I happened to come across this article yesterday and found much of the response on Twitter intriguing. The article is by Ayaan Hirsi Ali about her decision to become a Christian. She writes: To me, this freedom of conscience and speech is perhaps the greatest benefit of Western civilisation. It does not come naturally to man. It is the product of centuries of debate within Jewish and Christian communities. It was these debates that advanced science and reason, diminished cruelty,... Read more
Over on my Substack a while ago I freaked out my subscribers by divulging, in ominous tones, that I would be doing a “deep dive” into the content of Sheila Gregoire. I am not very fond of the expression “deep dive” because, really, how deeply can anyone go into any particular subject these days when all of the discourse and argumentation is so very on the surface? Reading blog posts and listening to podcasts is not like swimming in the ocean... Read more
A Modern Man by Aedan Kennedy I am almost through Nancy Pearcey’s The Toxic War on Masculinity: How Christianity Reconciles the Sexes. I must add my own grateful endorsement to the vast number of others who have already admonished you to stop everything and read this book. It’s excellent. I’m sorry it took me so long to get to it. It is a cooling zephyr blowing away the progressive miasma of the last twenty-five years. As I was ‘splaining to... Read more
I made the bold and sane choice yesterday of not waking up at 4 in the morning to wrest something out of the Sunday lections. I had such a busy two days before, it seemed good to sleep an hour longer than usual and just go to church. Still, I love the gospel reading we had, I can’t bear to let it pass me by. I love it so much, in fact, that I made my children memorize it one... Read more
I’ve said it several times already today. It is so odd that September 11th is an ordinary work day. In fact, for me, more than usual a work day as it is also the first day of school for my four youngest children. I don’t like to feel old, and yet, as each anniversary of 9/11 flies by, I feel unduly aged, not because of the regular passage of time, but because I am so out of step with the... Read more
I’ve been thinking about the church a lot lately with the release of The Great Dechurching: Who’s Leaving, Why Are They Going, and What It Will Take to Bring Them Back by Jim Davis, Michael Graham, and Ryan Burge, and the gravity of suddenly living in a world where the social cache of church attendance has dissipated like a vapor. I’ve written a short series* of my initial thoughts in my first read of the book, and am going to... Read more
Super late today. No good reason. Just so busy–and it’s too humid. Here’s the pod, and the bonus over on Substack. Seriously, so sorry about such skimpy offerings–but the podcasts should fill up the podcast shaped hole in your life. Have a lovely day! Read more
Well, I guess it’s time to face reality again. We’ve had a lovely month off, and now, with the house still not quite clean, we’re taking up the usual routines of whatever it is we normally do, including the weekly Podcast. This time we talk about Amy Peeler’s Women and the Gender of God, and the overall health of the Anglican Church in North America. Then we go over to Substack and carry on talking about Christian Nationalism. It’s nice... Read more
It is a sultry, humid, gray day here in the Northeast so we’ve done an overly long podcast to kick off what ought to be the beginning of our vacation. We talk about all the stuff we don’t know about Russia and then answer a listener question about whether or not Bible Translators altered the Biblical text in order to oppress people. We then, of course, go on to talk about all the conspiracies, and a lot of other stuff... Read more
Persistent and longsuffering readers know that I’ve been writing almost exclusively on Substack, with the Sunday blog on Stand Firm, and links here on Mondays, when I get my act together. This hasn’t been because I don’t love all my Patheos readers. On the contrary. I love you all. And also, I’ve been grateful for the chance to earn a bit of money. And also, it seems that every other decade I need a bit of a blog overhaul. First... Read more
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