Looking ahead to next month's Scripture and Theology Colloquium, we asked Professorial Fellow and Symposium organizer Mark Elliott (ME below) what par

Do you, like me, have a complicated relationship with the news?

Do you, like me, have a complicated relationship with the news? I find it almost magnetic—I want to know “what is going on,” to think myself part of current social dramas. I also find the news disorienting and discomfiting—it depicts a world out of control.

There’s a growing ache at the heart of many of our western societies. Its name is loneliness. And a stream of actors has been calling it out of late: psychologists, pastors, pandemistas, even politicians.

“Stuck at home”

stuck: “mired, glued, compelled, resolutely adhered, halted, saddled disagreeably”

home: “one’s place of residence, domicile, habitat”

How very good and pleasant it is

The term “the Canadian model” has been thrown around in recent weeks as British Government negotiators seek the best “divorce settlement” deal they can get, in preparation for the UK to leave the European union.

We’ve all had enough, it seems. And yet we only want more. Shoulders curled forward, phones in our hands, eyes fixed to the screen, our brains wired to thumb endlessly deeper into the digital matrix: this is becoming the posture of humanity.

Why is it that Christians—particularly evangelical Christians—are increasingly seen as the enemy of the common good?  A Google search for “evangelical” in The New York Times quickly locates numerous articles about the evils of Christian evangelicals.

Jesus talked a lot about money. Though I haven’t done the accounting, I suspect that money is one of his primary topics. Think of Jesus’ parables: the lost coin, the two debtors, the rich man and Lazarus, the Pharisee and the tax collector, the talents, and so on.