By Leslie Leyland Fields My father believed in UFO’s deeply, sincerely. He watched the night skies often, ready for a revelation, for the flashing brilliance of an alien in his backyard. His faith in extraterrestrial life never wavered but his believe in God flickered off and on over his lifetime. Mostly off. He saw the two as mutually exclusive. Alien life, in his mind, proved that God didn’t exist. If he were still alive, he’d count this week’s exuberant headlines... Read more

From Jesus, John 17: My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me. … Then the world will know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me. AP Story MACON,... Read more

One of the hardest stories in the Old Testament comes in Genesis 22. Here God tests Abraham by asking him to sacrifice Isaac – his beloved son of the promise. This passage is next up in our slow walk through Genesis. Walter Moberly discusses this passage in Old Testament Theology: The Theology of the Book of Genesis in a chapter provocatively titled Abraham: Model or Monster? Although the history of both Jewish and Christian interpretation see Abraham’s response as a... Read more

John Nugent, in his book Endangered Gospel: How Fixing the World is Killing the Church, comes now to a decisive point in  his proposal: how does the church related to God’s vision of the “better place”? Recall that Nugent sketches three views, none of which is as robustly biblical as the proposal he offers (and I agree with Nugent in many ways): 1. The Heaven-Centered View 2. The Human-Centered View 3. The World-Centered View Nugent proposes a different view, one more... Read more

My Place At The Table By Michelle Van Loon, who blogs at patheos.com/blogs/pilgrimsroadtrip and at michellevanloon.com The resolution affirmed by 82% of those voting at the recent triennial gathering of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) calling for an end of all American aid to Israel reminded me once again that to be a Jewish follower of Jesus sometimes requires thick skin. Writer Elliott Abrams sums up the language in the resolution: A time bound agreement– so facts on the ground, for... Read more

Adrian Goldsworthy. Pax Romana: War, Peace and Conquest in the Roman World. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2016.ISBN 0300178824. Review by Michael C Thompson One of the first aspects of life under Roman rule that a beginning New Testament student learns is the Pax Romana (Roman peace). The phrase points to an ideal that characterized certain aspects of the empire, which would have helped construct the context of Jesus and the early church. However, even among the majority of those who... Read more

Lord of all power and might, the author and giver of all good things: Graft in our hearts the love of your Name; increase in us true religion; nourish us with all goodness; and bring forth in us the fruit of good works; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God for ever and ever. Amen. BCP Read more

ONE SENTENCE IS WORTH THE PRICE OF THE BOOK! By David George Moore. Dave blogs regularly at www.twocities.org and his videos, which are designed “to make people see,” are at www.mooreengaging.com. My subject line sounds ridiculous, but one sentence is full of so many implications I felt comfortable putting it down.   I have never read anything quite like it in my thirty plus years of reading theology books.   The sentence comes from the author’s doctoral supervisor, Donald MacKinnon: “He speculated... Read more

This is a story about my driver too, and I feel about it the way Jeff Ritter does: Each of the major clubmakers had a spot on the range, as they still do today, and that’s where I had my first Sasquatch sighting. A bogey golfer, I found the square crown so outrageous, I forgot most of my swing flaws. Staring down at that matte-black clubhead, I thought, “Ridiculous! Just take a swing and see what happens.” The ball rocketed... Read more

Roger Olson: But the real “meat” of Gushee’s essay seems to be something else and more than that rather obvious claim about disappearing middle ground. Throughout most of the essay he seems to be announcing that people, including conservative Christians, who continue to resist granting full equality to LGBT people even in private religious organizations will find themselves persecuted if not prosecuted—in the same way that people who continue to resist full equality for people of all races are persecuted... Read more