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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Traci Slatton, novelist wife of sculptor Sabin Howard, is ecstatic about sculpture. Her 2011 Art of Life is a passionate, occasionally overwrought, defense of sculpture as the master art, filled with photos of her husband’s stunning classical figures. She points out the complexity of sculpting. While a painting presents a…
James ends his epistle with instructions to believers in various conditions of need. The suffering are instructed to pray, the joyful to sing, and the sick to call for the elders who will anoint the sick and raise him up. The three instructions match the three offices of Christ and…
Joy is the keynote of the new heavens and new earth that Yahweh will create, as Isaiah announces in the chiastically structured prophecy in 65:18: A. Be glad ( sus ) B. and rejoice ( giyl ) forever C. in what I myself create C’. for behold I create Jerusalem…
Things are not as they should be, and Judah calls for Yahweh to descend to help. Rip the heavens, shake the earth, boil the sea; tear the three-story house of the universe apart brick by brick, but come down to help! (Isaiah 64). Judah has come to acknowledge that she’s…
Shlomo Sand’s forthcoming How I Stopped Being A Jew is a sharp slap to the brain. He challenges many of today’s tropes of Jewishness - the notion that there is a “Jewish culture,” the exclusive attention to Jewish suffering at the hands of Nazis, the contempt of Yiddish language and…
It’s one of the most dramatic illustrations of the unsurpassability of the Christian era: During the Enlightenment, secular thinkers and Deists turned against the established churches. Their reason was that the churches interfered with their hope for the unity of the human race. As Guy Stroumsa puts it ( A…
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