The Orant is now on Patheos!

Well today is a big day for me and my blog…. The Orant has officially moved to Patheos. What this means is that soon when you try to go to http://theorant.com you will magically be directed here. It also means that there might be a few hiccups in the archived content, and there are some more ads. Many of you have been on a journey with me for a lot of years and have landed here surprised to find everything different… so I thought I’d take some time to explain a bit about Patheos and the move. For those of you who are unfamiliar with Patheos, it is the home of a lot of blogs from a lot of faith backgrounds. It represents many of the best thinkers and writers from a number of different religions as well as a quite a few great atheist writers. Patheos, in my mind, is THE place to go for thoughtful conversations about faith of all kinds and I am really excited to have been invited to join the ranks of their thinkers and writers. It truly is an honor.

There are also probably a number of you wondering who I am, and what you can expect at The Orant.

This blog started in 2007 as an attempt to share a bit about myself and my faith. At the time I was working as the youth director for an ecumenical christian organization and so the blog quickly turned into a place where I processed a lot of ideas from a lot of Christian traditions. It still maintains a strong ecumenical readership and ecumenical content… meaning that there are a lot of Christians from a diverse variety of backgrounds that regularly read and participate in our conversations here. Over the last few years I found myself increasingly attracted to the theology and spirituality of the Catholic Church, and that development can be seen in my blog. Finally, I entered the Catholic Church in Easter of 2013. This marked a big change in the blog. It moved from being a protestant blog in conversation with Catholics and Eastern Orthodox to a Catholic blog in conversation with protestants and Eastern Orthodox.

I am a little nervous about entering into a setting that has a lot of Catholics. I have seen that there few very well intentioned Catholics out there who have taken it upon themselves to police the web, and sometimes do it in ways that are less than charitable. I can foresee that some Catholics might feel the need to police me from time to time. That being said  I have a few rules that I employ loosely when I’m writing that you should be aware of:

1. When I review the work of others I look for what is good, beautiful and true in it. I generally post my personal take-aways, but not all the things I might have disagreed with. I recommend books on the basis of their quality and usefulness in understanding the perspective and experience of the author much more then Orthodoxy or  doctrinal accuracy of the author. In other words you should not treat my personal recommendations of books like some kind of imprimatur.
2. I am a political activist. I am particularly focuses on ending hunger, which I view as a global issue of the utmost importance. so when I look at issues of politics and economics I see them through the  lens of how it effects how people eat. That’s just my go-to lens. Others might look through the lens of end of life issues, or the environment, or abortion, or education, or discrimination, or sexuality, or peace. All of these lenses are incredibly valuable and I am thankful for those who continually help me see things in new ways by holing up their lens to my eyes. I hope we can share our lenses with one another.
3. I write theology from the perspective of a liturgical theologian and a bible scholar. I have been trained in these fields, and feel comfortable in them. I am not a canon lawyer, a moral theologian, a patristics scholar, a systematic theologian, or a philosopher. My writting in these areas is simply dabbling.  I appreciate any and all feedback or clarification from people who are better trained then myself in any of these fields.
4.  I started to study theology and write about theology because I wanted to help people better encounter God and love their neighbor. So I write with pastoral concerns in mind. The most important question I ask about a dogma, passage of scripture, or news item is “how does this impact real life.” If I ever seem to drift from this, remind me. It’s a rule I always want to follow, but sometimes forget.
5. Even though I am Catholic now, I am very thankful for all the stops along the way that brought me to the place I am at now. Because of that I will often honor the writers and thinkers that have helped me fall in love with Jesus and his Church, even those I don’t agree with anymore.