A Thinking Reed

  • Salt on Melville

    Henry S. Salt, who I believe I mentioned in a recent post, was a 19th-century humanitarian reformer involved in causes ranging from socialism to pacifism to animal rights. Salt wrote a number of books, including books on social reform, animal rights, and vegetarianism, as well as studies of Thoreau and Shelley. (When Gandhi was living…

  • Whose Jesus? Which eschatology?

    (With apologies to Alasdair MacIntyre.) I’m still reading Marcus Borg’s Jesus. In the scholarly arena, Borg is probably best known as a proponent of the “non-eschatological” or “non-apocalyptic” Jesus, and he addresses this controversy in chapter 9 of this book. In Jesus, Borg offers a refinement of terminology. Instead of “non-eschatological” or “non-apocalyptic,” he now…

  • Friday Metal: All Hallow’s Eve edition

  • Six months

    My daughter turns six months today! I don’t know that I have any particularly original observations on parenthood at this point. All the cliches seem to be more or less true–it upends your life in dramatic ways, you don’t get much sleep, and yet–you love this little person with more intensity than you could’ve possibly…

  • The elitism quiz

    See Marvin, Camassia, and/or Russell for explanation. 1. Can you talk about “Mad Men?” All but the fourth season; I don’t have cable so I have to wait for the DVD. 2. Can you talk about the “The Sopranos?” No. 3. Do you know who replaced Bob Barker on “The Price Is Right?” Drew Carey.…

  • I want to be a Pentecostal too

    Marvin offers a review of Allan Anderson’s book on global pentecostalism that really makes me want to read it. The essence of charismatic Christianity, according to Anderson (according to Marvin) isn’t speaking in tongues or some of the other trappings usually associated with pentecostalism, but rather “A shared conviction that the Holy Spirit can and…

  • Killer electronics

    Derek flagged this article on the human cost of our insatiable demand for new electronic gadgets and asks what the proper Christian response would be. My suggestion: most Americans wouldn’t pay $15k for an iPad (the amount the author estimates an iPad would cost if manufactured in the U.S.)–would they pay somewhat more than they…

  • The latest from Wikileaks

    From the Guardian, which received the latest batch of documents: The new logs detail how: • US authorities failed to investigate hundreds of reports of abuse, torture, rape and even murder by Iraqi police and soldiers whose conduct appears to be systematic and normally unpunished. • A US helicopter gunship involved in a notorious Baghdad…

  • Brian McLaren on the atonement

    I like this way of putting it: When people ask me about atonement these days, here’s what I often ask in reply: where do you primarily locate God on Good Friday? Is God primarily located with the Romans who are crucifying Jesus, or is God primarily located in the man on the cross, suffering at…

  • Faith and factuality revisited

    When I was reading Marcus Borg’s Heart of Christianity, I expressed some dissatisfaction with his treatment of the Bible. I felt like he wasn’t clear enough about the relationship between the meaning of the text and the question of its historical truth. Recently I picked up Borg’s newer book on Jesus, and I’m happier with…