My latest: on Houellebecq (in Mere O) and Forgiveness (in Comment)

Two new essays for y’all.

The first was published last week at Mere Orthodoxy, on January 7, the ten-year anniversary of the publication of Michel Houellebecq’s novel Submission, which came out the same day as the Charlie Hebdo massacre in Paris. Jake Meador was kind enough to get it up in time for the anniversary—I was surprised not to see any other outlets noting the date—and gave it the title, “A Future Worthy of Life: Houellebecq, Decadence, and Sacraments.” It’s about the insights and shortcomings of Houellebecq’s critique of the West, parallels in other recent novels, and the superior vision (and prescription) found in P. D. James’s Children of Men. (The lesson, as always: James is the queen.)

The other essay came out last month in the print issue of Comment, but it’s been behind a paywall until today. In the magazine it has the title “Promise, Gift, Command”; online it goes by “The Theological Terrain of Forgiveness,” which tracks with the issue’s overarching theme of forgiveness. It’s my attempt at locating, delimiting, and unpacking the Christian doctrine of God’s forgiveness of our sins in Christ, by the Spirit, through the sacraments—and the implications for our own call to imitate this divine action in our daily lives.

Thanks for reading. More soon.

2024: blogging

Counting this one, I published a total of eighty-three posts on the blog this year. At least half were themselves just news, updates, or links to pieces published elsewhere. In other words, not a lot of original writing in this space. Which makes sense, since any half-baked ideas I would have blogged about in the past became columns for Christianity Today.

In any case, here is a rundown, loosely categorized, of what I did write on the blog in 2024.

10. I annotated an old-fashioned blogroll of one hundred writers I follow.

9. I wrote about Antoine Fuqua’s “real movies” and Alex Garland’s seriously misunderstood Civil War.

8. I wrote altogether too much about Star Wars: three posts on The Acolyte, another comparing Catholic Jedi to Protestant wizards, and a long series of twenty-three thoughts on The Phantom Menace.

7. I loved Liu Cixin’s Three-Body Problem and thought Percival Everett’s James powerful but flawed.

6. I fell in love with Clive James’s Cultural Amnesia, but noted the absence of religion and imagined a similar book called Theological Amnesia.

5. I wrote about the church and the Eucharist and the desire and search for both.

4. I wrote about disenchantment and reenchantment and the search for both.

3. Theologically, I wondered what idols promise; I argued what biblicism can’t get you; I outlined the metaphysics of historical criticism; discussed the unspoken Name; elaborated Protestant subtraction; and proposed a sort of fallacy: “no true cessationist.”

2. In terms of miscellany, I wrote about the NBA, ancient illiteracy, second naivete in biblical scholarship, the reception of C. S. Lewis among American evangelicals, and forty examples of my “tiers” of writing.

1. This year on the blog I wrote the most about digital technology: how it’s the greatest threat facing the church today; why I changed my mind on podcasts; what it costs not to be on social media; what it means to write with or without a “platform”; how boys are affected by video games; the simple principle governing screens and distractions; the dangers of screentopia; how social media is bad for reading (and we all know it); what unites the best books about technology; a taxonomy of tech attitudes; and the Bartleby rule for the “necessity” or “inevitability” of adopting new technologies.

2024: writing

This was a banner year for my writing in more ways that one.

First, I had two books published in October. These were my first true “popular” books, i.e., not written for an academic audience. I have no idea whether or how well they are selling. But I am happy with them; the reviews have all been quite positive; and the podcasts I did for my little digital publicity tour were a blast. I couldn’t be more grateful.

Second, I began in January as something of a part-time columnist with Christianity Today. Every three weeks I send my editor an essay or book review, if I have one written, if it’s worthy to be published. In total, this year CT published eighteen pieces with my byline, one of which came out in the final print issue of the magazine.

This experience was entirely new for me: new in terms of audience and certainly new in terms of the speed and regularity of a deadline. I think I’ve gotten the hang of it, though I still write far too many words in the first draft. (Thank my editor for trimming it down and cleaning it up.) The “pitch” or “level” (or “tier”) of assumed readership at CT is very, very helpful for this logorrheic academic.

In addition to the books and columns, I published one journal article, one academic review, and eleven mid-to-highbrow essays in other venues. All in all, my estimate is that I published around 60,000 words this year, not counting the books or the blog. I’ve got plenty in the works for next year, but my number one hope is to have one or more places that have repeatedly turned me down finally give me the green light on a submission. Come twelve months from now, I guess we’ll see whether I’ve met my goal.

Here are the links.

Books

Letters to a Future Saint: Foundations of Faith for the Spiritually Hungry (Eerdmans, 1 October 2024).

The Church: A Guide to the People of God (Lexham, 23 October 2024).

Academic

Review of Konrad Schmid and Jens Schröter, The Making of the Bible: From the First Fragments to Sacred Scripture, in Interpretation 78:1 (2024): 69–71.

“Churches of Christ: Once Catholic, Now Evangelical” and “Response to the Responses,” Restoration Quarterly 66:3 (2024): 133–43, 163–69.

Essays

How to Read Paul (Commonweal, 31 January 2024). A review of Matthew Thiessen’s A Jewish Paul.

A Poet’s Faith Against Despair (Comment, 15 February 2024). A review essay of Christian Wiman’s Zero at the Bone. One of the better things I wrote this year, I think.

Beating Slow Horses (The Hedgehog Review, 1 March 2024). An aesthetic appreciation and political critique of Mick Herron’s Slow Horses novels (not the Apple show).

The Genesis of Grace (The Los Angeles Review of Books, 12 March 2024). A review of Marilynne Robinson’s Reading Genesis.

The Home of God in the Body of Christ (Syndicate, 18 April 2024). Part of a symposium of responses to Miroslav Volf and Ryan McAnnally-Linz’s The Home of God.

Mother of the Unborn God (Commonweal, 25 April 2024). A theological reflection on Mary, the incarnation, and abortion.

The Gift of Reality (The Hedgehog Review, 5 September 2024). A review of Albert Borgmann’s final (posthumously published) book, doubling as an introduction to and exploration of his work and thought as a whole.

The Reading Lives of Pastors (Sapientia, 20 August 2024). A vision for the role of reading in the vocation of ministry.

Gods Who Make Worlds (The Christian Century, 16 September 2024). An essay review of the final book in Tad Williams’ “four book trilogy,” The Last King of Osten Ard, itself a sequel to his original, 35-year old trilogy, Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn. I use Williams as a springboard for thinking about fantasy, tragedy, and the divine comedy of grace.

The Knowledge of God (The Raised Hand, 30 October 2024). An answer in reply to the question: “What do all college students need to know?”

Promise, Gift, Command (Comment, December 2024). An essay on “The Theological Terrain of Forgiveness” (its online title). In the December print issue, and paywalled until January.

Christianity Today

All Hail the Power of … Stage Lighting? (6 February 2024). On liturgy and technology.

My Students Are Reading John Mark Comer, and Now I Know Why (14 February 2024). A review of Comer’s latest book, Practicing the Way; the most-read CT book review of the year, and one of the top-ten most read pieces published on the site period. Checks out, because my inbox exploded at the time, and the stream of emails continues unabated.

Doubt is a Ladder, Not a Home (20 February 2024). Against the sexiness of doubt.

How (Not) to Talk About Christian Nationalism (13 March 2024). What the title says. A good piece, in my opinion, that seemed to fly under the radar.

Biblical Literacy in a Postliterate Age (18 April 2024). A word of lament.

