Making Prayer Happen
Laura at Pursuing Holiness is blogging about prayer and what keeps us from praying as much as we should. She has some excellent thoughts, and in particular she mentions what I think is the most important point: Another problem with prayer is that we so often, after a discussion where someone has shared a need…
Bible Study Tool: The NeXt Bible
One key question for computer savvy, or at least computer-involved Bible students is the type of Bible study software to purchase. Many can get along well with e-Sword, which I’ve reviewed before. (Be sure to read into the comments for some corrections.) Now there’s a new, free resource from Bible.org, the producers of the NET…
Swearing In on Relevant Books
Speaking of swearing in on relevant books, the new Governor of Massacheusetts chose to take his oath on a Bible that was a gift of freed slaves to John Quincy Adams who had fought for their release, according to the Boston Globe (Hat tip: Breaking Christian News (e-mail). I like the symbolism involved in that.
Grand Canyon Age and National Parks Bookstores
Joe Meert, vice-president of Florida Citizens for Science has an excellent post on the current controversy about a creationist book sold in the Grand Canyon National Park bookstore and allegations that have been made that park rangers are not permitted to give an honest, scientific answer to questions about the age of the canyon. He…
What Should he Swear On?
It appears that Keith Ellison, the first Muslim elected to congress, is also quite an effective politician. He wants to be sworn into congress holding a copy of the Qur’an, to which a number of “traditional” Christians have objected (on which more in a moment), and has chosen to do so on a copy previously…
Moderate Christian Blogroll/Aggregator
To keep this blogroll clean and current I will be removing blogs that are not active for over 60 days from the roll and aggregator. I think this is appropriate because the aggregator lists the last five posts from each blog. If your blog disappears from the list and you become active again, please let…
Evolution Sunday
Evolution Sunday is coming up February 11, 2007. Some folks may be a bit concerned, or even seriously annoyed with the idea of an “evolution” Sunday. Is the theory of evolution going to become a point of Christian doctrine? Shall we celebrate evolution for a day? Well, I can think of several subjects right off…
A Politician’s Past
Barack Obama has been making quite a splash in the media, and while the general reaction is often annoyed or amused, my view is that the pressures of a presidential campaign are quite adequate to test the strength of a candidate. I have not decided to support him, and besides as a registered independent voter,…
Principles of Interpretation or Conclusions?
I’m always happy to see discussion about principles of interpretation of scripture, because in general when we have large differences of opinion between Christians they can be traced back to our approach to interpreting scripture and more broadly to our understanding of how doctrine is formed. Thus I was delighted to see General Principles for…
Continuing Series into 2007
I have had several series going on for some time, and I’d like to update you on them as we start the new year. First, my series on Isaiah 24-27 is about to come to a close. In my list of drafts is the post Isaiah 27: Accomplishing Redemption which will be the final entry…
Christian Carnival for Epiphany 2007 Posted
Christian Carnival for Epiphany 2007 has been posted at The Wittenberg Gate. Start the new year off right by checking in with some of your fellow Christian bloggers.
I Hope This is True
The Christian Science Monitor reports that Uncle Sam wants US Muslims to serve and is taking positive steps to make them feel welcome in our armed services. We should do this simply because we are a society that values freedom of religion. But there is a practical side, indicated in the article–Muslims in the military…
Heat, Light, and Comments
This morning I awoke to start my early morning blog and e-mail work only to find that co.mments.com had supplied me (at my request) with seven messages alerting me to comments on Ed Brayton’s most recent blog entry on the Richard Dawkins petition debate, representing 27 comments. I only worked my way through a few…
Is Waking Up Always Good?
John Meunier (Trouble Enough) has been reading William Abraham’s book Waking From Doctrinal Amnesia and making a few comments. Since the Wesleyan Quadrilateral was one of the things that attracted me to the United Methodist Church in the first place, I’m not sure that this is an amnesia I’d like us to wake up from….
Indoctrination and Religious Education
In the course of the discussion of typology of ID opponents the topic of Richard Dawkins and his claim that religious indoctrination is a form of child abuse came up. Now since I’m a religious educator, and particular one who works in churches and other voluntary organizations, you can imagine that my response to Dawkins…
Why I Oppose ID
. . . and how I oppose it. There has been an interesting flap that started when MikeGene at Telic Thoughts proposed a typology of ID critics, and Ed Brayton responded, with further response again from MikeGene. I think most of what needs to be said has already been said in those posts and the…
A Dead Tyrant and Mass Murderer
Nations welcome, condemn Saddam execution says the MSNBC.com headline, and the story reflects that dual reaction. There’s a large part of the world that believes Saddam Hussein is certainly deserving of punishment, but who condemn all instances of the death penalty. As an opponent of this war from before it started, I’ve found it interesting…
Thinking About Hell
Via the Christian Blog Carnival I found this article on hell with some discussion of various views held by Christians.
New in the Moderate Christian Blogroll
I’ve just added Kouya Chronicle to the aggregator and blogroll. Kouya Chronicle is written by Eddie and Sue Arthur, who have some interesting involvement in Bible translation. I welcome them to the moderate Christian blogroll.
Moderate Christian Blog Roundup #2
OK, this is getting regular, which I know is contrary to my personality, but here comes another roundup of the http://www.moderatechristian.com”>Moderate Christian Blog Aggregator. I’m seeing a lot of good posts on the blogs covered by the aggregator and would like to help see them get some more attention, so here goes. Note that the…
On Bible Translation from realmealministries.org
From realmealministries.org comes a brief discussion of Bible translations and how to make your choice of one to use. There is some good material here, though obviously in such a short presentation it cannot be tremendously detailed. Since this is also a favored topic of my own (see Bible Version Selection Tool), I’d like to…
Christian Carnival CLIV Posted
The Christian Carnival CLIV has been posted at From the Anchor Hold. It’s another nice selection and a good job by the host. I didn’t get a submission in because I was out of town and away from a good internet connection, but I hope to have time to call attention to some particular posts….
A Late Merry Christmas
I missed wishing readers of this blog a Merry Christmas because I was out of town and left fairly quickly. At the last minute my wife and I were able to go to Ft. Worth, TX to see our daughter, son-in-law, and two granddaughters. A good time was had by all of us! I will…
Bible Study, Community, and Agendas
I have written previously about community and Biblical inspiration and more recently about fear that pushes people away from studying the Bible for themselves. So how about a note on some of the dangers of Bible study? My attention was called to this topic by this post on Thinking Christian, in which the basis for…