DRUG MONEY Nathan McClelland writes in response to "Dangerous Giving":In his response to Mr. Kushiner, Christopher Encapera states that giving money to an addict is a positive harm. This very well may be the case, but after seeing a close family member struggle with heroin addiction, I know the pain withdrawal can bring and the utter desperation that entails. An addict only has to go

THE RUSSIAN ORTHODOX STRUGGLE This article post on the website of Orthodox Europe relates the comments of Russian Orthodox Patriarch Alexei about the state of church and society in that country. After criticizing the "cupidity" of clergy who charge fees for sacraments, especially baptism, he addresses abortion:"We are doomed to live in a horrible time when our nation is extinguishing. We have

DANGEROUS GIVING Christopher Encapera writes in response to yesterday's "Panhandlers":Mr. Kushiner knew folks were going to disagree with him. Here are my two reasons: First, it is a simple fact that the vast majority of panhandlers are mentally ill and/or heavily addicted. It is widely known that giving them cash is a positive harm. This is not even argued by both Christian and secularists

THE PROBLEM WITH SERMONS As a rule, Touchstone does not print sermons, and we tend to discourage their submission. Anyone who listens to a lot of them, in a lot of places, as we have, will understand why. In a great many churches what passes for the sermon is the sort of stale, lumpy pabulum that gives no evidence of serious study or thought, or of an engaged spiritual life. It coddles when

CHARITY but I feel a lot more free not having to calculate how worthy a beggar is. Besides, everything I have is by the grace of God, so it's not really mine, especially the mammon, which, thank God, someday rust and moth will consume anyway. In the meantime, I keep a loose grip on the small bills and change in my pocket.

WIRED ON PORN ADDICTION A Mere Comments reader told us about this alarming story published last month on the Wired Magazine website (quoting the first several paragraphs):Internet pornography is the new crack cocaine, leading to addiction, misogyny, pedophilia, boob jobs and erectile dysfunction, according to clinicians and researchers testifying before a Senate committee Thursday [November

RAY KEATING ON CHRISTMAS Ray Keating, a columnist for Long Island's Newsday and a Mere Comments reader, sends this link to his Christmas column.

IT IS WHAT IT IS From the Wall Street Journal's best of the web:...in California, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has ignited controversy by presiding over the lighting of what he has renamed the state's Christmas tree. Under previous governors, it was called the "holiday tree." At the ceremony, Mr. Schwarzenegger talked about how he celebrated Christmas growing up in his native Austria, adding,

A VERY SPECIAL OFFER: SPEND THE YEAR WITH US For the first time ever, we're offering a year of Touchstone (ten issues) bundled with our handsome 2005 Calendar of the Christian Year. You get a year's delivery of Touchstone magazine along with this one-of-kind liturgical resource for only $35 (a $44 value). This limited-time, web-exclusive offer is available to new subscribers and on

A FRIEND IN CANADA A Canadian reader just sent me this in response to our appeal for funds: "Keep up the terrific work. Can I make a contribution by credit card?" The answer is Yes. Please call our toll-free number�1-877-375-7373�to give us your information, and so we can also say "Thank You."

THE GIFT OF A FAN LETTER I received this in the mail last week:Dear Sirs, I am very sorry that I am not renewing my subscription to Touchstone. I am almost 91 and my sight is deteriorating so that I cannot keep up with my reading. I have enjoyed your magazine very much with your broad reach and firm convictions. I have given many copies away hoping that they would bring more readers (with

RELIGION'S ROLE IN THE "ORANGE REVOLUTION" The Wall Street Journal's Houses of Worship column, which appears on Fridays, had this to say about the religious dimension of the political upheavels in the Ukraine.

