Meanwhile, back at the ranch…

…or, Something to keep you busy over the weekend…

…or, The Past Fortnight in the Theoblogosphere.

I don’t know about you, but this fortnight felt like it flew by! Maybe it’s a result of how busy I am. At least I am finally beginning to feel like my busyness is turning productive. But more on that later. In the meantime, here are some links!

To begin, here are some DET related links:

• I’m sure you are all aware of the recent Chick-fil-a fracas. My various aggregators have been full of related tirades. DET contributor Brandy Daniels posted a lengthy piece on her personal blog dealing with all this that is more than worth your time: Longing for More than Middle Ground: A response to Rachel Held Evans’ reflections on “Christians on both sides of the Chik-fil-A war.”
• While we’re on the subject of what’s going on at contributor personal blogs, DET contributor Kait Dugan put a piece up just the other day on preaching in the context of her summer internship. Check it out: Solidarity as Discipleship.
• Here at DET itself, DET contributor Jon Nelson posted about the August Book ‘O the Month; Hans Urs von Balthasar’s Prayer.
• Finally, DET recently celebrated its 6th anniversary!

Alright, enough of the down-home stuff. Let’s see what’s going on in the wider theo-blogging world!

• Let me begin with what I think is the “big one” out of these links. Here is a letter signed by law professors at a wide variety of institutions across the country urging Obama to stick to his guns on all the matters of purported religious freedom currently circulating in public discourse. This letter argues that it is actually those who challenge the administration’s current policies who are seeking to limit religious freedom, and that these folks are on the wrong side of the relevant law code. Here are the first two paragraphs:

  We are law professors concerned about the Constitution, religious freedom, individual liberty, and gender equality. Today, the egalitarian notion that every American deserves to enjoy religious freedom is under attack from those who would cede employees’ religious-liberty rights to corporate executives and nonprofit directors. In this cramped and one-sided view of religious freedom, supervisors are entitled to decide, based on their religious sentiments, whether their employees will be permitted to enjoy essential health benefits without the slightest concern for their religious beliefs. In particular, advocates claim that the Constitution gives all employers the right to veto their employees’ health-insurance coverage of contraception.
  
  This view, which is espoused by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and others, is both wrong as a matter of law and profoundly undemocratic. Nothing in our nation’s history or laws permits a boss to impose his or her religious views on nonconsenting employees. Indeed, this nation was founded upon the basic principle that every individual – whether company president or assistant janitor – has an equal claim to religious freedom.

• Collin Cornell, whose blog I have been featuring in this list with some regularity this year, has another good post up. This time he reflects on what it means to do biblical theology today.
• Here is more from Collin, this time it’s 9 points of reflection on reading Augustine’s City of God.
• Darren Sumner gives us the abstract of the paper he presented at a recent St. Andrews conference on the subject of Galatians and theology.
• I don’t often have opportunity to post links to videos here at DET, but today I do. Here is a video of George Hunsinger giving a paper at a BIOLA conference this past May. The subject is: “Barth on What it Means to be Human.”
• Kim Fabricius gives us yet another set of – you guessed it! - doodlings! Here’s my favorite from this list: “There are rumours of funding cuts at Princeton’s Center for Barth Studies: George Hunsinger and Bruce McCormack have been seen wearing “Save the Whale” tee shirts around campus.”
• Friend of the blog and past KBBC contributor (more than once) Andy Guffey posts: Pauline Soteriology: Theosis or Deification?
• Wow, I actually went a few links there without mentioning Collin Cornell. But I’m afraid that streak now comes to an end. Let’s be honest – he’s one of the more active young theo-blogger out there. Here is a post entitled: How Not to Prove the Resurrection.
• Here is yet more Collin, this time it’s a sermon on 2 Samuel 6.1-15.
• Alright, I swear, this is the last link to Collin for today. Check out his reflections on reading some of Oliver O’Donovan’s sermons.
• Cynthia Nielsen posts about the challenges facing female and otherwise minority scholars in the academy today, as seen through the prism of stupid things white males have said to her. The post is titled, Awkward Academic Moments: The Woman Issue, Red Herrings, and Other Nonsense.
• Evan Kuehn posts about the recent shutting-down of the University of Missouri press, and about the current drift in higher education toward for-profit business models (and all that entails for scholarship), complete with what I think is a very insightful cartoon: When is a university not a university?
• Here is a post highlighting a piece of information that has the American Roman Catholic bishops of the culture-warrior ilk revving up their spin machines: the Pope made a public statement in 2010 endorsing condom use in (very) limited circumstances. Of course, this has amazing implications for the issue tacked by the first link in this category above. Maybe it’s the bishops rather than the nuns that need to be drawn up on CDF charges . . . Anyway, here’s the link.
• Finally, allow me to end with something from good friend of the blog Jason Ingalls, this time the fifth installment of his series on the BCP baptismal covenant.

There you have it. Happy reading! Until next time . . .

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