Alexandra Pelosi is the talented filmmaker behind “The Trials of Ted Haggard”–though, as she put it in the New York Times yesterday, she prefers to be considered a maker of television, not documentaries. Fair enough, as her light, earthy, humanizing touch is just right for the small screen. It is also the right touch for…

I’ve been mulling a long post in defense of doubt. For the last few months, I’ve watched hard questions and varieties of doubt do a great deal of good among some of my Christian friends, and I’ve been reading Luke’s gospel, which invites itself to be read as (among other things) a prescription for doubt.…

Jeff Sharlet, in his review of Peter Trachtenburg’s The Book of Calamities at Search Magazine, coins a phrase–“scripture shock”–to describe reading rattling, blood-curdling Bible passages. Consider Psalm 137 (where the psalmist blesses the one who would bash the heads of Babylonian children), or Exodus 32:27-28 (where the Lord appears to sanction brother-on-brother bloodshed)–passages where violence and destruction are the…

Reading N.D. Wilson’s account of his father’s public debates with Christopher Hitchens put me in mind of a certain kind of Christian I’ve met a few times, and always with a shock: intellectual Christians who don’t doubt.  As I explained to a commenter in the Mark Driscoll thread, I’ve rarely been without doubt in my experience…

More from Beliefnet and our partners
More from Beliefnet and our partners