I read two recent items about former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum that both turned out to be, oddly, about former Pope Pius XI. First up is an excellent question from Mary at The Left Coaster, who notes that Republican presidential candidate Santorum opposes contraception, arguing that sex without the possibility of conception is “a license to do things in a sexual realm that is counter to how things are supposed to be.” Mary suggests a follow-up question for the candidate:... Read more
Kudos to Rachel Stark of The Oregonian for following up on an important story four years later: “Loss lingers for former residents of Thunderbird Mobile Club, four years after Wilsonville (Ore.) park closed.” The last residents of the Thunderbird Mobile Club in Wilsonville can all trace a chaotic chapter in their lives to February 2007, when they were evicted at the height of the housing boom to make way for new development. More than 50 Oregon mobile home parks issued... Read more
Jeff Madrick: “How Austerity Is Killing Europe“ The European Union has become a vicious circle of burgeoning debt leading to radical austerity measures, which in turn further weaken economic conditions and result in calls for still more damaging cuts in government spending and higher taxes. The European debt crisis began with Greece, and that nation remains the European Union’s most stricken economy. But it has spread inexorably to Ireland, Portugal, Italy, and Spain, and even threatens France and possibly the... Read more
If you want to protect individual liberty, then you need to protect civil liberties. Those are not the same thing. I think Corey Robin shouldn’t allow them to be used interchangeably in this piece, “Ron Paul has two problems: one is his, the other is ours“: Ron Paul has two problems. One is his and the larger conservative movement of which he is a part. The other is ours — by which I mean a left that is committed to... Read more
The lights are down, the tree is gone, and the needles have been vacuumed off the living room floor. Busy day. Between trips to the attic, I watched the Broncos-Steelers game. After complaining about Tim Tebow’s ostentatious disregard for Matthew 6:5-6, it was odd rooting for him. But a rule is a rule, and I always root against the Steelers and the Lakers, for the same reason. My unofficial theological view: Tebow winning is not a miracle; Roethlisberger losing may... Read more
1 Corinthians 15:41 There is one glory of the sun, and another glory of the moon, and another glory of the stars; indeed, star differs from star in glory. Read more
The WordPress platform I’m using here allows me to “tag” posts with keywords, thereby creating category indices for each tag. Unfortunately, I wasn’t using WordPress for the first eight years of this blog and so those older posts aren’t tagged. Plus it’s taken me a while to get the hang of how best to use such tags, so even most of the newer posts aren’t tagged (or aren’t tagged in the most helpful way). So in the months ahead, I’m... Read more
OK, let’s step aside from politics and religion (mostly) for a moment and talk about comic book superheroes and Doctor Who. Because we can. Like most people who are fans of comics and/or Joss Whedon, I’m geekily excited about the Avengers movie coming out this summer. I was never more than an occasional reader of the Avengers comics, but those characters made an impressive appearance in one of my all-time favorite comic book stories — the 1986 Daredevil “Born Again”... Read more
I’m enjoying the Christian Century’s ongoing “What’s the Gospel in Seven Words?” feature. Some of the responses are whimsical, such as Martin Marty’s “God, through Jesus Christ, welcomes you anyhow” or Mary Karr’s “We are The Church of Infinite Chances.” Others attempt more theological precision, such as Walter Brueggemann’s “Israel’s God’s bodied love continues world-making,” or Max Stackhouse’s “God enters history; renewed covenants promise salvation.” I’m pleased to see that, overall, these attempts to distill the gospel into seven words... Read more
David Moore at the Burner blog really, really, really does not like Mark Driscoll’s new book about marriage. Moore is not a feminist, or even an “egalitarian,” but he still finds: “This book is an astoundingly unbelievable work of disrespect for women.” It’s good to see that assessment coming from that corner of the evangelical world. I mean, one sort of expects that someone like Rachel Held Evans would find the book immature, chauvinistic and disturbing. Or that she would... Read more
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