A Thinking Reed

  • To split or not to split

    A recent poll of United Methodists found that more than 90 percent of respondents don’t think the church should split over the question of homosexuality. Moreover, “[c]reating disciples of Christ, spiritual growth and youth involvement” were named as higher priorities than debates over sexuality. The congregation I belong to is firmly in the “open and…

  • Confessions of a backslidden vegetarian

    Adam Kotsko posted today about why he’s not a vegetarian, even though he seems like the sort of person who should be one. I was a vegetarian, of increasing strictness, for almost 10 years. I found philosophical arguments for vegetarianism convincing (though I never accepted animal rights arguments in their strongest forms). I read lots of…

  • Metallica, “King Nothing”

    I’m a (mostly) unapologetic defender of Metallica’s frequently maligned Load and Reload albums. (St. Anger is a different story.)

  • “Theistic ethics” or Christian ethics?

    I said in my previous post that some Christians might be worried by the fact that Ward’s Morality, Autonomy, and God doesn’t appeal to the Bible or specifically Christian revelation. Shouldn’t Christian ethics be informed by convictions specific to Christianity? In his book Behaving in Public, Christian ethicist Nigel Biggar takes a position that is…

  • (How) does morality need God?

    “Does ethics need God?” is an old question, and the answers we get are often simplistic. On the one hand, Christians (and other religious believers) sometimes identify ethics with “God’s will” conceived as a sheer command, and they imply (or sometimes outright assert) that only believers in God can be moral. On the other hand,…

  • Van Morrison, “Into the Mystic”

  • Evolution, Adam, Paul, and the Gospel

    I’m not sure I was part of the target audience for Peter Enns’ book The Evolution of Adam, but I still got a lot out of it. Enns reviews the scholarship around the composition and authorship of the creation story, as well as its historical context, and argues that the Adam story (i.e., the version…

  • Mavis Staples, “Jesus Wept”

  • All truth is God’s truth

    I liked this post from Rachel Held Evans in which she rebuts critics who say that those who propose revisions to traditional church teachings are merely trying to “conform to the world.” She points out that many of the calls for change on matters like gender roles, the relationship between science and the Bible, and…

  • Staple Singers, “When Will We Be Paid”