A Thinking Reed

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

History

  • Marcus Borg’s non-eschatological Jesus

    I found Dale Allison’s book on the historical Jesus stimulating enough that I thought I should get another perspective. I had read Marcus Borg’s Jesus: A New Vision several years ago, but didn’t really remember much of it. So I thought it might be worth re-visiting. Though he comes to different conclusions than Allison (Borg Read more

  • Intelligent dissent on the food movement

    I’m obviously sympathetic to a lot of the proposals of Michael Pollan, et al., but some of what passes for criticism of our system of food production can come across as simplistic, naive, or nostalgic. That’s why I was happy to discover the blog of historian and author Maureen Ogle who, among other things, subjects Read more

  • Two “fall of the Wall” songs

    I was a young buck of 15 at the time, so naturally my memory of the events is filtered through rock music: Jesus Jones, “Right Here, Right Now” Scorpions, “Winds of Change” [Edited because of embedding issues.] Read more

  • Charles Wesley gets his due

    It appears that new scholarship is discovering some of the long-forgotten (or even suppressed) differences between Charles Wesley and his more famous brother. One interesting point that comes up in this piece is that C.W. leaned more heavily toward keeping Methodism as a movement within the Church of England. I suppose it doesn’t mark me Read more

  • Rediscovering Correggio

    The Post had an article this weekend on the nearly forgotten Renaissance master Correggio (a.k.a. Antonio Allegri) who at one time ranked up there with the likes of Michelangelo and Leonardo. What makes Correggio stand out is that his work is unconventional, even at times chaotic, by the standards of the day: Correggio’s paintings are Read more

  • Jeffersonia

    I don’t know how many ATR readers live in the DC area, but the Library of Congress currently has a very cool exhibit of Revolutionary-era documents, “Creating the United States,” which includes Jefferson’s “rough draft” of the Declaration of Independence, complete with handwritten edits from Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, and members of the Continental Congress. Read more

  • July reading notes

    I recently finished a book called Atonement, Christology and the Trinity: Making Sense of Christian Doctrine by Vincent Brummer. Brummer is a Dutch philosopher of religion in the Reformed tradition and this book is an attempt to give an account of these central doctrines of Christian belief. Brummer starts from the premise that loving fellowship Read more

  • Power, state, and Reformation

    Leaving aside the anti-Catholic animus (as well as what seem to be some dubious historical assertions) this is an interesting piece by British journalist Rod Liddle on the deep connections between English culture and Protestant Christianity. There has been a revisionist view, popularized by Eamon Duffy in particular, that Catholicism represented the authentic religion of Read more