Quality interweb mischief from Jared Bridges
A story that has been floating beneath the radar which deserves a little more attention is that of an incident in Izhevsk, Russia a couple of weeks ago. Apparently a Pentecostal church was harrased by the local police force: Twenty masked special and plain clothes police raided an evening seminar on 14 April at the … Read more
‘Left Behind’ Authors Blast End-Times Mini-Series as ‘Unbiblical, Weird’ This quote from Tim LaHaye on the NBC miniseries is especially hilarious: “This story is based on some writer’s imagination about the book of Revelation,” LaHaye said. “However, the writer clearly has not studied the book or maybe even read it. … This is a good … Read more
Long before the birth of Jesus, the prophet Isaiah had this to say about him: Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted. But he was wounded for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought … Read more
Bill Moyers is off his rocker. Newly retired from his journalistic career at PBS and other outlets, Moyers has been keeping the fires burning via a string of articles, speeches, and interviews all with basically the same point: fundamentalist Christians who think the rapture is coming soon have taken over the government and are eliminating … Read more
A recent Guardian article on the psychological/physiological nature of belief proves once more that the widespread understanding of faith is misunderstood: Faith has long been a puzzle for science, and it’s no surprise why. By definition, faith demands belief without a need for supporting evidence, a concept that could not be more opposed to the … Read more
As regular readers will note, I’m not Catholic, and neither do I observe Lent (although I know many Protestants who do). I grew up in heavily evangelicalized East Tennessee, where Lent was known as something that accumulated in one’s belly button. Since I moved to heavily-Catholic Louisville, I’ve been confronted with the vast number of … Read more
David Wayne has an excellent post on just what is the Gospel. For our soundbite-laden culture, we’re often tempted to reduce the Gospel to elements that can easily be handled or transferred: When someone asks what the gospel is, they are asking a question that is a bit more dfficult than we may think. Typically, … Read more
A surprisingly well-informed article in Sunday’s Washington Post notes the trend of a rise in environmental concern among American evangelicals. I say well-informed because the reporter, Blaine Harden, actually did his homework and got a number of perspectives on the issue. He writes: There is growing evidence — in polling and in public statements of … Read more
Michael Spencer has written a firebrand of a post exposing the clearly un-Christian teachings of Joel Osteen, pastor of the 30,000 member Lakewood Church in Houston and author of the current bestselling self-help book, Your Best Life Now. I’m not too familiar with Osteen (other than seeing his Orel Hersheiser-like face staring at me every … Read more
Time Magazine’s lists its take on who are the 25 most influential evangelicals in America. They get much of it right, but there are some glaring omissions. It’s especially surprising that intellectual luminaries such as Albert Mohler and D. A. Carson were left off the list in lieu of non-evangelicals like Richard John Neuhaus and … Read more