Andy Cassler is continuing his blogging through my book, having added a second post about the introduction. Knowing Andy’s views, I was expecting him to approach the book with significant reservations and to not be persuaded by many things I wrote. Nonetheless I am somewhat disappointed that he leads this blog post by focusing on what I don’t mention rather than what I do. He points out that those to whom Jesus asked questions when learning in the Temple were... Read more
I hope that Macey Dickerson’s fantastic artwork for my book What Jesus Learned from Women will get attention in the media at some point in its own right. When I spoke to Butler alumni about the book recently and shared the story, the response was immediate that it is a story that needs and deserves to be told. The initial question was actually whether the story is told in the book itself. The answer is no, as cover artwork only becomes a... Read more
Here is the poster for a talk I will be giving in April: Yes, that is the Red Angel from Star Trek: Discovery as depicted in the stained glass window of a church that was whisked away from Earth during World War III. In addition to so much science fiction in writing, longstanding television shows like Star Trek and Doctor Who as well as recent additions to the genre such as The Expanse and Devs engage not just with Christianity... Read more
A friend and colleague shared this vision from 1997 of what education would be like in 2021, noting how accurate it is (with the exception of the flying cars that everyone assumed we’d have by now, even though earthbound drivers still aren’t using turn signals and obeying the rules of the road consistently which means letting them wreak havoc in the air would be catastrophic). I reshared it on Facebook (after due fact-checking of course) and immediately heard from friends... Read more
I’ve had so many thoughts running through my head as I’ve read the news about the shooting carried out in Atlanta by a conservative Southern Baptist, a born-again Christian named Robert Aaron Long. The victims were predominantly women of Asian ancestry. The man viewed himself as eliminating temptation. There is so much in this that is illustrative of the conservative Evangelical variety of Christianity. Yes, it tells people they should not kill, but it also tells them many other things that... Read more
I am so grateful to the Times of Israel for the chance to record this conversation with Amanda Borschel-Dan about my new book, What Jesus Learned from Women. It was great to talk with someone, with a particular audience in view, that really knows what it means to talk about Jewish mothers and their influence on their sons! What Jesus Learned from Women is already beginning to be listed in a number of online booksellers and even some local bookstores,... Read more
I have thought a lot about same-sex relationships as the topic intersects with the Bible and religion, and have blogged about it in the past. I don’t feel as though anything I read previously transformed my perspective on this topic quite as much as having sat in recently on a class about gender and sexuality in Islam, focused in particular on same-sex eroticism in Ottoman poetry. What’s the connection, you might ask? Think about it. The Greek world and the... Read more
Messengers from the Stars: Episode VI Online Conference School of Arts and Humanities, University of Lisbon November 25-26, 2021 Nature and Overnature in SF and Fantasy Discourses Science Fiction and Fantasy are lasting fields of inquiring into today’s world. They have become privileged means to question issues of aesthetic, ethical, political, social, economic, environmental and historical nature with high impact on contemporary societies. They have promoted hot-button issues and rich critical debates in literature as well as in cinema, TV, and videogames among... Read more
The first customer review of What Jesus Learned from Women has been posted on Amazon. I hope others will follow but this first one is a very encouraging and meaningful start. Here’s a taste of what it says: The scholarship of What Jesus Learned from Women is strong, and it is also accessible for anyone who does not read biblical scholarship/criticism regularly…Dr. McGrath created a retelling of the lives of these women consistent with their culture offering a fresh perspective that does... Read more
I have said more than once that I think there should be musical exploration of the stories of women who made an impact on Jesus, who are the focus of the chapters of my book What Jesus Learned from Women. It turns out that there are more works along these lines than I was aware of! Of course I was aware (and had shared previously) some songs that relate. But there are a number of chancel operas (small-scale operas composed with... Read more
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In