When the “A-ha Moment” Turns into “Gotcha”

When I was younger, especially in my twenties and early thirties, I was always looking for a sort of “skeleton key” that would explain Life, The Universe and Everything to me (or at least some specific issue), a meta-narrative that brought it all together. I’ve since learned that the only true narrative in that regard is the Gospel. Every other skeleton key–even theological ones,ā€¦

Do We Preach “Orthodoxy”… or Christ?

In her review of Kyriakos Markides’s Gifts of the Desert, Frederica Mathewes-Green says she had a hard time finding Jesus in the book: Markidesā€™ previous book, ā€œThe Mountain of Silenceā€ (2001), was read eagerly by those interested in Orthodox spirituality, chiefly because he had faithfully transcribed taped conversations with a monk trained on Mt. Athos, Father Maximos. Though Markides himself seemed not wholly onā€¦

12 Reasons Why I Became and/or Remain an Orthodox Christian

Lists like this are usually so much clickbait, I know, but I thought it was nevertheless worthwhile to compile a list of most of the reasons why I became and/or remain an Orthodox Christian. Some of these things were not really on my radar when I became Orthodox in 1998, but they are part of the reason why I genuinely do love belonging toā€¦

Why I Love (True) Religion Because I Love Jesus, Redux

This coming Sunday, Jan. 12, will be the two year anniversary of the post that has inexplicably (to me) probably been the most-read thing I’ve ever written. It’s always somewhat odd to me to note the things that get the most hits. They’re almost invariably stuff that’s more off-the-cuff than much-deliberated (like this silly post of coffee and theology jokes). (Kind of depressing, really.)ā€¦

The Mass Cult of Big

The following is essentially a piecing together of selections from a Facebook thread in which I participated today. The following quotation led off the discussion: We have become fascinated by the idea of bigness, and we are quite convinced that if we can only ā€˜stage’ something really big before the world, we will shake it, and produce a mighty religious awakening. – D. Martinā€¦

Evangelicals at the Eucharist

I was fascinated today to run across this call to the Eucharist, written from a Reformed perspective, by Peter J. Leithart, pastor of Trinity Reformed Church in Moscow, Idaho, and an eminent Evangelical theologian. (Seeing this, along with my recent posts on Evangelicals observing Lent, I’ve decided to create a new category for posts on this weblog: Evangelical Appropriation of Tradition.) This is aā€¦

Evangelical Lent Redux

In my previous post, a comment from a Protestant challenged me to argue for Lent purely from Scripture, also saying that his own experience of Lent, like Mark Galli’s, was pretty miserable. That led me to consider that I actually had left several important things out in the previous post, most especially touching upon the question of the dualism of Evangelicals and what thatā€¦