Category: Uncategorized
Freaking Theology
If the title of this blog entry led you to believe that its purpose is to criticize theology, you would be correct. As used here, ‘Freaking’ is not an adjective, not a clean version of the ‘F’... Read More
Psalm 137 and Religious Violence, Part IV: No Neuters
As the cases of Digby and Smectymnuus illustrate, the Israel/Edom metaphor does not readily admit of middle ground. Indeed, in a famous sermon given on the occasion of a Parliamentary fast day on 23 F... Read More
Psalm 137 and Religious Violence, Part III: Bishop Hall and the Smectymnuan Hydra
The invocations of Psalm 137 got uglier when Hall addressed a new tract to Parliament in the wake of the Root and Branch Petition. This tract drew responses from adversaries in his first category, the... Read More
Psalm 137 and Religious Violence, Part II: Root and Branch
Like Jacob and Esau after the episode of the pottage, the family relationship of the English Church had gone quite sour by 1640, and this bitterness gave Psalm 137 its potency in the church-government... Read More
Psalm 137 and Religious Violence, Part I: “Down with it, down with it, even to the ground”
7 Remember the children of Edom, O Lord, in the day of Jerusalem: how they said, Down with it, down with it, even to the ground. 8 O daughter of Babylon, wasted with misery: yea, happy shall he be tha... Read More
Why I Love Church – A Humanist Confession and Battlecry
When I read The Humanist Manifesto for the first time while sitting in my Cambridge University dorm room, I knew that this was who I was – someone committed to a naturalistic perspective, with a cle... Read More
Interfaith Leadership: In the Best Possible Light
We are to fear and love God, so that we do not tell lies about our neighbors, betray or slander them, or destroy their reputations. Instead we are to come to their defense, speak well of them, and int... Read More
How I Learned to Pray with the help of Saint Ignatius and a Times Bestseller
I always felt self-conscious and wishful when I prayed. I couldn’t stay focused. I hoped that a class on personal prayer would help me, so I took a course in the spring of my first year at Union, Th... Read More