The Radical Ordinary

As some of you may know, I have a Substack newsletter, where I am posting longer essays, all of which are part of a larger project there titled The Radical Ordinary.

I just wanted to take the opportunity to invite you to subscribe there, if you haven’t already. It is free, and comes directly to your inbox. The project is launching into a new phase, and now is a good time to get in.

What is the project that I am engaging in on my newsletter, and how is it different from this blog?

The Radical Ordinary is my small attempt to work out my own theology, to explore the ideas and voices and works that have shaped and influenced and inspired me, and to begin to achieve some coherence

In order to find the intellectual coherence I crave, I need an organizing principle. The Radical Ordinary provides that for me. I love this concept, the tension it creates, between the idea of something being both Radical – revolutionary, extremist, uncompromising – while also Ordinary – common, habitual, traditional. 

I draw the name The Radical Ordinary from the book Christianity, Democracy, and the Radical Ordinary: Conversations between a radical democrat and a Christian, by Stanley Hauerwas and Romand Coles. I first read this remarkable dialogue in book form in 2015, while at Phillips Theological Seminary. I haven’t been able to shake it ever since. It forced me down the political and intellectual road I’ve been on ever since. It forced me to reexamine my faith in traditional forms of political engagement, and my belief in the unproblematic engagement of the church with politics as the world does it, and to start asking hard questions that kept giving me uncomfortable answers. It shook me out of my unthinking political and theological assumptions and priors. It’s a book I return to often. 

Throughout this project, I will be exploring a variety of ideas and thinkers – John Howard Yoder, Jurgen Moltmann, post-liberalism, liberation theology, Oscar Romero, process theology, martyrdom, Stanley Hauerwas, the Book of Acts and the Epistles of Paul – all of these, and more. I invite you to join me, to read and think and respond and challenge and share.

I invite you, if this sounds interesting, to check it out, and subscribe.