Video: Robert Louis Wilken on The First Thousand Years

Robert Louis Wilken Discusses 'The First Thousand Years' at 2013 VaBook


Impertinent Questions with Robert Louis Wilken by Meredith Hindley

Items of Interest, 5 March 2012

A brief legal (and mildly political) analysis of the NDAA



First Heretical Notions, now Paul Gottfried: A Modest Secessionist Proposal

Thomas Fleming, Putin and Democracy, American-Style
Kevin Carson, To Vote, or Not to Vote?
Ted Galen Carpenter, Enlisting America
Peter Hitchens, Pay Cops – a Grim Prophecy May be Coming True
James Howard Kunstler, Reality Check
Christopher Shannon on L. Brent Bozell: "Freedom or Virtue?" Revisited

Counterpunch:
PAM MARTENS AND RUSS MARTENS, Koch Brothers, Worth $50 Billion, Sue Widow Over $16.00 of Nonprofit’s Stock
KARL GROSSMAN, Nuclear Power and the Big Lie
MIKE WHITNEY, Mom and Pop Investors Call It Quits
PATRICK COCKBURN, Israel’s Huff and Puff Game

Economics:
Uneconomic growth deepens depression by Herman Daly (EB)
Debt and the Transition economy by Joanne Poyourow (EB)

Relocalization and Agrarianism:
It’s Not a Fairytale: Seattle to Build Nation’s First Food Forest
Making local food our future: A community response to the global food system by Katharine Darling (EB)
Our co-owned future by Gar Alperovitz (EB)
I got the power! by Charlotte Du Cann (EB)
Kick Wall Street to the curb, get $15 trillion by Erik Curren
Reclaiming domesticity from a consumer culture

Catholic:
Robert L. Wilken, Tutoring the Affections: Liturgy and Christian Formation in the Early Church

Dr. Mahrt's book, The Musical Shape of the Liturgy, is now available! We've waited a century for this work.

Penitence and Repentance: A Lenten Primer
Women and the Priesthood by Renee Pomarico

Education:
Why We Study Plato By Dr. Brian T. Kelly

History:
The Village Ale-Wife: Women and Brewing in Fourteenth-Century England
The Medieval Horse Harness: Revolution or Evolution? A Case Study in Technological Change
Why did the Anglo-Saxons not become more British?
North-European Trading Centres and the Early Medieval Craftsman; Craftsmen at Åhus, north-eastern Scania, Sweden ca. AD 750-850+
The myth of the medieval chastity belt

Food:
Barbecue Styles Across the United States: An Introduction

Music:
Belfry Fellows (FB)- Gotta Little Somethin'


The Renaissance of Polyphony by Damian Fowler

Harmonia Early Music: I Am Woman, Hear Me Sing

Book Event: Sisterhood of Dune by Brian Herbert

Book Event: Sisterhood of Dune by Brian Herbert from Suvudu on Vimeo.

Reading blogs, continued...

Rod Dreher is still attracting the same crowd as before, mostly people who are not sympathetic to his traditionalism and beliefs about sexual morality. Some of them are regulars from his old blog and a few participate elsewhere at The American Conservative blogs. Again, I find it pointless to wade through the comments and to respond to those who are objecting to traditional morality. Most of them are not there to dialogue but to object. One particular commentator who also participates at FPR is annoying; it's like he is playing "bishop," pronouncing the truth that must be accepted, even though his actual brand of Orthodoxy is rather suspect. So I should return to the default: skimming the articles and avoiding the comments.

One should be on guard against the temptation to express an opinion about everything; I don't think we outgrow disliking the vocal know-it-all. These thoughts are not new, but I have not posted them before (I may have an unfinished post stating the same things). What of Mr. Dreher's crunchy conservatism? Is he making any "converts" among conservatives Republicans?  He may be able to maintain a dialogue on questions of economics with non-Republicans, but he does not seem to be making any headway with respect to other aspects of traditional morality. It is not apparent to me that many of his readers are really that interested in embracing a more "crunchy" lifestyle.

Are most online discussions/debates that welcome people of differing viewpoints useless? Various Christians, including the Pope, hope that the Holy Spirit can work through the Internet, but if people are just coming to Christian blogs looking for a fight then they have a moral obstacle to conversion. How many sincere seekers are there? How many are instead parasites enjoying the attention they get and being able to one-up (in their minds) the proprietor of the blog? It seems likely that those who visit the Catholic Answers Forums have a different intent than those visiting Mr. Dreher's blog. (I don't know what the policy of the CA Forums is regarding trolls.)

Dos dialogue have to take place within some form of community for it to be worthwhile? I am working on a post about this at the other blog. Can the early Church tell us anything about dialogue? Did the early Christians get involved with dialogue, as opposed to apologetics? I have the impression that they did not expect to persuade anyone to become Christian through arguments; rather, they answered various allegations against Christians or the Christian faith, for example that Christian dogma contradicts reason or is irreligious. Perhaps someone like Robert Louis Wilken could shed some light on this.

What of the harmony between faith and reason? Did the Church wait to cultivate reason after the "triumph of faith"? I think the harmony was already being observed and reason exercised within the early Christian communities through theology, but it was not a project directed ad extra ecclesiae, except in apologetics?

I haven't decided whether I'll adjust the links according to my current daily reading preferences -- that part of the blog does need some cleaning. Still contemplating redirecting my time and energy towards the writing project, and its reflections like this post that cause me to question whether I should continue writing original blog posts.

Related links:
Robert Wilken: Ordered from the beginning
Robert Louis Wilken, "Catholicism and Culture"
His review of Among the Gentiles: Greco-Roman Religion and Christianity by Luke Timothy Johnson

Robert Louis Wilken, Culture and the Light of Faith

First Things: Culture and the Light of Faith
How Christianity embraced and transformed Classical culture
Robert Louis Wilken

Robert Louis Wilken, Rescuers, Not Invaders
The strange history of failed attempts to resist Islam's spread
(via First Thoughts)

The Gift of the West by Robert Louis Wilken

the book