LILEKS ON "MERRY CHRISTMAS!" One of my �Internet friends� (you know the kind: you�ve known him via e-mail for five or seven years, but never met him in the flesh), Alex Wainer, who teaches film at Palm Beach Atlantic College, turned me on to the humorist James Lileks just after this year�s presidential election. Lileks is an accomplished descriptive writer, the descriptions bearing much of

CONTINUING DISRUPTIONS On Friday afternoon, we learned that some readers were still unable to access our website due to the server move we reported earlier in the week (see below). The staff worked with Network Solutions to resolve the problem on Friday. We were told that the fix�which involved a new ISP address for our website�might take 24-36 hours to correct itself across the Internet. On

THE MYSTERY OF THE MIND Christopher Encapera responds to Jim Kushiner's comments on Jerry Fodor, the mind, and consciousness, then helpfully suggests further reading:The "problem" of consciousness and rationality is quite perplexing to the modern mind, and reveals the (often unexamined) Epicurean commitments of the philosophers, scientists, and artists who grapple with the implications. You see

ON MENNONITE CHILDREN A reader, David Layman, responds to a comment by Amy Laura Hall posted in this space a few days ago:Prof. Hall's comment (slightly condensed) goes as follows: "What do we have children for? A Mennonite colleague asked that right to my face at a conference... He explained to the group that, in the Mennonite tradition, children are born for martyrdom. ...[Hall's commentary:]

JONATHAN WITT'S NEW BLOG Jonathan Witt, author of the very clever The Gods Must Be Tidy! from our expanded July/August issue on Intelligent Design, has erected a new blogsite, Wittingshire. Recent posts include thoughts on the just-released extended edition of Peter Jackson's film of Tolkien's The Return of the King, a note on modern architecture (with examples), and, of course, much insightful

UNEXPECTED DOWNTIME We apologize to our readers who could not access Mere Comments from Monday night through mid-morning Wednesday. Our webhosting service moved all of our site files from one server to another without informing us and without much care. They failed to keep some of the path information from the old server and this meant some of you weren't seeing anything new on Mere Comments

GRINCH WARS The battles over Nativity scenes and the words �Merry Christmas� are heating up, at least according to some stories. (I wonder: maybe post-election, religion is more noticed by the media? Are the incidents higher than last year?) Anyway, here is one story, by Allen G. Breed, selected by the Wall Street Journal's �best of the Web� as having one of those headlines they sarcastically

MOHLER ON �FAKE BUT ACCURATE CHRISTMAS STORIES� For those of you afflicted with relatives, friends, family who raise questions about Christianity and Christmas as inspired by the annual �reporting� of Newsweek and Time magazine, we can offer you some sanity by pointing you to Al Mohler's Crosswalk article of 12/9. Of the two, the Newsweek article is more problematic by far. TIME's article,

MORE FROM AMY LAURA HALL In addition to the interview mentioned this morning (see below), Amy Laura Hall had an exchange with Christianity Today this past summer. It accompanied a cover story for the issue, "When Does Personhood Begin," by Bob Smietana, reporting welcome reconsiderations of in vitro fertilization and other reproductive technologies by a growing number of Evangelical scholars,

BUSH'S SPEECHWRITER Writing for Christianity Today's Weblog, Ted Olsen summarizes Sunday's Washington Post coverage of Michael Gerson's address to reporters at a conference sponsored by the Ethics and Public Policy Center. Gerson, a Wheaton grad who has worked as President Bush's chief speechwriter the past four years, disavows many of the media's pet theories about Bush and God. Olsen

A NEW VOICE WE CAN BE GRATEFUL FOR A refreshing (and surprising) voice has emerged from the mainline Protestant academy. Her name is Amy Laura Hall, and she teaches Theological Ethics at Duke Divinity School. The Matthew's House Project has republished an interview with Hall from The Other Journal. In the interview, Hall reflects on Evangelical comfort with reproductive technologies and

ATTENTION DETROIT-READERS Touchstone subscriber Jenna Young saw our blog last week about a reading group in Pennsylvania that was using our Creed and Culture book. She is interested in finding out if there are any readers in the Detroit Metro area who would be interested in something similar. She is happy to take on the responsibility for coordinating a Detroit-area group of Touchstone readers.

