• Christianity,  Theology/Bible

    The Oxymoron of Christian Terrorism

    The New York Times describes the perpetrator of the Norweigan massacre as a “religious, gun-loving Norwegian obsessed with what he saw as the threat of multiculturalism and Muslim immigration to the cultural and patriotic values of his country.” Other early reports (including The Times) have highlighted an alleged religious motivation, calling him a “Christian extremist.” Others have even used the term “Christian terrorist.” The “Christian” label was seized upon by media reports after a police official in Norway called him a “fundamentalist Christian.”

  • Christianity

    Twitter Is Like Poetry for John Piper

    I really like John Piper’s take on his use of Twitter: “Tweets for me are a kind of poetry. I make no claim to be good at it. But that’s the way I think about it. I want it to sound and look good. I will never use 2 for to. Or Shd for should. Why? It’s not a telegram. It’s a poem. “I love words. I rarely think of them as efficient, but as precious. God made them to carry the freight of truth and beauty. Nothing is more valuable than God’s truth and beauty.” Read the rest here.

  • Christianity,  Music

    The Critic’s Lullaby

    I’ve been in Louisiana this weekend and have had the chance to reconnect with many old friends. While I was there, I got to see one of my favorite bands, “The Critics.” They are working on a new album that will be released one song at a time beginning next week. I found out on Sunday, however, that they released a single not long ago titled “Lullaby.” The lead singer wrote the song as a lullaby for his baby niece, and it’s just a simple word about the hope of the new heavens and the new earth. I love the song and thought it worth sharing with you. The only…

  • Christianity,  News

    Frank Schaeffer Blames Norway Massacre on Evangelicals

    Frank Schaeffer blames the tragedy in Norway on conservative evangelicals and warns that evangelicals will be perpetrating similar attacks in the U.S. in days to come. He writes: In my new book “Sex, Mom and God” I predicted just such an action. I predicted that right wing Christians will unleash terror here in America too. I predict that they will copy Islamic extremists, and may eventually even make common cause with them… The rise of the “Tea Party,” the refusal by far right Republicans to authorize a the debt ceiling extension, the extremist anti-government words of people like Michele Bachmann, all these things are predictors of the violent Christian, white,…

  • Christianity,  News

    Haunted by an Abortion

    All of us are sinners, and we all are prone to cover our works in darkness so that our deeds will not be exposed (John 3:19-20). But we can’t hide our own faults from ourselves, so we have a tendency to rebrand our faults so that they are not faults after all. In other words, our hearts tend to suppress what they know to be true so as to salve our guilty consciences (Romans 1:18). But sometimes, there’s no getting away from the guilt. Even after we do our best to deny the evil of evil, it nevertheless haunts us at a visceral level.

  • Christianity,  Culture

    Woody Allen Interviews Billy Graham

    In 1969, Woody Allen interviewed Billy Graham on national television. Allen was agnostic and irreverent. Yet somehow Graham managed the encounter with humor and grace. It looks like the two actually established a genuine rapport, even though they couldn’t be any more different from each other. Allen would later point to this encounter as an inspiration for one of his movies. Here’s how one report describes it:

  • Christianity,  Politics

    Gay Marriage, Religious Exemptions, and Religious Liberty

    When the New York legislature voted to legalize same-sex marriage last month, there were a handful of representatives who formerly opposed gay marriage but who switched their vote to legalize it. To a man, they justified their decision on the basis of the “religious exemptions” that would supposedly protect religious organizations from having to violate their religious beliefs. Anyone paying attention knows that such exemptions are flimsy and probably won’t stand the scrutiny of the courts. But even more troubling is the fact that the exemptions do not cover religious individuals, but only religious organizations. This difficulty is not theoretical but has already come to a head in Vermont (another…

  • Christianity

    Post-op on the “Wild Goose Festival”

    Several weeks ago, I wrote about a conference that was to take place in North Carolina called the “Wild Goose Festival.” News reports and the advance promo material made it out to be a kind of would-be-Woodstock for Emergent church types. The speaker line-up was a list of progressive all-stars: Brian McLaren, Jim Wallis, Shane Claiborne, Tony Jones, and many others. Musicians included Derek Webb, Jennifer Knapp, and others. I didn’t attend the conference, but someone from The Economist (of all magazines!) did. According to the report, about 1,500 people showed up, and they included “artists and musicians, nonconformists, post-Christians, non-Christians, disaffected evangelicals and a liberal evangelical subset known as…

  • Christianity

    The Piper-Giglio Connection

    In the Fall of 1992, I began my sophomore year in college. I had just experienced a watershed moment in my walk with Christ the previous summer as I had just realized a call to ministry. As the new term began, I was hungry for the word like I’d never been hungry before. It was that year that my good friend from high school, Steve Graves, introduced me to the ministry of Louie Giglio. I can hardly believe that it was nearly twenty years ago. Steve had begun attending a Bible study on the campus of Baylor University called Choice. Louie Giglio preached to about a 1,000 students every Monday…