Unedited version of editorial published in Dialog 62,1 (March 2023), pp. 7-11. Do we really need Jesus any more? I mean, is there anything we need Jesus to save us from? It used to be that we needed him to save us from the wrath of a righteous God and eternal...
Can We Stop Neutering God?
Unedited version of article published in Dialog 58, 2 (June 2020), pp. 86-89. According to a study carried out and published by the Pew Research Center last year, 80% of adults in the U.S. continue to...
Inclusive God-Language
Over the course of the past few decades, it has become common among many English-speakingChristians and in many churches (such as my own, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America)to maintain that, when possible, we should avoid using masculine pronouns (“he,”...
On the Eulogizing of the Rev. Dr. James H. Cone
On April 28, 2018, we received the sad news that Professor James Cone of Union Theological Seminary had passed away. In order to celebrate Prof. Cone’s theological legacy, the September 2018 issue of Dialog: A Journal of Theology (57/3) began with a series of eight...
Resurrecting and Rearming the Warrior God Crucified by Gregory Boyd
I have just worked through parts of Gregory Boyd’s two-volume work, The Crucifixion of the Warrior God: Interpreting the Old Testament’s Violent Portraits of God in Light of the Cross (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2017). I was able to download and...
The Cross and Heather Heyer
Yesterday—August 16, 2017—I heard and then read the speech of Susan Bro at the memorial service for her daughter Heather Heyer, who was killed in Charlottesville, Virginia last Saturday (August 12) as she protested against the “Unite the Right Rally” organized...
On the Vital Role of Theology Today
David A. Brondos Unedited version of an editorial published in Dialog 50, 3 (Fall 2011), 221-22. To ask what the theological views upon which U.S. foreign and domestic policy are based might sound like a strange question to many. Yet in the Religious News Survey...
Criminal Justice: A View from South of the Border
Unedited version of an editorial published in Dialog 52, 4 (Winter 2013), 285-90. In June of 2011, Father Alejandro Solalinde, a Roman Catholic priest known for his human rights work with Central American immigrants passing through Mexico, created quite a...
Borders, Boundaries, and Blessing: Mission as Converting Hypocrites into Sinners
Unedited version of article published in Dialog 49, 1 (Spring 2010), 34-44. God’s People, Borders, and Boundaries Does God choose some people as God’s own in order to bless them above all others? Such a claim has been made repeatedly throughout history. Undoubtedly,...