Pastors in the USA have learned that church and state are separate. They have learned not to support candidates or a political party from the church or in their public ministries connected to the church. At least they are supposed to have both learned and practiced this non-support of a political candidate. The IRS puts it this way: Currently, the law prohibits political campaign activity by charities and churches by defining a 501(c)(3) organization as one “which does not participate in, or intervene... Read more

In the final chapter of The Adam Quest Tim Stafford provides a summary of the pros and cons of each of the young earth, intelligent design, and evolutionary creationist positions. He also adds some thoughts of his own from his research for the book. He interviewed scientists who fall into three broad camps. Young earth creationists. The earth is ca. 6000 to 10000 years old, Noah’s flood was a critical world-wide catastrophe, “kinds” created separately. Intelligent design creationists. Although Intelligent... Read more

When a 21st century Christian reads the Old Testament, she might raise an eyebrow or two. Read more

James Bryan Smith, in his new book The Magnificent Story: Uncovering a Gospel of Beauty, Goodness and Truth, says this: “No one ever taught me about the role of beauty in my spiritual life. It was not so much the danger of beauty but its neglect that characterized my life as a Christian. For me, Christianity was about dogma and doctrines, not desire and delight. The shaming story says nothing about creation or beauty. If it plays a role at all, it... Read more

The final ranking prior to conference championships looks like this: 1. Clemson 2. Auburn 3. Oklahoma 4. Wisconsin Alabama is awaiting a loss from one of the above, or at least 3 or 4 or a bad loss by Auburn or Clemson? Who is your pick for the Champion for 2017-2018? Read more

Nell Gluckman Almost anyone would say that Valerie Sheares Ashby is in the midst of a successful academic career. After more than a decade on the chemistry faculty at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and three years as chair, she became dean of Duke University’s college of arts and sciences in 2015. She’s won many accolades, including awards from the National Science Foundation and the companies 3M and DuPont, as well as several teaching prizes from UNC.... Read more

The final three scientists interviewed in Tim Stafford’s book The Adam Quest are British. Despite the conservative evangelical and fundamentalist stereotype of English Christianity as theologically bankrupt, there is an environment that allows sophisticated and serious Christian thinking to flourish. N.T. Wright, John Stott, and C.S. Lewis top the list for many of us. Beyond this we find Malcolm Jeeves, Alister McGrath, Tom McLeish (we will come back to his book Faith and Wisdom in Science soon), Mark Harris, and... Read more

There are a multitude of debates today: church and state, attractional vs. incarnational, atonement theories, expository vs. topical, music wars, and I could go on. Getting behind these various debates may be needed, and one way to do that is to ask What is the church’s mission? In a recent Counterpoints book Jason Sexton coordinated the debate on the church’s mission by examining four views: the soteriological, the participatory, the contextual and the sacramental theory of the church’s mission. The... Read more

Great story: PHOENIX — The greatest traditions sometimes start by accident. Just ask Jamal Hinton and Wanda Dench. The Tempe teen and Mesa grandmother were brought together last year by an accidental Thanksgiving invitation text message, and they reunited this week to have a second helping and cement a tradition. “It was really nice having everybody here,” Dench told The Arizona Republic on Saturday. “We got to laugh about last year and reminisce about how it all blew up on our phone... Read more