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Fossilized Faith

Tim J. Clark LinkedIn, Uncategorized

Post at LinkedIn.

Fossilized Faith by Aaron Reen, Nov 14, 2025.  I have a review of sociologist Christian Smith’s important new book Why Religion Went Obsolete: The Demise of Traditional Faith in America in the new December issue of First Things magazine.

“As Smith writes, obsolescence doesn’t mean extinction”. .. religion is just “less relevant to mainstream society”. Smith and Renn make the case that the “method” (“fossilized forms”—of traditional religion) of communicating the message is certainly becoming less relevant.

The topic of obsolescence is a little surreal to me. The expectations from a belief in the Christian message are timeless. God is love; love is willing the good of others, followed by taking the appropriate actions.

In the American system of government, the responsibility of citizens is to work together toward that more perfect union, which includes providing products and services as employees, entrepreneurs, elected officials, business owners, and ministers, where everyone benefits or at least, is not any worse off.

Meeting expectations requires reducing variation from the ideals advertised through promotions, marketing, and electioneering.

In a different context, how many parents and guardians who love their kids do not take the action needed to do what they think is best for them? Who doesn’t like to be the recipient of a kind word or deed?

Excellent quality results from doing the right things (effectiveness) and doing them right (efficiency). How can the management of quality ever be “obsolete”? Some people may always associate their motivation to do good with a higher power (God or a God), and others won’t – nothing new or obsolete about that. What “method” produces the best results for everyone?

Last line of defense

Tim J. Clark Uncategorized

Bari Weiss: You Are the Last Line of Defense, The Free Press. My speech at the Federalist Society’s Barbara K. Olson Memorial lecture.

“Our enemies’ failure is not assured and there is no cavalry coming. We are the cavalry. We are the last line of defense. Our civilization depends on us.”

Kirk Effect: On The Goodness Of American Evangelicals

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Excerpt: Now It’s The Mormons’ Turn And: Our Fragile Economy; Rethinking Comey; Digital IDs; Good Evangelicals; More, Rod Dreher, Sep 29, 2025 (paywalled)

Along those lines, Peggy Noonan had this to say (paywalled) about the Christian Right, in the wake of the Charlie Kirk service:

There is something you could have said at any time the past decade that is true now in some new way. It is that the GOP is becoming a more explicitly Christian party than it ever has been. A big story the past decade was that so many Trump supporters, especially but not only working-class ones, were misunderstood as “those crazy Christians” but in fact were often unaffiliated with any faith tradition and not driven to politics by such commitments.

But it looks to me as if a lot of those folks have been in some larger transit since 2015, as Kirk himself was. He entered the public stage to speak politics but said by the end that his great work was speaking of Christ. If he had a legacy, he told an interviewer, “I want to be remembered for courage for my faith.”

The secretary of state of the United States gave personal testimony on what Christ is in history and in his life. The vice president did the same. John Foster Dulles and Hubert Humphrey didn’t talk like this!

The whole thing was self-consciously and explicitly Christian. Kirk’s widow, Erika, talked of new converts and asked the crowd to help them. She said of her husband’s assassin, “That young man—I forgive him.” And she received a standing ovation.

As I watched I realized: This is the true sound and tone of the Republican Party right now. This is the takeover of the previously patronized.

She added that when she worked in the Reagan White House as a speechwriter, Christian conservatives had a seat at the table, so to speak, but they were quietly looked down on by the “pragmatists” in the room. No more.

It is no secret that as the GOP has become more religious, the Democrats have become more secular. This is not something you are going to see reflected in media coverage, because US journalists, being overwhelmingly secular liberals, are blind to how their own party has moved to the extreme on religious and cultural matters, just as the Republicans have. I think this is unavoidable, this schism. What you, reader, should watch out for is the attempt to shape the Narrative such that it looks as if religious conservatives are the ones taking America away from Normal. As Bill Maher said in his closing monologue on Friday:

LinkedIn: Who has no coherent idea?

Tim J. Clark Uncategorized

Who has no coherent idea? In his NYT article, David Brooks remarked: “My problem with the Kirk memorial service and all the conversation about his assassination generally is that many people seem to have no coherent idea about the proper relationship between faith and politics. In their minds, the two spheres seem all mixed together higgledy-piggledy.”

The aim of the U.S. system of government is to enable We the People to work together towards “a more perfect” Union. Who defines “more perfect”?

In a biblical context, perfection is described as having all needs met (the Garden of Eden being a notable example). The more needs that are met, the less harm caused to people as a result of unmet needs.) Thus, continual improvement becomes a moral imperative for Christians.

Take the example of crime: A Christian would embrace the belief that all crime should be continually reduced. A secular belief could include that crime is an acceptable, unfortunate, or normal part of life. A run chart showing a predictable trend would provide feedback on current mitigation strategies.

Within the quality management profession, it is an accepted fact that the closer any product or service (such as crime reduction strategies) approaches the ideal or target (i.e., the more perfect it is), the higher the quality and the lower the cost to the customer and society. (Ref: Taguchi Loss Function).

