Joe Carter

NPR has an article about young nuns in Nashville that is so sympathetic and affirming that it could be mistaken for the convent’s recruiting brochure: For the most part, these are grim days for Catholic nuns. Convents are closing, nuns are aging and there are relatively few new recruits. But . . . . Continue Reading »

From Flannery O’Connor’s “The Violent Bear It Away”: God told the world he was going to send it a king and the world waited. The world thought, a golden fleece will do for His bed. Silver and gold and peacock tails, a thousand suns in a peacock’s tail will do for his . . . . Continue Reading »

Biblical Archaeology Review has a scholarly examination of why Christmas is celebrated on December 25—and it’s likely not, as commonly believed, timed to coincide with a pagan holiday: The most loudly touted theory about the origins of the Christmas date(s) is that it was borrowed from . . . . Continue Reading »

Why are prolific neologists like Milton, Chaucer, and Shakespeare praised for coining new words while Sarah Palin is mocked for inventing a term like “refudiate”? Gene Veith, the Provost and Professor of Literature at Patrick Henry College, explains how words are (legitimately) invented . . . . Continue Reading »

At Christianity Today , Sarah Pulliam Bailey has an interview with former secretary of state Condoleezza Rice about race, foreign policy, and her faith : One of your friends read an article about you and said, “You’re not an evangelical Christian,” and you said “Yeah, but I . . . . Continue Reading »

During the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln was purportedly asked if God was on his side. “Sir, my concern is not whether God is on our side,” said the President, “my greatest concern is to be on God’s side, for God is always right.” Although Lincoln is often praised for this remark by those who oppose the mixing of religion and politics, it contains three of the most controversial ideas in American politics … Continue Reading »

Here’s another video similar to the one I posted earlier today : Via: Mary Ellen Kelly . . . . Continue Reading »

Add this to list of “Weird things you didn’t know existed”: It was etched in the blood of a dictator in a ghoulish bid for piety. Over the course of two painstaking years in the late 1990s, Saddam Hussein had sat regularly with a nurse and an Islamic calligrapher; the former . . . . Continue Reading »

Via: George Weigel . . . . Continue Reading »

In Faith magazine, physicist Stephen Barr discusses whether modern physics had anything to teach metaphysics and theology : Might the discoveries of modern science have implications for theology? They certainly cannot alter the substance of “the faith once delivered to the saints”. They . . . . Continue Reading »