Just Because the Disciples Didn’t Go to Seminary Doesn’t Mean You Don’t Need to Go

Last updated on: January 11, 2018 at 5:38 am By Frederick Schmidt

Last week I wrote about the importance of rigor in a seminary education. Predictably, someone finally noted that the disciples of Jesus didn’t have educations, so modern pastors don’t need one either. I’ve heard this argument repeatedly over the years and the defense often offered for it is the observation that there are pastors of mega-churches without a seminary education who have built mammoth non-denominational churches, while seminary-trained mainline Protestants often preside over struggling congregations. One problem with this... Read more

4 Reasons Seminary Shouldn’t Be Hard, It Should Be Harder

Last updated on: January 3, 2018 at 6:20 am By Frederick Schmidt

I found myself in a conversation with students about the challenges of being a seminarian. There is no doubt that there are innumerable challenges. For most seminarians Masters work does not cover ground to which they’ve been introduced as undergraduates. Few have majored in religion and, in any event, a religious studies major, which focuses on comparative methods, is nothing like the world of theology. Theology is different in both its approach and subject matter. There are a number... Read more

Defining Christian Spirituality

Last updated on: December 14, 2017 at 12:12 pm By Frederick Schmidt

One of the vagaries of curriculum revision is that you find yourself teaching a new course or two. So, in the wake of that change, I found myself teaching a class on the theology and practice of Christian spirituality this autumn. To open the conversation, I asked the students to write down the definition of spirituality, explicit or assumed, that they brought with them to class. I wasn’t surprised to discover that for many of them, the definition that they... Read more

Why the Conversation about Rights Won’t End Harassment

Last updated on: December 5, 2017 at 9:36 am By Frederick Schmidt

Rightly, we have been discussing women’s rights in one form or another for nearly 170 years in the United States. None of that has effectively addressed the issues of objectification, exploitation, harassment or physical violence. That is because the only sure guarantee of changed behavior depends upon the transformation of our attitudes toward one another, our understanding of the place of sexual intimacy in human flourishing, and a solid commitment to our mutual well being rooted in the will of... Read more

We Thank You Just the Same

Last updated on: November 22, 2017 at 5:42 am By Frederick Schmidt

Sometime ago I watched the film, “Shenandoah.” James Stewart plays Charlie Anderson, a Virginia farmer who becomes embroiled unwillingly in the mayhem of the War Between the States. His family gathers at the dinner table, and Anderson prays, “Lord, we cleared this land. We ploughed it, sowed it, and harvested. We cooked the harvest. It wouldn’t be here, we wouldn’t be eating it, if we hadn’t done it all ourselves. We worked dog bone-hard for every crumb and morsel, but... Read more

A Reflection on the Shooting in Sutherland Springs, Texas

Last updated on: November 7, 2017 at 6:14 am By Frederick Schmidt

All Saints Day, 2017 The Church witnesses to a world that is broken and enthralled to darkness. It also witnesses to God’s victory over that darkness in the person and work of Christ. But the very shape of that victory is one marked by a time in between and it is into that struggle that the Christian is invited. That is why the Saints whose lives we celebrated today are not easy people or even likable. They are... Read more

I Come to Bury Evangelicalism, Not to Praise It

Last updated on: October 27, 2017 at 6:26 am By Frederick Schmidt

Coming from Scot McKnight, who is himself a leading evangelical voice, the summons to bury the movement this last week came as something of a theological earthquake. But in not very different terms from the title above, that was exactly what he suggested. You can read the article here. I am not an Evangelical, but I do owe a good deal of my early education to teachers who would have described themselves as such. I also think it is important to... Read more

I Come to Bury Evangelicalism, Not to Praise It

Last updated on: October 25, 2017 at 10:11 am By Frederick Schmidt

All God’s Children Got Dogma

Last updated on: October 20, 2017 at 6:09 pm By Frederick Schmidt

A few weeks ago a firestorm erupted over an announcement at Patheos that former mega-church pastor, Mark Driscoll would be writing for the website. The complaint lodged by fellow Progressive Christians was that Driscoll’s views on women were not only backward and demeaning, but that he had also done women and others real harm. I don’t doubt it. Driscoll has described himself as William Wallace II (of Braveheart fame) and as “a prize fighter with a tattoo down His leg,... Read more

Las Vegas: The Brutal Truth and the Only Hope

Last updated on: October 10, 2017 at 8:28 am By Frederick Schmidt

By all means, let’s discover as much as we can about why Stephen Paddock fired blindly into a crowd. By all means, let’s enact any safeguard that might make it more difficult for this kind of thing to happen. But let’s not pretend that it won’t happen again, because it will. Gunshot and death will not always be the outcome. Sometimes, there will be more, not fewer victims. In fact, other kinds of mayhem went largely unnoticed around the world... Read more