Authorized Documentary Freely Available on YouTube!
The Authorized infotainment documentary (emphasis on the -tainment, though I hope the info is good!) is now up on YouTube for free to everyone! This is kinda big! For some time it has been behind a paywall on FaithlifeTV. This project was one of the great privileges of my life, including getting to interview my hero John McWhorter in New York City in the basement of some random building (that's Columbia University, where he teaches, in the background). I'd really like to see this video reach...
Review: Think Again by Stanley Fish
Think Again: Contrarian Reflections on Life, Culture, Politics, Religion, Law, and Education by Stanley FishMy rating: 5 of 5 stars I have read multiple Stanley Fish books; I read quite a number of these columns when they were originally published in the New York Times. I go to Fish for precisely the value he describes in his farewell essay: In the columns that provoked frustration, I stopped short of offering the “I believe X” part, leaving readers to wonder where I stood. I tried to stand on...

Review: Why I Preach from the Received Text
Why I Preach from the Received Text is an anthology of personal testimonies more than it is a collection of careful arguments. It is not intended to be academic, and I see nothing necessarily wrong with that. But it does make countless properly academic claims, and these are fit subjects for review. I’ve wondered how I can fairly describe a book that has more than two dozen authors. There is, indeed, a spectrum of views represented here. The contributions do not all perfectly cohere. So I...
The First Thing I Ever Wrote That I Still Have
This is so random, and I don't know who would care—but I just stumbled across the very first document I saved in what ultimately became my Dropbox/Academics folder. It was an exercise I wrote for an English class in high school. I was 16 and 3 mos. What I find fascinating is that I was interested, at this quite early date, in language change. The first time I remember caring about and noticing language change was while reading (in early high school?) the dystopian novel Earth Abides. I...

A Little Help for Your Charitableness from Kevin DeYoung
There are few figures on the national evangelical scene that I like and trust more than Kevin DeYoung. I think he nails the balance between, on the one hand, graciousness and fairness and charity and, on the other (can anything be on the other hand from charity?—yes!), a willingness to stand clearly with Scripture against sin of all kinds. I listen faithfully to his podcast, Life and Books and Everything, and I really appreciate that he has begun reading his WORLD Opinion articles there....