What is it about ‘denomination’ that people run away from? Read more

What I Would Believe Were I a Metaphysical Naturalist First, let me say that, whatever others may think of me, I believe I have the capacity to think rationally. I do not claim that reason governs everything I believe and do, but I do claim that I have been trained in rationality and have the knowledge of the laws of reason and evidence necessary to think and behave rationally. I have taken courses in philosophy (including on the graduate level… Read more

The Reason for Christian Higher Education (and Pressures to Abandon It) One purpose of this blog is to support what I call the “biblical-Christian plausibility structure.” I believe it is the primary reason for being of Christian higher education. (Yes, one could say it is the reason for being of all Christian education, but for my purposes it suffices to designate “higher” education.) I have been deeply embedded in Christian higher education in America for more than forty years with… Read more

Once again a police officer has been acquitted of all criminal charges in the shooting death of an innocent and unarmed black American citizen. Read more

Stranger Things: Does God Still Speak to Us with a “Still Small Voice?” Anyone who has read my books, articles or blog posts more than “just a little” knows that I am a strong believer in the supernatural. My most recent book Essentials of Christian Thought: Seeing Reality through the Biblical Story (Zondervan) attempts to rehabilitate the word “supernatural.” Like so many good words that are part of the Christian “language of Zion” it has been stretched to the breaking… Read more

How Should a Christian Church Celebrate America? Advice… Just a few blocks from my house stands a very large and active mainline Protestant church. (I’ll leave the denomination unnamed.) Throughout the year it sponsors and hosts numerous special events including seasonal worship services attended by hundreds if not thousands. Its Vacation Bible School yard signs are all over the neighborhood and I see them throughout the city. This is one of the most active and attractive churches in this area—which… Read more

For quite a few years now Americans have had more conflicted feelings about fathers than about mothers. Read more

Memories and Thoughts about Thomas Oden Methodist theologian Thomas Oden, who died this past December (2016) was by all accounts one of the few Protestant theologians who journeyed from theological liberalism to theological conservatism. Many have gone the other direction. Oden taught for many years at Methodist-related Drew University in New Jersey. By his own account, published in several articles and books, he became disillusioned with theological liberalism and pluralism and converted to what he once labeled as “paleo-orthodoxy.” He… Read more

Response to “the Benedict Option” In the title of this blog essay I put “the Benedict option” in quotation marks rather than italics because here I am not responding to the book by Rod Dreher but to the idea at the heart of the book as expressed in a Christianity Today article entitled “The Idea of a Christian Village.” (Christianity Today, March, 2017, pp. 34-41) The article is by author Rod Dreher and is about his proposal; the subtitle of… Read more

Review of and Response to the Documentary Film “The Mask You Live In” Long-time readers of this blog will know that one of my concerns, often expressed here, is the plight of boys and men in America. That is also the concern of the documentary film “The Mask You Live In” which was produced by a feminist film maker who also produced the documentary “Miss Representation” (about the many misrepresentations of women in popular culture). If you have not watched… Read more