The Red Herring of Public Decency

Last updated on: July 18, 2012 at 6:35 pm By Daniel A. Siedell

The Chinese government’s “pixelation” of Michelangelo’s marble sculpture, David-Apollo in a television story previewing an exhibition of western art at the National Museum in Tiananmen Square, Beijing, raises the question again of art, nudity, and public decency. Rather than make the sculpture safe for public viewing, did pixelating the work create an indecent or pornographic situation? Should a work of art be subjected to standards of public decency when it was not intended to be viewed, read, or otherwise experienced by the public as defined... Read more

Dictionary of Christian Spirituality

Last updated on: July 12, 2012 at 9:32 am By Kyle Roberts

I’m a bit late in getting around to this, but I wanted to offer up a plug for a great new resource: the Dictionary of Christian Spirituality, edited by Glen Scorgie (general editor), Simon Chan, Gordon T. Smith and James D. Smith. The book recently was announced (this spring) as the winner of the Christian Book Awards’ Bible Reference category. I’m proud to call both Glen and Jim colleagues of mine (they teach at Bethel Seminary’s San Diego campus, where... Read more

Spin, Laugh, Pray

Last updated on: July 6, 2012 at 9:39 am By Daniel Harrell

Guest blogger Dawn Duncan Harrell is author of Ten Ways to Pray: A Short Guide to a Long History of Talking with God.* You can find her at dawnduncanharrell.com. Did you don zebra and gyrate with LMFAO’s Sorry for Party Rocking tour? Do you even understand the question? LMFAO I had to do some research to verify my translation. You can, too. I will tell you that LMFAO is a nephew-uncle duo, the grandson and son of Motown founder Berry... Read more

Bearing Cultural Witness

Last updated on: August 14, 2012 at 9:11 pm By Daniel A. Siedell

Poet and Editor Aleksandr Tvardovsky It was Aleksandr Tvardovsky’s habit to lounge about his apartment in his bathrobe looking at the manuscripts that littered his living quarters. As editor of the liberal magazine Novy Mir in the Soviet Union during the height of the Cold War, Tvardovsky was well known as a Soviet poet as well as a staunch defender of his literary magazine’s independence. One morning he came upon a manuscript and began reading. He then stopped, put the manuscript... Read more

Movement, Sect, Organization or Institution?

Last updated on: July 9, 2012 at 9:11 am By Wyndy Corbin Reuschling

The sermon yesterday was organized around a quotation in the bulletin: “The mark of a good church is not its seating capacity but its sending capacity” (Mark Stachura). Using the Scripture readings from 2 Cor 12:2-10 and Mark 6:1-13, we were pressed to think about the implication for how we understanding ourselves today given Jesus’ command to “go” in Matthew 28 and given our historical roots in the Methodist movement of John Wesley. What might it mean to recover a... Read more

God’s Competition?

Last updated on: July 5, 2012 at 12:43 pm By Wyndy Corbin Reuschling

It was a wild Fourth of July night in Ashland, Ohio. We headed over to friends for the prime location on their front porch to watch the community fireworks display. A planned 21 minute presentation was crammed into 7 minutes because of the thunderstorms that quickly moved in. So, there we were, cozy on the front porch watching a full blown fireworks display in almost 1/3 of the time allotted while the lightening and thunder competed for sound effects and... Read more

God and the “Goddamn Particle”

Last updated on: July 6, 2012 at 12:27 pm By Kyle Roberts

For the past 50 years or so, scientists have been looking for the elusive “Higgs boson” particle (named after physicist Peter Higgs, who postulated the existence of this particle). The confirmation of the particle’s existence would complete the “Standard Picture” of the subatomic building blocks of the universe. The uniqueness of the Higgs boson is that it appears to bequeath mass to other particles, who — sadly — have no mass. Thus, the particle is thought to be responsible for... Read more

Justice for All

Last updated on: July 3, 2012 at 5:48 pm By Daniel Harrell

Happy Fourth of July. Hopefully you have better plans today than blog reading, but just in case… There’s been a deluge written in the wake of Chief Justice Robert’s ruling last week on Obamacare. He surprised everybody on both sides by choosing not to take sides on the Affordable Care Act, deciding to cut the baby in half, Solomon-style. I loved it. My favorite line from the ruling, speaking on behalf of the Court, was this: “It is not our job... Read more

Art and Karma: A Report from India

Last updated on: July 18, 2012 at 6:35 pm By Daniel A. Siedell

I spent last week in Hyderabad, India leading an arts in ministry track at the fourth annual India YCL Conference sponsored in part by One Hope, one of the more exciting and intellectually dynamic missions organizations in North America. Founded by Bob Hoskins in 1987 and located in Pompano Beach, Florida, the mission of the organization is simple yet ambitious—get the Word of God to children around the world. Its reach is aggressively global, working in over 140 countries and with... Read more

The Moral Vacuum of the Health Care Debates

Last updated on: June 29, 2012 at 10:29 am By Wyndy Corbin Reuschling

On Thursday, the United States Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the Affordable Health Care Act. After months of raucous rhetoric (it’s difficult to use the words “debate” or “conversation”), we will now have accessible health care for millions of our co-citizens, and guarantees for those of us currently with health care, that we will not be without coverage upon a job loss, catastrophic or chronic illness, or unexpected disabilities in our families. For the sake of fair disclosure, if... Read more