Let me introduce you to seven women in the great cloud of witnesses. Read more
Let me introduce you to seven women in the great cloud of witnesses. Read more
I worry that evangelicals have become too comfortable with hiding our inaction behind the guise of prayer. Read more
The 1957 film version of Charles Lindbergh's memoir, Spirit of St. Louis, dispenses with much of the book's spirituality - and add other religious themes. Read more
My new book will be out shortly. This is Crucible of Faith: The Ancient Revolution That Made Our Modern Religious World (Basic Books, 2017). It will be available on September 19. That “Crucible” refers to an era of revolutionary transformation that occurred in the Jewish and Jewish-derived world in the couple of centuries before the time of Jesus – roughly from 250 BC through the late first century BC. Or to adapt the publisher’s description: The New Testament proclaims a... Read more
I have been posting about the early chapters of John’s Gospel, and how an author/editor incorporated older materials that worked for his argument. (For convenience, let us call him John). One incident – the Marriage at Cana – shows clearly how John drew widely on earlier sources about Jesus and fitted them into his narrative, paying next to no attention to the chronology or sequence of those sources. The Marriage story originated as a miracle story in an older free... Read more
As I alluded to in my first post in this series on the Mayflower separatists, it is a bit strange to term them “the pilgrims.” They considered themselves “strangers and pilgrims,” who as the saints of old looked forward to what came beyond their time on earth. I felt this disconnect most keenly when rooting around in the Canterbury Cathedral Archives for information on Robert Cushman, whom the folks there happily refer to as a “Pilgrim Father.” Very nice of... Read more
Elie Wiesel died one year ago at the age of 87. A ghastly genocide, one that destroyed millions of Jews, gypsies, and gays, should have killed him seven decades earlier. But he survived and became a witness who wrestled with existential questions about life, death, humanity, and God. Wiesel’s Job-like wrestling with God is, in fact, one of the key motifs of his memoir Night. The narrative begins with a description of a youth’s easy faith in God. He is... Read more
Chris shares the story of the Amana Colonies, whose "communistic" economy was inspired by pietistic religious convictions. Read more
Like most people, I’ve been trying to get a read on American politics these days. For this reason, I recently picked up Robert Penn Warren’s Pulitzer-Prize-winning classic, All the King’s Men, which I confess I’ve never read. One of its central characters, Willie Talos (Willie Stark in older editions) or “the Boss,” is based on the actual populist politician Huey Long, who served as governor of and then senator from Louisiana in the 1920s and 1930s. The New York Times... Read more
Over the past couple of years, I have posted several times on the Gospel of John and its intricate construction. Last time, I argued that themes of baptism dominate the gospel’s opening chapters, most spectacularly in the stories of Nicodemus and the Samaritan woman at the well, but also elsewhere, with the pervasive water imagery. One seeming outlier in that pattern is the story of the Marriage at Cana, which certainly talks about water and water pots, and changing water... Read more
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