Featured Posts
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What Is Biblical Literacy?
We complain about it, write about it, claim it’s important or even critical, design programs to create it, but what is it? I don’t mean that none of us know what we mean when we say “biblically literate” or “biblically illiterate,” but do we all mean the same thing? I don’t think we do, and…
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Fences: Mending or Rending
The following is a sermon I presented at the Unitarian-Universalist Church of Pensacola on September 11,2005 and originally posted here on September 13, 2005. I’m reposting it because when I went to look for it, I found that the original post had somehow been truncated, and also because there is a one word at a…
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Experiencing the (Baptism of the) Holy Spirit
This is a topic where I tend to make just about everyone uncomfortable. Long time readers may recall a previous discussion of speaking in tongues, and my own experience of it. Those who expect me to be intellectually oriented and rational are uncomfortable with mystical experiences, and many who are comfortable with the mystical experiences…
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A Repentance Speech Event
A friend sent me a link to this post on Language Log which discusses public repentance as a speech event. If you tag some spiritual implications onto the linguistic analysis, it adds some interest as well!
Spectrum of Views on Historical Reading of the Gospels
I often present a standard spectrum of views on reading the gospels as history, one which extends from the conservative, or even fundamentalist side, which claims that all details of any type must be historical, to the opposite radical conclusion which claims that the gospels are entirely fiction. Most discussion goes on somewhere between that,…
Home-Grown Insurgents?
This is funny. And thought provoking.
Reading the Passion Narratives
I was reading from Darrell Bock’s book Jesus According to Scripture, and I was struck by a footnote. I’ve been reading from the passion narrative in Matthew, because it is the lectionary selection for this year, but I like to read Bock’s notes because he points out the similarities and differences between the various accounts….
Troy Britain Has a New Blog
I’ve been acquainted with Troy since back in early Religion Forum days. He’s had a web presence for some time, but now he has finally created a blog, Playing Chess with Pigeons (don’t ask me). Welcome to the blogosphere, Troy! I suspect he’ll talk about antievolution stuff quite a bit, which will be good. He…
Race and Obama’s Success
I have watched the stories about Geraldine Ferraro with some interest. She was one of the pioneers, suffering a loss in 1984, but nonetheless being part of a historic candidacy. Though I have at times thought the Clinton campaign wants to introduce race into the campaign, they have at a minimum done so subtly. Ferraro…
Voter Ignorance about the Iraq War
The Pew Research Center has published a poll, reported on CQ Politics that indicates amongst other things that only 28% of the voters can pick the number of casualties we have incurred in Iraq to the nearest thousand (4,000 as of the poll time). Here’s where I tend to feel more of an affinity for…
I, I Alone, Am Left
The devotional I posted today for my wife’s devotional list has this title. I think it’s a good lesson.
Tyndale Bible Toolbar
I have started using this, and yes, it does work with Firefox under Ubuntu. See my introductory notes here.
Moderate Christian Blogroll Updates
For the same reason that I haven’t been blogging until the last couple of days, I’m way behind on submissions to the Moderate Christian Blogroll and Aggregator. I promise I will get to those submissions by early next week.
Experiencing the (Baptism of the) Holy Spirit
This is a topic where I tend to make just about everyone uncomfortable. Long time readers may recall a previous discussion of speaking in tongues, and my own experience of it. Those who expect me to be intellectually oriented and rational are uncomfortable with mystical experiences, and many who are comfortable with the mystical experiences…
Eliot Spitzer Should Resign
. . . oh, he did. I was a little slow on posting on this, but as I have said about David Vitter and Larry Craig, public officials who fail to live up to their publicly proclaimed standards should not be trusted with their public office. All of these men failed to do so. Craig…
Why I Quit Trusting Creationist Writers
I’ve mentioned several times before how I migrated from young earth creationist all the way to theistic evolution, and even to the point of objecting to the term “theistic” in front of evolutionist. I am a theist, but the theory of evolution is a scientific theory, and should remain the same whether one is a…
Back in Action
. . . more or less. I had a fairly annoying encounter with the flu, and in the middle of that had an as yet unidentified medical problem that sent me to the emergency room. All in all this combination cut my blogging (and my writing for print) way back for a couple of weeks,…
Thinking about the Servant – Isaiah 50:4-9a
I made a mental connection this morning while reading the lectionary passages for Palm Sunday/Passion Sunday. I’m not certain just how valid this is, but I thought I’d write about it. There are multiple views of the servant passages in 2nd Isaiah. Some see each passage separately, with some being prophecies of the Messiah, and…
Back at It!
If you’ve wondered where I’ve been, see this post on my Threads blog. I’m back at posting again!
Florida and Academic Freedom Follies
The Florida Citizens for Science blog has a post summing up the current situation with creationist bills in the Florida legislature. FCFS communication director Brandon Haught shows how the bill in the Florida Senate is essentially taken directly from the Discovery Institute’s web site. What is the purpose of these bills? Academic freedom is not…
Parsimony of Miracle Assumptions: Matthew 21:1-7
Or I might title this “Was Jesus a Horse Thieving Magician?” I learned this story so long ago I don’t remember just when it was, but I got a Sunday School version that left me with the impression that because Jesus was God, either he knew everything, or his father revealed to him the location…
Why Anti-Evolution Lies?
Earlier I blogged about Dr. Steve Matheson’s use of the term “folk-science” to deal with some creationist writing about science. in that post I struggled with that term, and how to distinguish lies from differences of opinion, viewpoint, and simple ignorance. Well, Dr. Matheson is now dealing with some material he outright calls lies. This…
A Difference in Agendas – John 11:1-16
I noticed a theme in this passage that I think is important. If you look at the response of the disciples when Jesus proposes to go to Bethany (v. 7-8). They believe it’s too dangerous to go there. It appears to me that for the two days that Jesus delayed, the disciples assumed that he…
Health Care Must be Produced
I read this article on CQPolitics.com that deals with some of the issues of handling health care costs, and also suggests to me that my feeling may be right that the types of savings claimed by the candidates as part of their health care programs may be much more complicated to attain than they would…
Enabling Media Bias
Walter Shorenstein is decrying media bias in favor of Barack Obama. The only surprising thing here, in my view, is that someone felt they needed to write a memo–and I favor Obama myself. The question is just how media bias works, and what the bias is. First, while I think there is a natural tendency…
Piper on the Baptism of the Holy Spirit
Adrian Warnock has posted a substantial quote from John Piper on the baptism of the Holy Spirit. I believe that Piper’s illustration–which I think is excellent–is in accord with my view that this experience can happen more than once.
Respecting Elders and Adjudicating Church Property
[Note: I’m fighting the flu, which is why I didn’t post at all yesterday. I’m up to reading again today, and found a few things to comment on.] Peter Kirk posts on the church congregation of which J. I. Packer is a member, which has voted to leave its diocese and join the southern cone….