I’ve written about being an adjunct professor before. While I’m grateful for the three schools who currently employ me as an adjunct prof (St. Cloud State University, United Theological Seminary, and Fuller Theological Seminary) and those who have done so in the past (Rochester College, Andover Newton Theological School), one cannot help be see that the crisis in academia is coming to a head. Adjuncts currently make up over half of all teaching positions in the U.S. — we work... Read more
I met Laura Truax a couple years ago. She’s a force of nature — high spirited, joyful, loving. She pastors a church in Chicago that, as unlikely as it may seem, was founded by Moody Bible Institute as a place for its students to attend. That church has changed significantly over the years and, suffice it to say, with a woman pastor and an openness to GLBT persons, Moody no longer recommends it to their students. When we met, Laura... Read more
The Barna Group has studied them extensively, and has some answers. Here’s the report, and here’s infographic: Read more
Rob Bell gets me traffic. So does Mark Driscoll. So does any controversy, whether I gin it up purposefully or stumble into it accidentally. But you know what? There are a lot of Mark Driscoll watchdogs out there. There are lots of sites committed to reminding us how shitty the church too often is. And, while I’ll continue to point out theological ludicrousness when I see it, I also want to point out the good things in the world. As... Read more
This week’s Question That Haunts Christianity comes from Drew: (more…) Read more
Last Tuesday’s Question That Haunts Christianity came from Chris: This question has been bugging me for a while. To preface, I consider myself a progressive (certainly ex-evangelical) Christian. My question relates to ethics in general and the Bible in particular. We all assume that there is a particular way that each of us SHOULD or SHOULD NOT act. I.e., we all harbor the notion that some acts are inherently moral or immoral. As a progressive, I don’t consider the Bible itself to be... Read more
Jeff Sharlet is probably the best long-form religion journalist we have today. A few years ago, he published a haunting account of The Fellowship. It’s a must-read. Now Sharlet has followed up with an article on Westmont College, the top recruiting field for the Fellowship, published at Killing the Buddha (which Sharlet co-founded). I have some personal resonance with this story. For one, I started college in 1986, the same year as one of the subjects of the story, Ben... Read more
I’m getting audited, which I can tell you completely sucks. And I’m getting audited for three years of tax returns, which means triple the pain — it’s like getting an enema with thumb tacks. I’ll write about it more sometime. But because of that, I need a couple more days to chew on and answer this week’s Question That Haunts — it’s a good one. In the meantime, here’s a fantastic guest post by Zane Schertz, following up on last week’s... Read more
So, here’s the story. I can’t really even remember how it began, but I posted somewhere that I was looking for an online, interlinear version of the Septuagint for a word I was researching for my next book. Pretty obscure, I know. Well, I heard from the people at Logos that they, indeed, had such a thing. I’d had Logos back in the day. It was an early version, back when I was on a church staff and had a... Read more
We all want our sins atoned, right? On the eve of Yom Kippur, this is one of the coolest things I’ve seen. You can lay your sins on this escapegoat and then watch as your sins are sent out to Azazel, and pushed off the cliff: Read more
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