“The Weekend Wanderer” is a weekly curated selection of news, stories, resources, and media on the intersection of faith and culture for you to explore through your weekend. Wander through these links however you like and in any order you like. Disclaimer: I do not necessarily agree with all the views expressed within these articles but have found them thought-provoking.
“The New Atheists ‘Attack a God I Don’t Believe In, Either’: A Q&A With Rowan Williams” – Peter Wehner interviews former Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams in The New York Times: “Rowan Williams is among the most important religious thinkers in the world. A theologian, poet, playwright and literary critic, he served as the archbishop of Canterbury from 2002 to 2012. I spoke to Dr. Williams about his journey of faith and doubt, why God allows the innocent to suffer and how to interpret the Bible (and how not to). He talked about the New Atheists and the influence on his theology of Fyodor Dostoyevsky, what makes Jesus such a compelling figure and what it means to pastor people through grief. Dr. Williams also talked about how, for him, the Christian faith is “the perspective that enriches.” Our conversation, which has been lightly edited, is the third in a series of interviews I am doing that explores the world of faith.”
“Why You Need Religion (with Ross Douthat)” – Gavin Ortlund interviews Ross Douthat in Truth Unites: “Gavin Ortlund interviews Ross Douthat on his new book, Believe: Why Everyone Should be Religious. Check out Ross’s book here. Truth Unites exists to promote gospel assurance through theological depth.”
“Pastoring in the Age of Deconstruction” – Nicholas McDonald in Christianity Today: “The first time I heard the term, I was a campus minister at the University of Missouri. I figured I knew how to respond to it. But after several dozen conversations with deconstructing college students, it became clear: I didn’t have the tools to help these students re-engage with Jesus. Often, students would raise fairly typical objections to Christianity in these conversations, and I had fairly typical answers to their questions. Sometimes, I could tell these answers landed well. It was exactly what they needed—a clear, compassionate answer to their doubts. But for others, something wasn’t clicking. I’d offer my gracious, rational answers to their questions, but it just wasn’t working. By ‘not working,’ I don’t mean the student was unconvinced—I mean they were simply unmoved. They’d often say something like, ‘Yeah, I get what you’re saying.’ But their expression said something else:’You didn’t hear the heart behind my question.’ I continued in this pattern for about two years, until it dawned on me: The intellectual answers to my students’ questions were important. Very important. But for many of these young people—especially those who used the term deconstruction—those facts and proofs weren’t the right starting point. Not the first conversation we needed to have. Not even the second or third. Over time, I began thinking of my students who were deconstructing in terms of three general categories, or buckets, before I began to address their doubts, concerns, or anger toward the church.”
“Remembering Walter Brueggemann” – Brent A. Strawn at Fortress Press: “Walter Brueggemann, born on March 11, 1933, died early in the morning on June 5, 2025. A giant in the field of Old Testament scholarship, he outpaced all others in terms of his reach and scope. Brueggemann is often the only Old Testament scholar anyone knows by name, and this is no doubt due to his staggering literary output. A bibliography of his books runs to twenty pages and contains over 120 separate titles, over 40 of which appeared with Fortress Press. Most scholars, even prolific ones, aspire to three or four books in a career; Brueggemann published fourteen in his 90th and 91st years of age. It is not only the quantity that impresses; it is the quality. Several of these books changed and defined the field—though in Walter’s case, the field in question is actually plural, fields. He was one of a precious few who wrote easily and effectively for larger publics, especially Christian clergy and laypeople.”
“Creation Care in an Age of Despair” – Rinah Fiol at The Gospel Coalition: “My professor turned from the chalkboard strewn with soil particle diagrams. “‘Where does the vast majority of the mass of a tree come from?’ The room of 51 college students stared blankly back at him. Gradually, you could hear the hush of awe spreading through the room as the light bulbs went off in our heads. ‘The CO2 in the air,’ one student said. Giant sequoias, the avocados on your kitchen counter—all plants materialize from thin air via the wonder of photosynthesis. If this isn’t proof of a God who spoke all things into existence, I don’t know what is. If we accept that the cosmos was made by God and that ‘all things are [his] servants’ (Ps. 119:91), several things should follow: joyful worship in response to our Creator for his creation’s beauty and bounty, an eagerness to care for this creation out of love for God and our neighbors, and a sense of hope that the God who created everything will make it blindingly new. This hope-infused Christian creation ethic is the perfect antidote to eco-anxiety on one hand (‘It’s all on us to keep the planet alive!’) and escapism on the other (‘The earth is temporary, so why care for it?’). If Christians lean into our biblical calling to steward God’s creation (Gen. 1:26-2:15), we’ll demonstrate our hope for all of creation and our love for its Redeemer to the unbelieving world, particularly my own disconnected and pessimistic generation of Gen Z-ers.”
“AI May Have Exposed the Dead Sea Scrolls’ Real Age—And They’re Much Older Than Previously Thought” – Daniel Cassidy in ARTnews: “The Dead Sea Scrolls, once the sacred preserve of specialists armed with magnifying glasses and guesswork, have finally been subjected to machine learning. In a new article in the journal PLOS One published Wednesday, researchers from the University of Groningen combined AI and carbon dating to find that many of the scrolls are older than scholars previously estimated. Some, it seems, could date to the time of the biblical authors themselves, not centuries after. The conventional timelines, based largely on handwriting analysis and compromised carbon tests, now look suspiciously optimistic. Early dating efforts, we now learn, were skewed by the application of castor oil—a 1950s attempt to make the manuscripts readable that had the unintended effect of scrambling radiocarbon results.”
Music: Ólafur Arnalds and Talos, “We Didn’t Know We Were Ready” [featuring Niamh Regan & Ye Vagabonds]
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Matthew Erickson 