That is an interesting question. How does one answer that question? By where we stand. Do we stand in such a way that our narrative is the narrative of how the church of the 1st Century got to us or how we can take our goods to them? (Isn’t that colonialist?) Or is a narrative of how the church has become truly global? Of how we are but a part of a larger drama? (Isn’t that global?) How can we become... Read more
Grace For The President Sean Palmer is Lead Minister at The Vine Church in Temple, TX. Read more from Sean at The Palmer Perspective (www.thepalmerperspective.com), follow him on Twitter: @seanpalmer or follow him on Facebook at www.facebook.com/seanpalmerwriter. Four years ago I was feeling a patriotic deficit. I didn’t feel “American” enough, which was strange. Before becoming a school administrator, my father was a band director and American History teacher. I grew up immersed in the stories that shaped our country... Read more
Kris has been reading — and then telling me about what she’s reading — Marie Kondo’s book called The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up, so we decided Saturday late afternoon to give it a whirl. We started with my bloated, messy, hard-to-find drawer of T-shirts. When I was a cool university professor I used to wear jeans and a T-shirt and a sport coat, and at times a student would comment favorably on my selection of clothes. All to say, during... Read more
Jeff Bryant, from Salon: I call these folks the edu-crats. Education is not a top-down endeavor but a grass-roots relational matter. Leave the teachers alone. (Within reason, as it has traditionally been.) What Reform Fans Don’t Get Indeed, resistance to the education reform agenda is not as much a rejection of its various policy features as it is a rejection of the philosophy that drives it. This philosophy puts little stock in democratic governance of schools, believing instead that really smart people,... Read more
Ruth Graham: With the Iowa caucuses less than a month away, the competition for the evangelical vote seems to have become a two-man race between Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz. Last week, Rubio made another move to win that race-within-the-race, announcing the formation of a 15-member religious liberty advisory board that will advise the campaign on issues including the persecution of Christians in the Middle East and the freedoms of Americans who oppose same-sex marriage. The 15-member board includes megachurch pastor Rick Warren, some... Read more
There was a period, perhaps as long as a generation (e.g., 30-40 years), between Jesus’ public ministry of teaching and performing the gospel of the kingdom and the “scribalization” of those sayings and performances. In other words, for a generation what was known about Jesus’ teachings and mighty deeds was passed on orally. Some think of this oral period as the golden era, pristine and idyllic, but this is not only a false view of history; rather, that oral period overlapped... Read more
Source “”EVANGELICAL’ GETS NEW DEFINITION: A two-year collaboration between the National Association of Evangelicals (NAE) and LifeWay Research has resulted in a new way to identify evangelicals in surveys. In what might be the first research-driven ‘creed,’ the report identifies four key statements that define evangelical beliefs: ‘ The Bible is the highest authority for what I believe’; ‘It is very important for me personally to encourage non-Christians to trust Jesus Christ as their Savior’; ‘Jesus Christ’s death on the... Read more
The rapture and Armageddon, military conquest and the heaven and earth passing away in a blaze of glory are concepts that can catch the imagination. A commenter on a recent post (here) noted that the imagery of destruction can have a profound effect. The Rapture thing didn’t just shape our understanding of Jesus’ second coming, but also reshaped how we viewed his first coming. Jesus’ birth, life, death and resurrection, in this system, came to be seen as a failure... Read more
In a recent review in Books and Culture I examined what John Barclay calls a largely unexamined Christian theme — that’s right, grace is largely unexamined. Rather it is assumed we all know what it means. This was my book of the year on the Jesus Creed, so before I get going I want to say that I really, really like this book. While Barclay — in general — fits the apocalyptic school of Paul he does clearly transcend some... Read more
Howard Snyder: HT: JS First off (to set aside an issue some of these books raise): Economic inequality itself is not the issue. From a Christian and public welfare perspective, the question is not equality or inequality. It is economic justice. Let’s avoid the trap of thinking the public-policy goal should be economic or income equality, since that is both unachievable and undesirable. Would be we be happy if everyone’s income were equal but unlivable, or just at the poverty line?... Read more
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