If Lewis wrote today

Off the top of my head, the following things accurately describe C. S. Lewis when he was writing Christian apologetics:

• Avid tobacco smoker.

• Avid beer drinker.

• Oxbridge don.

• Scholar of medieval literature.

• Devotee of pagan literature.

• Lover of pagan myth.

• Poet and advocate of poetry (secular and religious).

• Novelist and advocate of fiction (secular and religious).

• Husband to a divorcee.

• Believer in evolution.

• Believer in a cosmos billions of years old.

• Confirmed member of the Church of England.

• Believer in the necessity and efficacy of the sacraments.

• Believer in the authority of church tradition.

• Believer in the ordination of priests.

• Witness and/or godfather to numerous infant baptisms.

• Participant in the liturgy of the Book of Common Prayer.

• Confessor of the creed.

• A writer who refers readily and without apology or embarrassment to saints, mystics, and “the blessed sacrament.”

In other words, Lewis was not much of an American evangelical—that is, not a primitivist, not a teetotaler, not a literal reader of Genesis 1–11, not a strict inerrantist, not a Young Earth Creationist, not a Zwinglian on the Supper, not hesitant about sacred tradition, not anti-creedal, not anti-paedobaptism, not anti-establishmentarian, not anti-sacramental, not congregationalist, not anti-evolution, not squeamish about pagan or secular culture, not allergic to “catholic” language about the saints or sacraments or liturgy.

To be clear, Lewis was not a closet Roman Catholic either. And I may be stretching or misremembering on one or two bullet points. Regardless, the point isn’t that Lewis was Roman rather than (American) evangelical. It’s that he was Anglican, with all that that identity meant and entailed in the early to mid–twentieth century.

Others have drawn attention to similar features of Lewis’s life, thought, and work. Mark Noll reminded me of this in his recent piece for Ad Fontes on Lewis’s initial reception in America. But here’s the question it raised for me.

If there were a similar author today, would American evangelicals feel about him the way they feel (now) about Lewis? Would they blurb his books and invite him to conferences? Would they push him into pulpits and put his works in the hands of young people? Would they move heaven and earth to publish him in their flagship journals and magazines? Would they feel that he represented them, giving eloquent voice to their life and faith as believers?

What I don’t mean is: Could someone like this get a hearing today? Clearly there are plenty of Anglican (and not a few old-school Presbyterian) authors and speakers who fit the bill and don’t seem to have trouble getting published or finding venues. I would argue that many of them code “moderate” or occasionally “left of center” to normie evangelicals, but even still: they exist.

No, what I mean is: No one that I can think of who meets most/all of these descriptions would be received across the board—by charismatics, by non-denom-ers, by Baptists, by Reformed, by conservatives, by hardliners, by squishy nonpartisan types—as “our guy,” as “one of us,” as fundamentally non-threatening and unqualifiedly lauded. I just can’t see it. Whether it’s the “catholic” language and doctrine, or the personal life, or the evolution stuff, or the scriptural issues, or the elite status—one or another item would prove one too many.

Now. At first glance there’s an obvious rebuff here: N. T. Wright. Is Wright’s popularity an exception that proves the rule, then? Or just a debunking of the rule altogether?

I think it’s the former, for at least four reasons.

First, because Wright very famously has from the beginning been a point of serious dispute among Reformed pastors, seminaries, institutions, and theologians in America. Second, because Wright’s writing is so much less “cultural” (for lack of a better term) than Lewis’s and so much more biblical: quite literally translating, commenting on, and interpreting the Bible. Third, because Wright isn’t exactly known for his tobacco and alcohol habits, much less for asking parson after parson to perform a wedding—as Lewis did—in contravention of the laws of the Church of England.

And fourth, because it seems to me that evangelicals’ relationship to Wright is less affective and more transactional than it is with Lewis. They want (above all) the imprimatur of the Oxbridge New Testament scholar and his confidence in the reliability and truth of the Scriptures; they don’t want (on the whole) their kids to become “high church” and start baptizing babies, reciting the creed, grabbing a pint, and believing in evolution. (Not to mention—as American evangelicals who have gone Anglican are known to do—adoring the Eucharist, submitting to bishops, calling priests “Father,” or asking saints for intercession.)

I don’t mean the foregoing as some sort of knockdown argument. There are other, smaller exceptions one could point to. And Lewis is Lewis; he’s a one of one. There are historical and social and political and generational reasons why Living Lewis in 2024 wouldn’t fly with American evangelicals the way Dead Lewis does. I get it.

It’s just a thought I had. And it gets at something that irks me, even if I can’t quite put a finger on it. A gesture or a feeling. I wonder whether it resonates with others.

That’s what a blog’s for, no? Floating half-formed intuitions into the world…

My latest: on lights and liturgy, in CT

Yesterday Christianity Today published an article of mine called “All Hail the Power of … Stage Lighting?” It opens with an anecdote taken verbatim from one of my freshmen. (Out of the mouths of babes…) You sort of have to read it to believe it.

Here are four paragraphs from later on in the piece:

To afford, maintain, and operate professional lighting of the sort my student had in mind, a church would have to be far above the 90th percentile of American congregational size, which is 250 regular attendees. Yet for my student, as for so many others, this size and its hallmarks are paradigmatic rather than exceptional. They’re just “what church is today,” what one would reasonably expect visiting a random church in a strange city.

This trend is both cause and consequence of churches investing in technologies that make Sunday morning a high-production offering, whether for in-person crowds or for folks who stream from home. Long before COVID-19 but exacerbated by lockdown, many churches have been competing in a kind of techno-liturgical arms race to draw seekers, especially young families and professionals, to the “Sunday morning experience” of high-tech public worship.

For many seasoned evangelicals among the millennial and Zoomer generations, the result—state-of-the-art, high-definition, professional video and audio and music, with smooth transitions and fancy lighting, all frictionless and ready-made for the internet—is simply becoming the norm. It’s what church, or worship, means.

At best, the gospel retains the power to cut through all the noise. At worst, believers receive neither the Lord’s Word nor his body and blood. Instead, they get a cut-rate TED Talk, spiritual but not religious, sandwiched between long sessions of a soft rock concert.

Click here to read the rest. And keep your eyes on CT in the next week; they’ll have my review of John Mark Comer’s new book up soon as well.

A tech-attitude taxonomy

I’ve been reading Albert Borgmann lately, and in one essay he describes a set of thinkers he calls “optimistic pessimists” about technology. It got me thinking about how to delineate different positions and postures on technology, particularly digital technology, over the last century. I came up with eleven terms, the sixth one serving as a middle, “neutral” point with five on each side—growing in intensity as they get further from the center. Here they are:

1. Hucksters: i.e., people who stand to profit from new technologies, or who work to spin and market them regardless of their detrimental effects on human flourishing.

2. Apostles: i.e., true believers who announce the gospel of new technology to the unconvinced; they win converts by their true faith and honest enthusiasm; they sincerely believe that any and all developments in technology are good and to be welcomed as benefiting the human race in the short-, medium-, and long-term.

3. Boosters: i.e., writers and journalists in media and academia who toe the line of the hucksters and apostles; they accuse critics and dissenters from the true faith of heresy or, worse, of being on the wrong side of history; they exist as cogs in the tech-evangelistic machine, though it’s never clear why they are so uncritical, since they are rarely either apostles or hucksters themselves.

4. Optimists: i.e., ordinary people who understand and are sympathetic with thoughtful criticisms of new technologies but who, at the end of the day, passively trust in progress, in history’s forward march, and in the power of human can-do spirit to make things turn out right, including the challenges of technology; they adopt new technology as soon as it’s popular or affordable.

5. Optimistic pessimists: i.e., trenchant and insightful critics of technopoly, or the culture wrought by technology, who nonetheless argue for and have confidence in the possibility of righting the ship (even, the ship righting itself); another term for this group is tech reformers.

6. Naive neutrals: i.e., people who have never given a second thought to the challenges or perils of technology, are fundamentally incurious about them, and have no “position” to speak of regarding the topic; in practice they function like optimists or boosters, but lack the presence of considered beliefs on the subject.

7. Pessimistic optimists: i.e., inevitabilists—this or that new technology may on net be worse for humanity, but there’s simply nothing to do about it; pushing back or writing criticism is for this group akin to a single individual blowing on a forest fire; technological change on this view is materialist and/or deterministic; at most, you try to see it for what it is and manage your own individual life as best you can; at the same time, there’s no reason to be Chicken Little, since this has always been humanity’s lot, and we always find a way to adapt and adjust.

8. Pessimists: i.e., deep skeptics who see technological development in broadly negative terms, granting that not all of it is always bad in all its effects (e.g., medicine’s improvement of health, extension of life spans, and protection from disease); these folks are the last to adopt a new technology, usually with resentment or exasperation; they hate hucksters and boosters; they are not determinists—they think human society really can make social and political choices about technology ordered toward the common good—but know that determinism almost always wins in practice; their pessimism pushes them to see the downsides or tradeoffs even in the “best” technological developments.

9. Doomsdayers: i.e., it’s all bad, all the time, and it’s clear as day to anyone with eyes to see and ears to hear; the internet is a bona fide harbinger of the apocalypse and A.I. is no-joke leading us to Skynet and the Matrix; the answer to new technology is always, therefore, a leonine Barthian Nein!; and any and all dissents and evidence to the contrary are only so much captivity to the Zeitgeist, heads stuck in the sand, paid-for shilling, or delusional “back to the land” Heidegerrian nostalgia that is impossible to live out with integrity in a digital age.

10. Opt-outers: i.e., agrarians and urban monastics in the spirit of Wendell Berry, Ivan Illich, and others who pursue life “off the grid” or at least off the internet; they may or may not be politically active, but more than anything they put their money where their mouth is: no TV or wireless internet in the home, no smart phone, no social media, and a life centered on hearth, earth, family, children, the local neighborhood, a farm or community garden, so on and so forth; they may be as critical as pessimists and doomsdayers, but they want to walk the walk, not just talk the talk, and most of all they don’t want the technopoly to dictate whether or not, in this, their one life, it can be a good one.

11. Resisters: i.e., leaders and foot soldiers in the Butlerian Jihad, whether this be only in spirit or in actual social, material, and political terms (IRL, as they say).

Cards on the table: I’m dispositionally somewhere between #7 and #8, with occasional emotional outbursts of #9, but aspirationally and even once in a while actually a #10.

Four tiers, forty authors

Last August I wrote up a long piece about “tiers” in Christian/theological writing. Go there for the details. Regular readers will know all about this by now; it’s become a bit of a hobbyhorse, as well as a shorthand—both with fellow writers and with editors and publishers.

I’ve found that, in these conversations, we don’t limit ourselves to one of the tiers but say “a high two” or “a low three” or “maybe a one point nine.” Four slots ain’t much. So I decided to unpack the tiers by decimal points into a total of forty options. I’ve also taken the liberty to put an example of the kind of author I have in mind for that particular number. If the author is prolific or tends to write on the same “level” across his or her books, then I don’t mention a title. If not, though, I give a sample book title to indicate which “version” of said author I have in mind.

Consider this your friendly reminder that the point of the original post was not that these rankings are indexed by quality; you don’t get books that are per se “better” as you get bigger numbers, nor are higher tier books per se “harder” to write compared to lower tiers. A lot of Tier 3 authors wish with all their hearts they could manage a successful Tier 2 book. But it’s really hard to do that, and to do it well.

The tiers, rather, are about intended audience, style, accessibility, density, presumed education, background knowledge, literary purpose, and so on. From normies with a day job who may read no more than a handful of books per year to fellow scholars in the academy who read hundreds—that’s the range of imagined readers for these books. Which isn’t to say that folks in the former category don’t occasionally wander “up” into Tiers 3 and 4 or that academics don’t enjoy books in Tier 1 and 2 (I do!).

But enough preliminaries. Here are forty authors across four tiers, limiting myself to authors who are either living or who have published in the last few decades and whose books continue to be in print.

1.0 – Sadie Robertson Huff
1.1 – T. D. Jakes
1.2 – Tony Evans
1.3 – Max Lucado
1.4 – Beth Moore
1.5 – Jonathan Pokluda
1.6 – Austin Channing Brown
1.7 – John Mark Comer
1.8 – Bob Goff
1.9 – Andy Crouch (in The Tech-Wise Family)
2.0 – Ben Myers (in The Apostles’ Creed)
2.1 – Tish Harrison Warren
2.2 – Jemar Tisby
2.3 – Henri Nouwen
2.4 – Alan Jacobs (in How to Think)
2.5 – Tim Keller (in The Reason for God)
2.6 – James K. A. Smith (in You Are What You Love)
2.7 – Esau McCaulley (in Reading While Black)
2.8 – N. T. Wright (in Simply Christian)
2.9 – Cornel West (in Democracy Matters)
3.0 – Beth Felker Jones (in Practicing Christian Doctrine)
3.1 – Tara Isabella Burton
3.2 – James Cone (in The Cross and the Lynching Tree)
3.3 – Ross Douthat
3.4 – Lauren Winner (in Dangers of Christian Practice)
3.5 – Miroslav Volf
3.6 – Justo González
3.7 – Fleming Rutledge (in The Crucifixion)
3.8 – Stanley Hauerwas
3.9 – Peter Brown
4.0 – Sarah Coakley
4.1 – Katherine Sonderegger
4.2 – Paul Griffiths
4.3 – Kathryn Tanner
4.4 – Willie James Jennings
4.5 – Jonathan Tran
4.6 – David Bentley Hart
4.7 – Bruce Marshall
4.8 – David Kelsey
4.9 – Alvin Plantinga

I imagine most readers would rank these authors a bit differently; others would include names I’ve not mentioned and scratch ones I have. I hope the gist is accurate, though. I’m going to use it as a springboard for further reflections later this week or next.

My latest: a review of Matthew Thiessen on the Jewish Paul

I’m in the latest issue of Commonweal with a review of Matthew Thiessen’s book A Jewish Paul: The Messiah’s Herald to the Gentiles. Here’s how it opens:

Of all conversion stories, St. Paul’s is surely the most famous. As a zealous Pharisee, Saul was a tortured soul persecuting his fellow Jews for their dangerous faith in a failed Messiah. Starting in Jerusalem, this band of messianic Jews proclaimed a message that was catching like a plague. And just as with plagues inflicted on Israel in the past, God’s people needed a righteous man to rise up and put an end to it. Once disciplined, these wayward Jews would come to see the light. They would give up their nonsense about a crucified King; they would return to strict observance of God’s Law; and God’s punishment of his people would come to an end.

But on the road to Damascus, God stopped Saul in his tracks. He blinded him with heavenly light. He indicted him for his murderous ways. And he appointed him an apostle to the gentiles. Within days Saul was baptized and preaching the good news that God raised Jesus from the dead. Naturally, he gave up the Law of Moses, since Jesus had fulfilled the Torah and thereby rendered its observance optional, negligible, even obsolete. What mattered now was faith, a posture of receptivity and trust in God’s promises available not only to Saul’s fellow Jews but to non-Jews as well. Saul took this message across the Roman Empire, effectively founding the Church as we know it: predominantly gentile, faith-centered, and Law-free.

