MOCKINGBIRD

1. Robert Lynch has been writing on downward social mobility. After getting a PhD under titan of evolutionary biology Robert Trivers, he applied to several tenure-track positions — unsuccessfully — and wound up teaching high school. When...

We are in the summer season of the sport-ification of our lives: the World Cup following the NBA Finals, during Major League Baseball, playing into the Full Obsession of Football — on all levels of society. The human body is on full display: some of us remember the line “

Welcome back, boils and ghouls, to the next installment, the second of Mockingbird’s spooky summer series! Blaine, Blake, Caleb, and I have lit the fire and set up the projection screen in the backyard to watch Jordan Peele’s NOPE (2022). Grab a drink and set up your seat: it’s showtime, and you don’t want to miss Peele’s Western-inflected examination of the mons...

I recently read Mark Allan Powell’s excellent book about preaching reception, What Do They Hear?, where he discusses the impact of social location and personal context on biblical interpretation....

In the closing talk of our 2026 NYC conference, our good friend Tim Blackmon explores how we receive the consolation of the gospel in the present tense. In preaching, God’s Word — something infinitely solid, objective, beyond us — makes concrete contact in the very heart of our affections.

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