(Disclaimer: No specific business or agency is being referred to, even indirectly, in this post.) I live and work in an area of the United States many people call the “Bible belt.” Some has labeled the city where I live “Jerusalem on the Brazos” because of all the churches. There is about one Baptist church per thousand people (in a metro area of about 150,000). It’s common to see huge billboards that contain only the 10 Commandments–no advertising–and bumper stickers... Read more

I recommend a great new book by a budding young Brazilian theologian (one of my former students) Joao Chaves: Evangelicals and Liberation Revisted. https://wipfandstock.com/store/Evangelicals_and_Liberation_Revisited_An_Inquiry_into_the_Possibility_of_an_EvangelicalLiberationist_Theology This is the only book I know of its kind–a thorough, up-to-date treatment of Latin American Liberation Theology (LALT) and its relation to evangelical theology (and vice versa). LALT has allegedly fallen on hard times since the fall of the Soviet Union and Eastern European communism. Not as many major volumes of LALT have been published... Read more

A Question for Conservative Christians and GLBT Rights Advocates: Why Not Civil Unions?             One of my earliest posts to this blog was a proposal to settle the controversy over “gay marriage.” Earlier I had written my proposal in a column published by the local newspaper. Both the column and the later blog post received angry responses. Cultural conservatives (mostly Christians) and GLBT rights advocates agreed that my proposal was unacceptable. But I still don’t understand why and this time... Read more

A Message for My Fellow Evangelical Arminians (Others Welcome to Listen In) Not many non-Wesleyan evangelical theologians have been so bold as to publicly proclaim themselves “Arminian” in the last thirty to fifty years as Reformed theology has become dominant and even normative among evangelical leaders. In 1992 I picked up the first issue of Modern Reformation, a magazine dedicated to promoting monergism (if not Reformed theology) especially among evangelicals and saw numerous misrepresentations of Arminian theology in its articles.... Read more

Years ago I took a theology class to an Eastern Orthodox Easter divine liturgy. The cathedral was packed, but I had called ahead and my friend, the dean of the cathedral, had reserved seats for us in the back (as requested). I had told my undergraduate theology students not to go forward for the eucharist but to wait and go forward for the bread of fellowship after the service or at the end of it. A kind usher came to... Read more

Why Do We Call It “Good Friday” When….? Today is “Good Friday.” To many students whose schools are on holiday and to many workers whose companies close for a long Easter weekend, it’s “good” because they can sleep in, go shopping, take a trip or whatever. But my question today is why Christians call it “good.” Here’s an irony that causes me some cognitive dissonance whenever I attend a “Good Friday” service (which I usually do): We call it “Good... Read more

Where Have All the Theological “Public Intellectuals” Gone? (An Invitation to Participate) Recently I have been lecturing and writing (again) about some of the “giants” of modern theology: Schleiermacher, Bushnell, Hodge, Ritschl, Rauschenbusch, Machen, Troeltsch, Fosdick, Barth, Brunner, Niebuhr, Tillich, Bonhoeffer, John Courtney Murray, Carl Henry, Hartshorne, et al. Some of them, perhaps all of them, spoke not only to the churches but also to society at large. Several of them graced covers of Time magazine: Fosdick (twice), Barth, Niebuhr,... Read more

The subject was Calvinism and Arminianism. The setting was City on a Hill Church in suburban Seattle (Federal Way). The reason was to explain Calvinism and Arminianism and answer questions about both. The audience was mostly young people from many churches–some as far away as Sacramento (CA).   Part One: http://vimeo.com/62468956 Part Two: http://vimeo.com/62474379 Read more

Do “Religionists” and “Secularists” Share the Same Goal? Tom Krattenmaker is a Portland-based writer specializing in religion in public life and a member of USA TODAY’s board of contributors. His column “Secularists, Meet the Religionists” appeared in USA TODAY March 22. A large, bold print side bar appears to be the article’s subtitle: “You may have different beliefs, but you do share the same goal.” Really? Much of the article is based on a book entitled How to Be Secular... Read more