About the Author and Blog

About the Author

I am a PhD student in Religion (Systematic Theology) at Marquette University. I have an MA in Theology and Ethics from Union Theological Seminary in New York City. You can read my thesis here, titled “Responding Theologically in the Face of Torture: Re-Politicizing American Christianity in Light of the Interruptive Jesus.” My undergrad work was at Multnomah Bible College, double majoring in Bible/Theology and History.

Some of my theological influences are (the very short list): Karl Barth, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, William Cavanaugh, Louis-Marie Chauvet, James Cone, Gary Dorrien, Stanley Grenz, Gustavo Gutiérrez, Beverly Harrison, Stanley Hauerwas, Richard Hays, John McGuckin, Johann Metz, Jürgen Moltmann, Larry Rasmussen, Walter Rauschenbusch, Rosemary Radford Ruether, Kevin Vanhoozer, Robert Webber, Delores Williams, N.T. Wright, and John Howard Yoder.

As for who I am: I may be a boring person. Paradoxically, theology seems to facilitate this on one hand and, on the other, reject it entirely. Theology calls for one’s undivided attention and one’s full resources, and yet tells the thinker to spread out into creation and enjoy the created. This “dialectic” (if one can call it that) polarizes theologians — we’re either terribly interesting or terrifically boring. I’d like to think I am the former, but am resigned to the fact that I may be the latter. What do I do on vacations for fun? Go to the pub with friends, drink imported beer and scotch, smoke a pipe, and talk theology on a technical level that is invigorating, slightly repetitive, and certainly a very strange language for anyone listening in.

My personal webpage is here.

Some of my library is cataloged here.

Oh, and I like to take pretty pictures.

About the Blog
The purpose of this blog is three fold: 1. to practice putting out theological thoughts; 2. to raise discussion around these thoughts; and 3. to work on my writing, specifically on clarity and style. I’m sure by now you can notice it could use some help. For a prime example of all three, see the page entitled: Towards a Political Theology, which has the paper titled, “Switching Narratives: From Constantinianism to the Theopolitical of Cavanaugh, the Theoeconomic of McCarraher and the Political Theology of Metz.”

While blogs are perhaps a published genre, I understand them to be inherently flexible and prone to constant revision, both in content and word choice. I suppose if I make a drastic turn in my thought somewhere, that change will come up as a new post; however, as for “wordsmithing,” I expect to make smaller editing changes for flow as I see the need without much warning, before or after. And a side note, if you feel the need to say something like: “Hey, this sentence is too passive,” “such and such is unclear,” “less jargon, more interesting adjectives,” or “you need less pronouns,” a nice email with an explanation will be welcomed. Don’t worry, I’m a big boy, I can handle it and I’m sure I’ve had worse from previous editors.

As for whom I write to, I have indeed thought about my audience and I have concluded that my audience will simply be my audience. My audience is me and those who want to engage “my” writing/thoughts (geeze, that sounds pretentious). I will be flexible when asked by those less involved in theological language and whom need some clarity, but I also do not have the time to define every word I use. Some posts may be more technical and others more popular, but hopefully all will be distilling concepts into clear and concise language without superfluous syntax or word choice. So, for this blog, I plan to simply write as each post strikes me and see what happens.

Here is the influence and reasoning behind the name of the blog.