Sailing the Last Voyage with Newton and Pascal
This gushing review of the Fulbright Program for "citizen diplomats" is elite pap: Since Aug. 1, 1946, the Fulbright Program — the U.S. Department of State’s flagship international exchange program — has withstood the test of time to continually enhance mutual understanding between Americans and citizens of more than 160 partner countries worldwide. But what …
Continue reading "Another Reason to Take Down William Fulbright’s Statue"
What Schmitt is saying here is very important, and it might very well end up being the true cost of the Afghanistan debacle. Every ruling class throughout history advances various claims about its own legitimacy, without which a stable political order is impossible. Legitimating claims can take many different forms and may change over time, …
A few years back I did a review of Andreas Killen's 1973 Nervous Breakdown. It's hard to argue against the fact that what we went through in the late 1960's and early 1970's was in fact a national nervous breakdown. Two years later, of course, came the fall of Saigon and the real end of …
Continue reading "Two Defeats, Two National Nervous Breakdowns"
An interesting article in Christianity Today discusses the success of the Assemblies of God: At most denominational conferences these days, leaders have to recognize and reckon with the challenge of continued declines in membership. But for the US Assemblies of God (AG), which drew 18,000 registered attendees to its General Council meeting in Orlando last …
Well it's that time of year for academics (at least those on a semester system) when we begin another term of teaching and learning. This Fall I am somewhat officially retired from full-time teaching (if the university had started me sooner it would be official) but I am back teaching my Foundations course. Towards the …
Complaints, complaints... The Olympics are typically a boom time for jingoism: patriotic fervor heightening among Americans of all stripes with each gold medal for Team USA. But this year, we’ve seen an unlikely faction of Americans rooting against our athletes: conservatives. Griping about this is rich: for years those on the left have complained about …
Continue reading "Unpatriotic Conservatives? You Asked For It"
Thirty years ago this month, the Cold War ended with a failed coup in Moscow. As was remarked by many at the time, Marx’s dictum that history repeats…America has become its worst enemy
Christians love text. Inheriting the enthusiasm of their Jewish forebears for the written word, Christians have left a blazing trail of text in their wake at every turn: sermons, commentaries, philosophical treatises, and liturgical documentation all have their part in the library. Text is powerful because it comes with triple strengths. Text endures; writing our…The …
Continue reading "The Scriptural BCP: Reclaiming the textual tradition with technology"
No, they don't: Pope Francis and most of the bishops are, to put it mildly, not generally seen as protagonists among these communities and networks. There is real danger that the pope’s actions will push such communities, either due to manufactured martyr-complexes, a genuine sense of alienation and betrayal, or a combination of the two, …
Continue reading "The “Reverends Pères Jesuites” Never Change"
In the recent kerfuffle over which Anglican province has oversight over the ACNA's chaplaincy jurisdiction, Bishop Bill Atwood opined the following: Sorting through the history of the relations between the Anglican Church in North America and the Church of Nigeria, we have discovered that a Canonical action remained unaddressed from several years back. Both the …
Positive Infinity 