Subversive Christianity
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Fear and Desire; Grace and Freedom
Last week I quoted Jackson Lear's Nation article about how new atheists like Sam Harris aren't just reductionist in their rejection of religion, but their embrace of an aggressive ideological positivism can be just as dangerous as any fanaticism that comes from the right. Right-wing ideologues are more in the news these days, but I
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The Judaeo-Christian Cosmogonic Myth
I think that one of the biggest problems with the contemporary West lies in its inability to feel the sacred. And this lack of feeling makes it almost impossible to frame a plausible cosmology open to transcendence. We look at the starry sky above us and we feel something that science simply is inadequate to
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The Mythos of Redemptive Violence vs. the Christian Chiastic Mythos
Myth provides the framework for any comprehension we have about moral truth–that's the way it was for the ancients, and that's the way it is for us. Mythos operates at a level deeper than what we call "belief systems", because belief systems are too rational, too open to comparison in a market of competing belief
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Spiritual Zombies
So, who or what is the “true object” of the anger welling up from the American body politic in the late summer of 2010? What “untouchable” figure or force is responsible for our dire predicament? My answer would be similar to that offered by G.K. Chesterton when the Times of London sponsored an essay contest
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The Freedom Paradox
In contemporary Libertarian America, freedom is a question mainly of multiplying choices, the more the better. Freedom is a question of being unshackled from any restriction. Liberation is understood as the unrestricted pursuit of any compulsion, so long as it does not harm others. From the Christian point of view, nothing could be cruder or
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Superpowers: Invisibility vs. Flight
In this week's This American Life the theme is superpowers, and in Act One The Daily Show's John Hodgeman asks which superpower, if only one were possible, would we choose–Invisibility or Flight. The answers given by people he interviewed were, I thought, rather depressing. One person talked about how she would choose Invisibility so that
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The Historical Norm
I think that one of the key differences that distinguish Americans on the right from moderates and liberals lies in that the mentality of the right is closer to the way most people throughout history have thought. They think tribally, and they believe that it's either kill or be killed, that either you're with us
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Some Thoughts on Christian Liberty
Whatever the nature of my politics, it should be clear that I am by no means a theological liberal. I acknowledge that in order to develop a high level of spiritual maturity, it is necessary to restrain one's open-ended freedom in order to submit to one kind or another of spiritual discipline, just as it