Dear Commons Community,

The Southern Baptist Convention has refused to welcome Saddleback Church back into its fold, rejecting an appeal by the California megachurch over its February ouster for having a women pastor.

Southern Baptist church representatives at their annual meeting here also rejected a similar appeal by a smaller church, Fern Creek Baptist of Louisville, Kentucky, which is led by a woman pastor.

The results of the Tuesday votes were announced yesterday morning on the concluding day of the the two-day annual meeting here of the nation’s largest Protestant denomination, whose statement of faith asserts that only qualified men can serve as pastors.  As reported by the Associated Press.

The convention hall packed with about 12,000 Southern Baptists was quiet after the announcement, appearing to have listened to the earlier urging by SBC President Bart Barber for them to show restraint.

“I know sometimes there are churches where people wind up in biblical divorce,” he said. “But we don’t throw divorce parties at church. And whatever these results are, I’m asking you, behave like Christians.”

Saddleback had been the denomination’s second-largest congregation and until recently was widely touted as a success story amid larger Southern Baptist membership declines.

With the 9,437-1,212 vote, delegates rejected an appeal by Rick Warren, the retired founding pastor of Saddleback and author of the best-selling phenomenon, “The Purpose Driven Life.” Warren had urged Baptists to agree to disagree “in order to share a common mission.”

“Messengers voted for conformity and uniformity rather than unity. The only way you will have unity is to love diversity. We made this effort knowing we were not going to win,” Warren said at a news conference after the results were announced.

Church representatives also voted 9,700-806 to deny an appeal by a smaller congregation, Fern Creek Baptist Church of Louisville, Kentucky, which has had a woman pastor for three decades but came under heightened scrutiny this year.

Warren and the Rev. Linda Barnes Popham, pastor of Fern Creek, made their final appeals to Southern Baptists here on Tuesday during the denomination’s annual meeting.

Warren has been a lifelong Southern Baptist, and the church he founded being removed from the denomination was something he might have never expected even though he has pushed the boundaries for several years now, said Scott Thumma, a sociology of religion professor and director of the Hartford Institute for Religion Research.

“It’s pretty clear (from his speech Tuesday) that Warren did not think the SBC was going to reinstate Saddleback,” he said. “But, he’s had a platform to say what being Baptist means, what the Scripture says about women in ministry, that Southern Baptists are under a big tent and what is means to exclude any congregation. This is all probably more symbolic.”

Following the vote results, Warren issued a critique of the direction of the SBC that contributed to Saddleback’s ejection.

“There are people who want to take the SBC back to the 1950s when white men ruled supreme and when the woman’s place was in the home. There are others who want to take it back 500 years to the time of the Reformation,” he said. “I say we need to take the church back to the first century. The church at its birth was the church at its best.”

In February, the Southern Baptist Convention’s Executive Committee voted to oust the two congregations, along with three others that chose not to appeal, for having women pastors.

All Baptist churches are independent, so the convention can’t tell them what to do, but it can decide which churches are “not in friendly cooperation,” the official verbiage for an expulsion. The SBC’s official statement of faith says the office of pastor is reserved for qualified men, but this is believed to be the first time the convention has expelled any churches over it.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Francis Wilkinson, columnist for Bloomberg, had a piece on Tuesday, entitled “Trump has officially broken the Republican Party”, which reviews the sad state of the GOP.  He  comments:

“There are tens of millions of conservatives in the U.S.  For American democracy to succeed, they need a political party that productively channels their aspirations, represents their ideologies, mediates their conflicts and functions in accord with democratic values and the rule of law.

No such party exists.”

And concludes:

“The trouble is, this is year eight of MAGA’s dominion over the party. If millions of Republicans are still clamoring for Trump, it’s unlikely that it’s because they’ve failed to notice that he is spectacularly corrupt. For many followers, his lies and grift and even his buffoonery and contempt for national security are a net positive, another means to convey their own loathing for elites and a system that they feel discounts them. Attacks on pluralistic, multiracial, democracy won’t stop anytime soon.”

Wilkinson is so right!

Below is his entire column.

Tony

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Trump has officially broken the Republican Party

Francis Wilkinson

Bloomberg Opinion

June 13, 2023

There are tens of millions of conservatives in the U.S. For American democracy to succeed, they need a political party that productively channels their aspirations, represents their ideologies, mediates their conflicts and functions in accord with democratic values and the rule of law.

