Masking The Horror of Jonah
May 14th, 2008Ronald Marshall in Touchstone- “Eaten Alive”
Univ of Illinois-Chicago Offering Course on “A Biblical Approach to Mental Health”
May 13th, 2008Story in the Chicago Sun-Times
Martin Marty- “Truth to say, I could sign this Manifesto with fingers only very rarely and loosely crossed. “
May 13th, 2008Martin Marty comments on The Evangelical Manifesto
“What’s So Odd About Religious Colleges?”
May 13th, 2008Interesting column in the Wall Street Journal about Wheaton College in their recent controversy over releasing a professor pursuing divorce
Mosque Attenders to outnumber Church Attenders in Britain in a generation
May 9th, 2008The Times of London- “Churchgoing on its knees as Christianity falls out of favour”:
Church attendance in Britain is declining so fast that the number of regular churchgoers will be fewer than those attending mosques within a generation, research published today suggests.
The fall - from the four million people who attend church at least once a month today - means that the Church of England, Catholicism and other denominations will become financially unviable. A lack of funds from the collection plate to support the Christian infrastructure, including church upkeep and ministers’ pay and pensions, will force church closures as ageing congregations die.
In contrast, the number of actively religious Muslims will have increased from about one million today to 1.96 million in 2035.
“Once all the self-description is out of the way, it turns out that the heart of the document is a kind of urgent appeal: Please don’t call us fundamentalists or confuse us with them.”
May 9th, 2008Wheaton Professor Alan Jacobs comments on “The Evangelical Manifesto” in the Wall Street Journal- “Come On, You Call This a Manifesto?”:
Once all the self-description is out of the way, it turns out that the heart of the document is a kind of urgent appeal: Please don’t call us fundamentalists or confuse us with them. This strikes me as a regrettable tack, for two reasons. First, it is defensive, and manifestos should never be defensive. Second, it suggests a concern for labels and public perception that is not attractive in Christians. Besides, people who make the kinds of theological statements found in this document — for instance, “We believe that the only ground for our acceptance by God is our trust in Jesus Christ” — are going to be called fundamentalists no matter what else they say.
Paige Patterson on Latest SBC Statistics
May 8th, 2008Baptist Press-“Of grinches, goblins, gremlins and ghosts”
HT: Sam Hodges
Wheaton Professor: “God won’t fire anyone because of their marital status, politics, theology or sexual preference”
May 7th, 2008New York Times with a story on Wheaton College professor Dr. Kent Gramm- “At College, a High Standard on Divorce”
Dr. Gramm rejects the idea that a spouse must accuse his partner of wrongdoing to be allowed to stay after a divorce. He questions why the judgment of college administrators matters more than the word of a valued, longtime employee. “God won’t fire anyone because of their marital status, politics, theology or sexual preference,” Dr. Gramm said.
“I’m accepting the policy as it applies to me because I knew it was in place and I don’t expect anyone to make any exceptions,” he said. “But in the long run I think the policy is not a good one, because in a sense it’s saying that Wheaton’s standards are higher than God’s. That’s an upside-down world.”
HT: Tim Bayly, who also comments:
Let me get this straight: Prof. Gramm believes God will not judge adulterers, legislative defenders of the murder of unborn children, heretics, or sodomites? Try as I might, I can find no other way to read this last statement.
Let me also get this straight: Prof. Gramm has been teaching at Wheaton for over twenty years? And he’s taught in the same department as Prof. Leland Ryken?
How is it possible that a man so bold in his impiety and rebellion against Scripture has been in good standing until now? Were Prof. Ryken and President Duane Litfin shocked by these statements made by one of their tenured faculty with whom they’ve served side by side for twenty years? Or are converting to Roman Catholicism and refusing to answer questions concerning your divorce the only things that rise to the level of an impeachable offense at Wheaton, now?
On the one hand, we could be relieved Wheaton is sticking to its commitments in this matter.
On the other hand, we could be scandalized wondering how long Wheaton’s administration and Prof. Gramm’s colleagues knew of his denial of Scripture’s doctrine of sexuality (just for starters)?
The Evangelical Manifesto
May 7th, 2008“A Declaration of Evangelical Identity and Public Commitment”
As an open declaration, An Evangelical Manifesto addresses not only Evangelicals and other Christians but other American citizens and people of all other faiths in America, including those who say they have no faith. It therefore stands as an example of how different faith communities may address each other in public life, without any compromise of their own faith but with a clear commitment to the common good of the societies in which we all live together.
For those who are Evangelicals, the deepest purpose of the Manifesto is a serious call to reform—an urgent challenge to reaffirm Evangelical identity, to reform Evangelical behavior, to reposition Evangelicals in public life, and so rededicate ourselves to the high calling of being Evangelical followers of Jesus Christ.
Signers include Notre Dame Professor Mark Noll, Moody Church Pastor Erwin Lutzer, Pastor and Author Max Lucado, Author Kay Arthur, and Liberty Seminary President Ergun Caner.
Full Document Here
“At this point in history, American evangelicals resemble the Israelites at various dangerous moments in the Old Testament: They are blending into the surrounding heathen culture, and having ever more trouble figuring out where it ends and they begin.”
May 6th, 2008
Some perceptive observations from Hanna Rosin’s review of Daniel Radosh’s Rapture Ready! in Slate:
When you make loving Christ sound just like loving your boyfriend, you can do damage to both your faith and your ballad. That’s true when you create a sanitized version of bands like Nirvana or artists like Jay-Z, too: You shoehorn a message that’s essentially about obeying authority into a genre that’s rebellious and nihilistic, and the result can be ugly, fake, or just limp.
“…(P)erhaps we are all fundamentalists now.”
May 1st, 2008Interesting article by David Gibson in Science & Spirit- “Who Are You Calling a Fundamentalist?”
