Volume 32 · Issue 1 · Winter 2026
Articles
·
Authors
· Richard A. Ray
Author

Richard A. Ray

Richard A. Ray is Chairman of the Board of the Presbyterian Heritage Center in Montreat, North Carolina. He holds a PhD from the University of St Andrews and writes on theology, patristics, and parish ministry.

20231 essay
Encouragement for the Journey
Encouragement for the Journey

Parish ministry is one of the most demanding journeys a person can take. Ray writes to encourage those discerning the call, and the older ministers who tend them, with a…

20221 essay
An Invitation to Combat
An Invitation to Combat

Ray opens with a Boy Scout sea voyage to Austria as a fifteen-year-old, the moment a curious kid first met big questions. The address builds from that memory toward an…

20211 essay
Theological Mystery of Words
Theological Mystery of Words

Ray opens with himself as a fifteen-year-old on a weather-beaten ship bound for Austria, the journey on which he first noticed how much words could carry. The piece works toward…

20201 essay
The Feast of Many Memories
The Feast of Many Memories

Church-leadership conferences offer endless cures for stagnant congregations: webinars, restructuring, mergers, branding consultants. Ray draws on John Leith and a long memory to question whether any of these have actually…

20191 essay
John Calvin on Theatrical Trifles in Worship
John Calvin on Theatrical Trifles in Worship

Late medieval worship was overrun with what Calvin called theatrical trifles. Ray follows Calvin's polemic into its sources and stakes, and asks what 'theatrical' looks like in modern Reformed worship…

20181 essay
When Theology Burns
When Theology Burns

Ray picks up Julian of Norwich's Showings, reads it again, and finds soteriology buried in the oddities of her sentences. The piece is about what happens when a theological text…

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