Did Evangelicals Re-Engage Culture with Neo-Evangelicalism?

Last updated on: April 26, 2015 at 6:45 am By Scot McKnight

The standard narrative: the fundamentalist movement turned American evangelicals/fundamentalists away from cultural, political and social involvement and Carl Henry’s famous The Uneasy Conscience of Modern Fundamentalism called evangelicals back into the engagement. In Matthew Avery Sutton’s new book, American Apocalypse, that story is challenged, and here are three lines then the pertinent paragraph calling Henry to task, and I reformat that last paragraph to create a dialogue: At the time of his death in 2003, the New York Times called the tall,... Read more

Do We Need Libraries?

Last updated on: April 25, 2015 at 9:39 am By Scot McKnight

My answer is that we need librarians today more than any time in history. Librarians are the priests and priestesses of knowledge and they can mediate the resources of this world to us. But some today don’t think we need libraries. Carlos Lozada: Libraries are repositories of books, music and documents, but above all of nostalgia: the musty stacks, the unexpected finds, the safety and pleasure of a place that welcomes and shelters unconditionally. John Palfrey shares these memories, but he... Read more

The Significance of the End: Death, Judgement, Heaven and Hell (RJS)

Last updated on: April 28, 2015 at 6:11 am By RJS

The last couple of chapters in John Polkinghorne’s book The God of Hope and the End of the World deal with the four last things (death, judgment, heaven, and hell) and with their significance. There is something of a divide within the church … between those who preach hell, fire, and brimstone and those who find such ideas part of a barbaric past we’ve out grown. Now this is a caricature of course, but there is a tendency to either... Read more

Males and Their Friends (Alastair Roberts)

Last updated on: April 28, 2015 at 6:20 am By Scot McKnight

Saturday I posted a link to an article that compared male friendships (more group-ish) vs. female friendships (more intimate, and more connected one best friend), and Alastair Roberts made a comment that is worthy of a conversation itself. So, with his permission, here is his comment: The first article is an interesting one, bears out a claim that I have made in the past, and identifies, I believe, an incredibly powerful factor in creating much larger social and personal differences... Read more

Barbers Doing Double-Duty

Last updated on: April 24, 2015 at 6:44 pm By Scot McKnight

Perry Stein: There are 26 barbers and stylists at The Shop in Hyattsville, Md. Between them, they cut the hair of more than 100 people each day. That’s around 600 people each week, 31,000 heads each year. Over the last two years, 29 of those customers received a colonoscopy as a direct result of conversations they had with their barbers at The Shop. One of those people, says owner Fredie Spry, was already showing symptoms of colon cancer and is now getting treated. Many more of... Read more

Repainting Hell: C.S. Lewis and N.T. Wright (by Jeff Cook)

Last updated on: April 23, 2015 at 8:00 pm By Scot McKnight

One of the features of this blog I like is the inclusion of disparate voices. I, Scot McKnight, am not the only voice; RJS is another voice; John Frye, Jonathan Storment, and Jeff Cook are other voices. And others send me posts and we post them to give yet more voices a platform to create a conversation. Jeff Cook, a regular voice here, has been struggling with the traditional view of hell for a long time and this series of... Read more

Is Heaven Vital for Morality or Not?

Last updated on: August 1, 2017 at 5:56 pm By Scot McKnight

You may well recall the famous scene in Les Miserables in which Jean Valjean comes clean in public to take the place of another who was in fact on trial instead of himself (Valjean). The scene poses the moral theory called altruism, that is, that one does what is good for others in a disinterested manner. It might be said that altruism is considered by many to be the highest form of moral action; heroic, in fact, when one poses that giving... Read more

Church of the Redeemer: Thanks

Last updated on: April 27, 2015 at 6:10 am By Scot McKnight

As some of you know, my new book A Fellowship of Differents is dedicated to our local fellowship, the Church of the Redeemer, and our two leaders and their spouses (Jay and Susan Greener, Amanda Holm and Erik Rosengren), Today, after our worship time, Church of the Redeemer very generously provided copies of the book for a splendidly reduced price and so we had a book signing that led to some stimulating conversations. Time has shown that there’s quite the diversity... Read more

Secularization Theory Debunked

Last updated on: April 24, 2015 at 6:39 pm By Scot McKnight

Sarah Pulliam Bailey: By 2050, the number of Muslims around the world will nearly equal the number of Christians. Pew projections suggest that Muslims will make up nearly one-third of the world’s population of about 9 billion people. “The culture of the West is going to become increasingly nonreligious at the same time the culture in the Global South persists in being religious,” said David Voas of the Institute for Social and Economic Research at the University of Essex. “Repercussions will be... Read more

A Prayer for Nepal

Last updated on: April 26, 2015 at 8:40 am By Scot McKnight

Our merciful and listening Father, In whose Son’s cries in Gethsemane our intercessions come before you in full love, We join our concerns and compassions in your Son’s for those who have died, who are suffering, and who are tending those who suffer, And we pray for mercy and speedy relief; Who with you and the Holy Spirit lives, reigns and loves all your creation, One God, forever and ever. Amen. Image Read more