Mere Orthodoxy
What is Mere Orthodoxy?
We are a small group of young Christians who have spent the past 12 years working out what our faith looks like in public.Whether it’s arts, movies, literature, politics (yup, we go there), sexuality, or any other crevice of the human experience, we believe that the Gospel has something to say about it and that “something” really can be good news.
We take our cues from our boys C.S. Lewis and G.K. Chesterton, two of the most thoughtful Christians of the twentieth century. One of them wrote Mere Christianity and the other wrote Orthodoxy, and we like those books so much we stapled their names together and took it as our own.
But their thoughtfulness wasn’t abstract: it was rooted in the challenges and struggles that England was facing their time, and their mission was to demonstrate how a classically minded, creedally centered orthodox Christianity was an attractive and persuasive alternative to the ideologies of their day.
And they did it while writing poems and children’s stories.
No really, what is Mere Orthodoxy?
Okay. Bullet points, if we must. Here’s what we hope you will discover within our writing:- Scripturally rooted, but creedally informed thoughts. We know that it’s not enough to hang out saying the Nicene Creed and that the further we get from it, the more we’ll disagree on the particulars of how Christianity should play out in public. But we also think that getting to the Nicene Creed is a pretty good start for most Christians in our era, so that’s where we’ll put our baseline.
- Cheerfully contrarian when we have to be. We disagree with each other, and probably with you too (at least on something, right?). We think that’s part of what makes life and writing interesting. So we’ll make arguments, but hopefully in a way that is generous and kind.
- Eclectic. Honestly, we could write about anything. So be prepared for that. Chasing our interests is the only thing that keeps us interesting, and being interesting is the one rule we have. Other sites may have a “niche,” and Google loves ’em for it. Our niche is the world and where our reflections take us in it. And we kind of like it that way (and hope you will too).
- Publicly engaged. We’re after the meaning and significance of things, the substance. Which means that we are after matters of public concern. And our hope is that you’ll think more carefully, more deeply, and hopefully more Christianly about our world and your place in it after reading us.