Unemployed Theologian

There's a type of person who doesn't feel comfortable at church. There are several actually, and these people, these beloved children of the Most High God, feel so ill-at-ease around our judgmental eyes and caustic tongues they stop coming to church altogether. And we blame them for it. "Get over it! God loves you anyway, come to church!" we say, as if it's fear of God which keeps them away. Perhaps sometimes it is, fear of the hateful God of heretical doctrine, but it's clear to me that far more often it is not God who drives them out, but His children. We claim grace, God's grace, His unmerited favor for us weary sinners with all our breath. We speak of Christ's compassion for the other, for the marginalized, for the "freaks" of His day, then we preach a very different sermon with our gossiping whispers and hostile glares. "Did you hear who she's  sleeping with?" "Can you imagine showing up at church in that? ...

Party at Jay Gatsby's A few weeks ago I found these words at the bottom of my ticket to George Fox's spring formal, a dance themed after the novel and fast-approaching film  The Great Gatsby . I would say loosely themed, considering the DJ offered no tunes from the roaring twenties but instead pumped the standard Top-40-techno-dance-hip-hop fusion, but having now seen the movie it was actually pretty on the nose. In any case I initially found it a bit odd that my Christian college would theme its dance around the bacchanals described in F. Scott Fitzgerald's anti-tribute to classic American excess, but I made no large fuss about it and indeed had a splendid time, cutting the rug with a few dear chums whom I will miss very much. It was no party at Jay Gatsby's though. No, it couldn't hold a candle to those raucous scenes depicted in the film, to the hyperreal colors, the impossibly shiny sequins, the manic, untethered energy, and no one in attendance at our dance w...

The gay marriage debate is everywhere you look nowadays, or at least for the last two days. Google tells me this is because the Supreme Court will soon rule regarding the constitutionality of California's Proposition 8, which banned gay marriage in the Golden State in 2008 (apologies for any unintentional rhyming). This imminent decision has ushered in a social media firestorm, blowing up my facebook feed with red equals signs: I'm a firm believer in the notion that images communicate in ways words cannot, and this one hits home in a big way. It says that, in a nation where we value equality under the law, we cannot justify the denial of marriage rights to any minority group, including the LGBT community. Sounds reasonable enough, right? Apparently not everybody is so convinced. As I peruse the facebook-scape I am confronted not only by these red equals signs but by the (unfortunately) inevitable parody placards made by Christians in favor of preserving the "sanctit...