A Thinking Reed

  • Stewart Udall, R.I.P.

    Stewart Udall, who was Secretary of the Interior during the Kennedy and Johnson administrations, died this weekend. I didn’t really know anything about him before reading this obituary in today’s WaPo, but his accomplishments as head of Interior were impressive. I was more struck, though, by some of the language he used. It’s hard to…

  • House passes health-care reform

    NYT story here. Even the high-level summary of the GOP’s objections can’t make them sound coherent: Republicans said the plan would saddle the nation with unaffordable levels of debt, leave states with expensive new obligations, weaken Medicare and give the government a huge new role in the health care system. Keep the gummint out of…

  • The trouble with atonement

    I’ve been helping to lead an adult Sunday School class at our church using a video series for “progressive” Christians. I have some problems with the theological positions taken by the series and the way they’re presented, but it at least stimulates discussion. The segment we watched today was about violence and its relation to…

  • From moderate Republican to liberal icon

    This New Yorker profile of Justice John Paul Stevens shows what a loss to the Supreme Court his (probably impending) retirement will be. My wife clerked for Stevens in 2007-2008, and I got to meet him on one occasion. He came across as a very gracious and obviously brilliant man. The article is also a…

  • Friday Metal: Anthrax, “In My World”

  • Jonathan Balcombe on the lives of animals

    Ethologist Jonathan Balcombe has a new book called Second Nature: The Inner Lives of Animals and was recently interviewed on the Diane Rehm show (listen here). Not a lot of earth-shattering information in the interview if you’ve read much in this area, but it provides a nice overview. Balcombe also makes a good case for…

  • First Things still unable to grapple with animal rights arguments

    I know I should stop expecting First Things to publish thoughtful pieces on animal issues, but this review of a review of Safran Foer’s Eating Animals by David Mills is particularly bad: The reviewer seems to assume, but does not even try to argue, that food animals deserve a long and fulfilling life (whatever fulfilling…

  • Luther’s fourfold (fivefold?) garland of prayer

    Chris at the Lutheran Zephyr has a clear and helpful summary of some of Martin Luther’s teachings on prayer, particularly his commendation of the “fourfold garland” method of prayer and his emphasis on making use of the materials contained in the catechism. As Chris says, in “A Simple Way to Pray,” Luther advised his barber…

  • Another thought on religion and values

    In thinking about the relation between ethics and theology, it helps to distinguish the metaphysical aspects of this problem from the epistemological ones. Or, as St. Thomas would say, the order of being from the order of knowing. Value, or ethics, may depend metaphysically on the existence of God, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that…

  • Friday Metal: Paradise Lost, “Praise Lamented Shade”