When it comes to Christian-Jewish relations, particularly Christian-Jewish dialogue, the most sensitive issues of all, of course, are those of mission and conversion. Thus those of us Christians who are seriously engaged in such dialogue need to be particularly sensitive about conduct on our part . . . . Continue Reading »
People who talk overmuch about beginning a new phase of life often appear quite foolish. After all, we rarely know until much later the meaning of our past and the promise of our future. Our ignorance and confusion alone ought to suggest that at times of transition (like the beginning of a new . . . . Continue Reading »
What do modern Jewish thinkers make of Christianity? Is Christianity in their eyes still the oppressive, pervasive presence that medieval Jews experienced as Christendom? Is Christianity held to be that which fills the hearts of Gentiles with implacable contempt for Jews? Or is it a chastened, . . . . Continue Reading »
We have witnessed in recent years the flowering of various Christian pluralistic theologies calling for unequivocal affirmation of the equal validity of all world faiths. It is argued that Christianity (and to some extent other traditions) has been infected with a virulent exclusivist virus, . . . . Continue Reading »
Stanley Hauerwas once told me that After Christendom? might be the systematic assembly of his thought for which friends and opponents have pressed him. In considerable part, the promise is fulfilled. The chapters of this book were drafted for a single set of lectures and work together in a . . . . Continue Reading »
Faith and Faithfulness: Basic Themes in Christian Ethics by Gilbert Meilaender University of Notre Dame Press, 211 pages, $22.95 This veteran of forty years of teaching no longer selects books for courses that fit into some tightly conceived outline but rather picks classics—or worthy . . . . Continue Reading »
There are numerous obstacles to making the connections between religion and public life. For some moderns, a quasi-religious commitment to secularism produces an overt hostility to religion in all its manifestations. For many others, religion is self-evidently a purely private phenomenon. In that . . . . Continue Reading »
Call it a public service. When National Review devoted almost an entire issue to William F. Buckley’s In Search of Anti-Semitism, an unsettled and unsettling set of questions was once again brought to the fore. That has to be done from time to time. One may be inclined to think that there is . . . . Continue Reading »
I, the grandson of devout Orthodox Jews, am watching my younger daughter being confirmed in the Lutheran Church. The minister, an affable, athletic-looking man, has his hands on my daughter’s head as he says a prayer. Afterwards, my wife takes a group picture of the smiling minister with the . . . . Continue Reading »