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Faiths-and-Worldviews

Items on religions, ideologies, philosophies, and other ways people interpret the world

Après Lewis: ‘As it turns out, Tim Keller’s “The Reason for God” (2008), the book recommended by my friend, is the best of the “Mere Christianity” wannabes. Mr. Keller argues that the usual objections to Christianity—that it is a straitjacket, that there cannot be just one true religion—are themselves the product of a particular (secular Western) point of view. He then builds an affirmative case for Christianity, suggesting that the Big Bang and our appreciation of beauty are clues pointing to God and that Christ’s resurrection was so unlikely both to Greeks and Romans (who viewed the material world as weak and corrupt) and to Jews (who expected any resurrection to come at the end of time) that it cannot be dismissed as the clever marketing strategy of a new religion. If this sounds a little like N.T. Wright, it isn’t accidental: Mr. Keller draws liberally from him, as well as Lewis, Christian philosopher Alvin Plantinga (a professor at Notre Dame) and others. “The Reason for God” is as sensible and winsome as one would expect from the pastor of a latticework of churches that draw more than 5,000 attendees in New York City every Sunday, most of them young, single, urban professionals. But it too is no “Mere Christianity.” It does not have the original arguments or the magical prose of Lewis’s classic.’ (David Skeel, Wall Street Journal )

Fri 15 Aug 2008 from TTF Staff • Link & Comments

The Return of Religion: “So who, in this subliminal contest, is the truly reasonable one? The atheists beg the question in their own favour, by assuming that science has all the answers. But science can have all the answers only if it has all the questions; and that assumption is false. There are questions addressed to reason which are not addressed to science, since they are not asking for a causal explanation.” (Senior Fellow Roger Scruton, Axess )

Wed 16 Jul 2008 from Mark Meador • Link & Comments

Why Me? The case against the sovereign self: “These are bold claims, and Elshtain has written a bold book, one meant to shake up the now-entrenched view that we are at center of the universe and the better for it. She argues that medieval theology offered anything but a blind worship of obedience. A long struggle between popes and kings ended with a standoff: a realm in which God was supreme and another ruled by the sword. As long as such a duality existed, absolutism could not; Christians could appeal to divine authority to protect themselves against the worldly dictates of a prince. From this point of view, the transfer of sovereignty from God to government was a giant step backward. Once the state takes over, the Christian right to resistance—and the sense of being responsible to God—atrophies.” Points to Wolfe for being honest at the end, though I do think he’s misreading the argument, and perhaps making Elstain’s point. (Alan Wolfe, Slate )

Wed 25 Jun 2008 from Peter Edman • Link & Comments

My Trust in My Lord: “This was not a joyful moment for me. It wasn’t an easy moment. It was an admission that I loved and believed in God, and that my old atheism was a façade. I knew it was going to be difficult to return to the Maker, to give over my life to Him, and become a member of a huge quarreling religion that had broken into many denominations and factions and cults worldwide. But I knew that the Lord was going to help me with this return to Him. I trusted that He would help me. And that trust is what undergirds my faith to this day.” (Anne Rice, On Faith blog )

Mon 09 Jun 2008 from TTF Staff • Link & Comments

The Daily Dog: Religion: Speaking about atheism, this is a fascinating post. “That doesn’t mean I’ve decided Christianity is the One True Religion and that I’ve been wrong about everything. I still have legitimate and reasonable questions and issues with any organized religion. What it does mean is that after reading Lewis, I genuinely feel compelled to apologize to certain people (including many of you from past comment threads about religion) for assuming you simply hadn’t thought things through enough and that’s why you are Christians.” (h/t Matteo) (Rachel Lucas )

Fri 06 Jun 2008 from TTF Staff • Link & Comments

The Loser Letters: A new weekly column from Mary Eberstadt on the New Atheism, in the tradition of The Screwtape Letters. Very effective use of humor. “Because there’s one thing that’s still missing from atheism’s final victory, and it’s something that just can’t be sugarcoated. Ahem: Apart from me, where is the testimony of anyone Your writings have actually convinced? After all, as one of You said somewhere and all of us want to believe, ‘If this book works as I intend, religious readers will be atheists when they put it down.’ So where are the rest of them, I’m starting to wonder — these other converts (like me!) to the new godlessness?” More here. (National Review Online )

Fri 06 Jun 2008 from TTF Staff • Link & Comments

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 )

Mon 05 May 2008 from TTF Staff • Link & Comments

Not on Sale: “The free-market ideologues take one instance of spontaneous order, and erect it into a prescription for all the others. They ask us to believe that the free exchange of commodities is the model for all social interaction. But many of our most important forms of life involve withdrawing what we value from the market: sexual morality is an obvious instance, city planning another. (America has failed abysmally in both those respects, of course.) Looked at from the anthropological point of view religion can be seen as an elaborate (and spontaneous) way in which communities remove what is most precious to them (i.e. all that concerns the creation and reproduction of community) from the erosion of the market.” (Roger Scruton, quoted by Rod Dreher )

