love for the beauty of nature.

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Becky Savitz’s garden looks like the pages of a fairy tale book. Colored. Capricious. Magical. Even the life-size mosaic cow standing at the back of its yard seems to have a secret story to tell. In fact, it is. Becky’sgarden was once a cow pasture. Years of accumulated cow manure became the fertile soil for five acres of sun-drenched hills, part of her formula for creating an Eden-like oasis. During the summer, Becky’s Garden is in full bloom, bursting with a wide variety of flowers near her home. However, the plants grow hundreds of miles south in Tampa, Florida, where she spends the winter months with her husband, Ed. “I buy my seeds from Johnny’s SelectedSeeds,” she explains. “My home in Tampa is ideal for cultivation.” Becky makes individual greenhouses with flat trays of rich soil seeds and clear plastic bags with knife-like plant markers to support them. When the seeds begin to sprout and grow, she moves them to shelves in the hot Florida sun to await their journey to the mountains of North Carolina in mid-May. “Each year, we pack several thousand plants ready for planting into a U-Haul truck,” she says. “When we get there? Instant Garden!” Walkways lined with a vibrant mix of towering hollyhocks invite visitors to explore the different garden zones within the acreage. Hydrangeas, boxwood, and rows of espaliered fruit trees help define distinct spaces. The flowerbeds include multicolored zinnias, poppies and nasturtiums interspersed with grasses and roses. “I plant so there’s something to bloom all season long,” says Becky. Climbing roses cover the fences and arbors, including one with a gate to welcome guests to the center of what Becky calls the wedding garden where her daughter got married. Atable with one of his spade plate mosaic creations sits in the middle with a tile saying Thyme Began In a Garden. The saying refers to the name of Becky’s garden, WildThyme. In the garden are more than 100 varieties of thyme. Grass lines the flowerbeds and steps leading up to the house. “When you walk on thyme, it gives off the most wonderful smell,” she observes. But perhaps the saying also alludes to a more spiritual purpose and place. For Becky, the garden, like Eden, bears witness to God’s creation and re-creation. Land that was once covered in manure has been transformed into something beautiful and full of life.

by Ann Self

Booze? Yes, I’m fully aware that my body ages rapidly and excess always precipitates a social hand-grenade moment – but, boy, does that first G&T feel right. And the prospect of a harsh winter ahead means I won’t be downgrading my units any time soon.

But the older I get, the more I see the effect of alcohol on relationships – mine and those of others. A 2013 study found that alcohol was a factor in 60% of couples breaking up – 60%! Among my own friends, this is increasingly becoming a point of contention rather than just a laugh.

In my youth, excess was the norm. In college, I would regularly absorb all of my allotted weekly units in one night. We would have prinks (pre-drinks) to avoid the relatively exorbitant cost of purchasing them from the Student Union. And the night would often end with one of us in the bathroom praying to the porcelain god.

Even when we entered the working world, we didn’t cut down on our alcohol consumption much. At the glossy magazine where I worked, there were endless parties with unlimited drinks. The day after a night of excess, we took turns regularly to take a refreshing nap in the fashionable closet. Twenty minutes lying on a Max Mara coat with a Prada bag for a cushion made the day survivable.

It didn’t impact my relationship because my boyfriend did the same thing (drank a lot, didn’t sleep on designer coats) and other than work we had minimal responsibilities. Then the children arrived. My friends and I agreed that it suddenly wasn’t much fun when your partner was so hungover that he or she was useless the next day. Not taking their turn to watch Teletubbies at 6 a.m. or passing through the park at 8:45 a.m. all the resentment built. After having kids, I found myself playing the role of fun police — begging my ex-husband not to stay out too long or drink too much.

Authoritarian or just?

I once poured wine into a measuring cup to prove that he was underestimating his unit consumption. I grew more and more frustrated that on a night out he couldn’t just have two drinks and then pull himself out and go home. Why is it necessary to go to three, four or five? It has become a bone of contention.

I remembered this when I heard Adrian Chiles on the radio talking about the same thing. He wrote a book about it called The good drinker. To have drank a lot in his lifetime – up to 100 drinks a week – he says he only really enjoyed 30%: “I’m sure I could have had such a good time drinking a lot less.

‘Yes yes!’ I shouted over the radio.

When I first started dating, I barely thought about the drinking style of a future beau. But when dating evolved into “seeing someone,” it slowly became apparent, after a few months, if a man had an unhealthy relationship with alcohol.

A guy I was dating emptied most of a bottle of whiskey in one night and rendered himself incapacitated the next day. He was home alone at the time.

It was a red flag.

A green flag is if someone is nice when they are tipsy. Alcohol makes my boyfriend affectionate rather than argumentative, which becomes a big problem.

When I think back to the start of our relationship, it was a drunken boys’ night out and the flurry of texts he sent in the taxi home, which meant I knew he liked me – without inhibitions, no cool game.

He woke up with anxiety, I woke up with a smile on my face.

But in conclusion, I think the key to a happy partnership is being pretty much on the same page when it comes to drinking. You could be a pair of high-functioning alcoholics or a couple who just have one drink on Christmas and it can work. But if one of you is a heavy drinker and the other a teetotaler, that must create a conflict.

As for me and the boyfriend? Well, I cleared myself up. Nowadays, the measuring cup is only used for peas in the microwave.

@lifesrosie