Every February, we commemorate Black History Month, and — sadly — every year, it seems we are given more proof of just how pervasive and stubborn anti-Black racism continues to be, and therefore why remembering Black history and promoting the stories of Black people in North America and beyond is so important. Over the past … Continue reading A Few Resources for Black History Month
So far in this series thinking about tradition, I’ve introduced a simple definition of the term and drawn some implications from that definition, and looked at how the major cultural movements of the past few centuries impact how we understand the idea of receiving a tradition ‘faithfully’. But any discussion of faithfulness to a religious … Continue reading Tradition(ed): Orthodoxy and Heterodoxy
As the old proverb has it, “Familiarity breeds contempt.” Seeing or hearing something too often can cause us not to pay attention to it. This can be especially true when something is most familiar to us in a specific context. I am convinced that this has happened with today’s epistle reading, 1 Corinthians 13.1-13, commonly … Continue reading Love at the Root: A Reflection on 1 Corinthians 13.1-13
I started last week’s post introducing this series on tradition by commenting on how so much contemporary discourse around tradition seems to be either revolutionary — expressing a desire to tear down what has come before — or reactionary — rejecting the present in favor of the (imagined) past. These two misunderstandings of tradition are … Continue reading Tradition(ed): What Does It Mean to Be Faithful?
A few years ago I went through a period of reading a lot Buddhist literature. I stopped, not because I didn’t find it valuable — indeed, if you ever need help surviving the experience of having a human mind, Buddhism is a great place to turn! — but because it got repetitive. No matter what … Continue reading The Jesus Manifesto: A Reflection on Luke 4.14-21 and 1 Corinthians 12.12-31
Matthew Root 