2021 recap: the blog

This was a banner year for the blog, for the simple reason that after 15 years of blogging I finally own my own turf. I’d been blogging on Google’s Blogger/Blogspot since spring 2006, but in June of 2021 my personal website (this very one) went live, and I moved over four years’ worth of posts from Resident Theologian (itself a successor to Resident Theology, my blog of nine years that I maintained during Master’s and doctoral work). That transition is marked by the distribution of posts: I wrote only 14 before June 12, and from then through year’s end I wrote 82, for a total of 96. That’s the most I’ve blogged since 2011, when I had 100 posts. That’s a lot of writing “on the side.” If I were to keep up the pace from the second half of the year, it would amount to a new post every two and a half days. And while I’ve partly stayed on mission—i.e., “mezzo blogging”—I’ve also written some rather huge posts.

Oh well. I’ve had a lot to say.

Given all that writing, I’d like to take a page from my friend and colleague Richard Beck’s long-running blog and do a rundown of the best, or at least my favorite, posts from the year, especially those you might have missed.

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10. On miscellaneous matters: aliens and Christian faith; Zuckerberg and the meta mafia; Enneagram anthropology; dreams and prayers; the secular spirit of Roger Scruton; biographies of theologians; Jordan Peterson, humor, and despair; the theology of C. S. Lewis; and a bit of nitpicking with Freddie deBoer’s anthropology.

9. On popular culture: Bezos Ad Astra; interpreting The Last Jedi; and, God help me, an MCU viewing order.

8. On art more generally: the catholicity of art; whether artists must be our friends; the fiction of P. D. James; and the heavenly vision of Piranesi.

7. On biblical scholarship: keeping up with the latest scholarship and writing in the subjunctive mood.

6. On the Bible and theology: a test for your doctrine of Scripture; anthropomorphism and analogy; heresy and orthodoxy; for angels; against theological fads.

5. On the state of the church in America: in tatters; slowly dying; and locally defectible.

4. On the (dis)contentment of affluent twentysomethings today who nevertheless need Jesus—and who feel the Ache for him, whether they know it or not.

3. On teaching the faith: (re)construction and deconstruction.

2. On life in the university: diverse academic vocations; emotional support in academia; authority in the classroom; and teaching a 4/4: office hours, tradeoffs, publishing, and freedom.

1. On podcasts: namely, why you should quit them.

2021 recap: reading

Ten years ago I cracked 150 books in a year; ever since, it’s been around 100 annually, give or take a few in either direction. Heading into 2021 I wanted to up that number—which felt just stuck—as much as I could. I met my minimum goal (I’m currently sitting at 120), along with some of my strategic goals, but I’m hoping to crawl back to 150 in 2022. Some of the successful strategies this past year that I hope to continue:

• Adding audiobooks to my regimen.

• Cutting out podcasts altogether.

• Reading less online.

• Reducing TV viewing.

• Keeping up an ongoing mix of poetry, fiction, nonfiction, and academic works.

I didn’t crack the audiobook nut until March, nor did I drop podcasts until the fall (when a tsunami of work and illness and family commitments overtook my extra time), plus I was working on finalizing the proofs for not one but two books from May to November. Looking ahead to 2022, at the level of mere numbers, if I were to average 11 books per month during the two academic semesters and 16 books per month during the four summer months, that would come to 152. It’s doable, y’all! I’m going to make it happen. One year from today my reading recap for 2022 will be nothing but a Tim Duncan fist pump GIF.

And now, some of my favorites from the year, with scattered commentary.

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Rereads

5. George Orwell, Animal Farm

4. Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol

3. C. S. Lewis’s nonfiction. Some comments here.

2. G. K. Chesterton’s nonfiction. Some quotes and remarks here.

1. C. S. Lewis, The Chronicles of Narnia. I read all seven once as an 18- or 19-year old. The re-read (via Audible) was glorious. My favorite used to be Dawn Treader, and I had low memories of Caspian and Horse, few memories of Last Battle, and no memories of Silver Chair. Now my definitive ranking: 1. Silver Chair 2. Last Battle 3. Dawn Treader 4. Magician’s Nephew 5. LWW 6. Horse & His Boy 7. Prince Caspian. In truth none of them are bad, and Horse would be higher if its weird and indefensible religious, racial, and cultural stereotypes weren’t so interwoven in the story. As for Lion, if it weren’t the first or so foundational or so iconic, I’d rank it last. I used to think Caspian was the one bad egg, but now I think it’s no longer bad, just the seventh best. But it’s Puddleglum and Underland for the win.

Poetry

5. W. H. Auden, Early Poems

4. John Updike, Endpoint and Other Poems

3. Molly McCully Brown, The Virginia State Colony for Epileptics and Feebleminded

2. Franz Wright, selected volumes. Every year I re-read Wright’s best collections (Beforelife, Martha’s Vineyard, God’s Silence, Wheeling Motel), and every year he remains my favorite.

