Stanley Fish on the Foundations Baptist Fellowship and American Protestant Fundamentalism More Generally
Readers of my blog know that I have a strong (and perhaps strange) affinity for Stanley Fish, the pragmatic, antifoundationalist literary theorist and classic public intellectual gadfly. I find him always stimulating and incisive, even when I disagree. But because his strength is analysis and not so much evaluation (indeed, in what I'm about to quote he makes a rare statement of something he "certainly" believes in—and it just happens to be original sin!), I don't really have to disagree very...
My Room off the Hallway of Christianity
C.S. Lewis writes in his intro to his world-famous book, Mere Christianity, I hope no reader will suppose that ‘mere’ Christianity is here put forward as an alternative to the creeds of the existing communions—as if a man could adopt it in preference to Congregationalism or Greek Orthodoxy or anything else. It is more like a hall out of which doors open into several rooms. If I can bring anyone into that hall I shall have done what I attempted. But it is in the rooms, not in the hall, that...
Two Great Books for Two Dollars
I thoroughly enjoyed N.D. Wilson's Notes from the Tilt-A-Whirl and Death By Living. And they're $0.99 each right now on Kindle.
David Brooks on Rod Dreher’s Benedict Option, Or, The Ironist Us Vs. the Purist Them
David Brooks has responded in the New York Times to Rod Dreher’s just-out, “already-the-most-discussed-and-most-important-religious-book-of-the-decade” The Benedict Option. His response is not negative so much as graciously dismissive. He does this by labeling Dreher a “purist.” Brooks' critique sets “purists” like Dreher against “ironists” like Niebuhr (and, apparently, Brooks); and at first he had me assuming I’d land clearly in Dreher’s category, conservative Protestant that I am. But the...
Why Bible Typography Matters Video Passes 10,000 Views
A HUGE thank you to my mother and my mother-in-law, who have each watched my Why Bible Typography Matters Sunday School over 5,000 times! But it's time others watched it, too. It's got some stuff you need to hear and, I think, will enjoy. Also parts of it are funny.