Thread by @richardabailey

A 🧵, as I get ready to post my @TGC essay likely one final time. I should say I’ve had some really encouraging and thoughtful comments come my way today.

I’ve also had some rather atrocious hot takes— the kind where it’s clear the person didn’t really read what was written, but read what they wanted to see and then started typing away. I see such non-reads fairly regularly in the classroom and they’re easy enough to engage.

My favorite reaction so far is the guy (yes, nearly always a guy) who wrote that I really needed to do more research (yes, don’t we all? Like a little research might make him aware of the 20 years I’ve been addressing this topic).

He then referred me to a blogpost written by a prominent evangelical pastor a full decade (yes, 10 years) AFTER my book was published through a standard peer review process by one of the premier academic presses and series.

I knew said blogpost and several others like it. That pastor, alongside whom I was presented (yes, do your research), who unleashed his minions on me at a conference in the early 2000s and who still hasn’t engaged my work in the 10 years it’s been out.

The guy today did refer, at least, to a scholarly article that (had he read my work) he would know I dealt with in detail in my epilogue—since my book ends before the time period that really fine analysis covers.

Unbeknownst to that guy today, though, I especially know what that earlier article covers because originally it was going to be in my dissertation and book in more detail.

That fact changed, though, when the authors decided to use some of the materials I’d uncovered in the archives and ideas we’d discussed together for their own article (yes, live and learn in academia). But, yeah, research.

I’m grateful, in sum, to @IvanTable and @TGC for the opportunity to contribute something in a place that is a little out of my regular wheelhouse. And I’m thankful for the way they mainly let me shape things the way I wanted—even if we both knew some feathers would get ruffled.

So, un the end: read, think, learn, engage.

And most of all (given that I’m so fortunate to be doing work that I really love): Enjoy.

thegospelcoalition.org/article/still-…

Sigh. *in the end