Faith Improvised

Hypocrisy abounds, along with the ugly exposure of interests and ham-fisted public relations, in the range of issues professional football has had to face. I’ve been thinking recently about how easy it is to point fingers at certain players, teams, and league officials, when there’s a larger complex of forces, including fans and media outlets […]

There’s a fascinating piece on the Kronos Quartet in the NY Times where they discuss their communication with one another and how they improvise. It’s fascinating in itself and beautiful to watch, but it also might serve to illuminate the manner in which we speak of relationships and community dynamics. I was especially struck by David […]

In assessing Resident Aliens: Life in the Christian Colony, by Stanley Hauerwas and William Willimon, Jennifer McBride offered the following comments clarifying the manner in which white American Christians envision their situation within the wider culture and how they ought to do so. It is disingenuous for white Protestants to deem ourselves alien to a culture […]

The academy’s a funny place. And by “funny” I mean pretty bizarre. I’m reading Dear Committee Members, a novel by Julie Schumacher that wonderfully captures the character of relationships and the varieties of inter-departmental dynamics on a college campus. It reminds me of Stanley Hauerwas’s comment, in Hannah’s Child, that academic departments are hives of envy […]

The U.S. Open is underway this week, the final major championship event of the tennis year. The New York Times had a marvelous article on the increasingly lost art of the one-handed backhand. To me, there is a handful of beautiful athletes to watch — their motion is gorgeous. Fred Couples hitting driver comes to mind, as does […]

Mark Driscoll’s recent troubles have been well-documented. It seems that he is facing the consequences of his behavior and mode of discourse over the last decade or so. A few weeks ago, Jonathan Merritt wrote about forgiving Mark Driscoll and then several days ago about not celebrating his downfall. I think that Merritt’s impulses are good ones. […]

This week our daughter, Maddie, returns to school, and next month our older son, Jake, heads off to college. As a final summer fling, we camped this past weekend at Muskallonge Lake, on the shore of Lake Superior. On Saturday, we hiked the 10-mile long Chapel Loop, which took us through beautiful forest, a few waterfalls, a river […]

Many Christians have trouble with the paradox in Paul whereby salvation is both a gift and involves obligations. Salvation as divine gift makes sense, but the demand for human response raises the specter of “works righteousness.” Some solutions to this apparent contradiction diminish the human agent (“it’s not really you acting, but the Spirit”) in some way […]

This is excerpted from Roger Cohen’s column in the New York Times this past Sunday. I found his account of his friend Andy Bachman compelling on several counts, especially the persistent effort to resist the temptation to give in to fear and hatred: THERE are good people and bad leaders the world over, but perhaps […]

Susan Eastman, in her chapter in Apocalyptic Paul, provides an excellent reminder for Westerners that salvation is not found in life-in-community or corporate identity. We are in a very different world from the world(s) in which the Bible was written, and one of the main differences is how we conceive of ourselves. Yet it’s not that communal […]