This week, I had an unusual conversation with an old friend. We had met over coffee to talk about some concerns he had over something he had read, about the writer’s theological direction, and about how that would affect his community. None of this is the unusual part – I have conversations like this often. Living in a pluralist world as we do, and working in it so intimately and intensely at Patheos, theological wrestling and wrangling goes with the... Read more
“But the effect of her being on those around her was incalculably diffusive: for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on historical acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been is half owing to the number of who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.” ~ George Eliot, Middlemarch I’ve nearly finished reading Revelation again, and the symbolism of twelve (and multiples of twelve) is... Read more
If we accept N.T. Wright’s description of the gospel in Simply Good News—as good news about something that has happened and something that’s going to happen which changes the in-between time we’re living in—then we have to accept a break in the continuum of ways things have always been done. Something has interrupted the “natural” course of events in such a dramatic manner that the systems—functional or dysfunctional—that we have relied on no longer reign supreme. Paul’s description of this... Read more
For many who have come from a middle-class American Evangelical background with solid, godly roots, there is a certain rightness to life that cannot be denied. This rightness includes a mélange of middle-class American values and Evangelical values, and it’s pretty hard to slice them down the middle. They coinhere. Many of us are kind of stuck in puritan mode—the small-p, pinched-face sort, not the good kind. These values are fairly tidy and can lead to a fairly tidy life—if,... Read more
As the 2016 election season launches in earnest, I’m still quivering a bit from the vitriol and animus of the 2012 Obama-Romney run. I’m still remembering that video of the little four-year-old sobbing because she was so very tired of Womney and Bronco Bamma. I’m dreading the television ads, the robocalls, and the endless mailings that get increasingly ridiculous through the season. At least in 2012 I had a bird, and those mailings made very nice, and appropriate, cage liners.... Read more
In the Gospel of John, the focus on the Passover meal as described in the other gospels—including the dipping of bread and sharing of the cup—is replaced with a tender, yet stunningly disturbing, moment. Jesus stoops to a most humiliating task: washing the disciples’ feet (John 13.1-15). Now we have a foot-washing service at our church, but I can guarantee you that we all come having washed our feet. We stand barefoot in the aisle as we come forward to... Read more
Reformation Day doesn’t make me giddy, but it does afford me the opportunity to think again about this business of being Protestant. “I yam what I yam,” Popeye said. And so it is with me. By the grace of God. Most non-Catholic, non-Orthodox Christians really don’t identify as Protestants. They’re Baptists and Presbyterians, Reformed and Anglican and Methodist and Vineyard and Pentecostal. And if they’re not any of those, they’re non-denominational. Or they’re nothing because they don’t bother with church.... Read more
Some of our Friends of God shine like the sun, and their names are known even to an unbelieving world: Meister Eckhart, Henry Suso, Johannes Tauler, Jan Ruysbroeck. Some lie in forgotten corners of history like so many fallen autumn leaves blown into the shadows. Often, but not always, it’s the women who drift into anonymity. I’m happy to say, though, that that seems to be our problem more than it is one of the Friends of God, because... Read more
The Friends of God were committed to community. While their associations with each other were indeed informal and unregulated, they recognized the value of mutual support and encouragement in their God-friendships. The Green Isle Community is one example of this. Today, Strasbourg in eastern France is known as the headquarters of the European Parliament, but it has centuries of fame behind it. Some of that fame is glorious—it was Johannes Gutenberg’s home when he created the single most influential piece... Read more
When we think of the Middle Ages, and we try to imagine the ordeals people faced, it’s our modern tendency to look for heroes. We love heroes. Who in the 14th century was doing something about all that mess? That deep-seated desire to set things right—by the sword, mainly—must, in part, be behind movies like Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves. Morgan Freeman was a hero! Or Braveheart – that world back then needed a good army full of William Wallaces.... Read more
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