A Thinking Reed

  • Sunday metal – In Flames, “The Mirror’s Truth”

    The new In Flames album, A Sense of Purpose, comes out this Tuesday! Here’s the first single/video:

  • An end to sacrifices

    I just finished reading James Alison’s Undergoing God, and the more I read of him the more I like him and think he’s onto something important. Alison, to recap, is a student of anthropologist/literary theorist Rene Girard, who has proposed a rather daring new interpretation of Jesus’ death on the cross. For Girard human selves…

  • A Muswell Hillbilly boy

    Jesse Walker reviews a new study of the lyrics of the great Ray Davies and his unique political outlook: this outlook translates into an intense distrust both for large corporations and for the state. Like many rock stars, Davies has written songs attacking venal Big Business. Unlike most rock stars, he has written songs attacking…

  • More Marty on Wright

    The other day I blogged about the comments from esteemed religious historian Martin Marty on Jeremiah Wright’s ministry that Nicholas Kristof quoted in a recent column. Well, Marty has penned an article for the Chronicle of Higher Education on the matter here.

  • Chipotle goes locavore

    Speaking of cheap meat, here’s a bit of good news. Chipotle, the Mexican food chain, has made a deal with Joe Salatin’s Polyface Farms to use his pork in its branch in Charlottesville, Virginia. Salatin, the “Christian libertarian environmentalist” farmer immortalized in Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma, pasture-raises his animals in a traditional and sustainable…

  • What price meat?

    Ezra Klein on why “meat should not be cheap.” P.S. Which isn’t to say we shouldn’t be concerned about food prices, particularly for poorer folks. However, the system we currently have 1) subsidizes industrially produced meat while hiding costs (particularly environmental ones) and 2) makes healthier foods (whole grains, fruits, vegetables) more expensive than they…

  • Jeremy on Rev. Wright

    Jeremy has an interesting post putting some of Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s more controversial remarks in context–including theological context; something the mainstream media is particularly bad at. Which is not to say that those comments are above critique, but that our definition of “mainstream” political discourse is perhaps rather narrow.

  • Creation care and compassionate eating

    Calvin College philosopher Matt Halteman, whose work I’ve blogged about before, popped into comments to this post to alert us to a terrific booklet he wrote for the Humane Society’s program on animals and religion. Thanks, Matt!

  • (Good) Friday Metal – Protest the Hero, “Bloodmeat”

    Um, nothing particularly spiritual about this clip, it’s just darn good. And, besides, I’ve missed a few of these. Also, these guys are Canadian, so it’s nice to see our northern cousins producing music that isn’t Bryan Adams, Alanis Morrisette, or Gordon Lightfoot.

  • Thoughts for Good Friday

    “Christ’s death on the cross and his descent into Hell … reassure us that we can never wander so far astray as to be outside the humanity with which Christ has identified.” – William Placher “Jesus came to forgive sin unconditionally for God. Our sin, our unbelief, consists precisely in the fact that we cannot…