No such party exists.

The vacuum is only partly a collective action problem. Pro-democracy conservative elites have failed to organize to defend democracy and advance their interests. The third-tier candidates opposing Donald Trump and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis for the GOP presidential nomination can’t even settle on a narrative for why such brazenly anti-democratic politicians pose a danger.

Arriving at a collective strategy to neutralize the threat is even more unlikely. Former U.S. Rep. Liz Cheney has been a brave truth teller. But she has been mostly singing solo, which enabled MAGA supporters to isolate, demonize and remove her from power.

The problem is also a function of how deeply askew the GOP was even before Trump. The Republican demand for stupid conspiracy theories to explain the world – climate scientists are all making it up, Barack Obama is an African-born socialist – presaged the moral collapse into Trumpism.

The party may have plumbed a new low after Trump was indicted last week on 37 felony counts for allegedly mishandling classified documents, including highly classified state secrets. The former president was also charged with obstructing the federal investigation.

The indictment was in some ways an homage to the alternate universe inhabited by the Republican Party. It consisted of evidence untainted by association with the world outside MAGA. There were photographs taken by Trump staff. Texts between Trump employees. Transcripts of audiotape of Trump talking. Sworn testimony from Trump lawyers. Transcripts of Trump public statements. It was a collection of facts exfiltrated from the MAGAsphere and derived exclusively from the MAGA king and his subjects. But the provenance of individual facts is irrelevant once you have rejected the legitimacy of facts altogether.

Most Republican elites took a look at the damning reality of the indictment, and promptly rejected the latest opportunity to break with Trumpism. Some addressed the indictment in the traditional manner, by misleading Fox News viewers about Hillary Clinton. Others shoveled buckets of nonsense. Still others resorted to rewriting the law in their heads to render Trump’s actions magically lawful. Some argued that the man who led chants of “lock her up” wasn’t being afforded the same grace and forbearance that he had magnanimously bestowed upon his (noncriminal) political opponents.

There were instances of honesty, from Sens. Lisa Murkowski and Mitt Romney, and even from William Barr, who as Trump’s attorney general facilitated Trump’s attacks on democracy. (Barr appears to have drifted toward the rule of law crowd after Jan. 6, 2021.) But the isolated, uncoordinated, musings of select conservatives are unlikely to have a significant impact on the Republican electorate.

In a CBS News poll taken after the indictment was announced, 80% of likely GOP primary voters said they would like Trump to be able to be president even if he is convicted. Three-quarters want a nominee “similar to Trump” if Trump is not the nominee. Meanwhile, the New York Times reported “a wave” of calls for violence by Trump supporters. The Washington Post likewise noted a “surge” in violent right-wing rhetoric.

The chicken-and-egg dilemma of the GOP — Republican elites won’t risk telling the base the truth because the base doesn’t want to hear it, and those voters never learn the truth because party leaders and party-aligned media only give them what they want — has been going on since at least 2016. Without concerted action by Republican elites, it’s hard to see how the party pulls out of its anti-democratic spiral.

Relaying his discussions about Trump’s indictment with people “inside the Republican race” for president, CBS News reporter Robert Costa said Sunday: “There is alarm in the sense that they believe if he wins the presidency again, he is now so comfortable with the levers of power, and he ignores the rule of law in the eyes of some of his [GOP] competitors, that he could be a threat to American democracy. Yet very few are saying that publicly.”

Democracy barely survived Trump’s first term, which ended with his instigating a violent assault to halt the transfer of power to a newly elected government. It’s unlikely it could survive a second round.

The most pressing task for anyone eager to bolster democracy is to find a way to make a viable, intra-party fighting force of Murkowskis and Romneys and even the unreliable Barrs. Though a GOP rescue mission has yet to materialize, that doesn’t mean that it won’t. It took a few years to repel the force of McCarthyism in the early 1950s.

The trouble is, this is year eight of MAGA’s dominion over the party. If millions of Republicans are still clamoring for Trump, it’s unlikely that it’s because they’ve failed to notice that he is spectacularly corrupt. For many followers, his lies and grift and even his buffoonery and contempt for national security are a net positive, another means to convey their own loathing for elites and a system that they feel discounts them. Attacks on pluralistic, multiracial, democracy won’t stop anytime soon.

With work, luck and pluck, Democrats and independents can repel the GOP. But they can’t reform it. Only Republicans can do that. Many Republicans appear to be waiting, still, for the right moment. Like last weekend.

