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2026-08-13T21:58:03-05:00

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

What is “Christian Nationalism”? A Reply to Dennis Knapp

Last updated on: August 13, 2026 at 9:58 pm By Edwin Woodruff Tait

Preliminary Considerations My fellow Patheos blogger Dennis Knapp of “The Latin Right” has raised an excellent question about the meaning of the term “Christian nationalism.” Knapp is responding in turn to an article by Henry Karlson which condemns Christian nationalism. He seems to agree that Christian nationalism, as Karlson describes it, is a bad thing. Knapp then raises the concern that progressive Christians define any attempt by conservatives to influence society with Christian principles as “Christian nationalism.” I don’t think... Read more

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2026-08-13T13:08:58-05:00

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

Love Ordered and Disordered

Last updated on: August 13, 2026 at 1:08 pm By Edwin Woodruff Tait

“Ordo Caritatis” is Not the Problem In an earlier post I explained why I can’t agree with those who simply dismiss the Thomistic concept of the “order of love” invoked last year by Vice President Vance. Vance invoked the concept to defend the Trump administration’s policies toward immigrants and its generally nationalist stance. Understandably, many Catholic commentators reacted simply by affirming the universality of the call to Christian love. As I argued in my last post, though, this is inadequate... Read more

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2026-06-30T18:43:43-05:00

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

A Bum with No Connections

Last updated on: June 30, 2026 at 6:43 pm By Edwin Woodruff Tait

Slaughter-House Five This past Good Friday I did not intend to work as a substitute teacher, as I often do. I had two church services in the evening and many other things I was behind on, as usual. And, of course, ideally one would spend Good Friday in prayer and contemplation, not work anyway. But a little after 11 I got a call that they needed someone to sub for the person who usually oversees detention. That seemed important so... Read more

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2026-08-12T10:54:08-05:00

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

The Order of Love

Last updated on: August 12, 2026 at 10:54 am By Edwin Woodruff Tait

. Vance vs. the Pope Vice President J. D. Vance, a convert to Catholicism, kicked off a debate last year when he invoked the classic Catholic principle of the “order of love” to defend Trump administration policies toward immigrants. As Vance explained it: “There is a Christian concept that you love your family and then you love your neighbor, and then you love your community, and then you love your fellow citizens, and then after that, prioritize the rest of... Read more

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2025-12-30T22:32:37-05:00

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

The Dragon’s War and the Virgin’s Dreams

Last updated on: December 30, 2025 at 10:32 pm By Edwin Woodruff Tait

The Woman Clothed with the Sun In Revelation 12, John sees a woman clothed with the sun, travailing to give birth. A monstrous dragon stands ready to devour her child, who is destined to rule the nations with a rod of iron. God snatches the child up to heaven and protects the woman in the wilderness, and Michael wages war on the dragon and casts him out of heaven. The dragon pursues the woman into the wilderness and spews out... Read more

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2025-10-31T14:21:23-05:00

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

Why Beth Felker Jones is a Protestant, Part 2

Last updated on: October 31, 2025 at 2:21 pm By Edwin Woodruff Tait

Who are the real Catholics? In this second part of my review of Beth Felker Jones’ Why I Am a Protestant, I’m going to tackle the central issue at stake in the book: the nature of the Church. For Wesleyans like Beth, disagreements with Catholicism on ecclesiology are often sharper and more central than disagreements over soteriology, and her book seems to bear out this generalization. Certainly ecclesiological issues were central in my own very long process of discerning whether... Read more

2025-10-13T20:59:14-05:00

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

Why Beth Felker Jones is a Protestant, Part 1

Last updated on: October 13, 2025 at 8:59 pm By Edwin Woodruff Tait

And Can It Be? Beth Felker Jones is a Methodist theologian whom I have known for years and whom I respect greatly. We first met at Duke when I was the “preceptor” (teaching assistant) for an intro church history class she was taking. I was a Ph.D. student and she was pursuing a master’s degree at the time, so it was my job to grade her papers. I took exception to her ending a paper on St. Augustine with quoting... Read more

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2025-06-20T09:01:59-05:00

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

Does the Church Have a Coherent Social Justice Teaching?

Last updated on: June 20, 2025 at 9:01 am By Edwin Woodruff Tait

Valuable lessons In a recent article on the website Word on Fire, Henry T. Edmondson III argues that Pope Benedict’s encyclical Deus Caritas Est offers us “valuable lessons” about the nature of Catholic social teaching. That’s a fairly innocuous claim. It’s also a relevant one because, as Edmondson points out, the new Pope has taken the name “Leo” largely on honor of Pope Leo XIII who inaugurated modern Catholic social teaching with his encyclical Rerum Novarum in 1891. So what does Edmondson think Pope Benedict... Read more

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2025-06-20T09:03:33-05:00

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

Where can I run from your Spirit?

Last updated on: June 20, 2025 at 9:03 am By Edwin Woodruff Tait

Christians often lament that the Holy Spirit is the “neglected member of the Trinity.” The great Pentecostal New Testament scholar Gordon Fee put this argument in historical form a talk I heard him give at Duke some years ago. Fee argued that Catholics think of the Spirit as working through the Sacraments, while Protestants think of the Spirit as working through the Word. In practice, this means that the Spirit “disappears.” Catholics assume that the Spirit is at work wherever... Read more

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2025-02-16T21:52:08-05:00

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

The Weakness of God: A Catholic Response to Tom Oord

Last updated on: February 16, 2025 at 9:52 pm By Edwin Woodruff Tait

I’ve written a number of posts in the past addressing the evangelical theological movement known as “open theism.” Last year I wrote a general evaluation of open theism from a Catholic perspective. Some years ago, I wrote a series of blog posts on the theology of Greg Boyd, one of the major open theists. I’ve been intending for a while to write about Tom Oord, whose work I find particularly interesting and challenging. He’s a bit different from other open... Read more

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