Month: January 2022
In Memoriam: Rev. Dr. Gregg Strawbridge
The Reverend Doctor Gregg Strawbridge died on January 26th, 2022 from a sudden heart attack. His death was entirely unexpected and has occasioned an outpouring of love and admiration from those who knew him and benefitted from his ministry. An...
A Baptist Third Way for Political Theology
Author’s note: The following article is the first half of a chapter I have contributed to a book tentatively titled Explorations in Baptist Political Theology, edited by Thomas Kidd, Paul Miller, and Andrew Walker, to be published by B&H Academic...
Puritans and Theonomy, Reconsidered
Joseph Boot, The Mission of God: A Manifesto of Hope for Society, 2nd ed. (2014; Toronto: Ezra Press, 2016), 978-0-9947279-0-9, 683 pages. Many Christians do not have a worked out political theology. We are aware of the importance of being...
Power, the Trinity, and Abuse: Notes on the Rise and Fall of Mars Hill
Predictably, the lessons drawn from Christianity Today’s “The Rise and Fall of Mars Hill” vary according to the biases of the listener. Some of those ‘deconstructing’ see the Mars Hill saga as increasing conformation of the wholesale bankruptcy of evangelical...
Visions of Exile: Christian Communitarianism, Christian Secularism, and Faithful Presence
How can Christians live faithfully in an ever-changing and increasingly pluralistic world? How can we maintain that faithfulness, both over the course of our own lives and from generation to generation? What sort of formation do we and our children...
The People Who Divide Us: Reviewing Owen Strachan’s “Christianity and Wokeness”
Owen Strachan. Christianity and Wokeness. Washington: Salem Books, 2021. 224 pp, $19.99. The church was meant to be the hope of the world and a reflection of a diverse community reflecting the harmony of the Triune God Himself. Unfortunately, the...
A Univers(ity) Without a Story
Blessed are those who dwell in your house, ever singing your praise! Selah -Psalm 84:4 Susanna Clarke’s Piranesi is a novel open to myriad interpretations. One reading of the story is as a parable helping us rediscover the integrative power of the...
The Virtues We Need to Repair Trust
As residents of Washington, D.C., we had a front row seat to the events of January 6, 2021 as they unfolded in our neighborhood streets. Glued to our couches and phone screens, we heard the sirens blare down streets to...
Our Year in Reading (2021)
Here’s a short summary of the books that several of us amongst the regular Mere O editors and contributors enjoyed this year: Jake Meador One of my most enjoyable reads this year was Michael Chaplin’s Newcastle United Stole My Heart. It’s a...
The World Becomes Light Again
I have long had an obsession with books. Since middle school, at least, I have loved to sit by a shelf and examine the titles, to arrange them, to examine their cover art, to read the summaries and flip through...