Rick Wakeman has recorded several albums that intersect with the Bible, as well as more broadly with theology, and I’m looking forward to exploring them in the book I’m working on about theology and progressive rock. The New Gospels is referred to as “a modern oratorio.” Wakeman’s website tells the story of how that project came about. Here’s a snippet: The New Gospels evolved because Rick Wakeman was asked to perform at an organ recital to raise money for the Camberley United... Read more
This song emerged out of the intersection of two of my book projects. I shared it at the end of a service I led and preached in, the sermon text being the story of the Samaritan Woman. I plan to share a video of the sermon followed by the song recorded during the service. But in the meantime, here is a recording of rehearsing the song. The lyrics are included below. Come Where The Healing Waters Flow Music and... Read more
Extrapolating Nostalgia: Special issue of Science Fiction Studies We invite papers on the role of nostalgia as a structure of feeling that animates speculative, utopian, and (post)apocalyptic texts across media. Although there has been increasing critical attention to the role of memory in these genres, nostalgia is a neglected topic. We seek papers that explore nostalgia as affect and motif in the genre, following Jameson’s description of sf as a mode of “apprehending the future as history” (1982), while discussing seemingly... Read more
It was great having Tripp Fuller visit Indianapolis recently. It was almost ten years ago when I appeared as a guest on his podcast. Early Christian Monotheism with James McGrath: Homebrewed Christianity 68 Back then he was still numbering them. I’m not sure when he stopped but after the first thousand I suppose it probably makes sense to stop numbering them and just name them instead. I feel like back then, we weren’t even calling them “podcasts” yet, although it... Read more
The Frankel Institute for Advanced Judaic Studies at the University of Michigan seeks scholars for a residential fellowship in 2021-2022 to explore the challenges of diversity in Second Temple Judaism. Diversity of ethnicity, religion, social status, gender, age, and ability was as much a feature of the ancient Mediterranean world as it is in the present. We aim to explore the diversity of religious, cultural, and political life during the period of the Second Temple, from after the Babylonian Exile... Read more
I’m really excited that Rob Orlando is coming back to Butler University. Hopefully there won’t be any sense of tension between continuing to draw attention to his new movie The Divine Plan, and continuing my series about his earlier movie, Apostle Paul: A Polite Bribe (as well as its sequel that will be one of Rob’s next movies). Today’s clip from A Polite Bribe focuses on the identity of “the poor” whom Paul was supposed to remember in his agreement with the Jerusalem apostles.... Read more
I recently replaced the vacuum breaker on an outdoor anti-siphon spigot. There was a time when that sentence would have seemed not only implausible but as incomprehensible as a discussion of the ontological ramifications of perichoretic symbolism on Romanian Orthodox iconostases sounds to most people. But the faucet was leaking, and so I got on YouTube and learned what I needed to do. And I did it. In the past, unless one had been apprenticed in such skills, one simply... Read more
It was interesting to find myself discussing the question of whether the arts can provide knowledge or make progress in the way science can, and then to have a post about the same topic in relation to theology appear on Sandwalk. I created a draft post, and then didn’t return to it for quite some time, as you may have noticed often occurs. But this topic kept coming up. Roger Olson wrote in a post called “Has Science Buried God?”: Much... Read more
Seth Price had me as a guest on his podcast last year. We’ve talked about following up and having him be a guest on mine at some point, but we have yet to make it happen. But as a follow-up, Seth made a transcript of the podcast and added it to the website recently. He indicates that it is a combination of automated software and what he heard and so there could be errors. But there is at least one point... Read more
No, this post is not announcing that Butler University is ceasing to be a secular university. And no, I’m not offering a theological interpretation of what goes on here even so. Not that that would be entirely inappropriate. We honor the values of our founder, Ovid Butler, and those values were theological in character and foundation. But they were also adamantly inclusive, and so is Butler. And that makes for a nice connection with what is the focus of this post,... Read more
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