Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Not long ago, I heard these statistics about New York City: New York City is in $100 billion in debt. 20% of all NYC residents are on food stamps, which cost $250 million a month. 5% of NYC population are on disability, costing $252 million a month. Other assistance costs…
1. All political power is ambivalent. Vertical violence of “the state” tends to limit horizontal and contested power between people and between tribes. “The State” brings new oppression, but also a measure of new peace and unity. 2. All political formations are ambiguous like this: a strong family conquers weaker…
Gnosticism by any other name would smell the same. But does the church have much of a theological sense of smell, these days, when it comes to the seductions of virtuality in our worshipping communities? Social isolation during a global pandemic makes good public health sense, but whether church should…
It is a remarkable thing, you know, this thing called priority. Just a few weeks ago, religious leaders were boldly asserting in their high-dollar online videos that it was too dangerous to return to worship and that we needed to listen to our political and health leaders. "They are the…
Somewhere in the city of Jerusalem on a rooftop just a few years after the ascension of Jesus and the outpouring of the Spirit on Pentecost. . . ". . . and just when are you guys going to live up to your ‘Sons of Thunder’ reputation? Huh? A lot…
In my book, Solomon Says: Directives for Young Men ( Amazon , Kindle ) I mention that Solomon portrays wisdom as a woman. But I don’t ask (or answer!) why he did so. Solomon uses the figure of Lady Wisdom without apology or explanation: Wisdom cries aloud in the street,…
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A t the New Yorker , Blythe Roberson is having fun imagining futuristic updates of Jane Austen's novels. Real-life efforts to update Austen aren't nearly as much fun. Paula Hollingsworth ends her The Spirituality of Jane Austen by summarizing the plots of the novels in the “Jane Austen Project,” a…
P aul writes letters. Letter-writing—or mail electronically composed and delivered—has become so commonplace that we don't immediately grasp the significance of Paul's activity. Noting the Old Testament background will shake us from our privatized assumptions about epistle-writing. There are two main words for “letter” in the Old Testament. The first,…
F ew studies of the Reformation, writes Alexandra Walsham ( The Reformation of the Landscape ), “have considered how it affected attitudes and practices associated with the world of trees, woods, springs, rocky outcrops, caves, mountain peaks, and other striking topographical features” of Britain. Studies of early modern England “have…
R itualism was a major issue in mid-nineteenth-century Anglicanism. Though inspired by the Tractarians, the ritualists went much further in elaborating the Anglican liturgy. As Peter Marsh puts it ( Victorian Church in Decline ), “For over thirty years the High Church clergy, however moderate, had been raising the standards…
J ohn Calvin isn't the first theologian who comes to mind when thinking about either liturgy or art, much less the combination of the two. W. David O. Taylor thinks that's unfortunate, and his recent Theater of God's Glory is an effort to rehabilitate Calvin as a resource for liturgical…
Boyd Hilton writes (in Age of Atonement ) about Evangelical “aetiology of business immorality” that emerges from 19th-century sermons, novels, and pamphlets: Once “fallen,” commercial man becomes a prey to materialism. His business absorbs too much of his life, and colours all his thoughts and actions, leaving no time for…
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