So here’s what I’ve written so far about Tocqueville for tomorrow’s panel at 8 (just in case you wont be there): Tocqueville called the effect of democracy on the heart individualism—by which he meant apathetic withdrawal from larger communities into a narrow circle of . . . . Continue Reading »
The peculiar Joe Carter (see You Don’t Know Me below) offers in today’s “On the Square” article a reflection on the hold information technology has on him and what he has done to try to break it. He writes in Unplugging the Info-Tech God that We consider it peculiar . . . . Continue Reading »
Today marks my eighteen-month anniversary working for First Things . For a year and a half I’ve had the dual pleasure of working with the finest people in journalism and getting to know some of best readers anywhere on the web. Yet while I’ve gotten to know many of you, I realize that . . . . Continue Reading »
Here are some of the things I really hate in a worship song.1. Too simplistic, banal, lacking in depth, shallow, doctrineless: Consider that one that just talks about unity among brothers that only mentions God in passing at the very end.2. It’s so repetitive. I mean, come on, how . . . . Continue Reading »
It is very hard to swallow yet another Lutheran church body in America but that, following a two-day August 26-27 convocation in Columbus, Ohio, is what America has: the North American Lutheran Church (NALC). “North America” sounds rather expansive and that is only because some few . . . . Continue Reading »
Looking over the blogosphere as it relates to evangelicals has been an entertaining, yet frightening exercise. It is entertaining, so far as blogs go, to produce and weigh in upon controversy. It is frightening in that participating in the controversy has been an ugly affair. Take the dispute . . . . Continue Reading »
Outing overrated writers is a favorite pastime of critics everywhere, and this summer particularly so. First there was Gabriel Josipivici’s attack in The Guardian on Martin Amis, Salman Rushdie, Ian McEwan and Julian Barnes. They exhibit a “petty-bourgeois uptightness,” a . . . . Continue Reading »
Unfortunately, the United States government and the development agencies it funds seem determined to export our culture of contraception. As a story in the Philippine Daily Inquirer reports , American agencies have been intimately involved in the design of a big push to “normalize” . . . . Continue Reading »
When Beverly Willett’s husband filed for divorce she did what is considered absurd, if not unthinkable, in our culture: she refused to divorce him . One night when I was up reluctantly working on the divorce papers, my eldest daughter appeared by my side. “I don’t want you to get a . . . . Continue Reading »
I have discussed here and in my book, A Rat is a Pig is a Dog is a Boy, the ambition of animal rights activists to gain “standing” for animals to sue in their own names—which would, of course, actually be animal rights activists doing the litigating in pursuit of their own agendas. . . . . Continue Reading »
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