Liberals are enjoying a moment of confidence. Across the board, there is a sense that the salient political issues are evolving and that demographic shifts are weakening the center-right political coalition. It’s true that the challenges have changed, but more than ever it’s the right, not the left, which has the resources to address the problems of today. Continue Reading »
According to former Atlanta Fire Chief Kelvin Cochran, he was fired for being a Christian. According to Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed, he was fired for insubordination and poor judgment. And according to the New York Times’s recent editorial, he was fired for speaking of his subordinates as “second-class citizens.” But the argument over the motive for Cochran’s firing and its effect on civil and religious liberties obscures a deeper disagreement over Christian conceptions of sin and the consequences of those ideas in a public work environment. More than a mere difference in theology, this disagreement has dramatic implications for pluralism. Continue Reading »
In the wake of the horrific jihadist attack on the Paris-based journal Charlie Hebdo, the trope “satirical magazine” was regularly deployed to explain Charlie’s character and content. But that’s not quite right. Continue Reading »
Who is the protagonist of Hamlet? It seems pretty obvious that it is the dark prince himself, but I am sure you can imagine a clever reader making a case that it is really Ophelia, or Claudius, or some other important character. What would you say to someone who said that the protagonist was actually Cornelius, the Danish envoy to Norway, whose one line is shared with someone else? Continue Reading »
In trying to understand the extraordinary changes the Catholic Church underwent in the middle of the twentieth century, I recently came across two illuminating novels. Continue Reading »
One evening in the dead of winter, I went on a walk. I was on a break from graduate school visiting my parents who live away from the glare of city lights. As I was making my way that night, I looked up into the sky to locate my old friends—those constellations of stars I had been taught to recognize as a young boy. Most of them were there that evening, quietly making their way across the heavens: the always-faithful Big Dipper, Cassiopeia in her regal splendor, and Cepheus her jealous husband. And then, suddenly, my survey of the skies was arrested by the sight of Orion the Hunter. Continue Reading »
The more I am hit by the decadence and vulgarity of American culture, the more I return to the thought of Pitirim A. Sorokin (1889-1968). Now out of favor in spite of his enduring scholarship and his central role in the development of academic sociology, Sorokin was already beginning to fade when I entered graduate school in the late-1950s. His stout anti-communism, critique of loosening sexual mores, and cultural conservatism ran squarely against the academic trends of the time. And it didn’t help that his life story gave him far more credibility than his colleagues to discuss the great ideological debates of the Cold War. Continue Reading »
Newsweek, in an article by Kurt Eichenwald, says that Christians who regard homosexual practice as sin (or who—horror!—favor prayer in public school) “are God’s frauds, cafeteria Christians,” “hypocrites,” “Biblical illiterates,” “fundamentalists and political opportunists,” and “Pharisees.” To support his slurs, Eichenwald first tries to undermine reliance on Scripture as a supreme authority for moral discernment and then to show how Christians, oblivious to the problems with biblical inspiration, ignore its clear teaching. Continue Reading »
“Salt of the earth” is one of the best-known phrases in the Bible, but it’s more enigmatic than we realize. Salt has many qualities, and it’s not clear which one Jesus is highlighting. Does Jesus want disciples to preserve the world? Are disciples as necessary to the world as salt is to life? Are disciples the seasoning on a main course dished up by someone else? Continue Reading »
Almost three decades ago, theologian Ronald Goetz spoke of the rise of a “new orthodoxy” in Christian thought. He was referring to twentieth-century theology’s enthrallment with the theme of the suffering of God. Continue Reading »
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