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Essential Books for Understanding Christianity
In today’s Wall Street Journal, George Weigel gives his Top 5 “Essential books for understanding Christianity.” I’m glad that he picked one old book, Dante’s Divine Comedy, but the other four are all from the 20th century. It seems rather odd to suggest that four of the five essential books for understanding a two-thousand year old religion would all have been written within the last twenty-five years. In any case, it seems to me that Weigel left off one fairly influential volume. As it turns out, this particular book has been pretty helpful for Christians throughout the history of the church. Needless to say, my “Top 5” would have looked…
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CNN’s “After Jesus”
If you missed CNN’s “After Jesus” special last night, you didn’t miss much. It was more fanciful musings on the history of earliest Christianity of the sort that we saw last Spring with the release of The Gospel of Judas, the media blitz of Bart Ehrman’s Misquoting Jesus, and the release of the movie The DaVinci Code.
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Apostate Episcopalians: “Avoid such men as these”
Several Episcopal congregations in the U.S. have decided the time has come for them to secede from the authority of their American Bishop. The New York Times reports:
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Perturbed at Al Mohler?
No, I am not perturbed at Dr. Mohler, but the commenters at the Washington Post‘s “On Faith” blog are. Dr. Mohler has been contributing to this online forum for religious dialog, and his essays seem to be generating the most response from readers. As a matter of fact, the number of comments on Dr. Mohler’s essays have been positively disproportionate. Under Dr. Mohler’s most recent contribution, he has 275 comments (at my last count). Of the other seven panelists, the one closest in number to Dr. Mohler has 51 comments.
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Southern Baptists and Gay “Evangelicals”
The New York Times has printed a provocative piece today titled “Gay and Evangelical, Seeking Paths of Acceptance.” Like me, I’m sure you read that headline and can see that the oxymoron in the title betrays the bias of the author.
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Harvesting Body Parts from Aborted Babies
Here is the brave new world in which we are living. The Associated Press reports that Doctors in Oregon took brain cells from an aborted baby and implanted them in a 6-year old boy. Last month in Portland, Ore., doctors for the first time transplanted stem cells from aborted fetuses into his head in a desperate bid to reverse, or at least slow, a rare genetic disorder called Batten disease. The so-far incurable condition normally results in blindness and paralysis before death.
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Bruce Ware vs. Kevin Giles
Bruce Ware and Kevin Giles have been sparring over gender roles and the nature of the Trinity. The controversy came to a head in a paper that Dr. Ware read at the most recent meeting of the ETS. You can read about the encounter here, and you can download and read Dr. Ware’s paper here. Dr. Ware was recently elected to serve as president of the ETS.
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Dating Jesus: A Creepy Spirituality
Agnieszka Tennant’s “Dating Jesus: When ‘Lover of My Soul’ Language Goes Too Far” is one of the creepiest things I have read in a long time. She reflects on an “eros-laced” trend of female spirituality that is being pushed by Christian publishers and that has been embraced by not a few women in evangelical churches. She writes,
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Albert Mohler on Sermon Plagiarism
Albert Mohler: “What’s not new under the sun is theft. And what’s not new under the sun is laziness. And what’s not new under the sun is falling short of your ministry to preach the word. I’m sorry, but this is just one of the most despicable practices I can’t imagine. I cannot imagine sitting in the congregation, knowing that this guy is simply parroting what he has read, borrowed or stolen from someone else. I can read it better than he can.” [at 17:38 in audio linked above below] http://www.sbts.edu/media/audio/totl/2006/AMP_12_07_2006.mp3 –Albert Mohler, The Albert Mohler Program (December 7, 2006)