George Orwell is now revered as one of the most gifted and courageous writers of the twentieth century.  His Animal Farm and 1984 are regarded as brilliant exposés of communism that were penned when its totalitarian tyranny was fairly unknown. But as Christopher Hitchens’ Why Orwell Matters shows, Orwell’s gifts were largely overlooked by his contemporaries.  Animal Farm almost never got published during his lifetime because it was misunderstood: in 1944 T.S. Eliot, editor at Faber and Faber, thought it... Read more

The Talmud is the gigantic Jewish reflection on the Hebrew Bible and especially its first five books.  It contains much from which Christians can learn, even if Jews and Christians disagree on the identity of the messiah. One string of reflection in the Talmud from which we can learn is its thinking about how Athens relates to Jerusalem.  Reason vs. revelation.  Human thinking vs. God’s unveiling of His own mind and works.   Curt Biren is a student of Talmud... Read more

My friend Pesach Wolicki is an Orthodox rabbi in Israel.  This week he published an article in the Jerusalem Post that addresses the question many  Jews and Christians are asking, Is God trying to tell us something through this pandemic?  I find his answer to be compelling. It has to do with repentance and humility, two things that Christians are admonished to search in Lent.  Perhaps Rabbi Wolicki’s reflection will help us Christians ponder the irony that this crisis has... Read more

It is hot off the press: The Future of Orthodox Anglicanism. Amazon says it is the No 1 New Release in Christian Systematic Theology. Here is a summary: Anglicanism is the fastest growing Christian communion in the world today. It is attracting evangelicals who hunger for connections to the early church and for mystery, sacraments, and liturgy. But many people, even Anglicans themselves, don’t really understand what sets today’s Anglicanism apart from some of its history and distinguishes it from other... Read more

Carol Swain is a retired professor of political science and law from Vanderbilt University.  One of twelve children, she grew up in a two-room, tar-paper-covered shack with a tin roof. Her bedroom was the kitchen floor. The house was drafty and lacked indoor plumbing. Heat came from woodburning stoves, and water from a spring that looked more like a mudhole than a fresh water supply.  She and her siblings had to haul water in buckets up to the shack that... Read more

The study of race in America is an enormous undertaking.  It has been taken up in nearly every academic discipline, even the hard sciences.  CRT is only one small sub-discipline that started in law schools.  But after fifty years of influence, CRT has had disproportionate impact on a wide variety of academic disciplines and the broader reaches of American society. So my criticism of CRT is not a criticism of other academic studies of race.  Nor do I mean to... Read more

Critical Race Theory (CRT) is a movement that started among scholars in American law schools in the 1970s and has now influenced a wide variety of fields in the social sciences and humanities.  It has also affected much of American life outside of the academy, such as the broadly discussed “identity politics” in which people of the same race or sex or sexual orientation work together to gain power for their group. Since the 1990s CRT has produced a new... Read more

After I wrote a little article at Anglican Pastor on the question of women’s ordination (“God Is Not Fair”), I received about thirty comments, divided roughly equally between those who liked it and those who did not. Anglican scholar and NT professor at Wheaton College Esau McCaulley took up my article at his own blog.  Like another respondent at AP, he complained I was “uncharitable” for assuming that the issue of fairness was the “primary argument” for pro-WO scholars.  Because... Read more

  More than two years ago I wrote a blogpost on the (recent) disappearance from theology of God the Father. Not completely, of course.  A reader pointed me to two  recent books by Catholics in Europe on the Father.  But while there are piles of books on this side of the pond on Jesus and the Spirit, where are the books and articles on God the Father?  They are difficult to find. In the last few years evangelical theologians have been... Read more

Jonathan Edwards (1703-58) was a Reformed theologian who connected beauty and God more centrally than anyone else in the history of Christian thought.  For that reason and a number of others, Edwards can be a helpful resource for Anglicans in the 21st century.  Click here to hear my thoughts on this. Read more