Several years ago the Lincoln City Council passed a so-called "Fairness Ordinance" that was... fairly bonkers. We wrote about it at the time. The short version is that the ordinance was chiefly concerned with "public accommodations," which it defined, essentially, as being any place in the city aside from private homes. It also defined violations of the ordinance as being any "speech" that gave "offense" that took place in a public accommodation. So, per the letter of the ordinance, a pastor reading Romans 1 in the pulpit on Sunday morning would be in violation of the city's Fairness Ordinanc ..read more

David Bahnsen, Full-Time: Work and the Meaning of Life (New York: Post Hill Press). 208 pp. $24, cloth.  I sometimes tell people, when recommending that they read A Severe Mercy, that they should know the book presents as a love story but, in reality, it is actually a conversion story. If you understand that going in, your whole experience of the book will be better. A similar comment might apply to David Bahnsen's Full Time: Work and the Meaning of Life. If you take the book to be a reflection on work, you're only getting part of the story. Really the book is a vindication of ..read more

In the Screwtape Letters, the senior tempter Screwtape admonishes Wormwood about the danger of tempting humans with pleasure. He tells his devilish understudy, “Never forget that when we are dealing with any pleasure in its healthy and normal and satisfying form, we are, in a sense, on the Enemy’s ground. . . He made the pleasures: all our research so far has not enabled us to produce one.” C.S. Lewis’s imagined letters from Screwtape coaching Wormwood on how best to tempt an individual so that he will not fall into the hands of “the enemy” (i.e. Christ) communicate powerful insights int ..read more

Years ago, I visited an Anglican church while visiting some friends out of town. I had just started working  as the children’s director at the Anglican church I attended back home, so in addition to attending worship with the adults that Sunday morning, I spent some time following the children around to see what I could see. The children at this particular church had the traditional classrooms with the tables and chairs, circle time rug, dress-up, etc ..read more

Sarah McCammon, The Exvangelicals: Loving, Living, and Leaving the White Evangelical Church (New York: St. Martin's Press). 320 pp. $30.00 cloth.   ..read more

I. One of my favorite scenes in the Coen brothers’ film The Big Lebowski is when Walter and the Dude walk across the bowling alley parking lot moments after Walter has threatened a competing bowler at gun point for stepping over the lane line. The Dude explains to Walter that Sparky is a pacifist and kind of fragile. Walter replies that he himself also dabbled with pacifism at one time. Seated in the vehicle Walter waves off the accusation as “water under the bridge” since their team is through to the round-robin anyway. “Am I wrong?!”, asks Walter repeatedly. “No, no, you’re not wrong, Walte ..read more

For a brief moment last week my home state was in the news ..read more

As depictions of contemporary moral reflection go, I doubt we'll find anything more accurate or chilling than the finale of The Good Place. To briefly summarize, the episode wraps up a several season run in which the protagonists start out in Hell, though they are led to believe they're in Heaven before earning their way into Heaven, as it were. The final episodes of the series take place in Paradise, showing how the characters adjust to their perfected place ..read more

Let our formulas find your soul. We’ll divine your artesian source (in your mind), marshal feed and force (our machines will) to design you a perfect love—or (better still) a perfect lust. O how glorious! Glorious! A brand-new need is born. Now we possess you! (You’ll own that. You’ll own that.) Now we possess you! (You’ll own that in time.) Now we will build you an endlessly upward world, reach in your pocket, embrace you for all you’re worth. Is that wrong? Isn’t this what you want? Amen. -- Vienna Teng, The Hymn of Acxiom The Library of Babel was first imagined as a short story by l ..read more

Should modern Christians fast? There’s a danger in talking about fasting, because the power of fasting and prayer is almost entirely in the doing, not in explanation, but in bodily participation. We do it, and then we tend to see what it’s for. But since so many Christians in our disembodied cultural moment have perhaps never fasted or never even considered why it might be a good thing for Christians to do, it might be worth saying a few things about it as a way of re-introducing a notion that, perhaps for many of our ancestors, would have needed no explanation at all ..read more