Archives for October 2016

More than one friend has told me Trump supporters are not true Republicans and I countered with this: “That circle of voters brought Reagan into the Oval Office and did the same for both Bushes.” Yes, from what I have gathered from polls and statistics, many if not most of the Trump folks were former [Read More…]

For some religions are all doing the same basic things. Varieties and differences notwithstanding, Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism — or jumping back in time — Roman religions and gods and worship and Judaism as well as its mutation, Christianity, are all doing the same. This is how religion scholarship addresses world religions and it [Read More…]

Almighty and merciful God, it is only by your gift that your faithful people offer you true and laudable service: Grant that we may run without stumbling to obtain your heavenly promises; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen. BCP [Read more…]

WHAT WOULD JESUS DO, AGAIN? By Garrett Sheldon Garrett is John Morton Beaty Professor of Political Science Professor at the University of Virginia (Wise). He is the great-grandson of Charles Sheldon, the author of the legendary, In His Steps. In 1896, Rev. Charles M. Sheldon published the book In His Steps which raised the question for [Read More…]

Last Saturday night, in the Cubs’ game clinching win over the LA Dodgers, we saw again this crew of umpires — led by PhD in theology Ted Barrett — huddling to pray before the game began. I’m not sure if they were saying the Lord’s Prayer, the Jesus Creed, or going spontaneous but the removal [Read More…]

By John Frye in his series on the preacher’s temptations. A troubling spin-off of the welcomed return to narrative theology is the reduction of preaching to “telling stories.” The Bible is a library of stories. Yes. N. T. Wright has helped us see that even the Book of Romans expresses the startling completion of Israel’s [Read More…]

You can learn about a group not only by listening to them express their views, which is step number one in charitable conversation, but also by listening to their enemies. One time Joe Modica and I co-edited a volume called Who Do My Opponents Say That I Am? in which a good list of scholars examined [Read More…]

It has been awhile since the last post in our walk through Genesis – Isaac was Isaac-ing, but now we turn to Jacob, through whom the nation of Israel was established. Abraham and Isaac became fathers of many nations, but Jacob of only one, God’s chosen people Israel. Abraham had many sons, but only through [Read More…]

If anything is clear in NT Wright’s new book, The Day the Revolution Began, it is that Christians have … here are Wright’s own words: We have Platonized our eschatology (substituting “souls going to heaven” for the promised new creation) and have therefore moralized our anthropology (substituting a qualifying examination of moral performance for the biblical [Read More…]

(Im)migrating Toward Love (Part 2): 5 Things Our Church Is Doing To Become a Home I find houses to be curious places. They often tell the tale of travel by the souvenirs on display or of their owner’s interests by the kinds of nicknacks one might find sitting around the place. One of the ways [Read More…]