The Four Marks of the Protestant Church

In the previous essay I said I would say more about the relationship between political and theological philosophy. In that essay I briefly reviewed the history of classical liberalism which began with Thomas Hobbes' Social Contract Theory. His theory of the free individual led to a sort of liberty from all things that ultimately became …

Conservatism and Liberalism (of the Conservative and Progressive Sorts)

What is conservatism? Etymologically it refers to an attitude of conserving (and thus valuing) the past. But what if one has a thoroughly liberal past? Is valuing and conserving the liberal beliefs and attitudes from the past a species of conservatism or liberalism? This knot of questions has been foremost in my mind the last …

John Calvin, Student Radical and Humanist

Although they are not terms often associated with Calvin (much less Calvinism!) in this day and age, John Calvin was a liberal humanist and college radical before he became known as a Protestant Reformer. His critiques of Roman Catholic theology began with (and to a large extent, are a result of) his study of the …

Liberalism: That (Somewhat) Old Time Religion

My recent post quoting Chesterton raised some eyebrows at CHA. Chesterton, being Roman Catholic, viewed human freedom rather differently than Protestants. To me that goes without saying, so I didn't say it. Some readers thought that maybe I should have. As I tried to say something about Protestants and Chesterton, I realized that my perspective …

Happy Bach Sing Day (Dec 26)

Today's high was only 11°, which is a record. But nobody's going to notice our record cold weather because they're having a blizzard out where they make up the news -- New York City and Washington, where the news headquarters are. I have an industrial strength parka that I bought in Alaska, but it's a …

Twas the Day before Christmas in the Holy Land

I'm sure you remember the old story about a contest to draw a picture about peace. Entries included a pastoral scene of cows in a meadow with puffy clouds in a blue sky and a baby sleeping in a mother's arms, but the winner was a bird sitting on her nest singing, except the nest …

Back Home

I got back to Sioux City from Mississippi last night. The trip was uneventful. I ran into on-and-off snow starting at the rest area between Kansas City and St Joseph all the way to Omaha. It was just a skiff so it didn't cause any problems. It did bring back bad memories. That stretch of …

Spiritual Freedom

Note: tedium alert! I am reading Chesterton and have diligently avoided quoting him because I generally find those moments when people are quoting Chesterton to be tedious. So, today I break my rule. (This is from Orthodoxy, ch. 8, "The Romance of Orthodoxy," by the way, #1855 or so in the Mobi format edition). The …

School’s Out (almost)

Quarter finals – marking the end of my semester at CHA – begin today. I will be heading back to Nebraska at the end of the week. Brenda and I will be returning to Port Gibson in January for some family business, so my time here isn't quite finished, but my stint as a school …

Satisfyingly Ordinary

[After quoting the book (in the previous post), it seemed a proper book review was in order:] I just finished reading Stoner, a 1965 novel by John Williams that was reprinted by the New York Review of Books (NYRB) in 2006. It has been getting excellent reviews by people who matter to me, so I …