The Fourth Wall

I once described Christian Wiman’s work as a reach for the ineffable. I sometimes wonder if he’d be annoyed by that description, but if there’s one thing that works about it, it is that ineffable implies that the object in question can’t be described and also that if one were to attempt, language, and more…

On October 23, New York Times reporter Rory Smith reported on a 10-year science experiment happening on a little piece of land curling out from the southwest coast of England. There, the Steart Marshes of Sommerset, are yielding exciting results. Ten years ago an environmental trust group and the British government got together to come…

Brian Doyle died over seven years ago.  I would have grieved then, but I didn’t know him or of him.  This book review then is really a guise for what I wish I could have told him in a letter.   Dear Brian Doyle,  Where were you hiding?  How were you hiding?  After taking a closer…

In our world of fleeting meaning there is a meme (I think it’s properly called a meme, but I’m unsure) that stands out.  It arrested me because of my experience with its truthfulness.  The meme features Benny “The Jet” Rodriguez hoisted on the shoulder of his Sandlot compadres.  The copy reads “At some point in…

There are a few memories that I can recall with precision that were formative for my moral development as a child.  The year was 1992.  I was 11 years old.  In my evangelical household swear words and then some not swear words like “sucks” were not on the linguistic menu.  My parents were also fastidious…

There was a presidential debate last week.  Ostensibly, the only we will see before the election.  Of note was Donald Trump’s comments about Haitians abducting (implied not said) and eating (said and implied) the cats and dogs owned by the residents of Springfield, Ohio.  I listened to a Daily episode that told more of the…

Well, it’s long past time I wrap this up, and I say that knowing there is so much more that can be said. I’d like to use this concluding post to both synthesize what I’ve analyzed where that may prove helpful and talk about my shift in perspective. Methodist theologian Albert Outler synthesized the work…

In part 6 of this series I summarized the work of William Webb by suggesting that Webb affirms hermeneutical trajectories of liberation with regards to women in ministry and slavery, while maintaining that a hermeneutic of restriction remains uniform in the voice of scripture with regards to homosexuality. I’d like to further consider the complexity…

The last three posts, William Webb’s analysis of hermeneutical trajectories, Rowan Williams’s exposition of human sexuality, and Eugune Rogers’s exploration of biblical imaging, I have categorized under hermeneutics. While Webb’s book offers some explanation of the mechanics of hermeneutics, none of what I have written actually makes a hermeneutical argument using their texts. I have…

Eugene Rogers is a professor of religion at UNC Greensboro.  His contributions to this study are many, but most notable among them is his book Sexuality and the Christian Body: Their Way into the Triune God.  In this post I want to interact with his much briefer article “Same-Sex Complimentarity: A theology of marriage,” which…