A Newish American Church Phenomenon: INC (Independent Network Christianity) I learned the name of this relatively new phenomenon via a review of the 2017 book The Rise of Network Christianity (OUP, 2017) by sociologists Brad Christerson and Richard Flory by James K. A. Smith. The review was published in the Los Angeles Review of Books and can be found at https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/how-to-find-god-on-youtube/. The review’s title is “How to Find God (on YouTube).” Christerson and Flory have given this phenomenon a name:... Read more

The “Judge Judged in Our Place”: Substitutionary Atonement Reclaimed Over the years of teaching theology I have discovered that many young, ardent, passionate Christians are rebelling against traditional evangelical understandings of the atoning death of Jesus Christ without fully understanding them. Often, even usually, conversation reveals that their ideas of substitutionary atonement are distorted. This distortion often arises from sermon illustrations and folk religion.   Without wanting to enshrine substitutionary atonement as the only way of understanding the work of... Read more

“Something There Is That Doesn’t Love a Wall” The poem “Mending Wall” by Robert Frost was first published in 1914. The first line is the title of this blog essay. Some of us older folks will remember the outrage in Western Europe and North America, especially, when The Democratic Republic of Germany (communist East Germany) built an ugly wall to keep East Berliners in and West Berliners (and others) out. Two U.S. presidents stood near the wall and called for... Read more

Empathy Is Good; Justice Is Better In a way, this is “Part 3” of an ongoing series of blog posts about the foundation for ethics. The question with which I began two essays ago was whether or not human rights depend on a transcendent reality “above” nature. Of course, all along (and I mean all along!) I have been arguing here that this is the case—namely that ethical and moral absolutes (not necessarily “rules”) must have some source and foundation... Read more

Follow Up to Previous Post: Was Slavery Always Morally and Ethically Wrong Even When It Was Legal? My immediately preceding post here asked about a foundation for human rights. I argued there that some vision of transcendence is necessary to establish and maintain human rights; human rights cannot be constructed socially and remain absolute. Human rights are discovered, not constructed. (Of course there are rights so-called that are socially constructed but I am not asking about those. I am talking... Read more

What Is the Foundation (If Any) of Human Rights? We hear much talk (in Western cultures especially) about “human rights.” People tend to take it for granted that human beings, at least those already born, have certain “inalienable” rights. The American Declaration of Independence declares inalienable human rights to include life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Over the centuries, however, many more basic and inalienable human rights have been discovered. Some are debatable; some are taken for granted. They... Read more

Did Jesus “Sort” People? According to a mainline Protestant pastor, writing a guest column in a local newspaper, there is “overwhelming evidence” that Jesus did not require faith statements from individuals. The essay is pointedly against “sorting” people—even within churches. According to this seminary-trained pastor, Jesus simply accepted people with love and so should the churches. Atheists and agnostics are mentioned—as people who should be included within churches. The thrust of the column, as I interpret it, is that Jesus... Read more

What Do We Owe the Dead? A Question of Ethics A couple years ago I purchased a volume of essays and sermons by one of my favorite 19th century Christian theologians—Horace Bushnell. (I have written about him here before.) The volume is well over a century old but in good condition. One of the sermons in the book is titled “What Do We Owe the Dead?” It was preached at the dedication of a Civil War memorial and cemetery. My... Read more

A New Name for an Old Fallacy: “Assailment-by-Entailment” I receive a lot of e-mail from total strangers. Some of it is very helpful. Recently Nathan King, professor of philosophy at Whitworth University (Spokane, WA) e-mailed something very interesting and helpful. Along with his friend Robert Garcia (philosophy, Texas A&M) King has developed a name for one of the most common fallacies in theological polemics. (Of course it can be used and almost certainly is in many other fields and disciplines.)... Read more

Is It Time for American Christians to Bow out of the Culture Wars? Part 2 If you did not read Part 1 (the immediately preceding post) please do that before reading this one. This “Part 2” builds on Part 1 and assumes its content. The question on the “table” is whether Christians in America and other post-Christian societies ought to abandon attempts to manipulate the “levers of power” (legislation) for specifically Christian or specifically religious moral ideals. Using an old... Read more