Mar 25
I haven’t forgotten about my series on The Naked Anabaptist and plan on returning to it shortly, but in the meantime here’s a few quotes that struck me this week from N.T. Wright’s new book on Christian virtue called After You Believe: Read more
A feature ran by The Washington Post yesterday has generated a bit of discussion around a study called Preachers Who Are Not Believers by prominent atheist Daniel Dennett and Linda LaScola from the Center for Cognitive Studies at Tufts University (those familiar with “The Four Horsemen” of the new atheism will know Dennett well). The study outlines interviews with six “courageous” clergy who maintain their jobs in the pulpit while privately nursing unbelief. It is a classic modern tale of the triumph of reason and the inconsistencies and dissonances that come with the slow, inevitable drift away from faith in the modern world. Read more
On to the second of Stuart Murray’s seven core convictions of Anabaptists (from The Naked Anabaptist): Read more
On to the first of Stuart Murray’s seven core convictions of Anabaptists: Read more
Perhaps surprisingly, despite the fact that I earn my living at a Mennonite church, very little of my formal education was devoted to learning about Anabaptist history and theology. I took one year of Bible College at a Mennonite school when I was 19, but that was about it. I studied philosophy at university and deliberately chose to pursue graduate studies at an inter/trans-denominational institution. I received bits and pieces of the Anabaptist story along the way in my studies, I read the occasional book by a Mennonite author, and I almost always worshiped in Anabaptist churches so it wasn’t like I was clueless. But I’ve never exactly swam in the deep end of the Anabaptist pool. Read more
I read very few novels during the six years I was in formal studies—there was too much required reading for my courses and, when combined with the ordinary demands of small kids and everyday life, there wasn’t much time (or energy!) left for reading fiction. One of the joys of seeing my university and grad school days receding in the mirror has been the ability to start reading novels again. It’s nice to be able to read a book without the expectation of evaluating it and demonstrating comprehension looming large in the background. Read more
While we’re on the topic of Christianity and culture/how to engage those who think differently than us in a pluralistic postmodern world (and while I remain in shameless self-promotion mode), I noticed yesterday that Direction (an MB publication that describes itself as somewhere between an academic journal and a denominational magazine) has just made their Spring 2009 issue available online—an issue that contains my review of John Stackhouse’s Making the Best of It: Following Christ in the Real World. Read more
The fourth and final entry in my discussion of Philip Clayton’s Transforming Christian Theology (parts one, two, and three). Read more
On to part three of my discussion of Philip Clayton’s Transforming Christian Theology (parts one and two here and here). Read more
On to part two of my discussion of Philip Clayton’s Transforming Christian Theology (part one here). Read more
Over the last week or so I have been making my way through an article from last month’s issue of The Walrus which discusses the imminent demise of the Great Barrier Reef off the coast of Australia. The article talks about the rising acidity levels of oceans around the world by virtue of increased CO2 emissions and the warmer water temperatures this produces. It predicts that some of our most magnificent ecosystems (like the Great Barrier Reef) are living on borrowed time because of human-induced climate change. In some ways, the article reads like many others: it is a tale of human beings wantonly wreaking havoc with nature and a plea to do something about it. Read more
On Sunday I preached from Revelation 21:1-6—a passage that I would guess is among the more well-known and well-loved in all of Scripture. It speaks of a new heaven and a new earth where the old order of things has passed away. No more tears, no more death, no more pain… It is a world that seems too good to be true. It is a world that scarcely resembles the reality that Revelation’s first hearers/readers were familiar with. Or that we are familiar with. For as long as it has been around, there has been a disjunction between this text and the lived reality of those who read it, hear it, and hope for what it promises. Read more
Oct 27
When I first came across this quote I thought it was overstated and simplistic, but the longer I think about it the more I think Ron Rolheiser is gesturing toward an important truth here. From “The Power of Praying a Doxology” in Northern Lights: Read more
Once upon a time, my wife and I decided that our kids would not play hockey and, more importantly, that we would never be “hockey parents” (apologies to non-Canadian readers who may not appreciate all the unwelcome moral freight conveyed by this loathsome term). Hockey was expensive, it brought out the worst in both kids and their parents, it was expensive, it was unnecessarily violent, it was expensive, it involved unnecessary amounts of travel and early mornings at frigid rinks… and it was expensive. Read more
Those who have been following the previous two discussions about what our response to suffering ought to be, what resources we draw from, and what kinds of ethical paradigms inform how/where we locate suffering might want to check out Gil’s latest post. He’s been reflecting on Charles Taylor’s Sources of the Self where Taylor contrasts something like “traditional” ethics, where our vision of goodness and human dignity is grounded in a transcendent God (or Good), and a modern naturalist approach which sees the “good life in terms of a heroic determination to face a meaningless existence with courage.” Read more
From the “sobering quotes” file, comes this morning’s offering from Richard Rohr: Read more
As a parent of young children, I often wonder about how much of the pain and brutality of the world we ought to expose our kids to—which conversations do they need to be absent from, which books and films could they do without exposure to, and when it is appropriate to let them in on the secret that the world can sometimes be kind of a nasty place (I suspect it’s quite often not as much of a “secret” to them as we might like to think). There can be a fine line between helping your children see that the world is a safe enough place to love and learn and grow and not shielding from the reality of a messed-up world in desperate need of compassionate, committed, and resourceful people to make it better. Read more
This is henceforth going to be required reading for any and all pre-marital sessions I am a part of.
I don’t necessarily agree with every aspect of how the author diagnoses the problem, and I might have some questions about her “decision” not to suffer, but what a breath of fresh-air in the divorce-happy, narcissistic culture we live in!
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Rumblings 