I’ve been skeptical that the Left was willing to embrace Christians (even “progressive” Christians) with open arms, and this column (via Get Religion) from The Nation‘s Katha Pollitt supplies further evidence for such skepticism. Pollitt just can’t bring herself to believe that Jim Wallis, for all his progressive bona fides, isn’t itching to put the…

A very good piece from Archbishop Rowan Williams (via Scandal of Particularity): Do I have a right to die? Religious believers answer for themselves that they do not. For a believer to say, “The time could come when I find myself in a situation that has no meaning, and I reserve the right to end…

Just in case you were wondering.

I should mention that I commend the Grant McCracken post linked to in the previous post in its own right. He offers a thoughtful critique of “buy local” movements and other attempts to artificially restrict choice for the sake of some kind of aesthetic “purity.” It really is a vexing question: how much choice is…

The biggest challenge to transmitting the faith in the 21st century, according to Paul Griffiths, is that we have been inculcated by the culture of “late capitalism” into thinking of our identities as essentially items of taste. The Church (and he means the Catholic Church, but it could just as well apply to Protestantism) cannot…

The January issue of First Things is now online in its entirety. Highlights include “Just War, as It Was and Is” by James Turner Johnson and “The Laughter of the Philosophers” by David B. Hart.

This looks like a promising new blog: Caelum et Terra seems to be the successor to the magazine of the same name (see here). C&T espouses a philosophy of (for lack of a better term) Catholic agrarianism or distributism. Or in their words: …our vision was (and is) mystical, contemplative, distributist, agrarian, sacramental, ecumenical, aesthetic,…

Vaughn at ICTHUS asks what use philosophy is for Christians. I started to type a comment, but it got so unwieldy that I thought I’d make a blog post of it instead. Vaughn says: …I may say that it is difficult for me to understand how philosophy can be a practice that is prior to…

Word on the street is that Bob Casey Jr. is contemplating a run to replace conservative golden boy Rick Santorum in 2006 (see here – via A Green Conservatism). Casey, the son of late Pa. governor Bob Casey was just elected State Treasurer by an overwhelmeing margin and has long had designs on the Governor’s…

Russell Arben Fox has a very interesting post on what it might mean to live the simple life in our technology- and consumption-driven culture. I admit that I’ve been pretty put off by the agrarianism of people like Wendell Berry if, for no other reason, than it seems like they advocate a way of life…