On September 18 I glanced quickly at the headlines from the mobile edition of the New York Times and went straight to “A Faded Piece of Papyrus Refers to Jesus’ Wife.” As a theologian I’m always interested in how such…
Violence and the cross
Challenging the notion that some violent responses to violence are justified often seems to cause people to respond with greater vehemence than if their most deeply-cherished convictions about the nature of God had been questioned. I suspect there are two…
Christians, guns, and the myth of redemptive violence
“How many more daughters, sons, mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, grandmothers, grandfathers, aunts, uncles, cousins, husbands, wives, friends—people created by and in the very image of God—have to die a horrific death before Americans will learn to lay down their guns?”…
The myth of redemptive violence
By Steve Harmon The Aug. 5 shooting at the Sikh temple in Oak Creek, Wis., has set off spirited debate over the merits of gun-control legislation. Comments span the spectrum of perspectives in the contemporary American debate over gun control…
The myth of redemptive violence
By Steve Harmon The Aug. 5 shooting at the Sikh temple in Oak Creek, Wis., has set off spirited debate over the merits of gun-control legislation. As a theologian who thinks that a lively debate within a contested tradition can be…
Baptists and Episcopalians together?
In my book Ecumenism Means You, Too: Ordinary Christians and the Quest for Christian Unity, I suggested this as something that “ordinary Christians” can do locally to further the visible unity of the church: “If your own denomination has been in…official…
The Eschatology of ‘Young Love’
Six months ago I couldn’t have imagined writing an appreciative review of an album by an artist whose music is frequently described as a unique blend of folk, hip-hop, and Brit-pop (think Coldplay for the latter genre). The Coldplay connection…
Baptists who “do this”
Cooperative Baptists are Baptists who “do this” when they get together. They “do this” not only in their local churches but also in their assemblies and in the institutions of theological education with which they partner. I’m talking about the…
The formation and reception of believer-theologians
But on the other hand…. My college philosophy professor Wallace Roark taught me that cultivating the capacity to “think on the other hand”—to Think Like an Octopus—is the key to becoming a good thinker. “But on the other hand” is…