It was almost two weeks ago that I started seeing Twitter and Facebook posts about something called The Nashville Statement—a 14-point declaration on biblical sexuality by a wide coalition of conservative Evangelical leaders. It was met with choruses of condemnation by various progressive Christian leaders and LGBTQ groups alike, and was labeled as bigoted hate…
Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens, and Daniel Dennett have made a killing in their recent media blitz over the past 10-15 years. Nevertheless, I find many of their claims are just a preposterous and baseless as those of Ken Ham, for they too are ultimately biblical literalists who hold to an Enlightenment-based worldview. The…
For most of today, while my son was at school, I worked on writing this “Part 3” of my thoughts related to the Charlottesville tragedy last week. But then, after watching the news tonight, I decided I wasn’t going to use anything I had written. Here’s why. We Don’t Want Healing It occurred to me…
In my previous post, I focused on what I felt was the biggest obstacle we face in this country when it comes to addressing our current racial divisions (not to mention other contentious social issues): we’ve made partisan politics our religion, and we are so intent on defending out ideological turf, that we absolutely refuse…
Eight years ago, I started my first blog back when I was still teaching Worldview at my former school. You could have called me either fearless or naïve, but fairly regularly wrote posts on contemporary social issues that were deemed controversial. I thought that if Christians were open and honest with each other, regardless of…
Genesis: O Where to Begin? The book of Genesis is about beginnings: the beginning of creation, of humanity, and of civilization itself. Now, many of us in the modern western world simply assume the “beginning” the writer had in mind was the beginning of the material universe, and that Genesis 1 is giving us a…
The Didache is one of the earliest Christian writings after the Apostolic period (i.e. the first century) that we possess, and it gives us a glimpse into early Christianity–what was emphasized and taught–immediately after the Apostolic period came to a close. To read the first four chapters of the Didache, click here. Here, in chapters…
For the next few posts, I am going to share a more “reader-friendly” version of The Didache. It is one of the earliest Christian writings after the Apostolic period (i.e. the first century) that we possess, and it therefore gives us a glimpse into early Christianity–what was emphasized and taught–immediately after the Apostolic period came…
To read chapters 1-5, click here. To read chapters 6-10, click here. Chapter 11: These Things are Worthy to be Known and Believed Just so you know, I’m not speaking about anything I don’t know about. I’m no stranger to these things, and nothing I’m speaking about is inconsistent with proper reason. I have been…
For Part 1, check here. Chapter 6: The Revelation of Christians to the World If I were to sum up all this in one word, I’d say that the Christians are to the world what the soul is to the body. Just as the soul of a person is dispersed throughout all the members of…