Photo courtesy of glennbeck.com
As we approach the ninth anniversary of the terrorist attacks on Washington, D.C. and New York City, as we absorb the news that combat in Iraq is ending, at a time when some politicians and pundits condemn the building of an Islamic community center in lower Manhattan, and in a season when […]
Photo Courtesy New York Daily News
William Ewart Gladstone, perhaps the greatest of British statesmen, stood to speak to the British House of Commons on March 3, 1857, over 150 years ago. It was another country and another century, but the things he had to say that day still resonate. Gladstone was a classic Liberal (which is […]
History matters. It tells us how we got to where we are, and it can predict what will happen if things continue unchanged. But it doesn’t necessarily tell us what will happen if the equation is altered, if radical systemic change takes place. In the new interview with my Baylor University colleague Rodney Stark (“Are Evangelicals the […]
Check out “Hope Yet for Mainline Denominations”
Part of the Patheos series on the Future of the Church. Great contributions on Mainline Protestantism from my friends Brian McLaren, David Lamotte, and David Wallace are there now. Thoughts on the future of Catholicism, Evangelical Christianity, and other religions also on Patheos now or forthcoming. If you aren’t familiar with […]
Photo courtesy The Mirror.
To commemorate the anniversary of the 7/7 terrorist attacks and celebrate my friends in the UK, another piece of the Terror book, in progress. (And yes, I already hear voices saying, if you think England’s so much better than the U S of A, why don’t you stay there. Not what I’m saying). […]
An early look at the book I’m writing in Wales on 9/11, religion, and culture:
“Terrible thing, to live in fear. . . . All I want is to be back where things make sense. Where I won’t have to be afraid all the time.”
Red (Morgan Freeman), The Shawshank Redemption
“I wish I wasn’t afraid all […]
I was environmental before environmental was cool. Seriously. I mean, I wasn’t at the first Earth Day, but I was into Reduce, Reuse, Recycle back in the days when you had to take your recyclables somewhere—and when a lot of things couldn’t be recycled.
Now it feels as though there’s been a sea-change in the way […]
Photo: ABC TV
A nice break from talking about U2: I’ve been giving interviews on the finale of Lost, which I frankly think is one of the greatest things ever on TV. Lost has engaged us with big stories, and taken us seriously as people capable of reading, thinking, and discussing. It’s wrestled with the post 9-11 world, […]
I’m just off a weekend retreat and U2charist with the wonderful Trinity United Methodist Church, Austin, and this spring I’ve been talking about how we might find God moving in the music of U2, in movies, and in the Harry Potter story, among other things. We read Psalm 19 before my sermon yesterday, which talks about […]
(I first thought of titling this “Abusing the Sheep,” which probably would have led to more Google hits, but I think you can see why I decided against that.)
I know that many people would rather not talk about sexual abuse in the Church–or rather I not talk about it.
And I would rather not talk about […]
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