1. R. S. Thomas, Collected Poems. This year, though, I re-read Thomas’s best volumes (running from Laboratories of the Spirit up to Mass for Hard Times) for the first time in a decade, and he overawed me once again. The master.

Graphic novels

3. Gene Luen Yang, Boxers & Saints. Recommended. Go in not knowing anything, and read both back to back.

2. Art Spiegelman, Maus. A classic for a reason.

1. Craig Thompson, Blankets. This one walloped me.

Fiction

8. Patrick Hoffman, Every Man a Menace. Taut, brutal, surprising, and to the point. In other words, the best sort of crime fiction.

7. P. D. James, Death of an Expert Witness. You know I had to include the Queen.

6. Denis Johnson, Jesus’ Son

5. G. K. Chesterton, The Napoleon of Notting Hill. Orwell and Huxley are the standard scribblers of the dystopian future; what if Chesterton (Notting Hill) and Lewis (That Hideous Strength) were added to that duo? At least one result: the realization that wit and style, not to mention religious vision, don’t have to be excised from the genre.

4. Jamie Quatro, Fire Sermon

3. Charles Portis, True Grit. As promised, this one’s perfect.

2. J. M. Coetzee, Disgrace

1. Susanna Clarke, Piranesi. Charming and enrapturing from the first sentence to the last. I wrote about it here.

Nonfiction (popular)

11. James Clear, Atomic Habits: Tiny Changes, Remarkable Results & Cal Newport, A World Without Email: Reimagining Work in an Age of Communication Overload

10. Annette Gordon-Reed, On Juneteenth

9. Jesse Singal, The Quick Fix: Why Fad Psychology Can’t Cure Our Social Ills. I wrote about it here.

8. Tara Isabella Burton, Strange Rites: New Religions for a Godless World

7. Matthew B. Crawford, Shop Class as Soulcraft: An Inquiry into the Value of Work

6. Benjamin Dreyer, Dreyer’s English: An Utterly Correct Guide to Clarity and Style. If you love style guides, as I do, this one might move to the top of your list, as it did mine.

5. Abigail Tucker, Mom Genes: Inside the New Science of Our Ancient Maternal Instinct & Ross Douthat, The Deep Places: A Memoir of Illness and Discovery. These belong together, both because their authors are married and because they tell parallel stories: about science, about knowledge, about family, about marriage and parenthood and children and illness. I wrote about Douthat here and included a nugget from Tucker here.

4. Andrew Sullivan, Out on a Limb: Selected Writing 1989–2021. A whirlwind tour of one of the most socially and politically influential public intellectuals and writers of my lifetime. A sort of chronological testament to that influence; you see the nation changing as time goes by in these essays.

3. Dwight Macdonald, Masscult and Midcult: Essays Against the American Grain

2. E. H. Gombrich, A Little History of the World. Delightful. I wrote about it here.

1. Paul Kingsnorth, Confessions of a Recovering Environmentalist and Other Essays. A book that could change your life. As I read it in early 2021, I wondered why Kingsnorth wasn’t a Christian, or at least why he didn’t take serious Christian thinking and writing as a worthy interlocutor. Then he converted.

Nonfiction (scholarly)

5. Audrey Watters, Teaching Machines: The History of Personalized Learning. Watters is the very best; my review of her book is forthcoming in Comment.

4. Jason Blakely, We Built Reality: How Social Sciences Infiltrated Culture, Politics, and Power. My review here.

3. Roger Scruton, Fools, Frauds, and Firebrands: Thinkers of the New Left; Culture Counts; How to Be a Conservative. This year I read some of Scruton’s classics. I wrote about how they struck me as surprisingly but essentially secular here.

2. Matthew Rose, A World After Liberalism: Philosophers of the Radical Right. Required reading for the present moment. Get on it.

1. Allen C. Guelzo, Fateful Lightning: A New History of the Civil War and Reconstruction. I’d never read a full-bore history of the Civil War. My mistake. This is the one. Magnificent.

Christian (popular)

5. Richard Beck, Hunting Magic Eels: Recovering an Enchanted Faith in a Skeptical Age

4. Rowan Williams, The Dwelling of the Light: Praying with Icons of Christ

3. Peter Leithart, Baptism: A Guide to Life from Death

2b. Eve Tushnet, Tenderness: A Gay Christian’s Guide to Unlearning Rejection and Experiencing God’s Extravagant Love. I can’t count how many times this book brought me to tears. Why? Because Tushnet has the preternatural ability to force her readers to come to terms with just how much Jesus loves them. She is a treasure.

2a. Tish Harrison Warren, Prayer in the Night: For Those Who Work or Watch or Weep. Christianity Today was right to crown it the book of the year. My review here.

