Should Churches Engage in Partisan Politicking? According to news reports, United States President Donald Trump has rewarded some of his religious supporters by signing an executive order ordering the U.S. Treasury Department, which includes the Internal Revenue Service, not to prosecute or otherwise punish religious organizations or their leaders for endorsing or opposing candidates for public office. In other words, according to the news reports I have read, he is nullifying the so-called “Johnson Amendment” which forbade non-profit, tax-exempt organizations,… Read more

There can be little or no doubt that “rich privilege” is evident across the board in American society. Just being affluent (or being perceived to be affluent) paves the way for special treatment everywhere. Read more

Can Science Alone Decide the Meaning of “Human?”   Recently here (and elsewhere) a question has arisen and I would like to at least take a “stab” at answering it: Can science alone decide what it means to be “human?” The question could be asked in several different ways and adding some of them here will help “pin down” the issue at stake: Can science (as understood by most people in the modern, Western world) distinguish between “human” being and… Read more

Complimentary Book Offer… As many of you know already, my most recent book is The Essentials of Christian Thought: Seeing Reality through the Biblical Story. My original title for the project was “Narrative Biblical Metaphysics,” but, of course, the publisher (Zondervan), knew better and gave it the more attractive title. The book is available on Amazon and from the publisher and through all retail book outlets. The purpose of the book is to inform not-yet-fully-informed Christians (and other interested persons)… Read more

Memories of 1950s/1960s America Evangelical Culture So, for those of you at all interested, here is a “key” to at least some of the items I mentioned in my previous post asking what you were in the 1950s/1960s if you remember them (or even some of them): Back Yard Clubs were sponsored by Child Evangelism Fellowship (CEF) and volunteers (mostly evangelical Christian pastors’ wives) hosted them in their back yards during the summer. Cookies and Kool Aid and games (and… Read more

What It Means If You Remember…. What were you in the 1950s/1960s if you remember: 1) Backyard Clubs 2) Singspirations (“Stop and let me tell you…”) 3) The Four Spiritual Laws 4) The Sugar Creek Gang 5) Flannel Graphs 6) Chalk Talks 7) “Tips for Teens” 8) The Palermo Brothers 9) Campus Life Clubs 10) “Sword Drills” 11) Promise Boxes 12) Hoping the rapture won’t happen until… 13) “Banquet” in place of “Prom” 14) Thurlow Spurr and the Spurrlows 15)… Read more

Has American society fallen into a condition where lying in advertising and politics is so rampant and pervasive that most people do not even think of calling it out? Read more

What Does It Mean to be “Catholic” If Not Belonging to the Church of Rome? Over the past many years of my career as a Protestant Christian theologian I have had many encounters with fellow Protestant Christians—including Baptists and others in the Free Church tradition—who would like Protestants to be “catholic” (with a small “c”). Most of them do not mean that Protestants should join the Catholic Church whose headquarters on earth is the Vatican; most of them do mean… Read more

  Preface: These two essays are my admittedly feeble contribution, for now, to people who ask whether belief in God and belief in Jesus Christ as God are reasonable (justified) beliefs. No attempt is made here to prove either God or Jesus (as God) directly; my only interest is in demonstrating, in a simply language as possible and as briefly as possible, why Christians believe their beliefs are reasonable and not irrational “leaps of faith” that require sacrifice of the… Read more

Is “Social Innovation” Sufficient? A Call for More Radical Social Action Recently I have attended talks by several very bright, creative, socially concerned Christians. All that they said can be described under the umbrella concept of “imaginative social innovation for solving wicked social problems.” The speakers were Christians deeply involved in research into and creative thinking about especially urban problems in contemporary America: intergenerational poverty, racism, school dropping-out, teen pregnancy, police violence (especially toward African-Americans), food scarcity and insecurity, etc.,… Read more