I’m thinking and reading a lot about creation right now, in preparation for year two of the Christian Spirituality Cohort that I have the great joy of leading for Fuller Seminary’s Doctor of Ministry Program. (Another time I’ll write about what a joy it is to be in community with these 10 students.) In year one, Lauren Winner and I led the class through the history and theology of Christian spirituality; next year, Craig Detweiler and I will be teaching... Read more
Bob Hyatt doesn’t blog enough. But when he does, it’s good. Bob is a friend — he stayed at my house last week — but he’s also a thorn in my side. Almost every time I post on issues of human sexuality, he writes a comment here or on Facebook, gently chiding me from the other side of the issue (some of you who disagree with me could learn a lesson from Bob about civil engagement. Well, Bob has a... Read more
I’m sitting in the Buckhead Theater in Atlanta, about the take the stage with Doug Pagitt to talk about the future of preaching. We’re at the Festival of Homiletics, the premier conference about traditional preaching. The program is basically sermon-lecture-sermon-lecture. A person preaches, then later they give a lecture about what they were trying to do in their sermon. There’s also some singing peppered in between. As you might guess, Doug and I will be delivering a different message. We... Read more
“Do not ask who I am and do not ask me to remain the same: leave it to our bureaucrats and our police to see that our papers are in order. At least spare us their morality when we write.” -Michel Foucault The Archaeology of Knoweldge The greatest thinkers change, their thinking evolves. Augustine changed as his theological career progressed — the Augustine of the Confessions is not the same as Bishop Augustine. Some think he changed for the better,... Read more
Catholicism in America seems to continue is quest for irrelevance via misogyny. This from CNN: Baseball final forfeited because of girl at second base The Arizona Charter Athletic Association state championship baseball game wasn’t played Thursday night because Mesa Prep’s second baseman is a girl. Paige Sultzbach, a freshman, is playing baseball because her high school doesn’t offer girls softball. But the school Mesa Prep was to face in the final, Our Lady of Sorrows Academy, said its boys would... Read more
It seems that the late Peter Gomes stared down the administration at Harvard University when they tried to oust an evangelical campus group. Gomes won. Now, Vanderbilt is attempting to do something similar to Cru (the new name for Campus Crusade), and Cru’s defenders are invoking Gomes’s memory in their defense. From Bob Smietana at the Tennessean: When Vanderbilt wanted its freshmen students to learn about ethics, the school turned to the late Rev. Peter Gomes to teach them. Gomes’ book, The... Read more
It seems that every week, Catholic bishops in the U.S. are speaking out against something. Their target now: the Girl Scouts. That’s right, it seems that the organizations whose mission statement reads, “Girl Scouting builds girls of courage, confidence, and character, who make the world a better place,” is a threat to Catholics. From the AP: NEW YORK (AP) — Long a lightning rod for conservative criticism, the Girl Scouts of the USA are now facing their highest-level challenge yet:... Read more
In the Harvard Business Review, Jack Zenger and Joseph Folkman release the results of their study on men, women, and leadership. In the confirmation category is our first finding: The majority of leaders (64%) are still men. And the higher the level, the more men there are: In this group, 78% of top managers were men, 67% at the next level down (that is, senior executives reporting directly to the top managers), 60% at the manager level below that. Similarly,... Read more
After years of hedging on gay marriage — which many of us who supported him thought was a political ploy — President Barack Obama today declared his support of gay marriage. What had been a day of mourning for many GLBTs and allies in the wake of the Amendment 1 loss in North Carolina, has turned to a day of victory. For the first time ever, a sitting president has had the courage to voice support for marriage equality. It’s... Read more
Rachel Held Evans sees the passage of Amendment 1 in North Carolina yesterday as another nail in the coffin of the evangelical church and its relevance to millennials. When I speak at Christian colleges, I often take time to chat with students in the cafeteria. When I ask them what issues are most important to them, they consistently report that they are frustrated by how the Church has treated their gay and lesbian friends. Some of these students would say... Read more
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