A Thinking Reed

  • Into Great Silence

    This documentary, about the life of a group of Carthusian monks living in the French Alps sounds really fascinating.

  • Up from atheism

    Warning: lengthy post ahead! I first became a professed atheist at about age 15; I decided that I had seen through all the illusions of those around me, those unthinking, dogmatic, hypocritical, narrow-minded small-town types I had grown up with. I literally announced to my parents that I would no longer be attending church (I…

  • Plantinga on Dawkins and Calvinism and (vs?) philosophy

    Alvin Plantinga, probably the most important contemporary Christian philosopher working in the analytic tradition, has a lengthy review of Dawkins’ God Delusion. I have to say that I have almost no appetite for these back-and-forth polemics; I was an atheist for a considerable period of time and don’t feel much need to revisit it. But…

  • They’ve got personality

    Jon Katz writes the series Rural Life for Slate.com; he’s a writer who started his own farm with his wife and now writes about it. One of his recurring themes is the intelligence and personality of farm animals and how human interaction can affect them. Today’s entry is about a sassy hen named Henrietta and…

  • Eat less meat, save the planet

    The Christian Science Monitor reports on yet another report linking the raising of livestock on an industrial scale to climate change: As Congress begins to tackle the causes and cures of global warming, the action focuses on gas-guzzling vehicles and coal-fired power plants, not on lowly bovines. Yet livestock are a major emitter of greenhouse…

  • A reflection on Ps. 109

    I imagine that anyone who makes regular use of the Psalms in their devotional life has had the experience of stumbling over sentiments that seem … less than edifying, or even un-Christian. For instance, last night I was reading Psalm 109, following the old-style scheme for praying the Psalms in the Book of Common Prayer,…

  • Simplicity and Lent

    I’ve recently started reading a book called Radical Simplicity: Small Footprints on a Finite Earth by Jim Merkel. Merkel worked for years as an engineer designing weapons systems for arms dealers(!) until, one day, sitting in a bar in Sweden he watched the tv coverage of the Exxon Valdez disaster. Struck by his (and everyone’s)…

  • A veggie Lent

    Perhaps as one of your Lenten disciplines you’ve decided to give up meat (our Orthodox bothers and sisters go full-on vegan for Lent). If so, you may be wondering “What am I going to eat for the next 40 days?” Well, The Order of Santa Ignora has got you covered. Who knows, you might like…

  • More on giving teeth to JWT

    In a comment to the previous post, Michael Westmoreland-White asks a fair question of Just War theory: Has JWT EVER led to massive civil disobedience and refusal to fight on the part of a church’s members? Pacifists have often been arrested or executed for refusing to fight. When has this been true of JWTers? CAN…

  • William Cavanaugh, localism, and giving Just War theory teeth

    Eric directs our attention to this Godspy interview with Catholic theologian and “Radical Orthodoxy” fellow-traveler William T. Cavanaugh. He’s got some interesting stuff to say about globalization, the church, freedom, and just war theory among other things. I don’t agree with everything Cavanaugh says, but here are a couple of things that I thought were…