The Other Journal

10/31/2024

Grin and laugh through this surprising and amusing poem, written by Rebecca D. Martin and inspired by Ross Gay, published in our Issue 37: "The Second Time I Laughed during Holy Communion"

after Ross Gay’s Inciting Joy the whole right half of the sanctuary the people sliding their hands along the hard smooth polished backs of pews couldn’t figure out how to shuffle down the aisle at the right time one section lining up all the way to the door the other side forgetting to join them...

10/25/2024

“Just as the nested reality of a game is constantly affected by the real of the players and the world external to it, so too are we lost in our own imaginary-symbolic reality in which we are constantly being affected and moved by the real beyond us while also being unable to fully symbolize it. Games, thus, give us a chance to straddle two realities, inviting us to do the same with our material lives.” Read more by Paul Hoard in“On Pleasure and Games” from our latest issue.
https://theotherjournal.com/2024/07/on-pleasure-and-games/

Over the past couple of decades, the board game industry has exploded. Game-related stores, cafes, bars, and conventions have been popping up all over the world, and the game industry produced about $18 billion in revenue for 2022, a number that is expected to steadily rise.[1] Although this growth....

10/23/2024

What is The Other Journal? Our common commitment is to being a progressive, constructive, and charitable Christian voice that resources readers to love God, love neighbor, and invest in the hope that our world would be further characterized by justice and peace. Our next issue is focused on Money and will include writing in a variety of genres from essays to book reviews, poetry, interviews, and original art. Our goal is to provide readers with provocative and challenging, and nuanced Christian writing on social issues, politics, and theological ideas. Learn more about the journal:

https://theotherjournal.com/about/

10/18/2024

“I can’t stop seeing Zebulon on the steeply, hearing his call singe the sky.
I can’t stop knowing my own ancestors enslaved him.”

Poet Nancy L. Meyer wrestles with the past and its consequences through imagination and historical record woven into this creative piece featured in Issue 37 on Church. Read the whole poem here: https://theotherjournal.com/2024/07/zebulon-on-the-steeple/

10/15/2024

John Schweiker Shelton evaluates the history and impact of parachurch organizations, the need for church campus ministries, and analysis from the recent book The Great Dechurching alongside the context of American Christian missionaries. Read more from our latest Issue 37: Church in "Praying Towns, Parachurch Ministries, and the Need for Sodality" https://theotherjournal.com/2024/07/praying-towns-parachurch-ministries-and-the-need-for-sodality/

10/11/2024

Join us in telling it slant–and receive access to our current issue and twenty years of archives. Join us in envisioning a future of empathy, hope, and justice. We will publish two more issues in 2024 –don't miss out! https://theotherjournal.com/subscribe/

10/08/2024

“Borne by United Methodist–meets–Roman Catholic waters and fire, I’ve done church with tea-with-oat-milk Protestants and preachers of the prosperity gospel, evangelicals and charismatics, conservative Episcopalians and the Anglicans. I’ve prayed the prayer, prayed it with others, been sprinkled, been dunked, been disgraced. Married and divorced, I have loved and lost, and the poet’s mostly right on that.

Guy can’t hold a religion job, you might think, and you wouldn’t be wrong.

But I’ll see your smarty-snarky, Seinfeldian take and raise you a Defoe, Chesterton, and Eliot—Daniel Defoe, whose shipwrecked Robinson Crusoe faces death more than twice before seeing his plan isn’t working; G. K. Chesterton, who describes how we ‘walk round the whole world till we come back to the same place’; and T. S. Eliot, who finds that our explorations end when we ‘arrive where we started / And know the place for the first time.’[1]

Sometimes the shortest possible distance between two points isn’t a straight line.”

