Critical Christianity

Last updated on: April 22, 2018 at 9:25 pm By James F. McGrath

I am hoping sometime soon to turn my attention to writing a book offering a positive vision of progressive/liberal Christianity, which often gets defined negatively over against fundamentalist and conservative varieties. One question is the very name, since I’m not convinced that “progressive Christianity” is the best label, or one that resonates well with people and encapsulates their own vision for themselves and their spiritual lives. The last time I blogged about this, someone made the interesting suggestion that it... Read more

Blogs as Havens for those Fleeing Facebook

Last updated on: April 21, 2018 at 9:59 am By James F. McGrath

It has been fascinating to see multiple different sources commenting on blogs making a comeback, all converging (apparently independently) on the topic. Perhaps it can all trace back to Dan Cohen’s blog post about resuming blogging, which the Chronicle of Higher Education picked up on in its treatment of the subject. But I don’t think so. I wrote about the future of blogging back in January. Since then, I’ve seen discussions about the past, present, and future of biblioblogging –... Read more

Reality and Relationship Online

Last updated on: April 17, 2018 at 7:19 pm By James F. McGrath

The thoughts below from Jason Dueck are specifically about and inspired by Ready Player One, but they apply well to our current technologically-mediated interactions too. Online relationships are capable of being real ones; they just face a lot more barriers. Aech is one of the handful of people Parzival trusts in the whole OASIS; they spend years pouring over possible solutions to the challenge together and he still doesn’t know a single thing about her physical identity. But her appearance... Read more

Not Loving the Bible

Last updated on: April 19, 2018 at 2:46 pm By James F. McGrath

In sharing a post about “loving the Bible” on Facebook, I summed up its point in this way: You can heap praise on another human being, but if you won’t let them express themselves freely, but force them to say only things that you want to hear, you do not really love, honor, or respect them, no matter how much praise you heap on them. That is precisely how fundamentalists treat the Bible… Phil Ledgerwood then left a comment of... Read more

Comforting and Comfortable Boundaries

Last updated on: April 15, 2018 at 2:22 pm By James F. McGrath

Pete Enns shared some thoughts recently about a subject that often keeps more conservative religious people frightenedly clinging to views that were passed on to them. Here is an excerpt: I feel I need to let go of building those boundaries because my entire Christian life has been about doing that very thing—creating and holding tightly to categories, behaviors, and associations that kept my boundaries neat and clear. Only to find, as I lived more and experienced things I never... Read more

Unwell Student

Last updated on: April 19, 2018 at 7:33 am By James F. McGrath

It has been a while since I’ve made a parody song, but recently I found inspiration to make the above song – a parody of the hit song “Unwell” by Matchbox 20 – in a Faculty and Staff Learning Community that I’ve been facilitating this academic year. Our focus has been on wellness and metacognition. We started off by reading My Freshman Year together. If you’re not familiar with it, that book is an ethnography of student life and culture at... Read more

The Story of Emmanuel Musinga

Last updated on: April 16, 2018 at 10:47 am By James F. McGrath

Pastor Emmanuel Musinga, who spoke as a panelist at the last event in the Butler Seminar on Religion and Global Affairs series on “Religion, Refugees, and Migration,” recently told his story on a local Christian TV station, and so I thought I should share that video with you: Video from the final Butler Seminar of the year is available, although the sound quality is not as good as it is usually – I’m not sure what went wrong, but I... Read more

What the Bible Says about X

Last updated on: April 11, 2018 at 11:32 pm By James F. McGrath

Fred Clark wrote a helpful post about “concordanceism” a while back. Here is an excerpt: If you’ve spent a lifetime hearing sermons and homilies — especially evangelical sermons — then you’ve no doubt encountered concordance-ism and its unfortunate byproducts. You’ve likely heard some preacher admit to it. Sometimes this is a sheepish confession acknowledging their last-minute, I-got-nothin’ sermon-prep from the night before. But sometimes it’s not a confession but a boast, with the preacher bragging that they “looked up every... Read more

Biblical Allusions in “We Are The World”

Last updated on: April 15, 2018 at 2:07 pm By James F. McGrath

One of the things that I love about teaching my course on the Bible and music is how much I learn from my students. This year has been no exception. Even the things that they simply identify as relevant and bring up in class suggest new avenues of research, whether of the sort that would be enough for a blog post, or of the sort that might lead to an article or book. I confess that, despite how many countless... Read more

New Reviews of Theology and Science Fiction

Last updated on: April 5, 2018 at 1:30 pm By James F. McGrath

A couple of reviews of my book Theology and Science Fiction have appeared recently. Jaime Wright of the University of Edinburgh writes in The Expository Times: Reading Theology and Science Fiction one wonders if the term ‘theology’ was chosen over ‘religion’ merely because McGrath’s name is already attached to the edited work, Religion and Science Fiction. McGrath’s use of the term ‘theology’ is not as systematic, nor as God-centred, as one might expect. This is perhaps due to his desire to discuss multiple religions rather than... Read more