Forget the fish! God can work the miraculous. This is assumed in Jonah, but it isn’t the point of the story. The fish has only a bit swim on part.  Focus instead on divine mercy and compassion. A while back I wrote a post Satire or History exploring the genre of the book of Jonah.  The point isn’t to dismiss the book or to identify “error” in the Bible, but to correctly identify the genre and purpose of the book.... Read more

Luke Timothy Johnson, in his new theology of embodied experience (The Revelatory Body), begins what he calls “The Way Not Taken: A Disembodied Theology of the Body.” He does by taking on the late John Paul II. His aim is to show that if embodied experience is revelatory and part of theology, then the late pope’s theology of the body and sexuality proves to be source for this discussion. Johnson, as will become clear in this book, thinks revelation continues into... Read more

Brian Massey: Sarah Bernardi almost never goes to the grocery store. Instead, her community-supported agriculture (CSA) subscription provides 90 percent of what she eats. “I buy crackers, pasta, oils, and nut butters. All those things I could live without if I really wanted to. I have not bought a vegetable since joining the CSA,” she says. Bernardi is a member in the whole-diet CSA program offered by Moutoux Orchard, a farm in Purcellville, Virginia, an hour west of the Capital... Read more

Blindness is the problem and it leads to complicity in culture in ways the degrade the gospel and the church. We need the frigid splash of water in the face of what the Bible actually says at times — about all kinds of topics — if we want to be enlightened out of the blindness so that our complicities in culture are snapped. Brian Harris, in his fine new book, The Big Picture: Building Blocks of a Christian World View, examines... Read more

O God, you declare your almighty power chiefly in showing mercy and pity: Grant us the fullness of your grace, that we, running to obtain your promises, may become partakers of your heavenly treasure; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen. BCP Read more

Many of us became aware of the name “Phyllis Tickle” when someone told us about her 3 volume prayer book called The Divine Hours. There was so much more to Phyllis than her books and her publishing and her coverage of all things religious in The Publisher’s Weekly, but her contribution to the prayer life of many — including me — marks her out as a life time influence. So, today, I want to post one of her selections from today’s Morning... Read more

Another flap could happen over Pope Francis’ public affirmation of Catholic Worker Dorothy Day, a social activist for justice if ever there one was (though I’m partial to Jane Addams for that spot in American history). Frankly, I love the boundary crossing of a consistent pro-life policy, and tie in some economic theory to it and you’ve just about got everyone irritated. Perhaps a new wave of politicians will discombobulate the platforms and ideologies for a deeper morality: In his... Read more

Conor Friedersdorf: Were John Stuart Mill alive, he would say that silencing the expression of an opinion is evil. “It is robbing the human race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it,” he wrote. “If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth: if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression... Read more