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Tag: faith

Reviews

Review: The Book of Strange New Things by Michel Faber

Posted on November 29, 2015 by Kevin Holtsberry / 0 Comment

I am somewhat torn as to my reaction. I really enjoyed it for about 75% but then it felt like it was dragging a bit. But no sooner had I begun to feel that, it ...

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Rowan Williams: the case for blasphemy

Posted on August 13, 2015 by Kevin Holtsberry / 0 Comment

If you are forbidden to voice the hard questions, this might suggest that faith survives only by never being challenged. The person who actually expresses their...

Reviews

Review: Listening to the Bible: The Art of Faithful Biblical Interpretation

Posted on July 3, 2015 by Kevin Holtsberry / 0 Comment

I enjoyed Bryan's approach: an acknowledgement of the contributions of historical criticism and a return to reading scripture in its context but with it an unde...

Reviews

Review: Listening to the Bible: The Art of Faithful Biblical Interpretation

Posted on July 3, 2015 by Kevin Holtsberry / 0 Comment

I enjoyed Bryan's approach: an acknowledgement of the contributions of historical criticism and a return to reading scripture in its context but with it an unde...

Reviews

The God Engines by John Scalzi

Posted on February 5, 2015 by Kevin Holtsberry / 1 Comment

A creative and thought provoking science fiction/fantasy novella with some well done characters. Have to wonder what it could have been at standard novel lengt...

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Last Four

  • A Creepy, Atmospheric Young Adult Story From Kevin Wignall
  • Jim Geraghty Returns with Another Dangerous Clique Novel
  • Senator Josh Hawley VS Simon & Schuster
  • Trump, Hawley, Cruz & Dostoevsky: They are our own Stepan Trofimoviches

Notes & Asides

  • Trump, he loves this. He loves the bile, the wrath, the mockery. It’s a well-done steak to him, with extra ketchup. But Hawley and Cruz? I bet they are befuddled and mystified. How could it possibly have come to this? They are, then, our own Stepan Trofimoviches. It was all a game to them, until it wasn’t. They are, like him, utterly frivolous. If they had any dignity, any moral backbone, they would resign their offices. But the very frivolity that led them, and us, to this pass is the vice that will prevent them from acting honorably. I hope I am wrong, but I expect they will go to their graves thinking How could we have known?

    Frivolity - Alan Jacobs

    - Trump, Hawley, Cruz & Dostoevsky: They are our own Stepan Trofimoviches
  • While the laws that we live under matter a great deal, Christians need to recover the primacy of the personal over the political more than anything else. If we can’t love our neighbors in a personal, politically agnostic, face-to-face way, they’ll turn to synthetic and unreal ideological communities to fill the gap left by the loneliness of their daily lives.

    The road back to sanity, solidarity, and social trust on both sides of the political spectrum will involve turning away from this ideological cul-de-sac and back toward personal communities once more. If Christian churches won’t do this, they risk being exploited as political playthings of the powers that be. -- Christianity as Ideology: The Cautionary Tale of the Jericho March

    - Christianity & the Jericho March
  • You’ll notice we are not having a national debate about paying off poor people’s mortgages. We could do that just as easily if the self-declared champions of the poor had any interest in anything other than their own status and their own appetites.

    They don’t.

    The College-Debt Debate Is a Culture-War Battle

    - Kevin Williamson on the college debt debate
  • Wharton’s novel was little appreciated in its time, and it hasn’t benefited from the same revival of interest that eventually rescued F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, another Jazz Age novel. Maybe it’s because our culture is created and largely controlled by latter-day Pauline (and Paul) Manfords. Gatsby’s novel is held to reject the American dream itself as a falsity, obscene wealth as corrupting, and the WASP ruling class as a permanent source of oppression, despite its evident decline. Compared with Wharton’s novel, which cuts deeper and is more personal, Gatsby looks like a cheap attempt at scapegoating. For Twilight Sleep is a satire of the modern age, but it targets some of our permanent temptations. If we’re about to embark on a new Roaring Twenties, Wharton’s book will remind us that we’ve been there before.

    Michael Brendan Dougherty

    - Wharton vs Fitzgerald and the Jazz Age Novel
  • Mental Anchors for Information Overload - my review of Breaking Bread with the Dead by Alan Jacobs

    - Me in the University Bookman on Breaking Bread with the Dead

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