A Thinking Reed

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

Social justice

  • (I tweeted a bit about this earlier, but I thought I might as well write some thoughts into a proper blog post.) As if to confirm our most stereotypical expectations, a proposal is being put before a diocese of the Episcopal Church in Atlanta to “rehabilitate” Pelagius by reversing the Council of Carthage’s (5th century) Read more

  • Christianity Today ran a rather silly article trying to undercut the claims of the Occupy Wall Street protesters: Occupy Wall Street protest signs seek to ignite a revolution of the 99 percent against the (richest) 1 percent, who are responsible for our troubles. Christians of course are forbidden from supporting this kind of worldview. The Read more

  • I haven’t blogged about the ongoing “Occupy Wall Street” (and other) protests, but I did want to share a couple of recent pieces that I found helpful for putting them in context. Using a plethora of charts, this post at Business Insider lays out about as clearly as you could ask the problems with how Read more

  • My recent visit to the newly opened Martin Luther King Jr. memorial here in D.C. prompted me to pick up Harvard Sitkoff’s 2008 biography, King: Pilgrimage to the Mountaintop. To my embarrassment, I actually don’t know a lot about the details of the Civil Rights movement or King’s life in particular. Sitkoff’s relatively brief (under Read more

  • Friday Links

    –Marvin on the Presbyterian Church’s decision to allow congregations to call non-celibate gay and lesbian pastors. –Libraries are part of the social safety net. –“I hated vegans too, but now I am one.” –On anti-Semites and philo-Semites. –Mark Bittman asks, “Why bother with meat?” –Jesus and eco-theology. –Jeremy discusses Herbert McCabe and Gerhard Forde on Read more

  • Friday Links

    –With the death of bin Laden, the U.S. has accomplished the aims that justified the war in Afghanistan. Time to leave. –An interview with “eco-economist” Herman Daly: Rethinking growth. –A primer on Christian nonviolence. –The collapse of the “progressive Christian” big tent? –The Presbyterian Church (USA) voted to allow non-celibate gay and lesbians to serve Read more

  • Friday links

    –On Christianity, the Holocaust, and Dietrich Bonhoeffer. –Recent posts on what’s apparently now being referred to as the “new universalism” from James K.A. Smith, Halden Doerge, and David Congdon. –Does having a monarchy lead to greater equality? –Redeeming the “L word.” –Appreciating both N.T. Wright’s and Marcus Borg’s views of the Resurrection. –Why liberals should Read more

  • Friday Links

    I spent the day hanging out with my family, so these are coming a little late… –Why Rep. Paul Ryan’s budget proposal is neither brave nor serious. –Free-range meat isn’t necessarily “natural.” –A case for universalism from the Scottish evangelical preacher and biblical scholar William Barclay. –A review of a recent book called What’s the Read more

  • Friday Links

    –Today is the Feast of the Annunciation; here are some thoughts on that. BLS also has one of her outstanding musical offerings for the day. –John Piper, theological nihilist? –Catholics are “more supportive of legal recognitions of same-sex relationships than members of any other Christian tradition and Americans overall.” –How to live without a mobile Read more

  • I’ve been re-reading Andrew Linzey’s Christianity and the Rights of Animals and just wanted to jot down some salient passages. On intensive farming: To put it at its most basic: animals have a God-given right to be animals. The natural life of a Spirit-filled creatures is a gift from God. When we take over the Read more