1. Robert Farrar Capon, The Supper of the Lamb: A Culinary Reflection. First published in the late 1960s, a book that cannot be categorized by genre or style, a true N of 1. Buy it, read it, love it.

Theology (on the recent side)

5. Benedict XVI, Verbum Domini: Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation

4. Jean-Luc Marion, Givenness and Revelation

3. Timothy P. Jackson, Mordecai Did Not Bow Down: Anti-Semitism, the Holocaust, and Christian Supersessionism. My review here.

2. Eugene F. Rogers, Jr., Blood Theology: Seeing Red in Body- and God-Talk. My review here.

1. Paul Griffiths, Intellectual Appetite: A Theological Grammar & Regret: A Theology. Now that Jenson has passed, there is no living theologian I take greater pleasure in reading or learning from—or being provoked by—than Griffiths. He never fails to make you think, or to re-think what you thought you thought before.

Theology (less recent)

5. François Mauriac, What I Believe

4. Alexander Schmemann, The Eucharist: Sacrament of the Kingdom

3. Josef Pieper, Leisure the Basis of Culture. All Christian undergraduates should read this book, certainly those who already know they are interested in the life of the mind.

2. Oliver O’Donovan, Begotten or Made? I sometimes wish this little book had a different title, because it obscures both its subject matter and its relevance. Tolle lege.

1. Michael Ramsey, The Resurrection of Christ: An Essay in Biblical Theology. A model of succinct, stylish, substantive, scripturally normed, academically informed, and theologically rich writing. I want every book I write to be patterned on this minor classic.

2021 recap: writing

This past year was a big one for me, writing-wise. I published my first book, wrote about a dozen essays, curated a book forum in an academic journal, and got published for the first time in three of my favorite magazines. Here’s a quick rundown.

(Though first, here is a journal article that became available right as the clock turned from 2020 to 2021 a year ago—it’s an exploration of criteria for judging the success or failure of theological interpretation of Scripture—and a book review of Steven Duby’s volume on metaphysics, Scripture, and the doctrine of God’s life in se; the review was published in 2020 but I didn’t realize was in print until just a few months ago.)

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The Doctrine of Scripture. The book! My first. Its topic is its title: it is about what it says it is. I’m very proud of this book. I hope you’ll give it a chance. Here’s more information about it. Click on the link to buy it on Amazon; click here to buy it from the publisher (use EASTBK2 for a discount); click here to get it from Bookshop. If you’ve got some Christmas cash on hand, I’ve a notion how you could spend it!

Theology in the Dark. This was my introduction to a forum I edited in an issue of Political Theology in response to Karen Kilby’s new volume of essays on the Trinity, evil, and suffering. The six contributors were Sarah Coakley, Andrew Prevot, Katherine Sonderegger, Kathryn Tanner, Miroslav Volf, and Rowan Williams. (I know.) You should go read all six of their essays, as well as Kilby’s reply, right this instant.

The Circumcision of Abraham’s God. A New Year’s Day reflection in First Things on the happy convergence of a number of distinct feasts on different liturgical calendars, centered on Mary, Jesus, and his circumcision.

To See God in the Darkness. A review essay in Mere Orthodoxy of Tish Harrison Warren’s outstanding book Prayer in the Night; the through-line of the piece is the long Lent of Covidtide.

Covidtide Triduum. A sort of sequel, and another liturgical reflection for First Things, this time for Holy Week.

When Losing Is Likely. My first essay for The Point: a lengthy response to the socialist critic George Scialabba on the politics of Wendell Berry (and why Scialabba should be friendlier to Berry’s subtle understanding of the personal and the political in their connection to mass policy consequences).

Market Apocalypse. A review essay in Mere Orthodoxy of Rodney Clapp’s book Naming Neoliberalism. I was impressed and chastened by the work, but also frustrated by the overall approach.

Statistics as Storytelling. A review essay in The New Atlantis (my first for them) of Jason Blakely’s We Built Reality. The critique of scientism on display here leads nicely to the next entry…

Dragons in the Deep Places. A review essay in Mere Orthodoxy of Ross Douthat’s The Deep Places, his memoir of chronic Lyme disease. As it happens, Douthat’s wife Abigail Tucker’s book Mom Genes gets a shout-out at the end of the next entry…

Power in the Blood. A review in The Hedgehog Review (my third first of the year) of Eugene F. Rogers Jr.’s Blood Theology. What a weird and wonderful read, even if the politics of the book turn out to be needlessly predictable in an otherwise surprising work.

Still Supersessionist? A long review for Commonweal of Timothy Jackson’s Mordecai Would Not Bow Down. A major contribution whose shortcomings concern not its treatment of Jews or Judaism but Christ and Christianity.