A Thinking Reed

  • Power, state, and Reformation

    Leaving aside the anti-Catholic animus (as well as what seem to be some dubious historical assertions) this is an interesting piece by British journalist Rod Liddle on the deep connections between English culture and Protestant Christianity. There has been a revisionist view, popularized by Eamon Duffy in particular, that Catholicism represented the authentic religion of…

  • Christo-fascism, again.

    War correspondent Chris Hedges has the latest entry in the impending Christo-fascism sweepstakes with his new book, cleverly titled American Fascists. Read the Salon interview here. LA Times review here. The MO of a lot of these books seems to consist of cherry-picking the few people who actually adhere to a “dominionist” ideology and then…

  • Wright on the radio

    Via a friend who is a Calvin College grad, here’s a link to a lecture N.T. Wright gave there recently. Also, the lectures Bishop Wright gave at Harvard Memorial Church when he was here last fall are now available online. I haven’t listened to any of these yet, but thought I’d draw folks’ attention to…

  • Small Is Beautiful

    This looks promsing: in the spirit of Crunchy Cons and Reactionary Radicals, a blog to promote Joseph Pearce’s new book Small Is Still Beautiful, which argues for the continuing relevance of the economic ideas of E.F. Schumacher. From the book description: Joseph Pearce revisits Schumacher’s arguments and examines the multifarious ways in which Schumacher’s ideas…

  • Our animal friends and the temptations of fanaticism

    Very nice post from *Christopher at Bending the Rule. I was at an Epiphany party last night and was trying to make a qualified case for vegetarianism to a couple of the attendees, without much traction I’m afraid. And it’s hard to do it without coming across as shrill or fanatical. (Though in my defense,…

  • Romans 13 as death penalty proof-text

    There’ve been a variety of discussions and arguments among Christians in the wake of Saddam Hussein’s execution about whether it’s proper for them to support capital punishment. Invariably, someone trots out Romans 13 as a proof-text for the pro-death penalty side of the argument: Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there…

  • Reporting from the road

    I’m in Atlanta, traveling for work, which, ironically, gives me more time to blog since I’m sitting here in a hotel room by myself with nothing to do. Interestingly, I seem to be here at the same time that this is going on, so my hotel is full of well-scrubbed Baptist kids walking around with…

  • Prayer as remembrance

    Liturgical scholar Paul F. Bradshaw’s Two Ways of Praying argues for a reconnection between liturgy and spirituality which he contends have been separated in the Christian West. One of the reasons for this, he thinks, is that Christians have often been unclear about what exactly they’re doing when they pray. This is partly because there…

  • Jesus the Jew and Christian practice

    UPDATE: Welcome, readers of Theolog! I have responded to Jason Byassee’s comments here. Lutheran Zephyr and Derek the Ænglican already have good comments on this article by Amy-Jill Levine, a Jewish New Testament scholar at Vanderbilt Divinity School. Professor Levine argues for a stronger recognition of the essential Jewishness of Jesus by the Christian community,…

  • Just what I always wanted!

    An Archbishop of Canterbury Christmas tree ornament! One of our cooler Christmas gifts, courtesy of my brother-in-law and his wife, who took a trip to Merry ole England this fall.