Would confirmation of extraterrestrial intelligent life cause a crisis for terrestrial religion?

October 19, 2021 By Ted Peters

If ET would knock on your front door and invite you to an alien ‘n’ earthling barbecue, would your religious beliefs face a crisis? Would the world’s religions collapse? My tentative answer is: No! If anything, your appreciation for the magnificence of God’s cosmos would grow. Why might a public theologian be interested in the UFO phenomenon? For three reasons. First, UFOs are public. They’re experienced everywhere by all sorts of people. Second, like a leaking oil pipeline flooding us… Read more

Should Religion Go Extinct with the Dinosaurs?

October 16, 2021 By Ted Peters

Should religion go extinct? Should we accelerate evolution by killing off religion? Just as the Chicxulub asteroid 65 million years ago killed off 75% of life on Earth, including all non-avion dinosaurs, should we today take control of our evolutionary future by deselecting religion? Religion should be selected out of the evolutionary process because it has outlived its adaptive usefulness. Oh yes, our ancestors needed religion at one time to establish altruistic communities that would care for selected populations. But… Read more

Sin? Really?

October 14, 2021 By Ted Peters

Sin blinds us to sin, making us think that there is no sin. Sin turns off the lights, so to speak, so that the truth about ourselves becomes invisible. What accompanies sin is secrecy, fog, darkness. How does the dark darken? Sin, say critics of religion, is an idea invented by nefarious clergy to keep the hoi poloi under control. Sin is an idea that frightens little children. By making us feel guilt-ridden and requiring us to bow and scrape… Read more

Should Christians Dump Darwin?

October 10, 2021 By Ted Peters

Should Christians dump Darwin? No. There is no war between faith and science, but the Christian faith is still losing. Here’s why. Science is intelligible. Faith is not intelligible. The puddles surrounding faith’s relation to science are muddy. Or so it appears. Let’s see if we can clear up some mud. Actually, the so-called war between faith and science lacks intelligibility simply by calling it a war. “War” suggests 2 adversaries. There’s a war going on, to be sure: but… Read more

Critical Race Theory in the Classroom and the Pew

October 3, 2021 By Ted Peters

As I opened my previous Patheos treatment of Critical Race Theory (CRT), I noted that we have a problem due to misinformation or perhaps even disinformation.[1] In a recent New Yorker article on the topic, Jelani Cobb observes how conservatives are “waging war on a wide-ranging set of claims that they wrongly ascribe to critical race theory, while barely mentioning the body of scholarship behind it.” [Jelani Cobb, “Limits of Liberalism,” New Yorker (September 20, 2021) 20-26, at… Read more

To Mask? Or, Not to Mask? That is the Question.

September 29, 2021 By Ted Peters

“To be? Or, not to be?” asks Hamlet in his Shakespearian soliloquy. If Hamlet were to receive a religious exemption from vaccination or mask wearing and become infected by SARS-CoV-2, he might not live much longer. He would drop from being into nonbeing. What might we learn from Hamlet about religious exemptions to Covid 19 masking? Our version of Hamlet’s question is this: “To mask? Or, not to mask?” when in school, church, or other assemblies? “To Mask” is the… Read more

From Athens to Jerusalem: Introducing Public Theology

September 27, 2021 By Ted Peters

Tertullian (c.160-c.225) asked rhetorically: “What has Athens to do with Jerusalem? Or, the Academy with the Church?” (Tertullian, vii). I answer: lots! Our gracious God gifted Jerusalem with the gospel of new creation through Jesus Christ. God also gifted Athens with a cultivation of the mind that could benefit all pilgrims seeking truth. Today’s public theologian walks with one foot in Jerusalem and the other in Athens. There is a new kid on the block: Public Theology. We are already… Read more

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