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Writing

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

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City

The City of Cain

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…

by Richard BledsoeJune 25, 2020
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Empire

Twenty-Five Theses on Empire

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…

by John MilbankJune 23, 2020
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Coronavirus

Virtual Gnosticism and the Church – some disturbing thoughts about Covid19

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…

by Paul TysonJune 16, 2020
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American Culture

The Priorities of Priests and Protests

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…

by Uri BritoJune 15, 2020
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James

Anger, Riots, Violence, & Justice: How the Epistle of James Came to be Written

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…

by Jeff MeyersJune 9, 2020
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Proverbs

Lady Wisdom Eve

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,…

by Mark HorneJune 2, 2020

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History

St. Abraham

Rosenstock-Huessy strikingly sees the spirit of Francis in the person of Abraham Lincoln: “When Lincoln, as President and Commander-in-Chief of a victorious army, walked into Richmond in 1865, on foot, without escort, St. Francis had conquered the powers of this earth. In Siberia, in Egypt, people would whisper that old…

January 3, 2007
History

Reformation of gift

Natalie Zelmon Davis writes, “In a profound sense, the religious reformations of the sixteenth century were a quarrel about gifts, that is, about whether humans can reciprocate to God, about whether humans can put God under obligation, and about what this means for what people should give to each other.”

January 3, 2007

As if it were planned

Few areas of theology have been as ridiculed in modern times as eschatology. Antichrists, dragons, beasts, final judgments - it’s all superlatively mythological for modern rationalists. Sometime in the early part of the twentieth century, however, New Testament scholars began rediscovering the centrality of eschatology in NT theology. For some,…

January 3, 2007
Economics

Work and teaching

Discussing the separation of workplace and home, Rosenstock-Huessy makes the striking observation that this divide separates labor from a man’s “right to teach, once the supreme value of a master’s earthly life.”

January 3, 2007
History

Exorcising the family

The Protestant Reformation had well-known effects on the nuclear family, but Rosenstock-Huessy notes that a parallel movement occurred in the Roman Catholic church after 1500, when Catholics began to “lay far more stress on the cult of St. Joseph and on the conception of the Holy Family.” As a result,…

January 3, 2007
History

Childbirth again

In The Christian Future , Rosenstock-Huessy again makes some passing comments about childbirth. He is talking about the character of suburban life, its ethnic and economic uniformity, its placid and indifferent external peacefulness that hides, he claims, desperate inner conflicts. For Rosenstock-Huessy, the whole situation is summarized by the fact…

January 3, 2007

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