Raimon Panikkar has died.

1. Field of Greens has been in Houston a long time–I don’t know why it took us 12 years to find it. I’ve gone twice by myself for lunch, and took the wife and son there yesterday. There are lots of vegan options (and many of the vegetarian items can be easily modified). The food…

Maybe it’s time to start a food blog. Or maybe not quite, but I’m in the mood to do some blogging about food. I think I’ve decidedly gone vegetarian now–even largely vegan. The final straw was a recent physical that showed my cholesterol was still at 211, despite a largely vegetarian diet. The problem was,…

Take a look at the nutritional info in a SmashBurger (a chain that has recently opened stores in Houston). One burger has 1010 calories, 62g of fat, 1743mg of sodium! Notice also that a few things are missing from the list–cholesterol, for instance. “Zero” here doesn’t mean it doesn’t have any–only that the report doesn’t…

Chef Robert St. John, writing about the difficulties of catering for vegans , says he was a vegetarian for a whole month.  “It wasn’t easy,” he says. “I actually became a carbotarian and lived on bread, cheese, and milk.” How does a chef, who should know all about these things called fruits and vegetables, eat…

The New York Times recently has an article questioning whether vegans or vegetarians should serve meat at their weddings for the sake of carnivores who attend. The comments section includes rants from guests who complain that they need to eat “real food,” and that the wedding isn’t about the couple, it’s about the guests, etc.,…

Guardian reports that the pope suggests, “It’s easy if you try.” Heaven for Benedict is an abstraction, being in God’s love, not a real place. They’re reporting on his homily for the feast of the Assumption. All of us are conscious today that with the term “heaven,” we do not refer to some place in…

My latest column at Adventist Today.

“Fearsome Pirate” writes about his seminary experience (Concordia) in a post entitled, “Seminary Detox.” Replace the names of places and people with the equivalents in your denomination and ask, “Are we like this?”

It’s the teachers’ union, and they are threatening boycot of the LA Times. Why? Because the newspaper dared to report public information about test scores of students, and linking them with teachers. “You’re leading people in a dangerous direction, making it seem like you can judge the quality of a teacher by … a test,”…

For a generation we’ve been told that we should target families in evangelism. They bring stability, and children, and money. Maybe. But they’re also part of a cohort that is unlikely to change their affiliation. Barna has an interesting report out, Do Americans Change Faiths? The first reality is that people are leaving Christianity faster…

The Toronto Vegetarian Association refused to allow the Ontario Conference of Seventh-day Adventists to participate in their Food Fair.  The reason? Because Seventh-day Adventists believe marriage is an institution rooted in Creation between a man and a woman. Some folks at Spectrum seem to think that the Ontario Conference should have done as the TVA…

I’m on the mailing list for a Catholic retreat center in Houston; their summer newsletter just arrived–an equal number of pages and raffle tickets! This brings me to something I never understood about Catholicism: the idea that ministries are to be supported by gambling. It’s not just raffles, of course. BINGO supports many a Catholic…

Tom Fox at NCR on SNAP and the LCWR–the umbrella organization of liberal women’s religious orders.

Seventh-day Adventists, like most other Christians, have their own insider language. For instance, many Adventists, when speaking with one another, will refer to other Christians as “Sunday-keepers.” I’ve never met a “Sunday-keeper” who would use the term of himself, though. It’s kind of funny, when you think about it, that Adventists gloss over all the…

University of St. Thomas once had a reputation for Catholic orthodoxy. Then a labyrinth was constructed next to the chapel. Now the university is collaborating with the Jung Center to host a conference. What next? Probably not a lecture by Mitch Pacwa.

Folks sometimes suggest that criticism of the atomic bombings arose only decades after the fact.  Commonweal has republished it’s August 24, 1945, editorial which demonstrates that criticism was immediate.

Paul McCain quotes Luther: “The invocation of the saints is also one of the Antichrist’s abuses that conflicts with the chief article and destroys the knowledge of Christ (Philippians 3:8). It is neither commanded nor counseled, nor has it any warrant in Scripture. Even if it were a precious thing–which it is not–we have everything…

Lutheran seminarians pick up a lot of Latin (at least they do if they go to a seminary that cares about theology and history). An important question in Lutheran history is the relationship between the Confessions and the Bible. The Bible is the standard, of course–but Lutherans also consider the Confessions a standard. One distinction…

Richard Fernandez writes: As the New York Times remembers Hiroshima, try this quiz. Name the two greatest losses of civilian life in the Pacific war. Hint. In both cases the civilian casualties were greater than Hiroshima’s. In one case the event took place on American soil. Casualties Hiroshima 70,000–80,000 Battle of Manila 100,000 Nanjing 300,000…