Where Did the Idea of Mary as “Ever-Virgin” Come From?

Last updated on: October 21, 2016 at 3:27 pm By Kyle Roberts

Catholic and Eastern Orthodox tradition both formally teach the doctrine of Mary as “ever-Virgin,” meaning that she didn’t have sex with anyone, including her husband Joseph, throughout her life. The doctrine also includes the notion that she remained a virgin even through the birth of Jesus, meaning that her hymen was not ruptured through childbirth. Jaroslov Pelikan, in Mary Through the Centuries, tells us that the doctrine got lift-off in part through an allegorical reading of an obscure passage in... Read more

On the Origin of Modern Apologetics and the Loss of Mystery (via Charles Taylor)

Last updated on: October 17, 2016 at 11:09 am By Kyle Roberts

Try this: Scan the Bible (in vain) for any sustained, intellectual interest in the so-called “problem of evil.” CC by 2.0, via Flickr So why do the biblical authors seem to lack any sustained interest in theodicy (defending God’s goodness in the face of evil and suffering), when Christian theologians are often very engaged in that whole constellation of questions? Charles Taylor, in his monumental book, A Secular Age, argues that the modern theodicy discussions came about in large part... Read more

The Virtue Gap: Our Current Mess and the Church’s Place in it

Last updated on: October 14, 2016 at 12:40 pm By Kyle Roberts

This crazy election year has done at least one thing: It has raised to public consciousness questions about virtue (and lack of it). Virtue has not been a dominant theme in contemporary politics in America. Our political machine has been fueled by more pragmatic things: policies and power. To be sure, values have often been trumpeted. The religious right put “values” up front and center, creating terms like “family values” and “values voters.” But even values, as a term, has... Read more

The Evangelical Relationship With God, from an Anthropologist’s Point of View

Last updated on: October 12, 2016 at 2:57 pm By Kyle Roberts

The Evangelical experience is so fascinating that even anthropologists long to look into it. That’s just what Tanya (“T.M.”) Luhrmann has done in her fascinating book, When God Talks Back: Understanding the American Evangelical Relationship With God. Granted, there is no such thing as the evangelical experience–and Luhrmann acknowledges this. Nonetheless, she has pinpointed important, prominent and unique features of a large sector of the evangelical religious experience and analyzed those features with care and insight. She focused her research... Read more

Hauerwas on the Political Task of the Church in America

Last updated on: October 4, 2016 at 8:11 am By Kyle Roberts

What is the role of the church in the larger society? What does it mean for Christians to be “political”? Stanley Hauerwas’s A Community of Character, while being over three decades old, still represents well Hauerwas’ continuing influence on Christian ethics. His narrative and virtue ethic, which he views as not a distinct discipline from theology, but rather as a sub-set of theology, is still very much a live option within the fields of ethics as well as political and... Read more

If There’s a Future for Progressive Evangelicalism, it’s Somewhere in this Book

Last updated on: October 3, 2016 at 12:44 pm By Kyle Roberts

Evangelicalism is slowly changing. But you have to look very closely. That ‘close looking’ is exactly what Deborah Jian Lee has done in her book, Rescuing Jesus: How People of Color, Women & Queer Christians are Reclaiming Evnagelicalism. Jian Lee is well-suited for this task because, as a journalist she has a knack for accurate description as well as talent for storytelling. She’s woven together a fascinating tale of the diversity within American Evangelicalism, by telling stories of three figures... Read more

From Skittles to Syrians and What the Trolley Problem Has to Do With it

Last updated on: September 26, 2016 at 11:29 am By Kyle Roberts

What do Skittles have to do with Syrians, and with Trolleys? In my Ethics class last week, we discussed the well-known “Trolley Problem.” This is a thought experiment often used to exemplify the dynamics of moral calculations (originally written by British philosopher Philippa Foote). It raises the question of whether a consequentialist (or “utilitarian”) approach to ethics is preferable to a rule-based or duty-based (“deontological”) approach. The thought experiment goes like this: Suppose there are five people trapped on a... Read more

How the Bible was Used to Justify Slavery and White Supremacy

Last updated on: September 22, 2016 at 10:09 am By Kyle Roberts

In my Evangelicalism and Fundamentalism course today, we’ll be talking about the history of slavery and segregation in American Christianity. It’s the ugly underbelly we can’t ignore, but so often would rather pass over quickly. Many of (white) American Christianity’s great “heroes of the faith” defended slavery on “biblical” and theological grounds–as God’s punishment for sin or the outworking of a divinely ordained and divinely sanctioned hierarchy. Some argued that slavery is necessary for a robust economy, which is necessary... Read more

How Political Ads Manipulate Your Anxiety About Death

Last updated on: September 16, 2016 at 11:13 am By Kyle Roberts

Advertisers know how to tap into our deepest anxieties. For better or worse, they know how to manipulate us. One of the projects I was proud to work on this summer was a collaborative piece written under the auspices of the Ernest Becker Foundation–and now posted on the EBF website. The piece is called “Voter Manipulation: Death Anxiety in Political Messaging.” (click through to read and to view a talk on death anxiety and political leadership by Sheldon Solomon, leading... Read more

Did You Know that Evangelicals Were Feminists, Back in the Day?

Last updated on: September 14, 2016 at 2:59 pm By Kyle Roberts

Looking at what so often goes by the name “evangelical” or “evangelicalism” today, you would assume that evangelicals were always resistant to women at the highest levels of church leadership and public ministry roles–certainly in its origins. I mean, there may be some progressive, egalitarian, feminist evangelicals today–but centuries ago? Surely not. But you would be wrong. Evangelicalism in America mainly sprang out of the soil of eighteenth and (perhaps especially) nineteenth-century American revivalism. And that nineteenth-century revivalism was in... Read more