The Scriptorium Daily

Category: Politics

  • Liveblog of Inauguration

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    Fred Sanders
    in

    I love inaugurations, even when my candidate doesn’t win. I still have a marked-up newspaper copy of the first Clinton inaugural address in my files. Inauguration day is a great American event, and the high spirits surrounding the Obama inauguration take it to the next level. Here are some live reactions to the event, viewed…

  • Today Started Prohibition (1919)

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    Fred Sanders
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    It is hard to imagine, but 90 years ago, the Constitution was amended to make liquor illegal: no selling, manufacturing, or transporting beverage alcohol. If you look at all those progressive-era amendments to the Constitution, they’re all pretty interesting: 16th Amendment (1913): Federal Income Tax 17th Amendment (1913) Direct election of Senators 18th Amendment (1919)…

  • A Biblical Theology of the Arab Peoples

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    Fred Sanders
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    In these complicated days of geopolitical confusion, here is a straightforward question: What does the Bible say abut the Arab people? It’s a clear enough question, but who do you know who could put together more than a few sentences on the subject? There must be only a handful of such people, and one of…

  • The Color Line Through This Century

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    Fred Sanders
    in ,

    Even though it’s a big political week and I’ve been consuming much more news and political analysis than is healthy, I happened to be thinking about something else on Monday. I was browsing century-old Los Angeles Times stories for a project, and found this intriguing little report on an incident of racial unrest in L.A.…

  • Vote. A Right…

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    Jamie Campbell
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    Citizens of the United States of America are quick to argue that they have constitutional rights – for everything. Citizens defend clearly expressed rights such as the right to free speech, the right to not be searched or seized unreasonably, and the right to peaceably assemble. Citizens are also quick to “invent” rights not stated…

  • Leave it to a poet…

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    Matt Jenson
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    A selection from W. H. Auden, ‘The Poet & The City’, in The Dyer’s Hand and other essays (London: Faber and Faber, 1963), 86-87 …to speak sense into politics. ‘There are two kinds of political issues, Party issues and Revolutionary issues. In a party issue, all parties are agreed as to the nature and justice…

  • Voting as a Spiritual Discipline: Ten Tips

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    Fred Sanders
    in ,

    How do you keep a healthy spiritual life during an intensely political time? The political season, after all, is about to begin in earnest: in only one week the Democrats will open their national convention in Denver, and shortly after that the Republicans will convene in Minneapolis – St. Paul. In short order, running mates…

  • Martin Luther King, Jr: One Great Liberal Theologian

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    Fred Sanders
    in ,

    John Piper has the right idea about Martin Luther King Day: Don’t Waste It. In a timely memo, Piper exhorted all pastors and teachers who read his blog to “take note of the day and speak a word of exhortation to your people concerning their hearts in matters of race and ethnicity. … None of…

  • Praying on World AIDS Day

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    Matt Jenson
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    It’s World AIDS Day today. We tend to get faddish about issues. A buzz starts up about a particular need in the world, and many of us jump on a bandwagon of support, buying T-shirts and seeing movies and, sometimes, praying. Too often, our interest wanes as soon as the issue becomes ‘so last year.’…

  • Principles Poll Badly

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    Paul Spears
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    Imagine a world where slavery is still a normal part of our daily lives. What if the North under Abraham Lincoln’s presidency assented to the demands of the Southern states and allowed for both the continuation of slavery and the creation of new slave states? If Lincoln was the kind of man who was moved…

  • The End of Integration?

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    Matt Jenson
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    In a recent New York Times op-ed piece, David Brooks laments the ‘end of integration’. (Read the whole piece here.) Nothing is sadder than the waning dream of integration… Expecting integration, Americans find themselves confronting polarization and fragmentation. Amid all the problems that have made Americans sour and pessimistic, this is the deepest… But it…

  • A Simple Argument Against Secularism

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    Scriptorium Admin
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    John Mark Reynolds, 2004. Frequently, internet atheists argue that the American Constitution is a secular document. In one way, they are of course right. From a Christian point of view the Constitution governs the “secular authority.” It is for the City of Man and not the City of God. This is just a traditional Western…