Yes, with my latest phone upgrade, I’ve joined the world of smartphone users. As a programmer and a long-time participant in the world of open source software, there wasn’t really any doubt which of the competing smartphone operating systems I would get. I had decided long ago that when I did buy a smartphone, it would be an Android-based phone.

I also had no particular desire to change carriers. While Sprint is hardly perfect, I’ve typically had good reception and connectivity the places I need it. And I’m hardly enthused by any of its main competitors. I have friends and family on AT&T, T-mobile, and Verizon, so I have a decent idea how they work. No thanks. (Besides, I still remember how happy I was when I managed to shed my last Southwestern Bell service years ago. Just because they’re calling themselves AT&T these days doesn’t mean I’m eager to voluntarily become their customer again.)

Given those parameters, my choices boiled down to the current 3G HTC Hero and Samsung Moment or waiting a couple of months and getting the new 4G HTC Evo. The idea of owning a new 4G Android phone was tempting, but I’m something of a cheapskate when it comes to gadgets. The 3G phones were both available as upgrades for $99 (after rebate) and could be used on a plan roughly equivalent in price to the one I already had. While the 4G phone pricing hasn’t been revealed, the odds are it will be more that $99. More importantly, I’m sure that 4G will be some additional monthly fee or a more expensive plan.

Given that, it was a pretty simple choice. The Moment’s hardware specs generally seemed equal or superior to the Hero’s, but the deciding factor was the sliding keyboard. I’ve gotten used to the slider on my old Rumor phone and I like physical keyboards. I don’t generally like the onscreen ones, though I can use them when I have to. The Engadget article seemed to imply that the fact that it “runs plain-vanilla Android” was a negative, but it sounded more like a plus to me. I was concerned that it still shipped with android 1.5, especially since a friend on Verizon complains that they don’t tend to update the firmware on their android phones from the shipping version. But Sprint is apparently more responsive and an upgrade to android 2.1 should be coming in a couple of weeks or so for both the Moment and the Hero.

I did have some glitches getting our family plan switched to the comparable smartphone compatible plan so I could activate the Moment. However, Sprint’s customer care representatives were able to straighten everything out with a minimum of hassle. I’ve typically had good experiences working with them and this time was no exception.

Once activated, I began figuring out how to access the features and configure the phone. I’m still working on that. I have it synced with my Google account, which has been underutilized so far. I set up my other email accounts and am getting used to its default interface. I’m not thrilled with the email client, so I may see if there’s a better one out there, though I’ll probably wait until after the android upgrade to do that. I picked Seesmic for my twitter client and I’m reasonably happy with it on the Moment. I took a look at their desktop version, but I’ll stick with Tweetdeck on my computer. I have my home wireless network and my Moment configured to play nice together. And I have the WordPress app installed and configured for my blog.

If any other android users read this, I wouldn’t mind hearing what apps you find fun or useful and why. Please leave a comment and let me know.

So far, I’m extremely happy with my new phone. The interface is snappy as are transitions from one app to another. I’m still learning how to tweak it to both behave the way I want and conserve battery power, but I am getting closer to an acceptable middle ground. My contacts are still a mess. The phone syncs contacts with Gmail and since I’ve never managed them there in the past, I have a lot of work to do to get them set up. The good news is that I can do it on Gmail from my computer. I don’t have to try to enter everything on the phone itself. I definitely recommend this phone.

This past weekend a discussion with the Internet Monk, which began for me at least on twitter, emerged in two different posts. In the first, the iMonk posted a link to a sermon by David Chanski on the Baptist view of the Lord’s Supper and his own thoughts on the sermon. The second post responded to someone who asked what the problems are with the Baptist view of the Lord’s Supper. If you’re interested, you will find some comments by me on both posts. The first problem he listed was a problem he called “the historical problem”. He posed the issue this way:

How do Baptists relate their view of the Lord’s Supper to the ancient church’s far more eucharistic, real presence language? Do we believe the ancient church was wrong until the Baptist reformation? Yes? No? What?

