Perhaps you have seen his TV show— Snake Church, a reality show on Nat. Geo. Andrew Hamblin is a member of the Church of God. His church is on a gravel road in Campbell County, north of Knoxville. And recently he has gotten some attention he really didn’t want. The Law came and took away a bunch of poisonous snakes from his church. He sees this as a violation of church and state. They see it as a violation of... Read more

I remember the ride very clearly. It was a good number years ago and we were on the way to Tupelo for me to do a continuing ed event at First Church Tupelo. My friend Bud Gordon pointed to a big spread on the right side of the highway and said, “That’s John Grisham place. That is, it was until he moved to Virginia.” How does one go from being a small state small time lawyer to being a big... Read more

There is a Pink Floyd song entitled ‘Comfortably Numb’. It is about medicating yourself presumably, about drugs to dull the pain of existence. Of course it could be about the use of novocaine during oral surgery so you will be ‘comfortably numb’ before the drilling. But I want to talk about the effect of the total bombardment from the media in their coverage of one world disaster after another, after another. What happens is after a while there is what... Read more

There are probably only a distinct minority of persons on this globe who have not heard of Nelson Mandela, a man imprisoned for 27 years on Robbens Island for protesting the evils of apartheid. Millions have even seen the movie Invictus or read his biography about the long road to freedom. It was a long road for Mandela himself, and one that led eventually to his being the President of South Africa and a Nobel Peace prize winner. He has... Read more

It’s not everyday you get to: 1) play Julius Caesar at the Colisseum; 2) meet the Pope; 3) give a lecture at a Vatican conference; 4) get a private time in the Sistine Chapel, and with your Russian daughter! Christmas did indeed come early…. Praise the Lord. Read more

Here is an excellent post from Larry Hurtado reminding us that it is wrong to say that early Christianity was largely made up of impoverished slaves, women, minors, and the rural poor. This, is a complete myth. See below Social Description in Early Christianity by Larry Hurtado Just occasionally, there have been blog comments reflecting the old assumption that early Christianity was a movement made up simply of “illiterate proletariat”. That was a view often touted (even among scholars) until... Read more