On Friday April 17th the Austin American-Statesman ran a front page article with my mug plastered on it that highlighted how the religious culture of Austin has changed. It is a good article and I felt it deserved as thoughtful of a response as I could produce on a Friday night. So here it is. The original article is here.
In graduate school, one of the few books I read that radically changed my life was a little book by an ethicist and a chaplain called “Resident Aliens.” Its premise was simple, but it pried open a very hopeful window for me and changed the trajectory of my faith. According to one of the authors, the worl
d changed on a Sunday night in 1963 with the Fox theater in Greenville South Carolina opened its doors in defiance of the states traditional ”blue laws” which kept such businesses closed on a Sunday. In that moment, the reign of Christianity as the default-faith of that community had ended. The shocking part about that story for me was how this might be really good news for Christians… and indeed, in a way, it has been.
