Seminary faculty often lack any real affinity for the church and, that too, has colored the kind of graduate that seminaries have produced. In part this state of affairs can be traced to the seminaries themselves, which hired faculty from a wide array of institutions, including many that were shaped not so much by theological categories as they were the assumptions of religious studies programs. But churches also made it difficult, if not impossible, to be ordained and, at the... Read more
The question, “Why do we pray?” is one that has vexed me theologically and philosophically for some time. Here’s why: 1) Prayer is not to change us. I say this because it’s clearly not a biblical motivation for prayer. Prayer is not therapeutic. If it were, there would be no need for God, and we might as well be Buddhist. I know a lot people talk like this about prayer. They say that prayer is to “align our spirits with... Read more
That’s a word that Pete Ward introduced to me yesterday. Pete may be best known in the US as the author of Liquid Church, a book that was referred to often during the early days of the emergent movement. (OK, he may be even better known as one of the interstitial commenters in my first book.) At the time, to be honest, I wasn’t a fan of Pete’s thesis. At the time, I was on my way to becoming a... Read more
I’m no pietist, as many readers will know. In fact, my local newspaper once ran a story about me being installed as a pastor at Colonial Church titled, “The Irreverent Reverend.” However, some things cross the line even for me. I’ve been avoiding shopping at Target to stand in solidarity with Lady Gaga. No, actually, I was avoiding Target before Gaga, but for the same reasons. Well, now I have another reason to avoid Target, because last night, in a... Read more
Elizabeth Drescher has a great post at Religion Dispatches, riffing on Richard Beck’s excellent post about Facebook killing the church. Money Quote from Drescher: Not Enough Social to Go Around The relationships among the undergraduates in Beck’s research were not formed on Facebook, they were enriched by students’ continued digital contact. The problem with regard to churches and other religious communities (and we see this over and over again with Facebook group pages whose only visitors are the minister and... Read more
In other news, Brian McLaren had a new book come out yesterday: Naked Spirituality: A Life with God in 12 Simple Words. Personally, I’m looking forward to reading it. 🙂 Read more
Today’s StarTribune has an interesting story on the young and unlikely friendship between Senators Al Franken and Rand Paul. As you may know, Paul is one of the Senate’s most conservative members, and he actively courts mainstream media attention. Franken, on the contrary, is on the left wing of the Senate and generally avoids media attention. The Strib reports: The duo has raised eyebrows because the two senators couldn’t be further apart politically: Paul is a staunch libertarian and founded... Read more
Last week, I challenged Peter Rollins, a notorious Christian a/thiest, to give up atheism for Lent. Pete and I have had a bit of fun with each other on Twitter, which I plan to keep doing throughout Lent. Pete’s told me that he is writing a post on the subject for his blog, which should be up this week. But in the midst of the fun we’ve been having, I also heard from Nate McKay on Facebook. Nate let me... Read more
Dear readers, thanks for your ongoing interest in my writing here on the blog. Today, a non-descript Monday in a liminal part of the year, seemed like a good time for me to do a little housekeeping here on the blog. Here are some notes and answers to a few questions that seem to linger out there among readers and commenters: Dissertation: My committee has approved my dissertation for a public defense on April 25 at 4pm on the Princeton... Read more
Over at Social Phonics, we put up five posts this week — they were sent to us by an anonymous hacker who’d like church folks to better protect themselves online. I’m pretty up on this stuff, and I learned something in every one of these posts. I encourage you to check them out: Part One – General Overview Part Two – General Tips Part Three – Social Networking Part Four – Banking and Shopping Part Five – Privacy You can... Read more
Theoblogy
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In