Digital Lectors for a Postliterate Age (8 May 2024). A word of hope.

The Loosening of American Evangelicalism (20 May 2024). An elaboration of a long-running thesis of mine. This one resonated!

Faithful Fathers (14 June 2024). An ode to my dad and to other faithful dads like him.

Two Cheers for the Wedding Industrial Complex (25 June 2024). Weddings are good because marriage is good! Even the over-fancy ones.

Penalty or No, Athletes Talk Faith (25 July 2024). In which I talk about LeBron and the Spurs and the Olympics and God.

Worship Together or Bowl Alone (11 September 2024). The very things our non-Christian pundits and academics are noticing our society most needs today turn out to be the byproducts of belonging to a local congregation. Coincidence or divine providence?

Make Christianity Spooky Again (22 October 2024). A review of Rod Dreher’s Living in Wonder; the sixth-most read CT book review of the year.

A Vision for Screen-Free Church (28 October 2024). A sort of third entry in my loose trilogy of postliterate digital commentary.

Saints Are Strange. Martin Scorsese Gets It. (15 November 2024). A review of the new Scorsese-produced docuseries The Saints.

Jordan Peterson Loves God’s Word. But What About God? (19 November 2024). A review of Peterson’s We Who Wrestle With God; the second-most read CT book review of the year, behind Comer.

Our Strength and Consolation (November/December 2024). My first print piece for CT. The online title is “The Consolation of Providence.”

Why Christians Oppose Euthanasia (11 December 2024). Self-explanatory.

The Blood Cries Out at Christmastime (19 December 2024). A reflection on three feast days of Christmastide: Saint Stephen, the Holy Innocents, and the circumcision of Jesus.

An old-fashioned (annotated) blogroll

“Navigating the vastness of the Internet can feel like getting marooned in the middle of the ocean, both terrifying and sublime in its overwhelmingness.” That’s Franklin Foer in World Without Mind. He’s right. But if there’s too much to read on the internet, how to triage for the best?

One way is social media. Another is Substack. Still another is print magazines (not dead yet!).

Alongside these, my preferred mechanism is the RSS feed, which is basically a personal blogroll: a live feed, perpetually updated, of the authors and publications one wants to be sure never to miss. In principle infinite, in practice finite. Years ago a colleague asked me how I decide what to read and who my favorite contemporary writers are, and ever since then I’ve meant to draw up an old-fashioned blogroll in response to her request. Better late than never. At least it’s annotated!

To be sure, stellar newsletters with links to the best stuff are not hard to find: Arts & Letters Daily, The Browser, Prufrock. If I don’t know a writer by name or don’t keep up with a given publication, resources like these are usually how I happen upon new things, in addition to friends sharing links.

Short of grab-bags and random links, though, it’s nice to have a list of one’s own. Below I’ve drawn up a list of the writers whose work I make it a point to keep up with. I limited myself to one hundred names. Initially I organized them by category, but I opted just to run them in alphabetical order. Bios and links are meant to be helpful but, as will be clear, are sometimes tongue-in-cheek.

A few ground rules first. The listed names fit the following criteria: (a) living writers whose publishing output is (b) regular, (c) popular, and (d) accessible online. These aren’t academics whose primary work is found in scholarly journals. Nor do they mainly write books while occasionally putting out an essay. Nor still is the following list exhaustive, as if I didn’t enjoy, appreciate, respect, or follow those unnamed.

For example, Wendell Berry and Marilynne Robinson aren’t here, but their age is advanced enough and their essay output minimal enough that it wouldn’t make sense to include them. (They’re not exactly “online,” either.) My friend Ross McCullough is my favorite theological writer going, but I can’t induce him to write anything popular more than once every few years. I used to read Andrew Sullivan and Rod Dreher but slowly drifted away, even as I continue to keep an eye on their work. I’m delighted when Abigail Favale and Erika Bachiochi emerge from their scholarly dens to write popular essays, but lately it’s too rare an event by my calculation to add their names to the list. I subscribe to Robin Sloan’s monthly newsletter, but he’s a novelist with the best newsletter around, not an essayist pumping out regular pieces. I laugh whenever I read Andrew Ferguson and learn whenever I read Noah Millman, but I’d be lying if I said I keep up with everything they write. Maybe I should and maybe I will, but time is short and you can’t read everything.

That’s not even to mention friends and acquaintances whom I try to read as much as I’m able but don’t (yet) read enough of, like Matt Milliner and Kirsten Sanders and Chris Green and Kyle Williams and Ian Olsen and Alex Sosler and Alan Noble and Ben Crosby and James Wood. Or ballers like Onsi Kamel and Matt Burdette and Justin Hawkins and Rachel Roth Aldhizer who need to write more, more, more. Or once-yearly bangers like Matthew Rose and Patricia Snow and Zena Hitz. Or writers I hugely enjoy but can’t quite keep track of, like Ian Marcus Corbin and Matt Feeney and Samuel Goldman and David Samuels and David Polansky and Park MacDougald and Sebastian Milbank and Derek Thompson. Or old standbys I guiltily don’t read enough of, like Nicholas Carr and Mary Eberstardt and Jamelle Bouie and Oren Cass and Niall Ferguson. Or old lovable know-it-all academics like Philip Jenkins. Or old souls like Joseph Epstein and Stanley Fish, Peter Brown and Jackson Lears who’ve written so much for so long that I could barely make a dint in it. Or Ben Thompson and Jesse Singal and Ed West, who seem to write more daily than I can read in a week.

For those names that are on the list, therefore, their inclusion means that their author page is in my RSS feed, that I subscribe to their Substack, that I constantly scour the internet for their latest publication, and/or that I crack open a magazine the moment I see their name on the cover. To be clear, I don’t love or agree with all of them. A few might qualify as hate-reading, or at least facepalm-reading. Nevertheless I do find myself reading them—to see what they have to say, or to see how they say it. Everyone on this list has either style or substance, and many have both.

One last way to put it: These are the writers I’ve learned to read because the editors I trust continue to commission and publish them—Matthew Walther at The Lamp, Ari Schulman at The New Atlantis, Jay Tolson at The Hedgehog Review, Jon Baskin at The Point, Matthew Schmitz at Compact, Rusty Reno at First Things, Matthew Boudway at Commonweal, Anne Snyder at Comment, Peter Mommsen at Plough (all of which, by the way, arrive in my mailbox). These are the gatekeepers, together with their many fellow editors; they know what’s what, and most of what follows is just picking favorites from the murderer’s row of writers they have the regular pleasure of publishing.

Oh: And I’m sure I’ve forgotten someone. If your name is missing, I’m sure that someone is you.