____

Francis Wilkinson is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering U.S. politics and policy. Previously, he was an editor for the Week, a writer for Rolling Stone, a communications consultant and a political media strategist.

Reuters Connect.

Dear Commons Community,

Donald’s Trump’s federal arraignment in Miami yesterday was an  historic event and yet it was virtually invisible to the public due to various restrictions on access to the courtroom.  Hundreds of photographers and television crews were at the courthouse — many broadcasting live from outside — but they couldn’t show the key moments inside the courtroom.  Efforts by news organizations to loosen restrictions that generally prohibit cameras in federal courtrooms failed, despite the event’s unprecedented nature. It was a stark contrast from Trump’s arraignment in New York earlier this year.  Here is commentary courtesy of the Associated Press and Reuters..

Tony

——————————

Earlier, Trump arrived at the courthouse to be booked and enter his plea and then left without being seen. Cameras followed a motorcade of black vehicles with tinted windows.

“This is a little bit old-fashioned,” said Fox News Channel’s Mark Meredith. “We’re not going to be able to see what’s going on in the courtroom.”

News organizations had petitioned the court to allow photographs of Trump to be taken prior to his arraignment, and permit the public release of an audio recording of the court proceeding after it was done. Yet on Monday night, U.S. Magistrate Judge Jonathan Goodman denied the requests.

Also Monday, Chief U.S. District Judge Cecilia Altonaga ordered that no journalists could possess electronic equipment anywhere in the courthouse on the day of the arraignment. Prior to her order, credentialed journalists at the courthouse had been allowed to use cell phones and computers.

“It’s kind a black hole inside the building,” said David Reiter, executive producer of special events for CBS News.

Most reporters in the courthouse were confined to an overflow room, where they watched the proceedings on “the kind of televisions you get in low-cost hotel rooms,” CBS News reporter Scott MacFarlane said.

Through a random draw, some journalists — including at least one sketch artist — were allowed into the courtroom itself.

News organizations scurried to make arrangements to deal with the restrictions. Several television networks, for example, placed a handful of reporters and producers in the overflow room, sending them out one-by-one to report from the outside on what had happened. Reporters also discovered working phones by a bathroom that allowed them to make outgoing calls.

The limits on journalists were quickly apparent. ABC News, for example, reported while the hearing was still ongoing that Special Prosecutor Jack Smith was in the courtroom. Yet when NBC News reporter Gabe Gutierrez was asked about that by anchor Lester Holt, he confessed he wasn’t certain because he was limited in what he could see.

Some commentators couldn’t resist making assumptions, either, like when ABC’s John Santucci suggested Trump would be “trying to find a way to be a little charming” when he spotted Smith.

CNN’s Jake Tapper, in debriefing reporter Evan Perez, said he couldn’t ask him to be a mind-reader in assessing Trump’s mood. Then he did precisely that.

“He appeared very glum,” Perez said. “He did not seem to have a lot of energy.”

With time to fill, most networks took it live when Trump lawyer Alina Habba spoke outside the courtroom. MSNBC cut her off, however, and CBS’ John Dickerson noted that she did not address the specifics of any charges against the former president.

An outage at the Amazon Web Services cloud computing unit on Tuesday severely restricted some news organizations, including The Associated Press, from sending material at precisely the time of Trump’s arraignment. The Verge, the Boston Globe and PennLive.com were also affected.

Reporters kept a close eye on people gathered outside of the courtroom, including several banner-waving Trump supporters, a few anti-Trump demonstrators, and journalists from around the world — China, Australia, France, Germany and Australia.

A handful of news organizations that sent reporters to the scene hired private security in case there was trouble.

“It’s a small price to pay for peace of mind,” said Nathan King, the White House correspondent for China’s state-run CGTN. King said he had to flee an angry group of demonstrators at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, and watched as some of his equipment was destroyed.

Katie Taylor, a 76-year-old retired real estate agent and Trump supporter, drove 15 hours from Virginia to be part of the scene.

“We all know what’s going to happen inside the courtroom. What I care about is what they report on what is happening out here,” said Taylor, who gets her news mostly from conservative outlets like Newsmax and Bannon’s War Room. “I want to see it with my own eyes.”

Some Trump supporters snapped photographs of people in the media and recorded their interviews.

