Christian Piatt
When I told the pastor near my house I was taking a picture of his sign for my religion blog, he was thrilled. Pretty sure he hasn’t seen my religion blog… Read more
When I told the pastor near my house I was taking a picture of his sign for my religion blog, he was thrilled. Pretty sure he hasn’t seen my religion blog… Read more
I woke up this morning, like everyone else, to the news of a shootout with one suspect in the Boston Marathon Bombing and the ongoing manhunt for a second brother. Like many others, I’ve heard lots of misinformation over the past few days about whether officials did or didn’t have a suspect, whether they did or didn’t have them in custody, and so on. “I heard someone dropped a bomb on Boston,” said Mattias, my nine-year-old son, over breakfast while... Read more
(Deborah Arca, Book Club and Progressive Christian editor for Patheos, posted this interview with me on her Faith Forward blog.) This spring, Patheos launched its first “premium content” blog – a weekly bible study from popular progressive Christian author Christian Piatt. The new subscription blog, A Heretic’s Guide to the Bible, offers a weekly guided tour through the Bible following the Church’s lectionary schedule, and is aimed at bible “pros” (preachers, teachers) as well as bible/faith newbies (seekers). There’s something for... Read more
We have a group at our church that does a weekly sandwich ministry together. Though we already had a group that makes sandwiches each week for a local shelter, another team realized some folks don’t go to shelters, and that they might be missing out on a real opportunity to connect with different folks in our community if they didn’t go out to where the people are. So now, every week, they walk the streets of downtown Portland and hand... Read more
Should I be insulted when the Bible calls me a sheep? What is Peter doing raising people named Dorcas from the dead? Did Jesus really die for my sins? Those questions and more are on the roster in this week’s Heretic’s Guide to the Bible lectionary study. See more about Heretic’s Guide or become part of the growing community by clicking the banner below: Read more
Bible Cliff’s Notes (My dog ate my Bible!) Gospel John 13:31-35 Jesus knows his disciples want to go with him, but where he is going, they can’t follow. Instead he commands them to love each other as he has loved them. He reminds them that the way people will recognize them as disciples of Jesus is by how generously they love. First Reading Acts 11:1-18 Peter is criticized for hanging out with uncircumcised gentiles (i.e., non-Jews). God’s command, in a... Read more
To start things off, Amy has a lovely story in which she was humiliated by other preschool parents. It’s worth a listen simply for that. But there’s so much more! We welcome Tony Jones, one of the founders of the Emergent Christianity movement, to the show. He and Christian recently attended the Subverting the Norm Conference, and Tony stirred things up by subverting the norm of what people were talking about at Subverting the Norm. (He made some critical observations... Read more
I actually kinda like tax day. It’s the one time of year when choosing writing as a career actually sort of pays off. Being broke rules!!! Read more
I was invited to participate in a debate as part of Oregon State University’s Socratic Club series. The topic was “Hell and the Love of God.” I debated against, Todd Miles, a professor at Western Seminary in Portland, who took the position that the existence of hell as a place of eternal conscious torment was consistent with an understanding of a loving God. I took the position that it is not consistent with a God of love. Each of us... Read more
I was invited to participate in a debate as part of Oregon State University’s Socratic Club series. The topic was “Hell and the Love of God.” I debated against, Todd Miles, a professor at Western Seminary in Portland, who took the position that the existence of hell as a place of eternal conscious torment was consistent with an understanding of a loving God. I took the position that it is not consistent with a God of love. Each of us... Read more
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