In a recent conversation with fellow Christian Humanist Michial Farmer, I noted a certain paradox about my relationship with Brian McLaren and other public Christian intellectuals who often get labeled…

When I was (briefly) a catechumen in the Orthodox Church, one of the big sticking points for me was the concept of apostolic succession. When an Orthodox Christian, reciting the…

I do not recall when I first encountered the notion of a pathetic fallacy: a literature course, doubtless, but I’ve had many of those. I was almost certainly an undergraduate,…

This week’s theme music is “Judas Skin” from the Vigilantes of Love record Slow Dark Train. General Introduction – What’s on the blog? – An historical moment for the Christian…

Revised Common Lectionary Page for 25 April 2010 (Fourth Sunday of Easter, Year C) Acts 9:36-43 • Psalm 23 • Revelation 7:9-17 • John 10:22-30 I really should keep track…

Revised Common Lectionary Page for 18 April 2009 (Third Sunday of Easter, Year C) Acts 9:1-6, (7-20) •Psalm 30 •Revelation 5:11-14 •John 21:1-19 I’ve been asked to preach not this…

Yesterday, April 8, was the feast day of a saint: St. Julie Billiart. I’d not heard of St. Julie before: she’s not medieval, so one won’t find her in the…

On the first episode of the podcast, I made a joke about Nathan Gilmour sounding like the Internet Monk, Michael Spencer. That joke turned out to be in bad taste–just…

Revised Common Lectionary Page for 11 April 2010 (Second Week of Easter, Year C) Acts 5:27-32 •Psalm 118:14-29 or Psalm 150 •Revelation 1:4-8 •John 20:19-31 I recently revisited one of…

Part 1: The Nature of God Thomas and Omnipotence A person reading the first fifteen or so questions from Thomas Aquinas’s Summa Theologica might miss it, but it’s in there:…

(This is actually something I wrote several years ago, but I hope a bit of recycling will be forgiven me.) On Easter Sunday itself, so far as I can tell,…

Nathan Gilmour has (publicly and privately) referred several times to Emergent theology—or, so I’m sure not to oversimplify a complex and varied intellectual movement, to the version of Emergent theology…

Revised Common Lectionary Page for 4 April 2010 (Easter Sunday, Year C) Acts 10:34-43 or Isaiah 65:17-25 •  Psalm 118:1-2, 14-24 •  1 Corinthians 15:19-26 or Acts 10:34-43 •  John 20:1-18 or Luke…

In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit. And so he did: Bilbo Baggins, that is. However, the opening sentence of Tolkien’s story could just as easily describe…

Revised Common Lectionary Page for 28 March 2010 (Liturgy of Palms, Year C) Psalm 118:1-2, 19-29 •  Luke 19:28-40 I really like that, in this relatively brief story in today’s Gospel…