The Bible and Culture

All day my wife had had this sense of dread, a sense that something had gone terribly wrong. The dread had a focus--- our daughter Christy, whom we had not heard from for a couple of days. Then came the phone call late at night that no parent ever wants. Christy was dead and gone, felled by an unexpected pulmonary embolism. The thing is, that Ann had carried around the strong sense that it had already happened before it was confirmed.Then there was the story my old English prof Chris … [Read more...]

Hope springs eternal in the human breast, or so we are told by optimists of all kinds. This seems to especially be the case when what one is hoping for is that ever elusive 'true love'. It becomes all the more elusive when you are dealing with seriously messed up young people-- such as encounter in 'Silver Linings Playbook'. It is sometimes hard to tell who exactly is the most messed up--- Is it Pat Solitano (played very well indeed by Bradley Cooper) who is bi-polar and on top of that has … [Read more...]

Here is a nice article on the legacy of the John Wesley Fellows by Mary Jacobs in the UM reporter.....http://www.unitedmethodistreporter.com/2013/01/generation-wesley-john-wesley-fellows-keep-founders-flame-alive/ It has been one of my great privileges to be a John Wesley Fellow, from the very start of the program when I was one of the first three to be funded in 1977. As the article makes clear, the impact of this group of scholars has already been considerable especially at … [Read more...]

Going to Springfield Ill. is a trip back into the past. Here Abraham Lincoln built a house and lived for 17 years, and from here he was elected to the Presidency. The Lincoln Presidential Museum, and Library, and House are all here, and so is the pew his family would city in at the Presbyterian Church just down the road from his house. While I was in Springfield on Monday to do an event for my Methodists, preaching and teaching them, I had Monday morning off, and I made good use of it, … [Read more...]

The essay written by Christopher Mount, entitled "Paul's Place in Early Christianity" seems to be encumbered from the outset by a series of assumptions and arguments from silence that are probably wrong. The first of these is the assumption (see p. 93 n. 10) that Matthew, Mark, and John did not feel the necessity of linking the life of Jesus with the subsequent story and history of the church. First of all, we do not know what they 'felt' about this matter. If we were to judge it from the … [Read more...]

Who exactly are the Black Jacket Symphony? Well, they are a Birmingham Ala. band led by music director J. Willoughby. They have a cadre of musicians that rotate into and out of the band, depending on which album or albums or groups they are currently on tour doing hommages to. So, for example, you'll need some female voices to do Fleetwood Mac's Rumours, but a very different set of voices to do the Rolling Stones Some Girls. You get the picture.The band got started in 2009 when Willoughby … [Read more...]

When love goes south.....When reading is all that happens in bed at night.... … [Read more...]