Bruce Gordon, the Titus Street Professor of Church History at Yale University Divinity School, has made some wonderful contributions to the scholarly world of church history. Bruce and I first met at a monastery, of all places, in January 1989,…
One of the problems with the stadium events of Big Eva to which I have occasionally pointed is that they showcase pastors who by definition do not have pastorates that are in any sense normal. There is thus a danger…
Just over a year ago I received an email from one of the Top Men, giving me the routine lecture about how my criticisms of him, his organization, and the culture which he had helped to foster amounted to mocking…
The Witherspoon Institute has posted a fine article on parenting LGBT children. You can find it here.
In a seminar last week on Martin Luther, I commented that a theologian of glory could easily use the theology of cross for his own ends. He would thereby utterly subvert its purpose while still using its form. This provoked…
Our Man in Ulster has just brought this 2014 news story to my attention, about a woman charged with assault for taking meth while pregnant. Setting aside the obvious legal issue about the personhood of a baby in the womb…
Another evangelical megachurch congregation has come out in favour of same sex marriage. This time it is GracePointe Church in Nashville, TN. The evangelical collapse is coming. A set of circumstances is conspiring to make it so. The external pressure…
One aspect of Thomas Oden’s life which is both admirable and perplexing is his denominational loyalty. Oden is a United Methodist and it is clear from his autobiography that he is committed to his church and perhaps even optimistic that…
As readers will know, this week MoS is focusing on Thomas Oden's autobiography, A Change of Heart. As I have reviewed it for the January edition of First Things, I asked Scot McKnight, as a friend and representative of another…
One of the striking features of Thomas Oden’s spiritual life is his expansive intellectual appetite, evidenced in both his reading and his writing. From his early liberal passion for radical theological and political literature to his later development of the…