Read more of this intense, playful, and introspective “Orthodoxical” essay by Paul Hughes from our recent issue on Church: https://theotherjournal.com/2024/08/orthodoxical/

10/05/2024

Enter into the weekend through portals of poetry and join David Milley's journey in this Homily published in our Issue 37: Church. Read the whole poem here and understand how "I never learned to love my father's God, Instead": https://theotherjournal.com/2024/07/homily/

10/01/2024

On October 17 in Denver, explore new perspectives around purity, contamination, and disgust while enjoying a delicious dinner created by local chefs and craft brewers. Engage in thought-provoking discussions and embodied learning with theologians, licensed therapists, and culinarians. Don’t miss this transformative event that includes a subscription to The Other Journal!

Sign up here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/tbc-pre-game-event-sacred-contamination-w-dan-koch-the-seattle-school-tickets-939698001017

Join Us for a Pre-Conference Event at Theology Beer Camp 2024! Sacred Contamination: Embracing the Messy Call of Christian Love

09/27/2024

"I am sometimes asked how serving as a deacon in the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church shapes the way I read and write and teach theology. The truth is that I cosset a general allergy to the question. Answers to it often decline into styles, and each of these styles court reduction. One style reduces theology to ministry, which of course makes nonsense of the vast majority of theological discourse. Consoling a bereaved mother is, for example, entirely wide of the essence-energy distinction’s remit. Another style reverses the reduction, as if chanting the stichera during vespers might resolve the question of being’s univocity. But again: why imagine that ministry can only mean theologically? How exactly to think my way out of these twin reductions is not always clear to me. And so I habitually avoid the question of ministry’s relation to theology rather than risk reducing one to the other.

Even so, I am now prepared to confess that ministry as a deacon has indeed shaped the way I read and write and teach theology. But what diaconal ministry has taught me arrived as a surprise. [...] One among these movements carved deepest: retrogradation."

Explore "Theology in Retrograde" with Justin Coyle in our latest issue.



https://theotherjournal.com/2024/07/theology-in-retrograde/

09/27/2024

"I am sometimes asked how serving as a deacon in the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church shapes the way I read and write and teach theology. The truth is that I cosset a general allergy to the question. Answers to it often decline into styles, and each of these styles court reduction. One style reduces theology to ministry, which of course makes nonsense of the vast majority of theological discourse. Consoling a bereaved mother is, for example, entirely wide of the essence-energy distinction’s remit. Another style reverses the reduction, as if chanting the stichera during vespers might resolve the question of being’s univocity. But again: why imagine that ministry can only mean theologically? How exactly to think my way out of these twin reductions is not always clear to me. And so I habitually avoid the question of ministry’s relation to theology rather than risk reducing one to the other.

Even so, I am now prepared to confess that ministry as a deacon has indeed shaped the way I read and write and teach theology. But what diaconal ministry has taught me arrived as a surprise. [...] One among these movements carved deepest: retrogradation."

Explore "Theology in Retrograde" with Justin Coyle in our latest issue.
https://theotherjournal.com/2024/07/theology-in-retrograde/

09/25/2024

On Tuesday, submissions close for Issue 39: Death. Read more on our website about what we're looking for, and send your essays, creative writing, art and reviews by Tuesday, October 1. Thank you for sharing your work with us! https://theotherjournal.com/submissions/

09/23/2024

Casey Andrew Perkins explains how returning to the roots of diakonia is critical for the future of the church and society. "We live into our diakonia when we vote with our faith, engage in civll dicourse while respecting the dignity of those whose ideas differ from ours, and take action to increase justice and peace in our communities, throughout our states and across the nation.” Read more in our latest issue https://theotherjournal.com/2024/07/the-future-is-diaconal/

In June of 2023, I was ordained a deacon in the Episcopal Church. And the thing that everyone seems to want to know is why—why not remain a layperson or why not become a priest? The short answer is that this is the vocation to which I believe I am called, but there’s much more […]

08/27/2024

Death holds a fascinating, central place in Christian theology. The tortuous death of a human believed to be God incarnate is often understood as uniquely salvific. And death is the great equalizer among humanity–no one can deny mortality. For Christians, death is, after all, not the last word: resurrection awaits. So many relevant questions for authors to consider, and we look forward to engaging with your perspectives.