This is how Saul became Paul—how the persecuting Pharisee gave up Judaism for Christianity. Except that it isn’t, at least not in key respects.

Click here to read on.

The Church: cover, blurbs, pub date, and Amazon pre-order page!

Habemus cover! And publication date! And blurbs! And more!

The book in question is The Church: A Guide to the People of God. It’s the sixth in Lexham’s Christian Essentials series. Here’s the cover:

Just … wow. Perfect. The Lexham folks really know what they’re doing. (For comparison, here are the other covers in the series.)

How about some blurbs? Here they are, in all their glory. Allow me to find my fainting couch before reading them again:

This is a bright, thoughtful and passionate account of the church. Brad East roots ecclesiology in the story of Israel and the story of Jesus Christ, and in doing so provides a number of fresh perspectives which can help us in our doctrine and our practice.
—Andrew Wilson, teaching pastor at King's Church London

This book is pure delight! Inspiring, instructive, enriching, beautifully written, this book makes one want to be a Christian. It is next to impossible to write an ecumenically rewarding book on the theology of the church, but Brad East has done it!
—Matthew Levering, James N. Jr. and Mary D. Perry Chair of Theology, Mundelein Seminary

Brad East's account of Mary as the firstborn of the Church is brilliant. The theology in this book is at once scriptural and creative. With this book East becomes one of the more important theologians writing today.
—Stanley Hauerwas, Professor (retired), Duke Divinity School

I find this an extraordinary book. It is short. It is written with simplicity and clarity. And yet it covers so much, introducing its readers to an extraordinarily rich field of theology.
—Karen Kilby, Bede Professor of Catholic Theology, Durham University

In twelve concise, accessible, penetrating, and artistically-crafted chapters, Brad East provides an introductory guide to the Church as the messianic expansion of Israel among the nations of the earth. Rooting the identity of the Church in the biblical story of God's love for Israel, East shows how the redemptive work of Jesus completes that story, and is incomprehensible apart from that story. This introduction to the Church is both simple and profound—like the good news itself, which the Church proclaims and embodies.
—Mark Stephen Kinzer, moderator of Yachad BeYeshua, an international interconfessional fellowship of Jewish disciples of Yeshua, and Senior Scholar and President Emeritus of Messianic Jewish Theological Institute

Brad East's The Church wonderfully enhances the already marvelous Lexham series on Christian "Essentials." Building off of the Church's "Mystery" that is Christ's Body, as Ephesians proclaims, East outlines the story of God's people born of Abraham, in its breadth, beauty, imperative, and promise. Lucid, compact, attractive, and appropriately rich with the figures of Scripture's visionary treasure, this book is not only a fine introduction for new Christians of all traditions, but a well from which to draw continued reflection and prayerful praise. Highly commended!
—Ephraim Radner, Professor of Historical Theology, Wycliffe College at the University of Toronto

There are no words. My thanks to each of them for taking the time to read the manuscript and for their remarkable kindness. I hope other readers feel similarly!

Here is the official description of the book (written by Lexham, not by me):

You belong to God's family. But do you understand what that means?

The Bible tells the story of God and his people. But it is not merely history. It is our story. Abraham is our father. And Israel's freedom from slavery is ours.

Brad East traces the story of God's people, from father Abraham to the coming of Christ. He shows how we need the scope of the entire Bible to fully grasp the mystery of the church. The church is not a building but a body. It is not peripheral or optional in the life of faith. Rather, it is the very beating heart of God's story, where our needs and hopes are found.

That captures perfectly what I’m up to in the book. Short and sweet.

If any of the above piques your interest, here’s the good news: the book is up on Amazon and available for pre-order. As for when it’s coming out…

The publication date is October 23. That’s 39 weeks from now. A long time to wait. So why not make sure it’ll be in your mailbox on time?

Can you tell I’m excited? I’m excited. This is all not even to mention the fact that my other book coming out this fall also has its official cover and a publication date (let’s just say it’s not far off from this one). But I’ll save that announcement for another day, particularly once it too is up on Amazon and I’ve got blurbs and galleys in hand.

Until then. Thanks to everyone, but above all to Todd Hains, who made this happen from start to finish. He’s the man.

*

Update: I neglected to add two things.

First, head here for a webpage dedicated to the book. I’ll also add/share links to the publisher’s website for folks who want to check it out there or who want to avoid giving money to Mr. Bezos.

Second, I forgot to include the table of contents for those interested in such things. Here you go:

Series Preface
Prayers of the People

1. Mystery
2. Mother
3. Chosen
4. Bound
5. Redeemed
6. Holy
7. Ruled
8. Beloved
9. Incarnate
10. Sent
11. Entrusted
12. Benediction

Acknowledgments
Permissions
Notes
Worked Cited
Author Index
Scripture Index

Protestant subtraction

In A Secular Age, Charles Taylor argues against what he calls “subtraction theories” of secularism. A subtraction account describes secularism as simply removing, say, belief in God from the equation; hence, a secular age is the same world minus outmoded ideas about an all-powerful man in the sky. Against this, Taylor argues that secularism is in fact the proposal of something positive, something new and substantive that was not there before—regardless of its truth.

Now apply the concept of subtraction to the story of Christian division over the centuries. I first thought of the following exercise as “playing the Protestant game.” Most of my life I have been surrounded by people who believe, usually explicitly, that most of what the church did and taught from the apostolic fathers through the eighteenth or nineteenth century was erroneous. Here in west Texas, that’s still true. Sometimes this view is made out to be allied to the reformations of the sixteenth century, though typically in ignorance of the fact that, for example, the magisterial reformers did not abolish creeds or infant baptism or ordination or Christian government or other phenomena low-church American evangelicals take for granted as capital-C “Catholic” (and therefore bad).

At the same time, there seems to be a creeping openness among these very people to more and more of “the tradition”: to the church calendar, to saints and monks, to sacramental practice, to creeds and councils, to patristic and even medieval wisdom. This is part of the “loosening” I’ve identified before, which is non-ideological and thus works in every which direction—sometimes toward reclaiming sacred tradition, sometimes toward pursuing charismatic gifts, sometimes toward relaxing social conventions (regarding alcohol or gambling, for example), sometimes toward liberalizing long-standing teachings (regarding sex or male ordination, for example). There’s no one way this loosening is happening. Much is being shaken at the moment; how things will settle won’t be clear for decades, or so it seems to me.

But return to the notion of subtraction. Below I have formulated a list of fifty doctrines or practices that were more or less universally accepted and established by the time of the late middle ages. Many of them underwent serious development in the medieval period; most of them have roots in the church fathers; some of them are basically present in toto before Nicaea. So it wouldn’t be fair to say that the list is just “whatever the church believed from 100 to 1500”—though parts of the list do fit that bill. It would be fair to say that all, or nearly all, of these things described the church just before the Great Schism, and that all, or nearly all, of them continue to describe the faith and piety of two-thirds of the global church today.

So here is the exercise. Ask yourself: When do you hop off the train? When do you say, Yes, I reject items x through y, but no more from here on out? And what is the logic that informs your decision? Is that logic disciplined? arbitrary? a matter of preference? a matter of upbringing? of local social convention? Are there concrete, nonnegotiable biblical or theological reasons to hold back your Christian neighbor from striking through the next item on the list—or the next ten?

Let’s say that the Orthodox have questions about the first three items and that the Anglicans, at least the higher-church among them, have modest questions about a handful (but no more) in the first twenty. Say that, depending on whom you ask, Lutherans and Calvinists want to reject the first twenty to thirty (maybe thirty-five) items on the list. Say that American evangelicals are uncomfortable with every item through forty-five. Say that primitivists and restorationists have more than occasionally set a question mark next to forty-six and forty-seven, and that Protestant liberals have done the same for the final three items.

Where do you stand? Where does your church? Where does your tradition? Why? And, perhaps most important, what is the doctrine of divine providence, wedded to what doctrine of the church, that makes sense of God’s people having gotten so much so wrong for so long? What else have Christians gotten wrong over the millennia? How can we know? Is there a limit?

And if, as I’m less than subtly wanting to suggest, this sort of indefinite unrolling logic of subtraction is neither wise nor defensible; and if, as I mentioned earlier, there is a spiritual hunger behind the “loosening” we are witnessing, a hunger for unwinding these subtractions in favor of reclaiming what was lost—then what should be reclaimed, and on what basis? Call this last query an exercise in addition, even in restoration.

But I digress. Here’s the list. See what you make of it.

1. Papal supremacy

2. Roman primacy

3. Purgatory

4. Intercession of saints

5. Canonization of saints

6. Intercession of Mary

7. Veneration of Mary

8. Mary as Theotokos

9. Icons

10. Relics

11. Holy sites

12. Monasticism

13. Vowed celibacy

14. Vowed poverty

15. Masses for the dead

16. Private masses

17. The Mass

18. Eucharistic transubstantiation

19. Eucharistic adoration

20. Eucharistic change

21. Eucharistic real presence

22. “Deutero-canonical” books

23. Priestly absolution

24. Priests

25. Bishops

26. The sacrament of holy orders

27. The sacrament of marriage

28. The magisterium

29. Dogma

30. Signs and wonders

31. Miraculous healings

32. Exorcisms

33. Baptismal regeneration

34. Confirmation/chrismation

35. Infant baptism

36. Sacred tradition

37. Liturgical calendar

38. Creeds

39. Extra-congregational polity

40. Ordination

41. Liturgical order

42. Baptismal efficacy

43. Eucharistic presence

44. Regular observance of the Eucharist

45. The necessity of baptism

46. The doctrine of the Trinity

47. The divinity of Jesus

48. The inerrancy of Scripture

49. The infallibility of Scripture

50. The indissolubility of marriage

2024: forthcoming

I’ve looked back on 2023 in three posts: what I read, what I wrote, and what I posted on the blog. Here’s a look at what’s to come in 2024.

Books

The biggest thing is not one but two books, both set to be published in the fall. I should have actual publication dates and links to pre-order soon. I’m confident both will be out by AAR/SBL/Thanksgiving/Advent—in other words, for all your Christmas gift needs.

I’ve discussed these books plenty at this point, but here’s another reminder.

The first is called The Church: A Guide to the People of God. Published with Lexham, it’s part of the Christian Essentials series, which features previous entries by Ben Myers, Peter Leithart, Wesley Hill, and others. The series as a whole has become a trilogy of trilogies: Creed–Decalogue–Lord’s Prayer, Baptism–Eucharist–Forgiveness of Sins, Bible–Liturgy–Church. Out of nine books total, mine is the sixth. Without endnotes it’s just over 30,000 words. I signed off on the final typeset proofs last week; the cover is official; the blurbs are in. It’s heading to the printers this month, I’m told. I’m excited, y’all! This one’s meant for churches, Bible studies, Sunday School, small groups, and college curricula. For thoughtful Christians of all ages wanting to learn more about the Bible’s story of the calling and purpose and course and destiny of God’s chosen people. Mostly, as you surely expect, it’s an unhurried figural stroll through the Scriptures of Israel.

The second book is called Letters to a Future Saint: Foundations of Faith for the Spiritually Hungry. Published with Eerdmans, this one comes from the heart. It’s written directly for the undergraduate students I’ve taught for going on seven years now. Call it an epistolary catechism, if you want to use a phrase you won’t find in the book, since it’s written at a level any graduating senior from high school wouldn’t find odd or off-putting. It’s not a work of apologetics; I’m not convincing a skeptic to convert. The book consists of brief letters written to a young believer who wants to move from milk to meat, from adolescence to maturity, from thinking about Christ to following him all the way to the cross. I think it works. I hope it works. I know the great need for a book like this. Much more anon!

As I said, book #1 is out of my hands. Book #2 is in between copy-edits and type-setting. But it’s moving fast. I expect proofs and a cover in my inbox in the next month or two. Then an Amazon page in the spring, and we’re off to the races.

I imagine much of my fall will be taken up with podcasts and other marketing duties for both books. To all professors, editors, magazines, journals, bloggers, and podcasters: Consider this a heads up! Request the book! Read it! Review it! Have me on! Let’s get this done.

Sabbatical + the next book

Next academic year (fall 2024–spring 2025) I will be on research leave, my first ever sabbatical. I’m going to dedicate an entire blog post to that remarkable fact, about which I’m still somewhat in disbelief. The primary “product” of that time is meant to be a manuscript due to Lexham in summer 2025; it’s part of their Ministry Guides series, called Technology: For the Care of Souls. More on that in the future as well.

My goal is to avoid writing a single word of that manuscript in 2024. This calendar year my goal, before and during the sabbatical, can be summed up with one word: read. Read, read, read. Double or triple what I usually read. In all the things, but especially in tech.

Which means less writing than usual. But not nothing either.

Essays, articles, reviews, and more

I’ve already got a number of pieces in the hopper for this year:

• In Interpretation, a review of Konrad Schmid and Jens Schröter’s The Making of the Bible: From the First Fragments to Sacred Scripture, in Interpretation (just published, in fact)

• In Restoration Quarterly, an article called “Churches of Christ: Once Catholic, Now Evangelical”

• In Syndicate, a long review of Miroslav Volf and Ryan McAnnally-Linz’s The Home of God: A Brief Story of Everything (part of a symposium dedicated to the book)

• In Commonweal, a review of Matthew Thiessen’s A Jewish Paul: The Messiah’s Herald to the Gentiles

• In Comment, a review essay of Christian Wiman’s Zero at the Bone: Fifty Entries Against Despair

• In The Los Angeles Review of Books, a review essay of Marilynne Robinson’s Reading Genesis

• In Christianity Today, a review of John Mark Comer’s Practicing the Way: Be With Jesus, Become Like Him, Do As He Did

• In The Hedgehog Review, an essay on the politics of the Slow Horses/Slough House series of spy novels by Mick Herron

• In a volume for Baylor University Press on teaching theology, a chapter on … teaching theology

Two more essays are written but have yet to find a home: one on Albert Borgmann and one on Mary, Theotokos, and abortion. I’ll also be giving a paper at the SBL conference in San Diego. But aside from that, and assuming most or all of the above essays and reviews are published by April at the latest, the remaining eight months of the year are basically a clean slate. For once!

I’ve no doubt ideas for reviews and essays will bubble to the surface over the months, and I’m always mentally ticking off publications for which I’ve never published but would love to. My hope, though, is to use my time wisely from May through December to focus on research and not to let my extra time be dominated by writing I can always make time for, even with a 4/4 teaching load, when for once I have time for the reading my teaching load doesn’t allow for.

All in all, God willing, it should be a good year, professionally speaking, and in more than one way. Now to hurry up and wait.

2023: blogging

I published about 70 blog posts in 2023. That’s about one every five days. Sometimes a post is just a link to something I’ve written, or perhaps a quote. I used to do a lot more quotes from books and excerpt-links to stuff I’ve read online. But even the 10-20 minutes it takes to do that can be a timesuck at work, so I’ve backed off that habit.

Below, I’ve organized what I wrote on the blog this year into ten categories. Clearly, I use this blog primarily for two topics, church and technology, alongside other topics that intersect with them, such as politics, writing, and academia. Some of these should have been turned into essays, instead of dashed off in the half-hour before class; oh well.

