I realize I’m starting to sound like a Matthew Yglesias groupie, but this article on why war with Iran is a very, very bad idea is one of the best I’ve read. Even bracketing moral considerations, there just doesn’t seem to be a feasible military option that prevents Iran from getting nukes, rather than perhaps…

Thanks to Pastor Chip Frontz, who graciously loaned me his copy of Rod Dreher’s Crunchy Cons, I can weigh in, if somewhat belatedly, on the whole phenomenon. As I see it, the crunchy con ethos can be understood as an attempt to bring to bear a traditionalist religious (or philosophical) sensibility to bear on the…

Interesting story in the Chicago Tribune about a Catholic parish outside of Chicago that has consciously, and by this account successfully, modeled itself after evangelical megachurches. In fact, it’s a mere three miles away from the (in)famous Willow Creek, and has managed to win parishoners back who were worshiping there. The secret to the 22-year-old…

I may have mentioned previously that we are relocating to the Boston area this summer. By all accounts Boston is a great town, and I’m really looking forward to the move. However, I am disgruntled to discover that Yuengling doesn’t distribute to Massachusetts! For those not in the know, Yuengling (‘ying-ling’), the self-proclaimed oldest brewery…

Jonathan R. Wilson, whose daughter and son-in-law were part of a Christian Peacemaker team in Iraq (not the one that was held hostage), offers a primer on “gospel pacifism.”

In his essay “Lutheran Pietism and Catholic Piety,” found in the collection The Catholicity of the Reformation, church historian Robert Louis Wilken argues that Lutheran pietism was in part an attempt to recover some of the features of medieval piety that had been swept aside by the Reformation. Johann Arndt, the grandfather of Lutheran pietism,…

The Resurrection, Matthias Gruenwald, 1515

Episcopal Church holds “U2 Eucharist.”

Thomas at Endlessly Rocking: The Church reads the Scriptures to remember who Jesus is. “The Scandal and Victory of the Cross” at Connexions. And, at The Ivy Bush, why Easter is still weird.

Matthew Yglesias has smart things to say about saber-rattling on Iran at the Weekly Standard. Michael Kinsley at Slate reviews the resounding success that is America’s history of intervention in the Middle East. At Reason, Christopher Preble questions whether U.S. intervention in Darfur is a good idea.