Gene Edward Veith Jr.'s Blog, page 39
December 26, 2017
Sexual Counter-Revolution Leads Top News Stories of 2017
A good way to look back on the year that is just about over is to review the year’s headlines. The Associated Press polls editors and news directors on what they think have been the year’s top stories. The list follows, with my comments. From AP Poll: Sexual misconduct allegations voted top news story: 1. Sexual misconduct. I […]
December 25, 2017
Have a Merry, Happy, Blessed Christmas!
Christmas greetings to all of you! Many thanks to both long-time readers and the legions of new readers who have come on board over the last year. I greatly appreciate your visits to the Cranach blog, your comments, and your insights into the topics that we discuss. In the words of Tiny Tim–the Dickens character, […]
The Day Even Non-Believers Honor Jesus Despite Themselves
It’s Christmas, hailed in at least one secular song as “the most wonderful time of the year!” This is a Christian holiday. But why do so many non-Christians celebrate it? Nine out of ten Americans celebrate Christmas. (And the 10% who don’t includes strict Christians who reject the holidays in the liturgical calendar on principle.) […]
December 22, 2017
“Do They Know It’s Christmas?” “Do They Know What Christmas Is?”
Back in 1984, British musician Bob Geldorf put together “Band Aid,” a “super-group” of pop singers, to do a benefit for the famine in Ethiopia. The pop stars recorded a song “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” This time last year, Lutheran Satire put out a send-up of that project to address the famine of the […]
The Economic Theory of Ebenezer Scrooge
Ebenezer Scrooge was NOT a hard-hearted greedy capitalist. Rather, he was an advocate of the scarcity economics of Thomas Malthus. Charles Dickens’ “Christmas Carol” actually takes the side of free market economics. So says Jerry Bowyer in Malthus and Scrooge: How Charles Dickens Put Holly Branch Through The Heart Of The Worst Economics Ever, published in Forbes Magazine […]
December 21, 2017
Luther on Music, Art, & Aesthetic Pleasure
In my previous posts on Mark Mattes’s new book Martin Luther’s Theology of Beauty, we first discussed how Luther counters the usual understanding of beauty as “perfection” with the theology of the Cross. Next we discussed how Luther, in rejecting Platonism, makes possible a high view of matter, the senses, and emotions. Now we will discuss Luther’s perspective […]
Tax Bill Passes & Will Likely Cut Your Taxes a Lot
The House of Representatives and the Senate, after a brief hiccup, finally passed the Tax Reform Bill, which the president is eager to sign. So the Republicans’ first major legislative accomplishment is, as they say, a done deal. Though the details of the bill have been covered over in a fog of controversy and political […]
December 20, 2017
The Newly Discovered “Christmas Sermon for Pagans” by C. S. Lewis
The scholar Stephanie R. Derrick tells about discovering two previously unknown essays by C. S. Lewis, including “A Christmas Sermon for Pagans.” In an article for Christianity Today entitled Christmas and Cricket: Rediscovering Two Lost C. S. Lewis Articles After 70 Years, she summarizes the two articles that were published in The Strand in the late 1940s. Because that magazine was […]
A Solution to the Pronoun Problem
At this moment in the long history of the language, English speakers and writers are struggling with pronouns. What pronoun should we use to refer to a noun that could apply equally to a man or to a woman? What pronoun should we use to refer to a person whose gender is self-created? I have […]
December 19, 2017
Christmas, Scrooge, and Vocation
On this 174th anniversary of the publication of Charles Dickens’ The Christmas Carol, I am re-running this post–at a reader’s request–from a couple of years ago: Christmas and Vocation: One thing you learn from the doctrine of vocation is that the Christian life includes what we might describe as the secular. The realm of “Christian” […]
