Jacob Heilbrunn talks to Daniel Bell about our “endless culture wars.” Bell’s most famous work, The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism, argued that capitalism sows the seeds of its own destruction by engendering a libertine consumerism that undermines the bourgeois values necessary to its own success. Bell was also one of the famed “New York Intellectuals”…

One of the unforseen consequences of President Bush’s re-election has been the new attention suddenly given to liberal or progressive Christians. Because Bush’s victory has widely (if perhaps erroneously) been attributed to religious “moral values” voters, some secular liberals have recognized the need to reach out to religious people, and left-of-center Christians have made new…

Lew Rockwell and Justin Raimondo both have recent (characteristically overheated) columns about the growing “fascism” of the American right. William Marina of Liberty & Power critiques Rockwell here. Reason’s Jesse Walker has some thoughts here. The thrust of the Rockwell/Raimondo position is that American conservatism has shifted from being anti-government during the Clinton years to…

Surely American culture can’t be as insipid and superficial as critics claim when a theologian of the quality of David B. Hart can publish a piece on theodicy in a major newspaper: The Christian understanding of evil has always been more radical and fantastic than that of any theodicist; for it denies from the outset…

I would be remiss if I didn’t mention that Lutheran World Relief is also at work providing relief to victims of the Asian tsunami. LWR is a pan-Lutheran (they act on behalf of ELCA and LCMS Lutherans) relief organization based in the U.S. that does a lot of good work, not only with disaster relief,…

Via Keith Burgess-Jackson comes the new blog Reductio run by Dave Graham, a libertarian vegan. Via Camassia I followed the link to Quaker Ranter, the blog of Martin Kelley, a “post-liberal” Quaker living right here in the Philly/South Jersey area apparently (no surprise there). Also, I’ve recently been alerted to Eric Lee’s modestly titled Eric…

Marcus critiques a Calvinist theodicy and theory of predestination here. Generally, I’m suspicious of theodicy – it seems like a problem that’s above our pay grade, and I’d be surprised to find out that most theodicies have provided any actual comfort to those in need of it. Still, it’s a topic that inevitably comes up.…

I meant to blog on this a while back, but I see that Paul J. Griffiths’ “Orwell for Christians” from last month’s First Things is now online. Griffiths argues that Orwell had a distinct moral epistemology that dovetails very closely with Catholic natural law theory, both formally (ordinary people are capable of perceiving moral truth)…

Spent a very nice Christmas with my in-laws in the great city of Indianapolis. The weather was cold (single digits on Christmas day!) but the food, company and holiday cheer kept us warm. Thoughts and prayers go out to all the victims of the Tsunami. See here for where and how to send aid. I…

In thinking about the inspiration and authority of the Bible, one thing that I think it’s good to keep in mind is the purpose for which the Bible was written. 2 Timothy says that “all scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness.” That is,…