MUSICAL NOTES St. John Cantius, a �traditional� Roman Catholic parish here in Chicago, last Saturday evening offered its first-ever �Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols.� I am told they were hoping 200 might come. But the church, which holds at least 800, was full. The services and music at St. John's is of a high caliber and worth the trip for those living anywhere in the Chicago area. A

SEX ED Maegan Carberry has a column in today's "Red Eye" edition of the Chicago Tribune called "Sex ed: Don't preach, just teach." She writesExperimenting with drinking and other so-called vices is just part of growing up for many teens. Not all of them experiment, but many of them do. It's part of a broader type of education that is arguably just as essential as math or English--life

VIGIL ON SUDAN Tonight, Dec. 13, at the Fountain Plaza in Wahsington Square Park, New York City, there will be a candlelight vigil "protest of the genocide in Darfur, Sudan." Simon Deng, a survivor and former slave, will be a speaker. Accordin to a Freedom Now World News press release, some 350,000 people have died in the past 18 months. For more information contact Maria Sliwa, 973-272-2861.

MORE ON THE SHEPHERD STORY Focus on the Family's CitizenLink reports that NBC refuses to apologize for Katie Curic's 1998 reporting of the Matthew Shepherd story in light of an ABC News feature exposing the killer's real motivation for their crime:NBC News has refused to apologize to Christians maligned by "Today" show host Katie Couric's insinuation that biblical teachings on homosexuality in

AL MOHLER WATCH R. Albert Mohler, president of Southern Baptist Seminary, writes a daily column for Crosswalk.com (some might call it a daily e-book!). Today's entry deals with a newer book already mentioned in this space: The Post-Truth Era: Dishonesty and Deception in Contemporary Life by Ralph Keyes. Mohler interacts with the author and gives a thorough introduction to a book that seems a

A SLIPPERIER SLIPPERY SLOPE David Mills was predicting this years ago and now it's arrived (the following excerpted from a story by Alyssa Ford in Utne Reader):During the 1996 congressional debate on the Defense of Marriage Act, gay rights activist Andrew Sullivan was asked if legalized gay marriage wouldn't simply send society sliding down a "slippery slope," where the next thing on the agenda

NEO-NATALISM During my days in full-time pro-life activism, it wasn't unusual to be taunted by a melange of young lesbians, 70s feminists, ACT UP agitators, and old brown-bag variety American Socialists who'd show up to mock us as we prayed in front of abortion chambers. One of their favorite words for us, "breeders," often shouted with sneering condescension, made me chuckle inside. Now,

INTERVIEW: FLEW'S FLIGHT TOWARD GOD As a follow up to yesterday's item on atheist Antony Flew's recent embrace of theism, my daughter Mary sends me this link to an exclusive interview with Antony Flew on the Biola University's website. It was conducted by Gary Habermas, Christian apologist and author, who debated Flew a number of times beginning in 1985. Over the years they became friends. Flew

SIGNS OF INTELLIGENCE IN a story posted at ABC News and passed on to me by reader Steve Breitenbach, a leading British atheist and philosophy professor has changed his mind about God:At age 81, after decades of insisting belief is a mistake, Antony Flew has concluded that some sort of intelligence or first cause must have created the universe. A super-intelligence is the only good explanation

OUT IN AFRICA Father Francis Wardega of the Charismatic Episcopal Church sends this photo of Archdeacon Alfio Kondi reading Touchstone in the interior of Africa.

