Category: Theology and Practice
Calvinism and Liberty
If you had to summarize Calvin’s teaching on resisting tyrants it would be: don’t. Even as his Protestant compatriots, the Huguenots, faced persecution and he fled France to Geneva, Calvin was firmly on the side of maintaining political order. He...
Learning to See with Norman Wirzba
Soon after we moved to Australia, my family hiked in a temperate rainforest in the Yarra Ranges, an hour-and-a-half from our house. Southern Victoria is home to several of these rainforests. They challenge my prior knowledge of rainforests as places...
Imperial Migrations
The question I dislike the most is, “Where are you from?” My Eastern-European accent usually gives away the fact that I am not, should I say, local. Now that I live on the East Coast, I am often tempted to...
When Belief is Agony
I love being a Christian. I mean, I love Jesus too. But I also love all the rest of it: Brunch after church with friends, hylomorphism, late-night Eucharist on Christmas Eve, and carols and stollen and roast beef and friends’...
Friendship Through a Pandemic: Seeing More Clearly With Stanley Hauerwas
Ephraim Radner and others have recently reflected that the church’s theologians have said shockingly little about the pandemic that’s really been helpful, that’s helped Christians think clearly about this global crisis. To get our heads straight, minds clear, and hearts...
Good Friday
Every year on Good Friday as a rule we go dark with regards to publishing new essays or reviews. Instead, we share a few songs to help people mark Good Friday. I pray that today will be a somber one...
“Unpaid Gestation” and the Abolition of the Family
Every day, 385,000 newborn babies enter the world. A fledgling group of theorists and writers is interested in reimagining how we think about these births and the children they produce. Using the provocative tagline “Abolish the Family,” this group of...
How “Isolation” Helps Us Understand Sin
Loneliness and even estrangement we are familiar with, but isolation? Is this too strong a term to describe the ways in which sin afflicts our common life? The skepticism of this nomenclature, I think, is twofold. First, it may come...
Death and New Life on Holy Saturday
In the center of the photograph, an injured young woman lies on a stretcher. Her face is dusted in ash. Her left hand cradles her pregnant stomach. Men armed with rifles and wearing bulletproof vests carry her through the smoldering...