Designating a person “in residence” to think about theology may seem like a luxury. But for the church, making room for such work may be a necessity.
In divinity school, professors engaged my heart and mind—and began the process of helping me figure out what I believed and whether it was important enough to give my life to it.
It would be a shame if the crisis in seminary education didn’t lead to fresh thinking about how the church calls, trains and places leaders.
Dante’s Divine Comedy, if we are willing to read it whole, has a deep unity. The tradition of its interpretation does not.
As we remember the Reformation over the next couple of years, we should also recall its global context.
What does God require of us? We tend to like Jesus’ most famous answer, what Scot McKnight calls the Jesus Creed: to love God with our entire being and to love our neighbors as ourselves. But what about the answer we find in the holiness code of Leviticus and the Sermon on the Mount? Are we really ready to sign up for a program of holiness and perfection? Sure, it’s simple and to the point. But what chance do we have of living up to these radical standards?
I grew up in Southern Baptist congregations. By the time I left high school I knew the four steps to salvation and the meaning of Jesus’ sacrificial death as a substitutionary atonement for my sins. I could articulate this understanding of salvation in clear and simple terms. Within the metanarrative of evangelical Christianity it made perfect sense and was logically coherent. Then my fundamentalism began to unravel.
Reading for Preaching, by Cornelius Plantinga Jr.
Cornelius Plantinga Jr. contends that to be fully prepared to share a word from God with a congregation, a preacher should attend to storytellers, biographers, poets and journalists.
Fire and Light, by James MacGregor Burns
James MacGregor Burns has authored an eminently readable history of that elusive historical movement we call the Enlightenment.
Tombstone, by Yang Jisheng, and Three Famines, by Thomas Keneally
Yang Jisheng argues that totalitarian states tend to develop policies in a vacuum and find it difficult to change course. Thomas Keneally would agree.
Earthy vocation
U.S. society has shorn food production of its spiritual dimension. Fred Bahnson and Ragan Sutterfield explore this issue from different directions.
Girls gets attention as a boundary-breaking comedy focused explicitly on gender. But Hannah and friends are not navigating adult life well.