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Items on religion in public life and social discourse

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 )

Tue 22 Jul 2008 • Responses: 0 • from Mark Meador • 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 • Responses: 0 • from Mark Meador • Link & Comments

Theophobia: “Yes, one could imagine that religious believers might ignore the welfare of the secular world in favor of the eternal one. But one can also imagine religious believers who ignore their secular welfare out of obedience to God’s command to value the secular world. If what you need is passionate altruism, my bet would be on the theists: It is not easy to imagine a rational self-maximizing welfarist throwing himself on a grenade for the sake of a world that, from his point of view, will cease to exist at the moment of detonation: What’s in it for him, after all?” (Rick Hills, PrawfsBlawg )

Fri 20 Jun 2008 • Responses: 0 • from Mark Meador • 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

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

Politics, God, and Blue Devils: “Areas of overlap likewise exist between presidential candidates’ religious commitments and their ability to serve in political office. After all, churches are no strangers to issues of membership, leadership, authority, budgets, and the struggle for consensus—and politics, at its root, is about making moral judgments. A robust national conversation would include room for exploring how religious commitments shape a candidate’s leadership ability and policy stances. Yet it would not allow that discussion to overshadow the many other factors that contribute to an effective presidency.” (Ryan Messmore, National Review Online )

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

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

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

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