The New Republic has a profile (free registration req’d) of Sen. Russ Feingold (D-Wis) that makes him look ever-more appealing (to me, anyway, though surely not to the editors of TNR). Not only did Feingold vote against the authorization of force for the Iraq war (question to the Dems who are now complaining that they…

Speaking of William Placher, in this article from 1992 he discusses how Christians should participate in public life, both in academia and politics. He points out that Christians are in an ambiguous position in American society – on the one hand most Americans would consider themselves at least nominally Christian, but on the other hand…

Does Paul teach that homosexual intercourse is always sinful? For the reasons I have been indicating, I think that’s a question on which honest Christians can disagree. Is homosexuality one of the sins Christians should worry most about? That’s by contrast an easy question, and the answer is “no.” Scripture discusses same-sex intercourse only briefly,…

Martin Luther was born in 1483 in Eisleben in what is now eastern Germany under the reign of Frederick III, Holy Roman Emperor.Coincidentally (or not??) your humble scribe was born on the same day in 1974 in a small post-industrial town in western Pennsylvania under the reign of Gerald Ford.

This article from The American Spectator argues that, in contrast to Justice Scalia with whom he’s frequently compared, Judge Alito has a libertarian streak which could lead him to rule in ways that libertarians, and to a lesser degree liberals, would find congenial, especially on issues like minority religious rights, federalism, free speech, and immigration.…

I wasn’t kidding about it being Johnny Cash month! First, via Thunderstruck, Even in death, Man in Black looms large at USA Today. Kim wonders how the new movie will treat Cash’s faith.

Certainly an important issue. It’s reached the highest segments of society!

In his introduction to the collection By Faith Alone: Essays on Justification in Honor of Gerhard Forde, Luther Seminary professor Marc Kolden offers his account of the Lutheran reformers’ notion of “justification by faith”: First, for Martin Luther as well as the other reformers the whole gospel could be summed up in the phrase, “the…

It seems to be mostly dissident conservatives, says Nat Hentoff (link via Conservative Green): My respect continues to increase for the conservative defenders of our most fundamental liberties. A founder of the conservative movement, Paul Weyrich — chairman and CEO of the Free Congress Foundation — exemplifies this force when he writes: “Because of the…

It’s interesting that Thanksgiving is the only secular holiday in the American calendar that has explicitly religious overtones (we might say that holidays like 4th of July and Memorial Day have implicit religious overtones, but that’s another matter). That is, Thanksgiving implies Someone to whom we give thanks, but it’s not an explicitly Christian holiday…