Social and ethical issues
-
(See previous posts here and here.) In chapter 8 Jardine discusses what he calls the cosmological and anthropological revolution wrought by Christianity and why it holds the key to facing the dilemma of the technological society. That dilemma, recall, is that we human beings have found ourselves with the capacity to radically alter our environment Read more
-
(Switching gears here; we’re talking about political freedom now, not the metaphysical variety.) There’s been an interesting debate recently, swirling around some of President Bush’s more exuberant comments about political freedom being a “gift from the Almighty.” The reference comes from a recent David Brooks column (not accessible to us proles who don’t subscribe to Read more
-
Evangelical Christian and former Bush speechwriter Michael Gerson, who left his job at the White House, writes in today’s Washington Post that Rudy Giuliani is more of a Nixonian conservative than a religious one: In his elections, Nixon appealed to conservatives and the country as a culture warrior who was not a moral or religious Read more
-
Powerful piece by Tom Englehardt on the problems with relying on air power in war, something that has become more central to the US’s way of war over the last half-century or so. The problem, in essence, is that so-called collateral damage, the “unintentional” killing of large numbers of civilians, is such an inextricable part Read more
-
Since the previous post on Braaten’s soteriology made it sound like he had a completely negative view of Liberation Theology, I thought I’d try to set out the position he sketches in his chapter on the Two Kingdoms principle, which tries to put liberation in the context of eschatology and the coming Kingdom of God. Read more
-
One of the pleasures of moving is that in going through all your earthly possessions you rediscover books that you either hadn’t read or hadn’t fully digested. One such book of mine is Murray Jardine’s The Making and Unmaking of Technological Society. I think I may have blogged about it a bit a few years Read more
-
I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t at least a little bit sympathetically disposed to Bill Kauffman’s paean to neo-secessionists in Vermont, but I’m not so sure that ultra-localism is the solution to the problems that the secessionists identify. For one thing, to the extent that they deplore the effects of the global marketplace, Read more
-
As I mentioned previously, Daly and Cobb’s central concern is that the abstractions of economics leave out aspects of reality that are crucial to understanding the world and shaping the economy in a way that nourishes community and is sustainable in the long run. Following A.N. Whitehead, they refer to the phenomenon of treating an Read more
-
I’m in Indianapolis visiting family, and one of the things I like to do whenever I’m here is make a trip to Half Price Books. Yesterday I picked up a copy of For the Common Good: Redirecting the Economy toward Community, the Environment, and a Sustainable Future by World Bank economist Herman Daly and process Read more
-
Thanks to Michael Westmoreland-White for pointing out this interview with liberal theologian and social ethicist Gary Dorrien. Dorrien, who now holds the Reinhold Niebuhr chair in social ethics at Union Theological Seminary, points out that while Niebuhr held many different and incompatible political views over the course of his life, the current US policy in Read more
A Thinking Reed 