Karen Swallow Prior has an insightful article about “red-letter Christianity”—a movement that gives hermeneutical priority to Jesus’ words (the so-called “red letters”) over the rest of the words of scripture. Her bottom line says it all: All of the words of Jesus come through the narrators of the Bible. If the black letters of the narrators are reliable, so too are the red letters of Christ. If the narrators are unreliable, however, then the words of Christ they convey are untrustworthy as well. The only way to the red letters is through the black letters. It’s a really helpful article dealing with the question from a literary perspective. Read the…
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The aftermath of the iconic image of the OKC bombing
The image from the Oklahoma City bombing that is etched in all our memories is the picture of that firefighter carrying the lifeless body of a 1-year old girl from the ruins of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building. The little girl’s name was Baylee Almon, and the firefighter Chris Fields had no idea their picture was being taken as he brought her up from the rubble. Nevertheless, that single image captured the scope of the tragedy and became the focal point for Americans trying to understand the horror of that day. USA Today reports that the lives of nearly everyone connected with that photo were in turmoil after its…
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The six daycare survivors from Oklahoma City bombing
I can hardly believe that we are about to mark 20 years since the Oklahoma City bombing, but tomorrow is the day. Much of the country has moved on, but there are survivors who are still living with the results of that day’s catastrophe. The six survivors from the daycare are among them. The video above and the caption below tell their story. From the Oklahoma City National Memorial & Museum: The six survivors from the America’s Kids Daycare don’t remember the explosion that killed 15 of their playmates. But they will never forget how the Oklahoma City bombing changed their lives forever. All of them are moving forward, some…
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Top 10 things I love about the new Star Wars trailer
I don’t know about you, but the second teaser for the new Star Wars movie got me all verklempt. No kidding. Or maybe it was just something in my eye. Whatever it was, the appearance of Han Solo and Chewey was the coup de grâce. J. J. Abrams is speaking the superfan’s love language. This is an absolutely brilliant preview. It conjures all the feelings of my childhood while pulling my interest forward into new storylines. It is everything you’d want out of a trailer. In fact, these first two trailers are already better than all three of the prequels. They have exorcised my Jar Jar Binks demons. The force…
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Why have some evangelicals turned against reparative therapy?
The Atlantic tweeted a link to an article this morning with this statement: “Why did Christian conservatives turn against gay conversion therapy?” It turns out that the article is by Jonathan Merritt, and it describes the shrinking fortunes of reparative therapy. As I mentioned last week, President Obama recently came out publicly against reparative therapy, and now Merritt is explaining how its influence has waned even among evangelicals. It’s a fascinating article, and you can read it here.
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Sandra McCracken’s new Psalms album
Psalms by Sandra McCracken The Psalms are the prayer book of the church. We learn how to pour out our hearts to God in grief and in exultation from this book. That is why I am so very grateful to see that Sandra McCracken has devoted an entire album to singing the Psalms. Here’s the note she sent out today about the album: One day we are going to sit around a table together and remember this life. One day we will see every hope and heartbreak with a wider view, and we will sing of God’s complete redemption in full chorus. Over these past couple of years, the practice…
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Why can’t a father marry his adult son? A mother her adult daughter?
Nearly every experienced observer expects the Supreme Court to make gay marriage a constitutional right this June. Justice Kennedy will be the key figure in this decision, as he has been in all the precedents leading up to this point. And Kennedy has made it clear that the only possible reason for opposing legal gay marriage is irrational animus against gay people. Neither he nor the other justices have adequately considered that there might be a rational basis for defining marriage in connection with procreation. In a very helpful article at First Things today, Hadley Arkes observes that Kennedy has not considered other arguments because the Court’s conservative justices have…
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Marco Rubio’s faith: A circuitous route to Catholicism
Kudos to Sarah Pulliam Bailey for pulling together a short summary of the faith of Marco Rubio—who by the way announced that he is running for president today. In short, the story goes like this. He went from Mormon to Catholic to Evangelicalish and back to Catholic. In Bailey’s report, he says… “I immersed myself in LDS theology,” Rubio wrote. “I studied church literature and other sources of information to learn all I could about the church’s teachings.” By the time he was in sixth grade, his family had left the Mormon Church for Catholicism, and he had his First Communion on Christmas Day 1984. In 2007, Rubio told me…
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Check-out the new ESV Bible app!
The ESV Bible app was designed to make reading the Bible on your iPhone or iPad as similar to reading a print Bible as possible. It looks like a really helpful resource for Bible readers. You can read more about it here. Download app from the iTunes store.
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Why do reports conceal radicalism of the pro-choice side?
I noticed two separate articles this week about abortion that have a basic error of fact regarding abortion law in the United States. This wouldn’t be surprising if didn’t appear on the websites of our nation’s two leading newspapers—The New York Times and The Washington Post. What’s amazing is that the two reports make the identical error. NY Times – April 7, 2015: I came across this one earlier this week in The New York Times report on the new Kansas law restricting dismemberment abortions. Erick Eckholm and Frances Robles erroneously report that abortion rights in this country end at 24-weeks of pregnancy. Here’s a screenshot: