Updates - January 2013

Much of my professional work has kept me from active blog entries recently. So I wanted to just update those who may peer into this electronic page. I just finished a review of Dr. D. Brent Laytham’s new book  iPod, YouTube, WiiPlay: Theological Engagements with Entertainment (Cascade Books, 2012). This was an excellent read and was accessible to opening a dialogue beyond the pages that contained his observations. I also have something similar in the works and so his insights were appreciated with regard to my own analysis. The review should be available in the next issue of the American Theological Inquiry.

I have had the privilege of working with some fine Bonhoeffer scholars, including Drs. James Pat Kelley, Holger Roggelin, Michael Lukens, and Philip Ziegler all of whom have promised or have provided feedback on my own Bonhoeffer manuscript. I believe that my position is a unique one with respect to an approach to ethics. Dr. Reinhard Krauss, also a well-known participant in the field of Bonhoeffer studies, will be writing the foreword to my book. This is a great honor.  My hope is to finish incorporating any necessary clarifications and have it off to the publisher by February.

Finally, I was also invited to prepare a paper for the 38th Spalding Symposium at Merton College, Oxford in April. This paper will focus on prison writing coming out of British colonial India and Nazi Germany. While there will be some component of colonial discourse theory, the challenge of this exercise is to compare two different global situations and to see how the writing from political and religious figures helps us to understand the influence of the incarcerated experience on those writing from within.

I was hoping to present a paper on Bonhoefferian ethics, the question of homosexuality and marriage to the Koinonia Graduate Student Forum at Princeton Theological Seminary in March, but alas, I submitted my abstract at the tail-end of the call for submissions. I was informed this week they had 85 entries and only a small number were invited to be presented. The paper I was planning to present there is basically finished. So I guess I’ll need to find another venue.