Inspiration Faith & Prayer Health & Wellness Entertainment Love & Family
Newsletters Special Offers

Flunking Sainthood

On this, the anniversary of the Columbine high school shootings, I’m giving space to a book excerpt from Brady Boyd, a pastor in Colorado who has seen his own share of violent tragedy. In December 2007, a gunman opened fire at New Life Church in Colorado Springs, killing two people and wounding several others. In…

Rob Bell is my kind of heretic. His new book Love Wins: A Book about Heaven, Hell, and the Fate of Every Person Who Ever Lived has been loudly branded as heresy by fellow evangelicals Mark Driscoll and John Piper. That made me inclined to like it already, as Driscoll in particular has never been…

#Twible Ps 35: G, please kick the asses of my enemies. Don’t hold back. Stab ’em with the spear, then the javelin. That’s the ticket! imprecation [??mpr??ke???n] n 1. the act of imprecating 2. a malediction; curse I don’t remember ever hearing the phrase “Psalms of imprecation” until a few years ago, when I became…

I learned this week that my former professor and mentor, Edwin Gaustad, passed away near the end of March. (Here is the obit from the New York Times and another from the Washington Post.) I was lucky enough to study with him during the one year he was a visiting professor at Princeton Theological Seminary,…

The Civil War began 150 years ago today, an anniversary marked by the rebroadcast of Ken Burns’s masterful PBS series and a kajillion re-enactments this year. As we pause at this sesquicentennial commemoration we would do well to think of the Civil War as what Eric Foner rightly called it: America’s Second Revolution. The Civil…

I’ve got a post today over at The Thoughtful Christian about the enduring popularity of British class melodramas (Upstairs, Downstairs; Downton Abbey; The Cazalet Chronicles) in America. Why, in an allegedly classless society, do these stories about interclass tensions have such perennial appeal?

Actually, these were from a couple of weeks ago, not this week, but there is grace for Twiblers everywhere. My personal favorite from this batch is Psalm 31. Enjoy –JKR #Twible Ps 24: “Lift up your heads, O gates! Be lifted up, O ancient doors!” Yes, it’s an odd metaphor. It’s poetry. Work with me,…

If, like me, you were fascinated by Half the Sky, Sheryl WuDunn and Nicholas Kristof’s gripping account of women’s oppression and liberation around the world, you may be interested in Half the Church, Carolyn Custis James’s new book on a global understanding of Christian women. The bits I’ve read show that James writes from a…

Brian McLaren talks about the 12 spiritual practices that can change your life, the future of Protestant denominations, and how he brings his books to life.   Today we continue the Q&A we started yesterday with Brian McLaren, one of my favorite religion authors. His beautifully personal new book Naked Spirituality is a departure from…

Brian McLaren talks about Rob Bell’s critics, his own controversial writings, and what it’s like to be in the evangelical hot seat. Also on tap: his brand-new book Naked Spirituality. One of the greatest aspects of blogging is that I get to interview my favorite writers and thinkers. Today and tomorrow, Flunking Sainthood chats with…
archives most recent
search this blog
More from Beliefnet and our partners