This past summer, I began exploring the Enneagram, a grid of personality/spirituality types you generally see depicted in that vaguely satanic-looking nine-point star within a circle. I’ve heard about it from students and colleagues over the years, and I decided it was time to see for myself. I read Chistopher Heurtz’s helpful book The … read more
Advent Meditations- Wednesday, December 13
<<Return to Advent Meditations page Psalm 38; 119:25-48; Amos 8:1-14; Matt. 23:1-12; Rev. 1:17-2:7 “He said, ‘Amos, what do you see?’ And I said ‘A basket of summer fruit.’” Alongside the Adventide expectation of grace and favor, there comes also the promise of God’s judgment on injustice. Do we notice, as the prophets and psalmists […]
On Looking Again
C.S. Lewis once said that if we could really see another person—any other person—as God sees her and made her to be, we would be tempted to fall to our knees and worship her as a god. From a classical Christian point of view, that is not hyperbole. Jesus reminded the Pharisees of the […]
Laughter at Lent
It’s Ash Wednesday morning as I write these words, and in a few hours I will hear myself and others invited “to the observance of a holy Lent, by self-examination and repentance, by prayer, fasting, and self-denial; and by reading and meditating on God’s holy Word.” What are we denying and negating, when we choose […]
ADVENT MEDITATIONS – MONDAY, DECEMBER 19
Psalm 61, 62; Isaiah 11:1-9; John 5:30-47 Listen to the author read their meditation and prayer: Dr. Anthony D. Baker, Advent Meditation “For God alone my soul in silence waits.” The 62nd Psalm reads as if spoken by one on the edge of lost hope. The world is alive with assault, falsehood, and […]
Truthfulness in a Post-Truth Age
I’m not sure if one can win a prize for guessing the Oxford English Dictionary’s word of the year. Just in case that’s not a thing, I want some virtual fist bumps for calling it this time. The word of 2016 is “post-truth.” And I called it. No, seriously. I promise I did. Cross my […]
Dr. Anthony Baker on “Mysticism as a Theological Challenge”
This talk was presented as a part of the seminary’s series of lectures on mystics and mysticism.
Dr. Anthony D. Baker
Wednesday – December 9 Psalm 38; Amos 8:1-14; Matthew 23:1-12 Listen to the author read their meditation and prayer: Dr. Tony Baker Advent Meditation There’s an irony peaking under the surface of today’s gospel, when Jesus calls out the hypocrisy of the proud interpreters of Torah. Let’s imagine a Pharisee who finds that it’s […]
Jesus Christ, Karl Marx, and Michael Brown
Human labor is not a commodity. Recent articles on “Ferguson, One Year Out,” which I was reading alongside commentary on the Greek economic showdown, brought this central Marxist insight back to mind. When I read economic and political journalism, I do so not with the insights and perspectives of an economist or a political scientist, but rather as […]
Hospitable Language
What is an argument? “Argument is an intellectual process,” says a frustrated client at the Argument Clinic in a Monty Python sketch. “Contradiction is just the automatic gainsaying of any statement the other person makes.” “No it isn’t,”is John Cleese’s inevitable reply. Among the Episcopalians gathered in Salt Lake City this summer, there will likely […]