A Thinking Reed

  • Food rules for Christians

    I think it was Stanley Hauerwas who said, with typical pungency, that no religion can be interesting if it doesn’t tell you what to do with your pots and pans or your genitals. By at least part of that criteria, Exeter University theologian David Grumett seems to be trying to make Christianity interesting again. In…

  • The truth about scientists and religion?

    I thought this book review, from today’s WaPo, was worth highlighting: Rice University sociologist Elaine Ecklund offers a fresh perspective on this debate in “Science vs. Religion.” Rather than offering another polemic, she builds on a detailed survey of almost 1,700 scientists at elite American research universities — the most comprehensive such study to date.…

  • Sermon questions left hanging

    Today was our first attempt at church-going since the baby was born. We made it about half-way through before she started to fuss, and we’re still skittish enough about our baby-comforting skills that we decided to abscond. What I did manage to catch from the part of the sermon I heard–it was Trinity Sunday–was a…

  • Administrative note

    I’ve been giving the blogroll a long-overdue pruning and updating. A few sites have been removed that, while not officially inactive, haven’t been updated in a looong time (usually 6 months or more). But I’m always happy to re-link any blog that becomes active again. This all, of course, assumes that people still find blogrolls…

  • Varieties of liberalism

    This post (via Crooked Timber) is about British politics, but it nicely lays out the distinction between “economic liberalism” and “social liberalism,” or what we in the U.S. would call “market liberalism” (or libertarianism) and egalitarian or left-liberalism. For economic (or market) liberals, there is at times a clear sense that the free market produces…

  • More on HSUS vs. big ag

    Thanks to commenter Hillary, who identified herself as affiliated with the Humane Society of the United States, for pointing out another (lengthy) article on HSUS’s political strategy and the controversy it’s engendered. Definitely worth a read.

  • The triumphant return of Friday Metal!

  • The trouble with tradition

    Lutheran theologian Robert Benne laments the ELCA’s departure from the “Great Tradition” of marginalizing gay people and its descent into the dreaded “liberal Protestantism.” The problem, it seems, is that the ELCA hasn’t given sufficient weight to the opinions of white male pastors and theologians. One thing I’ve noticed is that whenever someone makes an…

  • Natural theology or theology of nature?

    Following up a bit on this post… In his book Religion and Science, which is based on his Gifford Lectures, Ian Barbour distinguishes between natural theology and the theology of nature. Natural theology tries to prove God’s existence by appealing to some feature of the created order. Barbour denies that natural theology can achieve its…

  • “The Age of Tough Oil”

    Elizabeth Kolbert on the disaster in the Gulf.