The beginning of the new year is an opportunity to deal with a point of business from the old one: the letter by 138 Muslim scholars back in October for unity between Muslims and Christians. Since I was appointed by my church's General Assembly to a position in the denomination, I think I can make …
Up From Bourgeois is Trickier Than It Looks
Wilfred McClay's article on the 80th "birthday" of Elmer Gantry is an interesting study, in no small measure because of the critical view he takes of Sinclair Lewis. That critical view is hard to find; Lewis of course won a Nobel Prize in 1930, was greatly influential in shaping liberal thought about Evangelical Christianity (including …
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Did God Intend Us To Be Vegetarians?
Recently the concept that God's original intent for man was vegetarianism has surfaced and gained currency amongst Christians (to say nothing of the followers of synthetic Judaism that passes for Christianity in the US.) This has been promoted for commercial gain by such movements as the Hallelujah Diet. But is this correct? A succinct case …
The Ridiculous Analysis of Global Warming and the Right
Dave Lindorff's article Global Warming Will Save America from the Right...Eventually is ridiculous on a number of counts (leaving out the whole debate of the existence and pace of global warming): One of the first victims of sea rise would be South Florida, certainly a bastion of left-wing life and politics. Perhaps it's not an …
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Benazir Bhutto: Like Father, Like Daughter
Benazir Bhutto's assassination reminds me of an earlier post on the subject: Most people don’t realise that Musharraf is one in a line of military leaders who have dominated Pakistan since Muhammad Zia-al-Haq overthrew Zulfikar Ali Bhutto in 1977. The year before that, I had as downstairs neighbours a pair of Texas A&M students, one …
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Merry Christmas from Positive Infinity
But the wreath on the bridge isn't bad either... For this boat, Christmas had been especially exciting since it almost went to the bottom the previous summer.
With Youth Ministry, A Gram of Prevention is Worth a Kilo of Cure
Travis Johnson's piece on reaching people 18-35 is great but perhaps it would be interesting to look at the problem from another angle: how did we get into this mess of having to reclaim this age group to start with? If we think about how young people are raised in this country, we're looking at …
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The Aggie Definition of Political Correctness
David Virtue's weekly digest contains this gem from College Station: "Political Correctness is a doctrine, fostered by a delusional, illogical, liberal minority and rabidly promoted by an unscrupulous mainstream media, which holds forth the proposition that it is entirely possible to pick up a lump of feces by the clean end." --- 2007 winning entry …
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Stacy Sauls and the Danger of Centralisation
Stacy Sauls' recent address to the Chicago Consultation at Seabury-Western Seminary brings up an interesting issue he may not have intended: There are proposals, of course, to make us either a federation or a confederation, or God forbid, a unitary governmental structure such as the Roman Catholic Church has. The draft Anglican Covenant is a …
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Archbishop says nativity ‘a legend’
The Archbishop of Canterbury says that the nativity story in the New Testament is 'a legend': Dr Williams said: "Matthew's gospel says they are astrologers, wise men, priests from somewhere outside the Roman Empire, that's all we're really told. It works quite well as legend." That's more than one can say for Rowan Williams. He's …
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