It is unfortunate that I have to respond to the NBC article about ‘Korean culture’ and the Asiana Airlines crash at San Francisco International Airport before I put my thoughts on the marriage cases up. To be sure, in some ways, both of these topics (the crash and the marriage cases) are both about San Francisco. I take some comfort in that geographical rubric. For this particular piece, though, I would first like to blame Angry Asian Man for provoking... Read more
I preached yesterday on the Sunday Gospel lectionary text, Luke 10:1-11, 16-20. The passage concerns Jesus’ sending of the seventy-two into the various towns into which he intended to go. While seeming to give them power to heal and exorcise, Jesus in fact sends them in total, vulnerable weakness, completely dependent on the mercy of the hospitality of the towns as they preach, ‘The kingdom of God has come near.’ At these towns (especially as Gerhard Lohfink has so perceptively... Read more
I am taking another break from my Anglicanism posts. I can assure you that parts 4, 5, and 6 are all slowly forthcoming. Now that I’ve deconstructed Anglicanism in parts 1, 2, and 3, I’m sure that many readers are wondering what the hell I’m still doing styling myself as an Anglican. I have reasons, I can assure you, almost as good as the reasons that Albus Dumbledore consistently hides from Harry Potter throughout the series. But with the recent... Read more
I usually don’t post twice in a day. Although my previous post on Edward Snowden and the global politics of racism referenced today’s devastating blow to sections 4 and 5 of the Voting Rights Act in Shelby County v. Holder, my reading today has indicated to me that I haven’t quite said enough. I’ve seen, for example, a post from MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow Show on the lack of clarity about where exactly the United States Constitution was mentioned in the... Read more
On 23 June, Edward Snowden left Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (SAR) en route to Moscow. As some noted, Hong Kong SAR’s government is now probably breathing a sigh of relief, for while they defied the United States’s request for Snowden’s extradition, Snowden is not really Hong Kong’s problem any more. But interestingly enough, you could say that Snowden’s choice of Hong Kong elevated the SAR to global political consciousness. In an interview with the Guardian‘s Glenn Greenwald, Snowden’s choice... Read more
This morning, the United States Supreme Court handed down a series of decisions, the most reported of which was Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin, 570 U.S. ___ (2013). What happened was this: Abigail Fisher, an applicant to the University of Texas at Austin in 2008, was rejected from admittance into the university. She then sued the university, claiming that because its admission policy since 2004 explicitly considered race in admission, her application had been rejected simply because she... Read more
If you look at the Who’s Who of American High School Students in 2002, you’ll find that my career dream as of my sophomore year in high school was to become an attorney at law. Of course, it’s presumptuous for me to tell you that I’m in a Who’s Who, but considering the thousands of other names in there, it’s a bit of whatever now and really only good for getting my wife to feign being impressed these days. But... Read more
The apology of Exodus International’s Alan Chambers toward LGBTQ+ populations yesterday and the Exodus board’s announcement that the organization will shut down has produced a variety of stunned reactions. As an organization devoted to ex-gay reparative therapy, these actions completely rocked everything for which the organization seemed to stand. Of course, this was only a small surprise for those following the Exodus story since last year, when Exodus issued a statement renouncing Exodus’s commitment to ex-gay reparative therapy as the... Read more
Taking yet another break from the Anglicanism posts (I trust that Churl has received a somewhat adequate answer in part 3), I’d like to write some reflections on a sermon that I heard at a free church last Sunday. I don’t have any interest in attacking either the church or the preacher, so I will keep both vaguely anonymous and instead critique the individual sermon as it stands on its own. Because I’m starting to feel a growing conviction that... Read more
Recently, the Gospel Coalition has been commenting quite a bit on legal issues. With appreciation for the recent Supreme Court decisions on gene patents and the Arizona immigration law as well as anxious anticipation for the decisions in the same-sex marriage cases (I wrote about one of them back here), I’d like to interrogate the Gospel Coalition’s conception of how evangelicals in America should engage secular legal issues. Why talk about the Gospel Coalition? From time to time, we talk... Read more
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