Gilbert Meilaender

Those of us Protestants whose heritage is relatively congregational may sometimes find ourselves thinking things would be better if only we had bishops to provide the sort of guidance that gives the church theological direction in a world that constantly raises new and difficult questions. Such a . . . . Continue Reading »

Making a long drive home from a meeting late last summer, I found myself hungry in the early afternoon. I needed something that would be quick, inexpensive, and good. And there (providentially?) was the sign: a Burger King off the next exit. I felt like a flame-grilled Whopper, and the beauty of it . . . . Continue Reading »

Once there was no politics in the “pre-political” society God created. One day there will be no politics, in the society gathered around the throne of the Lamb. But, for now, political society exists as “a moment in parentheses,” and its structure is trinitarian in character. It . . . . Continue Reading »

Just Work by Russell Muirhead Harvard University Press, 224 pp. $24.95 That work is essential to human life, few will doubt. Whether it should also hold some more exalted place in life”whether, rather than just working to live, we should also live to work”is less clear. It is an issue to which . . . . Continue Reading »

A good bit of public attention in recent years has been focused on developments at the beginning of life: new reproductive technologies, for instance, and research on embryos. But questions about what we ought to do for those near the end of life may be more enduring and are, at least by my lights, . . . . Continue Reading »

Robert D. Orr:  Feeding tubes make the news periodically, and controversies over their use or non-use seem unusually contentious. But feeding tubes are not high technology treatment; they are simple, small-bore catheters made of soft synthetic material. Nor are they new technology; feeding . . . . Continue Reading »

Democracy and Tradition ”the fruit of years of reflection and development by the author”actually comprises essays on three quite different topics. They are held together chiefly by a view of democratic tradition as a largely habitual (as opposed to rationally necessary) . . . . Continue Reading »

In the movie Memento (released in 2001) the central character, Leonard Shelby, sustains a blow to the head from an intruder who has already raped and killed Shelby’s wife. The movie tells the story of Shelby’s search to find and kill that intruder, but his search is enormously complicated . . . . Continue Reading »

I had occasion recently to ponder the service folder from a wedding. In many respects this wedding could probably have taken place in any Protestant church, though it happened to be Lutheran. Indeed, the rather good music might have suggested a Lutheran setting, even as the utter lack of . . . . Continue Reading »

Near the beginning of the twenty-fourth and last Book of Homer’s Iliad, called by Simone Weil “the only true epic” the West possesses, even the gods—detached as they are in their bliss from all sufferings—have seen enough. Achilles has become inhuman. Ignoring our animal nature, . . . . Continue Reading »