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Mercy Not Sacrifice

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April 2020

April 30, 2020

Babel (A Poem About Empire, Heresy, and Speaking In Tongues)

She is gathering the trumpets: Maybe there are 7; Maybe a prime number Like 29...

April 28, 2020

The Book (A Poem About Hegemony)

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

March 2020

March 30, 2020

Zen and God’s Grace

One consistent part of my spiritual journey for the past twenty years has been my...

August 2019

August 14, 2019

Eight Fragmented Thoughts On #ResurrectionGate

For those of you who weren't following progressive Christian twitter a few days ago, there...

April 2018

April 10, 2018

Evangelicals, Woketivists, and the “Faith” of Believing Hard Things

The best preparation for me to become a woketivist as an adult was growing up...

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...

July 2017

July 19, 2017

7 Ways I’m Not Entirely Progressive

I just got back from the Wild Goose Festival. It's a great experience every year,...

May 2017

May 03, 2017

No, there aren’t two United Methodisms

It's always easiest to imagine humanity existing in a single dualistic contrast. I do this...

April 2017

April 27, 2017

The narrative that’s destroying United Methodism

There’s a narrative circulating around United Methodism. It goes something like this: if preachers would...

October 2016

October 13, 2016

The religious right needs to repent, not rebrand

Ever since Donald Trump was caught saying the P-word, conservative evangelical leaders have been feverishly...

September 2016

September 12, 2016

An open letter with 12 honest questions for the Wesleyan Covenant Association

Dear Wesleyan Covenantal Association, First of all, I'm not afraid of you. I don't think...

August 2016

August 23, 2016

The orthodoxy of the blues

The seventh chapter of my book How Jesus Saves the World From Us is about...

June 2016

June 23, 2016

My quarrel with N.T. Wright about sex

I realize we're not supposed to quarrel with N.T. Wright. Because he's already refuted every...

June 02, 2016

A response to Billy Abraham regarding United Methodism’s orthodox rebirth

Dear Dr. Abraham, This week, I read your essay "The Birth Pangs of United Methodism...

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...

January 2016

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 2014

November 07, 2014

Can God improvise outside the boundaries of Christian orthodoxy?

Generally there are two extreme positions that Christians can take when talking about where other...

October 2014

October 23, 2014

Why I like Pope Francis’ “God of surprises”

It's little secret that progressive evangelicals like me have a huge crush on Pope Francis...

October 21, 2014

Where I’m actually coming from as a progressive evangelical

One of my most valuable conversation partners on the Internet is a conservative Calvinist campus...

June 2014

June 23, 2014

The two women who got me to carry the rainbow flag

Despite the fact that I've been pretty vocal on my blog about LGBT issues, I...

May 2014

May 09, 2014

What is a heretic and what is orthodoxy? (A response to Timothy Tennent)

In a recent blog post, Asbury Theological Seminary president Timothy Tennent claimed that the real...

February 2014

February 03, 2014

“I used to be exactly like you before I got saved”

There are two obnoxious tendencies that many people seem to fall into quite naturally. The...

April 2013

April 12, 2013

Interruption, Ideology, and Truth

Amos Yong at the Missio Alliance talked today about "the phenemonology of interruption" in Pentecost....

April 06, 2013

Five C’s of Christian Mansplanation

I witnessed a conversation on facebook last night where one of these young, restless, well...

January 2013

January 24, 2013

On critique and dismissal

After witnessing several exchanges here and here and here regarding blogosphere dramas around Phyllis Tickle...

December 2012

December 22, 2012

Father Hopko vs. Wheaton College: Who gets to be orthodox?

Eastern Orthodox priest Father Thomas Hopko has a featured podcast on Ancient Faith Radio that...

October 2012

October 15, 2012

Wisdom from Henri de Lubac, part 2

I have been reading off and on through Catholic theologian Henri de Lubac's Paradoxes of...

October 14, 2012

Communion or correctness? The underlying question.

Is God's goal for humanity communion or correctness? The way you answer that question will...

February 2012

February 20, 2012

We are not all Catholic now

I'm sitting in the Basilica of the Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, DC....

May 2011

May 16, 2011

Orthodoxy for the Sake of Orthopraxis

So for those of my facebook friends who don't know, this week there’s a virtual...