1. Sam Adler-Bell – leftist journalist and freelance writer, hate-hate relationship with the Right, co-host of Know Your Enemy podcast, bylines at the New York Times and New York Magazine and The New Republic

2. Sohrab Ahmari – co-founder of Compact, author of Tyranny, Inc., bylines at First Things and The American Conservative

3. Matthew Lee Anderson – ethics prof at Baylor, founder of Mere Orthodoxy, writes The Path Before Us newsletter, author of Called Into Questions, former co-host of the Mere Fidelity podcast, bylines at Vox and First Things and The Dispatch

4. Helen Andrews – conservative journalist, former editor at The American Conservative, author of Boomers, bylines at First Things and The Lamp and Compact

5. Jon Askonas – politics profs at CUA, winner of the Emerging Public Intellectual award, bylines at Comment and Compact and The New Atlantis

6. Jon Baskin – founding editor of The Point, former editor at Harper’s, author of Ordinary Unhappiness

7. Richard Beck – psychology prof at ACU, long-time daily blogger at Experimental Theology, author of Hunting Magic Eels

8. Jeff Bilbro – English prof at Grove City College, editor of Front Porch Republic, author of Words for Conviviality

9. David Brooks – come on, let’s not pretend you don’t know who he is

10. Joseph Bottum – man of letters, poet, onetime editor of all the magazines, Catholic and conservative intellectual, author of An Anxious Age (a masterly book but criminally under-read), bylines at The Washington Free Beacon and First Things and Commonweal

11. Josh Brake – engineering prof at Harvey Mudd, wise guide to all things A.I., author of The Absent-Minded Professor newsletter

12. Elizabeth Bruenig – staff writer at The Atlantic, formerly at the New York Times and The Washington Post

13. Matt Bruenig – wife guy, lefty data policy guru, fellow Texan, righteously angry, founder of the People’s Policy Project, blogs at his website, bylines at Jacobin and The Nation

14. Sonny Bunch – film critic for The Bulwark, writes the Bulwark Goes to Hollywood newsletter

15. Timothy Burke – history prof at Swarthmore, author of Lifebuoy Men, Lux Women, writes the Eight by Seven newsletter

16. Tara Isabella Burton – novelist and essayist, former religion reporter for Vox, author of Strange Rites, co-writes The Line of Beauty newsletter, bylines at Comment and Commonweal and Plough and the New York Times and The New Atlantis

17. Christopher Caldwell – polyglot monarch of conservative intellectual journalism, contributing editor at the Claremont Review of Books, contributing opinion writer at the New York Times, author of The Age of Entitlement, bylines at Compact and The New Statesman and The New Republic and National Review and The American Conservative and Financial Times and The Spectator

18. Isaac Chotiner – interrogative journalist at The New Yorker, author of the Q&A column, formerly of Slate

19. Phil Christman – marvelous essayist, equally(!) midwestern and leftist and Christian, English prof at the University of Michigan, author of How to Be Normal, writes The Tourist newsletter, bylines at Plough and Commonweal and Slate

20. Clare Coffey – freelance writer, bylines at The New Atlantis and The Hedgehog Review and Plough and The Bulwark

21. Tyler Cowen – economics prof at George Mason, columnist at Bloomberg, author of The Complacent Class, blogs at The Marginal Revolution, host of Conversations With Tyler podcast

22. Matthew B. Crawford – research fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture, author of Shop Class as Soulcraft, writes the Archedelia newsletter, bylines at First Things and The New Atlantis and The Hedgehog Review

23. Theodore Dalrymple – retired doctor, conservative essayist and novelist, author of Our Culture, What’s Left Of It, bylines at The Lamp and First Things and City Journal

24. Freddie deBoer – last true Marxist, disbeliever in word counts, freelance writer on everything under the sun, author of The Cult of Smart, writes the Freddie deBoer newsletter, bylines at Compact and the New York Times and Harper’s and n+1

25. Michael Brendan Dougherty – writer at National Review, author of My Father Left Me Ireland, regular on The Editors podcast, bylines at The Week and the New York Times

26. Ross Douthat – my own personal op-ed spirit animal, columnist at the New York Times, film critic at National Review, author of Bad Religion, co-host of the Matter of Opinion podcast

27. Christine Emba – staff writer at The Atlantic, author of Rethinking Sex, formerly at The Washington Post

28. Edward Feser – philosophy prof at Pasadena City College, long-time blogger, author of Philosophy of Mind, writes for First Things

29. Angela Franks – theology prof at St. John’s Seminary, author of Margaret Sanger’s Eugenic Legacy, bylines at First Things and Church Life Journal and Catholic World Report

30. John Ganz – lefty interpreter of the Right, author of When the Clock Broke, writes the Unpopular Front newsletter, bylines at The Nation and The New Statesman and The New Republic

31. David P. Goldman – right-Hegelian journalist of economics and China, writer at Asia Times, author of You Will Be Assimilated, bylines at Law & Liberty and First Things and Claremont Review of Books

32. Ruth Graham – religion journalist for the New York Times

33. John Gray – intellectual virtuoso and prolific analyst of the post-Christian West, author of Two Faces of Liberalism, bylines at The New Statesman and The Guardian

34. Emma Green – religion journalist at The New Yorker, formerly at The Atlantic

35. Paul Griffiths – retired theology prof at Duke, author of Decreation, bylines at Commonweal and (once upon a time) First Things

36. Allen Guelzo – historian at Princeton, senior fellow at the Claremont Institute, author of Fateful Lightning, bylines at First Things and The New Criterion and Claremont Review of Books

37. Jonathan Haidt – psych prof at NYU, author of The Anxious Generation, writes the After Babel newsletter, bylines at The Atlantic and the New York Times

38. Shadi Hamid – columnist at the Washington Post, formerly at The Atlantic, author of Islamic Exceptionalism, co-founder of the Wisdom of Crowds website and podcast, co-host of the Zealots at the Gates podcast, bylines galore

39. Mary Harrington – reactionary feminist, author of Feminism Against Progress, writes the Mary Harrington newsletter, bylines at First Things and UnHerd

40. David Bentley Hart – irascible genius unbound by institutional shackles, Eastern Orthodox theologian, essayist, and translator, author of The Experience of God, writes the Leaves in the Wind newsletter, bylines wherever he damn well sees fit

41. Sara Hendren – design prof at Northeastern, author of What Can a Body Do? (an all-timer), blogs at her website, microblogs at ablerism, write (wrote?!) the undefended / undefeated newsletter, bylines at the intersection of the built and the physical environment

42. Wesley Hill – NT prof at Western seminary, author of Spiritual Friendship, bylines at The Living Church and First Things and Comment

43. Dan Hitchens – editor at First Things, sharp-tongued and unsentimental observer of all things Catholic, bylines at The Spectator and The Critic

44. Peter Hitchens – surviving brother of Christopher, irascible conservative scribbler, columnist at the Daily Mail, author of The Rage Against God, bylines at The Lamp and First Things and Compact

45. Alan Jacobs – English prof at Baylor, OG uber-blogger, my self-assigned mentor and archegos, author of The Narnian, blogs at The Homebound Symphony, bylines at The Atlantic and Comment and The New Yorker and The New Atlantis and First Things and Harper’s

46. Samuel James – editor at Crossway, author of Digital Liturgies, writes The Digital Liturgies newsletter

47. Paul Kingsnorth – ex-pagan novelist, poet, and essayist, my favorite convert to Orthodoxy outside of my brother, author of Confessions of a Recovering Environmentalist, writes The Abbey of Misrule newsletter, bylines at First Things and elsewhere

48. Phil Klay – Iraq veteran, novelist and essayist, author of Redeployment, bylines at the New York Times and The Atlantic and Commonweal

49. Ezra Klein – columnist at the New York Times, founder of Vox, author of Why We’re Polarized, host of The Ezra Klein Show

50. Austin Kleon – fellow Austinite and thief, author of Steal Like an Artist, super-duper blogger, also writes a glorious newsletter

51. Sam Kriss – unclassifiable essayist, logorrheic in a good way, writes the Numb at the Lodge newsletter, bylines at Compact and First Things and The Lamp and the New York Times

52. Bonnie Kristian – editor extraordinaire at Christianity Today, author of Untrustworthy, writes the Bonnie Kristian newsletter, bylines at The Week and The American Conservative

