Man is only a reed, the weakest in nature, but he is a thinking reed. There is no need for the whole universe to take up arms to crush him: a vapour, a drop of water is enough to kill him. But even if the universe were to crush him, man would still be nobler than his slayer, because he knows that he is dying and the advantage the universe has over him. The universe knows none of this.

Blaise Pascal
Pensées

• There have been a couple of responses to President Obama’s much-discussed invitation to speak at the Notre Dame’s commencement at First Things. Lacy Dodd, a Notre Dame alumnus and Army officer who became pregnant at Notre Dame and made the decision to keep her child writes that Notre Dame needs to take an “unambiguous stand for life,” and Mary Ann Glendon refuses Notre Dame’s Laetare Medal in an open letter to Fr. John I. Jenkins. HBU’s own Hunter Baker has provided an interesting follow-up post at Touchstone’s blog, Mere Comments. For a perspective on the larger issues at work here, it is worth reading John G. Turner’s review of Jon A. Shields’s The Democratic Virtues of the Right over at Books & Culture.
• Carson Holloway has an insightful essay over at Public Discourse regarding the rhetorical strategy of advocates of gay marriage. He writes: “One of the most troubling aspects of the same-sex marriage movement is the rhetorical strategy it so frequently employs: denunciation of its opponents. The most vocal and prominent advocates of same-sex marriage seem to prefer condemning those who disagree as bigots to refuting the arguments for preserving marriage as a union between a man and a woman. Moreover, this tendency is found not just among partisan activists, where one might expect it even while lamenting it, but even among the voices of the most venerable institutions.” Read the rest here.
• Our own Robert Sloan has begun to blog for Touchstone’s Mere Comments as well. Dr. Sloan’s first post is a response to Jon Meacham’s article in Newsweek on the decline of Christianity in the United States. Read it here.
• Though he perhaps misses the personal rather than theological nature of Joe Knippenberg’s review of Francis Beckwith’s Return to Rome in our Spring issue, Mathew Milliner nevertheless has some interesting thoughts on the Catholic question here and here.
• Last, Daniel A. Siedell, author of God in the Gallery, engages the question of what makes great art from a Christian perspective. Christian artists of the world, unite!

If you have not already received it, you will soon find in your mailbox the latest issue of The City for Winter 2008. It features many interesting articles, focusing in large part on American politics and the recent historic presidential election. There are also some excellent pieces on what it means to be a young evangelical, and the undercurrent of faith in the works of Cormac McCarthy.

The contents are as follows – we’ll be posting some of these here over the coming weeks:

where do we go from here: a forum
Joseph Knippenberg + David Blankenhorn
Francis Cianfrocca + Susan McWilliams
Peter Lawler + Ryan T. Anderson
Frederica Matthewes-Green

on faith
The New Evangelical Scandal + Matthew Lee Anderson
The Muslim Other + Louis Markos
God’s Love & Life’s Storms + Tony Woodlief

on books
Faith, Fear & Cormac McCarthy : Christopher Badeaux
Grand New Party? : Jon D. Schaff
Schama’s America : Joshua Trevino
The Poetry of Salvation : Micah Mattix

With two poems by the award-winning Catherine Tufariello and the Word Spoken by John Witherspoon.

Hello and welcome to Civitate: The City Online, the ongoing internet-based conversation around Houston Baptist University’s The City. As our publication only comes to you thrice-annually, Civitate.org will give you the opportunity to read and consider the writings and thoughts of our contributors in between issues, providing you with topical articles from prior volumes, links to other fascinating content around the web, and new material from our contributors in podcast form!

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The Editors