A Thinking Reed

  • Death, where is thy sting?

    Thomas at Without Authority writes on death and whether we should consider it natural and/or evil in itself. I think he’s on the right track there (and I’m not just saying that because he had nice things to say about a few of my posts). I’m intrigued by his last paragraph where he says: So,…

  • More of a Howie Mandel than a Paris Hilton

    Find out your status here (via Siris).

  • NRCAT statement of conscience

    If you’re concerned about reports of the use of torture in the war on terror then you might consider endorsing the National Religious Coaltion Against Torture‘s “Statement of Conscience.” I’ve mentioned this before, but recently received an e-mail saying that they’re aiming to have 50,000 signatures by mid-January. You can view and endorse the statement…

  • What does TEC teach about salvation?

    Yesterday’s Boston Globe carried an article about Episcopal parishes in the Diocese of Massachusetts disassociating themselves from the national church body on account of the latter’s “teachings on gay clergy, homosexuality, and salvation.” Leaving aside for the moment the controversy over V. Gene Robinson and the larger issue of homosexuality in the church, what’s this…

  • Jars of Clay – LIVE!

    At the risk of incurring the mockery of Derek or others, just wanted to mention that the good wife and I attended a Jars of Clay concert last Friday at Gordon College on the north shore (billed as “the only nondenominational Christian college in New England”). Apart from being dragged to a Petra concert by…

  • Spare me

    I was pretty sure I didn’t want to see Borat, but this clinches it for me. Low-brow humor I can take, but pretentious and self-righterous low-brow humor – no thanks. Anyway, America has got to be among the least anti-Semitic countries in the world by any standard I can think of. I did watch a…

  • How to get out of Iraq?

    A proposal from Sen. Russ Feingold. (via ACBfP) Even though I was unsupportive of the original decision to go to war, I’ve only grudgingly been swayed toward the cut-and-run option. But more and more it seems to me that the longer we stay the more likely we’ll end up backing one side or the other…

  • More thoughts on Chadwick’s The Early Church

    John Henry Newman once said that “To be deep in history is to cease to be Protestant.” Now, I’m certainly not going to claim to be “deep” into early church history after having read Chadwick’s The Early Church (along with a few other books along the way), but I think I can see what Newman…

  • Eyewitnesses to Jesus

    Great interview with British NT scholar and theologian Richard Bauckham at the blog Chrisendom discussing Bauckham’s new book Jesus and the Eyewitnesses. The book, in a nutshell: The historical argument (most of the book) is that the eyewitnesses of the events of the Gospel history remained, throughout their lives, the authoritative sources and guarantors of…

  • Conservatism – wha’ happened?

    Former National Review board member and trustee Austin Bramwell writes about what he sees as the dead end of conservatism. No one is spared – neither neocons nor paleocons – but Bramwell reserves his harshest criticisms for NR, the flagship journal of American conservatism, for becoming, in his view, unserious about, well, pretty much everything.…