Joe Carter is the Jerry Seinfeld of Christian bloggers.
At Evangelical Outpost, he built up a considerable audience. He wrote for National Review, NPR, and then was handed a book contract. Where other, lesser writers might have enjoyed the view from the top, our friend Joe decided that he wanted to reinvent himself as an editor.
And has he ever. He’s the web editor at First Things, and has made it one of my favorite places to visit online. He’s one of the most interesting writers and thinkers I know, and while it’s not often that he gets behind the microphone, I managed to persuade him with the tantalizing promise of renewing our age-old debate over whether angels see green (trust me, they do).
To the show, then: we argue about his book, How to Argue like Jesus, and while we don’t quite live up to the standards of the title, it is an informative discussion. But before we get there, Joe gives me a brief tour about how writing a book goes (since I have no idea!). At the end, we bring everything together by kicking around torture and the lack of substantive engagement on the issue by evangelicals. And if that last point seems totally out of place, well, it is…until we get there and it kind of fits in with the rest of the conversation.
And if you would rather listen through iTunes, well, now you can!
Matthew Lee Anderson
Matthew Lee Anderson is an Associate Professor of Ethics and Theology in Baylor University's Honors College. He has a D.Phil. in Christian Ethics from Oxford University, and is a Perpetual Member of Biola University's Torrey Honors College. In 2005, he founded Mere Orthodoxy.