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10. I wrote about Ahsoka, about how awful most Marvel TV shows look, and about the all-time best series finales for TV dramas.

9. I wrote about fantasy: how every epic fantasy series is finally a comedy (never a tragedy, and always a theodicy—whether or not the author is theistic, whether or not the fictional world features gods or divine justice), what it was like returning to Osten Ard (you should visit if you haven’t!), and how Chuck Klosterman’s decade-old theory about the NFL’s popularity applies to J. K. Rowling and Harry Potter.

8. Call this the miscellaneous bucket. I wrote about Calvin, election, and the zombie problem; Christianity East and West as a love story; how to define the little word “culture”; fitting punishment and penance for people whose “cancellation” is justified; how Christianity might be understood as a kind of conspiracy theory (let the reader understand); and an approach to reading widely in Christian tradition: twenty texts for twenty centuries.

7. I wrote about politics a lot less in 2023 than in years prior; I’m not sure why. In any case, here’s a reflection on Christians and politics (in response to Richard Beck), a brief set of thoughts in response to Reeves’ Of Boys and Men, and a long piece thinking about Catholicism, Protestantism, and why intellectuals convert to the former not the latter.

6. I wrote two posts on the Churches of Christ: one attempting to define them in a way that excludes other evangelical groups (spoiler: I failed) and another following up on the attempt.

5. If others write about kids these days, I write about church these days: about young Christians and their reading habits (or lack thereof); about the divide between biblicist and catholic Christianity; about ecclesial and societal decline; about the church’s reputation in a hostile culture; about reasons why people leave church; about catechesis, catechesis, catechesis; about a “loosening” over the last generation; about generational differences in church leadership (this one was good, I think); and about why you can’t die for a question.

4. I wrote about digital technology: about A.I. fallacies in the academy, about smartphones in the church, about the tech-church show, about living in a tech bubble (NB: it’s sarcastic), and about quitting social porn. I also sketched a digital decision tree for church leaders as well as outlining how to be efficient and timely with email and how, as a professor, to use one’s hours in the office. Finally, I wondered whether it’s possible, wise, or both to find a way to limit one’s entanglement with Silicon Valley’s Big Five—to whittle one’s investment and time down to a single company, thereby expanding into and dwelling within a single digital ecosystem while divesting from all the others. I went with, am going with, Apple. Will report.

3. I wrote about life in academia: about prestige scholarship (not what you think it is), about two ways of reading, about naming the errors of our influences and authorities, about publishing widely, even promiscuously, and about the smartest people I’ve known in my life. I also expanded John Shelton’s map of academic theology across the last three generations.

2. My longest and most heartfelt post, written for students and readers near and far, was about whether and how to get into a theology PhD program. I hope this one has legs; I think it can be helpful to young Christians considering the academic life.

1. By far the most-read blog post from the year was my typology of four tiers of Christian publishing. It keeps popping up online, in my inbox, at conferences, in conversations with publishers. I’m glad people have found it useful. I followed up with applying the tiers to preaching; acknowledging my debt to James Davison Hunter; giving advice(!) about writing for a Tier 2 audience; and pointing out the most popular names and authorities in evangelical Tier 2 writing (and how and why to avoid them).

2023: writing

Unlike last year, when my output was heavy in the first half then MIA in the second, this year was rather even. All in all, I count one journal article, one book chapter, three academic reviews, five podcasts, nine magazine essays, and a dozen or so talks/lectures/“speaking events” (gag). I also discovered a review I thought hadn’t been published, which had been published more than a year prior. Well then.

So much of my time this year was spent revising and writing, writing and revising two books that are both set to come out next fall. So I’m grateful to have gotten this much out there in the meantime. More about those books in another post. For now, the year in writing and related artifacts…

Speaking

Each year I find myself with more opportunities to speak or teach at local churches. This year I taught about martyrdom, technology, hell(!), and the soul, among other things. I seem to be brought in to represent the tradition on this or that view; or to be an alarmist on digital domination. Everyone has to have a calling card, I suppose.

I also participated in an annual meeting of pastors to discuss the theology of the body. I traveled to Austin to talk tech and catechesis and to Oklahoma City to talk election and God’s word. And in February I gave an “address” to an academic honor society induction ceremony then, two months later, gave another to the chapel service celebrating graduating seniors who received ACU’s honor of being “university scholars.” That one was a treat.

Podcasts

The Church’s Book (A History of Christian Theology, 4 January 2023).

The Church’s Holy Scripture (The Great Tradition, 10 March 2023).

Theology, Technology, and Ministry (Live from the Siburt Institute, 5 June 2023).

Called into Questions (Mere Fidelity, 24 October 2023). A conversation about Matt Anderson’s new book.

Faith, College, and Technology (Know Why, 1 November 2023).

Academic

Review of David H. Kelsey, Human Anguish and God’s Power, in Stone-Campbell Journal 25:2 (2022): 265–267. David is in his tenth decade of life. He was a dear member of my dissertation committee. This will surely be his last book, following his magnum opus, Eccentric Existence. I missed the review when it came out. Short, but gives you the gist.

Review of R. B. Jamieson and Tyler R. Wittman, Biblical Reasoning: Christological and Trinitarian Rules for Exegesis, in International Journal of Systematic Theology 25:3 (2023): 504–506. I say some very nice things here! Check out the book.

Review of Fred Sanders, Fountain of Salvation: Trinity and Soteriology, in Pro Ecclesia 32:1-2 (2023): 200–204. Ditto and ditto. Fred agrees!

Review of Jordan Senner, John Webster: The Shape and Development of His Theology, in Scottish Journal of Theology 76:1 (2023): 92-93. One of the very first serious works of scholarly reception of Webster’s thought. More, please.

“The Fittingness of Holy Orders,” Journal of Christian Studies 2:3 (2023): 71–86. I’ve had a surprising number of folks reach out to me for the PDF. I never planned to write on this topic, but I loved doing so; in the process I realized, reader of Jenson and Ramsey and Ratzinger that I am, child of a primitivist tradition that I am, that I had some thoughts.

“Liberating the Least of These,” in The Liberating Arts: Why We Need Liberal Arts Education, ed. Jeffrey Bilbro, Jessica Hooten Wilson, and David Henreckson (Walden, NY: Plough, 2023), 163–174. The culmination of a years-long project begun at the outset of Covid. This one was a fun one to write. Levertov, Aristotle, Coates, Shakespeare, Boethius, Saint Augustine, and Rowan Williams all make an appearance. Buy the book!

Essays

Once More, Church and Culture (Mere Orthodoxy, 18 April 2023). A long-gestating reflection on Niebuhr and James Davison Hunter. I think the story told in the first six or seven paragraphs is on the money. Also the criticisms of pro-work “vocational” theologies that actually function to consecrate upper-middle-class Christian careerism.

Theology in Division (First Things, April 2023). Equally long-gestating, given the number of times the question I open the essay with has been posed to me. Also a tribute to the late Jenson and Ratzinger for their wisdom in answering it.

What Makes Critical Theory Christian? (Comment, 28 June 2023). A review of Christopher Watkin’s Biblical Critical Theory: How the Bible’s Unfolding Story Makes Sense of Modern Life and Culture. I really like Watkin—we met and discussed the review in San Antonio; he couldn’t have been more generous—but I didn’t love the book. The review attempts to outline my reasons why.

America the Biblical (The Christian Century, 1 August 2023). A review of Mark Noll’s America’s Book: The Rise and Decline of a Bible Civilization. A remarkable achievement, says little old me.

Stay the Course: How to Keep Your Faith in College (Christianity Today, 21 August 2023). A fun one to get out into the world. Share with the rising freshman in your life next August!

AI Has No Place in the Pulpit (Christianity Today, 27 September 2023). Can I get an amen?

Living in a WEIRDER World (The Hedgehog Review, 12 October 2023). A review of Andrew Wilson’s Remaking the World: How 1776 Created the Post-Christian West. One of the best books of the year. If not for the tenth commandment, I’d be jealous of Andrew for this one. Thankfully, I’m above all that.

The Brand Called You (Commonweal, 15 November 2023). A review of Tara Isabella Burton’s Self-Made: Creating Our Identities from Da Vinci to the Kardashians. A fun and insightful romp. I close the review by suggesting the next book for Burton to write so as to round out the trilogy she began with Strange Rites.

The Ends of Theological Education (Sapientia, 29 November 2023). Part of a symposium on the present and future of theological education. I have a 5,000-word essay on the same subject coming out as a book chapter next year; consider this a preview.

2023: reading

Over the last few years I’ve had the goal of inching my way from 100 books annually up to 150. Last year I hit 122. This year I’ll be lucky to finish with 90. What happened?

A passel of 1,000-page novels, is the first answer. Writing and editing not one but two books of my own, is the second. And third is surely some mix of happenstance, fatigue, and time management. So be it. The books I read this year were good, even if I didn’t hit the number I was aiming for. There’s always next year.

The list below does not include every book I read over the last 12 months, just my favorites across a handful of categories. You’ll see that I read a lot of good fiction and nonfiction. Not so much theology! I leave it to readers to decide whether that’s a reflection on academic theology or on me.

Comments and links throughout, as well as promissory notes on reviews that I’ve written but have yet to be published.

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Rereads

5. Kathryn Tanner, Christianity and the New Spirit of Capitalism. I read this when it was in draft form, as the Gifford lectures, but I’d never read the book version cover to cover. I had, and still nurture, the idea of writing an essay putting Tanner and David Graeber together in a theological reflection on work. We’ll see.

4. Aldous Huxley, Brave New World.

3. John Le Carré, The Spy Who Came in From the Cold. Not his very best—that’s A Perfect Spy—but in the top five. Even better on the second time through.

2. Larry McMurtry, Lonesome Dove. The beauty still shines in the story and dialogue and characters, but the brutality is more apparent. “A dark tale lightly told” indeed.

1. Tad Williams, Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn. As I wrote here, this return to the classic trilogy (a million words in all?) was in preparation for the sequel tetralogy (see below). My love for the series, the author, and the prose is unabated. And the narrator for the audiobook is can’t-miss for lovers of Osten Ard.

Fiction

10. Mickey Spillane, I, the Jury. Not a great book, but popular and influential; part of my attempt to read through the canonical authors of American crime fiction.

9. Adam Roberts, Purgatory Mount. The framing device is gripping, but I didn’t love the middle. Roberts is always worth reading, though.

8. Ian Fleming, Live and Let Die.

7. Denis Johnson, Train Dreams.

6. J. M. Barrie, Peter Pan. Had never read it; am listening to it now. The narrator is Jim Dale. He’s perfect. It’s a treat when you turn to a classic and immediately understand why.

5. Larry McMurtry, Streets of Laredo. Finally read the sequel to Lonesome Dove, where McMurtry lays waste at once to beloved characters, “bad fans,” and any remaining trace of romance we may have had with the West. It’s thrilling. And more affecting than I expected.

4. Mick Herron, Slough House. Having read the first two books in the ongoing “Slow Horses” series, I read the next six in the new year, plus a collection of short stories. In the spring I have an essay in The Hedgehog Review on the series as a whole. It’s great, if confused in its politics; as is the TV show starring Gary Oldman.

3. Tad Williams, The Last King of Osten Ard. No missed opportunity here. Williams keeps breaking my heart, but the books are on a par with what came before. I was preparing for the fourth and final book’s release last month … only for it to be delayed by a year. I’m told it’s written, but the publisher chose to delay it. Oh well. I’ll be ready.

2. Georges Bernanos, Diary of a Country Priest. No words. Just read it.

1. John Kennedy Toole, A Confederacy of Dunces. Ditto. When I finished the last page, I had plans to write a long essay comparing Toole to Melville, with Dunces a kind of madcap multicultural New-Orleans-meets-Chesterton Don Quixote for postwar America. Is Ignatius J. Reilly the white whale, a knight-errant, a holy fool, or just a fool? I forgot the answer, probably because I was laughing so hard. The novel is a one of one. Tolle lege!

Poetry

Another down year for my poetry reading. I always re-read Franz Wright, Mary Karr, Marie Howe, Christian Wiman, and Wendell Berry. This year I read some Les Murray and Allen Tate. More next year, I hope.

Christian (popular)

7. Dane Ortlund, Gentle and Lowly: The Heart of Christ for Sinners and Sufferers.

6. Tish Harrison Warren, Advent: The Season of Hope & Emily Hunter McGowin, Christmas: The Season of Life and Light. I love this new series. Need to snag Epiphany before we turn to Lent and Easter.

5. Esau McCaulley, How Far to the Promised Land: One Black Family’s Story of Hope and Survival in the American South. Is there anything McCaulley can’t do? New Testament scholarship, theological hermeneutics, liturgical devotions, children’s books, NYT op-eds … and now a bracing, moving memoir. There were more than a few moments that took my breath away. Recommended.

4. Samuel D. James, Digital Liturgies: Rediscovering Christian Wisdom in an Online Age. Immediately added this to the syllabus for my course on discipleship in a digital age. Excellent!

3. Beth Moore, All My Knotted-Up Life: A Memoir. We all know Beth Moore is a treasure. I suggest listening to her read it. I wept.

2. Matthew Lee Anderson, Called into Questions: Cultivating the Love of Learning Within the Life of Faith. Matt is a friend, so I’m biased, but I can’t wait to start giving this book to college students. It’s just what the doctor ordered. And the best thing Matt’s ever written in terms of style. Accessible yet poetic and pious in equal parts. For the brainy or doubting believer in your orbit. (Two-part interview plus podcast discussion over the book.)

1. Andrew Wilson, Remaking the World: How 1776 Created the Post-Christian West. Easily a top-5 for 2023 new releases. Here’s my review.

Nonfiction

10. Mark Noll, America’s Book: The Rise and Decline of a Bible Civilization. Review here.

9. Tara Isabella Burton, Self-Made: Creating Our Identities from da Vinci to the Kardashians. Review here.

8. John Gray, Feline Philosophy: Cats and the Meaning of Life. Good fun. Not just a joke, though. Gray contains multitudes.

7. Mary Harrington, Feminism Against Progress.

6. Edward Feser, Philosophy of Mind: A Beginner’s Guide.

5. Ronald L. Numbers, ed., Galileo Goes to Jail and Other Myths About Science and Religion. I sort of can’t believe how good this book is. It needed to be written; it needed to be written by the contributors involved; it needed to be published by Harvard; it needed to be readable, consisting of short entries by a range of theists, atheists, and agnostics. And somehow it was.

4. Richard V. Reeves, Of Boys and Men: Why the Modern Male Is Struggling, Why It Matters, and What to Do about It. Wrote about this here.

3. Albert Murray, The Omni-Americans: Black Experience and American Culture. To call Murray unique is an understatement bordering on an insult. He died in 2013. We needed his voice more than ever in the decade since.

2. Yossi Klein Halevi, Letters to My Palestinian Neighbor. Alongside Ari Shavit’s My Promised Land, this is the first book I recommend to anyone wanting to learn more about modern Israel.

1. Christian Wiman, Zero at the Bone: Fifty Entries Against Despair. There’s no one writing today quite like Christian Wiman. My review of his latest should be out in Comment next month. I’ve got a lot to say!

