One by one, his followers were targeted and harassed and then forced into hiding. Even those who were only nominally affiliated with this man were shamed, cast out of their homes and into the hands of...

This is my review of Paul Copan's Is God a Moral Monster? Making Sense of the Old Testament God (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2011). This review should be read as a supplement to Copan's book. You may p...

This week Patheos has been generous enough to feature a series of five Holy Week meditations I wrote (Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, Holy Saturday, Easter Sunday and Bright Monday). I hope you ...

Matt Flannagan has just posted a response to some quick and cursory criticisms I made of his position on the Canaanite genocides in the introduction to my review of Douglas Earl’s book. As Matt hims...

Rob Bell (Love Wins), Brian McLaren (Naked Spirituality) and I (Stumbling Toward Heaven) all released new books in March. All have drawn fire for questioning aspects of the faith, mine in sparks compa...

Evangelical Christians often make the charge that those who do not share their theological commitments are "liberals," while claiming the domain of "conservatism" for themselves. They claim those who ...

At the 2010 American Academy of Religion conference in Atlanta, I had the pleasure of meeting Callid Keefe-Perry, a fascinating guy with an infectious verve. Callid asked to interview me with his new-...

It ended with a pillow fight. Moments before Martin Luther King, Jr., was assassinated by a sniper's bullet, the radical prophet picked a raucous, uproarious pillow fight with his ...

Jesus of Montreal is a film about a play about Jesus of Nazareth. Upon returning from extended travels in the east, an out-of-work Montreal theatre actor, Daniel Coulombe, is commissioned by a Catholi...

I regularly have Christian fundamentalists tell me that people who do not approach the Bible with faith cannot understand it. That is of course nonsense, although I am pretty sure that at some point i...

He plopped down on the wall of the well, sweat dripping under the oppressive Palestinian sun. He was parched and exhausted to the point of fainting. But Jesus was not too tired to f...

When God strikes you on the right cheek, turn your left to God also. Then God will kiss it. The divine blow is an invitation to equality. When God takes your cloak, give God your coat as well. ...

One of the greatest enemies Judaism and Christianity have ever known has undoubtedly been socialism. Socialism threatens the very moral fabric of our society. It oppresses the masses with heavy taxati...

Growing Up Catholic (1952 – 1971) Although my soul is no longer in her keeping, I owe my physical existence to the Roman Catholic Church and her pro-life teachings. I was born the second of five ...

[In light of the recent events in Japan, and of some of the reaction I've seen from Christians who want to exploit this as an opportunity to preach about hell, an old post of mine has unfortunately be...

My interview with Steve Douglas, Matthew Raymer and Travis Jacobs from [ad hoc] Christianity is now online. Click here to go to the [ad hoc] Christianity Podcast blog page for our interview. To direct...

If it weren't for Facebook, I would have missed the flap over Rob Bell this past weekend. Here's the story in a nutshell: Bell's publishing company released a trailer for Bell's forthcoming book,Â...

I’ve started and stopped writing this post at least half a dozen times. I’ve invested something like 10,000 words into it and here I am starting over again.  I’m not a perfectionist or temperam...

Why do I remain in the Church? When this question was posted to me, I was taken aback for a moment. When one endures, survives, ekes out an existence on the fringes for so long, the question of “why...

When and if I arrive at heaven’s gates, I will have so many questions prior to entry that I can imagine the other tired and weary souls in line behind me will undoubtedly become irritated. I will as...

Introduction After briefly situating sociologist and theologian Ali Shariʿati historically and geopolitically within the context of pre-revolutionary Iran in the 1960s and 70s, this paper will...

Review: Kurt Armstrong, Why Love Will Always Be A Poor Investment: Marriage and Consumer Culture. Eugene: Wipf & Stock, 2011. Paperback. 142 pages. Buy the Book Here. I do not read many books o...

When the applause died down and the lights went up, I sat in my seat at the center of the front row spellbound by the performance of Judith I had just seen. I'd heard her anxiety, her prayers, an...

In the Gospel of Luke’s last supper narrative, Jesus says the words of institution and immediately, the disciples break into an argument about who is the greatest.  It should not surprise us, ther...

My interview with Nick Fiedler from the Nick and Josh Podcast is now online. There's a few minutes of humorous banter between Nick and Josh before the interview gets going. We talk about my book, iner...

