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November 2015

November 14, 2015

‘Bring in the candles’

According to a ridiculously incoherent Internet rumor, an alignment of the planets will cast the...

October 2015

October 09, 2015

The various endings of the Gospel of Mark (part 1)

Mark's Gospel seems like a rough first draft, like the work of someone racing to...

September 2015

September 14, 2015

She leaves her fingerprints everywhere

Some good news from Lancaster County -- or, if you're Republican candidate Ben Carson, evidence...

August 2015

August 29, 2015

Liberation and apocalypse in a country song

The piped-in music at the Big Box has been playing country music this week, leading...

July 2015

July 22, 2015

New Horizons

We live in a world of boundaries that seem as inconceivably vast as the distances...

May 2015

May 31, 2015

It’s Heresy Sunday — don’t fall for the trap

The doctrine of the Trinity is a mystery. Or, more specifically, it's an attempt at...

May 19, 2015

First contact and ‘the great disillusionment’

We humans from earth have been looking up at the stars and thinking about the...

February 2015

February 24, 2015

Niebuhr and Aristotle and Jay Smooth

You can learn a lot about ethics and human nature from reading the collected works...

February 19, 2015

The devil has been in twice as many movies as Jesus (and how that has changed our theology)

Vincent Price is theologically significant. Price wore a devilish goatee that made him look like...

December 2014

December 03, 2014

Smart people saying smart things (12.3)

I'm speechless today, so let me turn the microphone over to Jay Smooth, Pamela Merritt,...

October 2014

October 27, 2014

Abraham wasn’t like us, but we’re also not like Abraham

The idea that God speaks directly and unambiguously to humans is a given in the...

October 23, 2014

Just take everything down to Highway 61: Obedience is always about epistemology

No, no, no, the "pastors and apologists" say -- that violates the spirit of the...

October 09, 2014

‘You will have no more mercy than I do’

It's an ambiguous statement that can be read in two opposite ways: "You will have...

October 07, 2014

H.P. Lovecraft, ‘The Cabin in the Woods,’ and penal substitutionary atonement

"You know, one of the great things about Lovecraft is that this hot mess of...

September 2014

September 16, 2014

Smart people saying smart things (9.16)

Jane Van Galen reads the style pages; Karen Armstrong on good theology; Drew G.I. Hart...

July 2014

July 21, 2014

Love and justice are what give us ears to hear

Let me revisit what I'm trying to say in the previous post -- "Without justice,...

July 21, 2014

Without justice, we’re not reading the same book

We will never produce justice as a result of better biblical understanding unless we also...

July 17, 2014

‘Liberal theology’ is not the opposite of political conservatives’ theology

Every once in a while, this needs to be said: "Liberal" politics and "liberal" theology...

July 10, 2014

A whiskey priest is not the same as a Nazi

Did Luther's anti-Semitism "affect" his theology, or did his theology foster his anti-Semitism? Yes, both....

July 09, 2014

Whatever happened to the clobber texts for slavery? (Unlearning the lies, cont’d.)

When we see this text on the home page of this blog, we will know...

July 04, 2014

Darn Darn Floor Bad Bite: Happy Birthday Koko

Our cousin Koko is fascinating in part because of her way with words. When she...

June 2014

June 27, 2014

A little leaven leaveneth the whole lump (Unlearning the Lies, part 4)

Emanuel Hirsch's complicity indelibly taints his writing and theology. How, precisely, does it do that?...

June 21, 2014

Unlearning the lies we learned from the theologians of slavery (part 2)

Jonathan Edwards' understanding of "total depravity" illuminates our task when evaluating the heritage of American...

June 17, 2014

‘Ambiguity proposes, preference disposes’: We have to choose

To read the Bible is to interpret the Bible, which is to say it requires...

June 17, 2014

This is not good news. This is not salvation.

The man who wrote those words was surely, at some fundamental, essential level, wrong about...

April 2014

April 17, 2014

Two images for Holy Week

Many Christians who revere Sallman's "Head of Christ" would balk at Blanchard's gay vision of...

February 2014

February 18, 2014

OK, let’s talk about snake-handling

Snake-handlers' weird, idiosyncratic distortion of the Bible produces an impressive display of commitment, but to...

January 2014

January 07, 2014

‘Readers should know’ of theologian’s abuse

"John Howard Yoder (1927-1997) was perhaps the most well-known Mennonite theologian in the 20th century....

November 2013

November 21, 2013

‘Inerrancy’ is just Round 2 of the Bible-battle over slavery

In every iteration, the conflict is the same. On the one side are those who...

November 13, 2013

Reformed seminaries ought to understand Reformed political theology

Michael Kruger is a Reformed theologian. He teaches, and serves as president, at the Reformed...