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Looking Back to 2005 and a Brief Moment of Sincerity in Pop Music (before the dark times)
Read more: Looking Back to 2005 and a Brief Moment of Sincerity in Pop Music (before the dark times)Irony in music is cyclical (even if we can swear that those cycles take us lower and lower as a society the way we swear the lights are dimming in a theater minutes before the house goes dark). I’m thinking about irony because the magic YouTube algorithm thought I might want to see David Bowie…
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Evangelicals, Ex-vangelicals, Christians: A Lenten Reflection on the Politics of the Cross
Read more: Evangelicals, Ex-vangelicals, Christians: A Lenten Reflection on the Politics of the CrossI follow Paul, I follow Peter, I follow Apollos, I follow Christ. So Paul famously describes the leader-based factions developing in the Corinthian church. Like many of you, I like to think that if I were there, I would be in that Group 4 that says, “I follow Christ.” Maybe Group 4 was earnest, maybe…
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Review: Paul the Pagan’s Apostle by Paula Fredriksen
Read more: Review: Paul the Pagan’s Apostle by Paula FredriksenFREDRIKSEN, Paula. Paul: The Pagan’s Apostle. Yale: Yale University Press, 2017. pp. 336. $44.27 (Hardcover). ISBN: 978-0300225884. “Something is going on in Pauline studies.” So writes Paula Fredriksen in the closing pages of her recently published Paul: The Pagan’s Apostle. By “something” (italics hers), she refers predominantly to the emerging “Paul Within Judaism” school that renders “another…
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The Participatory Anthropology of 1 Corinthians: Reflections on Susan Eastman’s Paul and the Person
Read more: The Participatory Anthropology of 1 Corinthians: Reflections on Susan Eastman’s Paul and the PersonReading through Susan Eastman’s wonderful little study Paul and the Person over Christmas break has afforded me a chance to re-examine the kind of anthropology Paul takes for granted in his first letter to the Corinthians. The task of reevaluating traditional concepts of anthropology as a whole is enjoying something of a moment in biblical…
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The Solidarity Bandwidth
Read more: The Solidarity BandwidthWith the unsettling rise of international tragedies also comes the unfortunately now all-too-familiar swell of collective showings of solidarity on social media. In the wake of such horrific events, Facebook profiles have been seen switching en masse to familiar symbols and hashtags displaying strength amid loss: #BostonStrong #HoustonStrong #WeAreManchester #Aleppo #PrayForParis #JeSuisCharlie. So when the Thanksgiving…
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Changing Sides on Racism – Lessons from the World Series
Read more: Changing Sides on Racism – Lessons from the World SeriesIf you have been watching the World Series, or have simply been online this week, you may have seen the storm that arose after Yuli Gurriel of the Houston Astros rubbed in a home-run off Iranian-Japanese pitcher, Yu Darvish, by slanting his eyes up and referring to him as “Chinito” [Little Chinese Guy]. People of the…
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Faith and Love: The Inconvenient Truth About a “Personal Relationship With God”
Read more: Faith and Love: The Inconvenient Truth About a “Personal Relationship With God”How’s your relationship with God? It’s a question many Christians and religious people ask of each other. When I answer this question over the years, I typically work my way through the same cluster of questions—am I praying and spending private time with God, am I avoiding certain sins, am I maturing in my likeness to…
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La La Land & The Problem of “Having it All” (at least from the perspective of a handsome white guy)
Read more: La La Land & The Problem of “Having it All” (at least from the perspective of a handsome white guy)La La Land has landed a historic fourteen Academy Award nominations and if the past is any indication, it may win all of them outside of the acting categories given Hollywood’s adoration for movies about movies (remember when the Academy lost its mind over The Artist, a movie that honestly nobody talks about anymore?). Its place…
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Some Reflections on the Los Angeles Theology Conference 2017
Read more: Some Reflections on the Los Angeles Theology Conference 2017This Year’s Event and Theme The Fifth Annual Los Angeles Theology Conference (LATC) took place this week at Biola University. Fred Sanders and Oliver Crisp (together in a joint effort with Biola University, Fuller Seminary, and Zondervan Academic) deserve credit for the inception and continuing vitality of the conference. Out-of-town guests expecting the inviting sunshine…
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Is This the “End of Protestantism?” A Review of Peter Leithart’s Latest Book on Church Unity
Read more: Is This the “End of Protestantism?” A Review of Peter Leithart’s Latest Book on Church UnityLEITHART, Peter J. The End of Protestantism: Pursuing Unity in a Fragmented Church. Grand Rapids: Brazos, 2016. pp. 225. $21.99 (Hardback). ISBN: 978-1-58743-377-1. As of 2003,[1] there are roughly one thousand distinct Christian denominations in the United States. It was the prayer of Jesus that his children will join together as “one” as God…