A Thinking Reed

  • Tagged!

    From Rick Ritchie – five people (living or dead) who have been a positive influence on your spiritual life. It’s kind of tricky question for a few reasons. For one, I don’t know that my spiritual life is anything to write home about. For another, I’m sure that what spiritual life I do have has…

  • Flex time

    My pal Mary links to this article from Newsweek on “flexitarians” – folks who, for a variety of reasons, eat meat sparingly but without being full-bore vegetarians (or vegans). I think this is all to the good. In particular, as veggie options become more widespread and palatable, people will recognize that you can eat well…

  • You don’t need a weather man to know which way the wind blows

    The Nation has re-posted a story it ran on the Obama-Bill Ayers connection when the Clinton campaign tried to make hay out of the same issue during the primaries. What’s completely baffling to me is what inference the McCain campaign thinks we should draw from Obama’s (tenuous) connection to Ayers. That Obama is a secret…

  • More thoughts on omnipotence and creation

    In the previous post I talked about Jay McDaniel’s proposal for a revised account of divine omnipotence and creation based on the suggestion of a primordial chaos that coexists with God, a chaos out of which God creates the world and which limits the divine ability to shape creation. I agree with McDaniel about the…

  • Creation and omnipotence: a process perspective

    As a follow-up of sorts to my reading of Christopher Southgate’s The Groaning of Creation, I picked up Jay McDaniel’s Of God and Pelicans: A Theology of Reverence for Life, which Southgate refers to a number of times in his book. McDaniel is a process theologian who has also been influenced by feminist theology, as…

  • Getting desperate

    Palin: Obama “palling around with terrorists.” This is what happens when you don’t have anything substantive to run on, I guess.

  • A recommendation

    I keep meaning to link to the blog of Steven Waldman, the editor-in-chief of Beliefnet and author of a recent book on the religion of the Founders. Waldman offers thoughtful and even-handed commentary, usually focusing on the intersection of religion and politics. In other words: not like most blogs. So there–I’ve linked to it.

  • Re-thinking free trade

    You should check out this TNR piece by Chris Hayes, Washington editor of the Nation (and friend of this blog). Chris talked to a bunch of economists from across the political spectrum and noted a distinct sea change in attitudes toward free trade agreements (FTA). In essence: FTAs provide a measureable, though slight, increase in…

  • Veep blogging

    I don’t know that I have any unique perspective to add to the Biden-Palin debate. I think the c.w. is more or less correct that Palin avoided disaster–largely by sidestepping the questions and sticking to McCain campaign talking points (tax cuts! victory! maverick!). Probably not enough to turn the campaign around, but it may have…

  • John Stuart Mill – right about everything

    Mill believed in complete equality between the sexes, not just women’s colleges and, someday, female suffrage but absolute parity; he believed in equal process for all, the end of slavery, votes for the working classes, and the right to birth control (he was arrested at seventeen for helping poor people obtain contraception), and in the…