Heather Goodman wrote this on Facebook, and I thought it was such a great way of making an important point, that I asked for permission to share it: I think too many Christians start with the idea that Evolution would have to make sense theologically first, in order for it to be true. Something doesn’t have to make theological sense to be true. It’s either true or not true. Theology has to grapple with reality, we can’t force reality... Read more
I finally got to see the movie version of A Wrinkle In Time recently, and it was interesting to have that experience coincide with watching the most recent episode of The Expanse. Madeleine L’Engle’s novel A Wrinkle in Time was one that I thoroughly enjoyed reading as a young person, and I loved the other books in the series as well. It was very strange watching the movie and feeling as though, on the one hand, it was very clearly not aimed at... Read more
I still recall when I first spotted a first very early mention of Richard Grigg’s forthcoming book Science Fiction and the Imitation of the Sacred. I shared a link, commenting on how interesting it looked. Someone left a comment under the link, asking why the title referred to “imitation” of the sacred, rather than simply the sacred. Not long after, the publisher contacted me to ask for an endorsement of the book, and so I was delighted! Here’s what I wrote:... Read more
The New Yorker shared this cartoon: Here’s the caption: “I’m sorry, but we believe in tradition—marriage should exclusively be about bringing a brief moment of calm between two warring kingdoms.” There have been a lot of memes about “traditional marriage” or “biblical marriage,” many of which highlight stories such as Solomon’s many wives and concubines. What most of them fail to adequately incorporate is the very different social functions of ancient marriages vs. modern ones, regardless of the gender of... Read more
Following up on yesterday’s post, I remembered a blog post that I wrote more than a decade ago, about things that I had learned from the experience of living and teaching in Romania, which relate directly to areas that I research and teach. One of them was rumors. Looking back now I regret having given the impression that the spread of rumors was something specific to that culture or absent from my own – we have seen very clearly in recent... Read more
Daniel Wallace, Craig Evans, and others have done significant harm not only to Christian apologetics but to conservative Christian claims about the resurrection. What do I mean? As commenter Beau Quilter has pointed out, the legend/rumor of a first century fragment of the Gospel of Mark makes abundantly clear how stories can circulate and grow, and be repeated with confidence even by sources that should be credible, and yet turn out to be completely unsubstantiated. This is something that I... Read more
For those inclined to discuss whether certain laws are “biblical,” a tweet from Rev. James Martin is worth considering: It is not biblical to treat migrants and refugees like animals. It is not biblical to take children away from their parents. It is not biblical to ignore the needs of the stranger. It is not biblical to enforce unjust laws. Do not use the Bible to justify sin. https://t.co/oApfyC9wJV — James Martin, SJ (@JamesMartinSJ) June 14, 2018 If the tweet... Read more
I previously shared a quote from Robert Weston that is worth revisiting. Here is a small part of it: Doubt is the touchstone of truth; it is an acid which eats away the false. Let no one fear for the truth, that doubt may consume it; for doubt is a testing of belief. The truth stands boldly and unafraid; it is not shaken by the testing; For truth, if it be truth, arises from each testing stronger, more secure. Those... Read more
I received an invitation recently to submit a manuscript which I felt I should share, despite the warning not to do so at the bottom of the email. Sending me an unsolicited email seems to me that is should invalidate any demand in a disclaimer of the sort at the bottom. Nonetheless, after sharing the text of the email, I was contacted by an attorney telling me that I was violating the sender’s intellectual property in doing so, and so... Read more
Seeing the Inside Higher Ed piece about the Twitter hashtag #womenalsoknowhistory, which then led me to the Chronicle of Higher Education article about the website by the same name, I found myself thinking about my own field, which includes many historians as well as scholars who use historical tools as part of a more diverse palette of methods. I think that some additional hashtags such as #womenalsoknowreligion and #womenalsoknowbible are called for. There is already a website highlighting the work of... Read more
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