TRENDSPOTTING IN MIAMI The Miami Herald tells its readers that:In just one year, the number of girls 18 and younger getting breast implants jumped nearly threefold�from 3,872 in 2002 to 11,326 in 2003, the American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery reports. With financing making plastic surgery more accessible than ever, it's not just teenage girls getting implants. The increase in young

REMEMBER MATTHEW SHEPARD? You know, the young man savagely murdered by two young men in 1998? The homicide quickly turned into an international story about �gay� hatred. A reader, responding to posts yesterday about angry young men at home alone, tipped me off to this: According to a feature story by ABC News, �new details� have emerged, many from a new interview with the killers. Two

MORE ON FATHER BOUYER This comment from Kathleen Reeeves, on the death of Father Louis Bouyer, reported here yesterday:I didn't know that Bouyer had died, more's the pity that nothing has been noted. I first read an article by him 20 years ago in a magazine for Religious, warning about the "Protestantation" of Religious Orders in the Catholic Church. Unfortunately, very few paid attention to

ANOTHER BOOK BARGAIN Ken Tanner's note about the fire sale on RSV Bibles reminds me to make Touchstone readers aware of another book deal, well worth their while. Anyone interested in understanding the prehistory of the current crisis in American Anglicanism needs to read our own contributing editor Gillis Harp's acclaimed study Brahmin Prophet: Philips Brooks and the Path of American

MORE ANGRY MUSIC In reply to �Home Alone and Angry� today, a reader kindly tips us off to the full text of an article by Mary Eberstadt in Policy Review dealing with the music culture. It may be either a full reproduction or adaptation of the chapter in her book, Home-Alone America.

MEL AND THE MACCABEES Beliefnet.com has this report by David Klinghoffer (citing only the first four paragraphs):Anyone who took offense at Mel Gibson�s "The Passion of the Christ", with its depiction of Jewish leaders condemning Jesus, should get ready soon to be offended all over again. Gibson, it is reported, has his heart set on doing a movie version of the story commemorated by Hanukkah.

BIBLE SALE For readers who appreciate the Revised Standard Version, Christmas has come early. Oxford University Press is running a fire sale on its (normally $40) RSV with Apocrypha in Imitation Black Leather for a little over $15 (shipping included). While supplies last, you can order one here.

THE WEDNESDAY EDUDEMON Eric Scheske, the former editor of Gilbert Magazine, has begun a new once-a-week web-based publication, The Wednesday Eudemon. Eric's description:In the middle of the work week's dim mundanity, come spirit and light. Edited by Eric Scheske, TWE publishes a series of short features every Wednesday.The first issue has quotes from Malcolm Muggeridge, George Orwell, and

JUDGES UNDER THE INFLUENCE? This is just too weird. No, it's not really funny. That educated officials of the state, could rule that these actions of a San Diego policemansomehow constituted speech is something that should give citizens plenty of reasons to look carefully at judicial appointments in the next several years, or decades. Is it really this bad? The Wall Street Journal's best of

CLENDENIN'S JOURNEY WITH JESUS Earlier in this space, Wilfred McClay favorably mentioned an essay by Dan Clendenin. Some of our readers will know him as the author of Eastern Orthodox Christianity: A Western Perspective. Clendenin has launched a new website, Journey with Jesus where he posts meditations on the week's lectionary readings, books reviews, essays, and poems. Read his review of

JAILED CHINESE PASTORS MAKE CHRISTMAS LIGHTS ChristianWireService released this sobering story this afternoon:Pastors of the Underground Church in China are not only called to be lights, they are many times imprisoned and forced to assemble lights under incredibly harsh conditions. A special Christmas project�available to families all over the world�is reminding Christians of the

LOUIS BOUYER, REQUIESCANT IN PACE Our friends at Second Spring note the passing of Louis Bouyer in their current edition:The death took place on the 22 October 2004 of the theologian Louis Bouyer of the French Oratory at the age of 91. A friend of Balthasar, Ratzinger and J.R.R. Tolkien, and a co-founder of the international review Communio, Bouyer was a Lutheran who converted to Catholicism

NPR AND THE VOICE OF THE DEMONIC Last Wednesday, National Public Radio interviewed the Dutch baby enthanizers (um, killers) as if they were so many ordinary medical workers going about their awe-inspiring business, George Neumayr reports for The American Spectator. Eduard Verhagen, clinical director of the Pediatric Clinic of the University Hospital at Groningen, is quoted as saying, "we

