Meditations on Ephesians 4:1-7, 11-16
By Jarrett McLaughlin
On a recent pilgrimage to Turkey I had the rare honor of visiting the ancient city of Ephesus. It was an incredible feeling to walk the streets of this ancient city where Paul assembled a rag tag group of Greeks and Jews into one of the first Christian churches […]
by Gordon McClellan
How long, O Lord, must I cry for help, but you do not listen? Or cry out to you, “Violence!” but you do not save? Why do you make me look at injustice? Why do you tolerate wrong? Destruction and violence are before me; there is strife, and conflict abounds. (Habbakuk 1:2-3)
Habbakuk wrote […]
by Robert K. Martin
As the church year moves from Eastertide to Pentecost this weekend (May 27, 2007), it is easy for us to get swept up in the disciples’ spiritual combustion or their evangelistic fervor in the marketplace. But what is it that prepared them for being fired-up and what is it that they carried […]
by Fred Weidmann
These days, hype and overstatement are to be expected. So, what about the new book from author and columnist Christopher Hitchens, God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything? A good and dear and intelligent and sophisticated colleague shared with me recently, “I can’t even say the title.” Score one for Hitchens, I […]
by Alan Jones
I’ve been thinking lately about the centrality of beauty in the life of faith. We don’t say much about beauty and the Christian vision is a beautiful thing. Many people – especially the new breed of atheists (Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennet) see nothing but destructive violence in religion, not […]
by Roy Howard
I remember years ago Dr. Bernie Siegel saying to his patients, most of whom were suffering cancer, “In the face of uncertainty, it is not wrong to hope.” Countering the conventional medical advice of the time, which he found to be utterly pessimistic and even destructive, Siegel was telling his patients to summon all […]
by Trevor Eppehimer
In his essay, “The Evangelical Love Affair with Enlightenment Science,”1 noted religious historian George Marsden debunks the popular conception, often conveyed in the mainstream media, that the American conservative evangelical tradition is, by its very nature, hostile toward modern science. According to Marsden, nothing could be further from the truth. American conservative evangelicalism has, […]
by Cynthia M. Campbell
I arrived at school to pick up my robe and head out to Commencement on Saturday, when I stopped to look at my mail. In the pile from the day before was a complimentary paperback copy of Barbara Brown Taylor’s new book Leaving Church: A Memoir of Faith. The enclosed letter, from the […]
by Wes Avram
Amazing grace: curious, indescribable, yet the great constant of Christian life and Christian thought that seems to go without saying even when it’s forgotten or not understood. What, or who, is grace? Grace is sometimes described as a thing, as if it’s stuff. The word is also used to name an event or […]
by David Bartlett
“Do not ask for whom the bell tolls,” John Donne famously enjoined his congregation. These days most of us in America seem to be following his instructions, but for reasons exactly opposite to what he had in mind.
Donne was reminding his hearers that the death of anyone involves us all. None of us […]
By Daniel S. Brenner
Working in a Christian Seminary, I sometimes feel like the wacky upstairs neighbor in a Hallmark Channel sitcom. Sure, the great rabbinic sages of past centuries, like Menachem Meiri and Yakov Emden valued Christianity’s contributions to building a more ethical and compassionate world – but would they have played Santa at the […]
Rev. Tom Are, Jr.
Rabbi Jonathan Sacks has written, “The radical transcendence of God in the Hebrew Bible means that the Infinite lies beyond our finite understanding.”1
In college I traveled to Egypt on one of those “see the holy sites” tours of the Middle-East. The first day we stopped for lunch in a crowded market place. […]
Rev. Susan Andrews
Lately, I have been hearing – deep inside my heart and my head – fragments of old hymns – those songs of the faith that formed me as a child. Cherub Choir. Church Camp. Vacation Bible School. I’m not sure why these melodies are haunting me – except that this is the archetypal […]
Rev. Gordon McClellan
Today marks the launch of Quick to Listen, a blog designed to be a place where true dialogue can take place about faith and the many issues it touches. This blog, the name for which comes from the admonition in the Book of James to be “quick to listen”, is designed to be […]