53. Peter Leithart – president of Theopolis, author of The End of Protestantism, writes for First Things

54. David Leonhardt – pandemic worldbeater, writer at the New York Times, author of Ours Was the Shining Future, writes The Morning newsletter

55. Yuval Levin – everyone’s favorite level-headed institutionalist conservative, senior fellow at AEI, editor of National Affairs, author of A Time to Build, bylines at the New York Times and National Review

56. Mark Lilla – humanities prof at Columbia, author of The Once and Future Liberal, bylines at the New York Review of Books and the New York Times

57. Michael Lind – grumpy gumshoe pro-labor conservative, author of Hell to Pay, bylines at Tablet and Compact and The Free Press

58. Damon Linker – radical moderate, poli-sci prof at UPenn, onetime editor of First Things, author of The Theocons, writes the Notes From the Middleground newsletter, bylines at the New York Times and The Atlantic

59. Matthew Loftus – doctor in Kenya via Baltimore, bylines at Mere Orthodoxy and Plough and Christianity Today and the New York Times

60. Zach Lowe – NBA journalist, formerly of Grantland and ESPN, former host of The Lowe Post podcast, currently and unjustly a free agent

61. Kate Lucky – editor at Christianity Today, bylines at The Point and Commonweal

62. Tim Markatos – film critic, writes the Movie Enthusiast newsletter

63. Eugene McCarraher – humanities prof at Villanova, author of The Enchantments of Mammon, byline at Commonweal

64. Daniel McCarthy – omnicompetent conservatism-explainer, editor of Modern Age, columnist at The Spectator, bylines at the New York Times and The American Conservative

65. Esau McCaulley – NT prof at Wheaton, author of Reading While Black, writes a New York Times newsletter, byline at Christianity Today, host of the Esau McCaulley podcast

66. B. D. McClay – simply one of the best essayists around, Swiftie explainer, lover of perfume and anime, has the world eagerly awaiting a book, writes the Notebook newsletter, bylines at The Hedgehog Review and the New York Times and The Lamp and The New Yorker and The Paris Review

67. Jake Meador – editor of Mere Orthodoxy, author of In Search of the Common Good, bylines at Plough and The Atlantic and First Things

68. Russell Moore – editor of Christianity Today, author of Losing Our Religion, bylines at The Atlantic and the New York Times, host of the Russell Moore Podcast

69. Wesley Morris – film critic (the best when he wants to be), formerly at The Boston Globe and Grantland, now art and culture critic for the New York Times, former co-host of various podcasts

70. Gary Saul Morson – literature prof at Northwestern, master of all things Russian, author of Wonder Confronts Certainty, bylines at First Things and The New Criterion and The New York Review of Books

71. Samuel Moyn – law prof at Yale, author of Liberalism Against Itself, bylines at the New York Times and Compact and The New Republic

72. Adam Nayman – film critic for The Ringer, author of The Coen Brothers: This Book Really Ties the Films Together

73. Grace Olmstead – journalist, localist, memoirist, author of Uprooted, writes the Granola newsletter, bylines at the New York Times and The Wall Street Journal and Mere Orthodoxy and Plough

74. Louise Perry – journalist, author of The Case Against the Sexual Revolution, writes the Maiden Mother Matriarch newsletter, bylines at First Things and The New Statesman

75. Brian Phillips – staff writer at The Ringer, formerly at Grantland, author of Impossible Owls, bylines all over

76. Jeff Reimer – editor nonpareil at Comment, bylines at Plough and The Bulwark

77. Adam Roberts – best SF writer alive, supposedly moonlights as a lit prof in London, author of The Thing Itself, writes the (new!) Substack-ships On Fire, Off The Shoulder Of Orion newsletter, byline the Internet

78. Alastair Roberts – digital lector, adjunct senior fellow at Theopolis, co-author of Echoes of Exodus, blogs at Alastair’s Adversaria, co-writes The Anchored Argosy newsletter, co-host of the Mere Fidelity podcast

79. Becca Rothfeld – book review critic at The Washington Post, editor at The Point, contributing editor at Boston Review, author of All Things Are Too Small, writes the a fête worse than death newsletter

80. L. M. Sacasas – best tech writer alive, associate director of the Christian Study Center of Gainesville, FL, author of 41 Questions: Technology and the Moral Life (forthcoming), writes The Convivial Society newsletter, writes elsewhere but really just subscribe ASAP

81. Fred Sanders – humbly wry polymath, theology prof at Biola, author of The Triune God, blogs at fredfredfred.com

82. Leah Libresco Sargeant – journalist and freelance writer, author of Arriving at Amen, writes the Other Feminisms newsletter, bylines at the New York Times and First Things and The Lamp and The New Atlantis

83. Matthew Schmitz – co-founder and editor of Compact, former editor at First Things, bylines at the New York Times and The Atlantic and The American Conservative

84. Ari Schulman – editor of The New Atlantis, steady hand at the scientism-critical ship, bylines at National Review and the New York Times

85. George Scialabba – my favorite living lefty essayist, author of Only a Voice, bylines everywhere but especially Commonweal and The Baffler and The New Statesman

86. Matt Zoller Seitz – film and TV critic for New York Magazine, editor-in-chief of RogerEbert.com, my first-read for all things cinematic, co-author of TV (The Book)

87. Alan Sepinwall – TV critic for Rolling Stone, co-author of TV (The Book)

88. James K. A. Smith – philosophy prof at Calvin, former editor of Comment and Image, author of Desiring the Kingdom, bylines at First Things and The Christian Century

89. Justin Smith-Ruiu – the artist formerly known as Justin E. H. Smith, everything prof somewhere in Paris, author of The Internet is Not What You Think It Is, meta-writes The Hinternet newsletter, bylines at The Point and Tablet and elsewhere

90. Jonathan Tran – ethics prof at Baylor, author of Asian Americans and the Spirit of Racial Capitalism, writes for The Christian Century

91. Eve Tushnet – saint in the making, tragicomic Catholic queer writer and journalist, author of Tenderness, writes The Rogation Dragon newsletter, bylines at Commonweal and America and The Lamp and First Things

92. Matthew Walther – trad Cath prose stylist bar none, editor and founder of The Lamp, author of a biography of Saint John Henry Newman (forthcoming from Yale UP), bylines at the New York Times and First Things and elsewhere

93. Tish Harrison Warren – priest at local speakeasy Immanuel Anglican Church, author of Liturgy of the Ordinary, writes (wrote?!) for Christianity Today and the New York Times

94. Audrey Watters – ed-tech Cassandra (and therefore to be trusted), author of Teaching Machines, blogs at Hack Education, writes the Second Breakfast newsletter

95. Myles Werntz – ethics prof at ACU, author of From Isolation to Community, writes the Taking Off and Landing newsletter, bylines at Mere Orthodoxy and Christianity Today

96. Alissa Wilkinson – film critic for the New York Times, formerly of Vox and Christianity Today and Books & Culture, author of Salty

97. Rowan Williams – Welsh wizard, former archbishop of Canterbury, author of On Christian Theology, bylines at First Things and The New Statesman and The Guardian

98. Andrew Wilson – teaching pastor at King’s Church London, author of Remaking the World, blogs at Think Theology, writes for Christianity Today and The Gospel Coalition, sometime co-host of Mere Fidelity

99. John Wilson – lovable curmudgeon and devotee of books, former editor of the much lamented Books & Culture, bylines at First Things and The Hedgehog Review and elsewhere

100. Molly Worthen – history prof at UNC, recent convert to Christianity, author of Apostles of Reason, bylines at First Things and the New York Times and Christianity Today

My latest: bloodshed during Christmastide, in CT

My last column for Christianity Today this year is called “The Blood Cries Out at Christmastime.” It’s about the bloody feasts of Christmastide: Saint Stephen (Dec 26), the Holy Innocents (Dec 28), and the circumcision of Jesus (Jan 1). Here’s a preview:

Each of these ties bloodshed to Christmas—even the last one. This is not, however, how we usually mark the Christmas season, which is festive because it is a festival: a great party in honor of the birth of the King. Advent is for penitence; Christmas is for merriment (Matt. 9:15).