OUR EDITORS ELSEWHERE Contributing Editor Rod Dreher visits Holland and reports for National Review on the stew of libertarian politics, Islamic immigration, and crime, that, along with the growing discontent of the Calvinist working class, threatens to boil over in that formerly Christian country most radically altered by the Sixties. Senior editor, S. M. Hutchens, reviews Joseph Pearce's

BREAKPOINT WATCH Two worthwhile articles out at Chuck Colson's Breakpoint website: one by Gina R. Dalfonzo compares the imaginary worlds of C. S. Lewis (The Chronicles of Narnia) and Philip Pullman (His Dark Materials) in an attempt to find whether or not these authors successfully convey their respective worldviews in their stories and why or why not, though it becomes essentially a critique

UCC AD STORY CORRECTION Because the United Church of Christ reportedly disputes the claim made earlier today about having prior knowledge of a refusal by three network of its controversial ad, that paragraph has been removed from Rev. David Runnion-Bareford's press release (the one posted earlier today). By the way, you can see the ad for yourself by going here.

METHODISTS CLEAR, BARELY Earlier today I wrote: �In a refreshing display of clear thinking, on Dec. 2 a United Methodist jury in Philadelphia found the Rev. Beth Stroud, a self-proclaimed lesbian, guilty of 'practices incompatible with Christian teaching.' The decision was 12-1.� I also noted that her ministerial credentials were removed. But now I find out that the vote to remove them was

YOU HATE ME EVEN MORE: QUISP but what they were doing was presenting the TV audience with a sort of election campaign, pitting adulthood against childhood. Did kids want to be powerful by growing into the adult Quake? Or did they wish to have comparable power, but continue to be children in size and maturity, like Quisp? Having always played at being responsible men, I greatly preferred the

UCC PASTOR: UCC IDENTITY CRISIS Rev. David Runnion-Bareford, a United Church of Christ pastor and Executive Director of the Biblical Witness Fellowship, responds to the UCC TV ad in a press release:"The rejection of the UCC Ad would indicate that God is certainly still speaking and the message is clear. The commercial has been rejected because it sends an arrogant and negative message that the

THE UCC AND THE BIG THREE Doug LeBlanc of GetReligion rounds up coverage of a growing media circus: the three major network's rejection of a 30-second ad by the United Church of Christ:The three major broadcast TV networks stepped in a deep cowpie by turning away a witty ad from the United Church of Christ, and the UCC likely will gain more attention through news reports than it would have

OLD EUROPE AGAINST THE NEW Something I neglected to post from Thanksgiving, from the Daily Telegraph (London):More than a million people from all over Europe are to deliver a petition to Tony Blair and fellow EU leaders calling for changes to the constitution recognising Europe's Christian heritage. Refusing to accept a secular "fait accompli" from Brussels, a Christian coalition is

MORE STOTT REACTION.... The reaction to David Brooks's New York Times op-ed on John Stott continues, with a clutch of letters to the editor, mostly negative---how surprising---and blog commentary from various quarters. One of the wittiest of the latter mentions a name that our fearless leader David Mills has enjoined us never to use henceforth in Touchstone, for fear of putting our readers to

METHODIST JURY SAYS "NO" In a refreshing display of clear thinking, on Dec. 2 a United Methodist jury in Philadelphia found the Rev. Beth Stroud, a self-proclaimed lesbian, guilty of "practices incompatible with Christian teaching." The decision was 12-1. Stroud, who confirmed in the church trial that she was sexually active with another woman, who attended the trial with her, had argued

THE FERTILITY GAP Writing for The New Republic Online Joel Kotkin and William Frey found another group that voted for Bush: Parents. (The article is only available to TNR subcribers, by the way.) It seems the Democrats carried a number of the childless big cities, places where the population is largely in decline (brings to mind images of that sad town in "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang").

