We’ve become too optimistic, says Steve Chapman: Throughout our history, Americans have been brave, resourceful and ingenious, but we have also been lucky. Consequently, we tend to take good fortune as the norm – and trust that we will always have it. We assume success, which sometimes blinds us to the possibility of failure. We…

Via Generous Orthodoxy comes this interesting paper on “An Augustinian view of empire” by religion professor Charles Mathewes. Prof. Mathewes does a good job avoiding the Manichean worldviews of those for whom America is either omnibenevolent or omnimalevolent (which is, really, what you would expect from someone working in the tradition of that arch-anti-Manicheist Augustine).…

That’s the contention of this piece by Wendy Mcelroy (via Speculative Catholic): Science will not make the abortion debate go away. The conflict is too deep and involves such fundamental questions of ethics and rights as, “What is a human life?” “Can two ‘human beings’ — a fetus and the pregnant woman — claim control…

Maybe this is splitting hairs, but I confess to be a little annoyed when some of the most visible opponents of the war in Iraq are people who seem, well, a little off their rockers. A widely publicized debate (at least on the Internet) pitted Trotskyite-turned-neoconservative fellow-traveller Christopher Hitchens against far-left British MP and mollycoddler…

Christianity Today interviews Richard Foster and Dallas Willard, two major authors affiliated with the Renovaré spiritual renewal movement. They talk about “spiritual formation” as something that’s missing from many churches, and by this they mean taking on the character of Christ. What do you mean when you use the phrase spiritual formation? Willard: Spiritual formation…

Melinda Henneberger accuses Christian conservatives of “overturning the Gospels” by focusing on sexual morality rather than economic justice: We as a nation—a proudly, increasingly loudly Christian nation—have somehow convinced ourselves that the selfish choice is usually the moral one, too. (What a deal!) You know how this works: It’s wrong to help poor people because…

W. James Antle III has an article in the American Conservative on the attempts, from adherents of a “consistent life” ethic to Joseph Bottum’s “new fusionism,” to extend pro-life principles to other issues. He cautions against drawing facile policy implications from a general principle of “reverence for life”: Opposition to the shedding of innocent blood…

Call me a free speech absolutist, but this seems like a bad idea to me. I’ve long been troubled by the tendency to make religion into one more marker for the purposes of identity politics. In this country, it tends to, ironically, be religious conservatives who increasingly cry “religious discrimination” when criticized. This is not…

That wacky atheist Michael Newdow is at it again, this time getting a federal judge to declare the Pledge of Allegiance unconstitutional again, possibly setting the stage for another go round at the Supreme Court. (The court, you’ll recall, dodged a bullet last time around by ruling that Newdow didn’t have standing to bring the…

Philosopher C. Stephen Evans reviews a biography of Wodehouse for Books & Culture (via Thunderstruck), offering some reflections on why Wodehouse is so beloved and seems to be more than a “mere” humorist: According to Kierkegaard, the fundamental contradiction that is human existence can be experienced as either tragic or humorous, depending on our perspective.…