Yesterday (Nov 26) marked the end of the church calendar as it is observed in the Western church. It was also my saint day, in the Eastern church; thanks be to God for St James the Solitary. Our son invited us down to Omaha on Saturday night for dinner at a southern style restaurant (shrimp …
The neighbors down the street … Some folks at our place say they’re our best friends, others don’t know much about them and mostly ignore them. I guess I would count them as friends … but, our neighbors down the street, they beat the dog and I feel sorry for that dog. It’s been going …
I am, and have been for years, an unrepentant heretic. It’s not the sort of heresy you might think, because it has nothing to do with authentic Christianity (although it has seemingly everything to do with the current instantiation of American Christianity); it’s worse! It has to do with what has become the true American …
Last week I wrote about justice in terms of “forming and filling.” God formed creation in a particular manner and filled that creation in a particular manner so that everything worked properly and fit together properly. Injustice occurs when we don’t follow the divine pattern set forth by God. A few days after writing that …
When I was in 6th or 7th grade, I discovered the Irish Rovers. Among my favorite Rover tunes is The Orange and the Green. In 7th grade I was also becoming politically aware and in a moment of crazy political activism, I decided I should wear orange instead of green on St. Patrick’s Day. Of …
Continue reading It Is the Biggest Mix Up That You Have Ever Seen
In a conversation with Jordan Peterson, Jonathan Haidt observed that moralism messes everything up. (Just an aside, but I am amused when an academic says something as erudite as "messes everything up.") Peterson asked him what he meant by moralism. Haidt's response was that the most helpful framework for understanding the world is a true/false …
Some time ago I read a sermon on an Orthodox parish website. Unfortunately, I don’t know which parish. The sermon was about liberty (as the French would say) or freedom (as we Americans would say), putting it in context of the larger scheme of salvation. The fourfold path of liberty is as follows:: From Slavery …
The early history of icons in the Christian church is a bit sketchy because, in the 8th century, an iconoclastic Byzantine emperor (Leo III) ascended the throne. He believed his task was to destroy, and when that wasn't possible, to deface all the holy icons that were in existence. Today there are only a couple …
Continue reading Lamb of God, Who Takes Away the Sins of the World …
In the previous two essays about political Liberty and Rights, I emphasized that one of the assumptions about rights built into the Enlightenment was that they were necessarily connected to responsibility. One of the early critiques of the Enlightenment that has become increasingly obvious over the decades is that many of those Enlightenment assumptions were …
Continue reading Rights, Responsibility, Freedom, and Self-Control
In Enlightenment political theory (this is the political theory that is foundational to the American Declaration of Independence and Constitution) the two primary natural "endowments" are life and liberty (and yes, the Declaration adds Happiness, but that's another story). Given the history of American jurisprudence, the most appropriate definition of liberty is "the right to …
Just Another Jim 