I also would point to THEOCOM, which happens every year out in California (http://cscc.scu.edu/theocom17/about.html), and the many, many such events happening beyond the US Read more

Can I say amen? But there are more of us doing this work than you seem willing to credit, Clint. It just may be that we are writing in new media, and working with local pastors, both of which tend not to get the kind of recognition you might be looking for. This year I'm up at the University of St. Michael's College, in the University of Toronto, which was Marshall McLuhan's home college. It's been a joy to immerse... Read more

“He is risen is also He is not here. I think sometimes we experience the absence of Jesus in the Resurrection as much as we experience the joy of unexpected, too ambiguous glimpses. Too little attention is paid in our theology to that period of time in which he appears and vanishes while we are grieving, angry, and struggling to understand. The Easter season is a time of liminality. The Holy Spirit with its gifts of liturgy and comprehension and... Read more

 Christian Understandings of the Future: The Historical Trajectory, by Amy Frykholm.  Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2016.  Pp. 366. In 1984 William Gibson published Neuromancer, the futuristic novel that established cyberpunk as a legit sub-genre of science fiction. It won the Nebula Award, the Philip K. Dick Award, and the Hugo Award. In it, he coined the term cyberspace, and a few years after its publication, uttered that most felicitous of lines: “The future is already here, it isjust not evenly distributed.” ... Read more

It is now mid-week of Holy Week, and still the church has hosted no liturgies since Sunday. They begin tomorrow. Once begun, they continue daily until Easter Sunday, as if the three days–Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and Easter Vigil–were not three separate services of worship, but one worship service spread out over three days. The liturgies of Holy Week are exclusively focused on Christ’s passion, so much so that it puts into practice the famous observation of Martin Kähler, that... Read more

Yesterday I mentioned that John’s gospel dates the crucifixion differently than the other gospels. In John, the crucifixion takes place before the Passover. In the other gospels, it takes place after. Of the two, John’s account is actually more likely. It would have been against Jewish law for capital punishment to have been carried out on a “high” religious day. It is more likely that Jesus hosted the last supper with his disciples on a Wednesday, then dies on the Day... Read more

The Jewish Passover begins tomorrow (April 11th), just as the Christian Holy Week is beginning. The two observances do not always overlap, because they are guided by different calendars, but as we begin this Holy Week, we can greet in solidarity our siblings in faith with their traditional Passover greeting: Pesach Sameach!Our Christian observance of the death and resurrection of Christ is intimately tied up with Passover. It was the Passover the disciples were celebrating in Jerusalem the night he was... Read more

And when we go to love our neighbor we are supposed to pick him up off the side of the road a carry him to shelter like Jesus said. Could get pretty messy doing that. Read more

At the end of his life, Jesus was not in possession of his own body. He was possessed by the state, handed over to those in power, incarcerated and crucified. He was, as it were, apprehended. He was in the state of apprehension. On that holy night of Eucharist and foot-washing (observed on our calendar as Maundy Thursday), on the evening of his betrayal, he gives his body away freely in the meal he offered to his disciples–this is my... Read more

“There is also a non-political Christianity, which defends the argument that because of its transcendence and orientation on the specifically religious, Christianity must stand above all politics–which in view of the existing antagonism in social policy is in fact unmistakably also a POLITICAL decision. It is a decision in favor of those in power and those who have the greatest economic strength… In the light of the gospel, Christians must be partisans and advocates of the poor, those without rights,... Read more