I’ve got a new article up at the Huffington Post. It’s about the role we are supposed to play in our national life – especially in an election year. Here’s an excerpt: “The church cannot become the state, but the church has an obligation to bear witness to the state. In order to fulfill this role, evangelicals must rise above the typical left-right debate and learn to speak with a voice that is truly Christian — not Republican, not Democrat,... Read more

I’m reading some Reinhold Niebuhr right now and ran across some references to Soren Kierkegaard’s views on Anxiety which blew me away. Kierkegaard famously wrote, ““Anxiety is the Dizziness of Freedom.” It’s a stunning statement. Kierkegaard believed anxiety to be the existential dread every human being feels when face to face with their own finitude, especially in regard to their own moral inadequacy. Anxiety is innate for Kierkegaard, a primordial reality of personhood preceding human sinfulness and even human creativity.... Read more

A few quotes from A Peaceable Kingdom by Stanley Hauerwas “Ethics… is not primarily about rules and principles, rather it is about how the self must be transformed to see the world truthfully. For Christians, such seeing develops through schooling in a narrative which teaches us how to use the language of sin not only about others, but about ourselves.” 33 (this is part of why SH is so optimistic about virtues. They are not rules, but they give us... Read more

Daniel Kirk has a great blog post on how we should view the creation accounts in Genesis. What I love about his take is that he emphasizes the fact that we cannot make something into historical writing, when it was not composed as historical writing. Yet, he takes seriously the world Genesis 1-4 envisions. He writes, “Genesis 1-4 tips its hand in several ways that the passage is not to be read as a detached historical statement but rather as... Read more

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We’re are doing a series on the words of Paul at Redemption Church. The idea is to delve into five words that pop up over and over in Paul’s writings. If we can explore these words – which are really themes that are repeated and developed – we can become better readers of Paul, and better readers of scripture. The words we chose are: faith (pistis) righteousness (dikaiosynē) gospel (euangelion) Grace (charis) Church (ekklēsia) If you feel like listening to... Read more

One of the original ideas for the book An Evangelical Social Gospel? was rooted in my reading of A Theology for the Social Gospel by Walter Rauschenbusch. Walter Rauschenbusch was a Baptist minister who led a church of poor German immigrants living in Hell’s Kitchen a little over a century ago. This was a bad time to live in Hell’s Kitchen (if you’ve ever seen the Martin Scorsese movie “Gangs of New York,” this movie was set in the neighboring... Read more

Messianic Lunacy from The Work Of The People on Vimeo. Admittedly – I think N.T. Wright is a genius. Everyone who does New Testament studies for the next century or two will have to deal with him. It’s a blast to be alive at the same time and enjoy his influence. Here’s a quick video of N.T. Wright talking about what drives him crazy. What drives you crazy? What makes you angry? Read more

This is a killer reading list from Tony Jones’s blog. These are works centered on Christian Spirituality listed on a syllabus he’s created for a DMin. class at Fuller Seminary. I love several things about the list: One, it is eclectic – lots of different styles and strands of the conversation are represented. Two, it isn’t just the typical stuff (i.e. Richard Foster & Dallas Willard on spiritual disciplines, etc.). Three, there’s a fairly equal representation of male and female... Read more

The book is officially released! You can get it at Amazon.com, and the Kindle Edition is available as well. Thanks for all you are doing to support this. Also there is a new article up highlighting the book at the Huffington Post. Each time a person clicks “like” or shares the article via twitter/facebook/social media, or emails it to a friend, it gets bumped up the food chain & will stay out there longer. That means more people will read... Read more