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Recent Submissions

When Masters Lie Down with Dogs: Being Church in a Post-Secular Society
(Sheffield Pheonix Press, 2024) Monro, Anita; Colgan, Emily; St Francis College
Using the two references to dogs in the Gospel of Matthew (7:6; 15:26-27), this article explores the role of the church in secular society arguing for an ecclesial recognition of shared animality as essential to respectful involvement by the church in public debate and effective participation in post-secular contexts.
What’s the Emoji for ‘Communion’? The Digital Collapse of the Eucharistic Symbol
(2025-10-01) Cones, Bryan; Pilgrim Theological College
The COVID-19 pandemic shifted much human interaction to digital environments, with both material and economic effects. This is no less true of liturgical celebration across denominations, with some expressions likely to endure. This paper explores the theological presuppositions online and hybrid eucharistic celebration have unveiled through the dismembering of the fundamental materiality of the eucharistic symbol: the assembly gathered for eucharist. The paper will draw attention to the digital separation of the ordained presider and the elements of bread and wine from the symbolic whole, and how such practices reveal underlying attitudes toward eucharistic transformation, how it is effected, and what it produces. It will argue that the “context collapse” endemic to digital environments has intensified a consumer model of eucharist: presider as performer a la TikTok; eucharist as on-demand commodity with free next-day delivery; and liturgical celebration as consumable media with its own YouTube channel. It concludes by asking whether or how the digital liturgical genie might return to its bottle or, perhaps, if these digital experiments might be adjusted so that they point back to the fundamental eucharistic symbol of the gathered assembly.
Is the problem that faith is two sizes too small?
(2026-05-19) MacDonald, Sandra; Eva Burrows College
This article takes a fresh perspective on the contemporary “problem” of deconstruction in evangelical settings by considering the problem before the problem, the construction of faith, in particular during childhood. What issues that may make faith precarious and vulnerable to deconstruction can be addressed during children’s faith formation to make it more resilient to the bumpiness of teenage and adult life? The kinds of characteristics that make faith precarious or “two sizes too small” are faith that is antagonistic, simplistic, or moralistic; reliant on certainty and resistant to questions; and not personally-owned. Instead characteristics of resilient faith or faith that fits are being elastic, open to questions, and allowing for mystery; formed in community; and takes children’s faith seriously and acknowledges them as active meaning-makers. By shifting the focus, this article offers a formative theological approach, rather than being anti-deconstructionist.
Preaching Proverbs: Spiritual Formation through Proverbial Virtues
(Hendrickson Academic, 2026) Keefer, Arthur; Melton, Brittany N.; Daniel C. Fredericks; Trinity College Theological School
The Ethics of Hebrew Narrative: A Typology of Modes for Moral Analysis with a Case Study (Gen 19:30–38)
(2025) Keefer, Arthur; Trinity College Theological School
This article establishes a novel typology of approaches to the moral analysis of biblical narrative based upon a single case study: the story of Lot and his daughters in Gen 19:30–38. By analyzing how interpreters throughout time have made and justified ethical evaluations of Gen 19:30–38, I identify nine distinct methods for interpreting biblical narratives from an ethical angle and arrive at several conclusions: (1) there are distinct modes by which interpreters ethically evaluate biblical narratives; (2) certain modes are used in combination; (3) different modes can reach the same conclusion, while the same mode can bring interpreters to different conclusions; (4) the proposed typology should reorient certain methodological priorities in biblical ethics. The significance of additional factors for the ethics of biblical narrative are also explored, including the role of certain historical-critical approaches and the nature of intertextuality, while several constructive suggestions are offered for work in the field.