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The Last Stand of Rowan Williams

Summer is almost over, which for most of us means putting away the beach umbrella and suntan lotion and getting back to work, however much we dread facing the mountain of paper piled up in our inboxes.But if you’re one of the many who wishes that the daily grind could be postponed for just a . . . . Continue Reading »

God’s Different Warriors

Angry protestors line the sidewalk of a San Francisco street. Behind barricades and a line of policemen, they vent their rage at a group of young Christians in town for a rally. Cries of “Christian fascist” fly across the road, and on the other side, a teenager leads her group in a prayer: . . . . Continue Reading »

Saint Duncan of Wall Street

“What we need is a Saint Duncan of Wall Street.” I heard the phrase echo through the Princeton University chapel, one of many indications that the Catholic chaplain , Fr. Tom Mullelly, understood something vital about his students and the world. Countless Princeton graduates take up jobs . . . . Continue Reading »

Why Do the Heathen Rage?

An extended dialogue between biologist Richard Dawkins and Christian apologist Alister McGrath¯originally shot for Dawkins’ BBC documentary The Root of All Evil but never used¯ has surfaced on YouTube . (HT to the comboxes of Mere Comments , BTW. And, if the YouTube encounter . . . . Continue Reading »

Land of Lincoln: A Review

In the elementary schools of the American Midwest, Abraham Lincoln has always enjoyed a good press. Schoolchildren in northern Indiana, I can attest, marked Lincoln’s birthday by drawing crayon portraits of the president while listening to inspirational stories about his life. In middle school . . . . Continue Reading »

Mugabe and the Churches

Robert Mugabe, the dictator of Zimbabwe, claims to be a man of faith¯and with some reason. He was born to mission-educated parents and, like many Zimbabweans of his generation, he attended a Jesuit school. He reportedly still attends weekly Mass in Harare. Martin Meredith, a former southern . . . . Continue Reading »

The Name of God

Tiny Muskens, the Roman Catholic bishop of Breda in the Netherlands, says that Dutch Catholics ought to pray using the word Allah rather than God or its synonyms in Dutch. Muskens argues that it makes no inherent theological difference in which language one prays, and he notes that in countries . . . . Continue Reading »

A Criterion for Compromises

Our friends over at the New Criterion have put out a big anthology including the editors’ choice of essays and reviews published in its first twenty-five years. The book is Counterpoints and is edited by, as you might expect, the editors of the New Criterion , Roger Kimball and Hilton Kramer. . . . . Continue Reading »

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