Steep Trajectory

FeatureWed 07 May 2008 by Al Sikes

Illustration by Kelly Crull, CC-BY

Free Lunch Writ Large

We are deep in the blame game over the housing bubble, writes Al Sikes. Mortgage brokers, banks, rating agencies, property flippers, and regulators have all made the list. Perhaps somebody should go upstream in a search for the real culprit. 

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McClay at the White House

Tue 06 May 2008 • Responses: 0 • by TTF Staff

Senior Fellow Wilfred M. McClay recently spoke at a reception in the East Room of the White House honoring the 265th anniversary of the birth of Thomas Jefferson. You can read a transcript of his talk here, courtesy of the Ethics & Public Policy Center.

So let it be for his ideas that we honor Jefferson, above all else. And for the cause of human freedom and human dignity that he so eloquently championed. His failings may weigh against the man, but not against the cause for which he labored so heroically. That should be a lesson to us today. Like Jefferson, we all are carriers of purposes far larger than we know. Purposes whose full realization cannot be achieved in our lifetime, or even be fully understood by us, but which we are called to carry forward as faithfully as we can—as charges to keep.

Johnston on Speaking of Faith

Tue 06 May 2008 • Responses: 0 • by TTF Staff

Senior Fellow Douglas Johnston was featured on a recent edition of the public radio program, Speaking of Faith. The greatest threat in the post-Cold War world, he says, is the prospective marriage of religious extremism with weapons of mass destruction. Yet the U.S. spends most of its time, resources, and weapons fighting the symptoms of this threat, not the cause. The diplomacy of the future, he is showing, must engage religion as part of the strategic solution to global conflicts.

China, Tibet, and the Olympics

a columnMon 05 May 2008 • Responses: 0 • by David Aikman

Placing the Olympics above world politics is a valiant but vain hope.

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When the French nobleman and historian Baron Philipe de Coubertin revived the idea of the Olympic Games in Paris in 1894, he was motivated by both nationalism and idealistic internationalism. He felt the French had lost their war with Prussia in 1870 because of their poor physical conditioning. But de Coubertin had also been inspired by an English physician, botanist, and magistrate, William Penny Brookes. Another eccentric idealist and philanthropist, Brookes had first organized an “Olympian Games” in 1850 in the English rural village of Much Wenlock, Shropshire. De Coubertin visited the Much Wenlock Olympics in 1890, and returned to France inspired. 

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A Tale of Temptation for Our Times

Mon 28 Apr 2008 • Responses: 0 • by Joseph Loconte

Courtesy Fellowship for the Performing Arts

Thoughts on ‘The Screwtape Letters’

Senior Fellow Joseph Loconte looks at the themes behind C. S. Lewis’s The Screwtape Letters—both the original book and the current stage play, suggesting that the bond between faith and reason points to the deepest mystery of human existence. 

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A Brief Chat with Screwtape

FeatureMon 28 Apr 2008 • Responses: 0 • by Max McLean

Max McLean, courtesy Fellowship for the Performing Arts

Playing the Devil in D. C.

Actor Max McLean describes what it is like to play Screwtape in the stage adaptation of C. S. Lewis’s The Screwtape Letters, playing at the Lansburgh Theatre in Washington D.C. through May 18, 2008.

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Christ for Culture

FeatureSun 27 Apr 2008 • Responses: 0 • by T. M. Moore

The Goodness Store by Apollo-Jack (Flickr, CC-BY)

Enduring Standards in a Confused Age

Surely there is a better way to do culture than the one which has produced American Idol? T. M. Moore makes a radical proposal that there is. He says we must learn to look beyond mere personal preference and our current sensual and materialist agenda to discover divine standards for beauty, goodness, and truth in the person of Jesus.

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Obama’s ‘Bitter’ Comments

a columnSun 27 Apr 2008 • Responses: 3 • by David Aikman

The rigors of the campaign lead to what may be a landmark moment.

