All posts relating to religion, including those on the relationship of religion to other fields, such as science and politics
I’m planning to start doing some discussion of Bible passages using Google Hangouts on Air during the coming year. Basically, I’m going to work through material I intend to use in Sunday School. One may ask why I’m doing this, considering that the last time I tried, I had little success. Well, the difference is…
This past Sunday I was reading the Lectionary passages for Christ the King Sunday in which the epistle is Ephesians 1:15-23, in which Paul gives thanks for the Ephesian believers. I find the style of Ephesians quite fascinating, and especially these long prayer passages. In fact, I used two of them in a pamphlet I…
From Reframing a Relevant Faith, forthcoming by C. Drew Smith: When Jesus comes upon these fishermen they are doing what they normally do on any given day; they are fishing. Indeed, this was their life; this was their existence. Fishing was what was routine and comfortable for them. While their occupation as fishermen was hard…
Recently the topic of risk and danger has come up in several discussions of Christian Ministry. Shauna Hyde, who I interviewed along with Chris Surber, has spent the night in tent town with homeless folks and earned the informal title “vicar of tent town.” People have told her she’s crazy. But she manages to live…
From the forthcoming book Finding God in Suffering: A Journey with Job by Bruce G. Epperly. The book of Job invites us to claim our identity as theologians. Job shouts out to us, “You are a theologian” because we have experienced the pain of the world and are trying to make sense of it. Job…
Before you continue, look at the tag line for this blog. I self identify as a moderate, though I have a somewhat eccentric view of being moderate. My view of moderation doesn’t really solve the problem, however. As a moderate, I believe I should examine the whole spectrum of views on any issue before trying…
Tonight in our Tuesday night hangout series, I will be interviewing Christopher J. Freet, author of the newly released book A New Look at Hospitality as a Key to Missions in the Areopagus Critical Christian Issues series regarding the topic of hospitality. We are open to audience questions. You can view this event on the…
Several things I’ve written lately lead to thoughts on ecclesiology, though that is hardly one of my subjects. People do sometimes make assumptions because I’m a member of a United Methodist congregation. So I’m going to make this personal, first saying why I am in a United Methodist congregation and second saying what I see…
One of the things I love about both blogging and publishing is the number of interesting and capable people I get to interact with. It’s something I’ve missed since graduate school days—the opportunity to run my ideas up against people who can really challenge them. Dave Black has written some commentary on this matter of…
Since I’m revising my Hebrews study guide, and have been for more than a year, I can bring up complaints against the old one. One of the most common complaints was that people had a hard time connecting the background reading to the current passage. I included three reading lists: 1) Minimum reading, 2) Extra…
