Theology & Faith
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Continuing the experiment of dusting off this creaky old blog, here are the best theology books I read this year (not necessarily published this year!): Teresa Morgan, Trust in Atonement: Teresa Morgan is a scholar of classical antiquity as well as New Testament and early Christianity, and she brings this perspective to bear in developing Read more
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Adam Hamilton, Why Did Jesus Have to Die? The Meaning of the Crucifixion (Abingdon Press, 2025) Adam Hamilton is the pastor of the Church of the Resurrection in Leawood, KS, one of the largest Methodist churches in the country. He’s also the author of numerous books and bible studies where he’s tried to carve out Read more
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I just finished reading Deceiving the Devil: Atonement, Abuse, and Ransom by feminist theologian Darby Kathleen Ray, partly at the suggestion of someone on Twitter. It’s essentially a critique of traditional models of the atonement from a feminist and liberationist perspective, but it creatively mines the tradition for a constructive counter-proposal. One strength of this Read more
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Is the Christian gospel about the life and teachings of Jesus, or is it about his death and resurrection? These two poles of the Christian message have often been pitted against one another, sometimes in the form of St. Paul’s “theology of the cross” vs. “the Jesus of the gospels” (particularly the synoptic gospels). In Read more
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If all are not saved, if God creates souls he knows to be destined for eternal misery, is God evil? Well, perhaps one might conclude instead that he is both good and evil, or that he is beyond good and evil altogether, which is to say beyond the supremacy of the Good; but, then Read more
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After getting a little feedback on Twitter, I realized my previous post could be read as dismissing the importance of shared beliefs–about the Resurrection or anything else. This wasn’t my intention. While I do worry about how “orthodoxy” can be (and has been) weaponized (see the recent UMC general conference, e.g.), that doesn’t mean that Read more
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Union Theological Seminary president Serene Jones instigated a minor online theo-kerfuffle last week when she seemed to dismiss the importance of the bodily resurrection of Jesus, along with other major Christian doctrines, in an interview with New York Times columnist Nick Kristof. One interesting thing about this latest round of the theological culture wars is Read more
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I assume anyone who cares already knows what went down at last month’s special general conference of the United Methodist Church. (Here’s a pretty lucid rundown of the events and some possible implications.) LGBTQ-affirming Methodists have been made painfully aware that they just don’t have the numbers to change church policy, and likely won’t in Read more
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I first read C.S. Lewis’s Miracles about 25 years ago, and it was pretty important in what eventually turned out to be my return to Christian faith, over a decade after I had abandoned belief in God when I was a teenager. It helped me see that Christianity–and not just a watered-down, “modernist” version–might actually Read more
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Someday–maybe next year, who knows?–I’ll get better about tracking the books I read. Heaven knows I read a bunch of stuff this year that has already slipped into the misty recesses of memory. But until I get my act together, I thought I’d note some books in theology and religion that stuck with me for Read more
A Thinking Reed 