Seeds of Compassion

Amidst all of the protests going on around the world related to the Beijing Olympics, one of the focal persons has been the Dalai Lama.  There’s no shortage of coverage of the Tibetan Buddhist Monks and their opposition to China.  Beginning Friday, the Dalai Lama will be participating extensively in an event here in [...]

The Wacky Emerging Church, Reason #92

This post is part of a continuing series. You may want to read my list of disclaimers and intro remarks here, if you haven’t done so already.
Reason #92: Voting for a Democrat for the first time in your life doesn’t mean you’re subversive
This being a presidential election year, it’s definitely been interesting to watch the [...]

Marriage and Born Again Christians

The Barna organization just released some study stats on marriage and divorce.  There are a number of interesting aspects to this thing.  But I’ll pick two to highlight.
First, the study notes that of the 3792 adults surveyed, 33% had experienced a divorce.  Of these, “born again Christians” had a 32% likelihood of divorce, atheists or [...]

My Kind of Election Coverage

Diebold Accidentally Leaks Results Of 2008 Election Early
HT: onegoodmove

Us vs. Them . . . Who Are They Again?

In an era where we’ve been constantly reminded that foreign nations are either with us, or they’re with the enemy, it’s important to step back and take stock of who exactly “we” are, and who “they” might be. A couple of days ago, I got to see one of our students for the first [...]

How (Not) to Vote

Mark Van Steenwyk has a very thought provoking post over at Jesus Manifesto about voting, or NOT voting, as the case may be.  A few years ago, I intentionally embraced a phase of active non-voting.  Many of the things Mark writes are exactly where I was at, but he’s very thorough and smarter than me.
One [...]

SoCal fire, pt. 4

I wasn’t able to pay close attention to news updates yesterday as I had the previous couple of days. The fires continue, but the weather has begun a more helpful turn, so hopefully that will give the firefighters an edge. Nothing new to report on our immediate family and friends. Everyone is [...]

Liberalism Gone Crazy in a Major Denomination

Over the past ten to fifteen years, my denomination has engaged in a discussion of how to read the Bible. This has produced a “victory” for those who favor a view of inerrancy. The Bible is literally God’s word, and is completely without error. Meanwhile, those who take even a slightly moderated [...]

Big Government at the Local Level

I don’t blog politics much. It’s not that I am apathetic, but rather that I’m quite ambivalent and distrustful of political parties and their agendas of power - I think most politicians may start their careers with the best of intentions, but inevitably get sucked into the gamesmanship and insider dealings far too easily. [...]

God and Country

Charles Marsh, a professor at the University of Virginia wrote a devastating article (actually, an adapted chapter from his new book) in the Boston Globe a couple weeks back. Here are a couple of snippets:
These past six years have been transformative in the religious history of the United States. It is arguably the passing [...]