TOLERATING NIGHTMARES Christian conservatives, it seems, according to an article by James Bowman for the Ethics and Public Policy Center, continue to darken the dreams of some of our citizens: This is the fantasy of a nightmarish world of theocratic rule from Washington by fanatical Christian fundamentalists who, at least according to Garry Wills in The New York Times are all but

DEATH BY COMMITTEE Among Hugh Hewitt's comments for The Weekly Standard on that horrific story out of Holland Jim Kushiner noted earlier:This is either a low point, or a point of no return. The establishment of "independent committees" to dispatch non-consenting humans is nothing but a death penalty committee for innocents. Once begun, it is impossible--simply impossible--to limit the concept

DOWN TIME The Touchstone website was down for six hours yesterday and for an equal amount of time today. Both interruptions were caused by a crashed router our Internet Service Provider uses to host the website. We apologize to our readers for these outages.

OFF-MENU BELIEVERS From Jonah Goldberg's National Review Online column:I ... detest the tendency of Americans, Westerners, or "Moderns" to boast of how they've customized their religious views to fit their lifestyles. "I don�t believe in organized religion, but I�m a very spiritual person." Yuck. It simply strikes me as intellectually offensive to pretend that the engineer of it all goes out of

RIVERA ON HAPPINESS In a follow-up essay to his recent (and entertaining) rips on "hotness" and "relationshipism", Roberto Rivera, a Touchstone contributing editor, meditates on the pursuit of happiness. In these essays for Boundless, Roberto takes pop culture out for a spin�the former HBO series Sex and the City plus a film from last summer, Before Sunset�and, with the help of Mortimer Adler,

HEALTH CARE FOR DUTCH KIDS There are many reasons why I do not admire much of what Europe is becoming, and here's one of them: euthanasia for newborns. Of course, of course, we must realize that only the most strict and the highest ethical guidelines will be followed, for after all, these are decisions being made by highly-trained medical doctors and the parents. American lives were lost in

TORODE WATCH Touchstone's former designer, Sam Torode, writes for Boundless on why the last generation's talk about sex (reducing the act to an animal-like satisfaction of urges) pales before the wonders of male-female attraction and affection. Meanwhile, Sam's wife, Bethany, continues to draw Christian wisdom from the quotidian. Here's what she learned from a spider in a parked car outside a

AND THAT'S A PART OF OUR WORLD.... Some things just speak for themselves. This, for example. But be sure to enjoy the remarks of the "art expert" when he speaks of "the dynamic nature of art today and the idea that the creative process that goes into a work of art is the most important thing," and that "the work itself can be made of anything and can take any form." Yeah, right. How moldy-old

A LEFT HOOK? (AFTER A RIGHT JAB?) In the wake of the election, you will be reading and hearing more about the need to fight back against the "religious right." Here is a story about this from The Boston Globe that begins:Liberal religious figures, concerned about broad moral issues such as world poverty as well as the perception that ''moral values" helped win the election for President Bush,

CHRISTIAN, MUSLIM, AND LIBERAL It must be frankly acknowledged by orthodox Christians that many of the things most hated by western liberals about the faith of Islam, they also believe. As uncomfortable as we might be with the idea, we are not free to pretend that what appears on its face to be the genocidal bloody-mindedness of the terrorist is by definition unethical, or that someone like

MORE ON STOTT Several people have written to ask for more information about John Stott. One could certainly begin with the website of Stott's organization, which has a brief biography (overly brief, I think, reflecting Stott's personal modesty), a partial list of publications, and access to free online devotional materials drawn from Stott's work, which I have myself used for years with great

CAN CATHOLICS STILL SWING? NRO's Ramesh Ponnuru says they can and they did. In this year's presential election, particuarly in areas where the Catholic bishops were "outspoken about voters' moral obligation to protect unborn human beings," the Catholic vote helped President Bush to a second term. The story contains links to additional coverage of this year's Catholic voter.

