Politics and the Bible as Narrative

Last updated on: July 2, 2013 at 10:44 am By Jake Meador

From Oliver O’Donovan’s The Desire of the Nations: If political theologians are to treat ancient Israel’s political tradition as normative, they must observe the discipline of treating it as history. They may not plunder the Old Testament as though it were so much raw material to be consumed, in any order and in any variety of proportions, in the manufacture of their own theological artefact. They are dealing with a disclosure which took form in a succession of political developments,... Read more

Faith, Fiction, and Reason

Last updated on: June 28, 2013 at 11:47 am By Sarah Ngu

T.M. Luhrmann is a Stanford anthropologist famous for her research on evangelical devotional life, studying the mechanics of God’s presence in their lives. A few days ago, in a NY Times article, she asked and answered the following question: “Why is C.S. still a rock star for evangelicals?” In her view, it boils down to his fiction, particularly his Narnia series, which paints a complex picture of God that is “insulated from human doubt about religion.” The series, she argues,... Read more

The Summer Pop Culture Found Religion

Last updated on: June 27, 2013 at 12:01 pm By Jonathan Askonas

Behold the summer where pop culture (or at least its high priests) found religion. Two of the biggest, most influential albums to drop this summer place religious questions and symbols at their core. More importantly, both promise to be memorable works. One, Modern Vampires of the City, marks the critical and commercial highwater mark of indie-rock impresarios Vampire Weekend. The other, Kanye West’s Yeezus, has received rave reviews and, given the artist’s current pop culture ascendance (cf. “Kimye”), is already... Read more

What Does It Mean to Be Successful?

Last updated on: June 25, 2013 at 12:21 pm By Sarah Clark

A recent article by Genevieve Smith, published in April by Elle magazine, raises the question of what it means to young people to truly be successful. Smith describes her youthful pursuit of a “creative” job at a magazine for which she earned less money than she could have at the financial magazine where she first worked. She agrees, at the beginning, with a friend who told her: “I cared about career success. I didn’t care about security.” But, says Smith,... Read more

The Theo-Logic of Costly Adoption

Last updated on: June 21, 2013 at 11:58 am By Justin Hawkins

The New York Times recently ran an article entitled “Eager to Adopt, Evangelicals Find Children, and Pitfalls, Abroad.” These pitfalls include local corruption and poor communication to the birth families about the terms of the adoption, among other things. The international adoption process, moreover, is notoriously expensive, laborious, and emotionally draining. In light of these difficulties, it might seem that the safe course of action would be to adopt domestically or even to forego adopting altogether. Yet evangelicals continue on... Read more

How Should We Spend Our Goodwill?

Last updated on: June 20, 2013 at 11:46 am By Peter Blair

The New York Times reports on the controversy over the presence of Christian religious symbols on Euro coins: It therefore came as a rude surprise when, late last year, the National Bank of Slovakia announced that the European Commission, the union’s executive arm, had ordered it to remove halos and crosses from special commemorative euro coins due to be minted this summer. The decision has been reversed and Slovakia is going ahead with its plan to print the coins with... Read more

Unequal Conversation Partners

Last updated on: June 18, 2013 at 1:27 pm By Cole Carnesecca

In a recent post over at NPR, Adam Frank reviews Religion without God, Ronald Dworkin’s posthumously published book on religion. In his book, Dworkin attempts to expand the definition of religion beyond its traditional boundaries, arguing that you can be religious even if you don’t believe in God. For Frank, this innovative thesis shifts the ground on which science/religion debates take place. A broader definition overcomes the apparent cultural rift between “evangelical vs. scientist, believer vs. atheist”: since we’re all... Read more

The Spirit and the Letter

Last updated on: June 17, 2013 at 12:57 pm By Jordan Monge

As director of The Great Gatsby, Baz Luhrmann made a controversial choice in choosing to depict the parties of the Roaring Twenties with music featuring today’s top artists and styles. In one sense, this made the movie a less “true” depiction of what life during the Jazz Age was life. The minor allusions to that era, the droning trumpets and hints of blues, are authentic twenties, but the rap styling and rapid beats would have been foreign to those alive during that era.... Read more

Cynicism, Passion, and The Onion

Last updated on: June 14, 2013 at 10:37 am By Justin Hawkins

I’ve sworn off reading The Onion. It’s not that I don’t appreciate its sardonic wit or comedic genius. On the contrary, I think its writers are often some of the most apt cultural critics currently writing. But their analysis of the world has become so acute as to blur in my mind the line between reality and fiction. I vividly remember once clicking through the website and laughing at its startlingly accurate social comedy couched in the blackest of black... Read more

What We Can Learn from Young Atheists

Last updated on: June 12, 2013 at 12:43 pm By Sarah Clark

Recently The Atlantic posted an article entitled, “Listening to Young Atheists, Lessons for a Stronger Christianity.” In it, Larry Alex Tauron, the article’s author, reports the results of a survey he conducted to figure how, why, and when young atheists decided to become atheists (“Tell us your journey to unbelief.”). Taunton states that he expected to find Hitchens, Dawkins, and the other New Atheists at the forefront of these young people’s minds—but instead, they rarely mentioned any specific names of... Read more