A Thinking Reed

  • Lectionary irony

    In an earlier post I mentioned that our church was hosting a gathering of the “Network of Spiritual Progressives” this past weekend. As part of that event, Rabbi Michael Lerner–one of the chief movers of the network and the publisher of Tikkun magazine–preached at our church this Sunday. Ironically, perhaps, this passage from Galatians was…

  • Christ, Bible, Church: Some thoughts on in/fallibility

    As I noted on Friday, Derek recently wrote a post setting forth some provisional thoughts on the church and infallibility. While I generally agree with his conclusions, I did raise, in a comment over there, some questions about using the hypostatic union as an analogy or model for thinking about the relation between the human…

  • Friday Metal: Everyone in Converse

    Here’s a clever video from the German metalcore band Heaven Shall Burn (a very metal name, that):

  • The rise of the more-Catholic-than-thou Protestant

    This was a character who was (blessedly) unknown to me prior to the advent of the theo-blogosphere: the guy (and it’s almost invariably a guy) who is constantly berating his fellow Protestants for not being “catholic” enough. That is, not being in touch with the larger Church and the Great Tradition, being antinomian, relativistic, individualistic,…

  • Links for Friday

    – Derek on the church and (in)fallibility and communing the unbaptized – Animal advocacy and pragmatism – This is your brain on gadgets – BLS has been writing a fascinating series of posts on the church and A.A. – The thought of Paul Ramsey – The AV Club’s June round up of all things metal…

  • “Spiritual Progressives” converge on DC

    I won’t be attending, but I thought I’d flag the conference of the “Network of Spiritual Progressives” taking place this weekend in D.C. since it’s being hosted by my church. Presenters include Congressmen Keith Ellison and Dennis Kucinich, Brian McLaren, Joan Chittister, Bill McKibben, and Michael Lerner, among many others. The agenda is crafting “an…

  • The crooked path from metaphysics to morals

    Guest-blogger “Aeolus” at In Living Color flags a book by Rod Preece that attempts to set the historical record straight on Christianity’s attitude toward animals. The assumption among many animal advocates has been that Christianity reinforced a hierarchical attitude that was inherently detrimental to animal well-being, and that only a more science-based approach, heavily indebted…

  • The ballot or the bullet

    The Washington City Paper has a good–albeit depressing!–autopsy of the failure to pass the DC voting rights act this year. Bottom line: blame the NRA and its lackeys in Congress.

  • Meat-eating and Benedict’s rule

    Here’s another tid-bit from that Christian Century article on food that I blogged about last week: Benedict saw lack of dietary discipline as a sign not of strength but of weakness. In particular, he restricted meat to children, the sick and the elderly. By eating meat unnecessarily, healthy adult members of his community would enjoy…

  • Friday Metal: As I Lay Dying, “Condemned”

    From their new album, “The Powerless Rise”: