In 2015, I’m reading and blogging through Ronald Knox’s collection of sermons on Christian exemplars, Captive Flames: On Selected Saints and Christian Heroes. Every Monday, I’ll be writing about the next portrait in the book, so you’re welcome to peruse them all and/or read along. In this week’s chapter, Ronald Knox sets up St. Edward the Confessor as a bulwark against our longing for fame, and, indeed, I had never heard of him before turning to his chapter. He was anonymous to... Read more
Before I picked up Denise Bossert’s Gifts of the Visitation: Nine Spiritual Encounters with Mary and Elizabeth, I had run into a very short meditation on Mary’s visit to Elizabeth on a friend’s tumblr. the first christian and the first person to make a declaration of christian faith the visitation is so important. 2 pregnant women, caring for each other, prophesying, acting radically on their faith in god’s power and intention to lift up the lowly, knowing their sons will do incredible... Read more
You can listen to “Fights in Good Faith,” my weekly radio program, streaming today at 5pm ET and tomorrow (Sun) at 1pm. I’ll update this post when the episode is available to download and stream. Every week, I put up a “Radio Readings” post, so you can track down the books, articles, and (this week) failed Lenten penances that I cite on the show. So, without further ado, here’s what I’m talking about this week. Lent – Offering God Whatever’s Hardest ... Read more
— 1 — Here’s a heads up — the women who write at A Queer Calling are running a GoFundMe to raise money to train a service dog for Sarah (who has fast-progressing Meniere’s Disease). I think some of you read their writings on hospitality, affection, vocation etc, so you may want to help them out. I gave to their fundraiser and then matched the donation with one to Against Malaria — GiveWell’s top ranked charity, so that the need of people... Read more
Richard Beck of Experimental Theology had an interesting post up recently about purity and anxiety in progressive Christian circles. I’ve excerpted it below: [T]his “will to purity” doesn’t just manifest in protecting sacred beliefs, it manifests in behavior as well. Both evangelical and progressive Christians doggedly pursue a vision ofmoral purity.For evangelical Christians moral purity will fixate on hedonism (e.g., sex, drug use).For progressive Christians moral purity will fixate on complicity in injustice. To be increasingly “pure” in progressive Christian circles is to become less and less complicit... Read more
You can listen to “Fights in Good Faith,” my weekly radio program, streaming today at 5pm ET and tomorrow (Sun) at 1pm The episode is now available to download and stream. Every week, I put up a “Radio Readings” post, so you can track down the books, articles, and (this week) adorable experiments that I cite on the show. So, without further ado, here’s what I’m talking about this week. “Deny the Cat and Refuse Thy Nature…” From G.K. Chesterton’s Orthodoxy: Modern masters... Read more
— 1 — I’ve got a special weakness for clever methodology, and I loved this set up from an article on near death experiences (the protocol was informed by the frequency of NDE people reporting being near the ceiling looking down): All involved placing some stimulus—a picture or a symbol on, say, a piece of paper or an electronic display—in a high location, visible only if you were floating near the ceiling. The research designers did their best to make... Read more
Patheos doesn’t have any site-wide style guide for bloggers, but, over at The Friendly Atheist, Terry Firma announced a style change that will apply to that blog, specifically. The contributing bloggers over there are going to stop referring to ISIS as ISIS, ISIL, the Islamic State, or anything else except Daesh. Here’s the passage Firma quoted from the Boston Globe to explain the decision, interspersed with his own comments: The term “Daesh” is strategically a better choice because it is still... Read more
I’ve got a book review of David Smith’s If: A Mind-Bending New Way of Looking at Big Ideas and Numbers in the latest issue of Social Studies and the Young Learner, and I figured it might be of particular interest to parents/friends of parents, but also of general interest to all of you who love math (or even those who have yet to succumb to her charms). Here’s an excerpt: What Adds Up to Citizenship? Smith makes numbers and statistics graspable, even... Read more
UPDATE: I’ve closed the survey, since you all have provided over 100 responses! Thanks for your suggestions of questions for the mini-Ideological Turing Test that I’ll be running at UPenn this week. Now, I could use your help answering them! Just a reminder, an Ideological Turing Test is modeled on a conventional Turing Test, but, instead of checking whether programmers can make a computer that can pass for human, we’re checking whether you understand an ideological opponent well enough... Read more
Unequally Yoked
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