Jennifer O’Mahony: As of last week, Saudi women’s male guardians began receiving text messages on their phones informing them when women under their custody leave the country, even if they are travelling together. Saudi women’s rights activist Manal al-Sherif, who last year urged women to defy a driving ban, said a man had contacted her to say he had received a text from the immigration authorities while at the airport with his wife. “The authorities are using technology to monitor... Read more
The poetic portion of the book of Job begins in Chapter 3 with Job breaking the silence and cursing the day of his birth. Translation below from Tremper Longman III (Job (Baker Commentary on the Old Testament Wisdom and Psalms)) (p. 96-97) Let the day on which I was born perish, and the night (on which) he said, 'A boy is conceived.' Let that day be dark. Don't let God above seek it. Don't let a light shine on it.... Read more
This is not about the right candidate; this is about how evangelicals frame their relationship to politics. And one of the best pieces to read on this topic is Geoffrey C. Bowden’s “The Evangelical-Anabaptist Spectrum,” an essay in the fine book The Activist Impulse: Essays on the Intersection of Evangelicalism and Anabaptism (Pickwick). What Bowden is sketch the spectrum from Francis Schaeffer to John Howard Yoder and, at the same time, shows Jim Wallis began more like Yoder and is today... Read more
I read about these Chinese folks who refused to abandon home in the name of development, and I have to say there’s a parable here — or a caption! Read more
From Richard Florida: America’s stark class divides are a product of its ongoing economic transformation. As the ranks of the working class have shrunk due to the devastating one-two punch of automation and globalization, two other classes have swelled. On the one hand, there is the creative classof scientists and engineers; business professionals and knowledge workers; artists, entertainers, media workers and cultural creatives. Numbering more than 40 million, they account for almost a third of the American workforce. With average annual earnings of... Read more
Everyone claims their theology is biblical. Which means “biblical” is used by everyone and so many different approaches use “biblical” that “biblical” diminishes in value. It becomes, sad to say, little more than a claim to authority. What does it take for you to say something is “biblical”? Does biblical theology (as historical description — below) hold theology hostage to historical discoveries? Jacob Milgrom is a world’s leading scholar on Leviticus: are his commentaries “biblical” theology? Lutheran and Reformed scholars... Read more
This post, by Mark Stevens, concerns Bonhoeffer’s famous expression about wish dreams and the church. The most challenging words I have ever read on the subject of community come from a little book by Dietrich Bonheoffer entitled, ‘Life Together’.[1] Alongside Henri Nouwen’s ‘In the Name of Jesus’ it is one of the best books on pastoral leadership I have read. “Innumerable times a whole Christian community has broken down because it has sprung from a wish dream. The serious Christian,... Read more
From WaPo: After years of holding steady, new Center for Disease Control data shows that the United States abortion rate has fallen to an all-time low. It dropped 5 percent between 2008 and 2009, the most recent years for which data is available, the largest decline in the past decade. The big question for public health researchers is: Why? What was different in 2008, that might have lead to this downtick in abortions? What’s the most reasonable explanation? Read more
From Fulcrum: When I am Ordained, I shall wear Purple by Mia Smith With acknowledgement to Jenny Joseph’s original poem When I am ordained, I shall wear purple with killer heels and bright red lipstick And I shall go round preaching from the Bible …The liberating truth that Jesus calls women and tell those who say otherwise that it is they, not I, who are bad theologians.I shall sit down with fellow clergy when we are tired of fighting for... Read more
Almighty and everlasting God, whose will it is to restore all things in your well-beloved Son, the King of kings and Lord of lords: Mercifully grant that the peoples of the earth, divided and enslaved by sin, may be freed and brought together under his most gracious rule; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen. Read more
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