Mon 14 Apr 2008 from TTF Staff • Link & Comments

The Pope Comes to America: “Well, it set the dialogue in which those people have been engaged back. But that dialogue was going nowhere and the Pope knew it. An inter-religious dialogue that is an exchange of pleasantries – aren’t we all wonderful; wouldn’t it be nice if everyone else was as wonderful as we are – there are no real issues here. That’s not dialogue and that’s not tolerance.” (George Weigel, on Benedict, Islam, and Christianity, at a recent Pew Forum seminar. (h/t Insight Scoop) )

Wed 09 Apr 2008 from TTF Staff • Link & Comments

Both Read the Same Bible: ‘On the crest of this historiographical wave comes The Civil War as a Theological Crisis, the latest work from the nation’s premier historian of Christian thought. In the opening pages, Mark Noll explains that his goal is not primarily to shed light on the causes or course of the war but rather “to show how and why the cultural conflict that led to such a crisis for the nation also constituted a crisis for theology.” That crisis centered on two questions: what the Bible had to say about slavery, and what the conflict seemed to suggest about God’s providential design for the country. Although “both read the same Bible,” as Lincoln famously observed in his second inaugural, Protestants North and South discovered that “the Bible they had relied on for building up America’s republican civilization was not nearly … as inherently unifying for an overwhelmingly Christian people as they once had thought.” In the end it was the force of arms, not the Word of God, that would resolve the sectional dispute.’ (Robert Tracy McKenzie in Books & Culture )

Wed 09 Apr 2008 from TTF Staff • Link & Comments

Why Nippon Is Nuts About J.S. Bach: The Japanese yearn for hope. “Our language does not even possess an appropriate word for hope,” explained Suzuki. “We either use ‘ibo,’ meaning desire, or ‘nozomi,’ which describes something unattainable.” Yet hope is precisely what the Japanese are yearning for, he went on, given their desperate spiritual crisis which manifests itself in many ways. . . . So when Suzuki conducts the “Christmas Oratorio” or – on Good Fridays – Bach’s “St. Matthew Passion,” the audience studiously follows the Japanese translations of the German lyrics in their programs. “After each concert people crowd the podium wishing to talk to me about topics that are normally taboo in our society – death, for example. Then they inevitably ask me what ‘hope’ means to Christians,” said Suzuki, who is also an organist in a Reformed church. “I believe that Bach has already converted tens of thousands of Japanese to the Christian faith.” One famous convert is Masashi Masuda from Hokkaido, Japan’s northernmost island. Curiously, it wasn’t one of Bach’s religious compositions that led Masuda to have himself baptized. He became a Christian after hearing a recording of Bach’s “Goldberg Variations” played by Glenn Gould, the Canadian pianist. (Uwe Siemon-Netto, The Atlantic Times (Germany) (also see here.) )

Thu 21 Feb 2008 from TTF Staff • Link & Comments

What is forgiveness?: “But he does not ask the question: what kind of a being is it that can forgive? Dogs don’t forgive, because dogs don’t resent. Forgiveness is unique to rational beings, and is a gift of metaphysical freedom. Only the accountable being, able to take responsibility for his own actions and mental states, can forgive or be forgiven, and this way of overcoming conflict has next to nothing in common with the peace of the “pecking order”, or the territorial settlements among badgers and bears.” (Roger Scruton, reviewing a book in the Times Literary Supplement, via Alan Jacobs )

Wed 02 Jan 2008 from TTF Staff • Link & Comments

Benedict on A Common Word: Very helpful news item with commentary and background links that put the Muslim statement into a larger perspective. Why has Benedict been so slow to respond publicly to the Muslim letter? “Because the kind of dialogue he wants is completely different. The pope is asking Islam to make the same journey that the Catholic Church made under pressure from the Enlightenment. Love of God and neighbor must be realized in the full acceptance of religious freedom.” (Sandro Magister, La Repubblica )

Mon 26 Nov 2007 from TTF Staff • Link & Comments

Loving God and Neighbor Together: A response to the historically unprecedented statement from Muslim scholars and leaders, “A Common Word Between Us and You.” May both bear much fruit. “What is common between us lies not in something marginal nor in something merely important to each. It lies, rather, in something absolutely central to both: love of God and love of neighbor. Surprisingly for many Christians, your letter considers the dual command of love to be the foundational principle not just of the Christian faith, but of Islam as well. That so much common ground exists—common ground in some of the fundamentals of faith—gives hope that undeniable differences and even the very real external pressures that bear down upon us can not overshadow the common ground upon which we stand together. That this common ground consists in love of God and of neighbor gives hope that deep cooperation between us can be a hallmark of the relations between our two communities.” (Yale Center for Faith and Culture )

Mon 26 Nov 2007 from Peter Edman • 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