Yet there is a reason for the timing of these altogether bloody memorials. They are a stark reminder of the world into which Jesus was born, the world he was born to save. Even as we make merry, we will be less likely to trivialize the nativity of Christ when we remember that this child was born to die.

“Without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness” of sins: so says Hebrews 9:22. Christmas may seem a long way from Calvary, but in truth it isn’t far at all. The Cross is already in view, whether for God (from eternity), for Scripture (as a narrative), or for us (who know the end of the story). Mary’s son is born to shed his blood for us. Even from the womb, this baby is bound for Joseph’s tomb. The circumstances of his birth and the saints honored during this season testify to that sobering truth.

Read the rest here. Merry Christmas!

My latest: why Christians oppose Euthanasia, in CT

I’m in Christianity Today this morning with a piece called “Why Christians Oppose Euthanasia.” It is exactly what its title suggests. Here are two early paragraphs:

The church’s moral teaching has always held that murder—defined as the intentional taking of innocent life—is intrinsically evil. It follows that actively intending the death of an elderly or sick human being and then deliberately bringing about that death through some positive action, such as the administration of drugs, is always and everywhere morally wrong.

This ethical argument is very similar to the one Christians make about abortion. We could modify the oft-quoted line from Dr. Seuss—“A person’s a person no matter how small”—by substituting old or ill for “small.” (Other substitutions also suggest themselves: smart, abled, sexed, or hued.) To be sure, there are relevant differences between active euthanasia and, for example, removing a brain-dead person from life support. There are none, however, between administering fatal drugs and offering or prescribing them: Both directly facilitate the intended death of a patient under a doctor’s medical care.

Read the rest here.

My latest: on Jordan Peterson, in CT

Yesterday Christianity Today published my review of Jordan Peterson’s new book, We Who Wrestle With God: Perceptions of the Divine. The title of the review is “Jordan Peterson Loves God’s Word. But What About God?” Early on I write the following:

The volume is, to put it mildly, an enormous undertaking—quite unlike Peterson’s self-help books. Running more than 200,000 words, it is a thematic and allegorical commentary on the law of Moses, especially Genesis and Exodus. It is gargantuan in every sense of the word: energizing and exhausting, brimming with ideas and asides, full of insightful connections and baffling conclusions, consistent in its viewpoint, maddening in its dodges, impressive in its ambition, and tedious, at times, in its sheer funereal solemnity.

Read the full thing here. For comparison, here is Rowan Williams in The Guardian with a rhetorically more negative but substantively similar assessment.

My latest: on providence and on the saints, both in CT

I have not one but two new pieces in Christianity Today this week (and another this coming Tuesday!).

The first is from the latest print issue; there it’s titled “Our Strength and Consolation,” online it’s called “The Consolation of Providence.” It’s a theological exploration of what the doctrine of providence teaches, what it’s there for, and what it’s not there for. It arose after political upheavals in July then was revised in October to be published after the election. It’s not really about politics; it is about God; it’s also about the uses and abuses of providence as a Christian hermeneutic for history (abusus non tollit usum).

The second piece is a review of Martin Scorsese’s new docuseries The Saints, which debuts in two days. I got to watch a couple episodes in advance—my first screeners! (I’m inching my way toward becoming what I’ve secretly always wanted to be: not a scholar but a film critic.) The title is “Saints Are Strange. Martin Scorsese Gets it.” And he does. Mostly I’m writing not about the technique or quality of the series but instead about the origins of sainthood in the early church and the question the saints pose to believers today.

As Tyler Cowen likes to say: self-recommending.

Stay tuned for Tuesday, when CT publishes my review of Jordan Peterson’s big new book on Genesis and Exodus, We Who Wrestle With God.

Ancient illiteracy

Literacy is not my area of expertise, whether ancient, medieval, modern, or contemporary. But I find myself talking about it a lot, so I thought I’d put down some markers here for the best resources on the topic, at least regarding mass illiteracy in those societies where Christianity took root early on.

Some relevant books include:

• Robert A. Kaster, Guardians of Language: The Grammarian and Society in Late Antiquity (University of California Press, 1988)

• William V. Harris, Ancient Literacy (Harvard University Press, 1989)

• Harry Y. Gamble, Books and Readers in the Early Church: A History of Early Christian Texts (Yale University Press, 1995)

• Peter W. Martens, Origen and Scripture: The Contours of the Exegetical Life (Oxford University Press, 2012)

• Carol Harrison, The Art of Listening in the Early Church (Oxford University Press, 2013)

Below are two long excerpts from Harrison and Gamble (the former is dependent on the latter); bolded emphases are mine.

First, Harrison (pp. 3–4):

In early Christianity … functional literacy was possessed by perhaps 10 per cent of the population. It was the preserve of a very small group of male citizens who were literally and metaphorically free: free (rather than enslaved) citizens, who had been educated in the seven liberal disciplines—those arts appropriate for free men (grammar, rhetoric, dialectic, arithmetic, music, geometry, astronomy). Having shared this homogenous education they were prepared for public service, and especially for those key jobs which required a facility in public speaking or rhetoric, and where the ability to teach, move, and persuade an audience of what they had to say was of the utmost importance: the law courts, the senate, the army, provincial administration. As we will see, this training meant that classical and early Christian culture was very much a rhetorical culture; one based on the practice and power of the spoken word. In this sense, we can speak not only of an oral culture, but of a much broader 'cultural' literacy, which those who possessed an ability to read and speak were instrumental in creating among a much larger, more diverse, less socially or gender exclusive group. The words of the formally educated—in teaching, law, politics, poetry, and (following the rise of Christianity) preaching and catechesis—were crucial in forming and perpetuating a shared world of memorial images, beliefs, expectations, and authorities, which together established what we have called a cultural literacy or a facility for “literate listening” among the illiterate majority in the ancient world. The unlettered were able to “read” and understand reality through the shared, often tacit, markers of complicit understanding, customary practice, and habitual ways of thinking created by speaking and hearing. It is this cultural literacy—the Christian culture which the writers and speakers we will be examining built up—rather than the formal literacy of the educated elite that will be out main focus of interest in examining how hearing formed, informed, and transformed the minds of early Christian listeners.

Next, Gamble (pp. 2–5):

To what extent were early Christians actually capable of writing and reading? The question has rarely been raised and has never been explored by historians of early Christianity. Biblical and patristic scholars have shared with classicists the sanguine assumption that literacy prevailed in antiquity on a scale roughly comparable to literacy in modern Western societies and so have imagined that early Christianity was broadly literate. This view has been tacitly disputed only by the early form critics, who aimed to study the oral transmission of early Christian traditions, and only for primitive Christianity, which they regarded as an illiterate or, at best, semiliterate folk culture that relied on oral tradition. But neither the view that early Christianity was broadly literate nor the claim that in its earliest phases it was illiterate is more than a hypothesis, and neither view has been systematically argued.

