Elshtain, Billy Graham, 9/11

"Finally, the Reverend Billy Graham, dean of American evangelism, reminded us of the fog of history's unfolding in his remarks at the service in the National Cathedral for the National Day of Prayer and Remembrance on September 14, 2001. Reverend Graham insisted that he did not know the answer to why God allows tragedy, and that there is a mystery at the heart of this question. September 11 did teach some lessons, however--lessons about 'the mystery of iniquity and evil, but, secondly, it's a lesson about our need for each other,' and in this need lies hope. This may be the only true Christian message to have come out of the horror of that day--a message of hope and human solidarity."

Jean Bethke Elshtain, Just War Against Terror (New York: Basic, 2003), p. 123.

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Now in (e-)print

My review of Experientia, Volume 2 has been posted at the Review of Biblical Literature website. A brief excerpt: "This volume offers an array of voices to think with, conversation partners to engage for those interested in examining ancient religious experience and the texts that reflected and elicited them. What it lacks in coherence it makes up for in verve. Experimentation may not provide the solid results we might desire, but it might just show us which paths are worth taking and which should remain untrod." If you're interested, read the review . If you're still interested after that, buy the book here or at Amazon .

Don't vote for Kant!!!

Cultural pessimism and our gravest error

Cultural pessimism is always fashionable, and, since we are human, there are always grounds for it. It has the negative consequence of depressing the level of aspiration, the sense of the possible. And from time to time it has the extremely negative consequence of encouraging a kind of somber panic, a collective dream-state in which recourse to terrible remedies is inspired by delusions of mortal threat. If there is anything in the life of any culture or period that gives good grounds for alarm, it is the rise of cultural pessimism, whose major passion is bitter hostility toward many or most of the people within the very culture the pessimists always feel they are intent on rescuing. When panic on one side is creating alarm on the other, it is easy to forget that there are always as good grounds for optimism as for pessimism--exactly the same grounds, in fact--that i, because we are human. We still have every potential for good we have ever had, and the same presumptive claim to respe...

Andrew Guffey

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