Theology (newer)

7. Miroslav Volf and Ryan McAnnally-Linz, The Home of God: A Brief Story of Everything. Ten months ago I wrote a long review of this for Syndicate. I hope it comes out soon so I can finally share it with people!

6. Joseph Ratzinger, Many Religions—One Covenant: Israel, the Church, and the World.

5. Jim Davis and Michael Graham with Ryan P. Burge, The Great Dechurching: Who’s Leaving, Why Are They Going, and What Will It Take to Bring Them Back? Every pastor, elder, and church leader needs a copy.

4. Esau McCaulley, Sharing in the Son’s Inheritance: Davidic Messianism and Paul’s Worldwide Interpretation of the Abrahamic Land Promise in Galatians.

3. Jonathan Rowlands, The Metaphysics of Historical Jesus Research: A Prolegomenon to a Future Quest for the Historical Jesus. I wish I’d had this in hand a dozen years ago; it would have helped immensely. As it is, we have it now, and it’s a must-read for all biblical scholars, historical critics, and theologians interested in reading Scripture theologically, responsibly, and/or historically.

2. Matthew Thiessen, A Jewish Paul: The Messiah’s Herald to the Gentiles. See my review in a forthcoming issue of Commonweal.

1. Ross McCullough, Freedom and Sin: Evil in a World Created by God. Another biased pick, since Ross is a good friend, but an honest choice nonetheless. One of the best new works of theology in years. The only remotely satisfying treatment of theodicy, compatibilism, determinism, and human/divine agency I’ve ever read. Extra points for being concise and stylish and witty without losing an ounce of substance.

Theology (older)

4. Howard Thurman, Jesus and the Disinherited. What a weird but invigorating book.

3. Thomas à Kempis, The Imitation of Christ. Almost unbearably painful, given the way it cuts to the quick. But also full of the deepest consolations. Sometimes it really is Christ addressing you, the reader, by name.

2. Patrick Ahern, trans. and ed., Maurice & Thérèse: The Story of a Love. A window into the heart of Saint Thérèse. Probably the best introduction to her, too. Recommended to me by a friend. A beautiful book. Thanks to the good bishop for putting it together.

1. Blaise Pascal, Pensées. We all have gaps in our reading. I’d never (seriously) read Pascal. For the four-hundredth anniversary of his birth, I read his most celebrated work. It did not disappoint.

Jenson on catechesis for our time

I’ve done my best to read everything Robert Jenson ever wrote, but he was so prolific that I regularly stumble onto something I’ve never seen before (or, at least, have no memory of reading). The latest is an essay on catechesis.

It comes from a 1999 volume that Jenson and Carl Braaten co-edited, titled Marks of the Body of Christ. It consists of essays by a wide range of ecumenical scholars on Luther’s so-called seven marks of the church: the word of God, the sacraments, the office of the keys, the pastoral office, the holy cross, and the liturgy. The volume interprets the cross as discipleship and the liturgy as catechesis, since Luther uses the latter term to pick out the Creed, the Decalogue, and the Lord’s Prayer as central to the church’s public worship of God.

Jenson’s essay is called “Catechesis for Our Time.” It’s a barnburner. If I could, I would republish the entirety below. Since I can’t, I’ll limit myself to quoting some of the juiciest excerpts.

Jenson, for readers unfamiliar with him, was born in 1930 and died in 2017. He was a polymath, a Midwesterner, a Lutheran, and German-trained. He was deeply involved in international ecumenical dialogues throughout his career and taught at a variety of institutions. He remained an ordained Lutheran all his life, but was deeply catholic in piety, liturgy, doctrine, and ecclesial sensibility. He was an astute observer of late modern culture in all its permutations and depredations.

Here’s how the essay begins:

I began teaching in 1955, in a liberal arts college of the church. My students were mostly fresh from active participation in their home town Protestant congregations. In those days, I and others like me re­garded it as our duty, precisely for the sake of students’ faith, to loosen them up a bit. They had been drilled in standard doctrine — Jesus is the Son of God, God is triune but what that means is a mystery, heaven is the reward of a good life — to the point of insensibility to the gospel itself.

In 1966 I left undergraduate teaching. Then just 23 years later, I re­turned to teach at a similar churchly liberal arts college. My students were again mostly fresh from active participation in Protestant congre­gations — though now with more Catholics mixed in. During those years, the situation exactly reversed itself.

It is now my duty to inform these young Christians that, e.g., there once was a man named Abraham who had an interesting life, that then there was Moses and that he came before Jesus, that Jesus was a Jew who is thought by some to be risen from the dead, that there are command­ments claiming to be from God, and that they frown on fornication and such, and other like matters.

Well hello there, shock of recognition. It’s always good to be reminded that Protestant liberalism comes for everyone; evangelicals are not immune, they just lag the mainline by a couple generations.

Jenson comments on the development of the catechumenate and the logic that lay behind it. He writes:

[Following the initial apostolic generations] the church needed and was granted institutions that could sustain her faithfulness within continuing history. So the canon of Scripture emerged, and the episcopate in local succession, and creeds and rules of faith. And so also an instructional institution arose, situated between conversion and baptism.

For it was the experience of the church, after a bit of time had passed in which to have experience, that baptism and subsequent life in the litur­gical and moral life of the church, if granted immediately upon hearing and affirming the gospel, were too great a shock for spiritual health. Life in the church was just too different from life out of the church, for people to tolerate the transfer without some preparation.

Converts were used to religious cults that had little moral content, that centered often on bloody sacrifice, and that were oriented — as we might now put it — to the “religious needs” of the worshiper. They were entering a cult oriented not to their religious needs but to the mandates of a particular and highly opinionated God. They were entering a cult cen­tered around an unbloody and therefore nearly incomprehensible sacri­fice. And most disorienting of all, they were entering a cult that made ex­plicit moral demands. They needed to be coached and rehearsed in all that, if their conversion was to be sustainable.

Catechesis therefore involves a comprehensive instruction in three areas of life: worship, ethics, and doctrine. Here’s how Jenson puts it:

Thus they needed to study, for a first thing, liturgics, that is, how to do these Christian things, so different from what could appeal to their exist­ing habits and tastes. And they needed to be instructed in how to under­stand what they were doing.

And then there were those moral demands. Christian heads of household were not supposed to treat their wives as subjects, and both husband and wife were supposed to be sexually faithful — for converts from late-antique society such puritanism was a shocking violation of nature. More amazingly yet, Christian parents did not get rid of inconvenient children, not even of unborn ones. The list went on and on of things that converts’ previous society regarded as rights, that the church regarded as sins. If converts were to stand up under all these infringements on their personal pursuits of happiness, they needed some time under the care of moral instructors and indeed of watchful moral disciplinarians.

And then there were those creeds and doctrines. New converts were used to religions with little specificity, and so with little intellectual con­tent. You were expected to worship Osiris in Egypt and the Great Mother in Asia Minor and Dionysus in Greece, and all of them and a hundred oth­ers simultaneously in Rome, and if the theologies of these deities could not all be simultaneously true, no matter, since you were not anyway expected to take their myths seriously as knowledge. For a relatively trivial but historically pivotal case: Did you have to think that the notorious lunatic Caligula was in fact divine? Not really, just so long as you burnt the pinch of incense.

But with the Lord, the Father of Jesus, things were different. He in­sisted that you worship him exclusively or not at all. And that imposed a cognitive task: if you were to worship the Lord exclusively, you had to know who he is, you had to make identifying statements about him and intend these as statements of fact. You had to learn that in the same history occu­pied by Caesar or Alexander, the Lord had led Israel from Egypt and what that meant for the world. You had to learn that in the same history occu­pied by Tiberius one of his deputies had crucified an Israelite named Jesus and what that in sheer bloody fact meant for the world. You had to learn that this Jesus was raised from the dead, and try to figure out where he might now be located. It was a terrible shock for the religious inclusivists and expressivists recruited from declining antiquity. There was a whole li­brary of texts to be studied and conceptual distinctions to be made, if new converts were in the long run to resist their culturally ingrained inclusivism and relativism.

Catechesis was born as the instruction needed to bring people from their normal religious communities to an abnormal one. That is, it was born as liturgical rehearsal and interpretation, moral correction, and in­struction in a specific theology. Apart from need for these things, it is not apparent that the church would have had to instruct at all.

One more excerpt, this time about what it means for the church to catechize the baptized for liturgical participation in a post-Christendom cultural context, in light of the temptation to water down or eliminate what makes her worship unique, which is to say, Christian:

Instead of perverting her essential rites, the church must catechize. She must rehearse her would-be members in the liturgies, fake them through them step by step, showing how the bits hang together, and teach­ing them how to say or sing or dance them. And she must show them wherein these rites are blessings and not legal impositions.

Nor does it stop with the minimal mandates of Scripture. The church, like every living community, has her own interior culture, built up during the centuries of her history. That is, the acts of proclamation and baptism and eucharist are in fact embedded in a continuous tradition of ritual and diction and music and iconography and interpretation, which constitutes a churchly culture in fact thicker and more specific than any national or ethnic culture.

Now of course this tradition might have been different than it is. If the church’s first missionary successes had taken her more south than west, her music and architecture and diction and so on would surely have devel­oped differently. And in the next century, when the center of the church’s life will probably indeed be south of its original concentration, the church’s culture will continue to develop, and in ways that cannot now be predicted. But within Christianity, what might have been is beside the point; contingency is for Christianity the very principle of meaning; it is what in fact has happened — that might not have happened — that is God’s history with us, and so the very reality of God and of us.

We are not, therefore, permitted simply to shuck off chant and cho­rale, or the crucifix, or architecture that encloses us in biblical story, or ministerial clothing that recalls that of ancient Rome and Constantino­ple, or so on and on. Would-be participants will indeed find some of this off-putting; people will indeed drift into our services, not grasp the pro­ceedings, and drift out again. We will be tempted to respond by dressing in t-shirts and hiring an almost-rock group — not, of course, a real one — and getting rid of the grim crucifixes. Then we will indeed need less catechesis to adapt would-be participants to the church, because we will be much less church. If instead we are aware of the mission, and of the mission’s situation in our particular time, we will not try to adapt the church’s culture to seekers, but seekers to the church’s culture.

So, for an only apparently trivial example, it is almost universally thought that children must be taught childish songs, with which occasion­ally to interrupt the service and serenade their parents. They are not, it is supposed, up to the church’s hymns and chants. The exact opposite is the truth, and in any case the necessity. In my dim youth rash congregational officials once hired me to supervise the music program of a summer church school. I taught the children the ditties supplied me, but also some plain chant. When in the last days, I asked the children what they wanted to sing, it was always the plain chant.

Catechesis for our time, as the culture of the world and the culture of the church go separate ways, will be music training and art appreciation and language instruction, for the church’s music and art and in the lan­guage of Canaan. If we do not do such things, and with passionate inten­tion, the church will be ever more bereft of her own interior culture and just so become ever more the mere chaplaincy of the world’s culture. The recommendations of the “church growth” movement will indeed produce growth, but not of the church.

Coda: what is a CoC?

Based on feedback, a few more “family marks” to add to the original list of ten:

11. Anti-clericalism, i.e., no priestly caste set apart by holy orders or a white collar who alone can administer the Word and Supper of the Lord. (This is the obverse of egalitarianism, but more apt to historic CoC self-understanding, given egalitarianism’s range of meanings).

12. Cessationism, i.e., no charismatic gifts of the Spirit such as tongues, healings, visions, and exorcisms.

13. Amillennialism, i.e., no end-times speculation, no grand theories of Revelation, no in-case-of-Rapture church basements, no geopolitical dominoes to line up before the Parousia, no wedding of church and state to facilitate the time, times, and half a time.

14. Apoliticism, i.e., no stump speeches from the pulpit, no “how to vote” cards in the pews, no flags in the sanctuary, no mention of hot social topics in sermons, no sense that “America” is a “Christian nation” (after all, aren’t Baptists and Presbyterians and Catholics running the show?), no sense that government or military or elite institutions are where the highest Christian vocations are found.

15. Arminianism, i.e., an absolute principled rejection of Calvinism in all its forms, an allergy to predestination, a maximal commitment to and reiteration of personal individual free will and its necessity for salvation—so that a person past the age of accountability must choose Christ for him- or herself; absent this free choice, salvation is impossible.

Now take these in reverse order, as I did in the previous post:

15. Like congregationalism and weekly celebration of Communion, Arminianism is here to stay. In this Churches of Christ are most like their American evangelical cousins, and have been from the beginning. The difference is that, historically at least, one’s choice of Christ found public and saving expression in baptism; the choice itself was a prelude, a necessary condition for the salvation found in baptism’s waters, whereas for wider evangelicalism the choice that is faith is itself both necessary and sufficient condition for salvation. Having said that, evangelicalism’s influence on CoC practice can be found in (a) de-emphasizing baptism’s salvific efficacy, (b) lowering the age at which children can be baptized (from, say, mid-teens to mid-elementary), and (c) emphasizing the importance of children’s faith at very young ages.

14. From anecdotal conversations with elders and ministers, the newfound presence of politicization in Churches of Christ is a shock to the system. Whether that means Trumpism in the pews, saying Black Lives Matter from the podium, the polarization around masking and church closures, or hot-button topics like abortion, gender, and sexuality rising to the surface, politics are present in CoC-dom in a way they’ve never been before. It turns out that Facebook and Fox News have been running their own parallel catechesis programs this whole time. They work.

13. The elements of CoC life that my evangelical friends have always found most bewildering are these: high sacraments, low politics, and no end times. From what I can tell, the amillennialism is still present, aside from the occasional lay member who claims to have cracked Revelation’s nut. As a distinguishing mark, though, this one’s pretty weak; there are plenty of churches out there (low church and high) that lack Rapture basements and dispensation-charts and hell houses. Plus, I’m always surprised by the obvious latent interest in “end times” questions that students and peers pose to me, sotto voce, after a class or before service. Millennialism we will always have with us.

12. On one hand, there aren’t exactly hundreds of hyper-charismatic Churches of Christ out there, with flags and dancing and Spirit-slain tongues-speakers running in between the pews. On the other hand, the doctrine of cessationism is quite weak among CoC-ers under 50, in terms of its “givenness” as biblical teaching, and most folks my age and younger are either outright charismatic or at least spooky-curious. I predict that, in another generation, this one’ll be a dead letter.

