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Essays

A Friendship with Emil Brunner

Because I did my doctoral dissertation with Karl Barth at the University of Basel in Switzerland, it might seem strange that I had an even closer relationship with his Swiss Reformed contemporary in Zurich, Emil Brunner. (Once friendly, the two had a major falling out in the mid-1930s after Barth famously said “nein” to Brunner’s essay “Nature and Grace.”) I had a very good relationship with Barth, who was an exceptionally kind and helpful doctoral adviser, but my relationship with…
February 29, 2016
Essays

Memory Recall and Life with Dignity

Almost two decades ago, Bill Clinton, whose skill at fitting gesture to national mood at times rivaled Ronald Reagan’s, famously proposed a series of town-hall meetings to explore ways of preserving Social Security. About the same time “civility projects” – groups mobilized to discuss and solve community problems while modeling respect – were beginning to multiply in universities and municipalities across the country, much as learning circles had already replaced traditional classes in our more progressive schools. Even today any…
December 31, 2015
Essays

Faithful Pastoral Care: A Response to Domestic Violence

“Come! Live in the light! Shine with the joy and the love of the Lord! We are called to be light for the kingdom, to live in the freedom of the city of God. We are called to act with justice, we are called to love tenderly; we are called to serve another, to walk humbly with God.” – David Haas Domestic violence has been a social problem for generations. Research studies show that families in the church struggle with…
December 31, 2015
As We See It

Barefoot Teaching

Today is not just the first day of teaching in a new semester for me; it also marks the beginning of my 25th year in the classroom. My silver anniversary, if you will. I’m not sure it’s an occasion for a party or anything. And I realize it’s clichéd to say, but it really doesn’t seem that long ago that my 22-year-old self was walking in to teach English 131AK: Expository Writing to incoming first-year students at the University of…
December 31, 2015
Essays

What Does the Sticky-Faith Movement Mean for the Church?

“If the church is ever to flourish again, one must begin by instructing the young.” – Martin Luther “Welcome to the Sticky Faith Cohort Summit! We are so excited that all of you are here!” Kara Powell said as she greeted us in late February 2012. That first night when we arrived in Pasadena, California, my team and I were full of excitement and energy, even after a long day of travel. After introductions of the nearly 40 churches that…
December 31, 2015
Tea lightsAs We See It

Step by Step

When our sons were young, we put up the tree each Thanksgiving weekend, hanging the flotsam and jetsam of our growing history. It wasn’t gorgeous, but it was ours, and it satisficed. Now that we are empty nesters and without their youthful Thanksgiving enthusiasm, I’m a reluctant Christmas decorator. Last year, knowing we would be gone over the holidays, I left the Christmas boxes untouched in our cement-walled storage room. This Thanksgiving weekend, those boxes stayed unopened again. The project…
Carol Van Klompenburg
October 31, 2015
The artistEssays

We Speak through Nature; Nature Speaks through Us

“To an angel, art must seem a very foreign thing indeed.” —Nicholas Wolterstorff in Art in Action: Toward a Christian Aesthetic (Eerdmans, 1980) Imagine this: There is a woman in your congregation who is a talented quilter. She’s covered all the beds in her house and most of the beds in her children’s and grandchildren’s houses with her handiwork. Inevitably, she begins making quilts for members of the congregation – particularly those who are ill or grieving. Nothing says comfort,…
October 31, 2015
Barth's Church DogmatcsEssays

Listening to Karl Barth

Karl Barth's study, in Basel, Switzerland. In the last house where Karl Barth lived and worked and finally died, a charming residence on Bruderholzallee in Basel, there are several portraits that stand apart from the others. Portraying Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, these stand out because they hang above several doorways instead of on the walls with everything else. Barth’s singular love of Mozart’s music is well known. Bach and Beethoven each get a cameo appearance in his Church Dogmatics, but it…
October 31, 2015
Essays

Netflix’s Daredevil: Superhero with a Real Soul

The unexpected news that Netflix had produced and released 13 episodes of Daredevil filled me with a mixture of nostalgic hope and earned skepticism. I loved the Marvel comic as a kid, but I also dolefully recalled Kevin Smith’s 2003 film, latent with bad Ben Affleck and shallow Hollywoodization of Daredevil’s gritty mythology. I feared this second installment would again sanitize the melancholic beauty of Marvel’s dark morality tale. Upon viewing creator Drew Goddard’s inspired retelling, fear thankfully transformed into…
Robert J. Hubbard
October 31, 2015
Essays

When Singing Is Like Breathing

Twice in my reading life I have come upon descriptions of communal singing that have aroused in me a deep longing to join with the singers, descriptions of a kind of choiring so spontaneous and natural, so full of the joy or pain of the moment, that I thought, “Only this singing, nothing else, could so completely feed the bodies and souls of the singers.” I wish I could have lived in such a community, for singing, like nothing else…
Dave Schelhaas
October 31, 2015