From the days of Plutarch all the way to our modern world we tell stories about people who have the most extraordinary accomplishments. And once anyone’s story is told they move from wherever they were on the scale of accomplishments to the upper echelon. We don’t talk about the fella’s book that sold 2500 copies but the one who sold 5 million, even if the former fella’s book is actually much better. For some reason we are all tempted to be... Read more

Here are the winners to the Baylor University Press giveaway of Richard Hays, Reading Backwards: Over 700 entries! Baylor will be contacting each person. We randomly generated 5 winners from the giveaway this morning, and they are: Ryan Kelley  Sara Evans Brett Sanner Matt Manry Barbara Kelley Read more

 Read more

You don’t go to jail to teach inmates about God, you go there to learn. I don’t say this patronizingly, secretly wanting to give a virtual wink and let you know that I don’t really mean it.  I was involved in the Fort Worth jail ministry for several years, and I sincerely believe I learned more about God there than I have anywhere else.  I worshiped and studied the Bible with middle class white men, young uneducated African-American men, Hispanic... Read more

Zoe Williams, on George Lakoff’s theories, theories that tell us that the one who tells the best story wins: Lakoff’s work on the conceptual systems around morals and politics (and how they show up in language) has yielded two-dozen metaphors for morality, most of them universal across cultures. Of those, the two key frames informing political judgment involve the idea of government as a family: the strict-father model (conservative) versus the nurturant-parent model (progressive). … In the strict-father worldview, he explains, “The father is... Read more

The way we read and tell the story of the Old Testament plays a large role in the view that many people have of Christianity. To many outside the church the story can be framed as ancient myth, the story of an autocratic tribal god, a founding myth for ethnic identity. Within the church other misunderstandings often prevail. Iain Provan, in his new book Seriously Dangerous Religion: What the Old Testament Really Says and Why It Matters looks in depth... Read more

Stanford: Now, Donohue and his colleagues have shown that extending the data yet another decade (1999-2010) provides the most convincing evidence to date that right-to-carry laws are associated with an increase in violent crime. “The totality of the evidence based on educated judgments about the best statistical models suggests that right-to-carry laws are associated with substantially higher rates” of aggravated assault, rape, robbery and murder, said Donohue. The strongest evidence was for aggravated assault, with data suggesting that right-to-carry (RTC)... Read more