Two Christianities At The Heart Of Wake Up Dead Man Rian Johnson's new film, Wake Up Dead Man, focuses on two priests with very different ideas about how Christianity should work in the world.

ICYMI: I wrote last month about WAKE UP DEAD MAN, its take on Christianity in the US, and how it signals two tested but opposite approaches to being Christian.
www.patheos.com/blogs/anxiou...

Two Christianities At The Heart Of Wake Up Dead Man Rian Johnson's new film, Wake Up Dead Man, focuses on two priests with very different ideas about how Christianity should work in the world.

Spot-on analysis of the crux of faith at the heart of WAKE UP DEAD MAN, written by my friend @jrhett.bsky.social
www.patheos.com/blogs/anxiou...

Wow, Austin, thanks. Means so much coming from you!

Cracker Barrel, Anglican Converts, And Tradition's Aesthetic What does Cracker Barrel's branding woes tell us about the relationship between tradition and modernity in Christianity?

In my most recent post, I attempt the impossible: connecting the Cracker Barrel debacle and Matthew Barrett's conversion to Anglicanism.
www.patheos.com/blogs/anxiou...

Cracker Barrel, Anglican Converts, And Tradition's Aesthetic What does Cracker Barrel's branding woes tell us about the relationship between tradition and modernity in Christianity?

In my most recent post, I attempt the impossible: connecting the Cracker Barrel debacle and Matthew Barrett's conversion to Anglicanism.
www.patheos.com/blogs/anxiou...

Southern Baptists And The 'Main Thing' Southern Baptist leaders want to "keep the main thing the main thing." But what if your very culture gets in the way of the "main thing"?

ICYMI: Last week, I wrote about how Southern Baptists' history of moral crises, from slavery to segregation to sexual abuse, reflect the fragmented identity and mission strategy of the SBC itself.
www.patheos.com/blogs/anxiou...

That’s fascinating, Jonathan. I’m quite convinced that missionaries in the field differ from most SBs in the pew on a vast number of things…

New from me. What’s at stake (and what goes unsaid) when leaders want to keep focus on “the main thing.”

We Keep Choosing Barabbas How a Passion chorale, Calvin’s commentary, and U.S. deportations reveal the cost of following the wrong voices.

ICYMI:
"When the chips were down, when the temperature was raised, the thief the people knew became more acceptable, more plausible, more benign than the accused they didn’t know...Are we so much more perceptive than them?"

My latest at @anxiousbench.bsky.social
www.patheos.com/blogs/anxiou...

My latest piece at @anxiousbench.bsky.social.

I'm sad to say goodbye to David Swartz, and I'm so thankful for his work at the Bench and in print. He has been a model of collegiality and quality scholarship, characteristics I have no doubt he will continue to exhibit!

is aslan a theophany? an alternate incarnation? the lion at creation makes me think the former, but the sacrifice on the stone table makes me second guess toward the latter. either way that man was a freak for putting it in the world.

I’m not sure it was Wendy’s decision tbh. I wonder if the editors got ahold of it and spun the summary to be much more negative than Wendy’s review was in its totality.

This kind of gatekeeping must be just exhausting. (photo 1: 9 AM day of review publication; photo 2: 11 PM same day)

Just sent the manuscript to my editor. 🤢 🥱 😀

Evangelicals, Charismatics, And Reformation Roleplay, Part 2 In my last post, I charted the acceptance and gradual ostracizing of Pentecostals and charismatics within neoevangelical spaces. Neoevangelicalism, as the What makes an evangelical? Is it adherence to...

My latest at @anxiousbench.bsky.social. Part 2 of a brief survey explaining how memories of the Reformation shaped evangelical backlash against Pentecostals and charismatics. www.patheos.com/blogs/anxiou...

Hey, y’all— @ansleyquiros.bsky.social is very good at what she does.

Here’s a new one from me. Hashing out some early research that I hope will be a bigger project in the near future!

Lessons from Remembering “The Mary We Forgot” For me, the days off around the holidays traditionally include many things: more baked goods than wisdom says should be consumed, football, family time,

The Magdalene of tradition hasn't always been synonymous with the Mary of the Gospels. Can we still recover her calling?

Lynneth Miller Renberg reviews Jennifer Powell McNutt's newest book, The Mary We Forgot, today at The Anxious Bench

www.patheos.com/blogs/anxiou...

Good weekend with ASCH. Glad to see some old friends and meet a few new ones. Looking forward to the next go-round!

FROM THE ARCHIVES: In Every Heart There is a Womb For my post this month, I wanted to revisit my Christmas post from last December. I'm still compelled by the power of this metaphor and the theologians For Luther, the nativity event was itself pregna...

This month at @anxiousbench.bsky.social, I revisit an old post of mine, reflecting on how all Christians, like Mary, give birth to Christ in our innermost being.

Ooooooh this is so right up my alley! 😍😍 Can't wait to listen.

sesame street isn't supposed to make money. the post office isn't supposed to make money. not everything is supposed to MAKE MONEY

Crowdsourcing for my evangelical history folks: ISTM neo-evs gradually push Pentecostals and charismatics away after early attempts at coalition-building. Is this bc Spirit movements are seen as at odds with the mission to increase evs' social respectability/intellectual vigor?

I’m not a CRT apologist per se. I don’t think it’s a silver bullet or magic formula to solve the equation of race in America. But I don’t think most CRT scholars think that either. There’s explanatory power there to get at several aspects of that long, winding, and tragic story.

I don’t go into this in great detail in the piece, but I have a hunch that we can trace those moments of stagnation and recession in the SBC as well, and we’re seeing the fruit of the most recent recession in the last 5 or so years.

Bell suggests that legal pushes for Black civil rights only go so far as is useful for broader white-driven political and social concerns. When those concerns change or are threatened, progress toward equity stagnates or even recedes.

This is exactly what Bell finds wrt the push for desegregation and concerns about foreign policy in the midst of the Cold War. The conversations in the SBC mirror the political maneuvers made by the federal government. It’s pretty striking.

What I found was that Baptists, by and large, didn’t acquiesce to federal policy changes out of a newfound empathy for the plight of Black Americans, but rather because not to do so would have created serious missionary PR problems at home and abroad.

CRT is a useful tool in analyzing Southern Baptist history on race In 1980, legal scholar and critical race theorist Derrick Bell penned his pioneering article, “Brown v. Board of Education and the Interest-Convergence Dilemma” in Harvard Law Review. In it, Bell tack...

Although not a CRT scholar, I’ve ventured into this briefly myself. Reading the sources of Baptist history with the work of Derrick Bell helped me see the complexity of desegregation in Baptist institutions. baptistnews.com/article/crt-...