From the NYTimes: The United States is becoming a broken society. The public has contempt for the political class. Public debt is piling up at an astonishing and unrelenting pace. Middle-class wages have lagged. Unemployment will remain high. It will take years to fully recover from the financial crisis. This confluence of crises has produced a surge in vehement libertarianism. People are disgusted with Washington. The Tea Party movement rallies against big government, big business and the ruling class in... Read more

When I was at Synergy conference in Orlando, I gave a plenary address and chose a tricky topic. Kris said “Why?” and then said “Be careful.” My answers, “Because it’s in Paul” and “I will, real careful.” And I tried. And I think it worked.  But first: great to meet Carolyn James and her husband Frank; wonderful people. Then so many, many others, including outstanding an outstanding talk from Michelle Loyd-Page. Just before I spoke I was upstaged by an... Read more

Gilbert Meilaender, in a well-known essay originally published in First Things, explored the classical issues surrounding an issue that emerged yesterday in our reposting of Carolyn Custis James’ post. The issue is this: Can a married man be a serious “friend” with a woman who is not his wife? And, alternatively, can a married women be a serious “friend” with a man who is not her husband?  Meilaender explores this question through the lens of the classical world where there... Read more

Tom Wright’s newest book is about virtue ethics, about how we move from where we are through habituation so we can arrive at the goal. This is all found in After You Believe: Why Christian Character Matters . For a long, long time people have been debating whether or not we really have to obey the teachings of Jesus, not the least of which are those found in the Sermon on the Mount — did that “not the least of which”... Read more

It’s an odd experience to be reading three books on the Christian life at once, and what makes the experience oddest is that the books couldn’t be more different. I’m focusing here on John Ortberg’s new book, The Me I Want to Be: Becoming God’s Best Version of You , but I’ve been reading John’s book alongside Tom Wright’s After You Believe and Eugene Peterson’s Practice Resurrection. Wright’s book sets the stage for the practicalities of John Ortberg’s, so if... Read more

The Washington Post has a fascinating question and discussion going on, and I want to import their questions to this site and carry on the discussion here, and if you have the time, read the report by Daniel Dennett and Linda LaScola. Here are the questions: What should pastors do if they no longer hold the defining beliefs of their denomination? Do clergy have a moral obligation not to challenge the sincere faith of their parishioners? If this requires them... Read more

One’s view of women says what one’s view of men is; one’s view of men says what one’s view of women is. If you think of women as the temptress, you think of men as seduced. Carolyn Custis James has a great post about this, and I’d like to carry her post to this site: “. . . you are the devil’s gateway. . . you are she who persuaded him, whom the devil did not dare attack. . .... Read more

Eugene Peterson, in his new book, Practice Resurrection: A Conversation on Growing Up in Christ  explores Paul and the saints in Ephesians 1:15-23. He’s got a good realistic section on the meaning of “saint,” which is something God has done to us and not a level we have achieved (though we more or less use it the latter way). What I really liked in this chp is his understanding of prayer as something, once we learn to do this in our habits,... Read more