The Color of Compromise: The Truth about the American Church’s Complicity in Racism Jemar Tisby is the author of the much talked about book, The Color of Compromise. Tisby also serves as president of The Witness: a Black Christian Collective, cohosts the Pass the Mic podcast, and is a doctoral candidate in history at the University of Mississippi. The interview was conducted by David George Moore. Some of Dave’s videos can be accessed at www.mooreengaging.com. Moore: I’ve been thinking much... Read more

Good morning! Words matter … alot! The most common words used by Beth Moore are: Christ, love, attitudes, accepted, serve, respect, know, misogyny, alongside, asking, sake, scripture, good, want, challenges, say, bible, serving, sexism, leaders, etc. The most common words used by Strachan and his ilk are: church, teaching, word, order, headship, authority, scripture, teach, preach, called, leadership, design, gathered, says, rules, biblical, exercise, etc. They are both talking about the same subject. But Beth Moore is concerned about Jesus,... Read more

I began my career teaching seminary students, shifted to undergraduates for seventeen years, and now am teaching at a seminary again, at Northern Seminary (check out our DMin and MANT special cohorts). This move has driven me to think and rethink what seminary provides the church, or what the church provides the seminary. Today’s post offers ten reasons for going to seminary, and I know full well that many today both find seminary irrelevant and contend they are “successful” ministers... Read more

Climate change is an issue that is not going to go away. It is also not an issue where ideology or worldview will ultimately play any significant role. Either humans are impacting the climate or we are not. Because of the impact on human life both present and in the future, this is an issue where we have an obligation to get it right. Because of the potential significance I am going to spend some time over the next several... Read more

Is this congregationalism? soul freedom? Or what is this? Federal representation? The 2011 Faith Matters Survey — a study from Harvard and Notre Dame that surveyed 2,646 Americans — asked respondents how much they agreed with the following statement, “Women should be allowed to be priests or clergy in my house of worship.” Three quarters (77.8%) of Americans agree. That includes two-thirds (64.7%) of Southern Baptists and Roman Catholics (68.9%). That could accurately be described as strong levels of support. Southern Baptist... Read more

In a recent article on Get Religion, we encounter a new approach to adult believer’s baptism and thus a new argument against infant baptism: THE QUESTION: Why do most Christian churches baptize babies? THE RELIGION GUY’S ANSWER: This classic issue unexpectedly popped up as news on June 23 due to an Irish Times interview with Mary McAleese, an attorney and the former president of Ireland. McAleese assailed her Catholic Church for its practice of baptizing infants shortly after birth with parents making vows on... Read more

Last week I began a series of posts on C. Christopher Smith’s wonderful new book, How the Body of Christ Talks: Recovering the Practice of Conversation in the Church. In that post I said this: The evangelical church’s conversational style can be simplified to the term didactic while the mainline’s approach is dialogical, and Smith and his church are seeking to embody the recovery of conversation as how the church can better be a body. I’m convinced this form of rhetoric constantly shapes our... Read more

When theology is reframed for a flourishing life what does it look like? Miroslav Volf and Matthew Croasmun, in For the Life of the World, present a sketch of an answer in their last chp under two major categories: form and content. We look at form today. … the Christian faith offers a specific account of the character of the transcendent realm and how it relates to the mundane, a particular vision of God and the relation between God and the... Read more

By Jeremy Berg, one of our Northern DMin students: A Global Speech Impediment by Jeremy Berg Can you imagine Facebook or Twitter without disagreement or conflicting viewpoints? Can you imagine a world without political division? Can you imagine a world united by one language and motivated by one grand purpose? We live in a cultural moment of unprecedented division. Some have said our nation hasn’t been this divided since the Civil War. There’s nothing “civil” about war, and “incivility” in... Read more

Almighty God, on this day you opened the way of eternal life to every race and nation by the promised gift of your Holy Spirit: Shed abroad this gift throughout the world by the preaching of the Gospel, that it may reach to the ends of the earth; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.BCP Read more