Dominic Santana, who retired in Miami after decades of operating an eatery in the New York area, showed up wearing a black and white striped jailhouse uniform, complete with handcuffs and a plastic ball and chain to celebrate what he hopes will be Trump’s imprisonment. He carried a sign saying, “Lock Him Up.”

“A fellow New Yorker can spot a rat a mile away,” said Santana, 61, a political independent who said his mother and daughter voted for Trump.

Dear Commons Community,

On Monday night, CNN hosted a townhall for Chris Christie, who is running for the Republican presidential nomination. I was not able to watch it due to traveling.  It seems it was quite an evening for Christie.  Here is a recap, courtesy of USA Today!

Tony

——————————————————————-

USA TODAY

David Jackson, USA TODAY

Updated June 13, 2023 at 8:57 AM

WASHINGTON – Chris Christie took his crusade against Donald Trump to CNN’s airwaves Monday, saying the former president’s legal problems and character issues render him unfit for another term in the White House.

A Trump return to the presidency will only be about “settling scores” rather than helping the American people, Christie told a CNN town hall event staged in New York City.

“He has shown himself … to be completely self-centered, completely self-consumed, and doesn’t give a damn about the American people, in my view,” Christie said.

The Republican Party in general, particularly Trump’s primary challengers, should also go on the attack, Christie said, if only because of Trump’s recent failures in national elections.

Citing Republican setbacks in the 2018, 2020, and 2022 congressional and presidential elections, the former ally of Trump said that “he hasn’t won a damn thing since 2016; three-time loser.”

He later repeated: “Loser … loser … loser.”

The documents case

In critiquing Trump over his legal issues, Christie focused on Trump’s recent indictment over classified documents. Other items – the previous indictment over hush money, and the prospect of more indictments over his efforts to overturn the 2020 election – did not come up during the CNN town hall.

The evidence in the current indictment “looks pretty damning,” Christie said. Trump stands accused of improperly taking sensitive and classified information from the White House and obstructing justice by hiding the documents from investigators who had subpoenaed them.

“He is voluntarily putting our country through this,” Christie said. “It’s his conduct.”

Christie said he suspects Trump kept the documents in order to “show off” to friends and associates, never mind that he was not legally entitled to them.

Debate lane

CNN set up a town hall-like set-up in one of its studios in New York City. The network gathered together a group of Republican voters from the first four primary states, as well as New York and New Jersey.

CNN is sponsoring a series of town halls with Republican presidential candidates, starting with a much-criticized May 10 event with Trump.

Christie also taunted Trump into joining Republican debates later this year. Trump has suggested he may skip the debates because so many opponents are trailing him badly in the polls.

If Trump does refuse the first debate in Milwaukee on Aug. 23, Christie said he will have “a lane” to attack him without a response; that will force Trump to show up for a second session in California in September.

Chris Christie age comments: ‘Nobody beats father time’

Christie may not qualify for the debates, given his standing in the polls, and no doubt hopes that his full-throated attack on Trump will help inflate his numbers.

It’s all the more remarkable because few prominent Republicans played a bigger role in helping Trump win the presidency in the first place.

After dropping out of the 2016 race, Christie became one of the highest-profile Republican to endorse Trump’s anti-establishment campaign. Trump later considered Christie for the running mate slot before picking Mike Pence.

In the general election race, Christie helped Trump prepare for his pivotal debates with Democratic opponent Hillary Rodham Clinton. For a time, Christie headed up the Trump transition team, but was replaced by Pence.

“Very few people were as publicly invested in the success of Donald Trump as I was,” Christie said in a book called “Republican Rescue: Saving the Party from Truth Deniers, Conspiracy Theorists, and the Dangerous Policies of Joe Biden.”

Christie later said he was “wrong” about Trump, and began to turn against him during his protests of the 2020 election that led to the insurrection of Jan. 6, 2021.

During the CNN town hall, Christie said Trump’s post-2020 lies about the conduct of the election undermined faith in the system, and “is the most destructive thing he’s done.”

At times, Christie combined his criticism of Trump with attacks on Democratic President Joe Biden – including their ages.

The 60-year-old former New Jersey governor said that, if Biden and Trump are both re-nominated, their combined age will be 160 – simply too old for the demands of the presidency.

“I’m sorry guys,” Christie said. “Nobody beats Father Time.”

Christie and Kushner

There has long been tension between Christie and members of Trump’s extended family.

