By Michael Thompson Walter Brueggemann. God, Neighbor, Empire: The Excess of Divine Fidelity and the Command of Common Good. Waco: Baylor University Press, 2016. Chapter Three: Grace: The Inexplicable Reach Beyond (71–106) In discussing the biblical presentation of grace, Walter Brueggemann begins with a discussion of “common theology.” Drawn from a 1952 article by Morton Smith, six characteristics of ancient Near Eastern religious thought are listed briefly: One high god in a world of many gods. The one high god... Read more

If you are a Cubs fan, Mark Gonzales’s summary of who will remain and who will not is as good as it can get. I give his top section but at the link you can read the rest: Who’s likely to return Player … Position … Contract status … Comment Pitchers Jake Arrieta … Starting pitcher … Arbitration eligible … Could be last hurrah with free agency looming Jason Hammel … Starting pitcher … Club control … $12 million option... Read more

So says David Mizejewski in a report by Mary Bowerman: [SMcK: Confession time; I mow mine into small pieces and then put them in the compost pile.] Put the rake down, and back away from the leaves. Dry, dead leaves may be unsightly to your neighbors, but they are great wildlife habitat for a slew of creatures, according to David Mizejewski, a Naturalist at the National Wildlife Federation. Each year the NWF, reminds people that there are benefits to letting leaves... Read more

Being relevant is good but so is being irrelevant. Being like your culture connects you to culture; being unlike culture both disconnects and offers the opportunity to think again. The Christian God may have at times been somewhat like the Greek and Roman and Jewish cultures, but at other times it was so so so different. Thus, Larry Hurtado in his new book  A Destroyer of the Gods: Early Christian Distinctiveness in the Roman World (Baylor, 2016), but his emphasis is... Read more

Follow The Leader, By Michelle Van Loon http://www.MomentsAndDays.org I am of Paul. I am of Apollos. I am of John Piper or Jim Wallis or Jen Hatmaker or Nancy Leigh DeMoss. It was a first century problem, and it is a twenty-first century problem. It is perhaps most pronounced in the Protestant world. Our very spiritual DNA contains a desire to divide. As we lack a single hierarchical authority structure on which we can all agree, we are tempted to form... Read more

By Jason Micheli, for All Saints Sunday An Argument for the Existence of God 1/458 July 5, 2005 From: [email protected] Subject: Communion Etc. Dear Jason, Welcome to Aldersgate! We met on Sunday morning. I was the “good-looking lady” with the Arkansas accent who, leaving church, asked you: “You’re not a Republican are you?!” I whispered it pretty quietly so I don’t why you didn’t answer me. You probably noticed I didn’t “take communion” Sunday. The reason I didn’t was because... Read more

O God, whose blessed Son came into the world that he might destroy the works of the devil and make us children of God and heirs of eternal life: Grant that, having this hope, we may purify ourselves as he is pure; that, when he comes again with power and great glory, we may be made like him in his eternal and glorious kingdom; where he lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and... Read more

Robert Royal is the founder and president of the Faith & Reason Institute in Washington, D.C. and editor-in-chief of The Catholic Thing (www.thecatholicthing.org). He is the author of numerous books. One in particular, The God That Did Not Fail, is one of my all-time favorites.   Royal’s new book, A Deeper Vision: The Catholic Intellectual Tradition in the Twentieth Century, framed this interview. David George Moore conducted this interview. Dave blogs at www.twocities.org and his videos can be seen at www.mooreengaging.com.... Read more

It starts here for this first weekend after the World Series, with Tom Verducci’s little anecdote about Joe Maddon’s father’s hat and Jason Heyward’s character: As Maddon prepared to return to the dugout, he stepped out from behind his desk in the visiting manager’s office, the one with two open packages of dark chocolate bars—“For brain stimulation”—and an 8×10 picture of Hall of Fame Orioles manager Earl Weaver that he carried with him as both inspiration and totem throughout the... Read more

By John Frye I will conclude this series by offering three more temptations pastors face as they fulfill the injunction “to preach the word.” These three can be captured in the words control, fixation, and anger. Control. I know of few pastors who believed their mission was to shape and control the beliefs and behavior of their congregations. Back in the 1970s when small groups became the rage of church life, when all the New Testament “one another’s” took on... Read more