A Thinking Reed

  • Green Christology

    I really liked this essay in the magazine America by Elizabeth Johnson, the well-known feminist theologian. She argues that Jesus’ ministry, death and resurrection, and the incarnation as a whole have implications for the entire creation, not just human salvation: Jesus Christ is a gift given because “God so loved the world,” kosmos in Greek…

  • A break from Friday metal – a little Ray Davies

    I recently picked up legendary Kinks front man Ray Davies’ solo album Other People’s Lives at a used book/record store and have been enjoying it quite a bit. Here’s Davies performing one of the songs, “After the Fall,” on The Tonight Show: Now I see he has a more recent disc, Working Man’s Cafe; here’s…

  • Marriage equality in the heartland

    A summary of the Iowa state supreme court’s decision here. I imagine we can look forward to a protracted political battle a la California now?

  • Fides et ratio redux

    Marvin has another post on the “faith and/versus reason” theme. One thing I’d want to add to the mix–in partial agreement with a comment Eric made at Marvin’s–is that there is a variety of understandings of “reason,” only some of which are inimical to faith. For instance, a lot of debates about faith and reason…

  • “Truly this man was God’s son!”: A meditation on the centurion’s confession

    Here’s the text of a meditation I gave at a mid-week Lenten service at our church. We were instructed to select a piece of art depicting a scene from the last week of Jesus’ life according to Mark’s gospel. I selected the confession of the centurion at the foot of the cross and used a…

  • A reluctant universalist

    That’s how Richard Hall from Connexions describes himself in this thought-provoking post.

  • Collier on Singer

    Paul Collier, who wrote the book The Bottom Billion about global poverty, reviews Singer’s The Life You Can Save and has some interesting criticisms. Though, I think our obligations to the world’s poorest people aren’t simply a matter of altruism; it can be well argued, I think, that we owe them, given some of our…

  • A boy and his robot

    From the AV Club: an appreciation of one of my very favorite movies.

  • God and the multiverse

    An interesting article dealing with how some religious believers are dealing with the idea, suggested from some of the more speculative corners of contemporary physics, that our universe is simply one part of a vast “multiverse” (via the First Things blog, I think). Among other things, the multiverse hypothesis seems to pose a challenge for…

  • Faith and reason: a follow up

    Jeremy and Jonathan both provided some good comments and helpful pushback on this post. Here are some follow-up thoughts: I don’t think I was very successful at doing this, but it’s important to avoid positing a simplistic dichotomy between a monolithic reason and an equally homogeneous “faith” or “revelation.” I don’t assume that we can…