Via The Morning Retort I was directed to a stimulating exchange between two bloggers at ICTHUS debating the merits of “sectarian” and “transformist” Christian approaches to culture and society at large. (See here, here, and here for starters.) In comments to this post, Jennifer defends her sectarian comrades against the assaults of Fr. Neuhaus: I…

American ex-pat Nora Jacobson, who describes herself as “a bluestocking blue-stater,” has lived in Toronto since 2000, but it hasn’t been everything she expected: Although I enjoy my work and have made good friends here, I’ve found life as an American expatriate in Canada difficult, frustrating and even painful in ways that have surprised me.…

As part of my job, I was able to travel to San Antonio the weekend before Thanksgiving to attend the annual meeting of the American Academy of Religion and the Society of Biblical Literature. This is easily the largest yearly gathering of academics in the fields of religious studies, theology, biblical studies and comparative religion.…

Harvard Law professor and evangelical Christian William J. Stuntz thinks secular academics and evangelicals have more in common than they might like to admit, and even thinks a political alliance might be feasible: True, university faculties are heavily Democratic, and evangelical churches are thick with Republicans. But that red-blue polarization is mostly a consequence of…

From S. M. Hutchens at Christianity Today’s Books & Culture: For many Catholics C. S. Lewis is an enigma that needs explaining. This is especially true for those who are strongly attracted to his writings, and most particularly those for whom he has been of aid in their own pilgrimages from Protestantism to Rome. How…

Apparently by not shopping on the day after Thanksgiving I was engaging in an innovative form of social protest! And here I thought it was just an aversion to crowds. Who knew? Max Sawicky has some interesting thoughts on anti-consumerism, work and leisure here.

Camassia continues to blog her way through John Howard Yoder’s The Politics of Jesus. One of the great virtues of Yoder’s work, in my view, is to situate the debate between pacifism and just-war as an attempt to answer to the question: How do we most faithfully follow Jesus? Yoder’s project can be viewed as…

Here’s Rodney Clapp on the Pledge of Allegiance: The Supreme Court’s June ruling on whether “under God” should be part of the Pledge of Allegiance passed with relatively little notice, since the case was rejected on procedural grounds. For those who paid attention to the arguments, however, it conclusively exposed the incompatibility of American civil…

Apologies for the dearth of posts – I’ve been away on business since last Friday and am now spending Thanksgiving with my family in western Pennsylvania. Soon: more on sectarians and maybe something on Paul Griffiths’ article “Orwell for Christians,” which I think makes some important points. Happy Turkey Day to all!

Okay, this will probably be the last of these mammoth posts for a while. This month’s First Things arrived in the mail yesterday and one of the highlights is an essay (not online yet) by Fr. Richard John Neuhaus, the editor-in-chief of FT in which he offers a spirited defense of his particular brand of…