A Thinking Reed

  • A democracy of sinners

    Via Christopher, a meditation on violence, redemption, and the importance of holding on to our doctrine of sin: There is Good News hidden in the doctrine of sin. Sin is the great equalizer. Sin levels the playing field and throws us back on God’s loving kindness. In Paul’s vision, Jews are no better and certainly…

  • The price of not having cable

    One week later, and I’m still waiting for the Sci Fi Channel to post the Battlestar Galactica (sort of) season finale to their website (which, by all accounts, was mind-blowing). Grumble.

  • Whither the ELCA blogosphere?

    Maybe it’s bad form to call out bloggers who haven’t posted anything in a while, but I can’t help but notice that several bloggers from my sidebar who’ve been inactive for months are ELCA Lutherans! I’m talking about Chip Frontz, Andy of Sinning Boldly, and Thomas of Without Authority. What’s the deal here, fellas? What…

  • Henry Chadwick, RIP

    An esteemed Anglican scholar and ecumenist passes. The obituary by Rowan Williams is here (via Derek). For what it’s worth: I highly recommend his history of the early church and Early Christian Thought and the Classical Tradition. Highly readable works that wear their (ample) scholarship lightly.

  • Rays of hope

    Marvin has a review of Diana Butler Bass’ Christianity for the Rest of Us, which tries to identify characteristics of thriving mainline congreations (often believed to be a contradiction in terms). Based on Marvin’s post, Bass confirms something that I’ve long thought: that you need to integrate both the “vertical” and “horizontal” dimensions of religion…

  • Friday metal – All hail Scandinavia edition

    I’m not usually one of those people who harps on about how much better and more advanced Europe is than the good ol’ US of A, but when it comes to metal it may well be true. Scandinavia alone has produced a disproportionately large number of metal’s best contemporary bands. (Is there a Lutheran connection…

  • Heaven is not optional

    Austin Farrer was, among other things, a renowned Anglican theologian and a friend of C.S. Lewis. I’ve been reading his book Saving Belief – a kind of primer of sorts Christian theology originally delivered as a series of lectures to undergraduates. In his chapter on “Heaven and Hell” he has this to say about Christians…

  • Dangerous nonsense

    I’d like to register my protest at the now-widespread tendency to refer to the President as “the commander-in-chief” or worse “our commander-in-chief,” full stop. To my ear, the connotations are perilously close to those of the Roman title imperator and it makes the President sound like some kind of warrior-king. As the Constitution makes clear,…

  • Is same-sex marriage a threat to religious freedom?

    In the argument over same-sex marriage, social conservatives have seen a string of defeats. For all intents and purposes, they have lost the argument based on straightforward morality (“gay sex is wrong”) and the argument based on social harm (“it will undermine straight marriage”). But the last-ditch argument that, in the wake of the California…

  • A Christian defense of liberty

    The Christian Century reviews Glenn Tinder’s recent book on liberty. I haven’t read the book, but I’m a big fan of Tinder’s earlier work, The Political Meaning of Christianity, which has been aptly characterized as combining the insights of both Niebuhrs: H. Richard and Reinhold. From the review: What makes Tinder’s discussion so refreshing and…