11. Stone-Campbellite egalitarianism is an odd duck. In its ideal form it radicalizes the priesthood of all believers to include, quite literally, any and every baptized adult. In practice it has usually meant that the church should be led by well-spoken, biblically literate, and gainfully employed married fathers—a station in life to which all young boys without exception should aspire. (No shade; I’m a product of “Timothy Class.”) Some of these men would be preachers and evangelists and teachers; more would be elders; all would, or could, preside at the Lord’s Supper. Every one of the baptized, though, stood on an “equal footing” before the Lord, and was equally capable of reading the clear word of God in Scripture. No special class of seminary-trained priests could tell you what God would tell you himself; as in Luther’s day, the schoolmen were the enemy, sent to complicate and obstruct the sound doctrine of the apostles, unlettered men that they were.
–So where do things stand on this front today? Strangely, in my view.
–Some churches have unfolded the egalitarian impulse to its logical conclusion: not just men but women, not just adults but children, not just the baptized but any and all who report faith in Christ are full members and participants and may, given the occasion, lead, preach, teach, or preside. This is of a piece with wider cultural trends, a one-by-one relaxation or elimination of obstacles and conditions meant to exclude some from what is seen to be the prerogative of all.
–At the same time, there has been a concurrent professionalization of formal ministry, church leadership, and public worship that belies the apparent democratizating trends just outlined. Anyone at all can “preside” at the Supper—but music is in the hands of the professionals. Churches tend to prefer ministry hires to have degrees in Bible or related disciplines and often an MDiv as well. And while Churches of Christ have always placed a premium on preaching, they have not been immune from the impact of the internet. Podcasts, YouTube, and social media have made the best preaching in the world immediately accessible to anyone with a smartphone, even as they have shaped the sermon’s form into something less like proclamation and more like a TED Talk, delivered by well-coiffed preachers in skinny jeans and replete with slickly produced slides and reams of asides and jokes and stories. (All, naturally, live-streamed to the world. And, if you’ve got someone on staff to do it, quickly re-packaged into bite-size videos and disseminated onto social media platforms, fingers crossed for the next viral hit. I call this the tech-church show.)
–In a word, Churches of Christ are simultaneously highly professionalized and extremely egalitarian. So while the anti-clericalism persists at the doctrinal level—no one stands between me and my Bible—it’s far less powerful at the ecclesial level. This trend is exacerbated by the fact that, while most churches are small and getting smaller, the few big churches that remain are only getting bigger. The result is an optical illusion. “Successful” churches look huge, and with huge-ness comes a fleet of well-trained staff members. The message is clear: If you build it, the professionals will come. And when they come, they will run the show. Accordingly, churches we would be tempted to call “mid-size” (I believe, for example, that a church with 350 members is in the ninetieth percentile for congregational size in America) spy this trend and feel the need to professionalize themselves, too, lest they be left behind (like that 90-member church around the block). In this way a certain egalitarianism works in tandem to produce more, not less, professionalization—which is itself a kind of clericalism, albeit in the guise of a kind of corporate management expertise.
–I trust the irony is clear enough: Historically, both Catholic and Protestant traditions ordained pastors who alone could administer the sacraments and proclaim God’s word. The anti-clerical American evangelical genius is to repudiate ordination in light of the priesthood of all believers. So anyone can baptize; anyone can preside. But there arises a new priesthood in the wake of the old: charismatic speakers and talented musicians. Yet such a priesthood appears to be marked by native talent, which in turn comes to function like nothing so much as ordination by genetic lottery. So we have holy orders by other means, rather than its elimination, even as the celebration of the sacraments is moved farther and farther from center stage. (Its nadir being Covid-era at-home self-serve with “whatever’s in the pantry.” This, not from lack of catechesis, but from successful catechesis.)

So. Taking stock. The point of these descriptions, following the previous post, is to wonder (a) how Churches of Christ have changed over the last three or four generations, especially since the turn of the century; and in light of those changes, to ask (b) what if anything continues to mark Churches of Christ as distinct from American evangelicalism. It seems clear to me that the additional five historic “family marks” above do not alter my original verdict. Either they have evolved into alignment with evangelicals or they never distinguished Churches of Christ from evangelicalism in the first place. The absorption, in other words, continues unabated—if it isn’t already complete.

What is a Church of Christ?

Historically, Churches of Christ have been known by a range of formal and informal marks:

1. The name on the building.

2. Congregational autonomy, i.e., governance of a local church by a group of elders; this has entailed (or been entailed by) rejection of any and all supra-local governance, institutional centralization, and denominational hierarchy.

3. Some kind of genetic and/or genealogical and/or self-conscious and/or affiliative connection to the Stone-Campbell Movement.

4. Weekly celebration of the Lord’s Supper.

5. Adult baptism by immersion for the forgiveness of sins.

6. The absence of any creed.

7. A cappella worship.

8. The rejection of sacred tradition.

9. Biblicist primitivism, i.e., a Bible-alone approach to doctrine, ethics, worship, and polity with the aim of restoring, discovering, or approximating the original pattern of the church’s organization, proclamation, and mission. (Call this “the restorationist vision.”)

10. A yoked sectarian ecclesiology and soteriology, in other words, salvation through faithful membership in the one true church founded by Jesus Christ—and not in “denominations,” such as the Baptists or Lutherans or what have you.

You could add other marks (strong cessationism, say, or the absence of ordained pastors alongside the lack of a scripted “high” liturgy), but these ten are strong candidates for the most important family of marks, granting that they never were or could have been etched in stone—given the nature of the movement and the tradition’s polity.

Given the lack of formal organization beyond the local, however, the movement was always bound to change and develop, mutate or evolve. After all, there aren’t any hard controls in place to keep such change from occurring. The question then becomes: Which of these is either necessary or sufficient to identity a Church of Christ today?

Run back through the marks in reverse order:

10. While a hardline soteriology is still present in certain Churches of Christ, over the last few generations a once-severe sectarianism has yielded in various ways to a bigger-tent (evangelical) ecumenism.

9. The same is true here: while a general biblicism is present, it’s more evangelical than primitivist. You can recognize true primitivism by the kinds of arguments it generates, and those arguments are largely a feature of the past.

8. So far as I can tell, many Churches of Christ today are quite open toward sacred tradition, whether liturgical (Ash Wednesday, Advent, the lectionary) or doctrinal (reading Saint Augustine or Saint Thomas or Calvin or Barth) or linguistic (words like “Trinity” and “incarnation” and “catechesis”). Tradition of this sort is no longer self-evidently anathema.

7. A cappella is still dominant, but more and more churches are introducing instruments into public worship.

6. I know more than a few Churches of Christ that recite, affirm, or endorse either the Apostles’ Creed or the Nicene Creed. And among those that do not, I don’t find many pastors who are theologically anti-creedal on principle, even if they wouldn’t impose a creed on their congregations.

5. Baptism is interesting. It retains its significance in many ways. Yet in two respects matters have changed (if only beneath the surface, as it were). On one hand, the age of children who are baptized has been moving “downward.” On the other, emphasis on immersion-baptism being necessary for salvation—that is, the very moment of being saved, apart from which one would be certainly damned—has likewise declined. “Emphasis” here is the key word: it’s about what is said and left unsaid. Baptism’s still a big deal. But CoC folks from a century ago would be shocked by what they would surely perceive as a lessening of emphasis on what matters most.

4. So far as I can tell, pretty much everyone still celebrates the Lord’s Supper weekly. Someone, though, will be the first to change: perhaps through the now-popular “optional communion in the back, self-serve as you please” approach, perhaps through moving to (an occasional) monthly observance. Having said that, across all ten of these marks, including the next three, I’ll go on record to predict that, at the macro level, this is the last one to go for most congregations.

3. Connection to the Stone-Campbell Movement is a tricky question. Many Churches of Christ today have simply forgotten their connection to the SCM; by the same token, many congregations that have dropped the “of Christ” from their name retain a clear genetic influence from the Movement. In either case, though, neither elders nor pastors are reading Stone and Campbell; and in terms of contemporary authors, they’re just as likely to be reading prominent evangelicals as they are to be reading CoC scholars. The once-tight networks of ecclesial kinship that prevailed among Churches of Christ have been laid waste over the last twenty-five years, with the demolition showing no signs of abating. Not a few Churches of Christ today are led by elders and ministers who have no investment in perpetuating something called “the Church of Christ,” and wouldn’t hesitate to tell you.

2. Congregational autonomy hasn’t gone and isn’t going anywhere—though one now sees, and can imagine, semi-formal relationships with parachurch organizations that once (even in the recent past) would have been unthinkable, organizations whose doctrine and practice depart widely from historic CoC doctrine and practice.

1. Plenty of CoCs have, as I’ve said, dropped the genitive modifier; those that remain, by definition, have kept it. Tautologically, the name endures with congregations that have chosen to retain it, and it does not with those that have not.

Now. Suppose I’m broadly right about all this. I’ll ask again: What are the necessary and/or sufficient marks of a Church of Christ today? How should they be identified?

Marks six through ten appear not to be necessary, since there are Churches of Christ one can point to that lack them. In addition, the fifth and third marks, on baptism and SCM-heritage respectively, are tenuous. Plenty of traditions practice immersive believers baptism; in itself that’s not a distinguishing feature of Churches of Christ.

What we’re left with, it seems to me, are marks one, two, and four. Including some other marks in revised form, I think it’s fair to say that we have a Church of Christ today if:

(a) it calls itself a “Church of Christ,”

(b) its polity is congregationalist,

(c) it celebrates the Lord’s Supper weekly,

(d) it baptizes by immersion (but not babies), and

(e) it belongs in some way to informal or affiliative CoC networks.

At the descriptive or sociological level, this appears accurate to me. But it raises some problems, or at least some questions.

First, apart from the name, aren’t there churches today that this definition describes that are manifestly not Churches of Christ? I know countless congregationalist churches that practice believers’ baptism and weekly communion. Typically they are “Bible churches” or “community churches” or non-denominational. Some of them even fall into (e), because for one reason or another they participate in CoC networks. They just don’t call themselves a Church of Christ.

Second, suppose a congregation drops the name but meets all the other criteria—including some of the others in the earlier list of ten marks. In other words, an ex–CoC that, for all intents and purposes, still looks and sounds and feels like a CoC. How should we think of such a church?

Third, are there today any material theological teachings or normative doctrinal claims that distinguish a Church of Christ from a non-denom evangelical church? It appears not—and this is in line with biblicism, not a contravention of it, since each believer as well as congregation is free to read the Bible for him/her/itself, minus the interposition of sacred tradition. And all the more if such folks opt to learn from concrete Christian traditions, whether Thomism or Eastern Orthodoxy or Calvinism or what have you. (Thus you have the irony of a biblicist-primitivist-congregationalist anti-tradition drinking deeply from the well of catholic tradition, and changing doctrine and liturgy accordingly.)

Fourth, what happens to contemporary Churches of Christ while, all around them, the informal networks that once sustained a thick CoC identity continue rapidly to decline? It’s not a secret that many Churches of Christ are on hospice care right now. The tight boundaries once drawn by editors, journals, preaching schools, the preaching circuit, famous ministers, widely read authors, colleges and universities, and other unofficial “denominational” organizations either no longer exist or possess a fraction of the power and influence they once exercised. In their absence, what holds the movement together, as a discrete, identifiable movement?

Fifth and finally, are the “family marks” that endure—(a) through (e) above—substantial enough to “pick out” congregations that a sociologist would agree form, or belong to, the same tradition/movement? Consider all the differences that mark Churches of Christ today: some worship with instruments, some don’t; some ordain, some don’t; some have women preachers, some don’t; some have women elders, some don’t; some are LGBT-affirming, some aren’t; some follow the lectionary, some don’t; some observe liturgical seasons, some don’t; some baptize Kindergarteners, some don’t; some “get political” (on Trump or race or gender or sex), some don’t; some say the Creed, some don’t; some “re-baptize” Catholics, some don’t; some practice open communion (i.e., inviting the unbaptized to partake), some don’t; some affirm the restorationist vision, some don’t; some affirm charismatic spiritual gifts, some don’t; some affirm military service, some don’t; some are biblicist, some aren’t; some reject eucharistic real presence, some don’t; some sing CCM “worship songs,” some don’t; some use a single cup, some don’t; some have statements of faith, some don’t; some affirm the doctrine of the Trinity, some don’t.

The list could go on. Interestingly enough, different items here that might appear to outsiders as coded “progressive” versus “conservative” are sometimes joined together. The results are fascinating. Very nearly all Churches of Christ are trending evangelical, but sometimes that very trend is a sign of a move in a politically progressive or theologically liberal direction, just as, sometimes, it’s the opposite. It’s case be case, congregation by congregation. Quite often a congregation is moving in two or more directions at once, and its own members don’t realize it until very late in the process.

I’ve written about all this at length elsewhere (and, I should add, I’ve drawn together and expanded those posts on Churches of Christ as catholic/evangelical/neither/both into an article that will be published soon in Restoration Quarterly). All that I want to say here is this. In the American context, in the third decade of the twenty-first century, it is well nigh impossible to know what “makes” a Church of Christ a Church of Christ beyond a given congregation’s self-definition. Any further necessary features—not to mention sufficient marks—will either immediately carve off a sizeable chunk of existing Churches of Christ or inadvertently include, as a Church of Christ, all kinds of “normie” American evangelical churches that the definition is meant to exclude.

Put it this way. If you learn that a neighbor or stranger or friend attends a Church of Christ, it’s not different in kind from learning that he or she attends a local evangelical or non-denominational church. You haven’t yet learned the relevant theological or moral or social or political information. What matters, what tells you something significant, is what comes next in the conversation, in answer to the following question: Well, what kind? Tell me about your church.

That’s how it is today, and only more so as each year passes. The transformation is happening, has happened, before our very eyes. It’s undeniable. But it has to be noticed, observed, commented on, to be seen for what it is. For it was not ever thus.

My latest: the ends of theological education

Sapientia is the online periodical of the Carl F. H. Henry Center for Theological Understanding, housed at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. They regularly publish series organized around themes or questions, and the latest is on theological education. You can read Joshua Jipp’s introduction to the series here. My entry is the first to be published; it’s called “The Ends of Theological Education.” Here’s how it starts:

The first and final end of theological education is the knowledge of God. The God in question is not just any deity, much less generic divinity, at least if the theological education in view is Christian. Christian theological education is instruction in the Christian God, which is to say, the triune God of Israel. Theological education is about him, namely, the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ revealed by his own Holy Spirit. Whatever else it may be, whatever other ends it may have, theological education aims at the Holy Trinity or it misses the mark entirely.

There are many genres and locations for theological education. The modern research university is only one among many institutional habitats for it, the latest and perhaps the most expansive home, if not the snuggest fit. The monastery is one ancient and abiding institution for instruction in divine knowledge. Sunday school is another. Sometimes theological education happens within the Church, sometimes not; sometimes taught by the ordained, sometimes not; sometimes in a catechetical or devotional spirit, sometimes not. There is no one right way to do it.

Read the rest here.

Conversions, Protestantism, and a new mainline

Why do people convert to Christianity? Why do intellectuals and other public figures convert so often to Catholicism (or Eastern Orthodoxy) and so rarely to Protestantism? And what is the fate of both Catholicism and Protestantism among American elites and their institutions, given the decimation of the liberal mainline? Could a new mainline arise to take its place, and if so, who would it be and what would it look like?

Dozens of writers have taken up these questions in recent weeks, some (not all) prompted by Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s conversion and her written explanation for it. Here’s Douthat and Freddie and Tyler Cowen and Alan Jacobs (and Alan again). Here’s Justin Smith-Ruiu. Here are two reflections about why Catholicism instead of Protestantism. And here is a series of pieces by Jake Meador on both the “new mainline” question and the “why Catholicism” question—with a useful corrective by Onsi Kamel.

I’ve got some belated thoughts; in my mind they connect to all of the above.

