Sailing the Last Voyage with Newton and Pascal
Oliver Pritchett's piece on dumping brunch and bringing back the English breakfast has me thinking of many things English, American and otherwise. That's especially true with the upcoming Anglican Primates' meeting and Justin Welby's last throw at getting everyone to play nice. In particular, this statement from the Curmudgeon piqued my interest: And it can …
Continue reading "The Anglican Communion and the English Breakfast"
In this midst of his critique of current Roman Catholic academic "theology", Adam deVille makes the following observation: As someone trained in the Anglo-Canadian academic system, I note certain curiosities about Americans and academics. Americans turn degrees and “credentials” into an absurd fetish and repository for all kinds of misplaced faith. Holders of these degrees …
From the end of his Conflict of Religions in the Early Roman Empire: By his expression of Christian ideas in the natural language of Roman thought, by his insistence on the reality of the historic Jesus and on the inevitable consequences of human conduct, by his reference of all matters of life and controversy to …
We're coming upon Halloween, that time of year when things get scary. (I'll throw in the fact that Martin Luther posted the 95 Theses and started the Reformation on Halloween, something that Bossuet could appreciate.) In any case "ghost stories" make their way to the surface. In Cleveland, TN, that means "Tall Betsy," a story …
Continue reading "It's Time for Cleveland to Lose "Tall Betsy""
While on a recent trip to Nashville, we stopped at the Lane Motor Museum and viewed their French car exhibit. For most Americans, French cars are a total abstraction. For people in other parts of the world, it's another story. One of the most famous--perhaps the most famous--French car ever produced was the Citroën 2CV. …
In this case, from New York's Eastern Correctional Facility debate team: The debate team from New York's Eastern Correctional Facility has major bragging rights, after beating the national debate championship team from Harvard. In September, the inmates invited the Harvard team to the Napanoch prison for a friendly match. The Eastern Correctional Facility team was …
That's what Rep. Jason Chaffetz found out the hard way: A Secret Service official’s allegedly deliberate decision to embarrass Rep. Jason Chaffetz could “give pause” to other lawmakers who have applied for federal jobs, cautioned former House Judiciary Chairman Jim Sensenbrenner, R-Wis...(t)he disturbing leak to two media outlets of Chaffetz’s rejected application for a Secret …
That's a question that's as old as Anglicanism itself, as Bossuet pointed out a long time ago in his History of the Variations of the Protestant Churches, VII, 45-47: Accordingly, it thence came to pass, that Henry VIII gave the bishops power to visit their diocese with this preface: "That all jurisdiction, as well ecclesiastical …
Appoint an openly gay man to be Secretary of the Army: President Obama, in a historic first for the Pentagon, has chosen to nominate Eric Fanning to lead the Army, a move that would make him the first openly gay civilian secretary of one of the military services. Two years ago I opined that it …
Continue reading "That's One Way to Get Christians Out of the Military"
Race is the thing we seem to obsess about these days. That, in part, is because Americans on both sides of the political and religious spectrum have hung their hats on it, either explicitly (on the left) or implicitly (on the right). Looking at the results, the conventional wisdom on the subject has been unhelpful …
Continue reading "What Working for the Church of God Taught Me About Race"
Positive Infinity 