Society

I'm not a Catholic, but when specific teachings of the Roman Catholic church are truly "catholic" (that is, universal to all Christians), I'm more than happy to agree with them.  Here's a great account of the journey of a woman from being pro-choice to being pro-life.  Her account of her thinking, and the way it changed, is especially enlightening.

(via First Things blog)

Interesting-sounding lady, and in Tennessee, no less!
http://www.firstthings.com/onthesquare/?p=1100

This is a fascinating description of the movement to encourage children to spend more time outside.

Leave No Child Inside | by Richard Louv | Orion Magazine March-April 2007

Similarly, the back page of an October issue of San Francisco magazine displays a vivid photograph of a small boy, eyes wide with excitement and joy, leaping and running on a great expanse of California beach, storm clouds and towering waves behind him. A short article explains that the boy was hyperactive, he had been kicked out of his school, and his parents had not known what to do with him—but they had observed how nature engaged and soothed him. So for years they took their son to beaches, forests, dunes, and rivers to let nature do its work.

The photograph was taken in 1907. The boy was Ansel Adams.

Have We Lost Our Minds? | Christianity Today Movies

I'm not a moviegoer.  I have my reasons: in a nutshell, I live out what I watch.  Thus, I have to be careful about whose head I enter, whose life I live for a couple of hours.  Movies impact me very deeply, perhaps more deeply than the average person.

In spite of this, I wholeheartedly endorse this essay on Christianity Today, which describes the philosophy of one of their movie critics.  The critics who write for CT are striving to be good Christians and good movie reviewers.  What this looks (reads) like sometimes surprises both other Christians and other movie reviewers.

When I can't put my own thoughts into any better words than others already have, I just blog about and link to them...

FIRST THINGS: The Fear of Being Viewed as Insufficiently Progressive

People who are not intimidated by the fear of being thought insufficiently progressive can also consult their common sense. They may even be so bold as to protest that it is morally repugnant to subject children to a social experiment that is manifestly driven by the desire of adults to satisfy their disordered emotional and erotic appetites.

FIRST THINGS: Friends of God

This is a review and commentary on the Alexandra Pelosi (yes, that Pelosi, daughter of the Speaker of the House) titled "Friends of God," about Evangelicals in America.  Michael Linton describes the movie itself (which plays on HBO throughout February) as well as comments from various media outlets.  In the end, he feels it does a much fairer job of representing Evangelicals than, say, Focus on the Family thinks it does.

The Power (and Peril) of Praising Your Kids -- New York Magazine

This is, for me, a stunning article.  I have a hunch it will take me a while to really process it.  See, the basic point of the article--supported in very powerful and conclusive fashion by repeated studies--is that it is worse, even destructive, to praise a child for his/her intelligence.  Those who are praised for their effort learn to respond to failure by trying harder.  Those who are praised for their intelligence are praised for something apparently beyond their control; I'm thinking it's like praising someone for the weather today.  So when a child runs into failure, they believe they have no recourse.  If all they have is their intelligence, and that's failed them, what can they do about it?  Nothing, they think.

Banned in Boston

"How much of the coming threat to religious liberty actually stems from same-sex marriage? These experts' comments make clear that it is not only gay marriage, but also the set of ideas that leads to gay marriage--the insistence on one specific vision of gay rights--that has placed church and state on a collision course. Once sexual orientation is conceptualized as a protected status on a par with race, traditional religions that condemn homosexual conduct will face increasing legal pressures regardless of what courts and Congress do about marriage itself."

FIRST THINGS: On the Square » Blog Archive » Death on Demand

A number of months ago, as the small group I'm in was reading an article about the biblical basis for opposing animal cruelty, we read about how Sweden banned confinement in animal production.  Some people in the group tried to argue that this is an example of how Europe has a better society than America because they don't have the death penalty, they have universal health care, etc.

I tried to point out that insofar as any of these things is desirable, we should notice that they are not arriving at these conclusions by biblical logic that acknowledges the existence of God and takes its cues from the way He created the world and still sees the world today.  Instead, Europe's current culture has derived the logical basis for its choices primarily from an atheistic viewpoint that has elevated the value of animals (largely a good thing) as it has lowered the inherent value of human beings (a very bad thing).

This is a helpful article about the struggles of Protestant pastors and workers in Colombia.