Gene Edward Veith Jr.'s Blog, page 194
December 31, 2015
Reinventing New Year’s Eve with college football playoffs
I’ve got to say, I’m excited that the Sooners of the University of Oklahoma, one of my alma maters, is in the college football playoffs tonight. I had given up on them after they lost to Texas, but here they are, playing the undefeated Clemson for a shot at the national championship. For everything you [Read More...]
December 30, 2015
Top Lutheran stories of 2015
So what were the biggest stories or most important developments in confessional Lutheranism for 2015? I have come up with 6, which I give after the jump. We really need 10. Can we come up with 4 more?In no particular order. . . 1. The major confessional Lutheran church bodies are not in fellowship with [Read More...]
The vocation of being an advocate for the dead
An article on the real-life doctor featured in the movie Concussion says quite a bit about the Nigerian Christian’s understanding of “calling”; that is, vocation. (Did any of this come out in the movie?) From Sean O’Neil, Christianity’s Concussion Crisis: Where Football and Faith Collide | Religion Dispatches: A Nigerian-born Catholic has crashed the American [Read More...]
On Trump, the Constitution, and how he’s like Obama
Rich Lowry has a great column on Donald Trump’s disregard for the Constitution. Also how he is like Obama in being willing to use “executive” power in defiance of Constitutional limits. There was a time, Lowry writes, when conservatives and tea party activists were all about upholding the Constitution. Now, many of those folks are [Read More...]
December 29, 2015
The comments are working now
Among the things that didn’t work yesterday and this morning is the comment system. But World Table has fixed the problem and is taking measures to prevent it from happening again. So, sorry.
The Year that Nothing Worked
It’s been a rough year. Bloomberg’s Lu Wang, referring specifically to economics and investing, has called 2015 The Year Nothing Worked. Terrorism is back in force, with ISIS giving us nearly daily examples of unsettling, disillusioning cruelty. That’s hard for humanists, optimists, and progressives to take, day in and day out. The Taliban is [Read More...]
Donald Trump as an evangelical
Donald Trump is calling himself an “evangelical.” Christian columnist Michael Gerson discusses that self-identification, in the course of which he tells a great anecdote relating to (a misunderstanding of) vocation. From Michael Gerson, Donald Trump presents evangelical Christians with a crucial choice – The Washington Post: Donald Trump — who knows something about crude and [Read More...]
How socialism is working out
As socialism comes back in vogue in the United States, voters have overwhelmingly repudiated it in Venezuela. From Election results in Venezuela offer timely lesson on socialism | Oklahoman.com: VENEZUELA held legislative elections last weekend and the results are heartening for anyone who believes in freedom. Not since the late Hugo Chavez took power in [Read More...]
December 28, 2015
This last week of the year
The last week of the year is a time to look back upon the previous year and forward to the year ahead. We’ll be doing some of that here, culminating in New Year’s Eve, for our looks back, followed by New Year’s Day when we will make our predictions for 2016. On December 31, we [Read More...]
Bonhoeffer on Christmas
Lutheran theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who was executed for plotting against Hitler, is in vogue today. Much of what people are so excited about in his writings is simply Lutheran spirituality. Michael Gerson writes a fine column about Bonhoeffer’s reflections from a Nazi prison on Christmas. What Bonhoeffer is saying–the inversions, the paradoxes, the repudiation of [Read More...]
