Gleanings Quick Links

Sightings

Items by or about Trinity Forum Fellows, Moderators, and other friends

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 • Responses: 0 • 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 • Responses: 0 • from TTF Staff • Link & Comments

Backward Thinking: Abolition, then and now: Don't apologize for yesterday's slavery, stop today's. “Politicized “apologies” may serve partisan purposes, but they make no moral sense. Each generation is responsible for its own transgressions; as the Scripture says, children are not liable for the sins of their fathers.” (Senior Fellow Joseph Loconte with Benedict Rogers, National Review Online )

Mon 26 Mar 2007 from TTF Staff • Link & Comments

After Bush: Senior Fellow Bill McClay has a piece on the prospects for the American conservative movement grounded in an unblinking look at the historical record rather than our fickle memories. "The evangelical Protestantism that gives American religion much of its distinctive form and energy, and that fuels George W. Bush's own commitments, is a faith of personal and social transformation, constantly seeking to challenge the status quo. Thus, although evangelicalism can be a force of moral conservatism, it can also be a force of moral radicalism, calling into question the justice and equity of the most basic structures of social life." Very helpful perspective in particular on traditional conservatism and the war on terror. (Wilfred M. McClay, Commentary, reprinted in OpinionJournal)

Wed 17 Jan 2007 from TTF Staff • Link & Comments

A Conversation with British Philosopher Roger Scruton: Roger Scruton, a new Trinity Forum Senior Fellow and "England's most notorious philosopher," sits for an interview with Canada's CBC Radio on December 10, 2006. (link to audio) (RealAudio from Sunday Edition, CBC)

Tue 12 Dec 2006 from TTF Staff • Link & Comments

Amazing grace and other things: “An independent documentary highlighting the sex trades—Let My People Go—is scheduled for release next spring. In that film, Jody Hassett Sanchez follows modern-day Wilberforces working around the world to end human trafficking.” The column is about the Amazing Grace movie, its subject, and its sources. (Kathleen Parker, Townhall.com)

Fri 24 Nov 2006 from TTF Staff • Link & Comments

A Divine Conspirator: A nice piece on Dallas Willard. “'I thought the fashionable views were a disaster,' says Willard. 'I wouldn't have stayed in philosophy if it weren't for realism.'” (Christine A. Scheller, Christianity Today, September 2006)

Thu 19 Oct 2006 from TTF Staff • Link & Comments