Hope springs eternal in the human breast, or so we are told by optimists of all kinds. This seems to especially be the case when what one is hoping for is that ever elusive ‘true love’. It becomes all the more elusive when you are dealing with seriously messed up young people– such as encounter in ‘Silver Linings Playbook’. It is sometimes hard to tell who exactly is the most messed up— Is it Pat Solitano (played very well indeed... Read more

Here is a nice article on the legacy of the John Wesley Fellows by Mary Jacobs in the UM reporter….. http://www.unitedmethodistreporter.com/2013/01/generation-wesley-john-wesley-fellows-keep-founders-flame-alive/   It has been one of my great privileges to be a John Wesley Fellow, from the very start of the program when I was one of the first three to be funded in 1977. As the article makes clear, the impact of this group of scholars has already been considerable especially at places like Asbury and Duke, and... Read more

Going to Springfield Ill. is a trip back into the past. Here Abraham Lincoln built a house and lived for 17 years, and from here he was elected to the Presidency. The Lincoln Presidential Museum, and Library, and House are all here, and so is the pew his family would city in at the Presbyterian Church just down the road from his house. While I was in Springfield on Monday to do an event for my Methodists, preaching and teaching... Read more

The essay written by Christopher Mount, entitled “Paul’s Place in Early Christianity” seems to be encumbered from the outset by a series of assumptions and arguments from silence that are probably wrong. The first of these is the assumption (see p. 93 n. 10) that Matthew, Mark, and John did not feel the necessity of linking the life of Jesus with the subsequent story and history of the church. First of all, we do not know what they ‘felt’ about... Read more

Who exactly are the Black Jacket Symphony? Well, they are a Birmingham Ala. band led by music director J. Willoughby. They have a cadre of musicians that rotate into and out of the band, depending on which album or albums or groups they are currently on tour doing hommages to. So, for example, you’ll need some female voices to do Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours, but a very different set of voices to do the Rolling Stones Some Girls. You get the... Read more

When love goes south….. When reading is all that happens in bed at night…. Read more

We hear a lot these days about the ‘reception’ of Paul in the post-Pauline era. Many scholars, who think the later Paulines are post-Pauline would include in this discussion 2 Thessalonians, Colossians, Ephesians and the Pastorals. Many would not as well. But it is of course true that there was a reception and transformation of both the image and the teachings of Paul in the post-Pauline era. It was recognized that Paul was important, was a fellow Christian teacher, and... Read more

The next essay in Paul and the Heritage of Israel is one by Michael Wolter, based on sociology of knowledge paradigms as a key to interpreting Paul and as a way of distinguishing Paul from what Wolter calls the later pseudepigraphic Paul (in his view this includes 2 Thessalonians, Colossians, Ephesians, and the Pastorals). Basically, Wolter wants to make a hard and fast distinction between a religion of conversion (see 2 Cor. 5.17) and a religion of tradition (see the... Read more