Hard Questions and Protestant Churches: We Can Do Better

Protestants aren’t very good at dealing with difficult social/ethical issues. Roman Catholics, while they have their own problems, are much better at this. Why? They have an extensive body of theological and ethical teaching produced for the church and adopted by the church. In my own Methodist world, we have nothing really like this. We…

Inconclusive Musings on Unity

I’ve been trying to write an essay on Christian unity for an ecumenical volume on this topic. I’m supposed to write from my own Methodist perspective. Since I’m a Protestant, I’ve had to think about unity apart from specific ecclesiastical communions (i.e., denominations). Part of what I’ve been kicking around in my head is the…

A Conversation about Liberalism

Rev. Dennis Sanders was kind enough to invite me onto his podcast recently to talk about liberalism. The invitation came as a result of a piece I wrote in Firebrand called “On Liberalisms (They just don’t make ’em like they used to).” I wrote this piece because I’m increasingly concerned about the decline of public…

Do-It-Yourself Religion

I see this more and more often. Faith is no longer something we share among a community of believers, but a possession in the hands of an individual who will shape it to his or her liking. Perhaps this is the religious outworking of “liquid modernity,” a culture in which structures change so quickly that…

Are our expectations of God too low?

Recently I had the privilege of speaking with Odell Horne of the North Georgia Annual Conference and Dr. Daniel Castelo of Duke Divinity School on the nature of the God we worship as Christians. The conversation was a program for the United Methodist Men in that conference. Both of these conversation partners have very keen…