One of the arguments in the book I’m working on is that evangelical politics might have taken a very different direction if Democrats had not turned so decisively pro-choice in the wake of Roe v. Wade. In the early 1970s nearly all of the influential Catholic Democrats–including the just-buried Ted Kennedy–held pro-life views. That changed by the 1980s, as Ross Douthat explains in this NYT article.
August 2009
Monthly Archive
August 31, 2009
August 28, 2009
As I was leaving my office in Flanner at 5 p.m. this afternoon, I stumbled on an amusing scene: four students on their knees were pouring cans of beer onto the grass with a burly security guard standing akimbo over their little project. Their weekend just got little more sober!
August 27, 2009
I grew up, like many of you I expect, looking at this picture in my grandparents’ kitchen. Here’s some history about it.
August 26, 2009
The school year has started. I had my first day teaching American Religious History from 11:45 to 1 p.m. today at Notre Dame’s DeBartolo Hall. We went over the syllabus, after which I gave a narrated slide show of my family’s religious history. I surveyed how my ancestors practiced their faith as they responded to Native attacks during the French and Indian War, urbanization, acculturation, new technologies, and vocational shifts. And then we discussed how their stories reflected course themes of American identity, the promise and peril of American faith in progress, the changing character of American responsibility and power globally, and the nature of American exceptionalism (if it is at all).
–David
August 25, 2009
Andrew and Jonathan lost their Play-Doh privileges some time ago when they demonstrated a complete incapability for using it without tearing it into tiny pieces and grinding them into the carpet. During their nap time recently I let Benjamin give it a try. He did much better than they ever have–and had a lot of fun.
