Archive for Random Thoughts
I have said many times that I am not a pacifist, but that I have genuine respect for those who are. I also believe it is important to understand the arguments for pacifism from a Christian perspective. Today I found out that from now until Sunday you can get the Kindle edition of Christian Pacifism: Fruit of the Narrow Way (30th Anniversary Edition) for free on Amazon.com. I have not read the book yet, but I have heard good things about it, and who can pass up a free book like this?
My friend Aaron Taylor made me aware of this find. He found this description of the book:
Originally published by Friends United Press, copyright 1981, Christian Pacifism: Fruit of the Narrow Way, by Michael [C] Snow [Earlham School of Religion, ‘81], is now in an “ebook” edition.
In the new Preface, the author writes, “May we all continue to seek first His Kingdom… I pray that this new release…will be a help to pilgrims on that path.”
The original book finally came off the press in January of 1982. It was featured as the selection of the month for the Quaker Book Club in March. The cover art, by graphic artist Susanna Combs, was also featured in a poster and on the cover of Quaker Life for the July-August issue of that year.
In the review in The Friend (UK), Eva Pinthus wrote, “There are few Friends, and even fewer books, that can help evangelical Christians to become convinced of the truth of the Friends’ peace testimony…. Thus we welcome Michael Snow’s rather brief but challenging book.”
Though the original book is currently out-of-print, it has remained readily available through online used book vendors. And a WorldCat library search via the internet shows that it is still available at over 50, mostly university and seminary libraries.
I hope you’ll find this book beneficial. Check it out at Amazon.com.
Tags: Bible, pacifism, theology, war
The Story of Broke Response
Posted by: |Art Carden is a Christian economist who has a knack for bringing complex subjects down to understandable terms. While he already writes for Forbes.com, Mises.org, and other major online sites, I’ve been encouraging him to submit articles relating to faith and economics to LCC for a while. I’m sure he’ll take me up on that offer someday, but for now I’d love to share one of his videos that was recently posted on LearnLiberty.org that is simply phenomenal.
His previous videos are primarily educational, and while his newest one does educate, it’s extremely practical. As a response to a left-liberal video called The Story of Broke (same creators as The Story of Stuff), it sets an example of how to talk about public choice problems and the knowledge problem while at the same time agreeing with much of the critique of our current system. It’s simple, and brilliant. Add to that the amazing production effects (seriously, there are sharks in this video!), and it’s a wonderful 4-minute video.
Check it out:
Tags: Art Carden, economics, public choice, story of broke, story of stuff, subsidies
Welcome to 2012, Christian libertarian friends
Posted by: |A new year has begun. Demarcations of time such as this give us time to reflect on what is in the past and what is now before us.
Politically and culturally, we saw many things to distress us. War, economic destruction, creeping statism, loss of liberty – it only seemed to get worse throughout the year. Nonetheless, we also continue to see good signs ahead. The younger generation of libertarians is rising up and making a difference, we see it in groups like Libertarian Longhorns and Students for Liberty. The Ron Paul 2012 campaign is clearly having an impact. Something is happening, and we have yet to see how events will unfurl.
2011 was also a big year for LibertarianChristians.com, but I am absolutely certain that 2012 will be even bigger. The presidential election is an opportunity to reach out like never before to Christians desperately searching for an alternative to the behemoth state. LCC is being seen around the world like never before. I’ve never seen so much activity and discussion here and on social networks like Facebook and Twitter about Christianity and libertarianism. I’m committing myself to being extra-vigilant this year to bring you the best content I can offer, so that we can all keep building on this momentum.
I hope that you find a way this year to make a difference for Christ and for liberty. I hope especially that you find opportunities to show Christians the rightness and value of true political liberty.
What do you want to do this year? What do you want to see LCC do? Let us know in the comments…
Tags: christian libertarian, liberty
Can the government create a holiday out of thin air?
Posted by: |Today is Veteran’s Day, and there has been some interesting discussion on the new Christian Libertarian Facebook group about it. But one thing came to my mind as I was reading the posts… Does anybody – conservative or liberal or whatever in between – ever wonder why the government has the power to just suddenly establish holidays? From what I can tell, there are two problems with this:
(1) A holiday officially declared by the Federal Government is unconstitutional. There is no power in the Constitution to establish a holiday, or to do 99% of the other things the Feds do for that matter. This gets particularly ironic with “Constitution Day”, which unconstitutionally requires unconstitutionally established educational institutions to teach about – you guessed it – the Constitution. Although C-day is not strictly speaking a “holiday” where certain privileged classes (i.e. government workers) get a day off, the contradictory nature of it all is biting.
(2) Government-established holidays subtly reinforce the meta-narrative of the-state-as-religion, because a holiday is, after all, a "holy day". I get the idea of commemorating events, that’s fine, and obviously a day like Veteran’s Day isn’t treated the same way as true "holy days" like Christmas or Easter, but it still rubs me the wrong way.
What do you think?
Tags: civil religion, government, holidays, libertarianism
Norman Horn is the creator and primary writer for LCC. Learn a little bit about him in the 