When he was a U.S. attorney in New Jersey, Christie prosecuted the father of Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law. Charles Kushner wound up in prison on charges of tax evasion and attempts to intimidate a witness against him.

Jared Kushner is no fan of Christie, and vice-versa. Since launching his 2024 campaign, Christie has added Kushner and his wife Ivanka to his list of attacks on the former president.

“The grift from this family is breathtaking,” Christie said at a New Hampshire town hall. “It’s breathtaking. Jared Kushner and Ivanka Kushner walk out of the White House, and months later get $2 billion from the Saudis.”

The other candidates

The aggressive New Jersey governor didn’t attack just Trump; he also went after other Republican candidates who are vying to become the alternative to the frontrunner.

At one point, Christie criticized Ron DeSantis for avoiding criticism of Trump over the indictment, saying they are hoping to inherit the former president’s support in case he is chased from the 2024 race.

“They’re playing political games with you,” Christie said.

Old Quebec Funicular

Dear Commons Community,

Yesterday Elaine and I spent time in the Lower Town of Quebec City. To get there we took the Old Quebec Funicular, a railway that  links the Haute-Ville (Upper Town) at Dufferin Terrace to the Basse-Ville (Lower Town) at Rue du Petit-Champlain.  It is double tracked and has a height of almost 200 feet.  It also gives a rider a beautiful view of the St. Lawrence River.

A view of the St. Lawrence River from the Funicular

The Lower Town is a gem of narrow streets with restaurants and shops.

In the evening, after dinner we sat in the Quebec City Hall Square with its beautiful fountains.

A nice day all around!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

The conservative National Review had an editorial on Sunday that said one cannot read the allegations outlined in the federal indictment against former President Trump and “not be appalled by the way he handled at the way he handed classified documents.

The editorial board also noted  that many of the boxes that Trump had moved from the White House to Mar-a-Lago at the end of his presidency contained hundreds of documents with classified markings. The information on the documents covered information relating to U.S. nuclear programs, defense capabilities, vulnerabilities and plans for potential retaliatory action in the event of an attack from another country, according to the indictment. 

The board said Trump no longer had a right to possess these documents after his term ended, and he stored them “recklessly” in locations like his bedroom, a bathroom and a ballroom at Mar-a-Lago. It also mentioned federal prosecutors’ allegations that Trump ignored requests for the documents to be returned for months and attempted to keep investigators from obtaining the documents he had. 

The editorial board argued the “most damning” part of the indictment is the transcript of the conversation Trump had in which he showed one document to a reporter who was not authorized to see it. 

“Equally damning, particularly for someone who was and would like again to be the nation’s chief executive, responsible for the enforcement of the laws, is the evidence that Trump not only deceived the investigators and the grand jury, but his own lawyers — knowing and intending that they would consequently obstruct the investigation,” the editorial states. 

The indictment alleges that Trump had an aide, who has also been indicted, move boxes of documents away from a storage room when one of his attorneys came to Mar-a-Lago to confirm that the subpoena was being fully complied with. This caused his legal team to wrongly tell investigators that all documents had been turned over. 

The board said it understands conservatives might be frustrated with former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton not facing charges for her use of a private email server while serving and that President Biden might not face charges for his own alleged mishandling of some classified documents. 

“But it doesn’t change the fact the country wouldn’t be in this uncharted territory if Trump hadn’t taken documents he had no right to, and simply complied when asked to give them back,” the editorial concludes. 

The board previously declared in November that it would reject Trump as a choice for the Republican nomination for president in 2024.

The entire editorial is below!

Tony

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National Review:

The Trump Indictment Is Damning

By the Editors

June 10, 2023

Just as paranoiacs sometimes have enemies, people obsessively pursued for alleged violations of the law by their political opponents sometimes commit criminal offenses.

At many junctures, most recently with Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s flimsy charges, we’ve had occasions to point out how Donald Trump’s adversaries have twisted the law in a politically motivated effort to nail the former president. And we certainly do not welcome the precedent of a federal prosecutor, who ultimately reports to the president, indicting that president’s leading rival for reelection. That said, it is impossible to read the indictment against Trump in the Mar-a-Lago documents case and not be appalled at the way he handled classified documents as an ex-president, and responded to the attempt by federal authorities to reclaim them.