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Every presidential campaign cycle has its landmark moments. Television viewers watching the debate in 1960 between Richard Nixon and John Kennedy were shocked by how unattractive Nixon’s five-o’clock shadow appeared. He lost the debate on television, even though those who heard the debate on the radio thought Nixon had scored more points. Then there was the moment when Ronald Reagan seized the microphone during a 1980 Republican primary debate in New Hampshire and announced that he had “paid” for the microphone and was going to hold onto it. And who can forget Michael Dukakis, George Bush’s opponent in the 1988 election, trying, by driving a tank on camera, to look manly and in-charge and to demonstrate he was commander-in-chief material? Unfortunately, he simply looked absurd.

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Firm Foundations?

Sun 27 Apr 2008 • Responses: 0 • by Pete Peterson

Is there a difference between earthquake-proofing and terrorist-proofing our buildings?

Nevada desert by Ken Lund (CC-BY)

The next steps in the eventual building of One World Trade Center were taken last month in a desolate patch of the New Mexico desert about ninety miles south of Albuquerque with little media fanfare, but a large bang. There, the building’s architects from Skidmore, Owings & Merrill witnessed the explosion of a three-story replica of the structure’s aluminum and glass casing. The test was a success as only few of the glass panels were smashed in the blast.

In a post–9/11 world, that’s how we must design and build the skyscrapers of the future: capable of withstanding acts of God and man. Here in California, earthquake-testing our tall buildings has been a mandated practice for decades, and in other regions of the country, formalized tests for withstanding high wind and rain are not only well-known, but are a required part of architectural education.

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Barack Obama and Rev. Jeremiah Wright

a columnTue 01 Apr 2008 • Responses: 0 • by David Aikman

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By many observers’ reckoning, Senator Barack Obama’s major speech on race in the U.S. at Philadelphia’s Constitution Center March 18 was one of the rhetorical highlights of the 2008 presidential election season. Obama’s 5,000-word address was skillfully crafted, eloquent, and a powerful attempt to bring balance—and the views of both blacks and whites—into discussion of “America’s original sin” of racial injustice over the centuries. As the son of a white woman from Kansas and a black man from Kenya (which raises the question why people of mixed race with one black parent and one white parent are almost always deemed to be black and not white), Obama is certainly in a good position to shed light on this often poorly illustrated topic.

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Examine the records of history, recollect what has happened within the circle of your own experience, consider with attention what has been the conduct of almost all the greatly unfortunate, either in private or public life, whom you may have either read of, or hear of, or remember, and you will find that the misfortunes of by far the greater part of them have arisen from their not knowing when they were well, when it was proper for them to set still and to be contented.

Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, p. 252

Recent Responses

Oscar on “Obama’s ‘Bitter’ Comments”: I think what is more telling is how quickly people have been to report and comment on Obama's words. Why…

Paul Klaassen on “Obama’s ‘Bitter’ Comments”: Insightful comments David. You're right that income has nothing to do with this. Some segments of our society have been…

Veljko Dubljevic on “Obama’s ‘Bitter’ Comments”: Quote: "Neither in this Musings column nor in any other am I offering partisan advice on America’s choice for the…

James on “Whatsoever Things Are True”: I, too, agree with and want to express my gratitude to the author. I read every piece that the Forum…

Dootz on “Whatsoever Things Are True”: I agree with McClay. His argument underscores the need for redemptive art, which not only lifts the maker but the…

Matthew Cadbury on “Death in a Jerusalem Yeshiva”: The Israel Palestine conflict can only be solved through love, charity, understanding and forgiveness. These were the principles of Jimmy…

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Recent Features

Steep Trajectory
Al Sikes 

A Brief Chat with Screwtape
Max McLean 

Christ for Culture
T. M. Moore 

Confessions of a Small Business Fanatic
Jo Kadlecek 

Whatsoever Things Are True
Wilfred M. McClay 

The Pursuit of Science in a Christian Context
Randy Isaac 

Shoring up the Fragments
William Edgar 

Making a Difference
Donald M. Bishop 

Other Recent Entries

McClay at the White House

Johnston on Speaking of Faith

China, Tibet, and the Olympics

A Tale of Temptation for Our Times

Obama’s ‘Bitter’ Comments

Firm Foundations?

