Faith Improvised

It isn’t easy to read Scripture faithfully in the midst of a conflicted and contested culture. When Scripture is put to use to endorse this or that contemporary cause, the church loses the ability to hear what the Lord of the church is saying to his people. John Walton has done a great service to […]

Well, the game was a shocker to most people, though not to the very few who predicted a blowout by Seattle. Because of his behavior at the end of the NFC Championship two weeks ago, Richard Sherman garnered loads of media attention leading up to yesterday’s game. Understandably, he’s making the rounds today on various radio […]

Today is the Feast of the Presentation, remembering the presentation of Jesus in the temple, according to the Law of Moses. The incident is recorded in Luke 2:22-40. This is the prayer from the Book of Common Prayer: Almighty and everliving God, we humbly pray that, as your only-begotten Son was this day presented in […]

Mark Oppenheimer has a review in the NY Times of Vern Bengston’s book, Families and Faith: How Religion is Passed Down Across Generations. It looks like a fascinating work. As Oppenheimer reports: In 1969, shortly after being hired at U.S.C., Professor Bengtson began a study of 350 families, whom he interviewed regularly until 2008. In […]

Sports Illustrated has an interesting article on the best and worst Super Bowl halftime shows. I’m looking forward to the game but probably won’t pay much attention to the halftime festivities. They’re more often than not disappointing and unremarkable, and it’s a great time to get up and replenish the hummus supply. A few years […]

Paul is one of the most familiar characters from the pages of the New Testament. Indeed, many Christians tend to read Scripture through a Pauline lens. It’s easy to make him one of “us,” whatever group it is that is “us.” We all tend to shape Paul according to our own image and then read […]

We’ve just begun a new academic semester, which means that last week I spent some time in class talking through syllabuses, explaining course content, describing textbooks, and the logic of various assignments. A student inquired as to how much thought goes into choosing course texts. It was a great question, and I explained the process […]

In an extended section of Paul and the Faithfulness of God, N. T. Wright takes pains to draw out the significance of “religion” in the first century. It wasn’t a separate sphere of life, but pervaded everything, down to the details of day-to-day existence. Because of the integral connection between “the gods” and the complex fabric of daily life, […]

Charles Blow had a very interesting column in the NY Times the other day about the corrosive effect of pundits in our culture. He cited Glenn Beck’s surprising recognition of his divisive behavior during his tenure at Fox News. I remember it as an awful lot of fun, and that I made an awful lot […]