Two contacts in less than twenty-four hours pressed me to write this post. One the post yesterday by RJS and the other a tweet by Frank Viola. Both of these contacts led my mind back to 1973, near Brussels. I was at a monastery for a week or so with Greater Europe Mission missionaries and other “Eurocorps” college students. It was my first trip to Europe and it was also notable for me because for one week I listened to... Read more
Chris Hedges, evaluating the journalism of HuffPo: The sale of The Huffington Post to AOL for $315 million, and the tidy profit of reportedly at least several million dollars made by principal owner and founder Arianna Huffington, who was already rich, is emblematic of this new paradigm of American journalism. The Huffington Post, as Stephen Colbert pointed out when he stole the entire content of The Huffington Post and rechristened it The Colbuffington Re-post, produces little itself. The highly successful site,... Read more
Last week I put up a post, based on my own experiences and the suggestions of Gabe Lyons in his new book The Next Christians, with the premise that the focus of church and the understanding of the role of leadership within the church needs to change. The local church is and will remain at the center of Christian community. It is essential for worship, for sacrament, for fellowship. But the work of the local church, the work of the... Read more
Tim Keller’s newest book, King’s Cross: The Story of the World in the Life of Jesus, is scheduled to be available today, so it’s a good time to dip into his second chapter. What is the gospel according to Jesus? What do you think of Keller’s two-fold idea about the gospel? The Gospel of Mark opens with a pronouncement by Jesus about the gospel: “The time has been fulfilled. The Kingdom of God has drawn near. Repent and believe in... Read more
From CT: My, this is fertile ground for conversation. What gives rise to these special interests? Evangelicals are in the majority for spending on military concerns, crime, agriculture … and nothing else. Read more
Potential authors often write to me and ask about writing. They ask all the right questions, and I often feel bad for them because I know they’ve got a good idea and maybe a good book and sometimes I answer questions they haven’t asked but will if they go down the writing path very far. I don’t have all the answers but I have learned a few things about writing for a more popular (vs. academic) audience … and I’d... Read more
In their new stunning book, Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses, a book that uses an ancient genre — the academic jeremiad — with exquisite accuracy, Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa prove — not contend — that students are not learning what they should, professors are not doing all they could, administrators are not focused on education enough and, as if that weren’t a glassful, society is and will continue to suffer is something isn’t done about it. This... Read more
I was impressed by the recent review of the NIV 2011 by Bridget Jack Jeffries, a student at TEDS, a Covenant Church member, and a blogger. Bridget’s review is in The Priscilla Papers, and it is a good time to express our admiration and regret at the death of Catherine Clark Kroeger, who began The Priscilla Papers. A brief sketch: the NIV came out in the 70s, it continually was revised, the TNIV came out in 2002, it was blasted... Read more
Education is on my mind these days as I’ve got two posts coming up this week on higher education. But today we’re looking at the situation in Wisconsin. I don’t think there is any simple solution: my father was a public school teacher; Kris’ father was a public school teacher; we have family members who are public school teachers; I coached high school basketball for a decade with public school teachers. For me this isn’t about teachers qua teachers, but... Read more
Wisconsin may well prove to be only the first State to go through an economic crisis that goes viral. I’d like to offer perspective as a private citizen from the State that sits below Wisconsin and that often gets beat by its football team. Like many of us and more and more of us, Kris and I live within our means. We pay our credit card bill completely at the end of the month. We don’t buy things we can’t... Read more
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