A Thinking Reed

"Man is but a reed, the most feeble thing in nature, but he is a thinking reed" – Blaise Pascal

Books

  • A Christian defense of liberty

    The Christian Century reviews Glenn Tinder’s recent book on liberty. I haven’t read the book, but I’m a big fan of Tinder’s earlier work, The Political Meaning of Christianity, which has been aptly characterized as combining the insights of both Niebuhrs: H. Richard and Reinhold. From the review: What makes Tinder’s discussion so refreshing and Read more

  • Redeeming the time

    LutherPunk has started up a new blog less focused on theology and ministry and more focused on crafting a lifestyle of self-sufficience and reduced consumption in what might seem like a not-too-promising location: modern suburbia. Derek weighs in here and points out that resisting consumerism dovetails with classic Christian virtues like “prudence, temperance, moderation, and Read more

  • Book meme redux

    Marvin also tagged me for this book meme, which I’m pretty sure I did a while back, but maybe it’d be interesting to do it again without looking at my old answers. Here goes: 1. One book that changed your life: Miracles, by C.S. Lewis. Reading this book as an undergrad was the occasion for Read more

  • The literature of peace

    Here’s a review of an interesting-sounding book on pacifism and English literature (though, given the subject, the review spends a surprising amount of time talking about Tolstoy). Read more

  • Creative destruction

    The book reviewed here asks if capitalism as we know it is compatible with reining in environmental destruction. The author is pretty convinced that the answer is no. If this is right, the problem then seems to be that 1. there’s no particularly attractive alternative to capitalism currently on offer and 2. even if there Read more

  • What kind of religious “center”?

    Bill McKibben reviews two books on Christianity: one by Harvard preacher Peter Gomes, and the other a book from the Barna Institute, the Gallup of evangelical Protestantism, reporting on young people’s perceptions of Christianity. Gomes is an interesting guy: a black, old-school New England conservative, Anglophile Baptist minister who happens to be gay. He’s widely Read more

  • Elvis, rock, modernism, and authenticity

    I’ve recently been reading Charles Ponce de Leon’s (awesome name!) biography of Elvis, called Fortunate Son. One of the running themes is that Elvis’ “rebel” image belied an underlying conservatism that was born of his working-class Southern upbringing which emphasized deference to authority in order to earn “respectability.” But also important was Elvis’ love (and Read more

  • The end of the world as we know it (6): animals

    (Previous posts: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5) Reflection on the ultimate destiny of animals has not been a central feature of Christian thinking about the eschaton. Most theology in general has been relentlessly anthropocentric, and eschatology as a general rule is no different. This is perhaps especially true of post-Enlightenment theology which, influenced by Cartesian Read more

  • The smiling God

    I don’t usually write about Joel Osteen and his ilk because a. evangelicalism isn’t really my milieu and b. it seems a bit like shooting fish in a barrel. But if you like that sort of thing, Slate‘s review of Osteen’s new book is worth checking out. Read more

  • The end of the world as we know it (3)

    (See here and here for previous posts.) The third part of The God of Hope and the End of the World is Polkinghorne’s attempt to construct a positive theological vision out of biblical insights, but one informed by what scientific cosmology tells us about the nature and destiny of the universe. The resurrection of Jesus, Read more