So the question remains unanswered: To what extent could early Christians read and write? This is a difficult question for several reasons. First, working definitions of literacy vary, and its indices are relative to its definition. If, despite the aid of empirical studies and statistical methods, it is hard to determine the types and extent of literacy in modern societies, it is far more difficult to do so for earlier periods, especially ancient ones. Literacy can refer to anything from signature literacy, which is the minimal ability to write one's name, to the capacity both to write lengthy texts and to read them with understanding. The problem of definition corresponds to the fact that "in reality there are infinite gradations of literacy for any written language," so that a useful definition would be neither too narrow nor too broad but would embrace a range of literacy and acknowledge its various types. Second, direct evidence about literacy is scarce for antiquity generally and scarcer still for early Christianity in particular. This problem may be remedied in part by attending to evidence about education and social class, for literacy has historically been a function of both. Comparative analysis is also useful. The diffusion of literacy in any society is known to depend on certain preconditions and stimuli, and we can infer the extent of literacy in ancient societies from data on the development and scope of literacy in early modern and modern societies by determining how far necessary conditions were satisfied. Third, the question of literacy in early Christianity is complicated by the fact that Christianity developed and spread in multi- cultural and multilingual settings and thus incorporated from the start a diversity that forbids the generalizations that are possible for more culturally and linguistically homogeneous groups. A Christian in first-century Palestine might have been thoroughly literate in Aramaic, largely literate in Hebrew, semiliterate in Greek, and illiterate in Latin, while a Christian in Rome in the late second century might have been literate in Latin and semiliterate in Greek but ignorant of Aramaic and Hebrew. So when it is said of a Christian holding the office of reader in the Egyptian church in the early fourth century that he "does not know letters," we should not suppose that he was illiterate, but rather that he was literate only in Coptic, not in Greek. Although the situation became progressively complex with the missionary expansion of Christianity into the provinces, the linguistic pluralism of Christianity was present from the outset insofar as Christianity originated in the Aramaic-speaking environment of Judaism while its earliest extant literature was in Greek.

The composition, circulation, and use of Christian writings in the early church are manifest proof of Christian literacy but say nothing in themselves about the extent of literacy within Christianity. The abundance of Christian literature from the first five centuries skews our perceptions and leads us to imagine that the production of so many books must betoken an extensive readership. Yet the literature that survives reflects the capacities and viewpoints of Christian literati, who cannot be taken to represent Christians generally. Even the wide use and high esteem for Christian writings among Christian communities do not indicate that the larger body of Christians could read, for in antiquity one could hear texts read even if one was unable to read, so that illiteracy was no bar to familiarity with Christian writings. Because neither the existence of Christian literature nor its broad circulation and use can reveal the extent or levels of literacy within Christianity, it is all the more important to have an idea of the nature and scope of literacy in ancient society generally, especially under the Roman empire.

In the most comprehensive study to date, William Harris has sought to discover the extent of literacy in the ancient world. Using a broad definition of literacy as the ability to read or write at any level, Harris draws on wide and varied evidence—explicit, circumstantial, and comparative—and takes some account of the types and the uses of literacy. He reaches a largely negative conclusion for Western antiquity generally: granting regional and temporal variations, throughout the entire period of classical Greek, Hellenistic, and Roman imperial civilization, the extent of literacy was about 10 percent and never exceeded 15 to 20 percent of the population as a whole. "The written culture of antiquity was in the main restricted to a privileged minority—though in some places it was a large minority—and it co-existed with elements of an oral culture." Although I have some reservations about the way Harris has posed and addressed the problem of literacy in the ancient world, his invaluable survey has made it clear that nothing remotely like mass literacy existed, nor could have existed, in Greco-Roman societies, because the forces and institutions required to foster it were absent. This recognition must stand as a firm check on the romantic and anachronistic tendencies that have too often guided scholarly assessments of literacy in antiquity.

If, as Harris recognizes, his conclusions "will be highly unpalatable to some classical scholars," they should be equally sobering to historians of early Christianity and its literature. There may be special factors in the Christian setting, but it cannot be supposed that the extent of literacy in the ancient church was any greater than that in the Greco-Roman society of which Christianity was a part. This is true in spite of the importance the early church accorded to religious texts, for acquaintance with the scriptures did not require that all or even most Christians be individually capable of reading them and does not imply that they were. It is also true should scholars reject the traditional view that early Christianity was a movement among the illiterate proletariat of the Roman Empire. In one of the most interesting developments in recent biblical scholarship, this conventional social description has been subjected to thorough criticism and revision. Studies of the social constituency of the early church have shown that, especially in its urban settings, Christianity attracted a socially diverse membership, representing a cross section of Roman society. Although it certainly included many from the lower socioeconomic levels, it was by no means a proletarian movement. Both the highest and the lowest strata of society were absent. The most typical members of the Christian groups were free craftspeople, artisans, and small traders, some of whom had attained a measure of affluence, owned houses and slaves, had the resources to travel, and were socially mobile. In terms of social status, Christian communities had a pyramidal shape rather like that of society at large. But since members of the upper classes were less numerous, high levels of literacy—as a function of social status or education, or both—would have been unusual. Still, moderate levels, such as were common among crafts-people and small business persons, may have been proportionately better represented within the early church than outside it. Yet these insights offer no reason to think that the extent of literacy of any kind among Christians was greater than in society at large. If anything, it was more limited. This means that not only the writing of Christian literature, but also the ability to read, criticize, and interpret it belonged to a small number of Christians in the first several centuries, ordinarily not more than about 10 percent in any given setting, and perhaps fewer in the many small and provincial congregations that were characteristic of early Christianity.

My latest: a plea to teach college students about God, in The Raised Hand

The Raised Hand is a Substack run by the Consortium of Christian Study Centers and edited by Daniel G. Hummel of the Lumen Center (Madison, WI) and Upper House (serving the University of Wisconsin-Madison). This school year they’ve been running monthly essays written by Christian academics asked to respond to the following prompt: “What does every university and college student need to learn?”

Yesterday they published my entry, titled “The Knowledge of God.” Here’s how it opens:

I am tempted to begin by saying that the first thing every university and college student needs to learn is how to read. But I’ve written about that plenty elsewhere, and you can’t throw a stone on the internet without hitting someone writing about the crisis of literacy on campus and in the public schools. Since I’m a theologian, moreover, there’s some low-hanging fruit (no pun intended) just waiting for me to reach up and take it.

Here's my real answer: If learning is about knowing, then every college student needs, through teaching, to come to know God. Another way to say this is that every student needs to learn how to pray.

Click here to read the whole thing. Thanks to Daniel for the invitation. And thanks to Sara Hendren, who already read and kindly boosted the piece. It was a fun one to write. Watch for a follow-up podcast conversation (sometime in the next week or two) that discusses the essay, also hosted by The Raised Hand.

My latest: a plea for screen-free church, in CT

I’m in Christianity Today arguing for screen-free church; here are the opening paragraphs:

Some years ago, author Hal Runkel trademarked a phrase that made his name: screamfree parenting. It’s a memorable term because it captures viscerally what so many moms and dads want: parenting without the volume turned up to 11—whether of our kids’ voices or our own.

I’d like to propose a similar phrase: screen-free church. It’s a vision for an approach to Christian community and especially public worship that critically assesses and largely eliminates the role of digital devices and surfaces in church life. But the prescription depends on a diagnosis, so let me start there.

