“What if political scientists covered the news?” asks Christopher Beam in a new article in Slate : A powerful thunderstorm forced President Obama to cancel his Memorial Day speech near Chicago on Monday—an arbitrary event that had no affect on the trajectory of American politics. Obama now . . . . Continue Reading »
Last Friday the New York Times ran a profile of blogger Eve Tushnet, a “celibate, gay, conservative, Catholic writer”: While gay sex should not be criminalized, she said, gay men and lesbians should abstain. They might instead have passionate friendships, or sublimate their urges into . . . . Continue Reading »
The virtue of Gerald McDermott’s The Great Theologians is that it condenses the central contributions of eleven of history’s most influential Christian thinkers into a readable and accesible format.And McDermott makes this seem easy.The Great Theologians introduces a rather . . . . Continue Reading »
The National Review’s John Derbyshire lost his religion—of no moment here—and then decided that his rejection of faith, and its replacement with scientism, meant he had to oppose human exceptionalism. I have disagreed with him before about these matters, for example when he tried . . . . Continue Reading »
We are quickly becoming an entitlement culture that increasingly refuses to set self limits and presumes the right to harness technology to get us what we want—no matter how destructive to others and to the overall culture. Nothing epitomizes this anything goes, me-me/I-I mentality than . . . . Continue Reading »
In part 1 we briefly examined the theological persuasion of the dispensational evangelical. Now in part two we look into some of current attitudes that exist in the world outside of dispensational evangelicalism.The tragic history of Luther’s later years has haunted Europe for centuries. Early . . . . Continue Reading »
Correspondence with a writer reminded me of a book on writing I really like, and like to recommend: Mark Turner and Francis-Noel Thomas’s Clear and Simple as the Truth . Here is the book’s website and their on-line course guide . These I had not known about, and commend them to . . . . Continue Reading »
I find this Michael Chabon op-ed , written in the wake of Israel’s interception of the Gaza flotilla, to be remarkable, and not in a good way. A few extremely cleverly oblique references to God, while the figure who identifies that God rather than merely naming him — guess who? — . . . . Continue Reading »
Many people don’t follow the euthanasia controversy closely. (I don’t know why: It’s not as if there is nothing else going on in the world.) But even though the issue isn’t currently on the public policy front burner, I think it is important to understand that . . . . Continue Reading »
So that’s the first of what will probably turn out to be a large number of quotable lines from the very funny GET HIM TO THE GREEK. As far as I know, this is the first really enjoyable movie of the year (CITY ISLAND is a decent but distant second). It would be easy and right to say it’s . . . . Continue Reading »