“How do I love my neighbor across the street whose house is adorned with MAGA signs? Does that differ from how I love my neighbor with a multicolored Pride flag?”
– @amarpeterman.bsky.social
www.christiancentury.org/features/com...
Episode 340 of Classical Ideas features my conversation with @amarpeterman.bsky.social! We discuss his brand new book "Becoming Neighbors: The Common Good Made Local" from @eerdmansbooks.bsky.social and his work with @sacredwrites.bsky.social!
Listen: linktr.ee/classicalideas
This first episode of the year, it made perfect sense to start with a conversation we had with @amarpeterman.bsky.social
about his new book, Becoming Neighbors: The Common Good Made Local—on faith, belonging, and practicing neighborliness locally.
Watch: youtu.be/Vhn_BJXbelg
For the Bluesky crowd: my favorite books read in 2025:
“An entire mythology is stored within our language.”
- Wittgenstein, Remarks on Frazer’s 'Golden Bough'
Truly an honor to review this incredible book, @drrachelwagner.bsky.social!
“@drrachelwagner.bsky.social names two foundational influences behind this cowboy messiah ideology: Christian apocalypticism and American frontier mythology.”
– @amarpeterman.bsky.social reviews Cowboy Apocalypse
www.christiancentury.org/books/self-a...
@nyupress.bsky.social
Today is a great day to unlearn the kind of Christian "love" that only serves to justify hatred, exclusion, and othering.
I believe they're aiming for the fall issue! I'll be sure to post and tag you in it once I see it.
I can't excerpt this entire article so I am imploring you to read it. @amarpeterman.bsky.social takes a complicated Q of how those on the left should respond to Trump's flip-flop on Epstein Files and flips it into a careful, thoughtful, analysis and explanation. I am floored by Amar's work.
Book review for the Christian Century!
It was a joy to talk with Karen Swallow Prior about her latest book "You Have a Calling."
Whether you're discerning your own vocation or wrestling with the pressures of productivity, Karen offers a rich, unhurried reflection on what it means to be called.
amardpeterman.substack.com/p/you-have-a...
Pre-orders for my first book, "Becoming Neighbors: The Common Good Made Local," are now available!
At the heart of this book is a simple but critical question: How will we live? I believe the answer for Christians is clear: We live as neighbors.
www.eerdmans.com/978080288412...
"May we learn that living things do not live just for us, that they live for themselves and for you, and that they love the sweetness of life as much as we do, and serve you, in their place, better than we do in ours."
- Walter Rauschenbusch, _Prayers of the Social Awakening_
"If our most powerful elites are now essentially beyond the reach of accountability, as they increasingly seem to be, then why suppose that our polity qualifies as a democratic republic at all? It appears to function, rather, as a plutocracy."
- Jeff Stout, _Blessed are the Organized_, xv.
I’ve had enough of “Christians” who claim to follow the teachings of Jesus…but would fail to recognize Jesus if he stood at the southern border, at the grocery store with an EBT card, or in the hospital waiting room without health insurance.
amardpeterman.substack.com/p/how-to-cel...
No matter what you believe politically or theologically about the LGBTQ+ community, the elimination of this lifeline should infuriate all of us.
It is discrimination.
It is fearmongering.
It is homophobia.
It is hate.
It is polarized partisanship.
It is death-dealing action.
It's official! "For Such a Time as This: An Emergency Devotional" is coming out late summer with @eerdmansbooks.bsky.social #EmergencyDevotional
www.eerdmans.com/978080288592...
In response to the deeply disordered quest for control, Christian leaders must...choose the path of neighbor-love.
This doesn’t mean that we abandon our society’s common life. Rather, we must reimagine what this common life might look like.
--
My latest in @sojo.net:
sojo.net/magazine/jun...
“When faith fades, the gun steps in.”
Rachel Wagner _ Cowboy Apocalypse: Religion and the Myth of the Vigilante Messiah_
To live in constant prayer, to lead a contemplative life, is nothing else than to live in the actual presence of God.
…
To exist at all, to be a human being, to be this particular human being, is only possible because of this Presence.
- Abhishiktananda, _Prayer_.
I would say, for the moment, that community, at least community larger than the immediate family, consists very largely of imaginative love for people we do not know or whom we know very slightly. - Marilynne Robinson
Truly such an incredible two days back in Green Bay — first, to meet @andyhermannfl.bsky.social and hear him talk football for 2 hours, and second, to see this city come alive in mid April for this once-in-a-lifetime event. #GoPackGo
We are made to belong with and to one another.
Christ receives only to give away,
he merits only to share.
What do we have that we have not received?
What do we have that we have not received?
All we have is given to us by God.
Our breath, our bodies, our souls, our thoughts.
All of reality—all we experience—teaches us our utter dependence on the Lord Jesus,
not our autonomy from him.
This dependence is not a curse.
Holy Saturday:
For the one who exploits, profits dishonestly, manipulates, fosters division, and prioritizes themselves over the whole, the cross reminds us that there is judgment.
—
sojo.net/articles/goo....
It is a rejection of all the systems, powers, and people that teach us to forget.
It is a refusal to accept stories that begin with "secondly."
It is a call to re-member the true, living, and active Christ every day.
amardpeterman.substack.com/p/you-cannot...
Holy Week: A tenuous, tenacious discipline of memory and hope.
To follow Christ’s command—“Do this in remembrance of me”—is to take up this discipline in thought, word, and deed.
