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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 January 12, 2009 at 5:09 pm
I guess you’d have a real problem with other leaders, then, like Moses, Joshua, Samuel, David, Jesus and Paul, to name just a few. They were all pretty authoritarian about their ideas too. I wonder how many of them like Ted Haggard also struggled to suppress their homosexuality.
posted January 12, 2009 at 6:06 pm
Since I don’t see any of those men as models of professional or church leadership (excepting Jesus, though that’s complicated), I don’t know that I’d have a problem with their ways of leading in their own contexts. But then, the BIble is plenty clear about the leadership failures of several of your examples, so one wouldn’t want to emulate them blindly.
I know you were just being cute, but there was a serious point lurking in there somewhere, yes?
posted January 12, 2009 at 7:29 pm
This is hardly surprising. Christianity (and most religions) require that you suspend reason and become an unquestioning follower of the “mysteries” of that faith. Any questioning is automatically answered with the catchphrase, “ye of little faith.”
Authoritarian cults are quite similar, whether they are acceptable Christian churches or fringe Moonie groups. Give him a year and he will be making headlines from his own sex or money scandal (or sex for money).
posted January 12, 2009 at 9:46 pm
Ironically, ds0490, those kinds of sweeping statements don’t suggest that you’re asking very hard questions. I’ve spent most of my Christian life exploring my doubts, and I’ve remained a Christian precisely because I’ve discovered that the Christian tradition is actually very amenable to questions. Not all Christian cultures deal with skeptics as well as others–but then, many cultures in general (religious or not) don’t quite know how to handle questioners, so that, as you say, is hardly surprising.
posted January 13, 2009 at 12:43 am
Check out Andrew Jones’ reflections here – I added my two cents about my time to check out MD in action.
http://tallskinnykiwi.typepad.com/tallskinnykiwi/2009/01/neo-calvinists.html
posted January 13, 2009 at 9:52 pm
Am I the only one who finds it ironic that this place is called Mars Hill? ‘Fight Club Christianity’ sounds more like the worship of Mars than of Jehovah.
posted January 14, 2009 at 9:22 am
Driscoll has, as they say, “issues.” It’s too bad that he’s projecting them onto Christianity to the detriment and embarrassment of the rest of the Church.
posted February 5, 2009 at 11:14 am
Don’t you think “Who Would Jesus Smack Down?” is just fundamentally (no pun intended) the wrong question to be asking?
It turns us into a bunch of adolescents screaming, “Pick me, God!”