The letter, with “Senator Orrin Hatch” written in large capital letters centered across the top, told me that on behalf of the National Republican Senatorial Committee the senator was sending me my “Republican Strategy Ballot” (the name was printed in boldface in the letter). “Your immediate response is critical,” he told me, or rather the “fellow American” to whom the letter was addressed. The letter followed the standard form for conservative fundraising … Continue Reading»
“Biblicist” is a fighting word. It’s what Catholics call “bibliolatrous” Protestants, what liberal Protestants used to call Fundamentalists, and what moderate Evangelicals like to call immoderate Evangelicals. It is a word more bandied than explained. One of the strengths of Christian Smith’s recent The Bible Made Impossible: Why Biblicism Is Not a Truly Evangelical Reading of Scripture (Brazos, 2011) is his precision in identifying the object of his attack… . Continue Reading»
Peter Leithart’s response to my book is more reasonable than some reviews I have had the misfortune to read recently. But his response essentially dodges rather than engages my book’s central argument. The case I argue in the first half of my book is simple, consisting of four central claims and a conclusion. First, I claim that biblicism, which I define clearly, is widespread in American Evangelicalism. Biblicism is a particular theory about how the Bible ought to function as an authority in Christian life… . Continue Reading»
There has been some talk lately”though not nearly enough”about the new healthcare mandate authored by the Institute of Medicine (IOM) and promulgated by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). This mandate, with the deceptively benign title “Guidelines for Women’s Preventive Services,” is set to go into effect in August 2012 as part of the Affordable Care Act… . Continue Reading»
As I walked along the streets of Hiroshima I tried to imagine the city on fire. Fifty-six years earlier the atomic bomb “Little Boy” had set the area aflame, killing nearly a third of the population within twenty-four hours. According to the local prefectural health department estimates, of the people who perished on the day of the explosion, 60 percent died from flash or flame burns. Most of the dead were “noncombatants””innocent men, women, and children. … Continue Reading»
Thomas Merton is usually thought of as a liberal or progressive Catholic, which in many respects he was: he certainly tilted left politically, on civil rights and Vietnam; he wanted to explore new modes of monastic life, putting the Western monastic tradition in conversation with Eastern religions; he chafed under authority throughout his Trappist life; he had a strong sense of self, the twentieth-century equivalent of what the Reformation controversialists called “private judgment.” … Continue Reading»
Just about two years ago, I had occasion to make a monastic retreat that included the gift and privilege of perpetual adoration. The community of Dominican nuns kept constant vigil, one-by-one with our lord, present in the Eucharist, and they invited me to do the same in their public chapel, throughout the night, if I liked. Those hours of silent contemplation wrought a subtle but lasting change within me; at the time it did not feel subtle. It felt like dynamite applied beneath my soul: kaboom went everything I thought I knew, and I have been processing the experience, and working at restoration, ever since… . Continue Reading»
The death of Archbishop Pietro Sambi, Papal Nuncio (the Vatican’s permanent diplomatic representative) to the United States for the last five years, is a great loss for the diplomatic community in Washington, D.C. Many would be hard-pressed to explain or appreciate the nature of Sambi’s work, but his passing is an opportune time to examine his importance in advancing the aims of the Holy See in global diplomacy… . Continue Reading»
How do you spell tendentious? Sociologists Robert Putnam and David Campbell on religion and politics. Without evidence they assert that the Tea Party is controversial not because of its strident fiscal conservatism, but rather because Tea Party activists are religious. In a recent op-ed in the New York Times, the duo held forth on the nature, influence, and significance of the Tea Party, which they say has become a toxic brand… . Continue Reading»
Although it is tempting to point to economic and social disadvantages as the root cause of the recent unrest in the United Kingdom, it is refreshing to find that part of Prime Minister David Cameron’s assessment is moral turpitude. In addressing the nation, he said that the “slow-motion moral collapse” of the youth is due to the unwillingness “for too long to talk about what is right and what is wrong… . Continue Reading»
