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
May 11, 2019
A New Hope For Evangelical Women
May 11, 2019 By Beth Allison Barr
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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
May 10, 2019
Miraculous Draughts
May 10, 2019 By Philip Jenkins
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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
May 9, 2019
How Much Religious Freedom Is Too Much?
May 9, 2019 By johnturner
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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
May 8, 2019
The Latin American Evangelical Left: An Interview with David Kirkpatrick
May 8, 2019 By David Swartz
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David R. Swartz interviews David Kirkpatrick about his new book “A Gospel for the Poor” Read more
May 7, 2019
The Religious History of Star Trek
May 7, 2019 By Chris Gehrz
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One of our resident Trekkies examines the complicated relationship between religion and the science fiction series Star Trek. Read more
May 6, 2019
Notes on Qatar
May 6, 2019 By Thomas Albert Howard
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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
May 4, 2019
The Legacy of Rachel Held Evans
May 4, 2019 By Chris Gehrz
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Kristin, Beth, and Chris pay tribute to writer Rachel Held Evans, who died this morning at age 37. Read more
May 3, 2019
The Man Who Collected Paul
May 3, 2019 By Philip Jenkins
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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
May 2, 2019
Religion as a “National Security Threat”: Lessons from the Second World War
May 2, 2019 By Melissa Borja
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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
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