I find it more than a little ironic that Andy Campbell’s primary criticism of my book is my proximity to the subject matter. He is disappointed with my lack of objectivity. Yet he begins his review with an admission that he flirted with the emerging church movement a decade ago but withdrew to campus ministry […]

Brett McCracken explores one of the more mysterious characters in The Tree of Life, and the theological ramifications of their identity. Among the many questions prompted by a close viewing of this finale sequence–and indeed, the whole film–is the identity and meaning of the mystery woman seen with Jessica Chastain’s older and younger self in […]

John Totten explores the perceptions of one of the greatest American rock bands, and why they might be evil – but for different reasons than people may think.

Science is too often milked for pseudo-insights into non-science.  How many times a day does someone announce that “Einstein showed everything is relative” even though he didn’t and was in fact annoyed by the popular belief that he had?  Cosmic fine-tuning, the Big Bang, the concept of “energy,” and biological complexity have all been hijacked […]

Reading is important and people don’t do it enough, again myself included. It does seem to me, holed up out here in my Tokyo bunker, that the affluent societies of the East and the West lack any form of direction or guidance, that we are simply spinning in a moral void. Where religion and government […]

I come to Dr. Jones’ book with a muddled history in the emerging church movement (ECM). From 2001-2005 I was actively involved as a commenter on Spencer Burke’s TheOOZE website, fascinated by the simultaneous emergence of faith communities who were tired of evangelicalism-as-usual and interested in creating clusters of people who really wanted to live […]

Hey, Max Von Sydow, did director Michael Haneke just win his second Palme d’Or in three years’ time?

Several years ago I interviewed for a teaching position at a small, private liberal arts university located in the non-mythical Northeast. I didn’t get the job, but who wants to live in the land of ‘Unsweetened Tea’, anyway? Silly Yankees. During my first day of the eight-hour interview process (seriously, interviewing for teaching positions is horrific), […]

I am appreciative of Jason’s generous and generative review of my book, The Church Is Flat. While Jason and I have fallen out of touch in recent years, we spent much time together in the early days of the emerging church movement (ECM). By reading Jason’s work in Church in the Present Tense, I suspect […]