Trying to argue for intellectual diversity and good faith by sticking up for kink is like trying to get high-school students excited about reading Romeo and Juliet by comparing it to Fifty Shades of Grey—it’s not just ridiculous, but dishonest. Continue Reading »
Mosaic (and Noahic) teachings regarding the death penalty are revelations of God and teach us of God’s grace, mercy, forgiveness, and love. But how?Continue Reading »
Abiding by moral rules, especially when they are explained meaningfully and mercifully, gives teenagers swimming in a sea of relativism and nihilism a “moral vocabulary.” Sympathy isn’t enough. People need norms.Continue Reading »
Recent, ugly nonsense about those who supposedly cannot refrain from sinful sexual relations is pastoral cruelty disguised as kindness. The voice of Archbishop Chaput, by contrast, strikes a welcome and profound note of clarity and true compassion. Continue Reading »
The now infamous second presidential debate was a spectacle that few decent Americans want to witness again. It was also a spectacular one-act recapitulation of the four-hundred-year-long drama of sex and sin in Protestant America. Continue Reading »
I became engaged at Easter, and, as I’ve started planning our wedding with my fiancé, I’ve noticed a suspicious lacuna in the wedding how-to's I’ve picked up. I would have thought, after one magazine’s handbook covered strategies for getting your pet turtle to join your wedding procession . . . . Continue Reading »
There were only two occasions in my life as a pastor in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) that required disciplinary ministry with a church member. One was gossip; the other was sex. The first didn’t get beyond private admonition by the pastor, me. That’s what the pastor does in . . . . Continue Reading »