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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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Sermon outline

INTRODUCTION John’s readers are in danger of being misled, and John writes to warn them about false teachers and deceivers. John is confident that his “little children” will be delivered from the deceivers because they have an “anointing” from God. THE TEXT “Little children, it is the last hour; and…

October 31, 2006
Theology

Liberalism

Christopher Insole wants theologians who attack “liberalism” to be more careful about what they’re attacking. He favorably cites Robert Song, who distinguishes the constitutional liberalism of Locke and Kant from the laissez-faire liberalism of Hayek from the welfare liberalism of Hobhouse. Fair enough. But Insole’s own definition of liberalism seems…

October 23, 2006

Eucharistic meditation

1 John 2:15-16: Do not love the world, nor the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. When John talks about “the world,” he’s talking, as we’ve seen, about a cultural, social, and political system organized in hostility or…

October 22, 2006

Exhortation

Cultures have traditionally been rivers (Z. Bauman). The current carries everyone along in the same direction, whether or not they like where they’re going. When someone asks, “Why are we going this way?” it’s a sufficient answer to say, “We always have.” The only way to go a different direction…

October 22, 2006
History

Legitimacy of modernity

Modernity arose to tame the chaos and carnage of 16th and 17th-century European wars. To form a Europe reduced to formlessness, modern thinkers and politicians drew boundaries - the boundaries between Protestant and Catholic established in the Peace of Westphalia and the boundaries between religion and political life, among others.…

October 19, 2006
History

High and Low Theater

Katherine Newey suggests that “a class-based divide between popular culture and literary or ‘high,’ remaining to this day, emerged in debates over the reform of the theatre [in the 19th century]. Much of what still endures of the concept of ‘legitimate’ theatre in the early twenty-first century was formed out…

October 18, 2006

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