The movie version of “Beowulf” will come out on November 16. Not only does it feature Angelina Jolie as Grendel’s formidable mom, it utilizes new methods of combining live action with computer animation that some say may revolutionize filmmaking. We shall see about that. But the trailer looks promising:

One section of the Olasky Manifesto deserves separate discussion, what he says about gay marriage. He says that we must affirm the worth and human dignity of homosexuals and not consider their sin as worse than heterosexuals’ sins, but that we must certainly oppose gay marriage. But he makes a socially-conservative yet libertarian argument against it. Legalizing homosexual marriage, he says, citing another scholar, represents a HUGE growth of state power, with the state presuming by fiat to alter the most basic and most organic of all cultural institutions. Instead of keeping to its own sphere, the state becomes, literally, totalitarian, taking on total power over all of life.

(That last sentence is my conclusion.)

Marvin Olasky is the editor-in-chief of “World Magazine,” among many other things, including one of the foundational thinkers of welfare reform and the one who coined the phrase “compassionate conservatism, by which he meant having churches and other non-governmental groups step in to help people instead of leaving all that to the government. He has recently written a treatise on how Christian conservatives can get their act together to influence culture and politics in a more positive way. It’s called Add, Don’t Subtract.

He argues that Christians should not try to impose theocratic solutions, but that instead they need to rebuild the Reagan coalition of social conservativism with small-government, pro-freedom libertarianism. Christians should not come across as trying to subtract freedoms (or options, or people included), but rather as trying to add freedoms (and options and people included). Read the Olasky Manifesto (my term, not his) and tell me what you think.

By the writers of “The Office,” along with some of the show’s stars: (HT: Cap Stewart)