It had been one hell of a time. Ever since that mystical baptismal experience for the forgiveness of sin, Jesus had seen his world slowly crumble around him. And it had all started so promisingly...

Clearing the Heir: A Critical Examination of Ernst Herzfeld’s Reading of Dan 7.13 In his massive two-volume, 851-page tome on Zoroaster published in 1947, German archaeologist Ernst Herzfeld assign...

Sundays when I was little, our beleaguered mother—divorced, in school, raising three kids—put us on the church bus, put a roast in the crock pot, and settled in for a couple of hours of respite. S...

Review: Douglas S. Earl, The Joshua Delusion? Rethinking Genocide in the Bible. Eugene: Cascade, 2010. Paperback. 190 pages. $22.00. ISBN 13: 978-1-60899-892-0. Buy this book here. My thanks to Wip...

My drama teacher in high school taught me how to play the blues and drink my coffee black (he probably would have taught me to chain smoke, too, but I took a pass). I've also been a church musician m...

One axiom that I hear all the time is that if the Bible is false, or is not self-evidentially true, or there is no God, or there was no resurrection, that we are wasting our time, and we might as well...

There's a riveting scene in the film Amadeus where Salieri, deeply envious of Mozart's talent, is so angry at God that he removes the crucifix from his wall and burns it in the fire, swearing enm...

I’ll be turning thirty about this time next year. That’s supposed to mean something, I know; I’m just not sure what. By any lights, I’m still a young man. But some things get old fast. My wife...

Living on Hope While Living in Babylon: The Christian Anarchists of the 20th Century by Tripp York Wipf and Stock / $17.00 US (list) [Amazon] [Wipf and Stock] The publication of Tripp York’s...

I resonate with the identity of Religion at the Margins - the fringe, the heretics, the outliers. And I have a penchant to like underdog views, and underdog composers in music. If I was more into spor...

Everything we write must be written with the constant anticipation of un-writing. As religious people we are caught up in the ebb and flow of God. Of God who breathes creation one moment and then dest...

God is a red herring. I have, at several different points, found atheism attractive. I've tried it out, more or less earnestly, on a couple of occasions, but the truth is my world is not quite dise...

There's an old story that tells of a man who went to a Christian counsellor about his marriage. When it was emphasized to him that the Bible tells husbands to love their wives, the man replied that h...

I knelt in front of the minister, whom I'd sought out for this very purpose: to be anointed with oil and prayed over in order to receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. By this I mean that I wanted to sp...

It's a fair question. I have enough departures from "orthodox" Christianity that it won't do for me to cry foul if someone wonders why I'm a Christian at all. This has proven to be a more difficult qu...

The most striking aspect of Christ’s ministry is his own queer relationships. From adulterers to tax-collectors, fishermen and roman soldiers, it has been Christ’s ministry to bring the queerest f...

—An interview of Thom Stark, author of The Human Faces of God. Thom Stark is a scholar of ancient and modern religious texts. He is currently an M.A.R. student at Emmanuel School of Religio...

I am delighted to have had the opportunity to read an advance copy of Dale Allison's forthcoming book, Constructing Jesus: Memory, Imagination, and History (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2010), and a...

The Human Faces of God will shatter any honest reader's preconceptions about the Bible and what it "says" and leave that reader with a stronger and better faith. This book is the most powerful ant...

So, I'm neck-deep in dissertation stuff. This is my life right now, besides grading papers. I'm taking notes for chapter 3, trying to sort John Howard Yoder's The Politics of Jesus into the five princ...

I do not write, because I do not like to be held accountable. I do not write. Writing is an act of catharsis; who wants their catharsis to be plastered all over the virtual marketplace of ideas? Or...

One characteristic that conservative Christians and mythicists share is that those who espouse these views seem prone to taking comfort in finding some lone scholar who agrees with them. Since I have ...

Ideal man passes through the very midst of nature and comes to understand God; he seeks out mankind and thus attains God. He does not bypass nature and turn his back on mankind. He holds the sword of ...

Maybe God isn’t dead. Maybe he’s just going deaf. Maybe he’s totally deaf in one ear, and partially deaf in the other. It’s understandable. He is getting to be a little ancient of days anymore...

Somebody asked me today, "What are we exactly saved from and what does the death and resurrection of Jesus mean in relationship to that?" This is a significant question. Evangelicalism preaches that y...