"I Didn't Know He Was a Heretic" - on Love and Listening

"I Didn't Know He Was a Heretic" - on Love and Listening

When the prof opened the class up for discussion on the reading, the first student to make a comment said: "I did not know Tolstoy was a heretic." The student refused to engage. He wanted to dismiss Tolstoy altogether because of particular elements of Tolstoy's theology. The professor looked stunned, almost personally insulted. And then…

How Not to be a Sectarian: Ten (Not So) Easy Practices

How Not to be a Sectarian: Ten (Not So) Easy Practices

“A sectarian is one who defends everything his party holds or that will help his party, and opposes all that his party does not hold or that will injure the strength and popularity of his party. The partisan takes it for granted everything his party holds is right, and everything the other party holds is wrong and to be opposed…. He sees no good in the other party. He sees no wrong in his own party…”

25 Lessons (Re)Learned in 2017

25 Lessons (Re)Learned in 2017

Be direct… Fight. Conflict. Avoidance. It is stunning what my sons will tell me. Journal in the third person. Transparency is not required at all times. Envision them in a hospital gown. “Be the board.” Make up a good story. Broken friendships can be renewed. Integrity may demand compartmentalizing. A loss of temper is akin to getting drunk. Default to gratitude…

President Trump in my Home State: Special

President Trump in my Home State: Special

I’m from Alabama. And white. And a man. And a Christian. You know, we white southern Christian men are not the most highly esteemed these days. I can walk in a room of mid-westerners and merely open my mouth, let my southern drawl waft across the room, and bam—just like that—my IQ goes down a full fifteen points. Let a mid-westerner merely hear me say hello, and sometimes they start giggling. “Poor thing,” it seems they’re thinking. “How cute. But what a dolt. ” They’ll put their hand over their mouth, trying to decide between one of two replies…

The UnChristian Quest for a Christian America

The UnChristian Quest for a Christian America

I am rather convinced that to conflate love of country with the myth of a Christian nation is bad news. To claim that the United States once was a “Christian nation,” or to seek to recover some supposedly lost “Christian nation” status, is bad news because it is historically false; misunderstands basic Christian theology and practice; and contends for a strategy that is sure to back-fire into resentment and hostility.

A Biblical Argument (Sort of) in Opposition to the Bible as Tennessee’s State Book

A Biblical Argument (Sort of) in Opposition to the Bible as Tennessee’s State Book

Here in the Buckle of the Bible Belt our Tennessee Legislature seems destined to drive us nigh unto insanity. I would like to say I think this bill, to make the Bible the official book of the State of Tennessee, in my carefully considered and nuanced vocabulary, is altogether stupid. And I think it is stupid for the following articulate and Biblical reasons:

Apple, LSD and the Kingdom of God: A Review of Walter Isaacson’s ‘Steve Jobs’

Apple, LSD and the Kingdom of God: A Review of Walter Isaacson’s ‘Steve Jobs’

Steve Jobs was notoriously impatient. His tirades were so well known that, in the early years of Apple, one executive had the job of keeping Jobs in check and calming the wake of wounded feelings. This notorious impatience was coupled with what Walter Isaacson, in his brilliant biography “Steve Jobs,” called a “binary view of the world,” in which all things were either/or — a product was either “shit” or the best ever; a person was either a hero or a “shithead;” and a meal or a particular shade of color would either “completely suck” or be “absolutely perfect.”