A Thinking Reed

  • Does the world need another Methodist church?

    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…

  • Supernatural mind: C.S. Lewis’s Miracles revisited

    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…

  • Is animal rights the next great progressive cause?

    This article at the New Republic argues that we’re about to see an overdue reckoning on the left with the issue of animal rights. The reasons are that many of the issues that newly energized progressive activists are focusing on–e.g., climate change, labor rights–intersect in major ways with animal agriculture. Moreover, the left’s emphasis on…

  • The official, way-too-early ATR 2020 Democratic primary straw poll

    The first votes in the 2020 Democratic primary won’t be cast until (God help us) almost a year from now, but as far as media coverage is concerned the campaign is already in full swing. As of today, there are 12 announced candidates (Sen. Cory Booker, former HUD secretary Julián Castro, former Maryland representative John…

  • Some good theology & religion books I read in 2018

    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…

  • Church for earthlings

    Ecclesiology–or the doctrine of the church–is, for my money, one of the duller areas of Christian theology. And when it doesn’t engage in excessive navel-gazing and hair-splitting, it can be a source of ugly Christian triumphalism. In recent theology, the “ecclesial turn” has often upheld “the church” as the cure-all for everything that supposedly ails…

  • The socialism question

    In case you haven’t noticed, there’s been a lively argument going on about the rise of “democratic socialism” within (or adjacent to) the Democratic Party. Obviously, the candidacy of Bernie Sanders in the 2016 primaries is ground zero for this discussion, but we’ve seen a general shift, even among otherwise mainstream Dem pols, toward “socialist”…

  • The victory of suffering love

    I recently came across this very good talk from Metropolitan Kallistos Ware (author of several well-regarded books on Eastern Orthodox Christianity) on “Salvation in Christ.” Metropolitan Ware offers four questions we should ask when evaluating any proposed model of the Atonement: Does it envisage a change in God or us? Does it separate Christ from…

  • Affirming Christianity is authentic Christianity

    Since this is pride month and since many Christian churches continue to wrestle with the full inclusion of LGBTQ people (including the denomination I’m currently affiliated with), maybe it’s worth sharing how I came to arrive at an “open and affirming” stance. Though I’m probably an atypical case in a lot of ways. I don’t…

  • The Luther Option

    If instead, we renew our focus on those Christian possessions shared by all, perhaps we can understand both our faith and each other better. If we turn away from an ideal Christianity to be preserved from the past or built in the future, perhaps we can see better what Christians already do and already are.…