I actually had the vague idea for this song last year, when it was snowy around Easter time. Today, as it is snowing outside again, and I have a cold for the third time in a row, I felt the need to finish writing the words and record it. I am sure that if I felt healthier I would have done a better job with it. But having a cold while making it seems somehow appropriate. This is, of course,... Read more
It must be added that the dichotomy does not have to exist. There is no one who only wonders, and never believes. The danger is when beliefs are treated as sacrosanct, so that nothing and no one can cause us to open ourselves to new information and new possibilities. Read more
My friend and colleague Charles Allen shared the following as part of an e-mail: John’s Gospel doesn’t really say that much about her, but that hasn’t stopped preachers and listeners from letting their imaginations run wild. After all, she’s had five husbands, and now she’s living with a man out of wedlock. So it’s been easy to jump to the conclusion that she’s been doing a lot of bed hopping.But the Gospel doesn’t tell us that. We do know that... Read more
By Signe Wilkinson Read more
Via Ancient World Online, I learned that the Vatican Library has put Targum Neofiti online! If you are not familiar with them, the Targumim are Aramaic paraphrases of the Bible, which provide important insights into how ancient Jews understood their Scriptures. Read more
Hasn't this been America's official religion for a long time, with voices or prophetic protest against it denounced as Communists? Pete Newlove has a nice article problematizing the notion of Christian corporations. When I shared it on Facebook, one commenter paraphrased Paul's words in 1 Corinthians and wrote, “I thank God that I did not baptize any of you corporations, except for Hobby Lobby and Chick-fil-A.” Read more
It is a symptom of the fact that I spend so much time addressing pseudoscience that, when I saw the article in the New York Times about discoveries in Brazil that may challenge previous conclusion concerning human migration to the Americas, my first thought was about how young-earth creationists will react to the news. I expect them to insist that the dates are wrong. But I also expect them to smugly point out that this just shows yet again that... Read more
Tim Bulkeley blogged about the subject of the church and social capital. He suggests that, if he preaches on his blog to an audience of hundreds worldwide, in addition to those present in a congregation he is physically present with on Sunday, then there has been a gain, not a loss. That got me thinking. If I were to go buy a piece of property and call it planting a new church, one with a progressive Christian outlook of the... Read more
Libby Anne recently noted one of the problems with concepts of heaven and hell. How can the eternal torment of others not impact the bliss of those in heaven? Apparently the answer some readily offer to this conundrum is that those in heaven will be so transformed that they will be unconcerned about the torment of those in hell. Wow. This may be an issue specifically for fundamentalist versions of religion – but there are other similar ones for other... Read more
I was reminded yesterday of the above quote from Tim Gombis, part of which I shared here before. It seemed to me to deserve to be turned into a meme. Read more
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