Sorry it’s been pretty dead around here – my dissertation has absorbed my writing time so I’m doing less public writing. And I’ve taken over new editorial duties at TGR that will probably hinder me from contributing there as a writer. So posts on HT will likely continue to be sparse for a while.

But I did just wrap up my latest TGR series, arguing that public spaces are shared among people of many beliefs but that does not make them secular in the sense that we ought to behave in public as if we had no beliefs:

We cannot cultivate social spaces as shared spaces if we charge into them with weapons drawn, intent on fighting off the secularists and making the spaces shared by force. We must instead go into the social spaces, declare them to be shared, remain there in the teeth of secular opposition and continue to declare that the spaces are shared, and give ourselves up to be crucified rather than compromise on the sharedness of public space.

Because the proposition that public space is shared is identical with the proposition that people without family or religious ties nonetheless share a common humanity, and owe something to one another. A proposition well worth being crucified for.

Let me know what you think!

TGR carries my latest on developing a theology of “public” social spaces:

I propose that the special intimacy of the family and the shared religious commitments of the church bond their members in uniquely strong ways not found in other forms of social organization. These bonds are both especially disruptive (even traumatic) to form, and especially powerful once formed. To become part of a family (by birth, marriage, adoption, etc.) or to convert to a new religion involves a fundamental change in identity that is not involved in joining oneself to any other social institution.

It is these especially powerful bonds that cause the home and church to be non-public. I can change schools, employers, cities, sports teams, etc. without anything like the same level of transformative action. Even where other organizations create powerful forms of intimacy among members (e.g. military units, fraternal societies or artistic communes) or create especially sharp divisions with non-members (e.g. political parties, activist organizations or economic interest groups), they do not create such a profound spiritual division between their members and the rest of society as is created by church and family bonds.

Share your opinion and let me know what you think!

Today TGC carries my column on what Christians today can learn from Whittaker Chambers’ Witness, as part of their series on rediscovering classic Christian books:

Above all, I’m convinced that an encounter with Chambers would help Christians on the political left and right understand one another better. His witness against totalitarianism, with its staunch defense of the rule of law and human rights under a system of freedom and personal responsibility, would help Christians on the left understand conservative concerns better. His unsparing portrait of the many forms of injustice that thrive in America—the mistreatment of workers, the brutality of white supremacy, the alienation of the outsider—would help Christians on the right understand progressive concerns better.

Let me know what you think!

TGR carries the second installment of my series on theologies of public life:

This implies that the church will not seriously theologize social spaces like business and government, or fix the blind spots in its theology of the church and the home, until it becomes aware of the public/non-public distinction and theologizes that. To do faith and work with people who work in businesses, we need a theology of business; but in order to have a theology of business, we need a theology of what makes a business a public institution in a way that a church or a home is not. The public-ness of business as a social space is what summons the church to think in new and more difficult ways about how to theologize it, and the importance of theologizing it.

Let me know what you think!

My second Thorns & Thistles installment is up at TGC. The question: What are the ethical boundaries for buying new things before the old ones are totally worn out?

We have to keep our gospel balance here. There are two sides of the balance beam on this question, and you can fall off on either side. I recognize my own tendency to buy new things sometimes when I shouldn’t, especially when it comes to some of my hobbies. On the other hand, at the moment your question arrived in my inbox, my wife had just finished pointing out to me that my favorite shoes have several visible holes in them, and if I don’t want to get sick on rainy days, I really need to overcome my sentimentalism (and sloth) and get new ones!

No need to buy a new phone to let me know what you think!