I use “mainliners” for lack of a better term. I’m a member of a United Methodist congregation, and it will probably shock many of my readers that it is, in United Methodist terms, a fairly conservative one. I’ll even be preaching one service there tomorrow. The problem I’ve found with mainliners is less that they…
Thanks to Hot Air with hat tip to Pursuing Holiness, I found an update on the episcopal priest who wants to be a practicing Muslim at the same time she is an Episcopal priest. I blogged on this previously, noting at the time that I was a big tent person, but that too large a…
Today I went on a sort of odyssey through a couple of theologically conservative blogs. My journey started at Adrian Warnock’s blog, where he has another quote from somebody supporting penal substitutionary atonement (PSA): While not denying the wide-ranging character of Christs atonement, I am arguing that penal substitution is foundational and the heart of…
The Evangelical Ecologist has an excellent post titled Closing Credibility Gaps. I think that I’m in a good position to underline his post, as a member of a congregation of the United Methodist Church, one of those declining mainline denominations. Just so the error seekers know that I saw it, I will quibble slightly over…
A community must have some sort of definition in order to exist. This may seem fairly obvious, but often in discussions of religion we lose sight of that fact in efforts to be inclusive. It’s important to remember that there is a difference between saying somebody is a bad person and saying that they don’t…
Peter Kirk has a post, The personal relevance of the atonement, that expresses what I have been trying to say about the atonement much more precisely than I have managed to do it. I commend it strongly. At the same time, Adrian has posted again regarding a review of Pierced for Our Transgressions. Since I…
I have written a few times before on the need for a core of essential beliefs that provide a basis for community along with a broader set of non-essentials on which people can agree. Probably my most comprehensive discussion of the issue is in Unity, Diversity, and Confusion. Over the last few days I’ve been…
Intelligent Design advocates are trying to make us believe that their struggle is primarily about academic freedom, about allowing a new idea to get the examination it deserves, and about ensuring that people are not persecuted for their beliefs. Similar arguments are used from the high school level on up, with the phrase “teach the…
In a recent post Dave Warnock looks through the preface by John Piper to Pierced for Our Trangressions, and quotes the following: This is how I feel today about teachers of Christs people who deny and even belittle precious, life-saving, biblical truth.When a person says that Gods punishing his Son for an offence he has…
I believe I have established here that I like tolerance, but I have also noted that tolerance is a value for me, not an absolute. In other words, I don’t have to tolerate everything. I just believe it’s good to be as tolerant as possible. (You can find some previous comments here.) Ed Brayton has…
