Published Works
PUBLISHED IN “CHRIST AND POP CULTURE”
#OKBoomer and Generational Warfare in Succession
“Younger members of Generation X, like myself, have encoded in our DNA the preternatural ability to roll our eyes as hard as humanly possible and mumble “whatever” in the direction of any and every authority figure. So, it is with some amusement Gen X-ers watch the generational war play out between Boomers and Millennials/GenZ. Baby Boomers, as well as some older Gen-Xers, have made it their mission to undercut Millennials since the younger ones entered the workforce like an army of upstarts who came to take over rather than wait their turn. Boomers have responded like the threatened and dying typically do: They’ve retrenched and attacked. Hard.”
(Cameron Morgan)
In the Shade of Wakanda: The Resurrection of Broken White Boys
“Too many of us have learned that difference is a threat that needs to be tamed and assimilated into the dominant culture. Difference is contrasted constantly to the white virtues of sovereignty and individuality. But if we are ever to see difference as a gift, then we need a resurrection of sorts, but we would do well to remember that resurrection requires a death.”
(jasonisbell.com)
Vanish into Nothing: Jason Isbell Explains the White Man’s World
“Much like dropping one’s gift at the altar in order to reconcile with another member of the community, Isbell reaches out to those hurting, even those he’s given voice to, by offering something better than bitterness.”
(Seth T. Hahne)
Just the Facts: A Death Penalty Discussion (without Principles)
As one trained in Christian ethics, I value principled conversations, but being in the death penalty repeal movement raises questions about the practicality of having the same principled debates over and over. In other words, the likelihood of us “converting” each other theologically on the death penalty is quite slim, that is, assuming theology ever entered into one’s consideration of the matter. After all, my own conversion on the death penalty was emotional, first, and only later theological.
A Decade of Wardrobe Malfunctions: Social Media and Pseudo-Adulthood
“The cultural pressure of celebrity – particularly childhood celebrity – is not unlike the effect of stepping through the wardrobe in C.S. Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia, where a secret portal to another world transforms children into warriors and rulers. …Celebrity offers a similar kind of portal between competing realities, where children are treated as pseudo-adults but remain children. …The true “wardrobe malfunction” is that somewhere between the real world and the pretend world, the necessary maturation to act as an adult has not occurred.”
PUBLISHED IN “the other journal”
JESUS AND THE DISPOSSESSED
“These particular whites have no counternarrative to the prevailing one of dispossession, which is to say, their pending sociopolitical death. In order to develop theological reservoirs of hope, untethered to political or cultural power, white evangelicals must learn hermeneutics formed in, or inspired by, hopeful resiliency. And we must, most importantly, call our demons by name.”
THE WORK OF PLAY
“To the casual baseball fan, these pauses may appear tedious. Upon the headstone of the once great game, journalists routinely chisel the predictable epitaph that baseball is boring. While attendance, revenue, youth participation, and all the other metrics suggest that the game is healthy, many critics still seem to argue that baseball needs a shot in the rear with something other than BALCO and Biogenesis cocktails.”
HOW CANCER MADE ME LESS OF A BASTARD (AND MORE HUMAN)
“There is a beloved story among whiskey-drinking Nashville Christians involving the regional oddity that is Will D. Campbell. He was a double-traitor of sorts, first to poor, white southerners when he became a civil right activist and then later to his fellow activists who wondered what would possess a man to minister to the racists. The story goes that an unbelieving friend, who routinely pushed Campbell’s buttons, once asked him to describe Christianity in ten words or less and Campbell replied, “We’re all bastards but God loves us anyway.””