Sarah Mullally as the Archbishop of Canterbury

On January 28, 2026, Sarah Mullally became the first woman to occupy the seat of the archbishop of Canterbury, which is the spiritual leader of the Church of England under its governor, the British King (or Queen) and of the worldwide Anglican Communion, which includes the Episcopal Church. The King (or Queen) being above the archbishop in the Church of England is in line with Thomas Hobbes’ seventeenth-century theory that the sovereign should be in charge of church and state lest civil war break out (again). Just as a British king is a man and a queen is a woman, so too, as of 2026, the Archbishop of Canterbury could be a man or a woman. This of course set the Anglicans even further off from the Roman Catholic Church, where only men can be priests and bishops, including that of Rome (i.e., the Pope). I contend that the intransigence on this point is due to a logical error involving a category mistake just for added fun.

The full essay is at "Sarah Mullally as the Archbishop of Canterbury."

Mary

The film, Mary (2024), is pregnant with intimations of the theological implications of her unborn and then newly born son, Jesus. That story is of course well-known grace á the Gospels, and the theology of agape love associated with that faith narrative is at least available through the writings of Paul and many later Christian theologians. What we know of Mary is much less, given that her role in the Gospels is not central even though the heavy title, Mother of God, has been applied to her without of course implying that she is the source of God. The film, like the magisterium of the Roman Catholic Church has done, endeavors to “evolve the myth” by adding to Mary’s story even though the additions are not meant to be taken as seriously as, for example, the Catholic doctrine that Mary is assumed bodily into heaven. The movie comes closest to the magisterium in suggesting that Mary’s birth is miraculous; the magisterium holds that Mary is born without sin, and that Jesus inherited this because of the Incarnation (i.e. God, rather than Joseph, impregnates Mary). Suffice it to say that the perception of myth as static is the exception rather than rule; it is natural for the human mind to work with myths such that they can evolve rather than take them as given in a final form or extent. This is not to say that we should focus on the faith narratives as if they were ends in themselves and thus unalterable; rather, as the film demonstrates, religious transcendence is of greater value.

The full essay is at "Mary." 

The Holy Grail: Artifact or Superstition?

Relics are nothing new to religion, whose legitimacy used to be synonymous with being ancient, which is one reason why the ancient Romans did not consider the nascent Jesus Movement to be a religion. The cup that Jesus uses in the Last Supper in Gospels is right up there with pieces of the wood cross of the Crucifixion as the most holy of relics in Christianity. “In Europe alone, there are said to be around 200 cups, each thought to be the Holy Grail—the cup used by Jesus Christ at the Last Supper.”[1] They can’t all be THE cup, but I bet if you visited each place, the partisans would insist that their cup is genuine. For example, the website of the cathedral at Valencia, in eastern Spain, proclaims regarding the cup there, “Tradition reveals that it is the same cup that the Lord used at the Last Supper for the Institution of the Eucharist.”[2] Never mind that medieval legend had it that Joseph of Arimathea had brought the Holy Grail near Glastonbury Tor in southern England shortly after Jesus’ death. That would be quite a distance to travel back them to deliver a cup. These two cannot both be right, yet Christians have prayed in both places as if the cup in each place were genuine. That people have gotten carried away with the super relic through history seems clear from “the fact that, over the centuries, legends have arisen of ‘grails’ producing miracles.”[3] That miracles have been said to arise from more than one of the cups ought to be a red flag that something is amiss, for only one cup could possibly be genuine and so miracles could not have come by means of proximity to the other cups. I submit that basic category mistakes regarding genres of meaning (and writing) are a big part of the problem as to why a presumed historical artifact has given rise to puerile superstition in the name of religious truth.

The full essay is at "The Holy Grail."

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1. Julia Buckley, “They All Say They’ve Got the Holy Grail. So Who’s Right?” CNN.com, August 17, 2024.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.

The Case for Christ: On the Problem of Extracting History from Faith Narratives

A film narrative oriented to an investigation of Christianity is tailor-made to illustrate the potential of film as a medium to convey abstract ideas and theories. In The Case for Christ (2017), a skeptical journalist—Lee Strobel—takes on the contention that Jesus’ resurrection in the Gospels was also a historical event (i.e., happened historically). Lee states the proposition that he will investigate as follows: “The entire Christian faith hinges on the resurrection of Jesus. If it didn’t happen, it’s a house of cards. He’s reduced to a misunderstood rabbi at best; at worst, he was a lunatic who was martyred.” The journalist’s initial position is that the resurrection didn’t happen historically; it is just part of a faith narrative (i.e., the Gospels). Lee wants to test the proposition by interviewing experts. The dialogues between the journalist unschooled in theology and the scholars of religion provide a way in which complex ideas and arguments can be broken down for the viewer and digested. The journalist stands as a translator of sorts similar to a teacher’s function in breaking down knowledge new to students so they can grasp and digest it.

The full essay is at "Case for Christ."