Matthew Schmitz

As Dietrich Bonhoeffer did—with clarity regarding its evil and compassion regarding its motivations.

As a young Christian, I arrived at college in the fall of 2004 with some of the usual intellectual difficulties: evolution, creation, the authority of Scripture, and so on. But I could think through them undisturbed, working them out in my reading rather than in debates. No one was asking, “Where . . . . Continue Reading »

N. T. Wright—hailed by Time as “one of the most formidable figures in Christian thought”—first captured my imagination with the early volumes of his series  Christian Origins and the Question of God. In them, he frames the Christian story precisely as a story, a . . . . Continue Reading »

A prayer for singles. Continue Reading »

How rap’s two nastiest brothers split—and how I hope they’ll reunite. Continue Reading »

After my Bloggingheads discussion on gay marriage and related matters with Slate’s Mark Joseph Stern, a student at a prominent Evangelical college wrote me asking for advice. She said her campus has been riven by the homosexuality debate and she’s found herself challenged to . . . . Continue Reading »

Whereas you, the Federalist, brainchild of one Ben Domenech, of Virginia, were denounced in 2014, to this Holy Office, for holding as true a false doctrine taught by a majority, namely, that marriage is possessed of an immovable definition, that it consists of two persons, and of opposite sex; also, . . . . Continue Reading »

Many have been hoping that the Church under Pope Francis will allow divorced and remarried Catholics to receive communion. Some argue for a change in Church teaching; many more urge the need for a “pastoral” response that leaves doctrine intact. In an interview today, Cardinal Gerhard . . . . Continue Reading »

Isaac Chotiner hasn’t spent much time talking to religious folks, and he hasn’t read David Bentley Hart’s The Experience of God: Being, Consciousness, Bliss, but he does think the book’s picture of God differs vastly from that of most believers:I cannot speak for . . . . Continue Reading »

How did we come to wish each other  not a happy, not a joyful, not a peaceful, but a merry Christmas?  The greeting dates back to at least 1565, in which year the author of the  Hereford Municipal Manuscript  wrote “And thus I comytt you to god, who send you a mery Christmas . . . . Continue Reading »