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From President Obama’s speech at the University of Michigan… Today’s 24/7 echo-chamber amplifies the most inflammatory soundbites louder and faster than ever before.  And it’s also, however, given us unprecedented choice.  Whereas most Americans used to get their news from the same three networks over dinner, or a few influential papers on Sunday morning, we…

This psalm, Psalm 11 (see after the jump), once again, is a prayer that weaves in and out of theology, plea and reflection — it ponders God as it ponders enemies. John Goldingay sums up what this psalm does in words worth quoting: “When the foundations collapse, you can (e.g.) flit (like Elijah), seek to…

This last week I (RJS not Scot) have spent my commute listening to the audio from the Wheaton Theology Conference: Jesus, Paul and the People of God: A Theological Dialogue with N.T. Wright. This is fascinating stuff – I recommend it highly. I put up a post in dialogue with the speakers at the conference…

If you are total pragmatist when it comes to ministry, you won’t like this book. If you are a theologian-pastor type, you may well love Andrew Purves, The Resurrection of Ministry: Serving in the Hope of the Risen Lord . Purves’ earlier book, which we blogged through, was called The Crucifixion of Ministry: Surrendering Our Ambitions…

Brad Lomenick, leader of the wonderful Catalyst organization, and Gabe Lyons, leader of the Q conference … both had their conferences within about a week and I was at both. Catalyst was at Mariner’s Church in Newport Beach (first time being there for me) and Q was at the Chicago Civic Opera (first time being…

Prayers include prayers for God to act in justice. So the psalmist goes at it, and this prayer reminds me some of the Magnificat: it’s not vindication or vengeance so much as it is balancing the scales. The confidence of the psalmist is that God takes notice; in fact, God always takes notice of the…

Justice, Judgment, “Soul Sort Narratives,” and Love In my post on Brian McLaren’s “Soul Sort Narrative,” we began to discuss the connection between justice, judgment and love.  As a lawyer and legal scholar, the themes of justice and judgment have always been interesting to me.  I’ve always felt a bit of awe when I receive an order from a…

Tom Long, well-known American Presbyterian preacher and professor, decided more than a decade ago that it was time to do a state of the art book on the Christian funeral. “What I did not anticipate discovering,” he confesses, “that the reigning understanding of the ‘state of the art’ funeral, which I shared along with many…

I met Ron Highfield in an airport after we had both attended a conference in Cincinnati. Ron is a theologian at Pepperdine, and I will get to speak at Pepperdine this week. But Ron has a good, a very good book, about God called Great Is the Lord: Theology for the Praise of God .…

A longish, I admit, clip from First Things: The principal source of my melancholy, however, is my firm conviction that today’s most obstreperous infidels lack the courage, moral intelligence, and thoughtfulness of their forefathers in faithlessness. What I find chiefly offensive about them is not that they are skeptics or atheists; rather, it is that…
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