Are you (or your child) trying to decide where to go for college? Chris suggests four questions you should answer first. Read more
Are you (or your child) trying to decide where to go for college? Chris suggests four questions you should answer first. Read more
When I write about the canonical gospels, as I often do, I follow a commonly accepted chronology of their composition and “publication.” But “commonly” does not mean universally, and rival dating systems do exist. Some scholars, including some very fine ones, argue for much earlier datings, and if they are correct, this has implications for the historical authority of those texts. Let me explain why I believe the standard consensus view in these matters is actually correct. Bear with me... Read more
In 1976, many evangelical supporters of Georgia Governor Jimmy Carter were disillusioned when the presidential candidate spoke rather openly about matters of the heart to Playboy: I’ve looked on a lot of women with lust. I’ve committed adultery in my heart many times … Christ says, Don’t consider yourself better than someone else because one guy screws a whole bunch of women while the other guy is loyal to his wife. The guy who’s loyal to his wife ought not... Read more
I am here expanding a column I posted on this site back in 2014. I had previously posted on Jesus’s Resurrection appearance in John 21, where the disciples meet him at the Sea of Galilee. I argued that this scene, or something like it, was the very oldest version of the Resurrection story, and that by several decades it predated the familiar story of Jesus meeting Mary Magdalene in the garden. We miss this point because the present structure of... Read more
On this rare occasion that major league baseball opens its season on Maundy Thursday, Chris recommends some of the best writing about the relationship between Christianity and America's national pastime. Read more
“Mary A. young admited into the hiest orderer Preasthood,” Brigham Young wrote in his diary on November 1, 1843. The entry has long intrigued me, in part because Young apparently what he wrote above that sentence and because he married a plural wife named Harriet Cook on the same date. What did it mean for Mary Ann, Brigham Young’s only wife from 1834 until he married plurally in 1842, to be admitted into the highest order of priesthood? It certainly... Read more
Though she did not overtly situate her work within feminist conversations, L’Engle nonetheless points toward a vast spectrum of feminisms, some of which resonate deeply with Christian faith. Read more
In the 1920s eugenics was controversial but in the mainstream of American society — with many Protestant preachers as likely to support it as the Catholic hierarchy was to oppose it. Read more
Recently Christianity Today offered Kate Shellnutt’s report of a new baby boom: more evangelical women are serving as gestational surrogates, casting this as a sort of ministry to infertile couples. That trend disturbs on several counts. Well-meaning, generous women like those featured in Shellnutt’s favorable article, who wonder how women who don’t know God can get through the trials of “my belly, not my baby” for nine months, speak as though praying over the bump not only dispels problems but... Read more
I have been posting about the years around 200 as marking a decisive, formative, moment in the history of Christianity, at least as significant as the celebrated era around the Council of Nicea (325). It is difficult to exaggerate just how important this earlier period was for defining every aspect of Christian thought and belief. Figures like Tertullian, Bardaisan, and Clement of Alexandria indicate the real maturity of Christian thought around this time, and their impact on the larger intellectual... Read more
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