Leaving a Denomination with Honor

Last updated on: March 13, 2015 at 4:50 pm By Tony Jones

Jason Stellman recently left the Presbyterian Church in America, a conservative, Reformed denomination that is the home to the likes of Tim Keller, R.C. Sproul, Tullian Tchividjian. Stellman was an ordained clergyman in the denomination who, from the looks of his resignation letter, took his ordination vows very seriously. He left, he writes, because of two growing and gnawing doubts. The first: I have begun to doubt whether the Bible alone can be said to be our only infallible authority... Read more

Cornerstone Folds, Wild Goose Soars

Last updated on: March 13, 2015 at 4:50 pm By Tony Jones

Greg Horton of the Religion News Service looks for a shift in the wind with the demise of Cornerstone, the venerable music festival put on the by Jesus People (USA) and the birth of Wild Goose, where many of my friends are gathered this weekend: (RNS) Demon Hunter. Vengeance Rising. Payable on Death. Since 1984, these and other Christian heavy metal bands have been congregating every summer in a field near Chicago for the Cornerstone Festival. And for much of... Read more

What Seminary Education Ought To Be [Part Five]

Last updated on: March 13, 2015 at 4:50 pm By Tony Jones

Finally, this: where one studies should be consonant with what one studies. Last week, we were studying the doctrine of creation and its relationship to Christian spirituality. It seemed to me downright silly to study the doctrine of creation where I did, in a classroom. I get that there’s a certain efficiency to gathering hundreds of students on a campus and having a centralized factory of learning. It’s got a bit of Henry Ford to it. And maybe the type... Read more

Don Piper Did Not Go To Heaven

Last updated on: March 13, 2015 at 4:50 pm By Tony Jones

It’s rare that I get a chance to agree with Tim Challies, so when I do get that chance, I take it! (HT to RHE for pointing me to this.) I haven’t read a single book in the heaven-and-back genre, but it does chap my hide every Sunday when I see them atop the NY Times Bestseller lists. How dumb can the American public be? I ask myself. (Don’t answer that. It’s a rhetorical question.) Tim asks a different question:... Read more

What Seminary Education Ought To Be [Part Four]

Last updated on: March 13, 2015 at 4:50 pm By Tony Jones

I’ve listened to a lot of lectures in my day. Hundreds, maybe thousands. And I’ve learned a lot in some of those lectures. I still listen to lectures, downloaded from iTunes U, when I ride my bike or walk the dog. But never did I learn more than in the seminar format of a doctoral program. My two years in coursework at Princeton were, while rife with personal turmoil, simply the most wonderful learning experience in my entire educational journey.... Read more

John Piper Not Opposing Gay Marriage

Last updated on: March 13, 2015 at 4:50 pm By Tony Jones

At least not from the pulpit. Conservatives in Minnesota have been waiting with bated breath for our state’s two most influential evangelicals — John Piper and Leith Anderson — to raise their voices in support of the constitutional amendment defining marriage as hetero-only. Now it’s clear that neither will do so. Thirty-one states have voted on marriage amendments, and all thirty-one have passed them. In Minnesota, polls show an even split, and many of us in the state are... Read more

Can You Be Anti-Gay and Nice? Fred Says No

Last updated on: March 13, 2015 at 4:50 pm By Tony Jones

Slacktivist is sick and tired of evangelicals like Halee Gray Scott, who argues that she’s nice, in spite of the fact that she wants to deny gay persons the right to marry: Scott shares Worley’s hateful goals, but not his hateful sentiments, so how dare anyone compare them? Note also that Scott hasn’t quite thought through what she’s arguing here. She says she opposes the civil right of same-sex marriage because her religious beliefs teach that “Homosexuality is not God’s... Read more

What Seminary Education Ought To Be [Part Three]

Last updated on: March 13, 2015 at 4:50 pm By Tony Jones

Seminary education as we know it is a relatively recent phenomenon. It was only at the Council of Trent, called by the Catholic magesterium primarily to fight nascent Protestantism, that the seminary was invented. In the 23rd session, on July 15, 1546, the Council decreed that seminaries be established and start admitting boys as young as 12: Besides the elements of a liberal education, the students are to be given professional knowledge to enable them to preach, to conduct Divine worship, and to administer the sacraments.... Read more

Philosophy = Learning How to Die

Last updated on: March 13, 2015 at 4:50 pm By Tony Jones

Maybe you’ve been reading about Pete Rollins’s Pyro-Theology. If you like that, you should also be reading Kester Brewin‘s Pirate Theology. He’s got a great post about it today: ‘to philosophize is to learn how to die.’ That really struck me when I read it, and Critchley goes on to expand a little on that in the piece, especially in relation to love, which draws the possibly selfish philosophical attitude to death out of itself and into relationship with another... Read more

What Seminary Education Ought To Be [Part Two]

Last updated on: March 13, 2015 at 4:50 pm By Tony Jones

I was fishing last evening with one of my friends/DMin students, and he said something interesting: “There seems to be no rivalry between you and Brian McLaren.” We have talked some about rivalry this week, especially about Rene Girard’s view of rivalry, and of Jesus’ undermining of male-on-male rivalries. (More on that another time.) “It’s true,” I responded, “I feel no rivalry with Brian. And I feel that he’s genuinely happy for any success I have.” Academic institutions are notoriously... Read more