Can Surrogacy Be a Christian Ministry?

Last updated on: March 27, 2018 at 6:13 am By Agnes Howard

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

The Church in the Mainstream

Last updated on: March 19, 2018 at 7:25 am By Philip Jenkins

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

Defining Evangelicalism and the Problem of Whiteness

Last updated on: March 20, 2018 at 3:58 pm By Kristin Du Mez

Do you approve of the way Trump is handling his job as President? If you’re an evangelical, chances are you do. In a recent poll, 78% of white evangelicals approve of Trump’s job performance. This number, of course, comes remarkably close to the 81% who voted for Trump in the fall of 2016. Both of these numbers lead some evangelicals—those in the 18% or 19%–to despair that Trump evangelicals have sold their souls. How could followers of Christ throw their... Read more

Paul Interrupted: A Medieval Perspective

Last updated on: March 21, 2018 at 7:47 am By Beth Allison Barr

Just a few years ago, my entire family (parents, siblings, aunts, and my grandfather) attended a church service together. The pastor was preaching through Ephesians and had reached chapter 5. Now, I have to tell you some about my grandfather. He was Baptist most of his life. After his family moved back to Texas from California, they joined Travis Avenue Baptist Church where he eventually met my grandmother. For most of his adult life, after the war, he served as... Read more

The Bishop’s Boys: Religion and the Wright Brothers

Last updated on: March 19, 2018 at 10:28 pm By Chris Gehrz

About a month after my editor first mentioned the name of Charles Lindbergh to me, our sabbatical travels took my family to the birthplace of aviation: Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. Sure enough, there’s a painting of Lindbergh in the National Park Service building at the site of the Wright Brothers’ first flights. But I’m starting to think there’s a decent “spiritual, but not religious” biography to be written about Wilbur and Orville Wright themselves. Embed from Getty Images That came... Read more

The Church of Many Voices

Last updated on: March 17, 2018 at 4:01 pm By Philip Jenkins

As I study the early history of Christianity, I become ever more interested by one critical era, namely the decade or so on either side of 200 AD. That is a time of terrific expansion, but more particularly, I have argued that this marks the point at which a sect becomes a church, or more specifically, when the Jesus Movement becomes the Christian church. This transition had powerful consequences for language and languages. That expansion had vital implications for the... Read more

On Gratitude and the Christian Liberal Arts

Last updated on: March 16, 2018 at 11:39 am By Chris Gehrz

Chris shares his gratitude for the students, parents, and colleagues who make possible his work. Read more

Mary Magdalene’s Myth: The Latest Chapter

Last updated on: March 16, 2018 at 8:11 am By Philip Jenkins

Not having seen the big production new film of Mary Magdalene (Joaquin Phoenix, Rooney Mara, Chiwetel Ejiofor), I can’t comment on it. And for interesting reasons I will explain, don’t expect to see it in the US any time soon. But I will respond to the latest wave of comments that this film has drawn forth about the widespread and powerful myth concerning Mary Magdalene herself – and myth it assuredly is. In the British Daily Telegraph, Peter Staniford writes... Read more

John the Baptist’s Head

Last updated on: March 14, 2018 at 9:13 pm By johnturner

From the Anxious Bench archives: When I ask students to read and generate questions about the Gospel of Mark, someone always asks about the beheading of John the Baptist? What sort of mother asks her daughter to ask her father for a prophet’s head? (I can also count on a question about Jesus cursing the fig tree, for which I never have an adequate answer). According to Mark, John the Baptist criticized Herod Antipas for having married Herodias, his brother Philip’s wife.... Read more

A Wrinkle in Time and the Gospel of the Third Way

Last updated on: March 13, 2018 at 9:42 pm By David Swartz

If Madeleine L’Engle’s portrayal of communism as the evil "other" was not unusual, her antidote certainly was. A Wrinkle in Time points to a third way of creative resistance to evil. Read more

What did Job's wife suggest he do during his suffering?