Month: January 2021
That Others May Live: Fetal Cell Lines and Vaccine Production
The world breathed a collective sigh of relief at news that multiple vaccines against the SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes COVID-19 were found to be effective. No sooner had this news reached us before there was a moral greaseball gumming up...
From the Ashes
Despite formidable remnants of power, the western late-modern system and its globally imperial philosophies are collapsing under the weight of their internal inconsistencies and increasingly visible external shortcomings. For evidence of our collectively culpable failure, one need only look to...
Missing the Subtler Yet Greater Problem: Replying to “Jesus and John Wayne”
Author’s Note I wrote and submitted this essay in advance of the January 6th events at the Capitol. Since then there has been a deluge of think-pieces and journalistic treatments of the events and the role “evangelicals” had in them....
A Homegrown Christian Insurgency
We’re living between the times. We’re in the territory of the “already, but not yet.” Is the kingdom of insurgency at hand?
Accusations Aren’t Evidence: Responding to “Jesus and John Wayne”
Flannery O’Connor’s short story “Revelation” begins with a holier-than-thou character having a book, along with her sin, thrown in her face. She returns home with a bruised face and bruised pride to reflect on her sins. For many of us,...
We’ve Got to Talk About Vaccines, with Dr. Gilbert Meilaender
Bioethicist Dr. Gilbert Meilaender published a short article in the Hastings Report questioning whether bioethicists should be making expert pronouncements about public policy. But if we can’t turn to bioethicists for answers, where do we turn? Our local pastors? Dr....
Jesus Plus Masculinity for America’s Sake: Replying to “Jesus and John Wayne”
As I reflected on Calvin University professor Kristin Du Mez’s brilliantly provocative and painful, Jesus and John Wayne, I realized how many different intersections I had with her subject. After all, I serve as a pastor in a Presbyterian denomination...
Book Review: History and Eschatology by N. T. Wright
History and Eschatology is a dense but rewarding book based on NT Wright’s Gifford Lectures, in which Wright is attempting to redirect natural theology, bringing history and biblical exegesis to the questions of natural theology to see if that “might...
Book Review: Sanctifying Interpretation by Chris E. W. Green
“God does not save us from interpretation but by it and for it.”[1] So claims Chris Green in the second edition of his marvelous book Sanctifying Interpretation: Vocation, Holiness, and Scripture. (Those familiar with the first edition of his book...
A Tale of Two Churches
I. Hamburg In 2019 I found myself working in Hamburg, Germany during the city’s celebration of a popular local holiday: Reformationstag, or Reformation Day.