Thom Stark wrote the words below on Facebook, and it seemed not just worthwhile but important to share them with a wider audience. Some Americhristians really, really don’t like it when you point out that slavery and polygamy are endorsed by the Bible. Some Americhristians really, really don’t like it when you point out that America’s wealth was generated by slave-labor over hundreds of years. Some Americhristians really don’t like it when you hold up a mirror. Lots of hissing.... Read more
An interesting call for papers (via Religion CFP and ACLA): Sacred Troubling Topics in Tanakh, New Testament, and Qur’an. Organizer: Roberta Sabbath, University of Nevada, Las Vegas Contact the Seminar Organizers Abrahamic sacred texts continue to inspire a diversity of scholarship that seeks to transform the ancient into the contemporary, the remote into the immediate, and the distant into the visceral experience. This panel takes that process into the examination of troubling topics, often overlooked, yet found in the Tanakh, New Testament,... Read more
There are so many things that might be said about this cartoon. It makes the point that things have become commonplace in our time which would have seemed miraculous a few hundred years ago, never mind several thousand. And it asks us to imagine how we might respond to someone who came claiming revealed truths which God had supposedly downloaded onto their tablet device (surely today’s equivalent of a stone tablet). Read more
Rev. Dale Bronner posted the above picture on Facebook with the following comment: Train yourself to see Jesus in the ordinary things of life! He is there even when you cannot see, hear or feel Him! Oh taste and see that the Lord is good…! The internet quickly clued him in… First Obi-Wan Kenobi, now Thorin Oakenshield. Who will be mistaken for Jesus next, I wonder? Read more
Peter Hess has published an essay in God and Nature magazine, in which he shares reflections on the task of theology which occurred to him as he climbed a mountain. Here’s a sample: There is no single right way to scale a mountain: on a team climbers are always in communication about route, equipment, pace, weather, and safety precautions. And just as truly, there is no one right way to believe as theists, or more specifically as Christians: theology... Read more
St. Mary’s University is planning a conference for June 2016 on “Memory and the Reception of Jesus in Early Christianity.” There are no further details at this point. The information was shared by John Daniels, who blogs at Cultural Jesus. It looks like it will overlap with the Enoch Seminar event focused on John’s Christology, scheduled for June 12-16, 2016. Otherwise I would definitely have been interested in attending. Read more
Jim Davila noticed before I did that Charles Häberl‘s social media campaign to get part of Pluto named after Krun – the Mandaean lord of the underworld – was successful. The designation of one of Pluto’s recently-revealed land features with the name Krun marks the first time that a celestial body has been given a Mandaean name by anyone other than the Mandaeans themselves. Although Wikipedia is not always reliable, on this matter it presumably is, given that the Krun page has... Read more
The idea for this joke came about in my Sunday school class yesterday. We have been studying 1 Corinthians, and found ourselves talking about what made Paul’s letters persuasive before they were scripture. For those who may not get the joke, our oldest manuscripts of the New Testament are written in all upper-case letters, not because of an escalating internet flame war that the Christians were involved in, but simply because that was how manuscripts were written then. There are all... Read more
I recently watched the movie Chappie. It poignantly conveys a point that I also sought to get across in my chapter on “Robots, Rights, and Religion” in Religion and Science Fiction: that what is most scary about artificial intelligences is that they will resemble us in all our shortcomings. But it also makes other crucial points – that children can receive love even from a family that is involved in crime, that children can transform the lives of their parents, and... Read more
The image comes from God of Evolution on Facebook. Obviously young-earth creationists can explain away such details as Cain’s concern for his safety in all sorts of creative ways. That is precisely the point – rather than embrace the problematic character of what the text actually says, they find ways to avoid taking seriously what it actually says, in order to protect their own view of “what the Bible teaches” – which is not in fact “what the Bible teaches,”... Read more
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In