This is inexcusable and un-American: A massive group of violent demonstrators spat on, assaulted and screamed obscenities at a Gold Star widow and sister Friday outside an inaugural ball honoring the military, one of the women told “Fox & Friends” on Tuesday. Amy Looney, who lost her husband Navy SEAL Lt. Brendan Looney in 2010, and Ryan Manion, whose brother Marine First Lt. Travis Manion died in 2007, said they were attacked as they tried to enter the American Legion’s... Read more

Please listen to this to hear Dennis Venema’s story about changing toward evolution. https://soundcloud.com/user-212639123/adam-and-genome-part-2-with-dennis-venema-kr-39?platform=hootsuite Read more

By John Frye For the observant reader of the Bible, it comes as a shock to read the Gospel of John with it use of the word “love” some 39 times. John: the gospel of love. The shock sets in as the reader continues on into the Book of Acts. How many times does the word “love” appear? Zero. None. Not once. We know that “love” is one of Luke’s vocabulary words because he uses it 19 times in his... Read more

Years ago, when my research was on the Synoptic Gospels, I composed a list of how the Evangelists “edited” their sources. Using the standard theory of their relationships (Mark first, then used by both Matthew and Luke, both of whom also used another source called “Q”), I came up with the following sorts of edits by the Evangelists: 1. Instead of editing they “conserved” or “preserved” by copying. 2. They sometimes conflate two sources into one. 3. They sometimes expand... Read more

For Christians the big questions in any discussion of science and faith generally come down to Scripture. How are we to read Scripture as the word of God? In much of the church there is an assumption that this should be straightforward… just read it literally. Unfortunately, this doesn’t hold up well for many of us. It isn’t even science that is the biggest challenge to this “simple” reading, it is Scripture itself. It isn’t clear that the Bible was... Read more

By Michelle Van Loon at www.MomentsAndDays.org and www.MichelleVanLoon.com I’ve been blogging for more than a decade,and I’ve written often about spiritual abuse by church leaders – sharing both my own experience and referencing the struggles of others. I’m just one voice in a large crowd: there are numerous blogs, books, and worthwhile organizations telling the stories of spiritual and/or clergy sexual abuse survivors. The internet has been a tool for good in this struggle as it has facilitated connection between survivors. In... Read more

The Myth of Inclusion, Part 1 Maybe you saw over the holidays, there was a fascinating conversation in the New York Times between the Journalist Nicholas Kristof and the well known Pastor, Tim Keller.  The name of the article interestingly enough was “Am I a Christian, Pastor Keller?” And Keller’s answer was no. It was a bit surprising to stumble upon a conversation like this in the New York Times, I found it refreshingly honest and respectful, even while they... Read more

Becky Castle Miller is the Discipleship Director at an international church in the Netherlands and writes about emotionally healthy discipleship at medium.com/wholehearted. She conveys her five kids around town on bikes and studies New Testament in the middle of the night via Northern Live. Our words can succeed at the level of doctrinal correctness but fail at the level of pastoral care. I’ve seen this happen over and over to survivors of sexual abuse, when church leaders, communicating about sexuality, leave victims... Read more

Dennis Prager: There are those on both the left and the right who call for American “unity.” But these calls are either naïve or disingenuous. Unity was possible between the Right and liberals, but not between the Right and the Left. Liberalism – which was anti-Left, pro-American, and deeply committed to the Judeo-Christian foundations of America, regarded the melting pot as the American ideal, fought for free speech for its opponents, regarded Western civilization as the greatest moral and artistic... Read more

What distinguishes humans from other animals?  The question is hard to answer definitively. We know intuitively that a dog, a dolphin, or even a chimpanzee is not human. Certainly no other animal builds schools, writes symphonies, performs surgery, or ponders the intricacies of the universe. Building, while not unheard of, develops none of the complexity of human cities including cities and villages dating back thousands of years. But how can we classify the difference? I picked up a book recently,... Read more