A son, grandson, brother, husband and nephew (three times over) of pastors, Adam somehow ended up in the family business and serves a very old Lutheran congregation in Lancaster, PA. In his spare time (which no longer exists, because he has a toddler) he plays games with too many rules and shouts at cats.
About Adam Morton
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God Has Made a Decision About You
Once upon a time in the 1970s, a midwestern theology professor and his former student sat down to write a guide to Luther’s Small Catechism for teenagers, which sounds the most thankless task ever conceived by mortal mind. Breathtaking beauty is rarely associated with confirmation curriculum. However, these two were rare birds, and as they […]
Blood on the Chalkboard: Faith, Fear, and Education
“Instead of the schools existing to educate, they exist to provide a safe space from education.” So a friend described the goals of a certain party within her church. In a panic that their colleges are “liberalizing” (which is to say, scattering weeds within a carefully tended garden of white conservative Protestant subculture), they want […]
Lancaster Conference Audio Files: Grace, Peace, and Personal Survival for the Preacher
Several weeks ago in June, when this old world was just slightly younger, some of the Lord’s own rabble met in Lancaster, Pennsylvania for Mockingbird’s first ever conference for pulpit-lurkers: “Grace, Peace, and Personal Survival for the Preacher”. It was not a terribly large group, but the food and wine were plentiful, and the talks […]
A Terrifying Act of Clemency
A certain sometimes-Presbyterian WWE enthusiast and former game-show host from Queens, preternatural in the ancient American art of getting attention, has commanded the usual furor of late — but for reasons that, even by his own standard, count as unusual. While the handshake in Singapore with Kim the 3rd is startling enough (for good, we […]
The Preacher Goes to Fashion Week: Jim Carrey’s Gospel Madness
Vanity of vanities, says the Preacher, vanity of vanities! All is vanity. God, in his mercy, sends preachers. Some are well-educated and institutionally-approved folk serving the faithful in fine old churches, but in these last days we should take no alarm that the same Lord who spoke through Balaam’s ass might again choose an eccentric […]
With My Own Eyes by Bo Giertz – A Review
By personal habit, and soon by way of formal study (again), I read a good deal of academic theology. It isn’t always easy going down – sometimes quite far from it, as most working theologians are not sparkling writers. By contrast, I don’t read much popular Christian literature. It isn’t my thing, and I justify […]
From the Archives: God Is Not The Archives
A throwback from Adam Morton. One great benefit of regularly preaching and teaching from the Bible in exchange for money, aside from the money itself (fine, not spectacular), is that it forces me into confrontation with portions of scripture that would otherwise escape notice. My spiritual discipline is inadequate to compel this in any other way. […]
The God of Order and the God of Cabbage Hill
Most Sundays you can find me in the pulpit of an imposing brick church on the western edge of downtown Lancaster, Pennsylvania. One-way streets join in odd angles and strange numbers before its disused front doors; Cabbage Hill at once rises and descends behind it into a labyrinth of narrow alleys, overhead power lines, and […]
The Father You Have, Not the Father You Want: Cross and Glory in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2
“A typical American film, naive and silly, can — for all its silliness and even by means of it — be instructive. A fatuous, self-conscious English film can teach one nothing. I have often learnt a lesson from a silly American film.” So judged the famously austere Austrian philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, fanatical opponent of intellectual affectation […]
How to Have (Just) One God – A Conference Breakout Preview
Perhaps the most basic piece of information about the Christian faith — so basic that in the West it is more assumed than taught, even to the unchurched — is that there is one God. We don’t have to think much about this. When somebody says they are religious, we assume that they believe in […]
The Church Without Christ and the Ghost of Christmas Future
I am an American Christian, however little I sometimes want to own that label. God, preaching, and proper theology may matter to me, but I know there is a business side of the church that demands pragmatic response. Bills must be paid, complaints satisfied, and attendance must be kept up, and all these things seem to ask […]
Parents in the Hands of an Angry God
As I type, my fourteen month-old son is downstairs alone. He is still alive — this is attested by the sound of plastic stacking cups banging together, alongside the odd mutterings and outbursts of a being whose vocabulary includes kitty, Bernie (an instance of kitty), Walter (idem), dada, uh-oh, and duck, but not mama. Mama […]
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