A Thinking Reed

  • Negative liberty, positive liberty, and the second American revolution

    In the afterword to his magisterial Battle Cry of Freedom (which I finished reading over Christmas), historian James McPherson says that the Civil War was a turning point between two different understandings of liberty. He distinguishes them using the terms made famous by Isaiah Berlin: “negative” liberty and “positive” liberty. Roughly, negative liberty is freedom…

  • Jars of Clay, “I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day”

  • Communion as a means of conversion

    “Open communion”–or what is sometimes referred to more precisely as “communion without (or prior to) baptism”–has become something of a hot-button issue in mainline Protestant circles. In this article at the Christian Century, Boston College theologian Charles Hefling provides the best overview of the issue that I’ve seen. Drawing on John Wesley’s notion of communion as…

  • Guns, civil society, and peacemaking

    In the wake of the horrific massacre in Newtown, Connecticut, last Friday, a common reaction among some conservative/pro-gun folks has been that we should “arm the teachers.” This is consistent with responses to previous such events, like the movie theater shooting in Colorado this summer, when some gun proponents argued that if only someone else…

  • The Ramones, “Merry Christmas (I Don’t Want to Fight Tonight)”

  • Do we need a two-tier system of marriage?

    According to The Book of Common Prayer, The union of husband and wife in heart, body, and mind is intended by God for their mutual joy; for the help and comfort given one another in prosperity and adversity; and, when it is God’s will, for the procreation of children and their nurture in the knowledge…

  • Half a gospel

    I sympathize with the spirit of this post at Patheos by David Henson–it is weird and creepy to talk about the infant Jesus as having been “born to die”–suggesting perhaps that a child sacrifice would’ve done the job of saving the world just as well. More seriously, it’s just bad theology to separate Christ’s death…

  • A rare post on abortion

    In this editorial, the Christian Century articulates a middle-ground approach on abortion that I find largely persuasive: Over the years, mainline Protestants have expressed their own reservations and qualifications. The Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), for example, declared that “the strong Christian presumption is that . . . all life is precious to God [and so] we…

  • Dwight Yoakam, “Silver Bells”

  • Favorite music of 2012

    I can make no claims to comprehensiveness for my music listening habits–in any given year I hear only a tiny fraction of what gets put out, and only a slightly larger fraction of what taste makers tell me I should like. But for what it’s worth, here are the albums released this year that I…