Extended Call for Chapter Proposals: Theology, Religion, and Margaret Atwood #CFP

Last updated on: May 24, 2022 at 4:03 am By James F. McGrath

The Popular Culture and Theology blog just announced an extension to this call for papers: We are once again extending the call for papers for the Theology, Religion, and Margaret Atwood volume. The editors are interested in theological and religious analyses of Atwood’s works, which includes her famous A Handmaid’s Tale, but also includes her other short stories, essays, and poetry. Of particular interest would be a critical essay dealing with some of Atwood’s recent TERF comments. Other potential topics include... Read more

I Am God’s Dream

Last updated on: May 22, 2022 at 5:09 pm By James F. McGrath

I am grateful to Matthew Paul Turner for sending me a copy of his latest children’s book, I Am God’s Dream, as a thank you for my review of the children’s book by Rachel Held Evans, What Is God Like?, that he completed and published. I want to write at least a little about it. Having read a lot of children’s books, first as a child and then to my child, I am struck after reading Turner’s latest that most of those... Read more

Entering Strange New Worlds of Star Trek

Last updated on: May 19, 2022 at 2:29 pm By James F. McGrath

I have failed to blog about Picard but having watched the first few episodes of the new prequel series Strange New Worlds, I feel the need to get back to blogging about Star Trek. I have said before that Captain Christopher Pike as he was portrayed on Star Trek: Discovery quickly became my new favorite captain (it had previously been Benjamin Sisko). That owed much to the Discovery episode “New Eden” in which Pike shared that his father taught both... Read more

Prehistoric Planet

Last updated on: May 15, 2022 at 4:43 pm By James F. McGrath

I had a chance to preview the new Apple TV series Prehistoric Planet and it is really impressive in all respects – scientifically, visually, and musically. The narration by David Attenborough is wonderful, but precisely what you might expect in a series reenacting the age of the dinosaurs. On the other hand, how often do you get to see a documentary with soundtrack by Hans Zimmer? Perhaps the key to understanding how a documentary can be so much like a... Read more

The Parables of LaGuardia Airport, the Call Center, and the Lost Sock

Last updated on: May 10, 2022 at 4:57 am By James F. McGrath

Several experiences have led me to think of ways to update classic parables from the New Testament as well as come up with brand new ones. That’s what you’ll get in this post. Even if you aren’t a New Yorker, you may have heard of New York’s LaGuardia Airport. It has a notorious reputation. I had the opportunity to fly through there recently, and the outside reinforced every worst expectation imaginable. It is a real mess. It looks like a... Read more

Wholehearted Faith

Last updated on: April 29, 2022 at 8:41 pm By James F. McGrath

I have loved every single one of Rachel Held Evans’ books. I have never been as moved as I was by listening to the audiobook of her latest and presumably last, the posthumously published Wholehearted Faith. Audiobooks are not all the same. Some are read by the author. Some are read by professional narrators. This audiobook is unique in that it has a different reader for just about every chapter. Who are those readers? Rachel’s friends, and in the case of... Read more

#CFP Call for Contributions to a Book: What Writing is Like: The Many Worlds of Russell T Davies

Last updated on: April 29, 2022 at 1:02 pm By James F. McGrath

I was made aware of this call for chapter proposals (via H-Net and Call for Papers) which I will resist the temptation to pursue, but I am sure others I know will jump at: What Writing is Like: The Many Worlds of Russell T Davies edited by Anindya Raychaudhuri Russell T Davies has been one of the foremost voices in British television for the last three decades. The range of Davies’s work is formidable – from his early work on children’s television such... Read more

Justification and Judgment in Paul

Last updated on: April 27, 2022 at 6:29 pm By James F. McGrath

Richard Beck has begun a new series on Paul’s theology, after reading (among other things) Gabriele Boccaccini’s book Paul’s Three Paths to Salvation (currently available for only $5 for Kindle!). Here is a taste from Beck’s first post: Paul thought judgment was imminent. So this time of “holding fast” wasn’t going to be very long. It was a doable proposition. Hang in there, be faithful, the time is short. But as generations have passed, the lag time between justification and... Read more

Sabbatical Update

Last updated on: April 30, 2022 at 4:58 pm By James F. McGrath

Now that some details and arrangements have been finalized I can finally share details about my plans for the 2022-2023 academic year, when I will be on sabbatical to work on a book project related to John the Baptist. First, I have the opportunity to spend time in the Holy Land this summer so that I can visit locations that have a connection with John the Baptist, who is the focus of my project for the coming year. The connections... Read more

AAR Conference Paper for 2022: “Late Antique Texts and Earlier History: The Case of John the Baptist and Mandaean Sources”

Last updated on: April 8, 2022 at 4:12 pm By James F. McGrath

I mentioned in a previous blog post that I will present a conference paper in the Society of Biblical Literature’s “Q” program unit about John the Baptist. I have now learned that I have also had a paper accepted by the American Academy of Religion’s Traditions of Eastern Late Antiquity program unit. The title is “Late Antique Texts and Earlier History: The Case of John the Baptist and Mandaean Sources.” Here is the abstract I submitted: There is a noticeable... Read more