My new favorite podcast is the Theology Pugcast. I came across it in the midst of listening to That Hideous Strength. It was like something was in the air. I was listening to that uncomfortably prophetic work and they were talking about it all at the same time. This morning I was coming to the final minutes of this episode, about knowledge, when a friend sent me this piece from the New York Times Modern Love section. It’s called “My... Read more
For some reason, I thought that the celebration of MLK was in February, and was therefore surprised to wake up and find the X App telling me it’s this very day. My feed is full of both praise for and recrimination against that person, which must indicate that I am not living in a social media silo but am being exposed to the broad spectrum of available thoughts. Does this constitute winning? Is there a prize? Or a participation trophy?... Read more
Every year I am so tempted to make a heap of resolutions, sure that the mere fact of a year will alter my personality and inclinations for the better. This really will be the year of the New Me, the one where I become “productive” and cease to be plagued by frailty and even sin. I will have the strength of mind and character only to add work and projects to my calendar without ever having to take anything away.... Read more
I’m not living my best life today. In the first place, it is snowing, which is too bad. In the second place, I am steeling myself to spend my evening in a long meeting which is, of course, excessively worthy and virtuous but does mean leaving my fireside and venturing into the snow. In the third place, I’m supposed to be finishing up my long article on the content of Sheila Wray Gregoire which, truth be told, I have had... Read more
I happened to come across this article yesterday and found much of the response on Twitter intriguing. The article is by Ayaan Hirsi Ali about her decision to become a Christian. She writes: To me, this freedom of conscience and speech is perhaps the greatest benefit of Western civilisation. It does not come naturally to man. It is the product of centuries of debate within Jewish and Christian communities. It was these debates that advanced science and reason, diminished cruelty,... Read more
Over on my Substack a while ago I freaked out my subscribers by divulging, in ominous tones, that I would be doing a “deep dive” into the content of Sheila Gregoire. I am not very fond of the expression “deep dive” because, really, how deeply can anyone go into any particular subject these days when all of the discourse and argumentation is so very on the surface? Reading blog posts and listening to podcasts is not like swimming in the ocean... Read more
A Modern Man by Aedan Kennedy I am almost through Nancy Pearcey’s The Toxic War on Masculinity: How Christianity Reconciles the Sexes. I must add my own grateful endorsement to the vast number of others who have already admonished you to stop everything and read this book. It’s excellent. I’m sorry it took me so long to get to it. It is a cooling zephyr blowing away the progressive miasma of the last twenty-five years. As I was ‘splaining to... Read more
I made the bold and sane choice yesterday of not waking up at 4 in the morning to wrest something out of the Sunday lections. I had such a busy two days before, it seemed good to sleep an hour longer than usual and just go to church. Still, I love the gospel reading we had, I can’t bear to let it pass me by. I love it so much, in fact, that I made my children memorize it one... Read more
I’ve said it several times already today. It is so odd that September 11th is an ordinary work day. In fact, for me, more than usual a work day as it is also the first day of school for my four youngest children. I don’t like to feel old, and yet, as each anniversary of 9/11 flies by, I feel unduly aged, not because of the regular passage of time, but because I am so out of step with the... Read more
I’ve been thinking about the church a lot lately with the release of The Great Dechurching: Who’s Leaving, Why Are They Going, and What It Will Take to Bring Them Back by Jim Davis, Michael Graham, and Ryan Burge, and the gravity of suddenly living in a world where the social cache of church attendance has dissipated like a vapor. I’ve written a short series* of my initial thoughts in my first read of the book, and am going to... Read more
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