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Letter to an Aspiring Theologian

Iwas delighted to receive your letter asking about the best route to becoming a theologian. Let me confess up front: I’m still in via myself. My business card should identify me not as research professor but perpetual pupil of theology, though if it did, you probably wouldn’t be . . . . Continue Reading »

CoWo, NoGrow

Back in 1998, at a theological conference, I heard a pastor (we’ll call him Pastor V.) of my denomination (the Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod) recount what had driven him out of his second call, a mission church in Lawrence, Kansas. It was the early ’90s, and Lawrence was one of the . . . . Continue Reading »

Geoffrey Hill, Prodigal

Among poets writing in English during the last forty years, Geoffrey Hill was sometimes named the greatest one alive, but he was always named the most difficult one to read. He had come to live and teach in America in the 1980s, along with a brilliant group which included Paul Muldoon at . . . . Continue Reading »

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