In Andrew Root’s  Faith Formation in a Secular Age, Root sketches three kinds of Secular: Secular 1: Sacred versus Secular Planes Secular 2: Religious versus A-religious Spaces Secular 3: The Negating of Transcendence What happens to faith in Secular 3? Faith in Secular 2 is joining and participating in an organization, an institution, a church. “In Christ” then means “in the church,” and he appeals here to Bultmann. What are the elements of faith in Secular 3? Root contends, and this... Read more

From American Conservative [HT: BCM] A woman claims she was raped at a Southern Baptist seminary led by Paige Patterson, who urged her to stay silent about it (“They shamed the crap out of me,” she told the Post), and then put her on probation for two years (the victim does not know why, but she senses that it was because she let a man into her home). And [Rick Patrick] the pastor of First Baptist Church of Sylacauga, Alabama, makes fun... Read more

What Christian Women Want, By Leslie Leyland Fields, editor of the recently released The Wonder Years. How did Beth Moore stay silent for so long? Humility, perhaps? Grace? By now, many have read the popular Bible teacher’s “Letter to my brothers,” posted on her Living Proof Ministries Blog on May 4. Sadly, her account of the treatment she’s received over the last three decades at the hands of evangelical pastors and leaders is all too familiar. Women like me, who... Read more

From Robert Louis Wilken, The First Thousand Years: At the end of the first century there were fewer than ten thousand Christians in the Roman Empire. The population at the time numbered some sixty million, which meant that Christians made up one hundredth of one percent, or 0.0017 percent according to the figures of a contemporary sociologist. By the year 200, the number may have increased to a little more than two hundred thousand, still a tiny minority, under one percent... Read more

An interview with Ross Douthat By David George Moore. Dave blogs at www.twocities.org and some of his videos can be accessed at www.mooreengaging.com. Ross Douthat writes for The New York Times. He is a Roman Catholic of a decidedly conservative stripe. His latest book is one part history, one part cultural critique, and one part cri de coeur. Douthat’s cry of the heart does not get lost in mere sentimentality. He knows his history and is ready to argue for... Read more

From RNS: Those of us in the evangelical world who have on occasion publicly criticized the policies of the Benjamin Netanyahu government have been quickly reminded of the ways we are evoking God’s displeasure with us. My hate mail regularly features the promise that God made to Abraham when he informed the patriarch that he would be the father of a great nation: “I will bless them that bless thee, and curse him that curseth thee” (Genesis 12:3). Well, let... Read more

From CBE By Tina Osterhouse On May 17, 2018 Is there a healthy balance somewhere between the Billy Graham rule and nothing at all? Could we, instead of creating a rule that worked well for one man at a very specific time in history, come up with something holistic and inclusive? Could we come up with an ethic that acknowledges the needs and experiences of Christian men and women today? I’ve written on the Billy Graham rule before—on how it makes the inclusion... Read more

Almighty God, on this day you opened the way of eternal life to every race and nation by the promised gift of your Holy Spirit: Shed abroad this gift throughout the world by the preaching of the Gospel, that it may reach to the ends of the earth; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen. BCP Read more