2022: the blog

Unless I’m mistaken, this is my 102nd blog post of 2022. That comes to one post every 3-4 days; about twice per week. I’m happy with that pace. Sometimes I’m quoting, sometimes I’m linking, sometimes I’m writing. Here’s a rundown, by general category, of the last group.

*

10. On pop culture, I wrote about Spielberg, The Gray Man, and why some movies don’t sell tickets. Also about Kenobi and Andor. I wrote thrice about Better Call Saul: on Kim, on happy endings, and a long reply to Alan Jacobs’ disappointment with the finale. Finally, in what I think is one of the better things I wrote this year, I compared the theological visions of Malick and Scorsese in A Hidden Life and Silence.

9. On various authors, I wrote about C. S. Lewis’s perennial appeal; about some clever ripostes to the claim that we can’t “turn back the clock”; about Robert Jenson, A Canticle for Leibowitz, and the bishop of Rome on Alpha Centauri; and about Oliver Burkeman and atelic self-help advice.

8. On Christian ethics, I wrote some theses as well as a primer, both for my students.

7. On writing, I wrote about sticking with blogging versus moving to Substack; about the way some journalistic and other popular writing feels like it was written by an algorithm; about the annoying tic of the same sort of writers to use “arbitrary” in useless ways; and about how to review and be reviewed.

6. On academia, I wrote a little spoof of deutero-Pauline studies and other claims to pseudonymity in “Pseudo-Scorsese.” I also wrote about the touchiness of major scholars; about the difference between being gotten right versus getting at the truth; and about what expertise is and why academics and other “experts” should be a little warier in their frontal assault on the “war against expertise.”

5. On technology, I wrote about the take temptation; about Twitter and podcasts and a general personal tech use update; and a series of three responses to Andy Crouch, Jeff Bilbro, and Alan Jacobs: tech-wise BenOp; tech for normies; and deflating tech catastrophism.

4. On politics, I wrote about the uses of conservatism; about prudence policing; and about politics cathexis (which has spawned a new series by Richard Beck). I also wrote three reflections prompted by Aaron Renn, James Wood, Tim Keller, and Christians in American politics: Wood v. Keller; so-called negative world; and another word on negative world.

3. On the Bible, I wrote two posts about Acts: one about its Jewish leaders, another about its inegalitarian treatment of leadership and discernment. I also proposed a test for Christian exegesis and tracked Jenson on metaphor, Scripture, and theology; I further noted the complexities of the church’s relation to the canon and popular sophistry about X or Y “not being in the Bible.” I wrote a bunch about biblicism, too: post-biblicist biblicists (and a follow-up); the alternatives to inerrancy and sacred tradition (hint: there aren’t any); and reasons why a Christian should trust the Bible.

2. I wrote the most this year about a convergence of topics, all centered on the church, division and reunion, the rising generation (“Gen Z”), ministry, worship, preaching, teaching, evangelism, and catechesis. In terms of young people and nonbelievers, I wrote about what I want for my students, what Christian parents (should) want for their children, double literacy loss (and follow-up), four loves loss (and follow-up), misdiagnosis of the problem churches are facing, and the post-Christian West. I also wrote about so-called Christian masculinity, “church people,” and church for normies (not for heroes). Finally, I wrote about temptations of the over-educated to making silly assumptions about what “smart” Christians are allowed to believe, and my own inoculation against this temptation.

1. In terms of church practices, pastoring and worship, and ecclesial institutions, I wrote about the prospects of reunion; about church on Christmas; about lifelong ministry; about CCM; about sermon length; about the atheism of the therapeutic church; and about principles for non-therapeutic preaching. Alongside the Crouch-related pieces above, the most read posts on the blog this year belonged to a four-part series about churches of Christ and, in conjunction with it, some further reflections on evangelicalism: CoC as catholic; CoC as evangelical; CoC future; CoC coda; defining evangelicalism; the problem with evangelicalism; and evangelical addenda.