Some years ago the phrase “compassionate conservatism” became popular.  I believe candidate George Bush used it to describe his program for helping the poor.  I got to know one of its main exponents and defenders–Marvin Olasky.  He was for a while a professor at the University of Texas and I used to take classes there to meet with him after they read one of his books.  (I had them read either Renewing American Compassion or Compassionate Conservatism.  Olasky disavowed any... Read more

Okay, so I used that title to get your attention.  No, I don’t really think we need an Arminian Defense League (although sometimes I feel like the only person doing anything to defend Arminianism from its enemies and could use some help!). Earlier, here, I talked about a video on youtube.com (it might also exist on DVD or something, but I’ve only seen it on youtube.com) that viciously attacks Arminianism.  It’s a slick video–well produced (not a home-made talking head... Read more

To here I have discussed folk religious expressions of atonement that are not completely wrong but incomplete or at least prone to distorted understanding and two recent books that I find helpful in developing an understanding of atonement that keeps in touch with evangelical tradition (which has without doubt emphasized penal substitution) while seeking to correct its mistakes.  Those books are Hans Boersma, Violence, Hospitality and the Cross and Scot McKnight, A Community Called Atonement. Both of these contemporary evangelical... Read more

Returning to my discussion of good books about atonement. Now I turn to what I consider one of the best recent books on atonement: Scot McKnight’s A Community Called Atonement. I suggest to anyone reading this book that they turn first to Chapter Eighteen: Atonement as Missional Praxis: Living the Story of the Word.  It might have been good for Scot to put some of this chapter’s material first because it lays his cards on the table with regard to... Read more

This was published in today’s local newspaper. It’s mine, so I have the right to re-publish it here (I assume): Every day, as I open my newspaper to read, I turn immediately to the opinion pages.  I enjoy reading the editorials, political cartoons and letters to the editor even when they irritate me—as they often do. And I know full well that my contributions here have irritated some good folks, but I hope I’ve made them think about things in... Read more

In Part One of this multi-part message I discussed folk religion and the atonement.  Virtually every doctrine of the Christian faith is subject to folk religious distortion.  Let me be clear, though.  Folk religion is not always completely wrong; it’s expressions (clichés, slogans, mottos, stories, etc.) CAN sometimes be partly right.  What’s wrong with folk religion, especially when applied to theology, is the partiality of its truth that distorts doctrine.  Earlier I gave the example of the most common folk... Read more

As you may have noticed, this blog has a new address: www.patheos.com/blogs/rogereolson, but the old address (www.patheos.com/community/rogereolson) will continue to work with automatic forwarding.  So please don’t let the new address inhibit you from coming here or participating.  You don’t really have to do anything.  If you want to update your address book to this new address, that’s fine. Some changes to the blog have been made that shouldn’t affect readers and discussion participants.  I was receiving a lot of... Read more

I live and work in the Bible belt.  Some call it the buckle on the Bible belt.  There are more churches per capita in this county than almost anywhere else.  And what I have called folk religion is rampant.  It appears on bumper stickers, T-shirts, church marquees, even billboards.  I know that’s not unique to this location, but what sociologists call the “religious ecology” of this region seems especially prone to it. The other day I was walking my granddaughter... Read more

Earlier (some months ago now) I posted an essay here arguing for a Protestant version of purgatory.  (Hold your fire unless you’ve read that post!) Now I’d like to argue for a Protestant version of categories of sin–something like the Catholic categories of mortal and venial. Recently someone commenting here repeated the Protestant cliche that all sins are equal.  I think that is folk religion UNLESS it has been reflected on critically and a strong biblical case made for it. ... Read more

Some time ago a visitor to this blog listed Lutheran Old Testament scholar Terence Fretheim among process theologians.  I challenged him on that and he asked me to read Fretheim’s book Creation Untamed: The Bible, God, and Natural Disasters (Baker, 2010); he claimed it would convince me that Fretheim is a process theologian and not just a garden variety open theist.  (Fretheim was an open theist before that label existed; his work has inspired many open theists and they have... Read more