Millennials and Mainlines

Last updated on: July 31, 2013 at 10:23 am By James F. McGrath

Rachel Held Evans blogged about millennials and the future of Christianity, getting lots of reactions. David Hayward responded with this cartoon: Kevin Davis, Hemant Mehta, Andii Bowsher, and Allan Bevere also discussed the topic. John Hawthorne shared developing hypotheses about Mainlines and Evangelicals, while Martin Marty reconsiders the mainline legacy. Chris Henrichsen posted “Another Liberal at Church!” while Dwight Welch blogged about religious symbols. Christian Piatt blogged about ministers losing their faith. There is a video with John Shelby Spong talking... Read more

Earliest Depiction of Mandaeans Seen in the West

Last updated on: July 31, 2013 at 9:34 am By James F. McGrath

Matthew Morgenstern shared this on Facebook: Read more

Science Doesn’t Replace Wonder

Last updated on: July 31, 2013 at 8:10 am By James F. McGrath

A recent Frazz comic strip. HT Phil Plait Read more

In Christ Alone

Last updated on: July 30, 2013 at 5:58 pm By James F. McGrath

David French blogged about the Presbyterian Church USA removing the hymn “In Christ Alone” from its hymnal, because its authors refused a proposed change to the lyrics that did away with the notion of Christ’s death as satisfying God’s justice. It isn’t often that I agree with French, but I do when he writes: The importance of rejecting substitutionary atonement is tough to overstate, with ramifications across the full spectrum of spiritual, social, and cultural engagement. Of course, he views... Read more

I Find Your Faith Disturbing

Last updated on: July 30, 2013 at 1:01 pm By James F. McGrath

Jeremy Smith came across a sticker that took a phrase from Star Wars in what was intended to be an atheistic direction: In Star Wars: A New Hope, Darth Vader says “I find your lack of faith disturbing” to a skeptic of the Force. Jeremy Smith finds a more positive interpretation of the phrase: religious faith should disturb us, make us uncomfortable, including (perhaps especially) the person whose faith it is. But even taken in its originally-intended sense as an expression of... Read more

Citation Needed

Last updated on: July 30, 2013 at 12:48 pm By James F. McGrath

Image by Dan4th. HT vjack I emphasize information literacy a lot here on my blog, and even more so in classes that I teach. Learning to not just click “share” or “like” without fact-checking, looking up the source of a quotation, and so on, is a key part of this. I like the way this image substitutes a request for a citation in the place where one often finds a slogan or quotation whose basis is at best unclear. Read more

Bryan Bibb on Religious Studies, the Bible, and Liberal Education

Last updated on: July 30, 2013 at 12:34 pm By James F. McGrath

Bryan Bibb has uploaded a talk he gave with the title “Why Are You Here? Religious Studies, The Bible, and Liberal Education” to Academia.edu. Those who teach Biblical studies as part of the Liberal Arts and/or their core curriculum, and who navigate the waters between religious studies and theology and between secular education and religious commitments, will find it interesting. Read more

Reviews of Religion and Science Fiction

Last updated on: July 30, 2013 at 10:20 am By James F. McGrath

There are several recent reviews of the volume I edited, Religion and Science Fiction, partly due to its re-release in the UK by Lutterworth Press. And so I thought I should mention and link to the reviews here. Some of them require a subscription in order to read more than a snippet of them, alas, and so if anyone reading this has a subscription to Church Times and would like to send me a copy of the review, I would be grateful!... Read more

The Book of Kells Online

Last updated on: July 30, 2013 at 9:24 am By James F. McGrath

The Library of Trinity College Dublin has made the entire Book of Kells available online! If you like that, you’ll probably like this Anglo-Saxon Psalter in the French National Library too! Read more

A Different Sort of Gnostic

Last updated on: July 30, 2013 at 8:18 am By James F. McGrath

Marc Cortez shared this diagram, which is like one that I shared previously, but is a bit more helpful in spelling out what the axis lines represent. What do you think? I think it is also perhaps more helpful than the Dawkins Scale. But the footnote suggests that things are still complicated, and there is still no incorporation of the fact that one may be graphed differently on such a chart in relation to different ideas of God. Read more