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Flunking Sainthood

So it turns out the reconstructing a community is a lot more work than reconstructing a temple. Stones are more flexible than people. Did we know this? While the first half of the Book of Nehemiah was taken up with describing the building project that reconstructed the perimeter of Jerusalem, the second half (8-13) explores…

Dan Buettner made headlines with his book The Blue Zones, which looked at the longest-lived cultures in the world and the kind of life that contributes to living past 100. He noticed during that research that many of the world’s longest-lived cultures were also very happy societies. This led to a new research project called…

In his new book Christmas: Festival of Incarnation, Donald Heinz argues that for all its commercialism, Christmas is still best understood as Christianity’s key holy day. I’m so pleased to welcome him here for a Q&A. You can also watch a YouTube interview with him here.  (Can I add that it cracks me up that…

Redemption is not a theme we normally associate with Christmas, but with the heaviness of repentance and Lent. The cross is where Christians believe our sins were forgiven, so the Lenten and Easter seasons are the times we reflect on redemption. Christmas is for lightness and gifts and carols. Not so for Bonhoeffer. In our…

Everyone is talking about the sociology of religion doorstopper American Grace by David Campbell and Bowling Alone author Robert D. Putnam. I read it this summer and am re-reading parts of it now. It’s a great book that will be fodder for several future blog posts about various demographic trends in American religion. The question…

Big picture: Another wave of exilees is retuning to Jerusalem. Under the guidance of Nehemiah, the governor, they work furiously to rebuild the city walls. And I do mean furiously. The Bible claims the walls were reconstructed in 52 days. (Nehemiah 6:13) That’s awfully impressive. Nowadays you can’t even secure a building permit in that…

It’s Thursday, and I am now finished with my to-do list. The one for this past Monday. It’s probably true that with two jobs and a family and a writing career and a church calling, my life is busier than some people’s. I get that. But every year I try to slow down a bit…

I hope you’re having a quietly joyous Advent. Last week on Flunking Sainthood, our Bonhoeffer theme was waiting, a condition that Bonhoeffer knew all too well — waiting for the war to end, waiting to be released from prison, waiting for his normal life to resume. (It never did; he was executed by the Nazis…

This week we begin exploring Ezra-Nehemiah, which was a single document back in the day, but which we have divided into two because our attention spans are very, very short. Ezra was a scribe, priest, and acting mayor who led one of the groups of returnees back from Babylon to Jerusalem. The first half of…

I know I have blogged–okay, bragged–about Elise Erikson Barrett’s book before, but I wanted to provide a link to the most recent WJK Radio podcast in which she is interviewed about her new book, What Was Lost: A Christian Journey through Miscarriage. In the interview I got to ask her about some of my favorite…
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