Jason Byassee
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.
Library without books: The Billy Graham Library in Charlotte, North Carolina
I told a friend that I was planning to visit the Billy Graham Library in Charlotte and he said, “There are no books. They should call it the ‘Billy Graham Experience.’” He was right. The experience is both tackier and more interesting than I'd imagined. The schmaltz has been well documented, like the mechanized talking cow that tells visitors how cold young Billy’s hands were before sunrise on the dairy farm where he grew up. Fortunately, the physical artifacts of Graham’s life have an eloquence that the cheesiness can’t quite spoil.
Augustine and the Jews: A Christian Defense of Jews and Judaism
I remember once defending the doctrine of divine immutability to a renowned New Testament scholar at an academic c...
I Love You, Man
I got this problem. There’s this guy I want to be better friends with. We’ve been out with other people for drinks, talked at professional events and had a few laughs....
Stand and deliver: Performers in the pulpit
At the annual banquet of the University of Chicago Divinity School, first-year student Rebecca Anderson knocks ’em dead with a stand-up comedy routine. But then she should: she was previously a stand-up comic. “When I tell people here I grew up in a fundamentalist family, they treat me like I just got out of a POW camp. 'Oh my God,' they say, 'Are you OK?'"
Emerging in Seattle: Education at Mars Hill
If you could start a seminary from scratch, how would you do it?
...Emerging in Seattle: Ray Bakke and a school without walls
As a pastor in Chicago and a teacher at Northern Baptist Theological Seminary and McCormick Theological Seminary, Ray Bakke encouraged pastors to engage the city rather than flee from it<...
Perilous presence: Christians in Uganda
“You can’t understand Africa without understanding religion,” said Emmanuel Katongole, a Catholic priest from Uganda....
Recovery Café: The gift of brokenness
Organizations committed to helping the addicted and the homeless can be found in every city. Few of them resemble the Recovery Café. As founder Killian Noe told me, “It looks like a Starbucks.”
...Zealous skeptic: Bill Maher's Religulous
Whereas new atheist writers like Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens are deadly serious, Bill Maher’s mockumentary on religion, Religulous, is as funny as Maher’s comedy show on HBO....
Inside The Shack: The Trinity makes the best-seller list
Perhaps the validity of a theological proposal can’t be properly assessed until it has been kitchified. William P....
Explain yourself: Making belief intelligible
Karl Barth famously attacked apologetics—the attempt to offer a persuasive account of Christian belief on mutually agreed-upon grounds of reason—as a misguided task, part of the failure of theologi...
Three resources for Christian formation: DVDs, online resources, books
"You pays your money and you takes your choice.” Several generations of students at Duke Divinity School have heard James “Mickey” Efird use those carnivalesque words to conclude debates over the m...
How martyrs are made: Stories of the faithful
One of the teenagers killed in Colorado’s Columbine High School shootings in 1999 was Cassie Bernall. Soon after her murder, reports emerged about how one of the shooters had found Bernall under a table, pointed a gun at her head and asked, “Do you believe in God?” She said yes and was promptly shot.Within weeks of that event I heard a sermon at an Episcopal church praising Bernall’s witness and urging Christians to imitate her faithfulness. Prognosticators predicted another Great Awakening in American life sparked by Bernall’s martyrdom.
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
The biblical archaeologist at my seminary once donned Indiana Jones–inspired attire to publicize one of his discoveries. He claimed not to enjoy this publicity stunt....
Creation and Covenant: The Significance of Sexual Difference in the Moral Theology of Marriage
In their debates over homosexuality, denominations tend to assume that the “orthodo...
Being constructive: An interview with John Webster
One of the world’s leading Reformed theologians, John Webster, has focused his study on the works of Eberhard Jüngel and Karl Barth (he edited the Cambridge Companion to...