Is there any serious thinking or discussion about the homes in which pastors and priests and bishops live? It is not just Roman Catholic bishops or archbishops who dwell in opulence. In fact, many Protestant pastors dwell in nothing less than luxury. Steven Furtick’s home was the attention of some media not long back, and Mark Driscoll’s salary has been probed, and that’s just a start. How does your church determine the salary of pastors/priests?  Pope Francis himself has definitely taken... Read more

As I am off vacationing this week, picking wild blueberries (four  pies worth this morning) and getting in a little fishing, we have a great opportunity to think a little deeper about the image of God. Earlier this year we took a long look at Richard Middleton’s book The Liberating Image: The Imago Dei in Genesis 1. Today we have a guest post response by Middleton describing how his thinking has developed since the book was published.   Richard Middleton:... Read more

Yesterday Jon Merritt called his readers, now that Mark Driscoll has confessed and apologized for his sins, to forgive. I was saddened by the vitriol spilled out against Merritt and Driscoll in the process. In fact, yesterday I posted about scapegoating and mob/crowd anger against someone, and it was not absent in some of the vitriol. I was saddened because I thought so many were Othering Driscoll, and Merritt at times, when they should have been taking the posture of... Read more

BioLogos by Lee Camp: Evolution & Christian Faith grantee Lee Camp recently published an article on the blog for Tokens, a radio show from Nashville combining music, interviews, university lecture, cultural analysis, and conversation, with each episode geared around a philosophical, theological, or ethical idea. On July 17th, Tokens aired an episode on the topic of Christian theology and the theory of evolution. The episode was recorded on the site of the famed Scopes Trial of 1925, in the Rhea County... Read more

Brian Zahnd’s father was a judge who taught Brian that “the majority is almost always wrong” and that the job of a judge was “to protect the minority from the majority” (73, in A Farewell to Mars). Why? majorities are more interested in power than truth. Power in the hands of a majority leads to scapegoating, and this leads to a reflection by Brian (and me) on what happens to the cross when viewed from the angle of the majority. Lynch... Read more