I am really delighted to have had the chance to watch the first three episodes of the brand new CBS series “Living Biblically” and then to talk with the show’s executive producer Patrick Walsh about it. Readers of this blog will know that I am a big fan of A. J. Jacobs’ book The Year of Living Biblically. This series is indeed an attempt to turn that non-fiction diary, an attempt by the author to follow the Bible literally over the... Read more
Last November at SBL in Boston, I had the privilege of sitting down with filmmaker Rob Orlando twice. One of those meetings was planned, and saw me in front of a green screen wearing makeup (more about that later and on future occasions). The other was serendipitous but provided a chance to chat less formally over breakfast, since it turned out that we were both staying at the same hotel – the hotel in which he was also filming interviews... Read more
Jeff Carter has a book coming out, which is on a theme that readers of this blog should recognized, since I have highlighted his biblical limericks here before. Here is one that I highlighted precisely because it was inspired by a blog post of mine, which in turn drew on something that Keith Ward says in one of his books (The Big Questions in Science and Religion, p.107): It is a part of our Christian creed that our Jesus ascended, indeed,... Read more
Bruce Gerencser writes: What kind of God allows children to be murdered, all because his adult followers aren’t allowed to proselytize public school students? What a vindictive, petty God this is, akin to a man who burns down a house with his ex-wife and children in it, all because his ex wouldn’t let him in the door. Such a God is not worthy of worship. Worse yet, are Evangelicals of a Calvinistic bent who believe school shootings are all part... Read more
I’m going to share links to several articles and blog posts here that I think will be of interest to readers of this blog. The first couple are ones that I actually was involved in directly, starting with a podcast interview for the series “Can I Say This At Church?” When Seth Price contacted me about the possibility of appearing, certainly the fact that he wanted to talk about science fiction was a draw. But even more so, the title of... Read more
The video above is from the most recent public lecture in this year’s Butler Seminar on Religion in Global Affairs, which featured Miguel A. De La Torre of Iliff School of Theology and John McCullough of Church World Service. I highly recommend De La Torre’s book The U.S. Immigration Crisis: Toward an Ethics of Place in the Cascade Companions series (the same series in which my Theology and Science Fiction is published). It is full of so much information... Read more
I remember the scene in the movie The Mission in which one of the characters responds to the statement “thus is the world” by saying “no, thus have we made the world – thus have I made it.” I wonder whether we do the same thing when we who are academics in the postmodern era analyse everything in terms of power struggles. I appreciate very much the fact that so many disciplines in the humanities and social sciences have turned a critical eye... Read more
I really enjoyed learning from student blog posts not only what they are finding engaging in my class on the Bible and music, but also what they are finding frustrating. One example of the latter was my mentioning in passing of historical questions, doubts, and debates related to the stories of the crucifixion of Jesus as found in the Gospels. I found the student’s blog post about this interesting because it stemmed from the student’s Catholic faith, and yet Catholicism... Read more
I actually had a draft post for a while, planning to blog about hell and Jesus, which was called “Christians approach hell (and Jesus) from different angles.” But then the image below came my way via Facebook, and it not only prompted me to return to the subject, but seemed to deserve to be the starting point for the post. What do you think? Was that the right choice? I think that the above actually illustrates nicely the way our... Read more
This pithy statement came to my attention via Facebook but originated with Ian Panth on Twitter: “The Ark is an abattoir of Scripture in the guise of a shrine.” There are other things in the Ark that will make you stop and stare like the utter nonsense in the text and the credulous crowd that eats them up. It is a jaw dropping head shaking romp through collective madness. The Ark is an abattoir of Scripture in the guise of... Read more
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In