Some belated MLK-day reading. Here’s Heather Gray on King’s theory of non-violent social change and Greg Moses on “King and the Christian Left” both from Counterpunch.

An interesting post from Get Religion on how various media outlets spun the story. Of course, it is, as I understand it, still up to the churchwide assembly this summer to accept or reject the recommendations of the task force (though, I would be very surprised if the cwa took a more liberal line than…

By “epistemological imperialism” I mean demanding that a particular subject matter be knowable by means unsuited to it. We don’t expect the same precision from ethics that we expect from mathematics, and to insist upon that would be an instance of epistemological imperialism. Likewise, the “brights” like Richard Dawkins demand that theology conform to the…

How “painless” is it? See here. (via A Conservative Blog for Peace)

Just as Democrats are wondering how they can win over culturally conservative red-state voters, some of those very same cultural conservatives are questioning aspects of their alliance with political conservatism. In the January issue of Touchstone, Gillis J. Harp (sorry, article not online) critiques conservatives like Rich Lowry of National Review for thinking that tax…

I’m not going to say that I agree with everything in this article, but surely there’s something to be said for a little carefree hedonism: What we do have is a society in which sometimes, and for a variety of reasons, people like to drink to get drunk. Not because they think that wine goes…

But you might want to check out Camassia on Eros and idolatry, or Disputations on free will (start here), or Keith Burgess-Jackson on “demi”-vegetarianism (hey, I’m one of those!).

she has been updated.

I Am a Christian Too on science and religion. (See also Bill Keezer on Intelligent Design and the Anthropic Principle.) I’m in basic agreement with IACT’s position – science gives us a true picture of the world, but a partial one. The kind of epistemological imperialism practiced by Dawkins, et al. is wholly unjustifiable. Huston…

Reihan Salam thinks they would do well to address the economic concerns of those middle- and working-class socially conservative voters who are putting them in office. “Get the government off our backs” doesn’t resonate with these voters as much as it might have in the 80s. Alternatively, a moderately socially conservative Democrat Party could pick…