Submit your theologically-infused essays, creative writing, art, and reviews on this topic of Death by October 1. Check out our submissions page for more details on what we’re seeking.
https://theotherjournal.com/submissions/

08/22/2024

“But if the gospel is true, then surely we are compelled to believe that all this death is just so much peat and loam for the emergency of new life. Nothing that dies is dead for very long. The word of the cross and the resurrection of the Son of God hold forth amid the chorus of voices loudly proclaiming that this, at long last, is the end of the ekklesia.”
[...]
“I, for one, have pushed all my chips to the middle of the table, betting on the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ and the renewing power of the Holy Spirit.” Read more about Andrew Arndt’s bet in our newest issue: https://theotherjournal.com/2024/07/the-living-and-dying-church/

Everybody keeps telling me that the church is dying. I keep wondering if we know what that means. A few Sundays ago, we baptized a whole mess of folks in the church where I pastor. One of them was a teenage girl with whom our family has become close. We’re quite fond of her. Her […]

08/20/2024

Scott MacDougall wonders whether there is anyone or anything that needs church in order to be who or what they are.

“For some, asking ‘Who needs church?’ reflects a justified crisis of confidence in Christianity. For others, it stems from sincere curiosity, wary suspicion, or dismissive condescenion. But for everyone who questions, it is crucial that we find a clear and forthright answer. Doing so will help align our ecclesial life and practice with a sober vision of what church can and should be.”

https://theotherjournal.com/2024/07/who-needs-church/

In the post-Christian, postsecular Global North, people inside and outside of Christian communities look around and observe shrinking membership in churches across the denominational spectrum. Christians and non-Christians alike notice the world keeps on turning even as their local churches dwindle,...

08/15/2024

“The Oxford Handbook of Mystical Theology is for this reason a very timely book. Its essays and the resources it names are a rich introduction to the mystical tradition.” Read more of this book review by former Seattle School professor Jo-Ann Badley and engage this dialogue on mystical theology: https://theotherjournal.com/2024/07/rethinking-religious-experience/

Edward Howells and Mark A. McIntosh, eds., Oxford Handbook of Mystical Theology (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2020). The first Sunday after Easter we opened our church service with the words from John’s Gospel: “Have you believed, Thomas, because you have seen me? Blessed are those who h...

08/13/2024

“Something’s wrong with me,” I told her. “And I don’t know how to fix it.”

L. B. Blackwell wrote about nuns, family dysfunction, the end times, and Twelve-Step recovery, not necessarily in that order. https://theotherjournal.com/2024/07/recovery-2/

In retrospect, I can say that I joined the church out of basic need; I was becoming a Christian, and as the religion can’t be practiced alone, I needed to try to align myself with a community of faith. —Kathleen Norris I am looking out the large front windows of the Sister Mary Anselm Hermitage....

08/08/2024

"Digital church is now with us, and so the question before us is not whether it should be, and not whether or not it is useful, but whether digital church is coherent. Christ has renewed humanity, creating a new world in the shell of the old, and if church is the name we give for that sign of contradiction and change, what does it mean for our faith to have digital church?" Check out the visions of digital church in this review by Myles Werntz and share your thoughts: https://theotherjournal.com/2024/07/digital-church/…

In the world before the global pandemic, the question of digital church was relegated to futurists and megachurches, to church planters–cum–app developers. Without a doubt this question of digital church was already too late, though. By the time that 2020 happened, it was no longer a question of...

