Third in a series. I’ve made the case that we lack an account of what makes a social space a “public” space, and that this lacuna in our thinking helps explain two persistent problems that the faith and work movement has long wrestled with: failure to theologize well the particular kinds of social spaces in which most people do most of…
The “faith and work movement” in America is in danger of deepening the sacred-secular divide . . . by approaching and understanding church in some secularizing ways. If we want to find the sacred in the world – including in our workplaces – we must first find it in our churches. And when we do, our work can be revolutionized. That…
Second in a series. I have proposed that the faith and work movement is hindered by the church’s failure to theologize public spaces in the same way we theologize the church and the home. To flesh that out, let’s begin by defining our terms – in part because the Philosopher’s Guild will take my card away if I don’t. What is…
by Wayne Schwab Love and justice are the reliable and constant guides to discern and to find God at work in our own life and in the world around us. Wherever we meet love and justice, we are meeting God at work among us. Wherever love and justice are missing, God is at work somewhere to bring them. If we…
First in a series. The Holy Grail of the faith and work movement is to figure out how to bridge the gap between having the insight (God cares about work) and actually giving it the central place it ought to have in the church’s doctrine and discipleship. Mark Greene was right at Lausanne in 2010 when he said that the good…
Third in a series. I’ve already argued that a universal basic income would empower racism and build the wall in the short term. Some further reflection on why it would do these things will help us imagine what it would do in the long term. We are already moving rapidly in the direction of a future in which large, impersonal bureaucracies…
When I taught theology, the doctrine my students found most offensive was neighbor love. The idea that you are obligated to love the person right next to you, regardless of anything they might have done to “deserve” your love, was patently absurd to them. Now I teach writing. You have to have something to write about, so my students write about…
