I have been reading John Boswell’s Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality over the past couple of weeks. Picking through it, mostly. According to my Kindle, I am 38% of the way through the book. So I thought it might be good to take a moment to offer a brief, initial reflection. Continue reading
My goal when I started blogging was to write two posts per week. I think it is safe to say that I have not met that goal lately. We have been a bit short staffed at work, and I have been putting in long hours both in the office and at home just to keep up. I have also had to resign myself to the fact that, when keeping up is your goal, perfection cannot be. So the past month has been the month where I have been learning to be content with what is possible.
I am painfully aware of the fact that I have not met my goal with turning my dissertation into my book. I have to remind myself that this is not because of laziness. Rather, the opposite! It owes to the fact that, as my psychiatrist put it, I “tend to greatly overestimate my own capacities.” I have a hard time saying “No” to good opportunities.
Jonathan Edwards (via Wikimedia Commons)
I am taking a momentary pause from my writing retreat to think out loud about a question that has been bugging me. I am working on an invited chapter for a book Kyle Strobel is editing which seeks various takes on the theology of Jonathan Edwards. If memory serves, it is called The Ecumenical Edwards.
I would say what I am working on, but I have heard a few stories about scholars stealing each others’ ideas to be a bit shy about that sort of thing. It does not happen often, but it happens. Continue reading
During Great Lent, I ran a series of posts from guest bloggers asking to explain why they became Orthodox. The why is important. Most of us are very good at telling the story of how we converted, but I asked contributors to reflect upon the reasons behind that story. I have spent the past three weeks reflecting on the posts in the series. What I learned was different than what I expected. Continue reading
I posted this to Facebook yesterday. I was going to try to get it on my blog then, but I was too busy trying to give my wife a good Mother’s Day.
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When I was nine, I was identified as gifted, but my undiagnosed ADD made it hard for me to keep up with the faster pace. So I decided to give up, because you cannot fail when you do not try. (But you can fail your classes.) Continue reading
The following concludes a series I had intended to end last week, but my laptop needed to be repaired. Rather than delay any longer, I have decided to go ahead and conclude this series so that I can move on to a new series of lenten posts I am very excited about (mostly because I get to read a bunch of great guest posts). I am typing this on my iPad, so I apologize in advance for any formatting issues. WordPress for the iPad is great, but not as good as it is on my laptop.
There are some “perks” to public theology. Warm fuzzies from online readers really strokes the ego. My heart is strangely warmed whenever I get a new Twitter follower. But if I let who I am and why I do this get mixed up with what other people say about me, then I’ve got a problem, because a lot of what people say about me is not very nice. There are other benefits to doing this. I do make a difference: Continue reading
My weekend was not very relaxing. I got home from work Friday to prepare to teach my SAVY students on Saturday morning (where I sometimes stand on chairs). On Saturday afternoon, I was in a rental car, driving to the annual conference for the Southeastern Commission for the Study of Religion (SECSOR). I was invited to present on the topic “Theology 2.0,” which was about the role of public theology in the age of social media. After filling up on some Indian food on Main Street in Greenville, SC, I drove back home again. I got in at about 9:00 last night. I am both tired from the trip and energized at the great conversation with other scholars trying to figure out how to be theologians in this new digital landscape.
Oddly enough, actually brings me to the topic of my paper itself, which was titled, “#Doctrine: Theology in 140 Characters or Less.” Rather than tell you what I said, I think I’d rather just say it. So over the next few posts, I will break up the manuscript of my talk, which I hope will help generate some discussion about what public theology actually is, why it matters, and how to do it in a way that is both effective and faithfully Christian. The first part of my presentation dealt with “Why #Doctrine?” Continue reading