Pete Enns’ blog has moved to Patheos, as regular readers of it will know. Take this opportunity to update your subscriptions if you haven’t already, and check out his latest post, which points out the inconsistency of Al Mohler’s “apparent age” approach to dealing with issues at the intersection of Bible and science. Here’s the conclusion: If Mohler were consistent, a literal reading of Genesis 1 would be as intolerable to him as a literal reading of those places where... Read more
One skill all educators need to cultivate is the ability to segue from where a conversation may be to where you need it to go. In my Sunday school class last Sunday, we were up to Romans 7, and the casual conversation before we began was about a computer in the church that had stopped working (the motherboard had gone bad). As the conversation progressed, I saw an opportunity to segue, by putting the interpretation of Paul’s terminology in the... Read more
“They Keep Killing Suzie” is quite possibly my favorite episode of Torchwood so far. Certainly for someone interested in the intersection of religion and science fiction, it gives a lot to talk about. We first meet Suzie in the pilot episode, and it is there that the resurrection gauntlet is introduced as well. In that episode, Suzie kills herself. She had been committing murders in order to have the opportunity to train with the gauntlet. She had been the only... Read more
We have several fruit trees in our yard. Most years, we have so much – in particular of pears – that we give away bags full of them to friends and colleagues. This year, we didn’t get to eat a single piece. All the fruit from the two pear trees, the apple tree, the peach tree, the cherry tree, and the quince disappeared just before they were ripe enough for us to pick them. We had a suspect in mind,... Read more
The Torchwood episode “Greeks Bearing Gifts” alludes to the proverb about the Trojan horse, and seems fitting for an episode in which an alien disguises itself in human form, and under the name Mary befriends and seduces Toshiko so as to gain entrance to Torchwood and seek to retrieve a transporter device that brought it here to be exiled and which she hopes can take her home. But in fact the more direct echo of things Greek is in Mary’s... Read more
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Two images have come to my attention connected with the current “Occupy Wall Street” movement and everything that connects and intersects with it. One is cynical, one is pointed, and both seem worth sharing. On the one hand, it could be easy to point to the hypocrisy of not merely those taking to the streets (Wall St. and others), but all of us in the United States and other wealthy countries claiming to want things to change, yet not seeming... Read more
Have you heard about the conservative Christians who are encouraging Christians to celebrate “JesusWeen” instead of Halloween? It may sound like it is a parody, but it isn’t. What one has to understand in order to begin to make sense of this is that there are Christians who view negatively any event or holiday that is not focused on Jesus, and who actually believe in demons and the sorts of creatures that one might find people dressed as on Halloween.... Read more
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