Obviously the sexual abuse of children is the gravest of problems, a horrific sin, and the Catholic Church as well as other churches must confront it directly and honestly. But I appreciate -- and often find it maddeningly difficult to find -- sober and balanced treatments of the issues. Read more
The first question in the Cross Investigations series is this: "Evangelical churches are showing renewed interest in theology and theological training. If the church in America could recover one area of doctrine or theological tradition (i.e., ecclesiology, pneumatology, doctrine of election), what should it be?" I have been pondering this question myself for quite some time, and I posed it to Andy Crouch last November on the campus of Harvard University. His response was compelling. Read more
One of the regular features at Cross and Culture is a series called Cross Investigations. For this series, a question is sent every second Monday to an email list that includes pastors, professors, authors and bloggers of all stripes. When a response is received, it is featured on the blog. On the Monday after the question was sent, the answers are gathered together into an article. The feature is modeled after On Faith, which is a joint venture of The Washington Post and Newsweek. In the coming week, the other members of this group blog will begin posting. Beginning now, I will start posting the responses I have received to Cross Investigation #1: Theological Renewal. Read more
My own feelings regarding Chris Tse’s poetry slam entry, “I’m Sorry I’m a Christian,” are deeply mixed. I’m curious what others think. Let me know: Read more
The Evangelical Portal has been thoroughly redesigned, and now Cross and Culture stands at its center. Welcome to the new order of things! If you're new to the Evangelical Portal itself, please read about its vision and future.) Please note the blog's name. "Cross and Culture" reflects the tension of following and worshiping and conforming our minds to Christ, a carpenter crucified in abasement and humiliation -- while living in a culture that worships excess and esteem, rampant consumerism and unconstrained narcissism. You can call it many things. Discipleship in the midst of decadence. Faith amidst the fleshpots. Okay, I confess that I just wanted to use the word "fleshpots." But the essential issue is what it means to carry our cross daily, and make the cross central to our lives, our hearts and our minds, while living in this contemporary culture. Read more
This afternoon, my interview with Brian McLaren will go live. I have Deborah Arca-Mooney, the manager of the Mainline Protestant Portal, to thank for making the interview possible. Until it’s published, I thought I would pique your interest with an excerpt: “When it comes to A New Kind of Christianity, if I’m proposing the same old thing, why are some people so upset and others so enthusiastic? If I’m proposing something totally unprecedented, why say it’s the same old thing?... Read more
GetReligion has another example of how standard reporting ignores the obvious religious angles to stories. When an interviewee makes a religious statement, why do reporters so often leave those behind? Is it because they are concerned about alienating readers of other faiths? But how does it alienate a reader to hear that someone responded to tragedy with faith? Ultimately, what is a very central part of the experience for the sufferer is excised by the journalist. It doesn’t have to... Read more
A typically brilliant post at The Church and Postmodern Culture. Do we escape fundamentalism when we simply do the opposite? Or do we rather, unwittingly, accept the very premises that misled in the first place? I have to agree with just about every line in this entry, except the characterization as “new” of Brian McLaren’s proposal that we view the Bible as a sort of communal library. I heard precisely that notion taught in lectures just about every year during... Read more
Robert Wright, author of The Evolution of God and a disseminator of enlightened opinion every Wednesday for the New York Times, actually manages to blame Christians for their persecution in Muslim nations around the world. He specifically mentions Nigeria, where hundreds of Christians have been slain recently in the vicinity of the village of Jos. In case you’ve missed it, the events near the city of Jos played out as a gruesome variation on the shibboleth story in the Bible. ... Read more
One Christian’s perspective on the day’s news: 1. LOST GERMANS. I enjoyed this report (“A Lost Generation”) at Christianity Today on the condition of Christendom in what used to be known as East Germany. Amidst the ashes of a formerly religious nation, some are recovering the spark of the missionary impulse that spread outward from Jerusalem 2000 years ago. One passage was particularly interesting: To many East Germans, the social gospel preached from many Protestant pulpits [after the fall of... Read more
Philosophical Fragments
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