1. It’s worth making clear at the outset that countless people defect annually from Catholicism and Orthodoxy, whether into unbelief or into some Protestant sect. So the question isn’t about who’s winning or which group people in general prefer or comparing overall numbers. The question is about public figures and intellectuals and their conversions, as adults, from unbelief to faith. Why does that type of person always seem to be joining “catholic” traditions (defined, for now, as Roman Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy, and perhaps also the Anglican Communion)?

2. Summed up in a single sentence, the reason as I see it is that Catholicism is a living tradition embodied in a global institution that stretches back millennia, claims divine authority, and contains both a storehouse of intellectual resources and a panoply of powerful devotional and liturgical practices. Let’s unpack that.

3. Catholicism is a world. Protestantism is not. Protestantism is not anything particular at all. It’s an umbrella or genus term that encompasses numerous unconnected or at best half-related Christian traditions, the oldest of which goes back five hundred years and the newest of which is barely older than a generation. There are not “Protestants,” somewhere out there. No ordinary layperson says, “I’m Protestant.” What he or she says is, “I’m Presbyterian” or “I’m Methodist” or “I’m Pentecostal” or “I’m Evangelical” or “I’m Lutheran” or “I’m Church of Christ” or “I’m Moravian” or “I’m Calvinist” or “I’m Baptist” or some other name. And the thing about midlife conversions on the part of public intellectuals is that they aren’t looking for a sub-culture. They’re looking for a moral and spiritual universe. They don’t want a branch of the tree; they want the tree itself—the trunk, the very root. “Protestantism” makes no exclusive claims to be the trunk as such. Its trunkness is never even in view. The question, therefore, is almost always whether Catholicism East or West is, properly speaking, the Christian trunk. Folks already in the West typically, though far from always, opt for the West’s claim of primacy.

4. Note well that this observation isn’t per se a critique of Protestants or a presumption against them. The fundamental feature of Protestantism is an ecumenical evangelicalism in the strict sense: a Christian whole created and sustained and defined by nothing else than the gospel itself. So that second-order sub-gospel confessional identities are subsumed in and comprehended by God’s singular work in Christ, which is the sovereign word proclaimed by the good news. In this way, according to Protestants, any and all attempts to be, or searches to find, “the trunk” is a distortion of true catholicity.

5. Be that as it may, the catholicity of Catholicism tends to be what wayward, agnostic, restless public intellectuals are after. And so they find it elsewhere than in Protestantism.

6. There is a reason why so many evangelical and Protestant graduate students in theology move toward “higher church” traditions. Intellectually, they discover thinkers and writings their own “lower church” traditions either ignore or lack; liturgically, they discover practices handed down century after century that function like a lifeline in a storm. Reading Saint Ignatius or Saint Justin or Saint Irenaeus or Saint Augustine, it occurs to them that they don’t have to imagine what the church’s ancient liturgy looked and felt like; they can simply visit a church down the street.

7. Speaking only anecdotally, I have never known students of Christian theology to move “down” the ecclesial ladder. I have only known them (a) to move “up,” (b) to move “left,” or (c) to move “out.” That is, relative to where they started, they go catholic, they go liberal, or they go away, leaving the faith behind. This remains true even of those who do not shift from one tradition or denomination to another: Baptists start reading Aquinas, evangelicals start celebrating Ash Wednesday, non-denom-ers start reciting the Creed. Or, if the move is lateral instead of vertical, one retains inherited beliefs and practices but changes on moral and social questions. Either way, “down” is not an option in practice.

8. Once again this fact, or observation, need not mean anything in itself. The populist or evangelical criticism might well be apt: Theological education places obstacles between students and the plain gospel. A student of theology “classes up,” thereby rendered unable to join “lower” classes in the purity of normal believers’ unadorned worship. Perhaps, then, this is an argument against the sort of theological education dominant today!

9. All this applies, mutatis mutandis, to public intellectuals. Put another way, suppose you are an atheist or agnostic exposed, over time, to the desert fathers, or to the pro-Nicene fathers of the fourth and fifth centuries, or to Saint Maximus Confessor or Saint John of Damascus, or to Benedictine monks, or to Saint Thérèse of Lisieux, or to Julian of Norwich, or to Saint Francis or Saint Bernard or Saint Anselm. It would simply never occur to you that what you find in these authors is what you’d find in the Methodist congregation on the corner, or the Baptist church around the block, or the non-denom start-up across town. Not only do the devotional and liturgical, spiritual and theological worlds conjured by these writers and texts not exist in such spaces. The traditions themselves do not claim the figures in question. You go, therefore, to the people and the places who are bold enough to say, “Those names are our names; those saints are our saints; those books are our books. We nurture and preserve and pass them on. Come learn them from us; indeed, come learn from us what they learned themselves, in their own time.”

10. In sum: What intellectuals, especially agnostic intellectuals in midlife, are restlessly searching for is something not man-made, but divine; not provisional, but final; not a question, but an answer. They are looking for rest, however penultimate in this life, not more open-ended restlessness. Something that lasts. Something that can plausibly make a claim both to antiquity and to permanency. A bulwark that will not fail. Something to defer to, submit to, bow one’s head in surrender to; something to embrace and be embraced by: a teacher but also a mother. And the truth is that Rome plausibly presents itself as both mater et magistra, the pillar and bulwark of the truth. Orthodoxy does as well. The plausibility explains why so many intellectuals find port of harbor with each of them. The reverse, in turn, explains why so few of those sorts of people convert from rudderless adult atheism to Protestantism with a capital-p.

11. As for motives, if what I’ve outlined so far is true, then it makes perfect emotional sense for restless brainy seekers whose spiritual midlife crisis is prompted by perceived civilizational decline, torpor, and decadence to turn to catholic Christianity, East or West, as a haven in a heartless, spiritless, lifeless world. They aren’t making a category error, nor are they (necessarily) joining the church in a merely instrumental sense. For all we know, their search for capital-t Truth in a culture that refuses the concept altogether may be wise rather than self-serving. As Alan remarked, “what matters is not where you start but where you end up.” Doubtless there are people who join Christianity as a cultural project; must they remain there forever? I see no reason why we must, as a matter of necessity, say yes, for all people, always, in every circumstance. No adult is baptized without a confession of faith; if a new convert makes an honest confession and receives the grace of Christ’s saving waters, then he or she is a new creation, God’s own child, whatever the mixed motives involved. To say this isn’t to worship the God-shaped hole in our hearts instead of God himself. It’s to acknowledge, from the side of faith, that the hole is real. Because the hole is real, different people will find themselves knocking on Christ’s door—which is to say, on the doors of the church—for every manner of reason in every manner of situation. What Christ promises is that, to the one who knocks, the door will be opened. He does not lay down conditions for what counts as a good reason for knocking. Nor should we.

12. See here the opening paragraph of Christian Wiman’s new book, Zero at the Bone: Fifty Entries Against Despair (from entry 1, page 5):
    Thirty years ago, watching some television report about depression and religion—I forget the relationship but apparently there was one—a friend who was entirely secular asked me with genuine curiosity and concern: “Why do they believe in something that doesn’t make them happy?” I was an ambivalent atheist at that point, beset with an inchoate loneliness and endless anxieties, contemptuous of Christianity but addicted to its aspirations and art. I was also chained fast to the rock of poetry, having my liver pecked out by the bird of a harrowing and apparently absurd ambition—and thus had some sense of what to say. One doesn’t follow God in hope of happiness but because one senses—miserable flimsy little word for that beak in your bowels—a truth that renders ordinary contentment irrelevant. There are some hungers that only an endless commitment to emptiness can feed, and the only true antidote to the plague of modern despair is an absolute—and perhaps even annihilating—awe. “I prayed for wonders instead of happiness,” writes the great Jewish theologian Abraham Joshua Heschel, “and You gave them to me.”

13. Now: Given this apparent movement among once-secular intellectuals toward faith, or at least a renewed openness toward the claims of faith, what about a parallel movement toward a kind of Christian establishment—and in America, a “new Protestant mainline”? Any answer here is always subject to the ironies of divine providence. Christ’s promise to Saint Peter stands, which means that the forces arrayed against Christ’s body will never finally succeed. That doesn’t mean all or even any of our local or parochial ecclesial projects will succeed. But some of them might, against the odds. That’s God’s business, though, not ours. For now, then, some earthbound comments and fallible predictions.

14. I can’t speak to the situation in Europe or Great Britain, though my two cents, for what little it’s worth, is that we will not be seeing anything like a renaissance of established religion among elites and their institutions in our or our children’s lifetimes. In the U.S., I likewise think anything like a renewed liberal mainline is impossible. The once-dominant mainline—mainly comprising Episcopalians, Presbyterians, Lutherans, and Methodists—is on life support where it isn’t already dead and buried. As a coherent civic bloc, much less a motive force among elites, it is undeniably a thing of the past. I take that as read.

15. So the only viable question in the American context, if there were ever to be a “new” mainline, is whether it would be Catholic, magisterial Protestant, or evangelical. There was a moment, as many others have written, when American Catholicism was in process of making a bid to function like a new mainline. That period runs basically from the birth of Richard John Neuhaus in 1936 (the height of the Great Depression, the end of FDR’s first term, with World War II imminent) to his passing in 2009 (Bush in disgrace, Obama triumphant, the Great Recession, in the sixth year of the Iraq War). Catholics were well represented in elite universities, in think tanks, in D.C., in presidential administrations, in magazines that fed and fueled all of the above. But between the priest sex abuse scandals, Iraq, the divisiveness of abortion, and rolling political losses on social issues (above all gay marriage), the dream of an American Catholic Mainline proved not to be.

16. As for conservative Protestants and evangelicals, the former lack in numbers what the latter lack in everything else. Here’s what I mean. A genuine mainline or unofficially established church has to possess the following features: (a) so many millions of adherents that they’re “just there,” since some of them are invariably “around,” no matter one’s context; (b) powerful centralized institutions; (c) an internal logic that drives its laypeople to seek and acquire powerful roles in elite institutional contexts; (d) a strong emphasis on education in law, politics, and the liberal arts and their various expressions in careers and professions; (e) an investment in and sense of responsibility for the governing order, both its status quo and its ongoing reform; (f) a suspicion of populism and a rejection of revolution; (g) a taste for prestige, a desire for excellence, and an affinity for establishment; (h) wealth; (i) the ears of cultural and political elites; (j) networks of institutions, churches, and neighborhoods filled with civic-minded laypeople who can reliably be organized as a voting bloc or interest group; (k) groups of credentialed intellectuals who participate at the highest levels of their respective disciplines, whether religious or secular; (l) a loose but real shared moral and theological orthodoxy that is relatively stable and common across class and educational lines; (m) an ecclesial and spiritual culture of thick religious identity alongside popular tacit membership, such that not only “committed believers” but mediocre Christians and even finger-crossing public figures can say, with a straight face, that they are members in good standing of said established tradition.

17. If even part of my (surely incomplete) list here is accurate, it should be self-evident why neither evangelicals nor conservative Protestants could possibly compose a new American mainline. It’s hard to put into words just how tiny “traditional” or “orthodox” magisterial Protestantism is in the U.S. It would be unkind but not unfair to call it a rump. Its size has been demolished by a quadruple defection over the past three generations: to secularism, to liberalism, to evangelicalism, to Rome. It’s arguable whether there ever even was any meaningful presence of magisterial Protestantism in America of the sort one could find in Europe. The four-headed monster just mentioned is a ravenous beast, and old-school Lutherans and Wesleyans and Reformed have been the victims. You need numbers to have power, not to mention institutions and prestige, and the numbers just aren’t there; nor is there a path to reaching them. It’s not in the cards.

18. Evangelicals still have the numbers, even if they’re waning, but as I said before, they lack just about everything else: the institutionalism, the intellectualism, the elite ethos, the prestige and excellence, the allergy to populism—nearly all of it. Evangelicalism is Protestant populism. This is why evangelicals who enter elite spaces slowly, or sometimes not so slowly, lose the identifying marks of evangelicalism. It isn’t strange to learn that Prestigious Scholar X on the law/econ/poli-sci faculty at Ivy League School Y is Roman Catholic. It is a bit of a surprise to learn that he’s an evangelical. The moment you hear it, though, you wonder (or ask) whether he’s an evangelical Anglican or some such. Consider high-rank Protestant universities with large evangelical faculties, like Wheaton or Baylor or George Fox. Ask the religion, theology, and humanities professors where they go to church. Chances are it’s an Anglican parish. Chances are that not a few of them, if they left, or if the university permits it, have transitioned from evangelical to Anglican to Roman Catholic or Eastern Orthodox. This is just the way of things in higher-ed as well as other elite institutions.

19. Here’s one way to think about it. An evangelical who climbs the elite ladder is more or less required, by the nature of the case, to shed vital elements of her evangelical identity. But a Catholic is not. And a Catholic is not for the same reason that, once upon a time, a liberal Protestant was not. A high-church Episcopalian wasn’t working against the grain by earning a law degree from Princeton or Yale a century ago. That’s what Episcopalians do. It’s what Episcopalianism is. Moreover, if said Episcopalian began as a wide-eyed conservative and ended a enlightened liberal, he would remain Episcopalian the whole time. There’d be no need to leave for some other tradition; the tradition encompassed both identities, indeed encouraged passage from one to the other. Whereas an evangelical who becomes liberal becomes a self-contradiction. A liberal evangelical is an oxymoron. He lacks any reason to exist. Evangelicalism isn’t liberal, in any sense. It is axiomatically and essentially illiberal. To become liberal, therefore, is to cease to be evangelical. That’s not what evangelicalism is for. Evangelicals who become liberal remain evangelical only for a time; they eventually exit faith, or swim the Tiber, or become actual liberal Protestants, where they feel right at home. Which means, for the purposes of this discussion, that every single time evangelicals send their best and brightest to elite institutions to be “faithfully present” there, only for them to become liberal in the process, evangelicalism loses one of its own. The same goes, obviously, for a rising-star evangelical who loses faith or becomes Catholic or Orthodox.

20. The other thing to note is that the “moral” part of “moral and theological orthodoxy” is absolutely up for grabs right now, in every single Christian tradition and denomination in America. No church has successfully avoided being roiled and split in two by arguments over gender and sexuality. Nor is there some happy middle ground where everybody agrees to disagree. One or another normative view is going to win out, in each and every local community and global communion. We just don’t know, at this point in time, where the cards are going to fall. In that light, any ambition for conservative Protestants (or Catholics, for that matter) to form an established religious backdrop for elite cultural and political organs in America is a pipe dream, given what “conservative” means regarding sexual ethics. Whoever is still standing, Christianly speaking, at the end of this century, the wider culture is not going to welcome new overlords who oppose the legality of abortion, same-sex marriage, no-fault divorce, and artificial contraception. I mean, come on. Most Protestants I know take for granted the legality (and usually the morality, too) of all but the first, and are politically ambivalent about the first as well. Protestants are in numerical decline anyway, a fact I’ve bracketed for these reflections. Put it all together, and the reasons why public intellectuals don’t convert to Protestantism are inseparable from, and sometimes identical to, the reasons why magisterial Protestantism is not poised to become a new American mainline. Do with that what you will.

