Issue Archives

5.2 – Winter 2009 – Table of Contents

Links to stories coming soon.
In the meantime, click image above for a PDF.

- Editor’s Note -
The Vision
by Samir Paul ‘10

– The Dispatch –
III: Why Go To Church?
Anne Goetz ‘10; Jinju Pottenger, Princeton; Sarah White, Dartmouth ‘11; Michael Giuffrida, Yale ‘12

– Opinions –
An Interview with Francis Collins
Questions by the staff of… more »

The Good, the Bad, and the Cranky: A Review of Gran Torino

I tend to be cautious about movies produced and directed by their stars. Turning the camera on oneself begets temptations to egotism that few can completely resist. The worst of such films fetishize their leading men, and even the best, like Braveheart, feel a bit top-heavy. Mel Gibson might have been manly and epic enough… more »

War and the American Difference

America is assumed to be different. We are different because Christianity is thought still to thrive in America. Whereas Christianity is allegedly dying in Europe, it seems alive and well in America. That Christianity still seems a vital faith in America confirms for many the contention that there is an inherent link between Christianity and… more »

Editor’s Note: What is it Good For?

Editor’s Note
What is it Good For?
I was seven when I first saw war.  It was 1995, and NATO had recently entered Bosnia, joining a conflict marked by incredibly brazen war crimes, including ethnic cleansing and brutal mass rape.
As the conflict raged on that September, I watched from the safety of my living room in DC’s… more »

The Dispatch II: When Should Christians Go To War?

Samir Paul, Harvard
Let us reframe the question: Do we take the hope of Christ seriously enough actually to trust in it?
Nonviolence is a consequence of hearing the glad tidings of the Gospel. It follows from obedience to the messiah who would rather die than take up the sword of revolutionary violence, the God who does… more »

Bonhoeffer and Pacifism

Courage and cruelty, honor and horror, miraculous escapes and damning coincidences are the stuff of film and novel, but also — at singular moments of history, for some few people — the stuff of life. In the wild days of World War II, a mild-mannered young German pastor, a theologian of some note and a… more »

Just Peacemaking in the Context of Terrorism and Nuclear Threat

For too long, people have interpreted Jesus’ teachings of peacemaking practices as Platonic ideals, high and beautiful, but not practical in real life. But when Jesus taught the leaders in Jerusalem that they needed to practice peacemaking or the temple would be destroyed, he was talking realistically about a real threat and about the practical… more »