Barack Obama and Rev. Jeremiah Wright

The Bigger Picture

Death in a Jerusalem Yeshiva

A Life Worth Emulating

America’s Religious Supermarket

Bush in Africa: Unexpected Encomiums

A Respectful Approach to Leadership Development

Political Democracy at Its Most Interesting

Perhaps, a Flicker of Light

Featured Trinity Forum Resource

cover imageA Spiritual Pilgrimage by Malcolm Muggeridge, Foreword by Alonzo L. McDonald.

A life in perspective, offering questions to consider and a path worth exploring.

Gleanings Quick Links

Orthodoxy: Georgetown’s Father Schall reviews G. K. Chesterton’s Orthodoxy on its 100 year anniversary. “In coming to believe in Christianity, Chesterton, as he tells us, did not read a single Christian book in the process. Rather, he read book after book of those who maintained that Christianity could not possibly be true. After he had read many of these tractates, he suddenly realized that the intellectual opponents of Christianity were constantly contradicting themselves about what they were opposing. Chesterton, the most logical of men, figured that anything so odd as to be opposed for the exact opposite reasons must either be quite strange or, in fact, rather normal and true.” A helpful introduction to a lovely book. (James V. Schall, SJ, InsideCatholic.com , 2008 05 05)

Where Were Obama’s Friends?: Friendship under fire: “As for the supersized candidates, what strikes one most about them is their ‘aloneness.’ They look so solitary. Indeed, it is possible that the old and honorable notion of ‘standing with’ a candidate like Obama simply didn’t occur to his famous supporters this week. Everyone has become used to watching celebrity stars and athletes take it in the neck on their own. Even someone running for the nation’s presidency looks like just another personal crack-up.” Makes one pause.  (Daniel Henninger, The Wall Street Journal , 2008 05 01)

There’s no way you’re going to convince me: Catholic professor Scott Carson covers the current debates on evil between N T Wright and Bart Ehrman on Beliefnet: “[H]aving had a look at this most recent exchange I have to say that it continues to astound me how simplistic and thoughtless the popular treatment of the problem has become. . . . It’s as if generations of sophisticated and complex theological and philosophical argument amount to nothing when compared to the emotional attitudes of a single individual living in a highly particularized time and place. . . . Just as atheists and agnostics are often—perhaps way too often—tempted to assume that believers only believe for emotional or psychological reasons, so too, it seems rather obvious to me, every non-believer almost certainly has emotional and psychological reasons for not believing that will trump any and every legitimate argument posed against them.” (extensive links from the article to the primary sources) (An Examined Life , 2008 04 27)

The Way We Weren’t: “The fifties really were a time when the culture broadly affirmed Christianity as a Good Thing. I was there. I saw it; I heard it. And yet some kind of demurral is strongly indicated: some sign of recognition that no human society, whatever its good intentions and methods, has lived unburdened, unencumbered by the crushing weight of human fallenness. Good as life may appear to have been in the cities and universities of France and Italy in the thirteenth century, or amid the sweaty fervor of the camp meetings in nineteenth-century America, or among the fierce faith of the emancipators, always human pride and general nuttiness were there to spoil the broth.” (William Murchison, in Touchstone , 2008 04 23)

Not on Sale (2008 04 14)
Seven New Deadly Sins, Suitably Updated (2008 04 10)
The Pope Comes to America (2008 04 09)
Both Read the Same Bible (2008 04 09)
Muslims Outnumber World’s Catholics (2008 03 31)

more . . .