On Taking Small Children to Church
Regular church attendance is probably not convenient for anyone. Consistent and whole-hearted participation in the divine liturgy, an active work of service and attentiveness to God and others, a demanding labor beyond passive observation as an audience, is not something...
Deconversion and the Cross
What has God promised us about our lives, in the here and now? One of the earliest works of Christian theology is Origen of Alexandria’s On First Principles; a case can be made that it is our oldest, extant text...
Christmas “Time” is Here
“Quid est enim tempus?” “So what is time?”[1] Pangs of nostalgia for innocence lost, discontent with reality present, and some combination of fear, uncertainty, or despair about the future can combine to make Christmas an especially difficult time. Recently, two...
How to Cultivate Epistemic Virtue
Bonnie Kristian. Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking our Brains, Polluting our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community. Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos Press, 2022. 225pp, $24.99. Over the last decade, many of us have found ourselves increasingly unable to relate to the...
The Blood of Christ, Shed for You
Trembling, elderly hands sometimes lack the most amenable digits for holding thimble-sized cups filled with wine, but they are the hands into which the sacrament is placed nonetheless. Though having the congregation drink from one common cup has been the...
The Mystery of Being Human in a Dehumanizing World
In the summer of 2021 I began driving an ice cream truck. My small contribution to Howdy Homemade Ice Cream, an ice cream shop that deliberately employs workers with intellectual, emotional, and/or physical disabilities, such as Down Syndrome, was to...
The Church Will Not Be Consulted
In recent years it has become increasingly popular for churches of differing sizes, locations, and denominational traditions to make use of consultant services to find new ministers and staff for Christian institutions. If you browse the denominational job boards of...
The Cost of Nurture
Christians and even some non-Christian philosophers regularly strive to ‘remember death,’ but few of us seem willing to remember our birth. Only a few paragraphs into Augustine’s Confessions, he recalls the grace of God given to him by his own...
‘Passages,’ Chapter 1
(originally published on “Passages”) Who wrote the Nicene Creed? Why did the estimated 300 bishops present at the Council of Nicaea use terms such as “Light of Light… consubstantial… proceeding…” and more to describe God? Is the creed even intelligible...
Announcing “Passages”: A New Podcast from Mere Orthodoxy
(originally published on the Passages podcast home page) “O gladsome light, pure brightness of the everliving Father in heaven, O Jesus Christ, holy and blessed! Now as we come to the setting of the sun, and our eyes behold the...