Salvation is Created – First Sunday of Advent

My favorite Christmas record is a 2009 album from Bifrost Arts called Salvation is Created. I’ve been captivated by that phrase since the first time I heard it. There’s a tendency amongst certain strands of evangelicals to view God’s redemptive work in a way abstracted from creation. One reviewer of Bartholomew’s Where Mortals Dwell displays this [...]

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The Geography of Redemption – A Review of Where Mortals Dwell

My review of Craig Bartholomew’s excellent new book, Where Mortals Dwell, is now online.

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The dual inclinations of American Identity – Starting with Berry’s Unsettling of America

From Berry’s The Unsettling of America:

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The one meme I allow myself per year: Your ideal dinner party

Generally speaking, internet memes annoy me. But once in a great while I stumble across one that’s actually kinda fun. Today, at Rod Dreher’s blog I came across one such meme. Create two lists for your ideal dinner party. Each list has six guests. The first is made up of dead people, the other of [...]

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The View from your Front Porch

If you haven’t been following Front Porch Republic’s “View from your Front Porch” series, you really must. (And you should contribute to it!) Each post features a photo and short 150 word (or so) reflection on the view from your front porch. My contribution to it is linked here.

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A couple more awesome things about my home state

We’re in the news again and for two more things that make me very proud to be a Nebraskan.

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A contextualized view of sexuality – my contribution to the Earthen Vessels Symposium

My friend Matt Anderson had his first book come out earlier this year. (It’s a good one.) As part of the book’s promotion, he organized a blog tour/symposium in which different writers would offer an essay response to one chapter from the book. My assignment was to discuss the book’s first chapter on sexuality. One [...]

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“Wanting desperately to belong to one’s place” – On the virtues of staying put

When the Smithsonian article I posted went online, almost 30 friends posted it on Facebook. It seems that Meghan Daum is not alone in her affection for my hometown. And yet what struck me as I read the comments of my friends linking to the story was how so many of them said “someday I’ll [...]

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REVIEW: Darryl Hart, From Billy Graham to Sarah Palin

My review of Darryl Hart’s latest book, From Billy Graham to Sarah Palin: Evangelicals and the Betrayal of American Conservatism, now appears on the Books & Culture website. Here are the opening paragraphs: Everyone loves an iconoclastic thesis, the kind that elicits a flabbergasted response of “Oh, really?!” Three immediately come to mind: in an [...]

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Growing up in the church as a healthy, life-giving experience

It’s no secret that evangelicalism’s worst critics tend to be other evangelicals. I know this because I’ve been that guy plenty of times. And there’s a reason for the criticism that goes beyond immature young kids who are angry. There are real issues of spiritual abuse that happen in far too many evangelical churches. Again, [...]

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