Jesus, Hosea, and the Third Day

Last updated on: May 11, 2019 at 6:38 am By Philip Jenkins

Early Christians believed that Jesus had predicted his Resurrection, and associated that event with the third day. They also suggest that such a belief should have been obvious enough to anyone who searched the scriptures. That latter statement is puzzling, as there really is no very clear statement that associates the Messiah with such a third day chronology. Where would you even begin searching? Let me suggest a passage that people might have had in mind when developing these ideas.... Read more

A New Hope For Evangelical Women

Last updated on: May 19, 2019 at 1:17 pm By Beth Allison Barr

My phone buzzed. I glanced quickly, then my brain clicked. I turned the car off and picked my phone up. Had Beth Moore just called complementarianism misogyny? Sexism? Had she just called it out as as more about arrogance and power than following Scripture? Named it sin? Read more

Miraculous Draughts

Last updated on: May 5, 2019 at 7:01 am By Philip Jenkins

I have been posting about the passage in the last chapter of John’s Gospel in which the Risen Jesus meets the disciples at the Sea of Galilee, and suggested that this was the original and most primitive Resurrection appearance story, which long predated stories of an encounter in a Jerusalem garden. That scene also has an interesting echo in another Gospel story, which as it stands does not have a Resurrection context. But arguably, it should have had one. I... Read more

How Much Religious Freedom Is Too Much?

Last updated on: May 9, 2019 at 12:08 am By johnturner

In a convoluted New York Times op-ed published this past Tuesday, Margaret Renkl argued against religiously grounded stupidity and religiously grounded exemptions from generally applicable laws. The online headline — which she might not have written — grabbed my attention: “We Are Taking Religious Freedom Too Far.” In her piece, Renkl criticized a Louisiana public school that blatantly ignored Supreme Court jurisprudence by having students read the Lord’s Prayer each day after the Pledge of Allegiance; a Nashville baker who... Read more

The Latin American Evangelical Left: An Interview with David Kirkpatrick

Last updated on: May 8, 2019 at 2:14 pm By David Swartz

David R. Swartz interviews David Kirkpatrick about his new book "A Gospel for the Poor" Read more

The Religious History of Star Trek

Last updated on: May 6, 2019 at 5:44 pm By Chris Gehrz

One of our resident Trekkies examines the complicated relationship between religion and the science fiction series Star Trek. Read more

Notes on Qatar

Last updated on: April 12, 2019 at 4:02 pm By Thomas Albert Howard

The state of Qatar, which protrudes into the Persian Gulf with Saudi Arabia to its south and Iran to its north, is only a little larger than Connecticut. Despite its size, however, it is an excellent place to observe current affairs, not least those pertaining to religion. This is what I learned during a recent visit to Doha’s decade-old International Centre for Interfaith Dialogue—among the first institution of its kind in the religiously conservative, historically inward-looking Gulf States. Qatar became... Read more

The Legacy of Rachel Held Evans

Last updated on: May 4, 2019 at 7:47 pm By Chris Gehrz

Kristin, Beth, and Chris pay tribute to writer Rachel Held Evans, who died this morning at age 37. Read more

The Man Who Collected Paul

Last updated on: May 3, 2019 at 1:11 pm By Philip Jenkins

I have been thinking about how Paul’s letters came to be collected and remembered. If anyone says the following post is pure speculation, which can neither be tested nor proven, they would be right. It’s an imaginative exercise, no more. Think of it as a detective story. To begin with solid facts, or things we can say with high confidence. Probably in the 90s AD, Luke was composing his Book of Acts, and he certainly did not know Paul’s letters... Read more

Religion as a “National Security Threat”: Lessons from the Second World War

Last updated on: May 3, 2019 at 12:33 am By Melissa Borja

This past weekend, nearly 2,000 people made the annual pilgrimage to Manzanar, one of the concentration camps where the U.S. government incarcerated Japanese Americans during the Second World War. The pilgrimage was partly an act of historical commemoration: this year marked the fiftieth anniversary of the first pilgrimage to Manzanar, and 77 years have passed since President Roosevelt’s issuing of Executive Orders 9066, which authorized the forced removal of thousands of Japanese Americans on the West Coast. But in... Read more