CONTEMPORARY EUGENICS ON PARADE According to this report from the Associated Press, a hospital in the Netherlands has admitted euthanizing infants. The hospital is proposing guidelines for the practice.

HOW TO FIX THE LITURGY: Readers interested in a discussion of the nearly eternal subject of worship should look at the "Pontificator's" How to fix the modern Western rite and the long discussion that follows.

FILE UNDER "SURPRISE, SURPRISE" George Will based his column in Sunday's Washington Post on recent studies and surveys indicating, among other things, that "far left" to "liberal" professors outnumber "far right" to "conservative" professors seven to one in the social sciences and nine to one in the hard sciences at America's universities:A filtering process, from graduate school admissions

ANOTHER REASON TO ADOPT Mere Comments reader, Gintas�Jazbutis, sent the following in response to the NRO article on adoption:An even better reason than the 15 given: when you adopt, you give an already-existing child the home and family they need.

BROOKS ON STOTT Just when you thought it was safe to stop reading the New York Times altogether, along comes a fine op-ed by David Brooks to upset your expectations. Brooks notes the fact that television talk shows always call on the same tiresome figures (e.g., Jerry Falwell, Al Sharpton) to represent the views of religious Americans, while the most admirable, and in fact widely and genuinely

15 REASONS to ADOPT November (what's left of it) is National Adoption Awareness month and National Review's Jennifer Roback Morse offers 15 lucid and light-hearted reasons why adoption is preferable to assisted reproductive technology.

CHINA CHURCH RISING? Almost anyone who's not an expert on Christianity in China will learn something from this story in the Sunday editions of The Washington Post. In "Chinese Christians Are a Force: But What Kind?" Joshua Kurlantzick writes:Though the Communist Party all but destroyed the Protestant and Catholic churches when it took over in 1949, scholars estimate that the country now has at

VICTOR L. WALTER, R.I.P. We recently received word of the death of Victor L. Walter, a man great of body and spirit, and an inspiration to all of us at Touchstone who knew him. Vic did some much-appreciated writing for us in the early nineties, giving conservative Protestant support to an understanding of biblical authority as indissolubly connected to the authority of the Church. He spent

NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC 118, LOSERS 0 Thomas Woodward, author of Doubts About Darwin (reviewed in our July/August issue on Darwin), reviews a recent National Geographic feature article on Darwin. It's posted at Christanity Today.If we imagine the "clash of two theories"-the older notion of "separate creations" by a supremely wise designer, versus Darwin's "common ancestry" of all life, driven by

A HERMENEUTIC OF LOVE? I've gotten a lot of pleasure over the past few days reading around in a book of essays honoring the theologian Thomas Oden, called Ancient and Postmodern Christianity: Paleo-Orthodoxy in the 21st Century, and coedited by our own Ken Tanner. There are some extraordinary essays in the book, but one in particular stimulated my thoughts, a very brief one at the end of the

WALKING WITH GIANTS I have remarked below on being among the great. This calls for some explanation. When I was a boy I was powerfully struck by these verses from Ecclesiastes: Folly is set in great dignity, and the rich sit in low place. I have seen servants upon horses, and princes walking as servants upon the earth. Later I was impressed by the frequency of this Christological

A FEW MORE PERSONAL RUMINATIONS Reflecting on her Harvard training, a regular correspondent to this column noted its avantages to life and godliness are wholly incidental unless reformed by the hand of God. Perhaps some readers will be interested in my response: Although I'm not smart enough for the Ivy League, I seem to be able to communicate well enough with my friends who are, so am

MORE ON THE BISHOPS AND THE LAITY I commented in passing a few days ago, in considering the efforts to address the clerical sex-abuse scandals, on the remarkable role being played by the Catholic laity in pressing for reform. But John J. Miller's piece in today's Wall Street Journal reminds us that this is not entirely new, even though the breadth and depth of the current response may well be