Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
In my last essay, we saw how consumer culture has gutted the familial category necessary to understand the church. When a consumer visits a church, he expects another service-provider, such as a hospital or a restaurant. He doesn’t understand the role of men in ministry, and thus, not the role…
First time visitors to our church sometimes express their surprise that children, even the youngest, participate with their parents in the entire worship service. Many congregations created an expectation for the parents (and children) of Sunday School or Child Care being available during the entire worship service or during the…
Quantifying the Love of God “For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, that whosoever believes in him should not perish, but have everlasting life” ~ John 3:16 This most beloved verse in all the Bible was spoken by the Savior himself to Nicodemus. As…
While The Lord’s Prayer enjoys wide recognition throughout the Church, its richness and depth may be unrealized due to a lesser familiarity with, what I will argue is, its primary inspiration: the Tabernacle. There, Christ’s intent can rightly be discerned. The Prayer’s methodological correction to the Jews and Gentiles wasn’t…
The Consumption of the Covenant Idea of the Church Last time we saw consumerism, having canalized its attitudes in our culture, shapes what the consumer sees when he or she steps into a church. Here, we’ll see how it has eviscerated the covenant and familial ideas necessary to understand the…
The ignoble Jayber Crow can stir your appetite for the noble. It’s the simplicity of a good ol’ Port William boy that builds the charm of the book. In fact, the elitists in Port William receive the harshest blows and severest outcomes, as they should. But before delving into the…
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T he book of Acts ends with a sailor's yarn. Paul has appealed to Caesar, and is sailing toward Italy when the ship hits a squall. Luke gives a detailed account of the efforts to save the ship and the final shipwreck at Malta, during which all 276 people on…
I n her essay in Christianity, Democracy, and the Shadow of Constantine , Mary Doak unpacks some features of a Trinitarian, communion-oriented political theology. She doesn't, however, think that communio ecclesiology implies pacificism, and, as a feminist theologian, she worries that communio can be used to blunt the force of…
D an Piepenbring comments briefly in The Paris Review on a bizarre fashion trend of the eighteenth century: “During Marie Antoinette’s time, for instance, there was a brief craze for caca-dauphin , a shade of brown that resembled the color of the new prince Louis-Joseph’s soiled diapers. In the most…
R eflecting on the retirement of actor Daniel Day-Lewis at Variety , Owen Gleiberman suggests that “What retired . . . is something that’s waning in the culture: the belief in acting as a highly sculpted soul transplant—as the mystical spirit of inhabitation.” He fills out the point by situating…
M y son Woelke sent this along, from Louis Menand: The real basis for the metaphor of voice in writing is not speaking. It is singing. You cannot know a singer from her speech, and although ‘natural phrasing' and ‘from the heart' are prized attributes of song, actually singing that…
I n the course of reviewing Philippe Desan's Montaigne: A Life , Jane Kramer speculates on the fraught question of Montaigne's influence on Shakespeare. Such influence is historically plausible: “Although Florio’s 1603 effort was the first English rendering of Montaigne’s essays to appear in book form, they had certainly been…
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