2013-01-07T17:51:09-05:00

In yesterday’s Sunday Review section of The New York Times, Susan Jacoby had an essay titled “The Blessings of Atheism.”  She’s tackling the perceived absense of atheists and secular philosophy in moments of crisis.  Here’s an excerpt, but my critique is about something missing in the piece, so you’d better read the whole thing to be fair. One major problem is the dearth of secular community institutions. But the most powerful force holding us back is our own reluctance to speak, particularly at... Read more

2013-01-06T19:58:51-05:00

In today’s NYT Magazine, there’s an amazing story about forgiveness and the criminal justice system. Conor McBride shot his longtime girlfried Ann Grosmaire, and, after her death, her parents kept up their relationship with him. Four days later, Ann’s condition had not improved, and her parents decided to remove her from life support. Andy says he was in the hospital room praying when he felt a connection between his daughter and Christ; like Jesus on the cross, she had wounds on... Read more

2013-01-04T01:01:48-05:00

— 1 — Jen Fulwiler of Conversion Diary (who runs this blog carnival) was in the hospital yesterday with two pulmonary embolisms, and treatment is complicated, since she’s pregnant.  Happily, she was discharged last night and is stable enough to be treated/monitored at home.  If you’re part of the religious subset of readers for the blog, please keep her in your prayers. And, if you’re looking for someone to pray to, Jen keeps a random saint generator running, so you can... Read more

2013-01-03T11:36:45-05:00

Guys, my life is really really wonderful right now.  I just found out about the existence of Naming Infinity: A True Story of Religious Mysticism and Mathematical Creativity, and my cup runneth over.  Here’s an excerpt from the review in The New Republic. The Name Worshippers of Mount Athos had been shut down. What mattered most were the defiant interruptions to the angry sermon of Archbishop Nikon of Vologda, who had marched into the monastery courtyard behind the troops. “You mistakenly believe that... Read more

2013-01-02T17:47:28-05:00

Eaton of Growing up Goddy has written a much needed jeremiad against a poisonous strain in our rhetoric about sex and consent.  From his essay: In the world I was raised in, most junior high, high school, and perhaps even college students were unlikely to give explicit consent — even though they were willingly having sex. I don’t just mean girls, either — both men and women in that environment had the lessons of immorality, temptation, and so on drilled... Read more

2013-01-01T16:32:08-05:00

New Year’s is a time for cached thoughts.   When people ask about resolutions, my first thoughts are “Should I be not eating something?  Or doing cardio?”  We tend to run down the list of cliche resolutions and decide which we should take on.  The standard resolutions may not be particularly well-tailored to you, but it’s about as hard to ignore the defaults as to not think of an elephant. So, I have a wacky workaround.  Instead of thinking of... Read more

2012-12-31T20:26:17-05:00

I received a free review copy of The God Who Weeps: How Mormonism Makes Sense of Life as part of the Patheos Book Club. I’m glad to have read The God Who Weeps, since, even in the midst of all the Romney controversy, there’s been very little discussion of Mormon theology.  Reporters prefer to cover the Temple rituals because they’re secret, and therefore must be interesting.  The Book of Mormon musical prompted some error-checking, but not very many details about what would have been the correct... Read more

2012-12-30T12:10:43-05:00

This review of Lawrence Cunningham’s The Seven Deadly Sins: A Visitor’s Guide is part of the Patheos Book Club, and my copy was free. My college debate group had many aphorisms, one of which was, “All sins are pride.”  So I read The Seven Deadly Sins: A Visitor’s Guide waiting to see what Cunningham had to say about my sin.  I didn’t expect to be caught by his meditation on anger/wrath, which I’ve always thought of as the most boring sin. Coming from a... Read more

2013-01-19T04:18:20-05:00

I may not have drawn little hearts in my middle school notebooks labelled “Leah + Inspector Javert” but I’ve loved him far too much since the first time I saw Les Miserables.  (And, this year, I immediately dibsed his part when organizing a Les Mis flashmob).  But some of the things I’ve loved most about the adamant Inspector are the things I’ve had to set aside in order to be a Christian.  So, to mark the occasion of the movie’s release, I... Read more

2012-12-28T15:50:04-05:00

The two things I found most frustrating about the Les Mis movie were the camerawork and Russell Crowe’s performance as Javert.  And they both came together to annoy me during “Stars.”  Crowe is sad-eyed instead of steely from his first appearance and, for this number, director Tom Hooper places him on a ledge.  This seems to be done simply so that Hooper can set up some parallelism in his cimematography; the shots of Javert walking right along the edge of the... Read more

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