Ross Douthat published an article this past weekend in the NYT called “Can Liberal Christianity Be Saved?” It’s gotten a lot of response, including this one by Diana Butler Bass arguing that all of Christianity is in the same boat and liberals are just feeling the decline first, and this one by Rachel Held Evans pleading for detente between liberals and conservatives and more room for those “stuck in the middle.” A specific criticism about Douthat’s piece: He makes the... Read more
I just returned from the second day of our diocesan convention, which this year featured the Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church, Katharine Jefferts Schori. I was personally impressed with the Presiding Bishop, who preached a thought-provoking sermon about St. Teresa of Avila and answered questions with grace and humor. However, I was confirmed in my belief that her understanding of the Church is radically different from mine. The most frustrating part of the afternoon question-and-answer period was her discussion... Read more
Over the past few years, I’ve been watching a lot of early movies in more or less chronological order. I started doing this fairly systematically in 2009, but the first early-movie DVD I got from Netflix was back in December 2007: Landmarks of Early Film #1. This is a collection of movies from the earliest days of the Edison company and the Lumiere Bros. through D. W. Griffiths and the Keystone Cops. It was a great place to start my... Read more
It may seem somewhat improper to review a book by my wife, but hey, she asked me to do it and I’m being upfront about my “bias”! With said bias in mind: Jenn’s basic argument is that Methodists who pushed for the use of non-alcoholic “wine” in the Eucharist in the late 19th century were doing so based on a coherent theological/philosophical point of view based in “common-sense realism.” I’m no expert on commonsense realism, so I won’t discuss the... Read more
The most thorough and widely touted refutation of Love Wins is a lengthy review by Kevin DeYoung, a pastor in East Lansing. I applaud Pastor DeYoung for his thoughtful and substantive approach. He’s done an excellent job of explaining why conservative Reformed evangelicals (and no doubt many conservative Arminians as well) find Bell’s views so troubling. Pastor DeYoung clearly takes seriously his responsibilities to defend the faith once delivered to the saints and to protect the sheep of Christ from... Read more
Here’s a review of Rob Bell’s Love Wins. First of all, I had never read any of Bell’s books before this. I have never been a fan of Bell or of megachurch celebrities or of people who write books with short lines like this and even this. (For one thing, it seems really mean to trees–perhaps Bell really isn’t a liberal after all.) When my students mention _Velvet Elvis_ I want to shake my head and say, “Can we please... Read more
The evangelical world seems to be in a tizzy about a book that almost no one has yet read. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. That’s how the world of the tweet works. As a guy who blogs about every year or so, I find it hard to keep up. I’m still trying to digest things that happened hundreds of years ago. In a rare foray into modern times, I attended a talk last night about George MacDonald (1824-1905), an... Read more
A year or two ago, on my friend Chris Armstrong’s blog (Grateful to the Dead), I got in an argument about whether there was such a thing as “mere Anglicanism.” As a result, I started writing what I called “An Anglican Manifesto,” laying out what I believe as an Anglican. A very disgruntled one, but as a Methodist theologian once said to my wife when she described me that way, “Is there any other kind?” The problem was, though, that... Read more
Yet again I return to this blog after a very long absence (the longest yet). I hope to post regularly, but we’ll see what happens. At any rate, the occasion for this post is a recent Facebook conversation. One of my friends asked why Christians no longer produce great art. I replied that this wasn’t entirely a fair generalization, but that the proportion of good art to “kitsch” probably is higher than it used to be, for the following reasons:... Read more
You’re St. Justin Martyr! You have a positive and hopeful attitude toward the world. You think that nature, history, and even the pagan philosophers were often guided by God in preparation for the Advent of the Christ. You find “seeds of the Word” in unexpected places. You’re patient and willing to explain the faith to unbelievers. Find out which Church Father you are at The Way of the Fathers! Read more
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