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February 2016

February 07, 2016

Mardi Gras, Psalm 150, and the search for an authentic hallelujah

Hallelujah. I've been suspicious of that word my whole life. It means "Praise the Lord!"...

February 06, 2016

Christian salvation and the Beatitudes #4: The pure in heart

Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God. This beatitude is everything....

February 05, 2016

Water To Wine: the salvation of a megachurch pastor

For the past several years, Brian Zahnd has been like an abbott to me. Every week,...

February 04, 2016

The wind is not always God

Every Wednesday morning, I give away donut holes and, more recently, cups of yerba mate...

February 03, 2016

Christian salvation and the Beatitudes # 3: The Meek

"Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth." Is there any verse in the...

January 2016

January 29, 2016

Christian salvation and the Beatitudes #2: Those who mourn

I've started a series looking at Christian salvation through the lens of the Beatitudes, the...

January 25, 2016

Christian salvation and the Beatitudes #1: Poverty in spirit

I've been wrestling with the concept of Christian salvation for decades. I used to think...

January 21, 2016

Why don’t we call God “they” instead of “he”?

For Christmas this year, I got Andrei Rublev's Trinity icon. It is the most beautiful...

January 19, 2016

Two Corinthians 3:17: why I love Donald Trump’s favorite verse

Everyone is making fun of Donald Trump for saying "Two" instead of "Second Corinthians" in...

January 13, 2016

Is damnation of the other a cornerstone of evangelical belief?

The Larycia Hawkins situation at Wheaton has become fodder for a lot of conversation about...

January 11, 2016

Can American Christianity be detoxified? (A summary of my first book)

Have we become what Jesus came to stop us from being? Many evangelical Christians in...

January 06, 2016

Can Jesus save the world from Christians?

It seems there are two kinds of Christians: those who think the world needs to...

December 2015

December 30, 2015

10 posts I wish more people had seen this year

Since everyone is doing their end-of-year top 10 posts, I figured I would do the...

December 25, 2015

The God who reigns as a baby

Can you bow before a God who has come to Earth as a baby? That's...

December 23, 2015

Jesus’ name and the meaning of salvation

In Matthew 1:21, the angel Gabriel tells Mary what to name her new baby: “You...

December 16, 2015

Do Christians worship the same God as Muslims?

Wheaton College has suspended its political science professor Larycia Hawkins for saying that Christians "worship...

December 14, 2015

Three Islamic concepts I wish Christians would adopt

Ross Douthat has been playing amateur theologian again in the New York Times. This time,...

December 11, 2015

Why white Christians need to read Ta-nehisi Coates this Advent

Over the course of this fall, I have been working through Ta-nehisi Coates' book Between...

November 2015

November 28, 2015

Can Christian theology promote terrorism?

We don't know exactly what motivated the white terrorist who attacked a Planned Parenthood clinic...

November 23, 2015

Was Moses a terrorist?

Over the past week as terrorist attacks have happened in Paris, Beirut, Baghdad, Mali, and...

November 14, 2015

Resisting the Great Terrorist

The word devil is a bastardization of the Greek word diabolos, which is a compound...

November 07, 2015

Rene Girard, God’s wrath, and Jesus’ cross

In 2001, my spiritual mentor Bob Holum gave me a book that completely changed everything...

November 01, 2015

Seven points of contention in today’s reformation

So it's that time of year known as Reformation Sunday when we remember the anniversary...

October 2015

October 27, 2015

The authority of the badge vs. the authority of the cross

Obedience and authority. The two favorite words of white conservative evangelical Christianity. They are at...

September 2015

September 29, 2015

Two simple theological reasons why no evangelical should ever support the death penalty

As I write these words, Kelly Gissendaner is being put to death by the state...

September 28, 2015

Evangelism and conquest: the troubling legacy of Junipero Serra

One of the most controversial things that Pope Francis did on his trip to the...

September 22, 2015

What will happen if Pope Francis gets a selfie with the gays?

The latest drama manufactured by the culture war industrial complex is a tiff over the...

September 11, 2015

An Honest Question for Christians Who Say They “Obey” the Bible

I wanted to ask an honest question. It's partly a loaded question, but partly a...

September 09, 2015

#BecauseImAChristian (Not #ImAChristianBut)

A couple days ago, the twitter hashtag #ImAChristianBut was trending. I knew immediately that it...

September 07, 2015

Capitalism’s war on the Sabbath

One of the most important events in labor history happened in Exodus 20:10 when God...