Friday 3 September 2010

I tried to save the things I made

Well, it's been ages since my last link roundup – so here are some notable things from around the web:

  • James K. A. Smith with a eulogy for Clark Pinnock
  • And a eulogy for Donald Bloesch (whose books made a big impression on me when I was first getting interested in theology)
  • Stanley Fish with an incisive comment on the furor surrounding the so-called Ground Zero mosque
  • Andy has gotten me into Rev., a hilarious new TV series about an inner-city Anglican vicar. Episode 2 (about a charismatic minister) is absolutely priceless: here's an excerpt.
  • A new dissertation on Melville's theology – I'm staggered by the suggestion that there's no publisher for this. We all need more Melville in our lives! (Have you tried Baylor UP? They have a few series in religion and literature, and they've been doing good things in this area of heterodox writers.)
  • For those interested in the Uniting Church, there's a report on the recent conference where I spoke about the church's confession of Christ
  • Steve Holmes on analytic theology and conceptual clarity
  • William Cavanaugh on Christopher Hitchens and religious violence
  • Sam Wells on forgiveness and justice
  • Paul Griffiths on impotent religions and state violence
  • And Paul Griffiths on plagiarism again
  • Milbank on Christianity, Enlightenment and Islam
  • The importance of genuine argument
  • The Bonhoeffer effect in Australian politics
  • A bad liturgical invention: giant papier-mâché Calvinist puppets of doom
  • How a dead fish nearly destroyed a childhood
  • A reader informed me that this F&T post is cited in the latest New Blackfriars – that's nice to see!
  • A good review of Sufjan Stevens' beautiful new EP, All Delighted People
  • Someone has even assembled a Sufjan Stevens order of service (sounds creepy when you put it like that, but it's great stuff)
  • And, wonders never cease, there are some job openings in theology: theology at Duke; theological ethics at Duke; theology and ethics at Fuller
  • Finally, since we've been talking about drawing, I leave you with some astonishing lead pencil art
Now don't just sit there – get up and praise-r-cise!

9 Comments:

Caro said...

Praise-r-cise! :-)
Reminds me of a real life book I remember coming across back in the 80s when I managed a Christian bookshop: "Slim for Him" (I kid you not).

Brad Johnson said...

Baylor kindly and quickly passed on it. It was not the most normative of review processes, and there is a story behind it, but the upshot of the story basically ruins the telling.

Ben Myers said...

Stanford, SUNY and Continuum have all just done books on Melville and theory. There's gotta be a market for this sort of thing!

Brad Johnson said...

Continuum has shown no interest at all. I've been told to consider SUNY. Perhaps at some point I will. I confess, though, that while it is not something I want to consider possible, it might be the case that the book is just not very good. Fortunately, I can claim "niche audience!" until I'm blue in the face and find solace in that.

Chad Lakies said...

Thanks for the series on Stringfellow back a while ago. The post you wrote was relevant for my topic in the NBFR journal. I hadn't ever read him before.

Anonymous said...

Since Baylor UP passed on it, try directing the Melville book to Mercer University Press. Also try for the AAR dissertation series (which keeps switching publishers).

University of Notre Dame Press & Duke University Press should also be tried.

Anonymous said...

Milbank and Aayan's anti-Islamic (& pro-Enlightenment) screed are as bigoted and ill-informed as the current pope's. What is forgotten in the triumphalist link of Christianity to reason is that without Islam (& Judaism) in Medieval Europe aiding in the recovery of Aristotle, the introduction of zero and higher maths, astronomy, etc., we'd never even have had Aquinas and the High Middle Ages or the Renaissance, never mind the Enlightenment.

To claim that in Christianity God will never command one to do something unreasonable shows that the pope (and Milbank) have never seen an Appalachian snake handling service, or seen apocalyptic bombers of abortion clinics, or heard a church in Florida announce a program called "National Burn a Qu'ran Day" and set that up on 11 Sep.! It forgets that the Enlightenment led to widespread claims of "magic." It forgets the racism of DesCartes and Kant who justified both slavery and colonialism, or the anti-Semitism of Voltaire.

This is just another example of the "our violence is better than their violence" that Cavenaugh was exposiing in his article. Every time I expect Milbank to impress me, he reiterates his Eurocentrism (talk of "premature endings to European colonialism!" UGH!) and his longing to return to imperial Christendom. Why Hauerwas likes him I have no idea.

kim fabricius said...

It's because Milbank is churchy, smart - and English. Hauerwas admits he's "a hopless Anglophile".

Justin said...

A "hopless Anglophile" huh? You mean he gets over it after a few beers?

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