Inspiration Faith & Prayer Health & Wellness Entertainment Love & Family
Newsletters Special Offers

Rod Dreher

The president said today that the failure of the government to stop the failed Christmas bomber is ultimately his own. We’ve come to expect this from our leaders — the ritual claiming of responsibility. I find it an empty gesture, unless it’s accompanied by an action that actually costs somebody something. To be sure, the…

Today I’m in sub-freezing, wet south Louisiana, where I flew yesterday from Phila. I’m picking up a couple of pieces of furniture from my mom and dad’s place, and driving it back to Dallas in the morning in a U-Haul. You can imagine how excited I am about driving a 14-foot moving van eight hours…

Via First Things and Doug LeBlanc comes fantastic news! Watch: About the filmmaker.

Sorry for the ultralight posting, folks. I’ve been traveling since early this morning, having been in Philadelphia this week to start my new job, and am completely wiped out. More substantive and frequent posting tomorrow, promise. I did want to put a question to the room about cross-country train travel in America. I’ve taken long(ish) train journeys in western…

The UK government has announced a new “food security” policy — and it’s not going to make localists happy. Excerpt: Imported beef. Genetically modified potatoes. The disappearance of those handy labels that tell you just how far your green beans travelled before reaching the grocery store shelf. This is the stuff of Jamie Oliver’s nightmares…

Kerry Howley is mostly pleased with Barbaran Ehrenreich’s jeremiad against the power of positive thinking. Excerpt from her review: All the Oprah-ready gurus you would expect to populate this polemic show up to share some advice–here’s Joel Osteen warning us never to “verbalize a negative emotion,” there’s Tony Robbins exhorting us to “Get motivated!” In…

OK, I’m going to confess to you now that Santa Claus brought the Dreher chirren a Wii for Christmas — and it was a fantastic purchase, for the most part. The kids are getting actual exercise (both boys came out of their rooms on Dec. 26 complaining that they were “sick” — their shoulders hurt…

Poking around the Templeton Report archives this afternoon, I found this news of a Templeton-funded research project that examined life among a geographic segment of economically disadvantage British teenagers. Here’s one of the things researchers found: Hodge Hill is one of the most economically disadvantaged areas in the UK, and three-quarters of its population is…

Evgeny Morozov says that Western geeks who think that Twitter and related information technologies are going to topple authoritarian governments are naive. Excerpt: But this is an anachronistic view of the world. Modern authoritarian states have eagerly (but selectively) embraced globalisation to provide their citizens with at least a modicum of self-actualisation without ever abandoning…

In Philadelphia, several historic Orthodox Christian parishes are on their last legs, because times have changed and so have the demographics of the areas they serve. From a long, interesting report in the Philadelphia Inquirer; Therein lies the challenge for the five historic Eastern Orthodox churches in Northern Liberties, some hanging on for dear life…
archives most recent
search this blog
More from Beliefnet and our partners