2015-12-28T16:24:14-05:00

Last updated on: December 28, 2015 at 4:24 pm   By

Over the past month and a half, I’ve read four books by four very different women that have offered healing in different ways. Each book has a completely different style and purpose, and I think each of them deserves your attention. 1) Pamela Lightsey: Our Lives Matter: A Womanist Queer Theology Dr. Lightsey has been an important leader within the United Methodist Reconciling Ministries Network which seeks full inclusivity for queer people in the church. She is an associate dean and professor at Boston... Read more

2015-12-25T13:25:11-05:00

Last updated on: December 25, 2015 at 1:25 pm   By

Can you bow before a God who has come to Earth as a baby? That’s the scandalous question that Christmas asks us. It is the most unique aspect of Christianity among all the other world religions. Though we believe that there is only one God, we also believe that this God pooped on himself and drank milk from his mother’s breast. And we don’t allow that to be weird enough. Because it’s easy enough to call the baby Jesus God’s... Read more

2015-12-23T16:09:00-05:00

Last updated on: December 23, 2015 at 4:09 pm   By

In Matthew 1:21, the angel Gabriel tells Mary what to name her new  baby: “You are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins.” This sentence doesn’t make a whole lot of sense unless you understand that the word Jesus is the transliteration through Greek, Latin, and English of the Hebrew word Yeshuah which means “salvation.” So what exactly does salvation mean? To many evangelical Christians, salvation means simply not going to hell... Read more

2015-12-17T23:32:28-05:00

Last updated on: December 17, 2015 at 11:32 pm   By

One of the most important propaganda moments of the US invasion of Iraq was when a crowd famously tore down the statue of Saddam Hussein. It meant that the US had liberated the Iraqi people from their great oppressor. Statues, like flags, communicate who is in power. The basic difference between the war in Iraq and the US Civil War is that the statues of the defeated oppressor came down in Iraq after he was defeated. Throughout the American South... Read more

2015-12-16T19:51:19-05:00

Last updated on: December 16, 2015 at 7:51 pm   By

Wheaton College has suspended its political science professor Larycia Hawkins for saying that Christians “worship the same God” as Muslims in explaining her decision to wear a hijab in solidarity with Muslims throughout the season of Advent. To be clear, she didn’t just say that as her own statement; she was quoting Pope Francis. So Wheaton College is effectively declaring the pope to be anathema by making this move. But what’s really at stake here? What does it mean to... Read more

2015-12-14T12:29:50-05:00

Last updated on: December 14, 2015 at 12:29 pm   By

Ross Douthat has been playing amateur theologian again in the New York Times. This time, he’s telling Muslims how they need to adapt their inherently “illiberal” faith to assimilate better into Western culture. There are definitely some ways in which Islam is inherently incompatible with our capitalist society, and I wish Christianity were too. I’m no Muslim scholar, but I did work briefly in a Muslim private school in Michigan and I’ve been around it enough to encounter three spiritually... Read more

2015-12-12T13:55:26-05:00

Last updated on: December 12, 2015 at 1:55 pm   By

God has been moving at the NOLA Wesley United Methodist campus ministry. In February 2014, several months before I stepped into the picture, the NOLA Wesley board decided to take the step of joining the United Methodist Reconciling Ministries Network and officially advocating for full inclusion and affirmation of all people regardless of their sexuality or gender identity. When I was looking for campus ministry jobs, NOLA Wesley’s affirming stance caught my eye. Now, a year and a half later,... Read more

2015-12-11T01:19:20-05:00

Last updated on: December 11, 2015 at 1:19 am   By

Over the course of this fall, I have been working through Ta-nehisi Coates’ book Between the World and Me. One of the topics that has generated some controversy is Coates’ purported lack of hope in talking about race relations in the US. Neo-Calvinist pastor Thabiti Anyabwile published a critique of Coates’ “hopelessness” in the Atlantic this fall. But I actually think that what many white Christians call “hope” is not really the kind of hope that our Advent season is... Read more

2015-12-09T00:04:40-05:00

Last updated on: December 9, 2015 at 12:04 am   By

I’m thankful for Donald Trump for the same reason that I’m thankful for Fred Phelps, the founder of the infamous gay-hating Westboro Baptist Church. Phelps presented the world with an extremely helpful caricature of toxic fire and brimstone theology that woke up thousands of fundamentalist Christians and deconverted them from their extremism. Trump is doing the same thing by being a perfect caricature of a billionaire narcissist. Three years ago, when the culture wars were raging in the buildup to... Read more

2015-12-07T17:09:09-05:00

Last updated on: December 7, 2015 at 5:09 pm   By

I’m not sure what the right adjective is for the kind of Christianity espoused by Jerry Falwell, Jr, and his adoring fans in the student body of Liberty University. In case you missed it, Falwell gave a speech at a school-wide convocation in which he said, “If more good people had conceal carry permits, then we could end those Muslims before they go out trying to kill us… I just want to take this opportunity to encourage all of you... Read more

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