A belief that soldiers die due to the supposedly immoral actions of their home country need be neither ignorant nor unsophisticated (though it almost certainly need be wrong). For it to be ignorant, they would need to be unaware of the immediate cause of death (i.e., gunshot, explosion, etc.)- clearly they are not,…

Lucky Jack was my first thought, too.

I saw him open up for the Pixies around Thanksgiving 2009. I didn't know him enough to recognize him by sight, and I didn't know he was the opener when I got the tickets, so I thought it was just a local punk act. I gotta say, I think he sucked. Like, really bad.

By the salting of my fries,
Something tasty this way comes.

Many of Zeppelin's best songs are too long for radio, anyway (e.g., Tea For One, How Many More Times, Achilles Last Stand, In My Time of Dying). Therefore, I tend not to listen to the local Zeppelin block ("Stairway to Seven" on Boston's classic rock station), despite the fact that Zep is probably in my top five…

Oh, and by the way, the issue of terminology actually has some debate surrounding it. What I suppose you would call "non-charismatic evangelicals" don't like to call charismatics evangelical- much like, a few threads down the page, you evidently distinguish between "Lutherans" and "Calvinists"and "evangelicals," or…

As an evangelical Calvinist, I have to point out that your categories are somewhat lacking in proper specificity. If you mean "mainline Lutherans, mainline Calvinists," that's one thing, but evangelical kinds of both do exist. And, contrary to popular belief, not ALL of them are specially stupid, bigoted, or…

Obviously, one's opinion of what correct theology is would inform one's opinion on the quality of theological works, but I think Timothy Keller (PCA minister in NYC) is producing work as good as any (albeit, on a fairly popular level), that John Piper does good work, and that George Marsden (who, having attended…

Evangelical
does not mean charismatic. Charismatics speak in tongues, evangelicals do not (that is to say, generally- certainly, an evangelical minister would not).

While I agree in principle (separation of church and state), the examples you cite are entirely incorrect. Separating church and state does NOT mean preventing really religious people from governing- ergo, the elections of Reagan and Bush do not violate it. Incidentally, Reagan wasn't even much of a churchgoer.

"Isn't that the idea at the heart of religion?"
"That" (i.e., "just doing what we think we're supposed to, in the hopes that someone will notice and reward us") sounds exactly like what the apostle Paul called "self-made religion." One could, and I would, argue that "religion" as such is primarily the act of…

The problem was that he upstaged Charlie relentlessly. This is implied to have been the case in the past, as well.

What Zeppelin "stole" was mostly traditional folk/blues lyrics that had been reworked. Does it really matter if the lyrics to "Whole Lotta Love" weren't original? The riff is what's important, and the drum patterns.

By contrast, I attended a Catholic high school (granted, the official position of the Roman Church is a theistic evolutionary one) where every member of the science faculty and every member of the religious studies department taught Darwinian biology. This was, however, in Massachusetts- I make no claims regarding…

"One of the worst TV" you've seen? Well gosh, that must be a really bad TV, then.

La Pipe- that was Adelei Niska, and he was Russian.

I meant to say that the law-gospel dialectic is analogous to the Roman Catholic (or, more specifically, Scholastic/Thomistic) concept of the principles of "nature" and "grace."

And yet Calvin was the one who opened Geneva to Jewish folk while Luther was calling for them to be driven out of the nation and demanding that synagogues be burnt.

You could do a lot better, too. I vote for Dave Grohl, personally, and I know he would probably jump at the chance.

@Siapaise: Anglicans definitely have priests.