One of many articles out in the last few weeks about the new show from David Milch, the man who brought us the glorious Deadwood.
David Milch mines his imperfect past in ‘John From Cincinnati’ - Los Angeles Times
Milch was quite a mess, according to him, for about 30 years, but then got above it. I […]

[Read more →]

Slate reviews Garry Wills’ “What Paul Meant”
If anyone can wean his fellow liberal Christians from their historic habit of denigrating Paul, it is Wills, whose translation of Chapter 13 of First Corinthians, tying Paul tightly to Jesus as a preacher of love, is characteristically fresh and gripping. The last six verses read: “Love will never […]

[Read more →]

Stunning article.
The last paragraph:
The New York Review of Books: A Country Ruled by Faith
There is a particular danger with a war that God commands. What if God should lose? That is unthinkable to the evangelicals. They cannot accept the idea of second-guessing God, and he was the one who led them into war. […]

[Read more →]

I was looking for the verification of a quotation from Billy Graham (evidently it was in a David Frost interview in 1997) where he says, “We’re not a Christian Country. We’ve never been a Christian Country. We’re a secular Country, by our constitution. In which Christians live and which many Christians have a voice. But […]

[Read more →]

I’m a big believer that money talks and bs walks. I used to be more idealistic: that money wasn’t everything, and that (outside of very healthy friendships and family relationships) how someone values you wasn’t necessarily dependent on the money they were willing to give you or trust you with.
But the older I get, […]

[Read more →]

Why on earth are more people not completely gobstoppered over the fact that we have an administration that is PRO-TORTURE.
Let me say that again … “Pro-Torture”…
If this were a movie, it’d be a very very dark political satire. Imagine the storyline if a political party got into power and continued (as everything else […]

[Read more →]

This is unbelievably creepy …
David Byrne Journal: 8.2.06: American Madrassas
Saw a screening of a documentary called Jesus Camp. It focuses on a woman preacher (Becky Fischer) who indoctrinates children in a summer camp in North Dakota. Right wing political agendas and slogans are mixed with born again rituals that end with most of the kids […]

[Read more →]

The world is going to the crapper in the Middle East right now, so in a way part of me wonders why I’m obsessing over this issue, but it’s important. Like everybody else I’m wondering how President Bush has managed never to veto a single thing in all his years in office.
I mean, if […]

[Read more →]

Ava Lowrey is a 15 year old girl in Alabama, which is not exactly a bastion of tolerance and independent thinking, so her website, “Peace Takes Courage,” is all the more remarkable for it.
Whether or not her expression of faith or politics is fully informed or “mature” is beside the point. She’s crafted what […]

[Read more →]

Christmas is almost upon us. What it mainly means to me is that I get to see my daughter for about 10 days and be her dad. I get to see my parents and be their kid. Everything else feels pretty extraneous right now.
It’s amazing how hard humanity works to create so many […]

[Read more →]

Adam Gopnik has an excellent piece on C.S. Lewis in this week’s New Yorker: Prisoner of Narnia.
He reminds us of a few important things to keep in mind about Lewis (he’s viewed differently in Britain, for instance), and discusses his brand of religious belief, and how it kept him in a sort of internal […]

[Read more →]

This is a terrific article: The Believer - Interview with Jonathan Haidt
Haidt makes some thought-provoking points: the evolutionary origins of morality; why some people find some things repugnant and others not; the difference between moral pluralism and moral relativism; and other great stuff.
He also reminds us not to objectify people with whom we may […]

[Read more →]