A Thinking Reed

  • Camera Obscura, “Do It Again”

    I’ve really been enjoying this album–it’s called Desire Lines and came out earlier this month.

  • Slavery, divine judgment, and atonement

    During my vacation I read James Oakes’ The Radical and the Republican: Frederick Douglass, Abraham Lincoln, and the Triumph of Antislavery Politics. Oakes tells the story of how the radical abolitionist Douglass and the temperamental conservative Lincoln converged on a brand of antislavery politics that eventually resulted in the emancipation of America’s millions of slaves…

  • The Clash, “Washington Bullets”

    I’ve been listening to The Clash’s sprawling 2-disc (3-LP when it was released) album “Sandinista!” A lot of people regard it as a bit of a mess, but I think it’s kind of amazing.

  • Wesley’s “conversion”

    Methodist and other churches remember today as the anniversary of John Wesley’s “Aldersgate Experience.” Richard Hall at Connexions provides some of the background here. Essentially, Wesley reported having a vivid experience of assurance in his own salvation when hearing a reading from Luther’s Preface to Romans. While this has sometimes been described as Wesley’s “conversion…

  • Willie Nelson, “Whiskey River” (Live, 1974)

  • Obama’s counter-terrorism speech: return to (a semblance of) normalcy?

    The counter-terrorism policy outlined in the president’s speech today hardly describes my ideal approach, but most, if not all, of the changes he’s made or is proposing are steps in the right direction. These include –continuing the reduction in the number of combat troops in Afghanistan, –declassifying information on Americans killed in drone strikes, –reviewing…

  • What does the Catholic Church teach about the salvation of non-Christians?

    I noticed that some people are spinning the pope’s remarks from yesterday as saying that anyone who “does good” is redeemed. But is this accurate? And is it consistent with other Catholic teaching on this? In the remarks, as excerpted here, Francis makes two major points, best as I can tell. First, everyone–no matter their…

  • Is the pope a universalist?

    Probably not, but he said this in a homily today: The Lord has redeemed all of us, all of us, with the Blood of Christ: all of us, not just Catholics. Everyone! ‘Father, the atheists?’ Even the atheists. Everyone! And this Blood makes us children of God of the first class! We are created children…

  • Miscellaneous links and such, mostly theological

    This post strikes a good balance in responding to the controversy over a tweet Calvinist preacher John Piper posted immediately after the tornado in Oklahoma. I enjoyed this podcast of some philosophers discussing Schleiermacher’s “On Religion.” Although they don’t seem to be very familiar with his more explicitly theological work–particularly The Christian Faith–which provides some…

  • Keyboard commandos, 19th century edition

    ‘So it is with the unanimity of the Press. It has been explained to me: as soon as there is a war their revenue is doubled. How can they help considering that the fate of the people and the Slavs–and all the rest of it?’ ‘There are many papers I don’t like, but that is…