Today I received an e-mail from Sojourners calling for military intervention in the Darfur region of Sudan to protect civilians from government-sponsored militias. This seems to have become a kind of cause célèbre among certain elements of the Christian left (for lack of a better term). And it’s certainly a worthy one. Still, as I’ve…

You Are 60% Normal (Really Normal) Otherwise known as the normal amount of normal You’re like most people most of the time But you’ve got those quirks that make you endearing You’re unique, yes… but not frighteningly so! Take the quiz: How Normal Are You?

There’s a post at Here We Stand that is relevant to some of the things we’ve been discussing around here: “The Paradox of Submission to the Governing Authorities.”

This seems like as good a time as any to resume blogging Robert Kraynak’s Christian Faith and Modern Democracy (you thought I’d forgotten, didn’t you? For earlier posts see here and here). Earlier we saw that, according to Kraynak, the Christian tradition, far from uniformly supporting democracy has been remarkably insouciant about the form of…

Earlier I suggested my approval of the liberal theory of government that holds that “governments are instituted among Men” to “secure” the rights of “Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness,” and that governments dervie “their just powers from the consent of the governed.” On its face, though, this seems to contradict the Christian understanding…

I was afraid that in relying on a review I might have been unfair to Alan Wolfe in this post. But reading this interview in Mother Jones has assuaged my conscience. Wolfe confirms my worst suspicions by offering his list of “great” figures in American history: MJ: Who in American history would you put in…

Today the Philadelphia Inquirer carried a review of Alan Wolfe’s new book How America Lost Its Sense of Purpose and What It Needs to Do to Recover It. Wolfe, a sociologist and author of several popular books, contrasts two approaches to American power: Most Americans, Alan Wolfe believes, belong to “the party of goodness.” Preoccupied…

Graham at Leaving Münster (a very good site, by the way) writes a thought-provoking post on what it means to be “pro-life”: For as long as I can remember, I’ve been anti-abortion. Okay, I know the party-line: we’re not anti-abortion, we’re pro-life. Well, that’s bollocks. I’m not even sure what “pro-life” means? We’re in favour…

John the Confessing Evangelical continues his series on Marian devotion. I find this pretty sensible: There is a difference between occasionally addressing Mary in the second person as a form of “literary apostrophe” (as FDN put it in the comments to my first post), such as is found in certain hymns (see v.2), and directly…

In last night’s press conference (which preempted the O.C. – @#$!!*&!) President Bush suggested cutting the rate of Social Security benefits for the top 70% of earners, while keeping the rate of increase the same for those in the bottom 30%. Seems like a reasonable step to me. He also distanced himself from the “Justice…