Religion

An obituary of a flamboyantly High Church Anglican priest reminds us why there must always be an England:

In Russia there is an old saying, ‘The first time is an accident. The second time is a coincidence. The third time is an enemy attack.’ Keep this old saying in mind while you consider the story of the 19-year-old Mormon missionary from Utah by the name of Mason Wells who, in an unfortunate string of ‘accidents’ and ‘coincidences,’ found himself at the epicentre of the West’s last three major terror attacks, spread across three cities and two continents on different sides of the world.

Submitted by Patrick Buchanan via Buchanan.org,

“We are not at war with Islam,” said John Kasich after the Brussels massacre, “We’re at war with radical Islam.”

Kasich’s point raises a question: Does the Islamic faith in any way sanction or condone what those suicide bombers did?

For surely the brothers and their accomplice who ignited the bombs in the airport and set off the explosion on the subway did not do so believing they were blasting themselves to hell for all eternity.

According to a study, critical or scientific thinking, operates on a different path in the brain than religious or supernatural thinking. Scientists say the opposition between religious beliefs and scientific evidence can be explained by difference in brain structures and cognitive activity. They found that critical thinking is suppressed in the brains of people who believe in the supernatural. The two paths are not reconcilable, however great religious scientists of the past somehow benefited from a balance between the two ways of thinking.

My friend Nathan Finn, Dean of the Theology school at Union University, has written a really interesting piece about the Benedict Option, from a Southern Baptist point of view. He calls is the Paleo-Baptist Option. Excerpts: