Why is it that the young folk revolted by contemporary excess don’t simply make for the local CofE, or Catholic church, and rediscover the religion of their grandmothers, rather than getting their spir Read more

RR Reno It’s easy to step back and denounce the excesses of the Christmas season: the orgy of spending, too much food, too much drink, too many parties, and expensive ski vacations that bring aching credit card hangovers. Easy, but mistaken. http://www.firstthings.com/onthesquare/2010/12/the-incarnation Read more

On Thursday, January 27, at 7:30 PM at Roanoke College, Rabbi Dr. Eugene Korn and Prof. Gerald McDermott will discuss “What can Christians and Jews learn from each other?” Dr. Korn is currently the American Director of The Center for Jewish-Christian Understanding and Cooperation in Israel, where he co-directs the Center’s theological activity and its Institute for Theological Inquiry. Prof. McDermott is the Jordan-Trexler Professor of Religion at Roanoke College and participant in Jewish-Christian dialogues at Yale University and at... Read more

Tessa Dahl looks out from a page of the Daily Mail online. I had never heard of her until a few days ago when someone drew my attention to the story headed, “Why I’m leaving a life of addiction behind and becoming a nun…”, http://www.mercatornet.com/articles/view/a_tale_of_the_unexpected/ Read more

But the main myth about him is that while imprisoned by the Gestapo he drifted away from orthodox Christianity toward some kind of “post-Christian humanism,” that he became some kind of atheist. This one is based off of a single infamous phrase — “religionless Christianity” — that he wrote in a letter to his best friend Eberhard Bethge. It turns out that Bonhoeffer meant precisely the opposite of what the atheists and agnostics said he meant. http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/255411/bonhoeffer-brave-interview?page=1 Read more

Micheal Flaherty Lewis would likely have appreciated making Mrs. Palin’s reading list. But he probably would have appreciated the questions about it even more. For Lewis, one of the best ways to know a person was to know what they read. He was convinced that books defined us and shaped our character. He realized that books did more than prepare people for interesting conversations with journalists—they prepare us to respond to the crises we encounter in our own lives. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703929404576022043778752626.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop Read more

Matthew J. Franck Marginalize, privatize, anathematize: These are the successive goals of gay-marriage advocates when it comes to their opponents. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/12/17/AR2010121702528.html Read more

Peter Wood Martin Gaskell is an astronomer who specializes in super-massive black holes, such as the one that lies at the heart of own galaxy. He recently tripped, however, and fell into a different kind of black hole — the kind reserved for academics in certain fields who are suspected of being tepid in their disdain for creationism and insufficiently hardy in their support for evolution. http://chronicle.com/blogs/innovations/potentially-evangelical/28135 Read more

RR Reno I’ve been thinking about this lately because of all the news about Wikileaks, the website that recently began publishing a vast trove of American diplomatic cables. The head of the rouge operation, the Australian Julian Assange, likes to talk about the intrinsic value of transparency, but he has been clear about his real goal. In this and the earlier disclosure of American battlefield intelligence in Iraq and Afghanistan, Assange hopes to strike a blow against the American empire.... Read more

Stephen Heaney Overwhelmingly, research shows that rearing children in any other environment than with both their natural parents is damaging. Sometimes that damage is unavoidable, as when a parent dies, but we shouldn’t seek it. And it certainly won’t help to say the impossible is real. http://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2010/08/1507 Read more