Three podcasts and two reviews

A bunch of links to share with AAR/SBL and Thanksgiving just around the corner.

First up is three podcasts I went on in the last month:

• On Mere Fidelity I joined the guys to talk about Matthew Lee Anderson’s new book Called Into Questions. I imagined a grilling, but the book is so good it just ended up being a conversation about the topics raised, which are particularly acute for pastors, teachers, parents, and professors. In addition, on Matt’s Substack, I interviewed him with a print Q&A about the book over two editions of the newsletter.

• On Know Why, I spoke with Liberty McArtor about my Christianity Today column on how to keep one’s faith in college as well as the challenges facing all of us, young people especially, by digital technology.

• On Theological Table Talk, I spoke with Keith Stanglin and Todd Hall about my article for the Journal of Christian Studies called “The Fittingness of Holy Orders.” We talked about the academy, the sacraments, catholic tradition, and churches of Christ. (The Zoom conversation includes video on YouTube.)

Further, two more reviews of my books are out:

• In the Journal of Analytic Theology, Caleb Lindgren reviews The Church’s Book. An odd fit for the journal, he admits, but he finds some points of contact with analytic thought. The review is quite positive while also wanting more from the book’s arguments and proposals, if not from me then from analytic theologians who might extend them.

• In the newest issue of the Stone-Campbell Journal, Rob O’Lynn also reviews The Church’s Book. I don’t yet have a link to an online version of the review; I’ll post it once I do. O’Lynn is mixed on the value of the book, tilting more negative than positive; or at least, positive at the level of the parts but underwhelmed by the whole.

Finally, be on the lookout for these:

• An essay on theological education in Sapientia.

• A review of Matthew Thiessen’s A Jewish Paul in Commonweal.

• An essay on Miroslav Volf and Ryan McAnnally-Linz’s book The Home of God in a symposium on Syndicate.

• An essay on the late Albert Borgmann … somewhere.

• An article on evangelicalism, catholicity, and the future of churches of Christ in Restoration Quarterly.

• A review of David Kelsey’s latest (and final) book Human Anguish and God’s Power in the Stone-Campbell Journal—published more than a year ago without my realizing it!

More stuff in the works, whether already written or to be written soon, all due out sometime in the new year. I’ll be in San Antonio this weekend for the annual SBL/AAR conference; no papers, but I will be chairing one of the “Theological Interpretation” sessions: a panel responding to Amy Peeler’s book Women and the Gender of God. Should be good fun. Perhaps I’ll see some of y’all there.

So you want to get a PhD in theology

I’ve been asked for advice about how to apply to doctoral programs in theology for more than a dozen years. I’ve had the goal, that whole time, of writing up a blog post that I could share with people when they ask. I’ve always found a way not to write it, though, at least in part because the ideal post would be either vanishingly short or impossibly long. In the latter case, a short book. In the former case, a simple sentence:

ABANDON ALL HOPE YE WHO ENTER HERE

Is it possible to split the difference? I think, at long last, I’m going to try. At the very least, I owe it to the students who meet with me each year with the question in mind, as well as the readers who email me regularly asking the same thing. If I do end up saying something useful to them, perhaps I can put it in writing here.

So let’s do it. The format won’t exactly be FAQ, but I’ll frame my advice in response to perennial queries—twenty in total.

NB: I’m not advising folks interested in English or engineering. I’m speaking to students interested in theology of some kind, or at least a theological discipline. The further one’s field is from Christian systematic theology, the less likely my advice applies. I’m also assuming a Christian interlocutor. Plenty of my answers will still apply to a nonbelieving applicant, but those are the folks who come to me, those are the folks likeliest to pursue Christian theology, and those are the folks who share my reasons and goals for becoming a theologian. Reader beware.

*

1. Should I apply to a PhD program in theology?

Only God knows, but here are some pointers:

• Ask yourself why you’re drawn to it. A sweet job? Love for God? Like being a pastor, but for brainy types? Because you like to read? Because you feel called to it, as in, this is why God put you on planet earth? Let me tell you now: The first four answers aren’t good enough.

• Here are two related questions that can help in discerning an answer to the larger question. (a) Would you be happy that you spent 6-10 years of your life earning multiple graduate degrees in theology even if you never became a professor? Alternatively: (b) Even if you never pursued graduate studies in theology, would you nonetheless find ways to “be a theologian” (read theology, write it, teach it, talk about it with others) in your spare time, outside of your civilian day job? If your answer is an unqualified and emotional Yes! to both questions, then a PhD might be for you. If a No to either, much less both, then don’t do it.

• How are your grades? Have multiple professors pointed you to doctoral studies? If your grades aren’t top of the class and/or your professors seem not to have noticed you, there may be extenuating reasons, but in general it means a PhD is probably not for you.

2. How hard is it to get into a PhD program?

Pretty hard, though I’m assuming that you mean (a) a high-quality program that’s (b) fully funded. The thing to understand is that, at the best of times, applying to programs is a crapshoot. I got into my program, an Ivy, on my first round of applications (and not via the wait list)—the very same year that nine other programs turned me down. (A few of those did put me on the wait list; one program whittled down the applicants to two others and myself. I was the odd man out; they admitted the other two. I’m still friendly with both!) There’s just no formula for this, much less logical predictability.

You need to know, at any rate, that you will be going up against dozens (occasionally hundreds, at least on the job market) of other applicants, all of whom will have impressive degrees from impressive institutions and loads of experience—even, these days, with a filled-out CV and publications. Them’s the odds.

3. Where should I apply?

That depends. For theology specifically, lists of the best American programs generally include Yale, Notre Dame, Chicago, Princeton Seminary, Duke, Emory, Vanderbilt, Catholic University of America, Saint Louis University, Marquette, SMU, Baylor, Fordham, Boston University, Boston College, Dayton—in something like that order, depending on one’s specific field and areas of interest. I think it’s fair to say the first half dozen or so are typically thought of as the top tier or cream of the crop.

(I should add: These things aren’t especially controversial in ordinary conversation among academics; after all, the rankings reveal themselves in how hard it is to be accepted, funding, stipends, who gets job interviews, and who gets the jobs themselves. Prestige and symbolic capital are by definition unequally distributed. At the same time, it’s a bit awkward to put in black and white, because academics are as a rule fiercely competitive, deeply ambitious, and insecure. But I said I’d try to be helpful, and that means honesty, so there you go.)

Some schools I left off the list:

• British universities: Oxford, Cambridge, Aberdeen, St Andrews, et al. Excellent programs, but not on this continent!

• Canadian schools, like Toronto or McGill. Both likewise excellent.

• Harvard, which so far as I know does not have a PhD in Christian theology. Harvard Divinity School does, I believe, have a ThD, just like Duke Divinity School (which is in addition to Duke University’s PhD in theology via its religious studies department). For those new to all this … yes, it’s complicated.

• Religion programs like Princeton University (≠ Princeton Theological Seminary), the University of Virginia, Brown, Rice, and the University of Texas. (There are others!) Typically these may be excellent programs for Old or New Testament, for church history, for philosophy, and so on, but not for theology. Princeton and Virginia are exceptions; they don’t necessarily produce systematic theologians, but they are happy to produce scholars of religion, philosophy, and ethics who are not allergic to theology; who, even, are theologically literate, informed, and conversant. Mirabile dictu!

• Evangelical schools like Fuller, Wheaton, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, Dallas Theological Seminary, and the various Baptist seminaries. These programs include excellent scholars and wonderful programs, albeit with two drawbacks. First, a doctoral degree from these schools almost always means that you will be hired “back” at them. In other words, an evangelical PhD means an employer pool of evangelical schools. That’s not a dealbreaker for plenty of folks, since many would like to be hired by such schools and/or have no interest going elsewhere. But forewarned is forearmed, etc. Second, many (most? all? I don’t know the numbers) of these programs are not fully funded. That means you, the doctoral student, will have to pay for the privilege of being a student out of pocket or via loans. That’s a tough row to hoe without a job—or with a job that doesn’t pay much—awaiting you at the end of five or six years. Compare that with, for example, Yale’s PhD students, who are fully funded for six full years and receive an annual stipend of around $40,000 and have access to free health care in the Yale New Haven hospital system. You can see how at a certain point it’s apples and oranges. No salary cap means the Yankees always have the best roster.

• Primarily or exclusively online programs. Speaking only for myself, but speaking frankly, I would advise against this—which is distinct from advising against programs that facilitate part one’s degree being completed long distance. Certain prestigious and well-funded schools have a long track record of doing just that.

I hope that gives you a reasonable lay of the land.

4. How do you or anyone else know all this?

Gossip. The epistemology of academe is gossip. It’s the only way anyone knows anything about anything.

5. How should I choose where to go?

Well first, you don’t choose anyone, they choose you. But from this direction, too, it’s a crapshoot. If you have the time and the money, apply to five or ten or fifteen programs! Cast the net wide and see if you catch anything. Beyond that, there are different schools of thought, and none of them is “right.”

(a) Some advise that you find a particular scholar and apply to where she or he is so that you can work with her or him.

(b) Some advise that you go where your particular sub-field of study is thriving, whether it’s Barth or von Balthasar, classical theism or practical theology, christology or critical theory.

(c) Some advise that you say yes to the most prestigious school that admits you, no matter what.

(d) Some advise that you put your ear to the ground and head to the school with the reputation for the healthiest environment for student flourishing. (For example, for decades Chicago has been known as the program that will take the longest to finish while taking the most out of you. It also has meant that those who do finish are assumed to be mega-scholars bound for greatness. Like an eight-year medical residency for a certain kind of surgical specialist. It’s all about tradeoffs.)

What do I think? Depends on the applicant, her prior studies, her major field, her interests, who lets her in, and so on. My purely anecdotal two cents is that I’d lean in the direction of a combination of (c) and (d), with less emphasis on (a) or (b). I applied to my doctoral program almost on a whim, and got in knowing next to nothing about the culture or the professors or their expertise. If you had given me a certain kind of lowdown in advance, I would have expected to be an odd fit. And yet my time as a PhD student was pure bliss, more or less. So I’m weary of supposing anyone can know, prior to arriving, whether a program is a good fit. You see the fit after you unpack your boxes! But that’s just my story. You should take all these factors into account.

6. Are there really no jobs in academic theology anymore?

Yes and no. Yes, there are jobs and there always will be, in some form. No, they really are shrinking, and fast. You’d be surprised at the number of Apple and McKinsey employees with PhDs in religion.

7. Whenever this comes up, I hear race and gender mentioned. These really do matter—myth or fact?

Fact. In this country, theology and adjacent disciplines (religion, philosophy, ethics, Bible) have been a white man’s game for a very long time. Accordingly, over the last half century seminaries and religion departments have been responding at two levels: PhD students and tenure-track posts. Even still, the fields of Bible and theology remain some of the most male-dominated in the American academy, alongside philosophy, economics, and physics. Most others have reached relative parity or have swung the other way, gender-wise.

What that means for you is, yes, you will have priority as an applicant if you are a woman or person of color. If that’s you, great! Let it put a little wind in your sails, though don’t let it give you undue confidence; you’ve still got to beat out tons of other folks. If that’s not you, it doesn’t mean you shouldn’t apply, but neither should you go in naive. This is simply the way things are, like it or not. Don’t get pouty. I can tell you right now, that will ensure you never advance one inch in this world.

8. You mentioned “tenure-track” posts. I’ve heard that phrase but don’t know what it means.

“Tenure-track” (TT for short) jobs are the most coveted gig for academics. In a word, it signals long-term job security. Non-TT jobs are likelier to pay less or involve higher teaching loads or be nixed when budget cuts appear on the horizon. Tenure track means that you will begin without tenure, but around year six or seven you will “go up” for tenure. This means you will apply to your university to receive tenure (plus promotion—hence “T&P”). This comes with a change of rank (Assistant to Associate Professor) and a raise, usually, but the real thing you get is the other t-word: tenure. You’re now, in a sense, employed for life. (Not really, but this is big picture.)

Tenure functions in theory to protect your free speech as an intellectual. You can study, think, write, and speak whatever you believe to be true or worthy of investigation, and nobody can fire you for having “wrong” ideas or “bad” politics. Now this is an ideal with many asterisks and exceptions. Nevertheless it’s not an empty gesture. It does have teeth. For that reason you have to be granted it; it’s not automatic. Depending on your institution, your application will weight things differently: research, teaching, collegiality, service. Ivy League schools are notorious for being stingy here, lower-tier schools less so. But everywhere occasionally (or more than occasionally) denies professors T&P. If you don’t get it, you finish out your year (or two), and then you have to leave. Yes, it’s that brutal.

9. Say I’m still interested. What should I do to try to get into a program?

Depends on when and where you are in the process. If you’re in high school, as opposed to finishing your second Master’s degree, my advice will be different. But here are some things worth doing:

• Learn languages. Master at least one language beyond your native tongue. If you can manage learning one ancient language and one living foreign language, you will automatically be a strong candidate.

• Study something relevant in college, whether that be religion, Bible, history, philosophy, ethics, theology, linguistics, or classics.

• Get a 4.0 GPA, in both college and Master’s programs.

• Form relationships with your professors. Not only will this begin to induct you into the world of academia, it will grease the wheels for the letters of recommendation you’ll eventually ask them to write for you. Also, just as academic epistemology is gossip, academic training and hiring is nothing but networks. It’s all in who you know.

• Study hard for the GRE, and ideally take it more than once. I’m convinced that I made the cut at Yale because the committee at that time culled applications on the front end with a hard GRE cut-off score. Some programs don’t care, but others do.

• Learn your field. Follow down footnote rabbit trails, ask professors for recommendations—try to get a sense of the hundred or so most prominent names in your sub-area of theology, and if possible start reading their work!

• Read everything. And I do mean everything. The memory that comes to mind is sitting in bed after my wife had fallen asleep, aged 22 or 23, and reading William Cavanaugh’s Torture and Eucharist. No one assigned it to me. I don’t know how I happened upon it. I was just reading it because I felt I should, out of pure interest.

• Reach out to professors elsewhere. Email them, see if they’ll chat by phone or Zoom, ask if they’ll meet you at AAR/SBL. No joke, the summer before I applied to programs, I physically mailed letters to professors there. Many of them replied!

• Go to AAR/SBL. That’s the annual conference for the Society of Biblical Literature and the American Academy of Religion, held in tandem the weekend before Thanksgiving each year. My first time, as a Master’s student, was a revelation. I met people there (circa 2010) I’m still friends with—for example, my now colleague Myles Werntz!

• Visit the schools you plan to apply to. As you’re able, obviously. I took a little road trip myself; I was able to visit Duke, UVA, and Vanderbilt. Worth it!

• Ask a professor to review your materials, especially your statement of purpose and CV.

• Have a community of support. Not entirely something you can control, but necessary all the same. Application season is brutal. My household had a lot of tears before the happy email arrived in my inbox.

• Pray. I saved the most important for last…

10. I’ve heard horror stories. Is a PhD program bound to wreck my marriage and suck my soul while making me work 100-hour weeks and hate my life?

