Latest Posts

  • Does God Bless the USA?

    United Statesians have always claimed to live in a nation blessed by God–white Americans interpreted the near complete destruction of certain Native American communities by smallpox as a sign of God’s blessing, believing that God had cleared the land of… Continue reading

  • Was It Worth It?

    Let’s assume that Jesus never said, “love your enemies,” or “do good to those who persecute you.”  Let’s forget that Jesus told Peter to put the sword away, (if you can’t use the sword to defend the life of Jesus,… Continue reading

  • Feast of Catherine of Siena

    Today, April 29, is the feast of St. Catherine of Siena, one of three women the Roman Catholic Church recognizes as Doctors of the Church. In her book Speaking with Authority: Catherine of Siena and the Voices of Women Today, M.… Continue reading

  • A Church That Does Body Counts II

    Today in North Waziristan, Pakistan, a United States Predator Drone killed 23 people, at least nine of whom (five children and four women) were civilians simply going about their daily lives.  The rest, the U.S. military assures us, were “militants.”… Continue reading

  • The Cross and the Lynching Tree

    In this 2007 interview with PBS’ Bill Moyers, James Cone argues that the lynching of African-Americans throughout the 19th and 20th centuries was an almost literal crucifixion because “the cross was a first century lynching.”  Lynching, like the crucifixion, was a… Continue reading

  • Another Kind of Mandatum: the Pedilavium – or, the Commandment to Love and Serve

    Holy Thursday is a complex liturgical celebration. The commemoration of the Lord’s Supper may include ritual emphasis on the institution of the eucharist, Christian service and mutual love, the sacramental priesthood, and Eucharistic adoration. In my own mind it likewise… Continue reading

  • Violence, Memory, and Mourning

    When artists put into words non-dominant narratives of violence we are able to rehearse alternatives forms of remembering— forms of remembering which defy language as defined exclusively by the powerful, which resist a culture of secrecy and silence which is… Continue reading

  • Follow-up: Intellectual Disability and My Own Two Cents

    Grateful for the comments and engagement I received on my recent post about intellectual disability and Hans Reinders, I’ve decided to enact a follow-up post for the sake of clarification and further conversation. I will loosely base this post on… Continue reading

  • Intellectual Disability and Theological Anthropology

    Having finally finished comps, I’ve been meaning to write a little about what turned out to be my favorite exam question, namely, my question on disability studies and Christian theological anthropology (though I didn’t get asked about it…le sigh). My… Continue reading