Anglican philosopher-theologian Keith Ward, recently retired professor of divinity at Oxford, has published a new book called What the Bible Really Teaches (about Crucifixion, Resurrection, Salvation, the Second Coming, and Eternal Life) that is a charitable but firm rebuke to fundamentalist readings of the Bible. Ward considers himself a “born-again” Christian, but says that fundamentalist…

This is from Thomas Merton’s little book (and I do mean little; it clocks in at under 50 pages) Praying the Psalms, which I’ve been reading: If there is one theme that is certainly to be found implicitly or explicitly in all the Psalms, it is the motif of Psalm One: “Blessed is the man…

The Philadelphia Inquirer‘s Dick Polman has a good round-up of the debate in Washington over the Bush administration’s program warrant-less domesitc spying (“Executive Power: The controversy could become a hot political issue in ’06,” January 8, 2006 – can’t seem to find it online). Is it telling that even people who should be sympathetic are…

Good column by Jonathan Rauch on the Bush administration’s expansive (to say the least) understanding of executive power during wartime. Key point here: The Civil War, World War II, and, to a lesser extent, the Korean War were intense, acute conflicts. Lincoln, Roosevelt, and Truman believed they were taking emergency measures during a conflict that…

Eric has a great quote from theologian David Hart describing his political outlook in the course of recounting a session at the American Academy of Religion meeting discussing his book The Beauty of the Infinite: I also had the joy of calling myself an “arch-conservative” in front of a room of people without then getting…

Adoration of the Magi, Albrecht Durer (1504)

Princeton philosopher Kwame Anthony Appiah has an essay in the NY Times Magazine making “The Case for Contamination,” that is, a cosmopolitan ethic as an alternative to attempts at “cultural preservation” that try to restrict outside influences in order to maintain cultural “purity.” There’s also a novel analysis of fundamentalism as a kind of false…

Been listening to Merle Haggard’s latest album Chicago Wind, and the Hag is not happy about the direction of our fair nation. “Where’s All the Freedom” is less than sanguine about the state of our liberites: Where’s all the freedom/that we’re fightin’ for? … Where’s all the freedom/that we fought to save? Is it gone…

Books & Culture reviews a new book on Lewis’ mystical side – a word not usually associated with him (via Thunderstruck). We saw The Lion, the Witch & the Wardrobe last week. I liked it quite a lot, but couldn’t help comparing it to Lord of the Rings, which is more epic in scale and…

Alan Bock writes on how religions might contribute to a “peace culture” by which he means one “in which most people view war as only a last resort and a tragedy if necessity forces us into one.” One of the key components of the “new American militarism,” according to Andrew Bacevich, is precisely the tendency…