Consider the following thesis: The greatest threat facing the church today is not atheism or secularism, scientism or legalism, racism or nationalism. The greatest threat facing the church today is digital technology.

Rest the rest here.

Links to a passel of podcast appearances (and a few reviews)

I’ve been on the podcast circuit the last couple months, hawking the two new books. I expect these appearances to continue for another month or so but then slowly disappear. I had no idea my sabbatical would really be about clearing my afternoons for book publicity, but there you go.

I usually remember to share links with friends and on Micro.blog, but I wanted to gather some of them here for folks who might be interested; I’ll follow links to pod with links to some reviews of either book that have been published this month. Plus a book launch here in Abilene at a local bookstore!

By the way, feel free to nag your favorite podcaster to have me on. I’m sure I’ll lose stamina by semester’s end, but it’s been so much more fun than I expected. Turns out that talking about God, church, theology, and your own writing with engaged strangers is fun! I’ve also gone on a few live radio shows that don’t record the audio for later—a rare instance of digital conversation not immediately disseminated in eternal form on the internet. Also also, more than once I’ve not realized the conversation would be captured in video form, for YouTube, hence my occasionally disheveled or casual appearance.

Last, I’ve either already recorded more podcasts or have plans to go on others that will be published in the coming months: Trevin Wax’s Reconstructing Faith, the Yale Center for Faith and Culture podcast, the Christian Chronicle Podcast, the Sacramentalists, and more. Perhaps Truth Over Tribe or Mere Fidelity, too—though I’m sure my bad takes and TV habits have led to Matt’s banning my non-Barthian, pseudo-recusant self for good.

Here’s the list for now:

• Eerdmans Author Interview – YouTube

• Crackers and Grape Juice – this isn’t available on Apple or Spotify yet, but a (sped up) version is available on Jason Micheli’s Substack Tamed Cynic

• Know Why – Apple | Spotify

• Mornings with Carmen LaBerge – Apple | Spotify

• Marc Jolicoeur (aka “Jolly Thoughts”) – Apple | Spotify | YouTube

• Gospel Simplicity – Apple | Spotify | YouTube

• That’ll Preach – Apple | Spotify | YouTube

• A History of Christian Theology – Apple | Spotify

And here are a handful of reviews:

• Christianity Today: Uche Anizor reviews Letters to a Future Saint

• Front Porch Republic: Alex Sosler reviews Letters to a Future Saint

• Fare Forward: Will Bryant reviews Letters to a Future Saint

• The Baptist Standard: Ben Faus reviews Letters to a Future Saint

• Christianity Today: Brett Vanderzee reviews The Church

• Holy Joys: Johnathan Arnold reviews The Church

• The Gospel Coalition: Samuel Parkison reviews The Church

• Joel Wentz: video review of The Church

Last but not least, if you’re here in Abilene, the local bookstore (co-founded by one of my former students!) Seven and One is having a launch party for both books this coming Tuesday. Here’s the flyer; come out and get a book signed!

My latest: a review of Rod Dreher, in CT

This morning Christianity Today published my review of Rod Dreher’s new book (out today) Living in Wonder: Finding Mystery and Meaning in a Secular Age. The title of the review is “Make Christianity Spooky Again”—just in time for Halloween!

Rod Dreher has some advice for you. First, put down your phone, close your laptop, and turn off the television. Next, begin to pray. Don’t pray just anything; recite the Jesus Prayer, preferably hundreds of times. Now you are positioned to begin your quest. The object of the quest is beauty. Seek to behold divine glory in the work of the Lord’s hands, whether in his creation, icons, or saints. If you have eyes to see, each of these is a mirror reflecting the light of Christ in a dark but not forsaken world.

In a word, you must become a “practical mystic.” If you don’t, you’ll lack the resilience to weather a godless, disenchanted culture. You and your children will lose hold of the faith. Like the apostle Peter, you will sink beneath the waters; unlike him, no one will lift you up. Or so argues Dreher in his new book, Living in Wonder: Finding Mystery and Meaning in a Secular Age. 

Just wait till we get to the aliens. Read the rest here.

My latest: on fantasy and theology in The Christian Century

In the latest issue of The Christian Century I have an essay on the divine comedy of epic fantasy, or as the editors titled it, “Gods Who Make Worlds.” It’s ostensibly a review of the final volume of Tad Williams’s quartet The Last King of Osten Ard, which is itself a sequel series to the original trilogy Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn—not to mention a prequel, a bridge novel, and a companion volume—for a total of ten books in this world. The name of that world is Osten Ard, and I use the glories of Osten Ard to think aloud about epic fantasy as a genre and its relationship to Christian faith.

Here are the opening paragraphs:

Three decades ago, Tad Williams published the final volume in the best epic fantasy trilogy written in English since The Lord of the Rings. Called Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn, the series ran from 1988 to 1993 and totaled over a million words. Half of those words came in the final book—one of the longest books ever to make it onto the New York Times bestseller list.

There is no overselling the significance of Williams’s achievement: the biggest names in fantasy in the intervening decades all acknowledge his influence, from Brandon Sanderson to Patrick Rothfuss to Game of Thrones creator George R. R. Martin. (There is no Westeros without Osten Ard, Williams’s fictional world.) Yet, although Williams is hyper-prolific and widely admired, he has never had the success or name recognition of these other authors. No streaming service has yet broken the bank in adapting Williams’s magnum opus.

Why have these books sold well but never set the world on fire?

Three reasons come to mind…

Click here to read the rest. Thanks again to The Christian Century for letting me write about these books and this topic—a big ask, given my lack of qualifications.

My latest: on the social effects of church, in CT

In 2016 David Brooks gave an address at the 40th Anniversary Celebration of the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities. Titled “The Cultural Value of Christian Higher Education,” the talk had a simple thesis: What every college in America is looking for can already be found at Christian universities across the country. In his own words:

You guys are the avant-garde of 21st century culture. You have what everybody else is desperate to have: a way of talking about and educating the human person in a way that integrates faith, emotion and intellect. You have a recipe to nurture human beings who have a devoted heart, a courageous mind and a purposeful soul. Almost no other set of institutions in American society has that, and everyone wants it. From my point of view, you’re ahead of everybody else and have the potential to influence American culture in a way that could be magnificent.

I happen to think he’s right about that, but in my latest column for Christianity Today, I use Brook’s remarks as a point of departure for thinking about another beleaguered American institution: the local church.

The piece is called “Worship Together or Bowl Alone”—a great title, kudos to Bonnie Kristian. Here’s an excerpt:

That’s why the instinct to meet our culture’s critique or ignorance of the church by downplaying its import is so misguided. Church is not an optional add-on to Christian faith. It is how we learn to be human as God intended. Indeed, it makes possible truly human life before God. 

Church has what we need, the purpose and community and cultivation of virtue for which the rest of our culture is grasping in the dark. It’s right here. It’s nothing to be coy or embarrassed about. It’s nothing to apologize for. Church is what people are hungering for, even if they don’t realize it. Sometimes we ourselves don’t realize it.

Click here to read the rest.

My latest: an essay and response in Restoration Quarterly

An essay of mine is featured in the latest issue of Restoration Quarterly (66:3). In fact, the entire issue is organized around it. Let me give a little back story.

