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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Christians founded universities in medieval Europe. They were Christian institutions, but no one (to my knowledge) sat down to work out an explicitly Christian model of education before starting a university. Universities were Christians instinctively rather than self-consciously. Dittos for many of the other Christian institutions that arose during the…
At the Trinity House site , Pastor Rich Bledsoe compares Protestant-Catholic conflicts to family quarrels, and argues that Protestants need to enter an adult relationship with the Catholic church.
One of Danah Boyd’s points in It’s Complicated: The Social Lives of Networked Teens is that teens have much less freedom of movement than teens of the past, and so are nudged toward virtual rather than face-to-face relations. As Alissa Quart sums it up in her NYTBR review: “In her…
Carl Trueman posted Rusty Reno’s barroom analysis of the Biola panel on the future of Protestantism. He writes in part: “Both of us, in a sense, see an epochal change taking place in American Christianity. As far as conservative Protestantism is concerned, I connect this to the collapse of traditional…
Writing at Slate , William Saletan says that “There will always be Christians, Muslims, and Jews who condemn homosexuality. There will be bigots, bashers, and demagogues. And in some places, particularly in Africa and Asia, there will be persecution and oppressive laws. But in this country, religious resistance is crumbling.…
In the wilderness, Israel eats they know not what, which they call “manna,” “What is it?” The Old Testament describes it as being like something flakey ( chaspas ) like frost ( kafor ; Exodus 16:14). Alternatively it is like bedellium ( bedolach ; Numbers 11:7), which doesn’t seem like…
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