In his foreword to the new book Free: Spending Your Time and Money on What Matters Most by Mark Scandrette, Richard Rohr reminds us that Jesus makes the point in the Sermon on the Mount that “where your treasure is, there your heart will be” (Matthew 6:21). Or said another way, to find out what someone’s priorities and values are, just look at their checkbook. This month in the Patheos Book Club, we’re taking a look at faith and money, using... Read more
If I can be so bold, I think that many (not all) who advocate for a violent response to evil, or who believe that America’s military can solve the world’s problems or keep evil at bay, have been more shaped by our American militaristic culture than the Bible. Read more
I just love the patience that God has and the characters he chooses to hang out with. It gives me hope. If He’s willing to call these guys his friends, then doggone it, I think I got a chance. Read more
Working writer Meredith Gould was using LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook (in that order) before many of us working in and around the church had heard the term social media. A marketing communications professional with decades of secular experience, Gould now focuses on counseling churches and mission-based organizations about how to thrive in the digital age. In July 2011, she founded the Twitter-based ecumenical Church Social Media Chat (#ChSocM), a popular weekly online conversation where people from across denominations explore timely issues and share advice about... Read more
By Jon M. Sweeney A review of Francis: Man of Prayer, by Mario Escobar. Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2013. First of all, disregard the gold medallion the marketers stuck on the cover of this book: “A Biography.” It’s not, or at least, not really. A true biography involves some amount of original research, whether in library archives or on-the-ground interviews with people who know the subject firsthand. Sometimes a biography even includes fresh interviews with the subject himself. It should at... Read more
One of the strangest things I encountered as I read "Fully Alive" was the similarities between Dr. Crabb’s views on the body and Pope John Paul II’s "Theology of the Body." Read more
In my new book, Eyes of the Heart, I explore the Christian practice of lectio divina, which means sacred reading, and is an ancient contemplative way of reading scripture, practiced by the very early monks of our tradition, as a way of framing the practice of photography as visio divina, or sacred seeing. Read more
Yes, open this book, and prepare to feel, perhaps momentarily, panicked that all of your life is an unexposed idol minefield, fraught with spiritual missteps that you can never avoid. But, YES, take courage! Read more
Now Featured at the Patheos Book Club Becoming the Son: An Autobiography of Jesus By C.D. Baker An Interview with the Author Why should someone read this book? Jesus Christ changed the world, and not just for Christians. Knowing who he could have been can make a great difference in the way any of us understands ourselves and others. Yet, most of us only know him according to very narrow perspectives, usually controlled by churches or other communities. The result... Read more
By Lillian Daniel, author and contributor to animate.Faith Gathered in a cozy living room, our little church group watched the Animate DVDs over eight weeks. We dug into the deep theological questions as we got to learn more about God, each other and the vagaries of our host’s temperamental toilet. In the first DVD, the gifted teacher Brian McLaren explained that in the Christian tradition, there are two ways of thinking about God, the apophatic and the kataphatic. (Hang in... Read more
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