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June 2020

June 05, 2020

The Serpent’s Fruit (In Poetic Form)

He understood clearly That all he had to do Was hold the Bible Courageously for...

June 03, 2020

Why True Christianity Is Anarchist

I wanted to take a few moments to talk about anarchism since Donald Trump has...

April 2020

April 28, 2020

The Book (A Poem About Hegemony)

This may not be the right question but Are you a character in a book...

January 2020

January 04, 2020

Ten Spiritual Lessons From A Decade of Failures

I first became a licensed local pastor in July 2010. Over the course of the...

May 2019

May 08, 2019

Democratized Theology vs. Theology of the Demos (Mob)

I should have known that I was going to get snarky replies from conservative evangelicals...

February 2019

February 19, 2019

Honest Questions For Traditionalist Methodists On The Eve of Our Apocalypse

As United Methodists enter the final week before our called General Conference on queer sexuality,...

February 05, 2019

Two Visions And A Council For Our Discernment

"Saul, why do you persecute me?" "What God has made clean, you must not call...

May 2018

May 16, 2018

Have I Failed as a Pastor if My Students Don’t Quote Scripture?

It's a question that's been haunting me throughout my campus ministry career. What do I...

October 2017

October 31, 2017

Ten Principles for the Next Reformation

I got to spend the weekend that marked the 500th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation...

September 2017

September 16, 2017

40 Bible Verses for 40 Years of Life

Since I'm forty today, I wanted to share forty Bible verses that are meaningful to...

August 2017

August 30, 2017

The Christians United Statement In Support of LGBT Inclusion

Post-evangelical social media got fired up yesterday after the release of an anti-queer statement from the...

August 26, 2017

The Theology That Pardons White Supremacy

Last night I witnessed a white United Methodist pastor seeking to justify Donald Trump's pardon...

May 2017

May 11, 2017

Why would anti-racist training be threatening to a white seminary professor?

"Of course, so-called anti-racism is anti-intellectual. It is also totalitarian and genocidally racist." That's definitely...

November 2016

November 16, 2016

Intersectionality for bewildered white evangelicals

In the Washington Post this week, white evangelical millennial leader Katelyn Beaty said, "I can’t...

June 2016

June 16, 2016

“Why is it our problem if a gay Muslim shoots a bunch of other gay people?”

I knew the comment was coming. I was bracing for it. My heart sank when...

May 2016

May 31, 2016

Two different ways to define orthodoxy

What does it mean to be orthodox? It depends on which definition of the Greek...

May 07, 2016

A prophecy and two visions from Acts for our United Methodist General Conference

The book of Acts is supposed to model for us how the early church engaged...

May 06, 2016

What Romans 1 teaches about sin and why it ironically exonerates LGBT identity

Romans 1:18-32 is one of the most important passages in scripture, because it describes the...

January 2016

January 21, 2016

Why don’t we call God “they” instead of “he”?

For Christmas this year, I got Andrei Rublev's Trinity icon. It is the most beautiful...

January 19, 2016

Two Corinthians 3:17: why I love Donald Trump’s favorite verse

Everyone is making fun of Donald Trump for saying "Two" instead of "Second Corinthians" in...

November 2015

November 01, 2015

Seven points of contention in today’s reformation

So it's that time of year known as Reformation Sunday when we remember the anniversary...

September 2015

September 11, 2015

An Honest Question for Christians Who Say They “Obey” the Bible

I wanted to ask an honest question. It's partly a loaded question, but partly a...

July 2015

July 07, 2015

Six scriptures I would use to address Kevin DeYoung’s 40 questions for rainbow flag-waving Christians

Kevin DeYoung’s 40 questions for rainbow-flag waving Christians has been making rounds across the internet...

February 2015

February 09, 2015

On self-serving appeals to God’s sovereign “natural” order

In response to the backlash against Barack Obama's Prayer Breakfast remarks about violence that had...

November 2014

November 19, 2014

Two offensive analogies in the gay marriage debate from David Gushee and Andrew Wilson

During the past couple of weeks, two arguments have surfaced on opposite sides of the...

September 2014

September 19, 2014

Three arguments for Biblical inerrancy that need to be retired

One of the most important books I read in seminary was evangelical Old Testament scholar...

June 2014

June 03, 2014

When “the Bible is perfectly clear” becomes the reason it can’t teach us anything

I've noticed a gap between what feels right to say about the Bible in the...

March 2014

March 03, 2014

Why English majors make lousy fundamentalists

I think that the reason many Christians can't understand each other, particularly with regard to...

February 2014

February 25, 2014

Two Biblical commands no Christian will ever obey

I've been at the Ecclesia National Gathering in DC. It's a network of moderate evangelicals...

February 12, 2014

The Bible has room for more than one gay Christian story

A couple of weeks ago, at Wheaton College, a very interesting dialogue happened. The campus...