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Previous Posts
The Last Text Message
Today is my last day with Beliefnet, and my last day as the author of this blog. The Text Messages archives will remain live at this location, but posting will cease. If that sounds gloomy, it's an accurate reflection of my mind this afternoon. I've chosen to pursue new opportunities, but I'm n
posted 3:47:12pm Feb. 04, 2009 |
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Quitting Church: A Q&A with Julia Duin
Why do people stop going to church? This big question is the subject of Julia Duin's small book, Quitting Church: Why teh Faithful are Fleeing and What To Do About It. Duin is not a disinterested observer of the phenomenon of church-dropping; rather, she's a churchgoer who wants churches to work wel
posted 4:03:51pm Feb. 03, 2009 |
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Rob Stennett vs. Marilynne Robinson
I'm overjoyed that my good friend Rob Stennett has won the Award of Merit from Christianity Today for his novel The Almost True Story of Ryan Fisher. (Here's CT's review of the book.) Stennett's hilarious book is about a real estate agent who joins a suburban church in order to reach the Christian h
posted 2:36:44pm Jan. 30, 2009 |
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What is spiritual restoration?
Slate asked for an essay on Ted Haggard's spiritual restoration. I'm okay with what I came up with for now, but the more I think about it, the more I think we need better thinking on what restoration looks like for very public, outspoken, influential men and women like Haggard:Most people who fail n
posted 9:00:56am Jan. 29, 2009 |
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It's Not TV; it's Ted TV
A blog might not be the best medium for an essay like this. But I want to offer some more considered thoughts on Ted Haggard and his HBO documentary; I hope this performs some kind of service in a story that I hope will end--in its public iteration--very soon. This was written as a stand-alone essay
posted 3:57:44am Jan. 28, 2009 |
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posted December 24, 2008 at 4:38 pm
Yes i believe we can be. Case in point is John Shelby Spong. i read him in my process of coming out and found relief from his writings. Yet, he is very rigorous in his beliefs. Whereas Marcus Borg is more generous because he presents his arguments and says the reader can believe the things he says or not and either is ok.
i can be guilty of this at times, yet i do not find myself living in this every moment. i consider myself to be pretty open to differing views. i think i get fundamentalist acting when i feel on the defensive, not so much as thinking my way or the high way.
EP
posted March 2, 2009 at 11:59 pm
hmm…. I think liberal Christians can be fundamentally anti-fundamentalism. Where does that leave us? I think if you come down on some belief that you refuse to relinquish despite evidence or arguments, that is a foundational/fundamental belief for you. There’s nothing wrong with that. That’s what belief is, isn’t it?
Maybe when you get to criticizing other people as just stupid for believing what they believe – is that what we’re calling fundamentalism? Maybe we mean something like intolerance. I’m not sure really but can we ever escape the hypocrisy of subjective feelings of certainty or the paradox that our absolute statements about reality are all expressions of some kind of faith?