Two years ago on the blog I wrote a series of reflections on the past, present, and future of churches of Christ. They got a lot of traction around this neck of the woods, and James Thompson, the editor of RQ, asked me to synthesize and elaborate the posts into a single essay. The result is called “Churches of Christ: Once Catholic, Now Evangelical” (pp. 133–44). It’s preceded by a brief reflection by Thompson on the “almost Catholic” ecclesiology of churches of Christ (pp. 129–32), then followed by three replies:

• “A Response to Brad East” by Wendell Willis (pp. 145–51)

• “Churches of Christ: Always Evangelical, Still Catholic” by John Mark Hicks (pp. 152–58)

• “A Response to Brad East” by Paul Watson (pp. 159–62)

I in turn wrote a response to the responses (pp. 163–69). All around a good time was had by all. My response is followed by a proper scholarly article on the New Testament (authored, again, by Thompson), then book reviews. As it happens, a review of my own book, The Church’s Book: Theology of Scripture in Ecclesial Context, is the first of this section.

It sort of feels like the Brad East Issue. I’m honored, humbled, and a little embarrassed.

Nevertheless it was a pleasure to engage such serious and pressing issues in a public forum with such thoughtful and generous thinkers and churchmen. My only regret is that while RQ does have a website it doesn’t have an obvious or convenient way to access current issues online or in digital form. Back issues are catalogued in ATLA but this one won’t be there for a while, at least from what I can tell.

I’m not in a position to share the whole issue with folks, but if you email me, I’d be willing to share a PDF of my essay and response. I’ll be curious to hear what folks make of my case, both regarding the absorption of churches of Christ by and into American Evangelicalism and regarding the precipitous institutional decline of the movement. The tone of the pieces isn’t doom and gloom, but it is quite sober and, if readers take it seriously, sobering. Which it should be, if I’m right.

My latest: on the late Albert Borgmann, in HHR

This morning The Hedgehog Review published an essay of mine called “The Gift of Reality.” It’s an extended introduction to and exposition of the life and writings of the late Albert Borgmann, including a review of his last book, published posthumously last January. Here’s a sample paragraph from the middle of the piece:

At the same time, while Borgmann may have been a critic of liberalism, he argued that “it should be corrected and completed rather than abandoned.” In this he reads as a less polemical Christopher Lasch or Wendell Berry, fellow democrats whose political vision—consisting among other things of family, fidelity, fortitude, piety, honor, honest work, local community, neighborliness, and thrift—is likewise invested in preserving and respecting reality. Such a vision is simultaneously homeless on the national stage and the richest fruit of the American political tradition.

Click here to read the whole thing.

My latest: on pastors’ reading habits, in Sapientia

I’ve got an essay in Sapientia called “The Reading Lives of Pastors.” The prompt was to reflect on Pope Francis’s “Letter on the Role of Literature in Formation” and, more broadly, on why pastors should (if they should) include fiction and poetry as part of their regular reading diet. After clarifying at the outset that literature does not per se make you a better person, I write the following:

The fact of literature is in general a human good, in the sense that it is a sign of an advanced culture: symbol, narrative, myth, technology, writing, literacy, communication—these are to be celebrated, granting their capacity to be bent to any number of ends. But the act of wide reading in literature in and of itself entails nothing at all about a person. The voracious reader may be either selfish or selfless, vain or humble, vicious or virtuous, religious or secular, joyful or melancholy, full of life or obsessed with death, a treasured friend or a despised enemy, a cosmopolitan or a provincial, a sage or a boor. Hitler and Stalin may not have been men of letters, but they had men of letters for followers and apologists. The list of wicked writers and artists—who abused women, abandoned children, and passed in silence over the suffering of countless victims—is too long to recount.

It is a difficult lesson to accept, but learning and goodness are not synonymous or coterminous. More of one does not necessarily lead to more of the other. They are neither directly nor inversely related. The desire for a cleaner, clearer correspondence between them is understandable, but utterly belied by the facts. Ordinary experience is a trustworthy teacher: Are the holiest people you know the smartest, the best educated, the most widely read?

Click here to read the whole thing.

Links: three reviews, three podcasts

I’ve fallen behind in my link updates, partly because of busyness, partly because the Micro.blog is so much easier for such things. But! Here are three podcasts I appeared on in the last few months, followed by a round-up of three new reviews of The Church’s Book: Theology of Scripture in Ecclesial Context.

Podcasts:

• Holy C of E, “A Catholic View of Scripture” (July 1), available on Spotify and Apple. Lot of high Anglican content here.

• The London Lyceum, “The Doctrine of Scripture” (July 10), available on Spotify and Apple. A rich conversation about Protestant approaches to and questions about Scripture.

• Speakeasy Theology, “The Scandal of Theology” (August 12), available on Apple and Substack. A long, meandering, and wonderful chat with Chris Green about Robert Jenson, wicked theologians, and original sin. To be continued.

Reviews:

• Joel B. Green, Interpretation 78:2 (2024): 174–75. Green writes that

this book serves both as a charitable and analytical reading of three distinct approaches to the use of the Bible in theology and as a formidable proposal for the importance of one’s understanding of the church for one’s interpretation of Scripture. The result is a welcome contribution to theological hermeneutics and to ongoing discussion of theological interpretation of Scripture. For those who imagine that their theological engagement with the Bible proceeds from text to doctrine, East offers an important corrective.

• Keith Stanglin, Calvin Theological Journal 59:1 (2024): 191–93. Stanglin writes: “The excursus alone, with implications that transcend Yoder’s case, is a rather full and careful account of how” to engage work produced by Christians and other writers who, while alive, perpetrated great evil against others. Stanglin concludes: “Through it all, East effectively illuminates a significant link that sometimes remains obscure in theological discourse,” namely between ecclesiology and bibliology.

• John Kern, Restoration Quarterly 66:3 (2024): 184–85. Kern writes:

Ultimately, this book is an exemplary work in contemporary systematic theology. It is historically attuned to the nuances of the figures that it treats. Even so, it evaluates their strengths and weaknesses, all while offering clear paths for bringing the best of their proposals together for a fuller vision. East never loses his constructive edge even while simply trying to get the figures right on their own terms. Even more, he does all of this while keeping his eye on the primary objective: to account for the divisions found among practitioners of [theological interpretation of Scripture]. He accomplishes this and so much more. Even tracing the lineage of these three theologians from Karl Barth’s influence would have been contribution sufficient to warrant a monograph, but East has found multiple ways to carry this conversation forward. The book is necessary reading for theologians and biblical scholars alike for the way it shows a point at once simple and deep: how one understands the church impacts how one understands the Bible as Scripture. It might not ultimately unify the differences between the different ecclesiological paradigms for bibliology, but East has helped theology in a major way by disambiguating the conflicts, showing where they truly originate.

My latest: on athletes and public faith, in CT

My latest column for Christianity Today is called “Penalty or No, Athletes Talk Faith.” Just in time for the Olympics! Alas, I had to cut the opening two paragraphs on the 2023–24 Boston Celtics, the recent champs who may be the most religious NBA team in years. Thankfully I did get to include this paragraph:

In Game 1 of the 2014 NBA Finals, LeBron James—at the time the best basketball player on the planet—had to leave prematurely due to cramps. Why? The stadium was slightly warmer than usual. He’d been known to request ice-cold air conditioning wherever he played, so much so that fans speculated that the opposing team, my beloved San Antonio Spurs, kept things warm for a competitive advantage. True or not, the Spurs won the game and the series both, all because the league’s MVP couldn’t keep his muscles from spasming.

I even got to mention the famous anecdote about MJ peeking at his teammates during Zen meditation. They’ll let me write anything!

What does any of that have to do with God, faith, or CT? Read on to see.