When he moved out of the White House, Trump moved many boxes of materials to Mar-a-Lago. Many contained nothing more than mementos such as newspaper clippings, photos, cards, and various notes and letters. But included along with these run-of-the-mill items were hundreds of documents marked classified. These documents, according to the indictment from special counsel Jack Smith filed in the U.S. District Court of the Southern District of Florida, included “information regarding defense and weapons capabilities of both the United States and foreign countries; United States nuclear programs; potential vulnerabilities of the United States and its allies to military attack; and plans for possible retaliation in response to a foreign attack.”

Once Trump was no longer president, he had no right to these materials. He stored them recklessly — not in a secured space that had been approved to handle classified documents, but, farcically, in places including his bedroom, a bathroom, and a ballroom. This was within his Mar-a-Lago Club that has hosted events for tens of thousands of people within the roughly year and a half that the documents were in his possession.

Trump brushed off months of demands from the National Archives and Records Administration to return the missing records before relenting in January 2022, but only providing a portion of what was in his possession — roughly 15 boxes, which included 197 documents that were marked as classified. After a grand-jury subpoena demanded all classified documents, Trump’s lawyers then turned over 38 more documents marked classified. But when the FBI carried out a controversial search warrant later that summer and seized more boxes, they found 102 additional documents with classified markings.

The indictment offers evidence that Trump misled investigators about his possession of the documents and took actions to conceal them. But most damning is the transcript of a conversation during which Trump showed one of the documents to a reporter. Speaking of a theoretical attack plan, Trump produced a document and said, “It is like, highly confidential.” He also said, “See as president I could have declassified it” but admitted, “Now I can’t, you know, but this is still a secret.”

The audio of this conversation makes it a lot more difficult for Trump to chalk everything up to an innocent case of some classified documents getting mixed up with other personal items from his presidency. It also directly contradicts some of the laughable public defenses that were made by Trump and his team last summer, including the idea that there was a “standing order” that whatever documents he brought to Mar-a-Lago to work on were automatically declassified. It’s clear from the conversation that he not only knew he was in possession of secret documents that were never declassified, but knowingly shared them with people who lacked the security clearance to see them.

Equally damning, particularly for someone who was and would like again to be the nation’s chief executive, responsible for the enforcement of the laws, is the evidence that Trump not only deceived the investigators and the grand jury, but his own lawyers — knowing and intending that they would consequently obstruct the investigation. If the allegations in the indictment are true, Trump tried to nudge his lawyers into concealing or destroying incriminating evidence. Unable to bend them in that direction, he and an aide hid boxes of documents from them, causing them falsely to tell the grand jury, under oath, that the classified documents they delivered to the FBI in June 2022 were the only ones remaining in his possession. They weren’t lying; according to prosecutors, they were passing along what he told them. It is worth noting, moreover, that the substantiation of this allegation is likely to come from testimony of the lawyers themselves — not from people out to get the former president, but people who tried, futilely, to help him.

We understand why many conservatives are unwilling to view the charges against Trump in a vacuum given that the Justice Department let Hillary Clinton off the hook for her reckless handling of government secrets and the resulting cover-up, that President Biden is unlikely to pay a price for his own mishandling of classified documents, and that Democrats and their allies have pursued a yearslong campaign to get Trump. All of those are legitimate considerations, and the contrast with how James Comey and Co. handled the Hillary case is particularly galling. But it doesn’t change the fact the country wouldn’t be in this uncharted territory if Trump hadn’t taken documents he had no right to, and simply complied when asked to give them back.

Church Services by ChatGPT

Dear Commons Community,

The Associated Press had an article on a  ChatGPT artificial intelligence bot that asked the believers in the fully packed St. Paul’s church in the Bavarian town of Fuerth to rise from the pews and praise the Lord. 

The ChatGPT chatbot, personified by an avatar of a bearded Black man on a huge screen above the altar, then began preaching to the more than 300 people who had shown up last Friday for an experimental Lutheran church service almost entirely generated by AI.

“Dear friends, it is an honor for me to stand here and preach to you as the first artificial intelligence at this year’s convention of Protestants in Germany,” the avatar said with an expressionless face and monotonous voice.

The 40-minute service — including the sermon, prayers and music — was created by ChatGPT and Jonas Simmerlein, a theologian and philosopher from the University of Vienna.

“I conceived this service — but actually I rather accompanied it, because I would say about 98% comes from the machine,” the 29-year-old scholar told The Associated Press.

