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

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Tyranny of the Agreeable

Inspired by the “Moscow Mood” Debate In a shocking 1961 study, Yale psychologist Stanley Milgram would don an official-looking white lab coat and tell a volunteer to administer increasing shocks to another “volunteer” in an adjacent room strapped into an “electric chair” just out of sight. The shocks were incrementally…

by John CarpenterJuly 22, 2024
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Apostle Paul

Why Doesn’t Paul Quote Jesus?

My title and the substance of the article are borrowed from a section of David Wenham’s excellent book, Paul: Follower of Jesus or Founder of Christianity? I am appropriating ideas from the pages in his book which address the question, “Why Does Paul refer to Jesus’ Life and Ministry so…

by Ralph Allan SmithJuly 9, 2024
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James

The Epistle of James: Shotgun or Sniper

Some of us may be familiar with the notion that the epistle of James is like a New Testament version of Proverbs or other wisdom literature. According to this line of thinking, the epistle of James (together with the other wisdom literature) is basically a collection of timeless sayings without…

by Chris JohnsonJuly 4, 2024
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Virtue

Doing What You Don’t Want to Do

This summer I started walking a long trail that ran north from our home. On my best days, I would walk a total of five miles at a brisk pace. This trail follows the power lines that serve a significant portion of North Dallas and stretches far past the two…

by Mandi GerthJune 25, 2024
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American Culture

Is Queer Theology Christian?

I am an Australian. I went to the American Academy of Religion mega-fest last year to meet up with some friends, to present a paper at a ‘science and religion’ panel, and to marvel at the sheer scale of how Americans do things. It was quite a ride. Looking at…

by Paul TysonJune 18, 2024
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Ecclesiology

Consumerism, Oikos, and the Role of Women in the Church (Part 4)

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 We evangelicals do not often understand the roles of men and women in ministry. Because our consumerist culture has gutted the notion of family as it was historically understood, all Biblical passages about women in church ministry (a familial organism) are almost incomprehensible to…

by John CarpenterJune 11, 2024

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Anti-Catholicism and Religious Freedom

John Pinheiro's Missionaries of Republicanism is, according to the subtitle, a “religious history of the Mexican-American War.” He shows how the war was infused with religious themes, linking American Protestantism with Anglo-Saxonism and Manifest Destiny. Near the heart of the religious justification of the war was anti-Catholicism: The United States…

August 17, 2015

Complacent City

John condemns harlot Babylon for her luxury. The Greek word is strenos , which is used only once in the LXX, to describe the “complacency” of Sennacherib (2 Kings 19:28). The Hebrew term behind it is sha'anan , which describe the women of Jerusalem (Isaiah 32:9, 11), those who are…

August 17, 2015

Unique Minority

In a contribution to the 1988 volume, Eliminating Racism , Thomas Pettigrew explained the uniqueness of the African-American experience, which “uniquely combines a long history of being simultaneously an integral part and on the outside of the society” (23). Few of even the most racist Americans consider blacks to be…

August 17, 2015

The Demographics of Exile

When Israel was deported to Babylonian exile, it would have been natural for Israelites to reason that they ought to limit the size of their families and wait for a return to the land. It might even be best to avoid marriage/ After all, who wants to support a wife…

August 17, 2015

Sociality in Modern Cities

Since Ferdinant Toennies introduced the categories, sociologists have often contrasted the gemeinschaftlich forms of social life in traditional societies with the gesellschaftlich forms in modernity. As Nancy Ammerman explains the distinction, the former are marked by “affectivity, particularism, ascription, and diffuseness. In such communities, relationships had emotional depth, were idiosyncratic,…

August 14, 2015

Race and Rootedness

Charles Bambach's Heidegger's Roots is an attempt to trace the roots of Heidegger's affinity for Naziism. The “roots” of the title have a double meaning - both the intellectual background to Heidegger and Heidegger's formulation of Bodenstandigkeit , “rootedness.” Early on, Bambach summarizes Ernst Bloch's “caustic and penetrating” response to…

August 14, 2015

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