Last week at the National Pastors Convention, Shane Hipps sat down with the guys from Out of Ur and talked about community, based on his new book, Flickering Pixels. (Full disclosure: Shane is one of my very best friends — we’ve known each other for 30 years — and I am a huge fan and proponent of his book.) But in the video (below), Shane says that “virtual community ain’t community.” John La Grou takes issue with this, using a... Read more
The Original Sin SeriesIntro–Intuition–Definition–Genesis–Jesus–Paul-Augustine-Calvin-Conclusion Well, now we get to the heart of the matter, and the passage that so many of my blogopponents have been waiting for: Romans 5. It’s in this chapter that Paul writes most specifically about the inherited nature of sin, and it is from this passage that the two most articulate proponents of inherited guilt (Augustine) and the total depravity of humankind (Calvin) get their material. Whether we like it or not, Romans is Paul’s magnum... Read more
“Friendship is the only cure for hatred, the only guarantee of peace.” ~Buddha(HT: Tiny Buddha) Read more
Charles Darwin‘s wife, Emma, famously disliked her husband’s theories, and he actually wrote On the Origin of Species in a way that he hoped wouldn’t be offensive to her. Well, it seems that a sesquicentury later, the two are still locked in a struggle for the hearts and minds of Americans. Acceptance of Evolution, By Religious Affiliation HT: Andrew Sullivan Read more
Andrew Sullivan posted a graf from Alan Jacobs in which Jacobs argues that the “architecture” of blogs makes it impossible to honestly converse about important and weighty matters, like the existence of God. This question is particularly compelling for this blog, since we’re tackling Original Sin, same sex marriage, and the like. Jacobs: Blog posts are just too short to deal with the Big Issues, and too likely to be fired off in short order, with minimal reflection and no... Read more
Rick takes a break from telling us how the music that we love (read, Coldplay) actually sucks 🙂 to round up many of the new hyphen-mergent groups: Relevemergent the fine line between Relevant magazine, cool churches with smoke machines, killer bands and hot java, but little theology and the Emerging church conversation. These guys like being cool, but they like poor people (kinda). They will do whatever it takes to make Emergent cooler (get rid of the theology, all the... Read more
That’s the dream of none other than esteemed Catholic theologian, Hans Kung. At Religion Dispatches, Rosemary Ganley reports, To get right to the point, Kung in his article on February 3, wished Barack Obama were Pope. “The mood in the church is oppressive, reforms are paralyzed, and the church in crisis,” he says. “Benedict is unteachable in matters of birth control and abortion, arrogant and without transparency and restrictive of freedom and human rights.” For Kung, Benedict should act as... Read more
Help add to Brandon’s list of crazy stuff you’ve heard around church. My faves: 1. Your message was good. You didn’t blaspheme the Holy Spirit or anything. 2. What is the deal with your weight? 9. Don’t you think your secretary is too attractive? 14. You should warn people first before you show pictures of snakes in your sermons. Read more
In this week’s edition of Newsweek, Richard Mouw, the president of Fuller Theological Seminary, penned an essay, “Less Shouting, More Talking,” in which he addresses the issues around Prop 8. It’s clear that he wrote it, in part, as a response to the infamous issue of Newsweek in which both Jon Meacham and Lisa Miller wrote about same sex marriage and Christianity. Before I say anything else, let me be clear that I am very fond of Rich Mouw. He... Read more
Thanks, Brian: The Quaker theologian Parker Palmer says it well: “Truth is an ongoing conversation about things that matter.” Read more
Theoblogy
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In