John Fea, a professor of history at Messiah, has an excellent blog — and I encourage you to bookmark it and join in on his conversation. John is also a columnist at Patheos — and to add to this, John was an excellent basketball player. This review examines a pressing issue: the rise of the Christian Right, and what role evangelicals have played in American politics in the 20th-early 21st Centuries. Back in the early 1990s, when I was a... Read more
Here come the winter snows! Gerald Hiestand compares Tom Wright and John Calvin, and finds more in common than some think. Dave Dunbar looks at Democrats and Republicans and … suggests we call a political fast on war talk. I’m not only a clueless rookie with Jim, I’m not even a rookie. I’m a minor leaguer. And thanks to Jim Martin’s FB update: A student article from Lipscomb University that deals with the Christian-Muslim issue on campus. A wise post... Read more
HT: JF (more…) Read more
In the last ten years I’ve been asked over and over what evangelism looks like when it gets connected to kingdom. Those many questions spring from a widespread disaffection with an evangelism that is focused too narrowly on getting people to make a decision. The number of young adults who have made that decision but who are not functional disciples ought to alarm us about what we are accomplishing in our evangelism. There is a low enough correlation between “having... Read more
Ron Santo, great thirdbaseman and persistently and undeservedly overlooked in the Hall of Fame voting, has died. Legendary Chicago Cubs player and broadcaster Ron Santo died Thursday night in Arizona. He was 70. Friends of Santo’s family said the North Side icon lapsed into a coma on Wednesday before dying Thursday. Santo died of complications from bladder cancer, WGN-AM 720 reported. “He absolutely loved the Cubs,” said Santo’s broadcast partner, Pat Hughes. “The Cubs have lost their biggest fan.” Hughes... Read more
This series is being written by David Opderbeck, and he’s probing into what I think is one of the most significant issues Christians need to face today: religious pluralism. This is the third post in my series on Gavin D’Costa’s book Christianity and World Religions: Disputed Questions in the Theology of Religions. The first two posts are here and here. At the conclusion of my last post, I mentioned D’Costa’s emphasis on “participatory ontology” in his construction of a theology... Read more
I am convinced that most of what is said about the future — and about eschatology — and about the Revelation of John in particular — in most churches today is mostly wrong. Western evangelicals somehow got sidetracked by the rise of Dispensationalism, it stuck to many evangelicals like glue, and today I rarely hear evangelical sermons about either Revelation or eschatology that spend the time to know (1) what the Bible says and what it does not say, (2)... Read more
I see this as a Christmas song — or an Advent song — one that deals with the hope of a New King. Read more
David Kinnaman, at Barna, released this report: I’m keen on hearing your response. And, what is your local church doing about accountability? Stories to tell? What are the dangers to avoid? Many of the exhortations in the Bible are not popular in today’s world. But a new study by the Barna Group indicates that one of the least favorite biblical principles might well be “Obey your spiritual leaders, and do what they say. Their work is to watch over your... Read more
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