Afternoon Links — 11.9.10

“Many students,” especially freshmen, writes an English professor at West Point, “do not rate their knowledge very highly; they divorce their private or extracurricular expertise from knowledge they acquire in a formal academic context,” and they need to read Sherlock Holmes .

Compared with Evangelicals, the Amish “are not interested in doing verbal evangelism; rather, they see their community life as their witness,” according to a scholar interviewed in The Amish’s Spirituality for the Long Haul . “The Amish are uncomfortable with revivalism and other fast-paced approaches to conversion. And they do not seek to bend the larger society to their wishes.”

A Jesuit theologian explains  what Catholics can learn from Luther .

Finally, The Catholic World offers several essays on Blessed John Henry Newman . Included are an article on his theological significance by  his biographer Ian Ker and articles on  his conversion, view of the laity, and “moralism.”