Gleanings Quick Links

Jacques Barzun Centennary: Critic and essayist Jacques Barzun turned 100 this September: “Barzun may be the very exemplar of the enlightened and humble humanist, and he long ago cut down to the core of the greatest difficulty in modern schooling: if we want young people to be humanized by the knowledge they acquire, they must be taught by humanists—that is, by those who themselves have been humanized by that same knowledge, who have been, in a word, changed, and changed for the better, by what they know.” (Tracy Lee Simmons, The University Bookman )

Mon 26 Nov 2007 from TTF Staff • Link & Comments

What Matters About Romney’s Religion: Must-read. “Romney, however, should not make Kennedy’s mistake and assert that all religious beliefs are unrelated to politics. What Mormonism shares with other religious traditions is a strong commitment to the value and dignity of human beings, including the unborn, the disabled and the poor. This conviction is unavoidably political, because it leads men and women to act in the cause of justice, not in order to impose their religion, but to protect the weak.” (Michael Gerson, op-ed, The Washington Post )

Fri 03 Aug 2007 from TTF Staff • Link & Comments

Atheism Redux: Marty offers some helpful perspective on responding to the “new” atheism of Dawkins, Hitchens, & Co.:  ‘Send cards of thanks. These authors bring up differences in an age of indifference. Don’t sneer. Many of these authors sneer. Where does that get us? I quote William Paley: “Who can refute a sneer?” . . . Converse, don’t argue. No one wins arguments—which are determined by one’s knowing the answer—about the existence or nonexistence of God, but everyone can profit from a conversation that tries to pose good questions and respond to them.’ (Martin E. Marty, The Christian Century )

Tue 31 Jul 2007 from TTF Staff • Link & Comments

Egypt’s Top Islamic Scholar Clears Up Muslim Conversion Controversy: Good for him. ‘Grand Mufti Ali Gomaa, one of the most respected Islamic scholars in the world today, re-affirmed that Muslims have the freedom to convert to another religion, but that it would be a “grave sin.” “Choice means freedom, and freedom includes the freedom to commit grave sins as long as their harm does not extend to others,” said Gomaa, according to Agence France-Presse.’ (Christian Post )

Thu 26 Jul 2007 from TTF Staff • Link & Comments

Harry Potter & the Art of Dying Well: “Our attitude toward death defines in many ways how we live. The medieval theme of memento mori, the virtuous cultivation of the memory of death, acts as a counter to modernity’s vacillation between unhealthy obsession and tragic forgetfulness. . . . Readers of the final book are left to puzzle over, not just the mysterious powers of mercy and self-sacrifice, but also explicit references to the New Testament, the one from Corinthians cited above and a passage from Matthew, ‘where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.’ Harry encounters these statements on tombstones and knows neither their source nor their precise import. In that respect, Harry is a stand-in for most modern readers. Although he never explicitly formulates it this way, Harry’s great quest in Deathly Hallows leads him toward an understanding of the meaning of these scriptural passages, an understanding not just theoretical but eminently practical.” (Thomas Hibbs, National Review )

Mon 23 Jul 2007 from TTF Staff • Link & Comments

The ‘New Victorians’: ‘Wendy Shalit, who earlier wrote about “A Return to Modesty,” has a new book called “Girls Gone Mild: Young Women Reclaim Self-Respect and Find It’s Not Bad to Be Good.” She illustrates the point with an interview with the daughter of Erica Jong, whose book “Fear of Flying” practically launched the sexual revolution. Jong glamorized promiscuity as random guilt-free sex with strangers. “When you’re 12,” says Molly Jong Fast, “there’s nothing funny about your mother’s fourth wedding.” Molly describes her own promiscuity as a mistake. “I was sold a bad bill of goods.” Molly is married and signs her e-mails “mother of Max,” making sure you understand that she’s first a mother. So do a lot of other young moms.’ (Suzanne Fields, syndicated column )

Mon 23 Jul 2007 from TTF Staff • Link & Comments

Evangelicals and The Vitter Effect: Senior Fellow Michael Cromartie is interviewed for Newsweek on Senator Vitter’s sex scandal. “Classical Christianity has always had a negative view of human nature. Generally, the belief has been that people are broken and fallen and frail. People plod along and make mistakes. But there is a message to all guilt-ridden humanity: there is saving grace and there can be release from that guilt, shame and sin.” (Newsweek )

