A Thinking Reed

  • Friday Metal: Iron Maiden, “Number of the Beast”

    From Rock in Rio:

  • Elvis 101

    The AV Club has a great primer on the music of Elvis Presley, presumably in honor of the anniversary of his death this week. You may wonder why arguably the most famous pop/rock star in history needs an introduction, but the article hits the nail on the head, I think: While Presley’s fame continues unabated,…

  • Reading the Bible after supersessionism

    I’ve started reading R. Kendall Soulen’s The God of Israel and Christian Theology, which is an attempt to rethink the foundational narrative of Christianity within a “post-supersessionist” context. Christian theology has traditionally held that the church replaces Israel in God’s covenant. However, the realization, post-Holocaust, of how Christian theology has contributed to anti-Semitism and the…

  • NPR’s SF and fantasy top 100

    NPR did a listener survey on the best science fiction and fantasy books and posted a list of the top 100. The ones I’ve read are in bold. At a glance, the list seems a little bit too weighted toward more recent stuff. Anything else on here anyone would particularly recommend? 1. The Lord Of…

  • Friday Metal: King’s X, “Sometimes”

    The King’s X obsession continues. This is from their first album, Out of the Silent Planet (note the C.S. Lewis reference).

  • The Christian politics of Mark O. Hatfield

    Former senator Mark Hatfield of Oregon passed away this week at the age of 89. He was one of the last of the liberal Republicans–someone who bucked his party on many issues. But Hatfield wasn’t simply a liberal Republican in the Nelson Rockefeller mold. He was a devout evangelical Christian, a virtual pacifist, and a…

  • Is “Christocentrism” the proper alternative to “biblicism”?

    I’m against “biblicism” if by that we mean treating each and every passage of the Bible as equally inspired and authoritative. However, I’m not sure a “Christocentric” reading is a viable alternative if it means this: The Bible is about Jesus Christ, and the only way to read the Bible is read it from beginning…

  • What mainliners can learn from evangelicals

    Mainliners can be awfully smug in their (our) attitude toward evangelicals. There is a certain “Lord, I thank you that I am not like other people” syndrome in the way mainliners view evangelicals. In some mainline churches I’ve been in, evangelicals are the perpetual “other” over against whom we define ourselves. We’re NOT conservative, NOT…

  • Friday Metal: King’s X, “Ooh Song”

    I’ve become kind of obsessed with this band and have been methodically collecting their back catalogue. This is from their fourth, self-titled album, which came out in 1992.

  • God, hell, and the Euthyphro dilemma

    There’s a discussion over at Jesus Creed on a new book called Erasing Hell, which is, I take it, a response to Rob Bell’s Love Wins. I haven’t read either book, but the argument of Erasing Hell, as sketched by the author at Jesus Creed, calls for some comment. From the post: A central claim…