Jonny Baker, long time observer of all things missional and emergent, reports in from a meeting which infused him with hope: yesterday there was a gathering in london diocese of around 30 groups like this and church plants. and well done the diocese for encouraging such a gathering! i don’t want to create a glossary or anything but a church plant is generally someone starting a new church and the language of plant means it often takes something of the... Read more
My friend Darrell at Stuff Fundies Like found this gem of a letter from 1982, explaining the qualifications for a pastor at Phillips Drive Baptist Church: Read more
Scott Paeth has been thinking about what kind of church he might fit. It is, he thinks, a Church for Freaks. He asks, “If I no longer feel at home among “normal” mainline Christians, and I can’t take self-identified evangelicals, where’s the church for the freaks?” He’s come up with three posts about what that church might look like, and I think that many readers of this blog will resonate: Part I: A Church for Freaks I am thinking more... Read more
Lisa Mamula posed the challenge this week for Questions That Haunt Christianity. She asked, I’m a Christian, but I have lately been struggling with a question: Do I believe God is Good, or do I believe God is just good to me? I see my life as having been blessed and guided by God into many good things (great husband, amazing kids, food to eat, etc.), but I struggle to reconcile all these gifts with the lives of those in extreme... Read more
When you hear a Senate candidate make a comment like this, “I think even when life begins in that horrible situation of rape, that’s something God intended to happen.” you may wonder where it comes from. What kind of theology would espouse such a horrific position? This: (more…) Read more
Panel Discussion: Revisiting Inerrancy from Southern Seminary on Vimeo. Baptists don’t have bishops, right? That’s what I thought, having been reared in the related denomination of Congregationalism. Growing up, I was taught that we — congregationalists and baptists and others whose polity is considered “congregational” — were vehemently anti-hierarchical. Our tradition started because Henry VIII and the Anglicans had not differentiated themselves enough from Rome. We were, from our founding, anti-papist, anti-bishop. In congregational polity, nothing is more sacred than... Read more
Until now, I haven’t blogged about the Dinesh D’Souza kerfluffle at King’s College because it seemed a little internecine, even for this blog. But I’ve been following it closely because I’ve known of D’Souza since 1986. That Fall I arrived at Dartmouth College, and I was randomly assigned to a dorm room in South Massachusetts Hall. South Mass was the last all-male dorm on campus — that lasted only another year — and, as such, it was a haven for the ultra-conservative... Read more
This morning, Andrew Sullivan penned what I think is a devastating post about Mitt Romney’s Mormonism. In short, Neither Mitt nor Anne nor his parents spoke against their church when it was rabidly racist for decades. Mitt claims that his parents wept with joy when a “new revelation” led church leaders to begin including African-Americans in the 1970s, but what led him to stay so silent for so long? As Sullivan notes, all churches have their dark histories. But even... Read more
Time for another installment of Questions That Haunt Christianity. This week, our question comes from Lisa, whom you can find at her blog and on Twitter. In fact, she’s already taken a stab at answering her own question on her blog. (more…) Read more
It may seem the height of irony, or maybe a double standard. Last night I listened to the third presidential debate as I drove home from a successful pheasant hunt in South Dakota. In my cooler were nine birds — birds that I had shot, that my dog had retrieved to me in his mouth, and that I had cleaned by hand. It’s a bloody business, hunting; admittedly violent. And yet, as I drove home and listened to our president... Read more
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