Protestantism has always had a somewhat ambiguous relationship with the Law – understood both as the natural and revealed moral law. With its emphasis on justification by grace through faith alone, Protestantism has frequently been accused by critics of lapsing into antinomianism. That is, if we are saved by grace, independently of whether we keep…

From the New York Times: It was no accident that John Kerry appeared Tuesday on “Live With Regis and Kelly” and recalled his days as a young prosecutor in a rape case. Or that he then flew from New York to Jacksonville, Fla., to promote his health care proposals. Or that on Thursday in Davenport,…

A great piece by Gene Healy on being a libertarian in D.C.

One argument sometimes offered as a justification for meat-eating is that it’s “natural” for us humans to eat meat and therefore okay. We’re “made” for meat-eating, it’s sometimes said. Or the human body is “designed” to eat meat, as indicated by our teeth, etc. Barring a really crude creationist picture of human development, I think…

Should churches ever excommunicate their members? What would be the grounds for such a measure? Camassia considers the issue here and here.

Consider the bully on the school playground, tormenting his victim. He is giving outward expression here to a low view of the victim, putting him at the bottom of the playground hierarchy. The playground, especially if it is relatively unsupervised, is a good place to observe what I said yesterday. People who know each other…

Via Get Religion here’s an interesting story about the last days of Johnny Cash. Apparently he and producer Rick Rubin took communion together every day as part of their working relationship. (Rubin, who was raised Jewish has also produced acts like the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Beastie Boys, and Slayer.) In Commonweal, veteran religion reporter…

A troubling article from Time: Between 10,000 and 30,000 of Iraq’s 800,000 Christians have fled the country since the fall of Saddam Hussein’s regime, according to Christian groups in Baghdad. Although Christians make up only about 3% of Iraq’s 25 million people, the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees has said they account for about 20%…

George Will: [Kerry] needs to resuscitate his campaign by making himself an interesting alternative to Bush. However, he seems incapable of mounting what the nation needs—a root-and-branch critique of the stunningly anticonservative idea animating the administration’s policy. The idea, a tenet of neoconservatism, is that all nations are more or less ready for democracy. So…

Last month John Kerry was telling us he had a plan to get more allies on-side and get U.S. toops out of Iraq, but wouldn’t tell us how, when or where. Now, Bob Novak reports that President Bush is considering a pullout from Iraq next year. But the administration won’t confirm if that’s true or…