First Things RSS Feed - Jason Byassee

Methodists & Microcredit

Sun, 01 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0400

John Wesley was not the greatest preacher of his day. His occasional friend and sometime nemesis George Whitefield was that. “My brother Wesley acted wisely,” Whitefield said. “The souls that were awakened under his ministry he joined in societies, and thus preserved the fruit of his labor. This I neglected, and my people are a rope of sand .”

Continue Reading »

Conceiving Parenthood

Thu, 07 Feb 2008 00:00:00 -0500

It has become fashionable in some theological and political quarters to eschew the term libera l in favor of progressive . The linguistic victory for conservatives by which the former term is now radioactive leaves Jim Wallis’s Sojourners and my own employer, Christian Century , fishing for new terms.

Continue Reading »

Not Your Father's Pornography

Sun, 06 Jan 2008 00:00:00 -0500

Back in college, before he was a successful lawyer and practicing Catholic, a friend of mine was at his fraternity house one night, partying with his friends while they waited for a stripper to arrive. And arrive she did, beginning her performance only to catch my friend’s eye. She froze. So did he. They had been in high school together. She gathered up her things and fled.

Continue Reading »

God Cannot Be Understood, Only Adored

Tue, 09 Oct 2007 00:00:00 -0400

Whatever one thinks about whether it is possible for Christian theology to be systematic—and there are good reasons to think not—we can at least say it is good manners to attempt to lay out everything one thinks in an orderly fashion.

Continue Reading »

Unchurching

Thu, 01 Jun 2006 00:00:00 -0400

Leaving Church
by Barbara Brown Taylor.
HarperSanFrancisco. 224 pp. $23.95.

Continue Reading »