Peter Edman
TF Moderator Joseph Loconte has an article out in the 28 May 2005 issue of The Weekly Standard, “The Unmentionable Freedom: A new report on reform in the Arab world ignores religious liberty.”
[M]ost Islamic leaders and institutions--and now the scholars of the Arab Human Development Report--seem to have sworn an oath of silence about the problem of religious oppression, especially the plight of Muslims who challenge state orthodoxy on religious grounds. The lack of religious liberty prevents debate over the meaning of Islamic texts--a crucial step in offering a progressive interpretation of Islam. For all the talk of a "freedom deficit," the authors of the U.N. report fail to recognize the unique status of religious expression. They thus see no connection between the denial of religious rights and the political and economic stagnation of most of the world's 22 Arab states. Their two previous reports, which examined economic and educational issues, were similarly silent on the point.
The full text is for Standard subscribers only, but I will send a text version to interested Trinity Forum alumni .
Sightings, Religious Liberty, Tue 31 May 2005
As soon as man began considering himself the source of the highest meaning in the world and the measure of everything, the world began to lose its human dimension, and man began to lose control of it.
Václav Havel
Israel-Lebanon: A Clash of Cultures
America’s Most Important Export
Christian Realism and the United Nations
Prayers for People under Pressure by Jonathan Aitken.
A practical spiritual handbook.
Christopher Nolan’s Achievement: The Dark Knight: “The title of the Nolan’s latest Batman film calls to mind medieval chivalry in a postmodern key. The dark knight embraces extraordinary tasks and fights against enormous odds; his quest is to restore what has been corrupted and to recover what has been lost. In so doing, he takes upon himself a suffering and loneliness that isolate him from his fellow citizens and inevitably court their misunderstanding and scorn. He is a dark knight, in part, because the world he inhabits is nearly void of hope and virtue, and, in part, because some of the darkness resides within him, in his internal conflicts between the good he aspires to restore and the means he deploys to fend off evil. Of the many filmmakers designing dark tales of quests for redemption, Christopher Nolan is currently making a serious claim to being the master craftsman.” (Thomas S. Hibbs, First Things: On the Square • 2008 07 22)
Unplanned Parenthood: “Hall offers a faithful reconception of parenthood that resists notions of the “progressive family” and instead summons the church to lovingly and actively incorporate all children. She uses the doctrines of Creation, salvation, and eschatology—namely, that all children bear the image of God, that adoption is God’s form of salvation, and that God secures the future of the church—to move the church beyond mere biology and more deeply into its baptismal identity.” (Michelle A. Clifton-Soderstrom reviewing Conceiving Parenthood by Amy Laura Hall, Christianity Today • 2008 07 21)
What makes a supervillain?: “We’ve exposed all the stories we know as a culture to several peanut-butter-thick layers of ironic reimagining by now, parodying and re-parodying them until there’s nothing left to appreciate with any sincerity, but rather with a smirk and a knowing grin. So how, I wonder, does this culture manufacture more sincerity? How do we create something new that isn’t a parody of something we saw as kids?” (Brian Tiemann, Peeve Farm, on Joss Whedon’s excellent Internet-based musical, Dr. Horrible. • 2008 07 19)
Pope’s Speech at Barangaroo: “Dear friends, life is not governed by chance; it is not random. Your very existence has been willed by God, blessed and given a purpose (cf. Gen 1:28)! Life is not just a succession of events or experiences, helpful though many of them are. It is a search for the true, the good and the beautiful. It is to this end that we make our choices; it is for this that we exercise our freedom; it is in this - in truth, in goodness, and in beauty - that we find happiness and joy. Do not be fooled by those who see you as just another consumer in a market of undifferentiated possibilities, where choice itself becomes the good, novelty usurps beauty, and subjective experience displaces truth.” (Pope Benedict XVI, The Catholic Herald • 2008 07 17)
• Hollywood’s Hero Deficit (2008 07 17)
• The Return of Religion (2008 07 16)
• Food for Thought (2008 07 15)
• Sir John Templeton: iconic innovator in finance and religion (2008 07 12)
• Running on Faith (2008 07 11)
The Grand Inquisitor by Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Foreword by Alonzo L. McDonald.
Endlessly thought-provoking, “The Legend of the Grand Inquisitor” is the world’s greatest novelist’s answer to humanity’s greatest riddle—its own existence.
