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Confessional Cover

Last updated on: June 22, 2015 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

In his contribution to Denominatonalism, editor Russell Richey argues that mid-19th century disputes over slavery and other political questions (a series of “ultraisms,” as he puts it) did not so much create as expose “the fault line in purposive association, namely, that . . . denominations and voluntary societies could gather great momentum along their tracks, but a new direction, a new issue, particularly one that exposed profound differences among the travelers . . . , could derail and crash the... Read more

Sources of Moral Confusion

Last updated on: June 22, 2015 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

I listened to a torturous discussion last week in which Terry Gross and Northwestern’s Laura Kipnis discussed Kipnis’s Chronicle of Higher Education article challenging university prohibitions of romance between faculty members and students. What’s the big deal? Kipnis wanted to know. In her day, sex with professors was a normal part of college experience. Sure, it went wrong sometimes, but that’s life. Rules against relationships infantalize students and presume that professors are predators on the prowl. Gross gamely, lamely, tried to present... Read more

Authority, Given and Received

Last updated on: June 22, 2015 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

The notion of conferred authority is strange. After all, if authority is conferred, it has to be conferred by someone with authority, presumably someone with more authority than the recipient of authority. Can a lesser authority confer greater authority? Medieval Popes thought not, and their coronation powers ritualized their superiority to earthly rulers. On the other hand, authority that is not conferred is equally strange. I can claim authority that no one has given me – authority to arrest speeders,... Read more

More on the “N” in NGO

Last updated on: June 19, 2015 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

According to the Agenda Europe web site, the gay rights network ILGA Europe receives most of its funding from the European Commission. To receive the funding, ILGA has to coordinate its planning with the commission, which means that “this self-described “non-governmental” organization actually appears to be something like an outsourced Commission service.” ILGA is legally more like a “body governed by public law,” with a suitably cozy relationship to the Commission. But it’s not accountable to the public because it is... Read more

The “N” in NGO

Last updated on: June 19, 2015 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

Nongovernmental organizations have been on my radar since I heard a pro-family activist from Ireland describe the array of forces pressing for approval of same-sex marriage—many political leaders, business leaders, some church leaders, and NGOs. Where, I wondered, do these NGOs get their resources? Who is actually funding these efforts? Robert Wuthnow’s Boundless Faith gives some hints. “By definition,” Wuthnow writes, “NGOs are independent of government,” but that doesn’t express their real status: “the very reason for calling them NGOs is... Read more

Proverbial Abomination

Last updated on: June 19, 2015 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

In Torah, “abomination” (to’evah) fits into the lexicon of holiness, purity, defilement. It often describes an act that transgresses created boundaries and confuses created categories (homosexual sex, Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13; a man wearing woman’s clothing, Deuteronomy 22:15). Specifically, sexual sin (Leviticus 18:26-30), idolatry (Deuteronomy 7:25-26; 12:31) and shedding innocent blood are abominable. Abominations defile the land, not merely the sanctuary. They so sicken the land that the land vomits them out. According to Deuteronomy, that’s what happened to Canaanites... Read more

From Cold War to War on Terror

Last updated on: June 19, 2015 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

When the Cold War ended with the Berlin Wall being dismantled and the Soviet Union breaking up, the West breathed a sigh of relief. Prematurely, as it turns out. Islamicism rose hard on the heels of Communism’s fall. And, according to George Friedman, the fall and the rise are linked. Two fault lines divided the Middle East in the twentieth century, Friedman says: One between between European secularism and Islam: “The Cold War, when the Soviets involved themselves deeply in the... Read more

Ecclesiology of Union, Ecclesiology of Mission

Last updated on: June 19, 2015 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

“Modern civilization, aghast at the results of a conflict between societies which had acknowledged no higher ideal than the pride of an ignorant nationalism, looks forward fearfully and almost helplessly to a yet mightier conflagration of the hates and passions it has nurtured. Remembering the holocaust which ethical stupidity has ignited and science fed with fuel, it fears to face its foreboding of a yet more fateful application of the destructive knowledge which its warriors are feverishly seeking. . .... Read more

Eating Doritos

Last updated on: June 18, 2015 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

Tamar Adler reviews Mark Schatzker’s The Dorito Effect in a recent edition of NYTBR. It’s another book about food, but Schatzker traces the problems with food back to breeding of plants and animals. In Adler’s summary: “Over the last 70 years, American animal and plant breeding has focused on yield, pest resistance and appearance—not flavor.” Well, so what? Can’t we just add flavor? I mean, look at Doritos! Schatzker argues that this breaks the natural connection between flavor and nutrition. Adler again:... Read more

Enthronement

Last updated on: June 18, 2015 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

The verb “sit” (kathemai) is used thirty-three times in Revelation, often explicitly with the connotation of enthronement. A dozen or more times God is said to be the “One seated” (4:2-3, 9-10; 5:1, 7, 13; 6:16; 7:10, 15; 19:4; 20:11; 21:5), and twice John sees twenty-four elders enthroned around the throne (4:4; 11:16). The harlot is also “sitting” on a beast and on the waters (17:1, 3), boasting that she sits as a queen forever (18:7). We might extend the... Read more

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