A Thinking Reed

  • Presbyterians still believe in God’s wrath

    Christianity Today reported that the Presbyterian Church (USA) rejected “In Christ Alone”–a popular contemporary hymn–from its new hymnal because it mentions the wrath of God. Here are the offending lines: In Christ alone! who took on flesh Fulness of God in helpless babe! This gift of love and righteousness Scorned by the ones he came…

  • The church’s introversion

    The church as the real content of the gospel, its glory the boundless manifestation of the heavenly Lord, sharing in it being identical with sharing in Christ and his dominion, his qualities being communicable to it–we know that message. It has lasted for two thousand years, has fascinated Protestantism, too, and is today the main…

  • Some Melvillian tidbits

    Yesterday was the 194th anniversary of Herman Melville’s birth, and to mark the occasion the Atlantic offered some excerpts from its archives–including two from W. Somerset Maugham–on what makes Moby-Dick great. The New York Daily News has some suggestions on how to celebrate Melville’s birthday, including an ode to Moby-Dick from experimental musician Laurie Anderson.…

  • Kyuss, “Asteroid”

  • American Christians should relax about church decline

    Popular Christian blogger Rachel Held Evans wrote an article for CNN on “why millenials are leaving the church.” She really means the evangelical church, and she cites issues like excessive politicization, an anti-science attitude, and hostility to LGBT folks as reasons why people in her generation are jumping ship. She suggests that churches need to…

  • Smashing Pumpkins, “Cherub Rock”

    Apparently this album came out 20 years ago tomorrow. Which makes me feel kind of old.

  • A liberal revival?

    According to the New York Times, after a period when it was more fashionable to study relatively marginalized religious movements like evangelicalism and Mormonism, historians are turning their attention back to liberal mainline Protestantism. One of the more surprising arguments, made by David Hollinger, is that the legacy of the mainline may be deeper and…

  • God is no gentleman

    Men who are strongly of the fact-loving temperament, you may remember me to have said, are liable to be kept at a distance by the small sympathy with facts which that philosophy from the present-day fashion of idealism offers them. It is far too intellectualistic. Old fashioned theism was bad enough, with its notion of…

  • “I Am the Doctor”

    Okay, this is kind of nerdy, but I’ve been watching the Matt Smith seasons of Doctor Who, and I really like the 11th Doctor’s theme:

  • Putnam and Plantinga on religion

    This discussion on religion with heavy-duty philosophers Hilary Putnam and Alvin Plantinga is from way back in 2000, but I found it well worth a listen. Somewhat ironically–considering that Putnam is Jewish and Plantinga is a Christian–I found myself more sympathetic to Putnam’s overall approach. I’m not nearly as familiar with his work, but the…