So, who has “no coherent idea”?
https://lnkd.in/gfMXjiaj

” … there is actually no such thing as atheism”

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This is Water by David Foster Wallace (Full Transcript and Audio), The Free Press

 

I submit, is the freedom of a real education, of learning how to be well-adjusted. You get to consciously decide what has meaning and what doesn’t. You get to decide what to worship.

Because here’s something else that’s weird but true: in the day-to-day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. And the compelling reason for maybe choosing some sort of god or spiritual-type thing to worship–be it JC or Allah, be it YHWH or the Wiccan Mother Goddess, or the Four Noble Truths, or some inviolable set of ethical principles–is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive. If you worship money and things, if they are where you tap real meaning in life, then you will never have enough, never feel you have enough. It’s the truth. Worship your body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly. And when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally grieve you. On one level, we all know this stuff already. It’s been codified as myths, proverbs, clichés, epigrams, parables; the skeleton of every great story. The whole trick is keeping the truth up front in daily consciousness.

Worship power, you will end up feeling weak and afraid, and you will need ever more power over others to numb you to your own fear. Worship your intellect, being seen as smart, you will end up feeling stupid, a fraud, always on the verge of being found out. But the insidious thing about these forms of worship is not that they’re evil or sinful, it’s that they’re unconscious. They are default settings. 

PDSA – Value of One-Page Proposal

Tim J. Clark Uncategorized

PDSA one page Dave Nave

LinkedIn Post – Dave Nave PDSA

Debra Mervyn: Excellent summary! Benjamin Franklin used Plan, Do, Study, Act long before Deming. Franklin used it for all his inventions, projects and businesses. More important for his life goals as documented in his autobiography, an international best seller, and “Project of Arriving at Moral Perfection” https://www.ushistory.org/franklin/autobiography/page38.htm

The 2025 Baldrige Award Criteria!

Tim J. Clark Uncategorized

Badrige Criterial Graphic

Now Announcing the 2025 Baldrige Award Criteria!

The next version of the Baldrige Excellence Framework®, from which the Baldrige Award Criteria are derived, will be published in the fall of 2025. The framework is being reorganized, simplified, and refocused as a maturity model improvement guide that will allow organizations to identify their maturity within each category and start process improvement initiatives based on clear steps.

A Christians Responsiblity for Voting

Tim J. Clark Uncategorized

LinkedIn Post. Barna’s survey results identify quite the paradox. In America, We the People are top management. The aim of our system of government is to enable us to work together toward“a more perfect Union.”

104 Million People of Faith—Including 32 Million Christian Regular Churchgoers—Projected to Abstain from Voting in November October 10, 2024 by George Barnas

Perfect in a biblical context can be defined as meeting all needs – the Garden of Eden being an example. Needs would include the physical, psychological, and emotional.

Given that God has a plan for us all, wouldn’t this plan include working to meet the needs of others, which would also reduce the harm caused by unmet needs? And, given that all needs are not being perfectly met, what is the “plan” (locally and nationally) for improvement? What feedback is needed to determine that change is resulting in improvement?

Rationalizing doing nothing (not voting) contributes to evil: “…. there has been an emerging convergence of the two ways of thinking that includes the consequences of action and inaction. … We can now do great evil without intending to. What we need today is more awareness, a wider recognition of how vast systems we are caught up in can do terrible things and how we can contribute to evil without even being conscious of it.” (Ref: When Jesus Came to Harvard, Making Moral Choices Today,” Harvey Cox)

We can hold our elected representatives “accountable,” but as citizens, we retain responsibility for the results. The only way to get systemic improvements is to get involved, which includes voting. The seven basic tools of quality can be applied to resolve over 95% of problems. These tools are successfully taught and applied at the elementary school level.

Deming SoPK vs SoPP

Tim J. Clark Uncategorized

LinkedIn Post – Bob Emiliani

“Those trying to practice Lean in the absence of understanding Deming’s System of Profound Knowledge are trying to drive cars without wheels.” — B.D. 𝐀𝐜𝐭𝐮𝐚𝐥𝐥𝐲, 𝐭𝐡𝐨𝐬𝐞 𝐭𝐫𝐲𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐭𝐨 𝐩𝐫𝐚𝐜𝐭𝐢𝐜𝐞 𝐋𝐞𝐚𝐧 𝐢𝐧 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐚𝐛𝐬𝐞𝐧𝐜𝐞 𝐨𝐟 𝐮𝐧𝐝𝐞𝐫𝐬𝐭𝐚𝐧𝐝𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐒𝐲𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐦 𝐨𝐟 𝐏𝐫𝐨𝐟𝐨𝐮𝐧𝐝 𝐏𝐫𝐢𝐯𝐢𝐥𝐞𝐠𝐞 𝐚𝐫𝐞 𝐭𝐫𝐲𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐭𝐨 𝐝𝐫𝐢𝐯𝐞 𝐜𝐚𝐫𝐬 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡𝐨𝐮𝐭 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐞𝐧𝐠𝐢𝐧𝐞.

Deming SoPk VS SoPP