From NYTimes, Romney’s participation in the Mormon service: A campaign aide points out that Gov. Romney uses his iPad to read scriptures, which could explain why he glanced down at his lap a couple time during the service. (It’s true that there are a number of apps that contain a complete compilation of Mormon scripture, including the New and Old Testaments, Book of Mormon, Doctrine & Covenants, and the Pearl of Great Price. But your pooler wasn’t close enough to... Read more
I occasionally receive e-mail after posts when readers agree, disagree, or just have questions. The e-mail address I include at the bottom of each post is there to allow this kind of communication. An e-mail message after the post last Tuesday, The Wellsprings of Conflict, raised an issue that I think deserves some serious consideration here. The title of the post referred to the wellsprings of Koch’s inner conflict between religion and reason. But “wellspring” is a little too passive... Read more
Perhaps the most notable issue many observers of American religion see is that religion is about choice. If there are thousands and thousands options in a coffee shop, there are even more when it comes to religious beliefs. “Adulthood,” Diana Butler Bass says in her book, Christianity after Religion, “means picking – education, career, partner, location, goods, political party, causes, beliefs, and faith” (41). At church Sunday a man asked us “what we were,” and we told him we were... Read more
From Christian Science Monitor, where you can read the full story: For the first time since the founding of the Republic, none of the major party candidates for president or vice president is a WASP – a white, Anglo-Saxon Protestant – a fact that was confirmed when Mitt Romney picked Paul Ryan to be his running mate. Mr. Romney is Mormon, Mr. Ryan and Vice President Joe Biden are Roman Catholic, and President Obama– a man of mixed race – most obviously is not a WASP. With... Read more
C. Michael Patton‘s got a brief, but dense, defense of the resurrection, leading him to this conclusion: Considering the internal and external arguments for the resurrection of Christ, I don’t ask anyone to look to one of these lines of evidence alone, but to consider the cumulative case. It is very impressive. If the resurrection indeed occurred, it would be hard to expect more evidence. In fact, what we would expect is exactly what we have. Of course, alternatives too... Read more
From Lee Wyatt: “What Do You Say? Evangelism in 2012 For some time now I have been pondering what the presentation of the gospel to the world might look like in light of some of the changes in biblical and systematic theology over last several decades. I don’t intend to rehearse those changes here. Others can and have done that better than I ever could. However, how to articulate the gospel as an evangelistic message in light of these changes... Read more
Dear Friend, This is a difficult one, and perhaps more difficult than you perhaps know. Let me begin with an analogy from within the soterian model. An increasing number of seminary graduates are among the New Calvinists. They are entering churches that are nondescript evangelicals, and by that I mean the churches are not robustly Calvinist and neither are they consciously Arminian. They are what my former colleague, Grant Osborne, often called “Cal-minians.” They embrace a form of free will... Read more
Mark Nanos is on a mission to expound for readers of Paul a Paul who never broke from Judaism. His project, and here we are sketching some of what he says in the book edited by Mike Bird called The Apostle Paul, is both about rhetoric and theology. Nanos, who plays golf well and is a Jewish scholar of Paul, has been stumping for his themes for more than a decade. The rhetoric is clear: Christians have explained their faith, in... Read more
A letter from a reader: I found your work The King Jesus Gospel (how I missed it I do not know) and it is answering many of the questioned that I had. As a reforming Soterian, I feel like I was attending a child’s tea party which has the appearance of the real thing, without any of the substance. It will be tough to change the culture of our church (fundamentalist background) to a gospel culture, especially since some have... Read more
From Live Science: DENVER — More and more Americans are spending their Sundays at megachurches, enormous churches with congregations numbering in the thousands. Despite the size of these churches, members don’t get lost in the crowd, new research finds. In fact, a new study of 12 representative megachurches spread across the country finds that the size of these churches is a major part of their appeal. Members report that the experience of worshiping with thousands is intoxicating, the researchers find. “It’s an... Read more
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