these proposals envelop it and pretty much flatten it.

the Christian public intellectual needs to be a kind of ethnographer, offering a “thick description” of our present,

Everything in this book is animated by the conviction that the tradition of Christian orthodoxy is a gift, not a liability—a resource for the future, not an embarrassment that we should be trying to sweep under the carpet or tuck away in a back room like a crazy uncle.

it anew as a visual metaphor for this project. Finally, I’m a grateful to Deanna: for understanding that this kind of writing is what eats up evenings and weekends,

to be both pressed and stretched, located at the intersection of church and world, past and future, ancient and modern, memory and hope.

At the heart of that revival was a sense that the ancient was a resource for the contemporary—that the past had wisdom for the present.

Again, consider this an architectural metaphor for the Christian life today. We find ourselves in contested spaces, hearing rival gospels, enticed into competing liturgies.

faithfulness requires innovation and cultural agility. At the same time, we are called to be the one people of God, enduring over time, serving the One who is the same yesterday, today, and forever.

faith and doubt.