Tag Archives: Protestantism

The Center Does Not Hold: Bastard Christianities

If his lecture outlining his argument is any indication, Catholic intellectual Joseph Bottum’s new book, An Anxious Age: The Post-Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of America (Image 2014), is going to be talked about “far and wee”: The major event … Continue reading

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Caelius Secundus Curio and Laelius Socinus: Two Heroic 16th Century Resisters of John Calvin

The following appears on page 478 of Will Durant’s wonderful history of the Reformation (which you can find at Amazon here): Calvin faced on the left a group of radicals recently arrived in Switzerland from Counter Reformation Italy. Caelius Secundus Curio, … Continue reading

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Can an Authoritarian Tree Produce Good Fruit? Thinking about John Calvin’s Geneva

After Disneyland, the happiest place on Earth? Here’s the historian Will Durant, from his book The Reformation (1957, pp. 473-474), on what John Calvin’s Geneva was like in the 16th century: Calvin himself, austere and severe, dreamed of a community … Continue reading

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America has No King—but Jesus?: Rapture-Ready Rick Warren is Anti-Gay Rights, Anti-Evolution, and Doesn’t Think Mormons and Jews Go to Heaven. So Why is He Doing Obama’s Innaugural Invocation?

It’s annoying, to say the least, that Obama is giving inaugural invocation duties to Rick Warren, a person who is politically active against gay rights, rejects the scientific theory of evolution, thinks Mormons and Jews go to hell, and looks … Continue reading

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NY Times Graph: The Trendline for Religious Unbelief is UP

PZ Myers today posted this interesting graph on religious belief in the United States (from the NY Times):  

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