In a previous post we looked at Thomas Jay Oord’s sketch of theories of providence — 1. God is the Omnicause. 2. God empowers and overpowers. 3. God is voluntarily self-limited. 4. God is essentially kenotic. [Oord’s view] 5. God sustains as impersonal force. 6. God is initial creator and current observer. 7. God’s ways are not our ways. Then a second post explored what “open and relational theology” is all about and today we we want to look his... Read more

We need a mission to restore dignity, and Mel Lawrenz’s editorial in Milwaukee is a good start. Dignity transcends words; dignity can only be embodied, and words that are dis-embodied deny dignity. Blood on the ground produces panic and confusion and rage, but is also an opportunity for moral clarity. We are watching it all right now. The blood at a traffic stop, the blood of assassinated police officers, the blood of men, women and children run over by a... Read more

Travis Gettys: When police officers were called to investigate a tent set up outside a Georgia college, they didn’t expect to find inspiration. The officers were called July 9 to a campsite near a Gordon State College parking lot, where they found a 19-year-old homeless student staying in a tent hidden in some bushes, reported The Herald-Gazette. The officers ordered him out of his tent with his hands up, but they listened to his story instead of writing a ticket... Read more

By Zane Witcher, university minister at the Highland Church of Christ in Abilene Texas. A couple of months ago, I exited out of a season many of you are familiar with.  It was the closing of one chapter and the opening of the next.  To walk out of the doors of higher education and to the world of working full time for the local church.  It’s always interesting when you walk across that stage though, because at the same time, you... Read more

In our last post on John Nugent’s fine new book, called Endangered Gospel, we saw that Nugent sketches three “visions of a better place,” with the fourth and his view not yet articulated. 1. The Heaven-Centered View 2. The Human-Centered View 3. The World-Centered View Before we get to his view, we need to provide a “Theology of Making the World a Better Place,” and here is Nugent’s sketch. It is probably fair to say that this is the theology of what... Read more

Story after story today has been about the source of Melania Trump’s speech. You can see a good graphic of it here. As someone who got his academic chops doing source and redaction criticism on the Gospels, I conclude that Melania’s speech owes its origins to Michelle’s speech. Or, more nuanced, Melania’s speechwriter’s source is Michelle’s speechwriter or Michelle’s speechwriter’s source(s)! Perhaps there is some Q-First-Lady-speeches source lurking in the background upon which both depended! Not likely, so this is clear: when... Read more

Here is an exceptional set of data put into graphic and interactive forms, along with good stories in the Menu. Worth a Bookmark. This interactive graphic is part of our project exploring the more than 33,000 annual gun deaths in America and what it would taketo bring that number down. See our stories on suicides among middle-age men, homicides of young black men and accidental deaths, or explore the menu for more coverage. Methodology The data in this interactive graphic... Read more

… Ruth Tucker’s Black and White Bible, Black and Blue Wife. Complementarianism, as popularly taught in the CBMW crowd, is falling apart at the seams. Traditional complementarians, like Aimee Byrd here, are weighing and some of its so-called leading lights — like Owen Strachan — seem now to be losing some platform space. I measure “biblical” teaching about male-female relations by (1) how cruciform it is, (2) how often Song of Solomon are mentioned (the only book in the Bible talking... Read more

By Michelle Van Loon whom you can see at patheos.com/blogs/pilgrimsroadtrip  and at michellevanloon.com In the wake a week where Alton Sterling, Philando Castile, and officers Lorne Ahrens, Michael Krol, Brent Thompson, and Patrick Zamarripa lost their lives, I appreciated post after post on social media again calling for whites to silence themselves and listen to the experiences of African-Americans. The kind of listening that comes from a deep desire to understand is a crucial first step. I want to be that kind... Read more