Marginal Christianity

                Many (including myself) have taken a run at the “gun thing” in recent days in the wake of the terrible shootings in Connecticut.   The questions have been largely pragmatic (will more or less guns keep us “safer”?), political (what can or will the Obama administration do about guns?), constitutional (what, in fact, is the significance of the 2 nd Amendment?), or comparative   (what have other countries done and would what they have done work for us?).   All these are, of course, valid and valuable questions.                   Fewer responses have been genuinely theological.   Perhaps the responses from the Religious Right have seemed so wrongheaded and headed in a wrong direction that others have chosen to stay out of that part of the discussion.   One, however, has not.   And ...

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/jesuscreed/2012/07/18/gary-wills-on-political-purity/ July 18, 2012 By scotmcknight From NYReview of Books by Gary Wills — his advocacy for political realism and not political idealism: Roberto Unger, descended from a famous Brazilian family, is a respected philosopher, a famous political activist, and a professor at the Harvard Law School (tenured there, thirty-six years ago, at the unusually young age of twenty-nine). He has many just grounds for being famous. But he is best known now, in recent news items, for having taught Barack Obama two courses at Harvard. The professor has released a special video saying that he is too principled to have any further dealings with his former student. His message is that “Obama must be defeated” for failing to advance the progressive agenda. I freely admit that Unger’s principles are better than Obama’s, that next to him Obama’s credentials as a progressive are muddied and blunted. If I had to choose between th...