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Writing

Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.

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American Politics

“Not our President”?

I think I want to respectfully disagree with Doug Wilson here . I understand him to be saying that if a candidate for elective office won that office through election fraud, that he would not really hold that office even if he was installed. I don’t have any comment to…

by Mark HorneDecember 2, 2020
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Advent

Peace on Earth

When I was a young girl, each Christmas my grandmother would send us a sweet little ornament to hang on the tree. I still have many of those ornaments decorating my home. For a few years in a row, she selected ornaments with people from around the globe smiling or…

by Lindsey TollefsonDecember 1, 2020
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Manhood

The Paradox of Masculinity

I am a man. I came from a man. I have been around many men. I read books about men. Occasionally I have the opportunity to directly disciple men. And now that I have a son I have the great responsibility of teaching him to be a man. One may…

by Brian G DaigleNovember 24, 2020
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Architecture

Bodies and Architecture

It seems at least sane to believe that past societies experienced upheaval and disarray quite like what we are experiencing today. Perhaps we are witnessing something altogether new or greater in degree than what peoples witnessed in the past, but it doesn’t seem likely. History is filled with fissures and…

by Joe McCulleyNovember 17, 2020
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Feast

The Church Potluck and the Biopolitical

“But for those of us to whom urban life is necessary and who cannot forego eating men, it is to our advantage to frequent the countries where one finds the most of them.” -Rousseau At All Saints Anglican in Honolulu, where I serve as rector, it has been our practice…

by Mark BriansNovember 10, 2020
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Biblical Studies

The Heel of Joshua

The Scriptures are replete with stories of deception. And often, strangely, it is those who we regard as righteous who are doing the deceiving. And, even more strangely, their deception is often rewarded, or even praised. Consider Jacob, Tamar, the Egyptian midwives, Rahab, to name just a few. Frustratingly for…

by Rhys LavertyNovember 3, 2020

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Eucharistic tea

In his lovely book of meditations on art, New York City, 9/11, American culture, Japan, and Christianity ( Refractions: A Journey of Faith, Art, and Culture ), Makoto Fujimura tells the story of Sen no Rikyu, “the sixteenth-century tea master who is most responsible for the development of the art…

September 16, 2009
Art

Art and faith

Toward the end of “On Seeking God,” Nicholas of Cusa has this to say: “when an artists seeks the face of a king in a block of wood, the artists rejects everything else that is limited except the face itself.  For the artist sees in the wood, through the concept…

September 16, 2009

Douglas and the Quadriga

Mary Douglas highlighted the analogies between body and social body in her work on Levitical defilements.  Protecting the integrity and wholness of the individual body symbolized the aspirations of Israelite society for a whole and well-protected social body, without intrusions from outside or seepage from inside. At the same time,…

September 15, 2009

Flesh v. Spirit?

Mary Douglas writes in Leviticus As Literature that the word translated as “swarming” or “creeping” should instead be translated as “teeming,” with its connotations of fertility.  Israel is to avoid teeming things, Douglas argues, because Israel is to make a distinction between covenant and fertility.  Israel is not to hate…

September 15, 2009

Nation of Nazirites

Nazirites were separated to Yahweh’s service and devoted to His holy war.  Priests too were “separated” ( nazir , Leviticus 22:2). But Israel as a whole was a nation of devoted warriors.  That is the whole rationale for the laws of cleanliness, that the sons of Israel will be “nazired”…

September 15, 2009
Theology

Defeated theology

Von Balthasar says that the “ethos of the theology in Bonaventure is . . . quite different from the ethos in Thomas Aquinas, whose philosophical point of view tries to reflect the order of the world as rigorously and clearly as possible.  In Bonaventure, there is something defeated from the…

September 14, 2009

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