No one really knows on what day Jesus was born. Many biblical scholars understand inferences to shepherds in fields from the New Testament, as well as Zechariah’s priestly service, as pointing to a birthday in mid-September or early October. That means that Jesus may have been conceived in December but most likely was not born on December 25. But at least Christians who celebrate the nativity do so on the same day each year. Christmas may occur on a different... Read more
Is not good. According to the story at Christianity Today, reports have surfaced that Bill Hybels has acted inappropriately with women: Nancy Beach, a former teaching pastor, told the Tribune that she traveled to Europe with Hybels in 1999 and that he asked her to stay a few extra days. She declined. But during the trip, he allegedly said his marriage was unhappy. Instead of work, Hybels wanted to have long dinners and walks on the beach. One night, he... Read more
Michael Gerson’s piece in the Atlantic on President Trump’s appeal to evangelicals is revealing of an essential aspect of anti-Trump arguments: these critics of the president assume that America is too good for a person like Trump. If the U.S. were really a nation like Russia or Germany, well, then we might appropriately elect someone as disreputable as Trump. But we are too good for that. The U.S. is a great nation, an exceptional nation. That’s why Trump is so... Read more
The last time we noticed evangelical spokesmen engaging in nostalgia for a winsome and appealing expression of evangelicalism, Tim Keller was massaging the circumstances of his identification with the movement for the New Yorker magazine. Now Greg Thornbury takes a stroll down a similarly nostalgic path. Both Keller and Thornbury romanticize the 1970s. Keller actually lived through them and should know better. Thornbury was still teething and learning to walk during the decade. Keller left out Jim Bakker and PTL.... Read more
Mark Hemingway has a positive piece on Russell Moore at The Weekly Standard, the gist of which is that the head of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission is one of the few evangelical straight shooters in a climate dominated by THE EIGHTY-ONE PERCENT!!! Hemingway writes: If you’ve been paying attention to national politics for the last few years, the idea that evangelical leaders are themselves in a position to offer such moral leadership might be in... Read more
Alasdair MacIntyre complained about the modern nation-state almost 25 years ago in ways that foreshadowed some of today’s antagonism to nationalism. He wrote: The modern nation-state, in whatever guise, is a dangerous and unmanageable institution, presenting itself on the one hand as a bureaucratic supplier of goods and services, which is always about to, but never actually does, give its clients value for money, and on the other as a repository of sacred values, which from time to time invites... Read more
Some call it confirmation bias, others wishful thinking. Confirmation bias (link is external)occurs from the direct influence of desire on beliefs. When people would like a certain idea/concept to be true, they end up believing it to be true. They are motivated by wishful thinking. This error leads the individual to stop gathering information when the evidence gathered so far confirms the views (prejudices) one would like to be true. Once we have formed a view, we embrace information that... Read more
Massimo Faggioli is a theologian who teaches at Villanova. With a name like that (trigger warning for profiling), you might expect him to be on the Roman Catholic team of western Christianity. Since he writes regularly at Commonweal and is a defender of the Second Vatican Council, he is also a nemesis for some traditionalist or conservative Roman Catholics (yes, for the uninformed, Roman Catholic is not synonymous with conservative or tradition). Yet for all of the differences between him... Read more
This is not a question that many have seemed to consider since the praise for Billy Graham from Roman Catholics has been substantial. For instance, National Catholic Register reported: In a statement on the archdiocesan website, Cardinal Dolan wrote that while his family was Catholic, there was a level of respect for Graham’s work in bringing people to Christ: “There was no question that the Dolans were a Catholic family, firm in our faith, but in our household there was... Read more
Remember the good old days when historicism taught us that fundamentalists were sort of silly and backward to think truth was objective, or that the details of the Bible were actually correct and true? The results of biblical criticism and modern understandings of history showed that treating the Bible as God’s word was wrong. It was, more accurately, the reflections of really pious people who set down their religious ideals in stories and teachings that were fine in their own... Read more
Putting the Protest in Protestant
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