On a recent road trip to through the South, I saw a series of billboards with religious message. These billboards were clearly part of a single theological viewpoint. And that theological viewpoint is terrible.
The Shitty Theology Along I-95
On Christian Agnosticism
If I'm going to be honest about what my true religious tradition is, a tradition that embraces faithful doubt and metaphor, then I have to acknowledge that I am a Christian Agnostic.
Video: The Passion(s) of the Christ
https://youtu.be/jwGDPr8zEB0 The final events of Jesus’ life are among the most central to Christian thought. But the four gospels are not of one mind as to what those events were. When we look deeply, we find that each gospel is crafting not a moment-by-moment historical record, but a rich theological narrative that conveys its message…
Read! In the Name of Your Lord
Some years ago, I joined in the Ramadan fast as a gesture of solidarity with a friend. I found the practice incredibly meaningful and have continued doing so since then. For me, the Ramadan fast has simultaneously been a declaration of solidarity with my friends, with my Muslim students, and a source of spiritual discipline…
The Wesleyan Quadrilateral
For it is in that wholeness that our faith is not only understood, but that it retains its relevance and power. For we are not constrained as the fundamentalists are to argue for our faith with ever more arcane interpretations of scripture. We are not dogmatists who communicate our faith as that which must be understood by accepting a long line of church teaching. We are not rationalists who distill faith down into that which can be argued through reason alone, and make ever more spurious appeals to science or pseudo-science to back up the claims of our faith.
Language, Thought, and White Privilege
I know there are some who doubt that White Privilege is real. But if being part of the group that is the "default setting" for the definition of your nationality is not a privilege, I don't know what is.
On the Relationship Between Christianity and Zionism
The debate about the relationship of the Church to the Biblical people of Israel is a centuries-long and enduring one. But the relationship of the Church to its own churches should be an obvious one: to love them as Christ has loved us. And choosing Zionism—indeed choosing any state loyalty over our brothers and sisters in Christ is fundamentally at odds with this command of Jesus.
Will There Be a Rapture?
Will there be a rapture? No. Not tomorrow, but, you know, eventually? No. Never? Never. Wait, why not? Allow me to explain. The Rapture, from the Latin raptus "seizing," refers to the belief by some Christians that at the End of Days, Jesus will return and take up the faithful into heaven with him. These…
O Come, O Come, Emmanuel
We are in the season of Advent and there is no greater Advent hymn than "O Come, O Come, Emmanuel." The words to the hymn date from a Latin hymn in the 9th Century and the melody to a 15th Century French carol. For some time, each verse of the carol has come with seven antiphons, one to be read before each verse is sung. The carol itself is an expectation of the coming savior, but doing so by invoking names from the salvation history of God.
“Are You Saved?”
Christian faith has a lot to offer this broken and hurting world. We have God’s offer of salvation to offer. But this is not our doing. This is not something we accomplish. This is not something we are peddling, like magazine subscriptions, to meet some kind of quota. And we have a fair amount of work ahead of us in helping to remind the church of what salvation is supposed to mean.
Resurrection Faith
Sing the wondrous love of Jesus, Sing His mercy and His grace.In the mansions bright and blessèd, He’ll prepare for us a place.Onward to the prize before us! Soon his beauty we’ll behold;Soon the pearly gates will open; We shall tread the streets of gold.When we all get to heaven, What a day of rejoicing that will…
Christology and Jewish-Christian Dialogue
It has been said that Judaism and Christianity share a dirty little secret in common: Jesus was a Jew. Indeed it is a great irony that the Jewish founder of the Christian faith, who should have been "a bridge of reconciliation between Israel and the world of the nations," has instead been a point of division and bitter contention.