The Church is Not Your Canvas

Last updated on: October 5, 2011 at 12:11 pm By Timothy Dalrymple

Mark D. Roberts has a piece at Patheos now that warns pastors against the presumption that their churches are all about them. It’s a nice companion piece to Monday’s post — “Rob Bell, Hollywood Celebrity?” — on the growth of the culture of celebrity-pastor-worship in evangelical circles. Roberts interacts with pastors frequently through his work at Laity Lodge, and he often asks them to tell him about their church and its health. Different personalities can respond in different ways, of... Read more

Spiritual Life in the Age of Machines — Richard Foster Interview

Last updated on: October 4, 2011 at 12:38 pm By Timothy Dalrymple

Continuing my interview with Richard Foster…with his new book hitting the shelves, Sanctuary for the Soul: Can we continue the contemplative spiritual disciplines in the modern world? Or does meditation have no place in a technological world? Those who really give themselves to the technology are the ones to discover those little nudges toward Christ within them. But at the very same time, we must be wary of the addictive character of technology and its ability to scatter us so... Read more

Rob Bell, Hollywood Celebrity?

Last updated on: October 3, 2011 at 3:05 pm By Timothy Dalrymple

Rob Bell recently announced his decision to leave Mars Hill Bible Church, the congregation he founded and guided to mega-church status in Grandville, Michigan, to move his family to Los Angeles and pursue other interests. The church’s official statement said he would “devote his full energy to sharing the message of God’s love with a broader audience.” Like Brian McLaren before him, then, who left a local church to minister to a “global parish,” Bell was leaving the rhythms, burdens... Read more

Richard Foster on Teaching the Spiritual Disciplines to Your Church and Your Children

Last updated on: September 30, 2011 at 4:00 pm By Timothy Dalrymple

Recently I had the opportunity to sit down with Richard Foster — he has a new book out, Sanctuary for the Soul — and speak with him about contemplative prayer in the modern world. Foster is a marvel of grace and humility and wisdom. I couldn’t decide what to do with this material, since it was too long to publish as a single article. But it’s rich, and worth reading. So I’ll separate it into coherent segments and publish it... Read more

It's Baby Time!

Last updated on: September 21, 2011 at 12:55 am By Timothy Dalrymple

Astute followers of this blog will have noted that there has not been much blog to follow lately — at least not since last Friday. The reason is simple: my wife and I had a baby. The process began Friday evening and came to a happy conclusion in the dark morning hours of Saturday. After returning home yesterday (Monday), I am presently helping my wife and newborn daughter (our second) adjust to their new lives. I’ll have more opportunity to... Read more

Are Mormon and Evangelical Views of God Really That Different?

Last updated on: September 16, 2011 at 1:04 pm By Timothy Dalrymple

Because of a certain person who shall go nameless — let’s call him M. Romney or Mitt R. — the question of Mormon differences from historical Christianity has been very much in the air. Not too long ago, for instance, we published an article (part of a broader discussion on the topic) in which Warren Cole Smith explained why he, as an evangelical, could not vote for a Mormon. This became a very controversial piece, eliciting no fewer than three... Read more

Reader Writes: Reviving Judeo-Christian Values

Last updated on: September 15, 2011 at 6:39 pm By Timothy Dalrymple

Editor’s Note: One of the purposes of Philosophical Fragments — and indeed of the Evangelical Portal at Patheos more generally — is to model the kind of conversation we want to see in the world. It’s distressingly common to find matters of faith, culture and politics discussed in the crudest of ways, filled with ignorance and suspicion and scorn, with bad arguments and false ‘evidence’ and ad hominem attacks. It was my frustration with the nature of our public discourse... Read more

Rick Perry: The Middle Finger of the Right

Last updated on: September 14, 2011 at 4:10 pm By Timothy Dalrymple

The Presidential primary pains me to watch. Not because the candidates are atrocious — I don’t think they are, and regular readers will know that I think highly of Mitt Romney — but because I don’t enjoy arguing with my fellow conservatives. Actually, I really don’t enjoy arguing at all. I could once argue for the sheer enjoyment of it, but then I saw relationships damaged through those arguments and became averse to stringent arguments. When I speak up on... Read more

The Absolute Integrity of the Human Person

Last updated on: September 13, 2011 at 12:49 am By Timothy Dalrymple

Wow. A powerful piece from David Mills at First Things on some horrific medical experiments — in the interest of finding a cure to Syphilis — and on the moral quandary they pose for your average relativist bioethicist: What makes what Cutler did so wrong? The members of the commission pointed almost uniformly to his failure to get the informed consent of his subjects, but what makes experimenting on people without getting their informed consent wrong? What is the ground... Read more

Remembering September 12th: Can Morning in America Dawn Anew?

Last updated on: September 12, 2011 at 2:23 pm By Timothy Dalrymple

Ronald Reagan’s famous “Morning in America” campaign commercial heralded the end of a long dark night in America’s common life. By 1984, we had endured the malaise of the Carter years, the 1979 energy crisis, the Iranian hostage crisis, stagflation, and unemployment that remained in double-digits for ten months. Yet the economy was growing again in leaps and bounds. Unemployment was falling swiftly. After the moral confusion and generational chaos of the 1960s, and the corruption and malaise of the... Read more