Theology

Sarah Vincent 5-19-2023

Sophie Kohler / Peacock

The new Peacock TV series Mrs. Davis has the most unhinged first 15 minutes of possibly any show I have ever seen. Men burn at the stake, heads roll, water is walked on, blood fountains.

Brandon Grafius 8-15-2022

'The Sandman,' Netflix

Viewers would be wise to approach The Sandman expecting a slow burn rather than a breakneck action extravaganza. There’s plenty of horror, but these moments are spaced out through the deeply human moments of Morpheus coming to terms with what it means to serve humanity.

Josiah R. Daniels 7-21-2022

Image of Julian Davis Reid. Photo credit: René Marban. Illustration by Tiarra Lucas.

Core to Christianity is this notion of hospitality and trying hard to hear your neighbor, hear what they’re trying to say, and even giving voice to what they’re trying to say. And you may not always agree with the melody. But part of what we see Jesus do is pay attention to the fact that every person in front of him has a melody that God’s given them.

Sean Feucht performing in Seattle, Sept. 10, 2020. Screengrab from YouTube.

“God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth,” Jesus tells the Samaritan woman at the well in John 4:24. But when our worship is based in a denial of truth and runs counter to the nature and character of God is it truly worship? This is a question I have been pondering in considering a series of worship events organized by Sean Feucht, a vocal supporter of President Donald Trump, worship leader, and politician.

Prior to this moment, new allies have preached a gospel of Jesus devoid of justice. They failed to make the theological connection that Jesus and justice are, in fact, mutually inclusive. To invoke Jesus and then to invoke justice is redundant. Every time we invoke the name of Jesus, we commit ourselves to the ministry of justice. Every time we invoke the name of Jesus, we declare the psalmist’s decree that justice and righteousness are the foundations of God’s throne. Every time we invoke the name of Jesus, we summon the messianic prophecy that the spirit of the lord was upon Jesus, to preach the good news to the poor, to set the prisoners free from the Roman industrial complex, and to proclaim liberty to those who were oppressed. Every time we invoke the name of Jesus, we remember that Jesus was convicted of a crime he did not commit, received an unfair trial, and was sentenced to a state-sanctioned lynching on a tree. The ministry of justice is the ministry of Jesus. We cannot divorce our theology from the ministry of justice. To do so is to divorce ourselves from Jesus himself.

Fran Quigley 4-28-2020

People wait in line to receive free food at a curbside pantry in the Brooklyn, New York. April 24, 2020. REUTERS/Mike Sega

Samuel Cruz didn't want to choose between faith and politics. Then he found liberation theology.

Jason Ashe 4-24-2020

Health care workers load a person into an ambulance outside of the Elmhurst Hospital center in Queens, New York. April 5, 2020. REUTERS / Eduardo Munoz

Our faith in God is tied to experiences of health and sickness. 

Portrait of Thomas Robert Malthus by John Linnell. 1834. 

Love him or hate him, Malthus is one of those figures who doesn’t go away.

Danté Stewart 4-09-2020

Credit: Shutterstock. 

Easter Sunday is coming. But Saturday is here and it's dark. 

Aaron E. Sanchez 1-14-2020

The impossible staircase. Tim Menzies / Flickr

I realized I minimize the miraculous.

Saadia Faruqi 12-05-2019

Image via Anna Sneed. 

There’s a difference between having a strong faith and being religiously obsessed, and religion can definitely be an addiction — in my view it becomes an addiction when it interferes with the rest of a person’s life, when following it means hurting oneself, or hurting other people. For me, I re-invented myself entirely in the wake of my conversion.

llustration by Charlie Eve Ryan

CHRISTMAS OFFERS AN opportunity to reflect on how well we know Jesus as he would want to be known. Can we be the kind of Jesus followers we should be without an adequate understanding of who Jesus really is? Only a good grasp of who Jesus is offers a solid foundation for our worship and service in the new year.