No. At least, that’s not inevitable. There are programs that function like law school or medical school. But even then, you usually retain a great deal of agency and responsibility for your time allocation. In my view, most (not all) programs permit a disciplined student to get his work done while continuing to function as a healthy person with family, friends, church, and a life outside the library. Granted, I do know people who would reject that proposition. Either way, it is not a foregone conclusion that you must decide between what matters most and your degree. No way.

11. What about my faith? Can a PhD draw me closer to Christ rather than “deconstruct” or diminish or steal my faith?

Yes! It can. That’s exactly what it did for me. But it’s good to ask this question and to be aware of the danger. There are people for whom doctoral studies challenged, complicated, revised, and sometimes destroyed their faith. Perhaps that was bound to happen at some point. Some people, though, just may not be cut out for a PhD, at least in religion.

In any case, your faith will not emerge from your studies unchanged. And here, as elsewhere, naivete is the enemy. You will read books by atheists and anti-Christians and members of other religions and representatives of views you find risible, heinous, or dangerous. You will have professors who repudiate all that you hold dear. You will have teachers who claim to be Christian who openly reject or even mock beliefs and behaviors you supposed nonnegotiable for any confessing Christian. You need to have a spine of steel even as your mind is open to learning new ideas and being challenged by what you’ve never considered. Does that describe you? Or does it frighten you? Your answer matters a great deal for whether you should pursue a PhD.

12. What does a PhD program actually entail?

Briefly: Two years of classes, one year of comprehensive exams (“comps,” written and oral), two or three years of writing a dissertation. Comps test your mastery of basic topics and texts in your field. A dissertation is, basically, a book based on your special area of research, led and read and assessed by a committee of three to five professors, headed by a single professor, called your “advisor.” Your “defense” of the dissertation is usually when you “become a doctor,” namely, by undergoing oral examination by the committee and defending your writing, your arguments, and your research “live”—sometimes with an audience! It’s a stressful day, to say the least. For those who pass, and not all do, the catharsis is overwhelming.

13. What’s the point of a PhD, anyway? How should I think about it?

Opinions differ. Some say: To become an expert in one specific thing, perhaps the world’s most informed expert. I say: To become a theologian. That is, to sit at the feet of masters, to apprentice yourself to them, as to a trade, to be inducted into what it means to be a member of the guild, to learn the grammar and habits that make a theologian a theologian. And thence and therein to learn some concrete expertise.

14. Is the quality of one’s doctoral training really convertible with an institution’s money and prestige?

No. Some of the most brilliant scholars I know and learn from got PhDs in out-of-the-way programs or unpretentious institutions; indeed, some of the world’s greatest minds and writers are effectively autodidacts. Don’t fall for the cult of credentials and gatekept expertise. It’s a game. If you want to be a professor, you have to play it. That’s it.

Now, money and prestige don’t count for nothing. They’re often a proxy for a certain quality floor, along with a certain quality ceiling. You’re rarely going to get a poor education at a top-5 school. And the degree will always count for something.

15. Suppose I get in somewhere, and I’m wondering how to flourish. Any tips?

Here are a few:

• Put your head down. You’re there to learn. Study, study, study. Then study some more.

• Set limits and boundaries. One guy I knew treated his studies like a job: he worked from 8:00am to 5:00pm, then he stopped and spent time with his family. Not for everyone, but incredibly useful for some.

• Don’t waste your time. Don’t read online. Delete all your social media accounts. Focus entirely on what you’re there to learn. Some doctoral students “work all day” without getting anything done: Twitter, Facebook, and TikTok see to that, not to mention the New York Times, the Atlantic, and Jacobin.

• Develop good habits now. They’ll stay with you in whatever future employment you find.

• Just as before, devote time to forming relationships and mentorships with your professors.

• Begin networking not just within your institution but outside of it, whether professors or fellow students.

• Don’t try to make a name for yourself yet. Don’t tweet. Don’t write for a popular audience. Don’t, for the most part, publish in scholarly spaces—unless your advisor gives you the thumbs up, and it’s work you think is A-quality, and it’s likely to matter for job applications. If you’re gong to have an academic career, there will be time enough for publishing. Now’s the time for input, not output.

• Learn how to do two things: (a) read for long, uninterrupted stretches of time and (b) write a certain daily word count. Learning how to skim and how to type fast are also useful skills. Best of all, learn how to take quality notes and to organize them in relation to your research and writing goals. These will serve you for a lifetime.

• Keep learning languages. I can’t emphasize this enough: Languages are the secret sauce of theology (and the humanities generally). If you have two or four or six or more, you’re gold. If you’re stuck in no man’s land with one, or 1.5, or a bunch you can only half-read, you’re at a serious disadvantage—for jobs and for your scholarship. Mastering languages pays dividends!

• Listen to your advisor. She knows best.

• Pray. Not a joke! Better to keep your soul than to lose it and gain the whole world. Focus on what matters most, even in a time of stress and compressed study. Focus on God, church, spouse, children, friends, life. It keeps things in perspective. (Also not a joke: Drop out if this isn’t for you. There’s no shame in it if the alternative is ruin.)

16. Any other tips?

Yes, one: Don’t be a jerk. It is not your job to police the opinions or beliefs or politics of fellow students, much less professors. You don’t have to announce yourself in every seminar as the expert or True Believer on whatever topic. Drop the show. Be a normal human. Keep your own counsel. Be collegial. Even if the people around you espouse crazy things, it is not your job to set them straight. It’s your job to get a degree. Do it.

17. Say I make it to the job market, dissertation finished and PhD in hand. What then?

Not much to say here. Apply widely, prepare to move cross-country even as you prepare for nothing but rejections, and keep up those prayers.

18. What about the dissertation itself?

Not every program, not every advisor, and not every dissertation allows this, but in general I think you should write the dissertation as though you are already under contract with a publisher for a book. Write it as a book, that is, not as that unique and uniquely unreadable genre, “dissertation.” Or at least write toward the eventual book.

That, by the way, is what often happens. Your “first book” is the dissertation, in revised form. Not always, not for everyone. But ideally for many, perhaps most. Sometimes it’s chopped up into journal articles. Sometimes it remains background for the next research agenda. How you approach it matters, though, for what it eventually becomes, or is likely to become.

There’s a balancing act to aim for here. You don’t want the dissertation to try to do everything. You don’t want to swing for the fences and decisively answer the biggest question facing the field. On the other hand, you don’t want it to be so niche, so remote, so granular that no one cares. This also touches on the “faddishness” of one’s dissertation topic, its relative “timeliness” or “sexiness” as an academic subject. Sometimes a fad will get you a job; sometimes it will ensure your perpetual obscurity.

I say: Focus on the perennial topics, questions, and figures. They’ll never go away, even if they’re not in fashion for a time. (Miroslav Volf once gave me the advice that Jürgen Moltmann gave him: Always do two things as a theologian. Take up the ultimate questions humans always ask, and do so through engagement with Scripture. That’s what it means to be a theologian, and it doubles as ensuring you’ll never be irrelevant.)

A final addendum: The one thing doctoral programs routinely fail to do is train their students to teach, even as the one thing they never fail to do is train their students to write awful prose. At to the first: Seek out opportunities to teach, and seek to T.A. (be a teaching assistant) for professors who are good in the classroom. Having said that, the best way to become a better teacher is sheer repetition, and you’re unlikely to get that until you have a job, and the truth is that few schools will hire you based on your already being a good teacher. So, in terms of tradeoffs, focus on research and finishing the dissertation, not teaching.

As to the second, then: It’s near impossible not to pick up bad writing habits in a PhD program, for the simple reason that most academics are bad writers, and most academic writing is meant not to be readable but to impress a small circle of experts with jargon, quotations, and footnotes. I suppose the best way to resist bad prose during doctoral studies is by reading poetry, novels, and literary essays on the side throughout one’s time. Another way is to read major scholars in other fields who write for highbrow general-audience publications like NYRB, NYT Magazine, The New Yorker, The Point, LARB, Harper’s, First Things, and elsewhere. Many academics never unlearn their bad writing habits, and for those who do, it takes years. Just knowing going in that your dissertation will be poorly written, no matter how hard you try, is to put you ahead of the curve.

19. What about jobs? Which should I plan on applying to?

All of them!

Besides that answer, which is true, I’ll add that TT academic posts are typically differentiated by “teaching load”: in other words, how many classes you teach per year (or per semester). If you’re at an R1 University (a level-1 research school), then you’re likely to teach a 2-2 (two courses per semester), with generous regular sabbaticals for research. If you’re at an R2 or R3, you’re likely to teach a 2-3 or 3-3. If you’re at a new R3 or teaching university or community college, you’re likely to teach a 3-4 or 4-4 or even 5-5.

A couple years back I wrote a four-part, 12,000-word series on what it’s like teaching with a 4-4 load. Spoiler: Not a fate worse than death! But depending on where you earn your PhD, you might be told that it is. I won’t say much more here except that the mindset that supposes any job outside of R1 or Ivy isn’t worth taking is deadly. Don’t indulge it, and exorcise that demon if it possesses you at any time during your studies.

20. What about serving the church?

Well, isn’t that the right way to end this.

Christians study theology because of the living God, in obedience to Christ’s command to love the Lord with all our mind. We become theologians to serve the mission of his people in the world. Our knowledge, such as it is, exists to his glory and the advance of his kingdom. It certainly does not exist to advance our ambitions or careers.

You do glorify God through academic theological writing, even when such writing is not obviously or directly “applicable” to or “accessible” by ordinary believers in the pews. I can’t say more here to defend that claim—we’re wrapping this post up!—but it’s true. Trust me for now.

More important, it’s crucial to approach the question of pursuing a PhD as an exercise of love for God and service to the church. That will guide you as a lodestar throughout your academic adventures (or misadventures). If this is what God has called you to, so be it. It might involve suffering; it’s likely to involve professional wandering; it’s certain to involve uncertainty. Offer it to Christ; put it in his service. He’ll use it, one way or another. Expect that use to involve a cross, even if the trajectory of your career looks “successful” from the outside or after the fact.

But if he’s not calling you to this, that’s okay too. Don’t do it just because. Discernment works only if it’s possible to hear a No and not just a Yes. Prayer enters at this point for a final time. If the job of the doctoral candidate is study, study, study, the job of the disciple is pray, pray, pray. Prayer will carry you through, whichever path you end up on.

Let’s say, then, that my advice is not for the PhD-curious to abandon all hope. Abandon all false hope, yes. But hope is not optimism. As for pursuing an academic career, put it this way: With mere mortals this may be impossible, but with God all things are possible—even getting a PhD in theology.

“Name five things they got wrong”

When I first hear or meet scholars committed to a comprehensive intellectual system, usually named after a person, I like to ask them a simple question (sometimes I do actually ask it, sometimes it’s only in my head): “Name five things they got wrong.” In other words, if you’re a Thomist or an Augustinian, a Rawlsian or a Schmittian, before I hear anything else about what you think, much less how your system solves my problems and answers all my questions, I want to hear how its namesake was fallible. If no answer is forthcoming, then I’m going to have a hard time taking anything else you say seriously.

I once heard John Hare, a committed Kantian and distinguished professor of philosophy at Yale (and, full disclosure, one of my own teachers), give a talk at a conference in which he began by listing four serious ways in which Kant erred in his philosophy. The rhetorical effect was powerful. It put the audience in a particular place: no longer were we preparing, perhaps reluctantly or suspiciously, to hear a zealous prophet of the Master deliver a timeless Word from the Inerrant One; we were now eager to learn from a fellow co-seeker of the truth, who happened to have found in Kant a useful aid for the journey.

The practice isn’t only rhetorically useful; it helps devotees of systems more generally, I think. “Calvin didn’t get everything right” is a kind of spiritual and mental hygiene for Reformed theologians. Call it an epistemic cleanse. All thinkers and writers should agree to this basic practice, or principle, but certainly Christians who believe in original sin should be the first to sign up for it.

The principle applies elsewhere, too. A Christian who says “My politics are exactly those of the DNC/GOP, plus Jesus” should immediately arouse suspicion, all the more so if the party advocate argues either that such politics are coterminous with Christian ethics or that this fact is obvious (or both). Whenever I meet Christians who are committed members of an American political party, the first thing I want to hear out of their mouths is, “Granted, I disagree with the platform on X, Y, and Z,” followed by, “but on the whole, I think the common good would be served best with them in power rather than the other guys.” That’s a perfectly reasonable position and can be defended variously and coherently. What can’t be defended is, “The ever-evolving platform of my party lacks any flaws,” much less, “My party’s platform is God’s political will written—a fact that should plain as day to any open-eyed believer.”

Now that’s nonsense on stilts, and anybody who’s not already a political hack can admit it. Epistemic humility is a tonic in politics as it is everywhere else. And in terms of honesty with oneself as well as the capacity to persuade others, there’s no substitute for principled and explicit fallibilism.

My latest: a review of Tara Isabella Burton

I’m in the latest issue of Commonweal with a longish review of Tara Isabella Burton’s latest (nonfiction) book, Self-Made: Creating Our Identities from Da Vinci to the Kardashians. Online, the title is “Have We Become Gods?” In the magazine, it’s “The Brand Called You.” Here are the opening two paragraphs:

I am what I want, and I have the power within myself to make myself what I want to be, if only I find the will to activate this inner potential—or rather, to manifest this authentic identity. Such is the thesis under review in Tara Isabella Burton’s new book, Self-Made: Creating Our Identities from Da Vinci to the Kardashians. The thesis is not a new one. It has a long history, which, in Burton’s telling, begins around the fifteenth century. Though she finds its philosophical culmination in the eighteenth, with the Enlightenment, most of her story covers the past two hundred years: from bon ton and Beau Brummell to “the two most prominent self-creators of the past twenty years,” Kim Kardashian and Donald Trump. Across Western Europe and the Anglophone world, self-creation as both a transcendent possibility and a moral imperative trickles down to ordinary people’s lives and self-understanding, mutating in tandem with religious, economic, and technological changes. Since creation is traditionally the prerogative of deity, Burton’s story is ultimately about “how we became gods.”

Burton is a reliable chronicler. This book continues a theme explored in her 2020 work, Strange Rites: New Religions for a Godless World. There she argued that rumors of religion’s death in the West have been greatly exaggerated. The God of Abraham may be on life support, so to speak, but other gods are alive and well. We haven’t refuted religion so much as “remixed” it. Postmodern spirituality is a potent cocktail of magic, money, and memes; a hybrid made possible by the internet, the dynamic power of capitalism, and the loss of authority once vested in religious institutions and their ordained leaders. America, at least, is not a land of atheists or even agnostics. It’s full of witches, cosplayers, crystals, fangirls, Proud Boys, and Goop. Is SoulCycle a religion? What about wellness culture? The borders of religion turn out to be porous. Accordingly, Burton suggests we’re misreading the signs of the times. We don’t live in a secular age. The gods haven’t vanished; they’ve migrated. Our age is as religious as any other. You just have to know where to look.

Read the rest here. And take note, please, that the URL for the review concludes in this way: “burton-trump-kardashian-east.” Go back a decade and find me somewhere in New Haven, nose buried in a book, prepping for comprehensive exams on systematic theology, and tell me that one day I’d write an essay with those names in the URL. My assumption would have been that something had gone terribly, terribly wrong in my career…