This column is a near-perfect example of what C. Wright Mills called “crackpot realism.”

That’s the title of a forthcoming book which compiles evidence of the role of military physicians, nurses, and other medical personnel in the kinds of “interrogation techniques” being used at Guantanamo Bay and detention centers in Afghanistan (and elsewhere for all we know) such as: Beating; punching with fists; use of truncheons; kicking; slamming against…

Recently Camassia posted on how children’s stories can inculcate a sentimental view of animals and the natural world that is neither realistic nor truly compassionate. This led to a discussion about in what sense death and predation in the natural world are an essential part of the created order and what our attitude toward them…

(See here and here for previous posts.) Next to Anselm’s, Peter Abelard’s atonement theory may be the most criticized in Christian history, though usually by different people. Beginning with his contemporary Bernard of Clairvaux and continuing to evangelicals in our own day who uphold the indispensibility of satisfaction or penal substitution atonement models, Abelard’s theory…

Hey, we found WMD in Iraq! Oh wait, not really. This may put me on the fringe (if I wasn’t there already), but I always thought the WMD business was a red herring in the first place. I recall reading an article Gregg Easterbrook wrote back in 2002 – in The New Republic of all…

There’s been a minor tempest in a blogspot in some quarters over the fact that the newly elected Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church, Katharine Jefferts Schori preached a sermon in which she referred to Jesus as “Mother.” Surely, we’re told, this is the death knell of kooky liberal mainline Protestantism which has finally sold…

The Independent Institute has posted an “Open Letter on Immigration” with over 500 signatures from economists and other social scientists, including five Nobel Laureates. These folks come form across the political spectrum, but support the idea that immigration has been and continues to be a net gain for the U.S.A.

(See here for previous post.) In chapter 3 of his Past Event and Present Salvation, Paul Fiddes tackles the question of the historical Jesus and how our knowledge of his earthly ministry should shape our understanding of atonement. He rejects the view, associated with Bultmann and others, that we can’t know much of anything about…

Noam Chomsky delivering a lecture on just war theory to a group of cadets at West Point. Makes for interesting listening/viewing. Via Red State Son.

I just received a copy of British theologian Paul S. Fiddes’ Past Event and Present Salvation: The Christian Idea of Atonement. As the title indicates, Fiddes is concerned with the relationship between the historical event of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection and how the salvation those events make possible is appropriated in the present. Here’s…