08/07/2024

“But if you are trying to get around in the modern world, it is critical you are using the right map.” In our latest issue on Church, Kirsten Sanders reviews new books by Meghan Larissa Good and Aaron Renn, exploring the complexity of understanding maps and locating Christianity in Western culture and the world. Read more about maps: https://theotherjournal.com/2024/07/the-map-is-not-the-territory/

Meghan Larissa Good, Divine Gravity: Sparking a Movement to Recover a Better Christian Story (Harrisonburg, VA: Herald, 2023). Aaron Renn, Life in the Negative World: Confronting Challenges in an Anti-Christian Culture (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Reflective, 2024). People’s ideas of geography are...

08/01/2024

"We are comforted until life happens, and we are suddenly confronted with the uncertainty and ambiguity inherent to all of life. That uncertainty asks us, Are you alive? New life always begins with tears. And if we are honest, we have to admit that we haven’t been alive and that we aren’t sure we want to be. It has been so comfortable to live in the certainties.

Some of us double down on the platitudes and the rules and the certainties, and we find leaders in the image of the he-god that dictates and demands. But some of us acknowledge the complexity of an uncertain world, and we find that we need a different language for spirituality: different images, symbols, metaphors to encompass more of the breadth and ambiguity. And so here we are, picking at lasagna leftovers and pie crumbs and weighing the possibilities that a psilocybin experience might offer in our journey with the divine, life, and ourselves. Here we are, wondering what the next transformation might reveal."

Kate Rae Davis explores what it means for a moment to feel like church–whether around a dinner table or dancing or hiking–as uncertainty brings us back to God and life and each other in new spaces that are transformative and healing.
https://theotherjournal.com/2024/07/seeking-uncertainty/

The lasagna is just being served when she asks what we all think about the use of mushrooms in therapeutic practices. A retiree tells about using psychedelics in the ’70s and the immediate transformation he experienced. That leads to a conversation on slower, more mundane transformations. We go ar...

07/25/2024

"I'd been too careless with my epiphanies, too exuberant with my knowledge of Elijah and Elisha and the syncopation of the synoptic gospels. I had said too much, sung too loud, spoken too freely of the love of God. I'd been seen. Now I would be studied.

I might be surprised by gentleness."

Enjoy this story of epiphanies and surprises by Angela Elizabeth Townsend, from seeking invisibility and wandering with a camera lens to being "all in" and welcomed into a new church family. https://theotherjournal.com/2024/07/off-the-vine/

I didn’t want to be seen. I was the sprite in the Nikon, invisible behind the lens. I set myself the goal of photographing all 114 churches in our rural county. GPS was a mere toddler then, prone to unorthodox directions. I found myself in swamps or surrounded by white ducks in search of mythologi...

07/22/2024

Kyle Stevenson calls out the ableist interpretations of Scripture and capitalist values that are at the core of systems and structures in the church today, perpetuating injustice through our conceptions of normalcy and accommodations. “Rich Wounds Yet Visible” examines how restoring our vision of the image of God in all people will “transform how we do church.” Read more here: https://theotherjournal.com/2024/07/rich-wounds-yet-visible/

I have a disability, I am Black, and I am an ordained Baptist minister. I grew up in the Black Baptist church tradition, a tradition with sermons and songs that have interpreted the healing texts in the Gospels through an ableist lens. That means that in my church and many others, we have normalized...

07/18/2024

We're excited to share this excerpt from "Water on the Hillside" by Donna J. Gelagotis Lee. Read the entire poem in our new Issue 37 on Church: https://theotherjournal.com/2024/07/water-on-the-hillside/

[...]
And the villager wants to see God
in the windows or at least Christ

or a saint or two. Everyone is hoping
for a miracle because now there are many lights, and the priests are old.
[...]

It was a river. No, it was a stream. Or perhaps it was a spring that flowed from a mountain, because it was so clear, and everyone wanted to drink. In the distance, there was a church with many lights starting from one light. There is a story about the light that had to do […]

07/16/2024

Paul Dafydd Jones defines church as the “materialized body of Christ." Explore more of “The Unconfinable God" in our newest issue of The Other Journal, an essay that begins with the question "What is the church?" https://theotherjournal.com/2024/07/the-unconfinable-god/