Can God improvise outside the boundaries of Christian orthodoxy?

Last updated on: November 7, 2014 at 5:55 pm By Morgan Guyton

Generally there are two extreme positions that Christians can take when talking about where other religions come from. Some Christians would say that in order for Christianity to be uniquely right, we have to believe that Buddhism, Islam, Sikhism, Hinduism, Ba’hai, and everything else besides Judaism and Christianity are the entirely false products of demons who have deliberately misled billions of people in order to consign them to an eternity in hell. On the opposite end of the spectrum would... Read more

Love is not our choice, but God’s gift (featuring Simone Weil)

Last updated on: November 6, 2014 at 7:40 am By Morgan Guyton

One of the most problematic axioms in the popular evangelical culture that raised me is to say that love is a choice, not a feeling. Evangelicals say this to contrast “Christian” love (agape), which is all about arduous self-sacrifice, with “worldly” love (eros), which is fickle and self-centered. But if you asked an orthodox Christian from any other era whether it’s proper to call agape our choice, they would say rightly that our ability to channel agape is not something... Read more

Should we accept ourselves or despise ourselves? [reflections on Henri Nouwen and Thomas a Kempis]

Last updated on: November 5, 2014 at 5:37 pm By Morgan Guyton

I’ve been reading two books simultaneously from two guys who have been deeply influential on my contemplative spirituality: Thomas a Kempis’s Imitation of Christ and Henri Nouwen’s Discernment. When I discovered Nouwen at a very dark time in my life, I felt like I’d found the gospel that I never heard before: that God loves and accepts me unconditionally, and my inability to trust and embrace this wonderful truth is the reason beneath all of my sin. I had grown up thinking... Read more

When I need a weak Jesus to be my friend (an encounter with an icon)

Last updated on: November 4, 2014 at 1:58 pm By Morgan Guyton

Yesterday was a very rich day of healing for me. So many of my readers reached out to me after my last post about feeling myself sliding back into depression again. My district superintendent from Virginia called me yesterday morning less than twelve hours after I’d posted. Another pastor friend texted me a beautiful prayer. I could feel palpably the support of so many prayers. But the richest part of yesterday happened when I spent an hour and a half... Read more

Hello darkness, my old friend

Last updated on: November 2, 2014 at 11:40 pm By Morgan Guyton

There’s a certain line that gets crossed between the normal daily inadequacies I experience and the return of my old friend depression. There’s a certain kind of heart-heaviness that indicates I’ve descended into the darkness again. It’s a physical feeling like a heavy medallion that hangs down inside of my chest like Frodo’s necklace when he carried the ring of doom. I enter into an acute self-awareness that isn’t the same thing as mindfulness and contemplative prayer, but kind of... Read more

Is Ross Douthat right that offering communion to divorcees will bring down the Catholic church?

Last updated on: October 31, 2014 at 4:48 pm By Morgan Guyton

I had always thought of Ross Douthat as one of the “reasonable conservatives” whom I could read and often agree with. But his recent freakout in response to some of the proposals brought up by Pope Francis’s Synod of the Family has raised some questions for me. I’m particularly intrigued by his claim that offering communion to remarried divorcees would “put the church on the brink of a precipice.” Huh? (more…) Read more

Wisdom from Thomas a Kempis #1: esoteric words vs. virtuous life

Last updated on: October 29, 2014 at 9:40 pm By Morgan Guyton

Thomas a Kempis was a 15th century German monk who wrote The Imitation of Christ, a classic devotional book that was tremendously influential to John Wesley, the founder of United Methodism. I’ve flipped through this book many times, but I thought it would do both me and my readers good to go back to it and proceed more slowly through it to meditate upon the wisdom Thomas has to share with us. So I’m starting with the first chapter. I... Read more

Why I like Pope Francis’ “God of surprises”

Last updated on: October 23, 2014 at 5:21 pm By Morgan Guyton

It’s little secret that progressive evangelicals like me have a huge crush on Pope Francis and probably project a lot of unmerited wishful thinking onto him. The Roman church’s recent synod on the family revealed among other things how little power Francis actually has to impose change by fiat. I respect him for patiently seeking a consensus among the stuffy bishops he’s surrounded by. It took many generations for the church to finally admit that Copernicus was right and give... Read more

Where I’m actually coming from as a progressive evangelical

Last updated on: October 21, 2014 at 1:49 pm By Morgan Guyton

One of my most valuable conversation partners on the Internet is a conservative Calvinist campus minister named Derek Rishmawy. In some ways, we are the opposite, since I’m a progressive Wesleyan campus minister, but I think we both recognize in each other a genuine zeal for God’s truth. I have a lot of respect for Derek, and when we do actually agree on something, I usually do a happy dance because I feel like I’m on very solid ground. In any... Read more

When cis-het men play God: evangelical transphobia and the idolatry of gender

Last updated on: October 16, 2014 at 3:40 pm By Morgan Guyton

Last week, Russell Moore wrote a column for The Gospel Coalition called “Joan or John?” about how to handle the “sin” of transgender identity in your congregation. His column presents the made-up scenario of a transgender woman tearfully approaching a pastor to repent of her sex change. It’s a textbook display of the breathtaking presumptuousness of cisgendered heterosexual males who judge people with lives they are clueless about by making false analogies with the sin in their own lives. (more…) Read more