When I teach my class on Human Rights and International History (as I will again next spring), few issues are as vexing as that of female circumcision, a practice that has affected something like 130 million women around the world — including 2-3 million girls each year in Africa alone. If you’re unfamiliar with it, … More Rights-Talk as Conversation, not Condemnation
While I read it regularly on Feedly, The Atlantic is not exactly my go-to source for reporting on Christianity in America or elsewhere. And yet this morning it featured a hugely interesting, informative post with the surprising headline, “Is Immigration Reform Dead? Not If Evangelicals Can Do Anything About It.” FYI – I don’t normally … More Evangelical Leadership on Immigration Reform
“Martin Luther must be turning over in his grave,” tweeted a former student of mine last night, re: the following announcement from the Vatican (via The Guardian passing on news from an Italian newspaper) about a certain practice that both prompted and survived the Protestant Reformation: Indulgences these days are granted to those who carry … More e-Indulgences?
I’ve blogged a couple of times about The King’s College (TKC), the conservative Christian school in Manhattan: in August 2011, contrasting the way that its then-president, Dinesh D’Souza, and long-time Bethel president Carl Lundquist talked about evangelical social and political engagement; and then in December 2012, asking if D’Souza’s resignation from TKC signaled evangelical depoliticization. … More Gregory Thornbury Named President of The King’s College
Asking that God’s kingdom come and His will be done is a supremely political act, a revolutionary declaration of independence from the powers of this world. But for that reason (among others), the Lord’s Prayer is not a weapon to be wielded in the culture wars. To wit, the case of high school student Roy … More The Lord’s Prayer and the Culture Wars
So, Brad Paisley’s new album includes a duet with LL Cool J entitled “Accidental Racist.” Perhaps you hadn’t heard… For (to paraphrase Sideshow Cecil) you spent yesterday on Mars, in a cave, with your eyes shut and your fingers in your ears. (And your iPhone off, to update a 16-year old pop culture reference a … More “Accidental Racist” and the Uses of History
As I wrote in my second post inspired by the election of a new pope, there’s been much parsing of the choice of the name Francis. In a meeting with global media Saturday at which he called for a “poor church for the poor,” the pontiff himself confirmed the widespread assumption that he took the … More Francis and Augustine
It scarcely seems possible to keep up with all the reporting and analysis on the election of Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio, Archbishop of Buenos Aires, as the newest pope — the “pope of firsts,” say many commentators. And in this second post passing along a couple more themes I’ve noticed in what I have managed to … More First Impressions of a “Pope of Firsts” (part 2)
Even for a Protestant like myself who belongs to a church that has gone so far as to do away with an episcopate altogether, the election of a new bishop of Rome is innately interesting and even a bit exciting. Like almost everyone out there, I knew next to nothing about Jorge Bergoglio except that … More First Impressions of a “Pope of Firsts” (part 1)
Yesterday’s surprising announcement that Pope Benedict XVI would resign at the end of this month inspired all sorts of commentary. Rather than try to make room for it all in my standard “That Was The Week That Was” links post on Saturday, we’ll give some of those links their own post: • Washington Post foreign … More That Was The Day That Was: Pope Benedict’s Resignation
The Pietist Schoolman 