It’s hardly a new issue to me. As a Christian (a clarification I have to make since I have been a lot of other things over the course of my life), I’ve only really been a Baptist sort of Christian. Oh, I’ve experienced many different flavors of Christianity from childhood on and know a pretty decent amount about many of them. But to the extent I’ve been anything in the midst of modern Christian pluralism, I’ve been a Baptist. I’m also the sort of person who enjoys history and who doesn’t just love reading, but for whom reading and breathing come close to being synonymous. And that combination means I encountered this issue sooner rather than later. I was able to set it aside for years to see if a resolution would emerge. I’m often able to do that when faced with tension in a belief. That worked for a decade or so. But it’s been increasingly ineffective over the last four or five years. Since there isn’t much in Christian life, practice, and belief that is and has always been more central than the Eucharist, that’s a problem.

I will point out that this is not uniquely a Baptist problem today. Many “nondenominational” churches (or denominations of one as they tend to be counted) have a perspective that is at least similar to the Baptist view. The Baptist, or more properly Zwinglian (Zwingli originated the memorial, symbolic theology of the Eucharist in the 16th century), view is also similar to the view held by many in the charismatic wing of the modern church. Presbyterian and other Reformed churches have a somewhat similar, though not identical, problem. As I consider the Protestant branch of the church, Lutherans and Anglicans have much less of a historical problem with the Eucharist than many. I honestly don’t remember what Methodists teach, but since they are offshoots of the Anglican Church, they may also have fewer historical issues. I can hardly claim to be familiar with the tens of thousands of distinct sects into which Protestantism has devolved, but I would wager that the majority of the larger Protestant tradition shares at least part of this particular problem with the Baptists.

In this series, I have no plans to resolve the historical problem. I don’t have any answers and I don’t expect a revelation. Instead, I plan to explore the nature of the problem itself. What is the history of belief about the Eucharist? What are the ramifications of that history? I’ll be exploring questions like that.

If it does not matter to you what your predecessors in the faith believed and practiced, if you are unconcerned about those whom Hebrews calls a great cloud of witnesses, then you don’t share this historical problem. If innovation in the faith, even in its most central aspects, is something that doesn’t bother you, then you will probably not find much of interest in this series. This is for those like me for whom such things do matter, and perhaps matter a very great deal.

In this series, I will be discussing excerpts from Christian writings throughout the first millenium. I’m not really fond of trying to “mine” those writings for a topical discussion. I’ve seen a lot of that done pretty badly over the years. Those writings don’t really lend themselves to that sort of approach. With much ancient writing, you have to try to understand the perspective, setting, culture, and situation from which someone was writing and then try to absorb the whole of what they are saying which will then illuminate the parts.  It’s very different from most Western scholastic works where you try to understand each piece in order to grasp the whole. The pieces often build on each other, but usually in a structured and orderly manner. I will always provide a link to the whole work from which I quote. And if you have any question about the way I am reading something, please go read the whole thing. Even better, read as much by that particular author as you can find.

I will caution readers up front that it is impossible to discuss the Eucharist from the writings of the first millenium without also running headlong into the issue of unity and oneness. That’s probably not what a Protestant wants to hear. But the two trains of thought tend to be deeply intertwined in most places. There are many writings over the centuries addressing schismatics (which is not the same thing as heretic) and there were schisms to address. Nevertheless, I don’t think any writer in the first millenium could have ever imagined schism on the scale that we’ve managed. So be warned.

I will generally assume that everyone reading this series has read, in their entirety, preferably multiple times, perhaps even using the techniques of lectio divina certain key portions of the Holy Scriptures. Of course, that includes the accounts of the last supper in Matthew, Mark, and Luke. The other two passages are John 6 and 1 Corinthians 11. There are other scriptures, and I will provide specific references when needed. But the Scriptures above will permeate the discussion and sit in the background at all times.

Since my focus will be specifically on the historical problem with the Baptist perspective, the 1689 London Confession is as good a reference for that perspective as any. I immediately noted when I read it that it never references John 6. I’m not sure how you can develop a theological confession of the Lord’s Supper without ever referencing the Eucharistic chapter of the theological Gospel. But there you go. Perhaps that’s part of the problem.

In the series I recently completed on the Didache, you might want to read post 31, post 25, post 26, and post 27. I don’t plan to revisit the Didache in this series since I just reflected on the entire Teaching.

I had actually planned to write a series of reflections on the latest encyclical, CARITAS IN VERITATE, by Pope Benedict XVI next. But this cropped up and it somehow seemed like the series I should write at this time. I may still slip in some thoughts on the encyclical in additional posts.