Fri 20 Jul 2007 from TTF Staff • Link & Comments

Memory eternal, Pastor Will B. Dunn: Cartoonist and comic Doug Marlette has died in a tragic accident. May he rest in peace. “We don’t need constitutional protection to run boring, inoffensive cartoons. We don’t need constitutional protection to make money from advertising. We don’t need constitutional protection to tell readers exactly what they want to hear. We need constitutional protection for our right to express unpopular views.” (via Terry Mattingly, GetReligion.org )

Fri 13 Jul 2007 from TTF Staff • Link & Comments

Where the Avatars Roam: “Libertarians hold to a theory of ‘spontaneous order’—that society should be the product of uncoordinated human choices instead of human design. Well, Second Life has plenty of spontaneity, and not much genuine order. This experiment suggests that a world that is only a market is not a utopia. It more closely resembles a seedy, derelict carnival—the triumph of amusement and distraction over meaning and purpose.” (Michael Gerson, The Washington Post )

Mon 09 Jul 2007 from TTF Staff • Link & Comments

Really Bad Ideas: Population control: “To put it bluntly: it is difficult to celebrate human life in any meaningful way when people – or at least the growth of the number of people – are regarded as the source of the world’s problems. Alongside today’s respect for human life there is the increasingly popular idea that there is too much human life around, and that it is killing the planet.” An excellent discussion of the latent and blatant Malthusian strands in modern thought—can Rwanda really be overpopulated after the genocide? (Frank Furedi, Spiked )

Wed 20 Jun 2007 from Peter Edman • Link & Comments

The Hitchens brothers: Anatomy of a row: ‘Peter, 55, confirms to me that he was implying in his review that Christopher, 58, was closer to religious belief than he had ever accepted. “There is always, in the atheistical struggle with God, the fight against temptation. If it didn’t matter to you, why write a book about how wrong it is? The first person you have to convince with any book you write, is yourself. If you didn’t need convincing… why go to all those lengths?"’ It does seem as though C. Hitchens is in the “doth protest too much” category. Will he, as Kathy Shaidle asks, “do a Muggeridge”? He seems to have the intellectual integrity, if he can get over his emotional commitments. (The Independent )

Fri 15 Jun 2007 from Peter Edman • Link & Comments

Addressing climate change: “As someone who lived under communism for most of my life I feel obliged to say that the biggest threat to freedom, democracy, the market economy and prosperity at the beginning of the 21st century is not communism or its various softer variants. Communism was replaced by the threat of ambitious environmentalism. This ideology preaches earth and nature and under the slogans of their protection – similarly to the old Marxists – wants to replace the free and spontaneous evolution of mankind by a sort of central (now global) planning of the whole world.” (Czech President Václav Klaus, address to the U.S. Congress, March 2007 )

Thu 14 Jun 2007 from TTF Staff • Link & Comments

British business leaders are now as spineless as American ones: “Businesses have a moral responsibility to use the power of their investments not only to make money but also to improve matters globally. That is the whole point of their signing up to statements and organisations such as the UN’s Global Compact or participating in exalted events such as the World Economic Forum. If businessmen and businesswomen don’t want to entirely discredit such organisations and institutions, the least they can do is to keep quiet rather than openly show that they are prepared to sacrifice liberty, law, and principle for the sake of profit.” (Prabhu Guptara, Renaissance blog )

Tue 12 Jun 2007 from TTF Staff • Link & Comments

Europe’s Christian Comeback: “In fact, the rapid decline in the continent’s church attendance over the past 40 years may have done Europe a favor. It has freed churches of trying to operate as national entities that attempt to serve all members of society. Today, no church stands a realistic chance of incorporating everyone. Smaller, more focused bodies, however, can be more passionate, enthusiastic, and rigorously committed to personal holiness. To use a scientific analogy, when a star collapses, it becomes a white dwarf—smaller in size than it once was, but burning much more intensely. Across Europe, white-dwarf faith communities are growing within the remnants of the old mass church.” (Philip Jenkins, Foreign Policy )

Tue 12 Jun 2007 from TTF Staff • Link & Comments

Continental Drift: “Is it possible, then, that the writers who have spent the past few years predicting Europe’s collapse could be wrong? The short answer is: no. Even a corpse has been known to twitch once or twice before the rigor mortis sets in. The longer answer is provided by Walter Laqueur in The Last Days of Europe, one of the more persuasive in a long line of volumes by authors on both sides of the Atlantic chronicling Europe’s decline and foretelling its collapse.” We can still hope. (Gerard Baker, The Times (London) / Wall Street Journal)

Tue 05 Jun 2007 from Peter Edman • Link & Comments