Bad company, bad citizens
Fifty years ago, the main cultural tension of being a Christian in the United States was that the Christian believed things regarded as naive and false by the general culture: that believing in an...
View ArticleA belated Constitution Day appreciation
Yesterday marked the 230th anniversary of the 1787 Constitutional Convention at Independence Hall in Philadelphia. And so, to mark the occasion, I present three alternate versions of an #OTDminus1....
View ArticleThere will be Saul of Tarsus
For some time I have been thankful that the Church dropped the dark notes of St. Stephen and Holy Innocents into the Feast of Christmas. In part, for the sake of those who mourn; in part, because it...
View ArticleWhere Every Basic Unit of Society Failed
The events surrounding Jesus’s entry into Jerusalem and his death underscored not only the failures of human nature generally, but the failures of every basic unit of human society. Close friends...
View ArticleJust-out-of-the-oven take on Masterpiece Cakeshop
A few preliminary thoughts on the decision in Masterpiece Cakeshop, Ltd. v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission (announced by SCOTUS this morning): First, I’m quite surprised that the final vote was 7-2....
View ArticleThe Bearable Balance of Discipleship: A review of Rebecca Reynolds’s Courage,...
Among the complaints made about Jane Austen’s novels is that her characters’ romances are too rational. Rather than getting swept away by whirlwinds of emotion, they take time to evaluate character,...
View ArticleOn Social Justice, the Gospel, and Denying the Gospel by One’s Fruit
Two weeks ago a document called the Statement on Social Justice and the Gospel (SJ&G) released and has since been making the rounds. I’m sure no one has checked the list of signatories for my name,...
View ArticleIndependence Day and American Patriotism in the light of Christian liberty
When I was a teenager patriotism was pretty much my religion: the United States of America was god, the American ideal of liberty the golden rule, July 4 the high holy day of the year. In the summer...
View ArticleThe Three Grumpy Virginians (Constitution Day 2019)
James Madison said that George Mason left Philadelphia in September 1787 “in exceeding ill humor.” A homebody and lover of family life, Mason was rarely happy to be away from his home on the Potomac...
View ArticleNo Patrick Henry Speeches were Flogged in Writing this Post
As the coronavirus and COVID-19 have spread, I have seen some grousing about States and localities declaring emergency curfews, requiring distancing, placing limits on numbers of assembled persons,...
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