A Thinking Reed

  • Does the Democratic Party need to exorcise the specter of socialism?

    Democrats should be wary of embracing Sen. Bernie Sanders’ democratic socialism, argues Princeton sociologist Paul Starr.* “Socialism” isn’t just another term for New Deal liberalism, he says, but a distinctive political and ideological outlook that is at odds both with the liberal tradition and economic and political reality. Sanders’ own political journey recapitulates the evolution…

  • Trump’s politics of fear vs. the pope’s politics of solidarity

    There’s something fitting about Donald Trump’s feud with Pope Francis. The public personas of the two men could hardly be more different. Francis exudes openness, compassion and humility, while The Donald is all vulgarity, braggadocio and sneering contempt. But even more, Trump’s brand of politics represents much of what Francis has spent his pontificate opposing.…

  • Augustinian universalism

    I recently came across a very interesting paper from 2003 by philosopher Lynne Rudder Baker: “Why Christians Should Not Be Libertarians: An Augustinian Challenge.” “Libertarian” in this case doesn’t refer to a political stance but a metaphysical position on the nature of free will. As Rudder Baker notes, Christian philosophers, at least in the Anglo-American…

  • Gretchen Peters, “Jubilee”

    This (beautiful) song seems fitting for a day dedicated to remembering our mortality.   (The whole album’s very good, by the way.)

  • Bringing balance back to the Force

    I can’t claim aesthetic objectivity here, but I really, really liked Star Wars: The Force Awakens. I lucked out last night when a friend of mine announced on Facebook that he had an extra ticket to a showing at the National Air and Space Museum’s IMAX theater. Pretty sweet! Anyway, I pretty much agree with…

  • Yes, Christians and Muslims worship the same God

    Since this topic is back in the news with the suspension of Wheaton College professor Larycia Hawkins, I’ll go ahead and re-link this post of mine from a few years ago. Theologian Miroslav Volf argues here that this is about anti-Muslim bigotry, not theology. His book Allah: A Christian Response is well worth reading.

  • Favorite music of 2015

    I listen to a lot of older music and am by no means a new-music maven. There’s undoubtedly a lot of great stuff that came out this year that wasn’t even on my radar. That said, here are ten albums I really enjoyed. The list is heavy on 80’s-esque synth-pop and country/Americana, for whatever that’s…

  • Macquarrie on divine self-giving and the risk of creation

    In his Principles of Christian Theology, a book I’ve returned to a number of times over the years, John Macquarrie considers what it means to talk about God’s “risk” in creating the world in a way that strikingly resembles more recent discussions. Recall that for Macquarrie, God is Holy Being, characterized by a self-giving that empowers…

  • Prayer and action

    God always and already does everything for all of God’s creatures (including us) that it is possible and appropriate for God to do. However, here we have to pay the price of saying that God is not one finite agent among and alongside others. Finite agents (such as you and I) can do things that…

  • Between inclusivism and pluralism

    In a recent Christian Century article, theologian Charles Hefling provides an argument for the salvation of non-Christians that seems to sit somewhere between “inclusivism” and “pluralsim”–at least as those terms are often defined. Inclusivism, though it admits of many variations, typically means that people are, or can be, saved by Christ without formally being Christians,…