Ultimate

A little shout-out for my favorite sport: Ultimate was #1 on Sportscenter’s top 10 plays today!  Check it out!

Dissertation Progress

I have added two tickers to my widgets.

Don’t we all?

Check them out beneath my Feedburner count widget on the right side of the home page, and pray for me if you would. I want my dissertation to be a benefit, however small, to the church. At least my own.

Fish on Liberalism Again

Stanley Fish, in Why We Can’t All Just Get Along

If you persuade liberalism that its dismissive marginalizing of religious discourse is a violation of its own chief principle, all you will gain is the right to sit down at liberalism’s table where before you were denied an invitation; but it will still be liberalism’s table that you are sitting at, and the etiquette of the conversation will still be hers. That is, someone will now turn and ask, “Well, what does religion have to say about this question?” And when, as often will be the case, religion’s answer is doctrinaire (what else could it be?), the moderator (a title deeply revealing) will nod politely and turn to someone who is presumed to be more reasonable.

This is why if evangelical Christians ever find themselves with a public voice, they should look to use it to repeat what God says about the nation’s sins instead of listing horizontal, sociological effects that anyone at the table can potentially agree on. Christian reasoning on the most important points is ultimately doctrinaire. Who else will tell the world God’s doctrines?

Religion vs. Liberal Democracy

“Liberalism very much wants to believe that it is being fair to religion, but what it calls fairness amounts to cutting religion down to liberal size.”

. . . .

“The conflict between the liberal state, with its devotion to procedural rather than substantive norms, and religion, which is all substance from its doctrines to its procedures, is intractable.”

—Stanley Fish, New York Times

In other words, liberal democracy and religion, specifically Christianity, cannot coexist when one says “treat everyone the same—because we said so!” and the other says “God doesn’t treat everyone the same!”

American Christians are right to celebrate their heritage of religious freedom, because in a fallen world people will not all agree and God hasn’t given man coercive authority over other people’s beliefs. But no political system can solve all the problems created when some people believe what is false and others by God’s grace don’t. And in our fallen world, most people will fall into the first category.

True

“Apart from God, one can pursue truth and beauty, but at some point, one must cross the bridge to the Faith to complete the journey.”

—My old boss, summarizing a theologian I cannot remember