Evangelical College Open to Gays

Last updated on: March 13, 2015 at 4:58 pm By Tony Jones

Last year, I asked which evangelical college would be the first to openly accept GLBT students. It seems that Belmont University is the answer. Cathleen Falsani reports that Belmont has recognized a gay student association, one that had been twice previously denied standing on campus: Late last week, the provost of Belmont University in Nashville, Tenn., announced that the school officially had recognized its first gay student organization. The announcement came barely a month after the Christian school changed its... Read more

Rob Bell and HarperOne: Marketing that Works

Last updated on: March 13, 2015 at 4:58 pm By Tony Jones

Remember how I said that, on the one hand, the Calvinistas have been waiting for enough evidence to throw Rob Bell (the Jason Bourne of Christianity) into the outer darkness (even if Rob doesn’t believe in an outer darkness 😉 )? And, on the other hand, I predicted that Rob would not take the bait? Those both seem to be holding true, at least for now. There’s another player in this story, too. That’s HarperOne, the publisher of Rob’s new... Read more

Join Miroslav Volf and Scot McKnight (and me)

Last updated on: March 13, 2015 at 4:58 pm By Tony Jones

I’m pretty keen on this event that I’m helping to coordinate with Rochester College and Doug and JoPa. It’s called, Streaming: Biblical Conversations from the Missional Frontier. This year the focus will be on the Book of James. What Mark Love and the others at Rochester are trying to do is catalyze a missional hermeneutic by bringing top hermeneuts (yes, I just used the word “hermeneut”) together to tackle a particular book of the Bible. We’ll be talking about it... Read more

Presbyterians Try a Gay Man

Last updated on: March 13, 2015 at 4:58 pm By Tony Jones

Years ago, I was sitting on an airplane, reading the USA Today that had been dropped at my hotel room door that morning. In a little snippet, I read that a lesbian pastor had been called before a grand jury of the United Methodist Church. What shocked me was not that there was a lesbian pastor in the UMC. What shocked me was that the UMC had a grand jury. Yesterday, just a few miles from my house, the Presbyterians... Read more

RIP, Rev. Dr. Peter Gomes

Last updated on: March 13, 2015 at 4:58 pm By Tony Jones

Peter Gomes has died. Gomes was the minister at Memorial Church at Harvard University, known for his brilliant intellect and his wonderful preaching. He was also known for embodying the odd mix of being Christian, black, gay, and Republican. As the Boston Globe reports, He was the first black minister of Memorial Church and the first pastor of that church to participate in a US president’s inauguration. The Rev. Gomes also was the only gay, black, Republican, Baptist preacher most... Read more

What’s Up with Rob Bell?

Last updated on: March 13, 2015 at 4:58 pm By Tony Jones

It seems that everyone in the little corner of the Christo-Twitterverse that I inhabit was talking about Rob Bell over the weekend. Rob’s got a new book coming out at the end of March, and it deals with heaven and hell. More significantly, I suppose, it allegedly flirts with Christian Universalism, a topic that I have been sporadically exploring this year. Based on a few leaked chapters, a press release from the publisher, and a promotional video, the right-wing Calvinistas... Read more

Mainline Churches Continue their Decline

Last updated on: March 13, 2015 at 4:58 pm By Tony Jones

File this under, “Same Ol’ Same Ol’.” The National Council of Churches released their annual yearbook last week and announced that the Catholic Church holds steady, Mormons are on the rise, as are Pentecostals. And, no surprise, the mainline denominations continue their long, slow fade: Mainline churches reporting declines in membership are United Church of Christ, down 2.83 percent to 1,080,199 members; the Presbyterian Church (USA), down 2.61 percent to 2,770,730 members; the Episcopal Church, down 2.48 percent to 2,006,343... Read more

Pomomusings Calls the Presbyterian Question

Last updated on: March 13, 2015 at 4:58 pm By Tony Jones

The long-expected divorce in the Presbyterian Church (USA) seems to be imminent, with a group of the fifty biggest, wealthiest, whitest, and most conservative churches in that denomination attempting to start something new. This “Fellowship” will be a strange Venn Diagram for a denomination — in a video posted this week, one member of that Fellowship explained that this group would be in relationship with churches within the PC(USA) and from other denominational groupings as well. It’s no surprise that... Read more

Who Can Preach?

Last updated on: March 13, 2015 at 4:58 pm By Tony Jones

Apparently not just anyone, at least in the Catholic Church. But it’s actually a little more arcane than that. A Catholic parish not far from my house did the unthinkable a few weeks ago and allowed a woman to preach. It seems that the problem is not that she’s a woman, but that she’s not ordained. Of course, being a woman in the Catholic Church means that, by definition, she cannot be ordained and therefore, de facto, she cannot... Read more

Gaga and Obama Love the Gays

Last updated on: March 13, 2015 at 4:58 pm By Tony Jones

President Obama made big news yesterday, through Eric Holder, when the administration announced that they would no longer be defending the Defense of Marriage Act in federal court. This, of course, is great news for those us us who hope for marriage equality in our country. Earlier this month, Bill Maher caused a bit of a kerfluffle by suggesting, on his show, that Obama is not really against gay marriage, and that he is not really a Christian. Instead, Maher said,... Read more