A Year in Writing
and a couple of favorite pieces you might have missed
My public writing was thin this year, by design. Writing for magazines is a little like candy- it is fun and hard to stop, but the long term benefits in my mind are not great. There is more than a little trend-chasing that has to happen to pitch something that is news-relevant, and I don’t think these sorts of calculations produce theology that will speak in the register I think it should. This year I took a year off of pitching magazines to focus on longer form writing.
I (mostly) finished my book. I say “mostly” because I’ve had some second thoughts about my feminism and Mary chapter, and I need to round the corner on my conclusion. I’ll be redrafting that after the holiday. I’m excited to tell you more about this in 2025.
I did treat myself to a piece at Comment, about images of Christ and what they are (not) for, that I hope you read.
This year I led a women’s Bible study and taught two courses on theological anthropology for a parachurch. Starting in 2025 I’ll be running a theology discussion group on David Kelsey’s Eccentric Existence- let me know if you’d like to join!
Being a freelance theologian is a little odd, but I remain as committed to the in person teaching-as-discipleship as I am to the writing. It is tricky to figure out the logistics for the teaching- both in terms of format and in terms of time commitments. I’ll keep trying things and will report back on what works, and what doesn’t.
This year I wrote 38 posts here on substack. That is a little more than every other week. A few that I think are notable:
My favorite piece of the year was “The Women Were up to Something”. I wish it had found a home beyond my substack, but once I finished it I wanted it to see the light as soon as possible. I’d love it if if you read it. This little bit I take out and look at from time to time:
Patriarchy, like divinity, does not admit of degrees. It is often deployed as a modern diagnosis of all that makes relations between men and women painful, awkward, tragic, or uncomfortable. It is rarely queried for what it is.
I finished up a series on George Lindbeck’s The Nature of Doctrine, with an eye towards its relevance for us modern church people. I think this post, about baseball as a metaphor for church, gets at the heart of the question.
This piece, about discipleship and the dangers of the “technological imaginary”, will help you see the places of productive tension between Lindbeck and our lives.
Discipleship is not like that. None of this will “work”, if you want a direct relationship between inputs and results. If my own work yields anything at all, it will result in people who are formed to keep time. They will have learned that things take the time they take, and that nothing can be scaled or predicted. I’ve seen radical transformations in people occur quickly; there are others I expect to tend for years. But if any of my work bears fruit, it will yield a people who know how to tend the flame. I think the best thing church-people can do is learn to be human. This will take more time than is expected, and will almost certainly be disruptive.
This piece, on the “end of vice” and the trouble we are in, needs a stronger ending- because I think more people should have read it! Perhaps I’ll tackle it from another angle in the new year.
And this piece, on Elisabeth Elliot, was my most read of the year. That was a book I read on a whim that ended up being much more pulpy than I expected! Musings on women and the church continue to draw the most eyes, which is a bit of a disappointment to me because I think the question is tired. However, seeing as I keep returning to it (like a dog to its vomit), perhaps I’m not done with it yet.
This post did surprisingly well, since it was a set of observations about what theologians call “prologomena”; meaning “the things you think about before you set about the task”. I love talking about these questions, and I’m glad some of you liked thinking about more formal theological questions.
I also was a guest on two podcasts, Chris Green’s Speakeasy Theology and Andrew Noble’s What Would Jesus Tech, where I talked about the “rule of life” as a technology.
For 2025, I hope to return to some public magazine writing. I have a few more writing goals that I’ll talk about when they have materialized. Thanks for reading, as always.