Wesley Hill

At a conference where I spoke this week, the question came up again: “Why would you call yourself a ‘gay Christian’?” Others have posted about this—I’m thinking of Joshua Gonnerman and Melinda Selmys and Eve Tushnet —but I never have, so here’s my brief take . . . . Continue Reading »

Over at Christianity Today , Allison Althoff has a story about the growing attention to LGBT issues on evangelical Christian college campuses : Same-sex attracted students at several Christian institutions have attempted to start on-campus organizations with varying degrees of success. Seattle . . . . Continue Reading »

Last week I caught up with some friends in England, my former next-door neighbors and parents of my godson. My friends have just had their second child and were remarking on how their fellow church members have been bringing meals and helping with household chores and in general offering support. . . . . Continue Reading »

If friendship needs to be seen afresh in our time as an intimate love in its own right, distinct from the love of spouses or romantic partners, then we need stories of friendship that  show  us how its rediscovery is possible. I’m always on the lookout for such stories, and I just . . . . Continue Reading »

This was published last summer in the NYT, but it’s just now coming to my attention (via  Luke Neff ):  “Friends of a Certain Age: Why Is It Hard to Make Friends Over 30?” An excerpt: In studies of peer groups, Laura L. Carstensen, a psychology professor who is the . . . . Continue Reading »

Krister Stendahl’s classic 1963 essay, “The Apostle Paul and the Introspective Conscience of the West” makes the case that Augustine and the Western (Protestant) Christian tradition, preoccupied as they were and are with personal human guilt, present us with a drastic misreading of Paul. Unlike his fourth-century reader who poured out confessions of sin and misery to God, Paul was relatively untroubled by a sense of personal failure. According to Stendahl, himself an ordained Lutheran clergyman, Paul was very different from Augustine and Luther insofar as Paul possessed a “robust conscience.” … Continue Reading »

It’s become a commonplace in modern literature on the apostle Paul to observe that he wasn’t a systematic theologian. One need look no further than a standard textbook from the last century, which offers the colorful exhortation not to “rank the tent-maker of Tarsus along with Origen, Thomas Aquinas, and Schleiermacher.” … Continue Reading »