Jason Byassee
Chaos and continuity
Luminaries praise Paula Fredriksen's Sin as gripping and magnificent. Her book on Augustine was both of these things. This one isn't.
The zombie war
Whatever else zombies are, they're a parody of Christian hope for the resurrection of the body.
And God Spoke to Abraham, by Fleming Rutledge
Fleming Rutledge is the most interesting preacher today working the fault line between the mainline churches and evangelicalism. Throughout this remarkable collection of Old Testament sermons she calls for mainliners and evangelicals to realize their common identity in Christ for the sake of our mutual mission in the world.
Game of Thrones
It seems like all anyone wants to talk about is power. And the best show on television about power is Game of Thrones.
Downton Abbey
“I’ve been telling everyone who’ll listen how great Downton Abbey is,” I said in a sermon that was technically about evangelism. I was illustrating St. Augustine’s point that when people love, say, a great actor they tell others about him—and so how much more should we tell others about the gospel. A week later I learned how (un)successful that point had been. “I’ve watched every episode,” a parishioner said. “Now what was it you were trying to say about that show?”
The Jewish Annotated New Testament, edited by Amy-Jill Levine and Marc Zvi Brettler
One of the most interesting shifts in Christian theology after the Shoah was in how the adjective Jewish was used....
The bishop’s dashboard: William Willimon’s experiment in accountability
With William Willimon set to retire as bishop of the North Alabama Conference in
2012, it is appropriate to consider how the Willimon experiment in the
episcopacy has turned out. It has not been business
as usual.
The Tenth Parallel, by Eliza Griswold
Eliza Griswold's book is a nearly perfect puzzle. On the one hand, she is doing some of the most important religious journalism being done these days....
The Future of Christian Theology, by David F. Ford
A manifesto hardly seems like the right genre for David F. Ford. The
Irish Anglican theologian has made a career partly with the splendid
encyclopedia The Modern Theologians, a book regularly blessed by graduate students facing their exams.
A review of The Children of Divorce
On the way to meet a friend whose marriage, I'd heard, was on the rocks, I sifted through the clichés one can offer someone on the verge of divorce....
How the church grew in south Sudan
Philip Jenkins has argued that Christianity's future is an African one. If so, what does the area poised to become Africa's newest independent nation tell us about Christianity's future?
Grammars of Resurrection: A Christian Theology of Presence and Absence
I once had a fight with a more evangelical friend about the nature of resurrection. He would go to the mat for the bodily resurrection of Jesus. I agreed....
A Million Miles in a Thousand Years: What I Learned WhileEditing My Life
Wondering what it would be like to have his life turned into a screenplay for a movie, Donald Miller a...
Family feud: Politics in a small church
When I arrived as pastor at Beech Grove United Methodist Church, the community was bitterly divided because one member was running against another to be county commissioner....
Synchronized worship: The rise of the multicampus church
Every week tens of thousands of people attend virtual worship services that use an online ministry called LifeChurch.tv....
R-rated scripture
Occasionally I’ve tried to hide what I am reading, lest someone catch me perusing a work that they think is too salacious for a minister to read. I’ve never done that while reading the Bible. But then I’ve never before read a book of the Bible illustrated by R. Crumb, godfather of the graphic novel.In turning his talent to producing The Book of Genesis Illustrated, Robert Crumb—usually credited as R. Crumb since he made a name for himself in underground newspapers of the 1960s—has found more sex and gore than even he can represent on the page, though he makes a game effort at getting it all in.