Postcards from Palookaville

Todd brought this little gem to my attention yesterday: Mount Holyoke College has apparently canceled a performance of that pinnacle of Western literary achievement, 'The Vagina Monologues,' because it might be offensive to transgender women who do not have the relevant anatomical part. Of...

Last week’s Malarkey business was sad. Though the lad involved clearly did wrong, it did not seem to me that he had been motivated by greed, simply by a desire for attention. That does not sanctify the sin but it certainly puts it in perspective relative to other, more high-profile cases of...

Yesterday Aimee brought my attention to a recent post by Beth Moore. In it, Moore complains about the scurvy treatment she has received online. As I read the article, I could not help but think that Beth Moore deserves better, much better. That feeling surprised me. I generally do not have a lot of...

The recent terrorist attack in Paris highlights perhaps the great political dilemma of the current age, that of Western freedoms being used to destroy Western freedoms. But perhaps just as importantly, its target was perfectly chosen. Democracy requires more than the legal right to vote. It...

Politico published an interesting article on Oral Roberts over the weekend. Unlike the typical hit-piece one might expect on such a figure, the portrait of Roberts here is more nuanced. Perhaps the key paragraph is this: At the dawn of the modern media age, Roberts expanded the evangelical message...

The confusion and contradictory statements emanating from Wheaton College over same sex attraction some weeks ago provoked the Ref Pack into revisiting a topic which Aimee and I have written on before: the cheapening and loss of the category of friendship. That episode airs today. Listeners who...

A friend brought my attention to this article by an Anglican priest, Andrew Foreshew-Cain, over the weekend. Foreshew-Cain is distressed by Archbishop Welby’s stand on gay marriage, especially as it relates to the Anglican priesthood. The article is instructive for a number of reasons. It is...

One of the regular concerns expressed by readers of this blog and listeners to the podcast is the fact that many of the suggestions we make about church life and practice seem to be rather Presbyterian. Some are simply puzzled by this; others are rather offended by it. There is a simple answer: the...

As the Ref Pack told Slate Magazine this week, we "kind of do the podcast for fun." That's even the case now, despite doing it under the distinctly unfunny iron fist of the Mad Woman in the Attic. As one might say: yes, we are a movement; yes, we are a revival (what does that even...

Earlier this year, Scot McKnight kindly invited me to review Theo Hobson's Reinventing Liberal Christianity for his blog. In return, I asked him to review Todd Brenneman's new book, Homespun Gospel. Being myself broadly sympathetic to Brenneman's thesis, I knew that Scot would offer a...