As the calendar turns to another year, commercials and advertisements and media all yell loudly at us to make resolutions– to become healthier and fitter (remember the infamous commercial for a certain exercise machine from a few years back?), to make wiser financial choices, to set and accomplish big goals. In short, as each new year begins, culture tells us to do better and to be better. As Christians, we are certainly called to pursue sanctification and to continually grow... Read more
Last year I introduced my “Best Books” column with some strategies for how to read. If you’re thinking about strategies for how to read in 2024, I recommend checking out that article. Now if you’re curious about strategies on selecting what to read for 2024, sit tight and lean in. How I Select What I Read No doubt, there are all sorts of readers who will happen upon this column. Some of these suggestions may not fit you as a... Read more
by Janine Giordano Drake American Christians are big on Christmas pageants that resemble Cinderella Stories. We like to reenact the story of an angel appearing to an innocent and faithful teenager, a young man submitting to his betrothed’s calling from God, and then an angel revealing God’s plan for the world to a bunch of humble shepherds and then a few wise men from far away. We like to imagine that we Christians are all like the shepherds, hardworking ordinary... Read more
Well, this is about as un-seasonal a theme as I can presently muster, but I fear that it is all too topical. Moreover, it raises issues that are going to be agitating us all a great deal in the New Year. In 2016, an American film-maker produced a brilliant case study of a historical campaign of domestic terrorism that was rooted in religious hatred and racial nationalism. I would argue that it remains one of the vanishingly few really fine... Read more
2023 was a great year for books. Admittedly the book I spent the most time with was my own book-in-progress. Thanks to the generosity of the Louisville Institute Sabbatical Grant for Researchers and Baylor University, I have been able to spend this past year working on a manuscript on how Protestant women navigated the Protestant fundamentalist-modernist controversy of the early twentieth century. This hundred-year-old split between theological and social conservatives and liberals contributed to the modern American culture wars, both... Read more
2023 was a year of violence. In addition to the ongoing war between Russia and Ukraine – a war that pundits said at its outset posed the greatest threat to European stability since 1945 – Israel was plunged into its most protracted and horrific war in decades after Hamas attacked in October. In addition, thousands of people died in a war in Sudan this fall, and a few thousand more have died in intermittent fighting in Ethiopia that followed the... Read more
Christmas is a holiday that celebrates family. This is true for Christians who celebrate Christmas as a religious holiday. The nativity scene that Christians display to commemorate the birth of Jesus Christ is, at its most basic level, a depiction of a family: the Holy Family of Mary, Joseph, and Baby Jesus. And it’s also true for those Americans who celebrate Christmas primarily as a non-religious cultural holiday. In a 2017 Pew study, the vast majority of respondents (82 percent)... Read more
Iowa state House Representative Jon Dunwell (R) has been on a hero’s journey for the past two weeks. The Representative, who is also an ordained minister in the Christian and Missionary Alliance, has been confronting Christian nationalism after a display was set up earlier this month in the Capitol building. Dunwell’s stand on X (formerly Twitter), which has generated thousands of comments and over 7 million views, has directly challenged Christian nationalism—the ideology blending white evangelical religious and ethnic norms... Read more
As I’ve been thinking about what to bring to my column this month in preparation for the birth of Christ, two things have returned to the forefront of my mind again and again. First, I can’t get over a chapter I read by Barbara Newman on the metaphors of pregnancy and childbirth in her book, The Permeable Self: Five Medieval Relationships. (By the way, I read anything Barbara Newman writes when I can find time. She’s brilliant.) I’m particularly interested... Read more
Over the Christmas season, our churches will be reading the magnificent Prologue to John’s Gospel, which is the foundation of so much of the Christian theology of Incarnation. This tells of the Light, and how “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it” (1.5 RSV, also NIV) or alternatively, “the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not” (KJV). Overcome and comprehended – aren’t those radically different words? Is one wrong? Why do... Read more
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