My reading goal this year was 250 books—and happily, it’s looking like I’ll finish up 2018 slightly ahead of schedule. I’m posting here because most of these volumes touch on theological concerns, in one way or another—though admittedly some do so more explicitly than others. The Politics of Virtue: Post-Liberalism and the Human Future (John Milbank & Adrian Pabst) Dissatisfied with mainstream American conservative defenses of the liberal-democratic project (see Jonah Goldberg’s “Suicide of the West’)? Tired of doomsday proclamations... Read more

You’d be forgiven for thinking that many American churches these days are desperately trying to be something they’re not. A drive through my North Texas suburb takes one past massive churches bearing names like “Freedom,” “Sojourn,” “The Ridge,” “Bent Tree,” and—my personal favorite—“fellowshipchurch.com.” Stodgy designators like Methodist and Presbyterian and Lutheran are out; sleeker, more “seeker-friendly” names are in. (Some groups conceal their crypto-Baptist sensibilities better than others.) On some level, though, these rebranding campaigns make sense. Broadly speaking, organized... Read more

There’s been plenty of commentary written about how Americans are lonely—how so many of us lack friends, communities, or connections beyond the most superficial level. And I find it hard to think of anything that better captures this reality than the rise of Twitch. In a nutshell, Twitch is an online YouTube-style site where individuals can stream themselves playing video games in real time (typically also with a webcam pointed at themselves). The concept sounds insane—who wants to watch other... Read more

Few writers are more beloved—especially in Christian circles—than J. R. R. Tolkien, the British philologist behind The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, and a vast corpus of other Middle-earth materials. And for good reason: he was a genius. Wholly apart from his religious convictions, Tolkien’s impact on the entire domain of “fantasy literature” was nothing short of colossal—indeed, virtually every book in the genre today imitates some aspect of his work. Over the years, generations of young Christians have... Read more

I’ve written here before about the unavoidable tension between conceptions of “universal human rights” and the practices of individual communities. In light of that discussion, a decision today by the Supreme Court of Canada—Judicial Committee of the Highwood Congregation of Jehovah’s Witnesses v. Wall—is particularly interesting. Judicial Committee involved a member of a Jehovah’s Witnesses congregation who was “disfellowshipped” after being deemed insufficiently repentant for sinful behavior. The congregant appealed the decision to a higher church body, but that committee... Read more