Recent Posts

  • Colonialism in glass houses

    By Rob Renfroe Covid vaccination for United Methodists in the United States is an issue of choice – not of convenience. Inoculation availability in the U.S. is widespread and accessible. This is not the case for all United Methodists in other countries. While it can be hard for urban and

  • Why Latter-day Saints Cannot Disregard the Old Testament

    Beginning in January, the worldwide Sunday School and home Sunday curriculum for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints—“Come, Follow Me”—turned to the Hebrew Bible or, as Latter-day Saints and other Christians typically refer to it, the Old Testament. Why? Why bother? Isn’t the Hebrew Bible sometimes difficult to

  • Moed Katan 17

    Can we separate an artist from their art? A scholar from their scholarship? Can we appreciate a wonderful book written by a terrible person? These are some of the deeply painful questions we ask today, especially in the age of #MeToo and cancel culture, and the seemingly never-ending revelations of

  • The God of Mercy in a Time of Plague

    Setting the Scene: Plague as Context and Text Julian of Norwich (1342-1429) is one of those remarkable medieval women mystics like Hildegaard of Bingen (1095-1179), Hadewijch of Antwerp (thirteenth century), Marguerite Porete (1250-1310), Angela of Foligno (1248-1309), and Catherine of Sienna (1347-1380), all instructors in the mystical life, speaking of and

  • The Spiritual Life of Children During Pandemics

    What follows is about Catholic evangelization, motherhood, the trauma of worldwide pandemics, and the lessons about each that Louisa May Alcott’s beloved nineteenth-century children’s novel Little Women (1868-69) can offer us today. But it starts inside my house, January 2022, in small-town Texas, when my six-year-old daughter stands before me