For many, this Christmas Jesus is a beautiful baby boy wrapped in swaddling clothes, sleeping in a trough on a bed of straw, as farm animals and shepherds look on pensively. Another common scene of tranquility is one of the baby Jesus in the arms of his mother Mary—the Madonna and child portrait so prominent throughout church history. In many ways, these depictions are appropriate for the Christmas season, but there is a potential problem. For many, these are the defining images of Jesus: helpless, dependent, silent.

This is not at all the person of the Messiah who is announced in the Old Testament. What was the expectation that gripped the Jewish people for centuries? What was the Coming One to do? How would he change the world as they knew it? How can he change the world as we know it?

These readings explore prophetic passages that describe the One who was to come. How does the New Testament celebrate Jesus as that long-expected Messiah? How can his coming help us to live out our faith well?

Lee Ann Pomrenke 4-03-2019

Photo by Eye for Ebony on Unsplash

Christians can claim that God's power is made perfect in weakness but leaning more heavily on the image of a mothering God would push Christians to give the care-giving traits a higher value at the ballot box and in our advocacy work.

Cindy Brandt 3-26-2019

Being a parent is to get a front row seat to the construct of being human — from the intense physical engagement of a variety of bodily functions — feeding, pooping, bathing — to emotional regulation, and profound spirituality. As I argue in my book, parenting children is one of the most critical strategies in creating justice, beauty, and carrying out the work of God in our world. 

Debby Hudson/Unsplash

As a poet, I used to compartmentalize my poetry. Christian poetry, poetry of the body, and Spanglish poetry all had their unique boxes until I came across the term theopoetics in academic scholarship. We all know how language and scholarship work. While white men are busy naming theopoetics to utilize in scholarship, women, women of color, black women, and indigenous peoples have been theopoeticizing since before Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz to the time of Macuilxochitzin.

Santi Rodriguez 9-27-2018

Photo by Radu Marcusu on Unsplash

To better comprehend the rhythm of my faith, I need to dig in and do the work. Therefore, I took to Twitter to inquire about the best books on Latinx theology. What follows is a curated list of suggestions I received. These are books by diverse authors from various traditions. It is a beautiful mix. An assortment of theology that tastes like tacos, sancocho, and sugarcane.

Kate Ott 4-25-2018

FRANTICALLY GRABBING last-minute items, I rush out the door to get my middle-school son to his pregame warm-up. “Oh, don’t rush; it will only take us 25 minutes to get there,” says my son. Surprised, I question where he got that information. Looking up from his phone, he replies, “Google sent a notification on my phone since my calendar has the game with location.” With some marvel in his tone, he remarks, “Every morning Google Assistant tells me how long it will take the bus to get to school.”

Humans have always shared information with each other, but the advance of digital media altered the time and geographic constraints that once shaped our historical patterns of communication. This transition ended the “Gutenberg era,” a period of human communication marked by a dependency on print, authorship, and fixity, and launched us into an era of communication marked by openness, collaboration, and easy access to information.

Despite the rapid pace at which we churn through this information, our new communication styles are also shaped, paradoxically, by permanence. Every share, post, or comment is archived, creating an online trove of information that identifies every person and their connections: where we get our news, what we look like, what sports team or social causes we support, who “likes” our church on Facebook, and, in my son’s case, our current whereabouts, our travel route, and destination points.

The internet is forever

In the world of digital ethics, the “endless memory of the internet” has recently attracted a lot of attention. How do we live in a world that increasingly does not forget?

Image via malavoda / Flickr

Some theologians taught that eventually all evil human beings and even Satan himself would be restored to unity with God. Other teachers held that hell was an “intermediate state,” where some souls would be purified and others annihilated.

Kimberly Winston 4-02-2018

Image via Creative Commons / RNS

“Since being in India, I am more convinced than ever before that the method of nonviolent resistance is the most potent weapon available to oppressed people in their struggle for justice and human dignity,” King said in a radio address in India.

Image via Osservatore Romano/Handout via Reuters

The pope spoke of “faithful creativity” in responding to a rapidly changing world. The job of a theologian is to show people what lies at the heart of the Gospel.