Many folks have written recently about how divided America is, especially in the post-2016 moment, but few have done so as gracefully as Jeff Sharlet in his most recent book, The Undertow: Scenes from a Slow Civil War.
As a Christian, I habitually pray not to be led into temptation and to be delivered from evil. These are times in which those prayers become especially urgent. As war, on whatever front, becomes more likely, we are surrounded with temptations and we desperately need the wisdom to discern good and evil. Political philosopher Jean Bethke Elshtain emphasizes that the problem with thinking about the ethics of war is that the very rhetoric of war invites us “to hate without…
While there is a diversity of opinion across our theological circles, research on mental health, spirituality, and well-being can guide us toward promoting the thriving and belonging of the nonbinary and transgender people within our homes, school, and faith communities. I experience a deep joy and abiding peace when I imagine an inclusive kingdom with a wide table of welcome. I’ve had glimpses of this in the here and now, and these snippets provide me with a strong motivation to join in the work God is doing among and with us.
He always told me that the most important thing in working in a hot fight is to recognize that everybody wants to simplify the issues so you have clear reasons for killing each other (spiritually, of course, in most church conflicts). He said that the most important thing one can do is to “complexify things.”
Macro photo of tooth wheel mechanism with imprinted SCIENCE, RELIGION concept words
Along with others, I have grown weary of the term postmodern as the blanket characteristic covering our time. The term simply carries along too much baggage, and each bag opens, as a postmodernist would say, on different meanings for different audiences. From spiritual and ethical positionings, from ways of perceiving the world, and from ways of holding all human products up to critical scrutiny, analysis, or distortion, postmodernism has settled like a dense fogbank on the scholarly imagination. One of…
I find her vision of our relationship with technology to be remarkably hopeful. The way that she describes the need for a balanced connection with tech, and the process of getting there, evokes the language of brokenness and redemption. Importantly, though, this redemption is not far-off; it is something we can work towards today, in small measured steps.
It’s a long way from a short bridge on the Illinois Waterway to contemplation about synodical decisions on sexuality. We all seek connections to God’s truth the best we can. For me, this story about a bridge helped me think about the complex tension between tradition and change. One hard truth is that we all have 19-7 bridges in our lives.
