Russian comic Yakov Smirnoff, whose popularity peaked in the mid-80s (Moscow on the Hudson, etc.) has reinvented himself as a philosopher-therapist who uses humor and positive thinking to cure folks of what ails them! He’s finishing up his master’s thesis at Penn on “love and laughter” under the tutelage of “positive psychology” guru Martin Seligman.

Thomas at Without Authority writes on the different meanings of “grace” in the Catholic and Lutheran traditions as well as the “Finnish” interpretation of Luther. Let’s make a deal (with Iran), via Unqualified Offerings. A “wager argument” for vegetarianism, via Siris. Caleb McDaniel draws an analogy between nuclear abolitionism and the abolition of slavery. Jonathan…

Nice article on John Stuart Mill (via Arts & Letters Daily) that argues that he was more complicated than people frequently think. He’s often reduced to a one-dimensional figure, depending on the preferences of the person discussing him (e.g. the libertarian Mill, the socialist Mill, the utilitarian Mill), but this piece shows him as a…

Lots of good comments in the post below. Prior to this discussion I’d been reading Gerald O’Collins’s The Tripersonal God: Understanding and Interpreting the Trinity. He has some things to say on naming the Trinity that might be helpful: When the Trinity is named, God the Father functions validly if we align ourselves with the…

Today our congregation started incorporating elements from the new worship book produced by the ELCA and approved at this summer’s churchwide assembly. Though the book itself won’t be in use til this fall as I understand it. Now, I freely admit to being resistant to change; just when I get used to a particular liturgy…

I’m second to no one in my love of the Beastie Boys, but I have to say, some of the rhymes on the recent To the 5 Boroughs, which I checked out from the library the other day, leave a bit to be desired. My longstanding theory has been that there is an inverse relationship…

In the new First Things, Gilbert Meilaender takes a bite out of Crunchy Cons. He’s put off, as I admit I was, by Dreher’s apparent disdain for non-crunchies: A strong sense of impatience runs through the pages of Crunchy Cons. Perhaps it is the impatience of the prophet, and, to the degree that it is,…

Brandon has a post on St. Anselm with lots of good links. N.T. Wright on the Resurrection, via Pastor Frontz. At Alternet, an interview with journalist Michael Pollan, who just publised a book called The Omnivore’s Dilemma, on “America’s Eating Disorder.” Interestingly, one of the people engaged in sustainable farming practices that Pollan talks about…

I would be remiss if I didn’t mention that today is the feast day of Archbishop of Canterbury and my favorite medieval philosopher-theologian St. Anselm. He is often referred to as the “founder of scholasticism” and is one of the great doctors of the Church. As Archbishop he was also instrumental in the struggle against…

This article is one of those classic pieces that proclaims the existence of a trend but then offers little more than the sparsest of anecdotal evidence that such a trend is actually occurring. Still, the question is a perennial one. How important to Christian belief is it that Jesus “literally” rose from the dead? The…