A Thinking Reed

  • 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…

  • For what it’s worth

    Consider this a kind of postscript to the last two posts. My personal view is that consciousness and mind are perfectly “natural” in the sense that no supernatural intervention was necessary to “insert” them into the process by which life developed. I take it that they emerged once living organisms became sufficiently complex, even though…

  • Nature’s “transparent rational beauty”

    The kinds of considerations I was discussing in the last post are very similar to those that physicist-priest John Polkinghorne offered as part of a “modest” natural theology in his book Belief in God in an Age of Science. I posted on this several years back, but here’s the relevant portion of the post reproduced:…

  • Mazzy Star, “Fade into You”