Sailing the Last Voyage with Newton and Pascal
I was recently directed to Frank Matthew Powell's blog post Dear American Church…I Am Not Renewing My Membership This Year. He's touched on a subject I've mon occasion but now need to take up in earnest: the church as a club. Most people who decry the church becoming a private club have never spent much …
Continue reading "The Church as Club: My Response to Frank Matthew Powell"
In the middle of a victory for conscience, this: The Supreme Court ruled Monday that certain "closely held" for-profit businesses can cite religious objections in order to opt out of a requirement in ObamaCare to provide free contraceptive coverage for their employees. The whole business of closely held corporations has been lost in the predictable …
Continue reading "Hobby Lobby: Another Victory for Closely Held Corporations"
It's that time of the biennium again: Lord willing, the Church of God will gather in Orlando towards the end of next month to consider the business of the church. One think that makes this Assembly different is that there are no Executive Committee members to be elected, although the state Administrative Bishops will go through …
Continue reading "Comments on the Agenda for the 2014 Church of God General Assembly"
Sarah Hey's piece on @standfirm on the necessity of ACNA's people getting involved in their church's politics reminds me of something that took place when I started to work for Church of God Lay Ministries and Paul L. Walker was our Presiding Bishop. Walker was a successful pastor in Atlanta before he moved onto the …
Continue reading "Where Two or Three Gather Together, There Will be Politics"
Those of you who follow my Twitter feed noted an link to a CNBC article about why my contemporaries are cohabiting in their dotage. I sensed a little pushback on Facebook on this, so I think that, in my advocacy for the abolition of civil marriage, some clarification is in order. I do not think …
Continue reading "A Clarification on My Position on Civil Marriage"
For the entire work and an interactive table of contents, click here. It is the custom of Evangelical and Pentecostal authors these days to finish their works with the confident assertion that, if the reader follows what is in the book they have just read, everything will be all right, as the advice given is …
Continue reading "Born to be Alive: After the Second Chapter"
For the entire work and an interactive table of contents, click here. They devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. Everyone was filled with awe, and many wonders and miraculous signs were done by the apostles. All the believers were together and had everything …
Well, almost everyone: God hasn’t stopped frustrating expectations. Who in 1900 expected that there would be 150 million Pentecostals and Charismatics in Latin America? Sure, charismatic prophets predicted it, but everyone knew they were mad. In 1900, there were 9 million Christians in Africa. Now it’s pushing half a billion, and many are members of AICs—African …
For the entire work and an interactive table of contents, click here. When the people heard this, they were cut to the heart and said to Peter and the other apostles, "Brothers, what shall we do?" Peter replied, "Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ so that your …
Are more and more non-white: “What I see among Millennials are African Americans, and Asians Americans, and Latinos who are vibrantly growing in faith and leading the future of what the church will become,” says Gray. About a third of young (18-29 year old) Americans — and more than half of younger Christians — are …
Positive Infinity 