The entire service was “led” by four different avatars on the screen, two young women, and two young men.

At times, the AI-generated avatar inadvertently drew laughter as when it used platitudes and told the churchgoers with a deadpan expression that in order “to keep our faith, we must pray and go to church regularly.”

Keep the faith, praise the Lord, and can I get an Amen!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Yesterday, Elaine and I toured areas outside of Quebec City.

Our first stop was Montmorency Falls (above), a spectacular sight just 15 minutes outside of  Québec City.  The falls are 272.3 ft. tall, and 98.4 ft. taller than Niagara Falls but not as wide. 

We then visited the Albert Gilles Copper Art Museum and Boutique, a gem of a place to see exhibits of handmade metal work.  The demonstration in making copper objects by hand was an education.

Last on the tour was the  Basilica of Sainte-Anne-de-Beaupré 19 miles east of Quebec City.  It is magnificent both outside and inside.  It has been credited by the Catholic Church with many miracles of curing the sick and disabled. There are two columns in the Basilica that have dozens of crutches and walkers put there by people who claim to have been cured.

In sum, a good tour with something natural, something educational, and something beautiful.

Tony

Interior of the Basilica of Sainte-Anne-de-Beaupré

Statue of St. Sainte-Anne-de-Beaupré

Column of Crutches from People Who Claim to Have Been Cured at the Basilica

Ivanka Trump.  Drew Angerer/Getty Images

Dear Commons Community,

Ivanka Trump plans to be far from the public eye as her father fights federal charges of mishandling classified documents, Page Six reported.

She “has disappeared” and “will be staying far away from daddy” as the case plays out.

The information came from two separate sources, neither of whom the publication named.

Page Six noted that Ivanka Trump’s apparent plan to have nothing to do with her father comes despite the fact that she, her husband Jared Kushner, and their kids live in Miami. Trump is expected to report to a Miami courthouse on Tuesday.

Citing prior comments from sources close to Ivanka Trump, the outlet reported that her association with her father’s presidency tanked her previously vibrant social life.

Insider’s Sophia Ankel reported in November that Ivanka Trump’s decision to help her father’s campaign and then advise his administration cost her friends. Famous friends ditched her in public and invitations to events dried up. When she did attend functions, other guests did their best to avoid being photographed with her.

As Trump formally launched his latest campaign late in 2022, Ivanka said she wouldn’t play a part in it and would instead focus on her family.

Her apparent absence will leave Trump with one fewer ally as he faces 37 counts of wrongdoing: 31 for violating the Espionage Act and six more for obstructing justice, lying to law enforcement, and violating three different statutes related to withholding and concealing government records.

Tony

View of the St. Lawrence River from the Terrace of the Fairmont Le Château Frontenac Hotel

Dear Commons Community,

Elaine and I are in Quebec City right now on vacation.  We are staying at a quaint inn in the “old town.”  The City is very European and the people proud of their French heritage.

Quebec has an amazing history, much of which is preserved in its architecture and monuments. Its origins  go back to 1534–35, when the French explorer Jacques Cartier landed at present-day Gaspé and took possession of the land in the name of the king of France. Cartier brought with him the 16th-century European traditions of mercantile expansion to a land where a few thousand Indigenous People (First Nations) and Inuit (the Arctic people of Canada) had been living for thousands of years. Permanent European settlement of the region began only in 1608, when Samuel de Champlain established a fort at Cape Diamond, the site of present-day Quebec city, then called Stadacona.

Quebec was the scene of the famous Battle of the Plains of Abraham in 1759. General James Wolfe led a fleet of 49 ships holding 8,640 British troops to the fortress of Quebec. They disembarked on Île d’Orléans and on the south shore of the river; the French forces under Louis-Joseph de Montcalm, Marquis de Saint-Veran, held the walled city and the north shore. Wolfe laid siege to the city for more than two months, exchanging cannon fire over the river. Both Wolfe and Montcalm died in battle.  The French lost to the British and as a result, ceded its North American territory to the King of England.

As a side note, the air pollution from Western Canadian wildfires that devastated parts of the Eastern United States last week have dissipated in Quebec City because the prevailing winds here are  Southeast.

Here are photographs of Quebec taken in the past two days.

Tony

Statue of Samuel de Champlain

Notre-Dame de Québec Basilica-Cathedral

Interior of the Notre-Dame de Québec Basilica-Cathedral

Quebec City Post Office