Resident Theologian
About the Blog
Evangelical gentrification
An analogy that helps to clarify the nature of the evangelical absorption of Churches of Christ.
My latest: an essay and response in Restoration Quarterly
An overview of the latest issue of Restoration Quarterly, which is organized around and in response to an essay of mine on the past, present, and future of churches of Christ.
Coda: what is a CoC?
Further reflections on “family marks” that once distinguished Churches of Christ from American evangelicalism, but no longer do so.
What is a Church of Christ?
A reflection on the family of marks that distinguish Churches of Christ, past and present.
A loosening
Reflections on trends in low-church Protestant settings regarding such things as tattoos, alcohol, charismatic gifts, feast days, and more.
Church on Christmas Day
A response to the responses to Ruth Graham’s piece in the New York Times on American evangelicals staying home on Christmas Day. A sympathetic defense of the normies, in other words.
CoC: past, present, future
My two posts on churches of Christ—the first on CoC-past as not-evangelical-but-catholic, the second on CoC-future as no-longer-catholic-but-evangelical—were intended to be merely descriptive, but I think their overall effect was something of a downer. This third and final post is meant to clarify what I’ve written and reflect constructively on the future.
CoC: evangelical, not catholic
I’ve had a number of readers reach out to me about my reflection on the churches of Christ as catholic rather than evangelical. I’m gratified to learn that what I was trying to put my finger on is something others resonate with. Some wrote as still-CoCers to say that it helped them articulate “the difference” they had always felt but had never been able to name; others wrote to say that, yes, indeed, they were raised CoC but were now a part of one of the three great episcopal branches of catholic tradition: Anglican, Eastern, or Roman.
CoC: catholic, not evangelical
For the whole of my academic career, it has been difficult to explain to friends and colleagues who have no prior knowledge of the Stone-Campbell Movement why churches of Christ are not best understood as “evangelical,” that is to say, as part of that rambunctious and dysfunctional family called “American evangelicalism.”