The Passions of Perpetua and Frans van der Lugt
Jesus warned that those who wanted to be his disciples would have to take up their crosses and follow him, at the risk of losing their lives. During Holy Week, Christians rightfully focus their...
View ArticleFive from One: Happy Anniversary Patheos
As Tommy Kidd noted yesterday, we are in the middle of Patheos’ five-year-anniversary celebration. Congratulations to Patheos for successfully “hosting the conversation on faith” for the past...
View ArticleFree Food!
“My reading of the Bible finds plenty of reminders that it’s better to teach someone to fish than to give them fish if they’re able,” said Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker shortly after his most recent...
View ArticleWhy Mormons Love Margaret Barker
Several years ago, a Latter-day Saint friend encouraged me to read British Methodist theologian Margaret Barker’s books. Now I understand why. A cautionary note. Barker has a large corpus of books to...
View ArticleJesus Delayed
Christians have no good reason to believe Jesus is coming soon. Okay, in the final chapter of John’s Apocalypse, Jesus himself says, “See, I am coming soon” (I prefer the King James Version’s “Behold,...
View ArticleHunting Heretics
The heresiography (or heresiology) is something of a dying genre among Christians today. For centuries, though, heresiography was a staple of Christian literature, as those who contended for their...
View ArticleThe Ransom of the Soul
What causes changes in the way Christians understand God, salvation, or the afterlife? Peter Brown reminds us that as much as historians seek to understand and explain change over time, it is no easy...
View ArticleEarthly Passions and Celestial Parts
“How are the dead raised up? and with what body do they come?” In his first letter to the Corinthians, Paul dismissed skeptics of the bodily resurrection as fools, but the topic remained thorny among...
View ArticleSt. Ephrem, the Syrian Refugee: A Church Father on War and Lament
One of the greatest writers of the Early Church, Ephrem the Syrian was a refugee whose laments offer a helpful model to this day
View ArticleFear No Evil: Christian Witness in a Time of Darkness
A truck plows into crowds at a Berlin Christmas market. Heart-wrenching images from Aleppo disquiet us on a daily basis. A young white man is convicted in the horrific killing of nine African American...
View ArticleWhen the Jesus Movement Became the Christian Church
I have blogged quite a bit recently on early Christian history, and the further I get into this material, the more interested I become in one particular period – quite a narrow period in fact, of a...
View ArticleDisrupting Christian Patriarchy: Russell Moore is Right (Sort Of)
My husband, however, is definitely right. He suggested I explain two things before I continue my series. First, I need to clarify patriarchy. Second, I need to talk about Paul. A recent social media...
View ArticleWhat Is a Heretic?
What does it mean to call someone a heretic? Guest blogger Joey Cochran surveys the history of heresy — and wonders if the word now functions as anything more than "name-calling."
View ArticleThe Cost of Staying Silent
It was more than a decade ago, but I still remember that moment vividly. It was one of the few times in my life where I found myself genuinely speechless. My husband and I had been visiting a church...
View ArticleWhy One Ancient Megachurch Pastor Would Like You to Get the Vaccine
Today’s post is another guest feature from my wife, Nadya Williams, professor of ancient history at the University of West Georgia. Nadya’s current research includes a substantial focus on the ancient...
View ArticleQuitting Church for Lent? Why the Desert is Not the Answer
Ash Wednesday and the season of Lent that it ushers in, are appropriate for considering the desert as a place of spiritual growth. After all, it was Jesus’ forty days in the desert that began His...
View ArticleThe Virtues Have Been Canceled: Life in a Post-Virtue World
Forty-one years ago, Alasdair MacIntyre published his prophetic After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory. MacIntyre’s foundational observation that “There seems to be no rational way of securing moral...
View ArticleRedeeming Email: Electronic Epistolography for the Glory of God
Every morning, grasping for dear life that first crucial cup of coffee of the day (possibly in the mug that truthfully admits that I am “Tired as a Mother”), I open my work email. Sometimes there is a...
View ArticleDid Lydia Play a Role in Planting the Bithynian Church?
I am currently in the process of finalizing revisions of my book, Cultural Christians in the Early Church, under contract at Zondervan. The story that is the subject of this essay is a theory that...
View ArticleHoly Folly: On the Billy Graham Rule, Twitter Feuds, and the Idolatry of...
Serapion Sindonites was a devout monk from the fourth century who had the Scriptures memorized, practiced great spiritual discipline, and—surprisingly—never wore clothes, apart from a loincloth....
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