²⁴ McClendon, Ethics, 1:17–18.

²⁵ The phrase “the holy imperfection and the medley of difference” is the subtitle of chapter 1 in David Brown, Through the Eyes of the Saints: A Pilgrimage through History (New York: Continuum, 2005), vii.

²⁶ Freeman, Curtis W., “The ‘Coming of Age’ of Baptist Theology in Generation Twenty-Something,” in “Festschrift for James Wm. McClendon Jr.,” Perspectives in Religious Studies 27, no. 1 (2000): 21–38Google Scholar.

²⁷ I am dependent upon the insightful interpretation of Hopkins’ poem by Caitlin Washburn, “The Comfort of Resurrection,” http://www.transpositions.co.uk/the-comfort-of-the-resurrection/.

²⁸ Washburn, “The Comfort of Resurrection.” This slide into nothingness, this de-evolution, echoes Athanasius’ vision of the state of a fallen cosmos in his On the Incarnation.

²⁹ Washburn, “The Comfort of Resurrection.”

³⁰ Ibid.

³¹ James K. A. Smith, Who's Afraid of Relativism? Community, Contingency, and Creaturehood (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2014), 155.

³² Smith, Who's Afraid of Relativism? 157.

³³ Orlando Espín and Gary Macy, eds., Futuring Our Past: Explorations in the Theology of Tradition (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2006).

³⁴ Sarah Pulliam Bailey, “Interview: Marilynne Robinson on the Language of Faith in Writing,” October 8, 2014, http://www.religionnews.com/2014/10/08/interview-marilynne-robinson-language-faith-writing/.

³⁵ R. R. Reno, In the Ruins of the Church: Sustaining Faith in an Age of Diminished Christianity (Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos Press, 2002), 22.

³⁶ The five rules of dry stone fence building are (1) cross the joints; (2) set the length of the stone into the wall; (3) heart the wall tightly; (4) build with the plane of the wall; and (5) keep the stones level. For more information, see “How to Build a Dry Stone Wall,” http://thestonetrust.org/resources/how-to/.

³⁷ John Thiel, Senses of Tradition: Continuity and Development in Catholic Faith (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000). The remainder of this section draws heavily from my essay “Stewards, Interrogators, and Inventors,” in Tradition and the Baptist Academy, ed. Roger A. Ward and Philip E. Thompson, Studies in Baptist History and Thought 31 (Milton Keynes, UK/Eugene, OR: Paternoster Press/Wipf & Stock Publishers, 2011), 80–81.

³⁸ Such an opening can be found on pages 298–309. Cf. Catherine Keller and Laurel Schneider, eds., Polydoxy: Theology of Multiplicity and Relation (New York: Routledge, 2011).

³⁹ See “Curtis Freeman: ‘Other Baptists’ and Contesting Catholicity,” Faith and Leadership, February 24, 2015, https:// www.faithandleadership.com/curtis-freeman-other-baptists-and-contesting-catholicity.

⁴⁰ Cheryl M. Peterson, Who Is the Church? An Ecclesiology for the Twenty-First Century (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2013), 134.

⁴¹ Rowan Williams, Resurrection: Interpreting the Easter Gospel (Harrisburg, PA: Morehouse Publishing, 1982), 64.

⁴² Beth Felker Jones, Practicing Christian Doctrine: An Introduction to Thinking and Living Theologically (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2014), 203.

⁴³ Letty M. Russell, Church in the Round: Feminist Interpretation of the Church (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 1993); Keller and Schneider, introduction to Polydoxy, 5.

⁴⁴ Elizabeth Schüssler Fiorenza, “Wo/men and the Catholicity of The*logy,” Transforming Vision: Explorations in Feminist The*logy (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2011), 163.

⁴⁵ Ibid.

⁴⁶ Ibid., 166. Gesturing toward these dimensions of catholicity resonates with similar remarks offered by Maureen O'Connell in a College Theology Society panel discussion of Steve Harmon's Toward Baptist Catholicity, sponsored by the Evangelical Catholic group in 2008.

⁴⁷ Peter G. Heltzel, Resurrection City: A Theology of Improvisation (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2012), 170.