The Road to Exegesis is Paved with Intentions

Last updated on: July 27, 2016 at 9:40 pm By Justin Tse

The recent news about the forced retirement of Doug Green from Westminster Theological Seminary (WTS) has been intellectually stimulating for me. Of course, intellectual muffling is not supposed to be stimulating. But I am a geographer. When I read theologians, biblical exegetes, spiritual masters, and church historians, I’m often struck by how many of these people are in fact honorary geographers. Their scholarship is not merely done in the office for an audience of three (peer reviewers). Among the evangelicals,... Read more

Monica Lewinsky made me think of my 1990s childhood

Last updated on: July 27, 2016 at 9:40 pm By Justin Tse

Last Thursday was the feast day of the fourteenth-century visionary and theologian Julian of Norwich. That was the day that Monica Lewinsky published an article in Vanity Fair to set the record straight. I was eleven in 1998. That means that I was old enough to hear all the uncles and aunties at my Chinese church, as well as all the teachers at my Pentecostal elementary school, talk about what a terrible example Bill Clinton had set for our country’s... Read more

Why Don’t You Want to Build a Snowman?

Last updated on: November 29, 2016 at 12:33 am By Justin Tse

When I gave the lecture on the Christian Right in my American Religion class, I sang songs from Disney’s Frozen. I found out recently that teaching on the Christian Right is a fairly gutsy thing to do at the University of Washington. It turns out that the Comparative Religion Unit was started because the ‘Christian Right’ (if you could call it that back then) sued the university in 1968. The case revolved around the English Department and its class, The... Read more

The New SCOTUS Prayer Case Is About Anglican Privilege

Last updated on: July 28, 2016 at 5:24 pm By Justin Tse

I had a student in my American Religion class who insisted, based on what she was reading and learning from both my lectures on early colonial America and her readings in David Hackett Fischer’s Albion’s Seed, that the American Constitution was laced with Anglican privilege. As a guest content blogger for Logos Anglican, you’d think that I’d readily agree. It was a gutsy argument, to be sure, and to the extent that she made her argument with examples, I gave... Read more

Considering and Contesting Calvin

Last updated on: July 27, 2016 at 9:15 pm By Justin Tse

Whenever I write about controversies, say, at Sovereign Grace Ministries or Mars Hill Church, I am always corrected by people who know what they are talking about. I’d #TPCIU the ‘Neo-Calvinists,’ and I’d be immediately informed that Colin Hansen’s Young, Restless, Reformed is about ‘New Calvinists.’ The difference? ‘Neo-Calvinism’ refers to the Dutch Calvinism of people like Abraham Kuyper all the way up to Richard Mouw, who have a view of Reformed politics that seeks to assert the sovereignty of... Read more

#SourcesoftheSelfie, or my students taught me how to run a secular classroom

Last updated on: July 27, 2016 at 9:19 pm By Justin Tse

It’s a cliché to say that one’s students will teach a teacher more than a teacher can teach them. If one were to cynical, one might quip that this is really false humility. And thus when I say that in my first course that I ever taught — the University of Washington’s American Religion class — that my students taught me more than I taught them, I risk sounding trite. After more than a month of reflection on what actually... Read more

The Canonization of Vatican II on Divine Mercy Sunday

Last updated on: July 27, 2016 at 9:07 pm By Justin Tse

Deus misericordiæ sempiteranæ, qui in ipso paschali festi recursu fidem sacratæ tibi plebis accendis auge gratiam quam dedisti, ut digna omnes intellegentia comprehendant, quo lavacro abluti, quo Spiritu regenerati, quo sanguine sunt redempti. Per Dominum nostrum Iesum Christum Filium tuum, qui tecum vivit et regnat in unitate Spiritus Sancti, Deus, per omnia sæcula sæculorum. Divine Mercy Sunday may well be a salient interpretive lens for post-Vatican II Catholicism. I realize that by saying that, I am utterly and hopelessly late... Read more

Forget Tim Challies

Last updated on: July 27, 2016 at 9:04 pm By Justin Tse

There are two versions of Cee Lo Green’s instant classic, that is, his imprecatory lament that his lover has left him because ‘the change in [his] pocket wasn’t enough.’ One uses an expletive. The other is said to be toned down. I have posted the Korean American Disney version. I’m posting because New Calvinist blogger Tim Challies has been ‘drivin’ round town’ with the church I love calling Pope Francis a ‘false teacher.’ I suppose I’m late to the party,... Read more

The Importance of Calvary Chapel

Last updated on: July 27, 2016 at 9:03 pm By Justin Tse

With the resignation of Bob Coy from Calvary Chapel Fort Lauderdale (reportedly the fourteenth largest megachurch in the United States – props to Sarah Pulliam Bailey), the arguable question perhaps is: when is all of this evangelical scandal going to stop? What I’ve attempted to do on this blog is to place some of these happenings in the larger context of the private consensus, the tacit agreement in American religion that church stuff should always be taken care of in... Read more

Will the Mars Hill case be a religious freedom case?

Last updated on: July 27, 2016 at 9:19 pm By Justin Tse

#TPCIU just got real. After following all the drama unfolding around Mars Hill Church on plagiarism, the New York Times/ResultSource debacle, and the growing protest of former pastors and members about church policy and the 2005-6 dismissal of Paul Petry, Bent Meyer, and Lief Moi, we have an anticipated lawsuit (h/t Warren Throckmorton). Note well: this lawsuit is anticipated. It has not yet been filed. But it looks like it will be. In light of lawyer Brian Fahling’s letter to... Read more