A Bunch of (un)virtuous Monks

Church and religion doesn’t have to be stuffy and boring.  Several monks prove that.  Enter the Unvirtuous Abbey.  A bunch of monks give us everything regrettable about Christianity, culture, people, and Facebook but make us laugh at it… in a good way.  The Unvirtuous Abbey ministers to people from their Facebook and Twitter page with […]

Why You Should Listen to Brad Pitt on Christianity

In a recent Q & A for his upcoming film, The Tree of Life, Brad Pitt said: “I grew up with Christianity, and I remember questioning greatly some things that didn’t work for me, [and] some things did…I grew up being told that God’s gonna take care of everything and it doesn’t always work out […]

Christmas: Peace In the Midst of Chaos

Melissa was enjoying dinner with her husband and their three children at a restaurant recently—until the waiter disappeared for 20 minutes. Her husband, Tim, began muttering. Melissa braced herself. “Uh-oh, here it comes,” she remembers thinking. “EXCUSE ME!” he screamed across the room to another waiter, then stormed off to complain to the manager. When […]

Atheists Know More about Religion

In a recent Pew Religious study, atheists scored highest on a  survey asking basic questions regarding religion.  Even more surprising is the fact that some answered questions incorrectly when it came to facts about their own faith. The New York Times reports that on average respondents answered half of the questions incorrectly. Atheists and agnostics […]

A Theology For Planning

A plan for the future is always a challenge, especially when it deals with money. The former CEO, Alan Schwartz of defunct investment bank Bear Stearns was apparently delusional in March 2008 when he stated that things were going fine with the faltering investment bank: “Bear Stearns’s balance sheet, liquidity and capital remain strong… Our […]

Age Segregation in Church

In the last 30 years, age-segmented worship was an unforeseen effect of the contemporary worship movement within Christianity.  What has developed in many (not all) churches are two worship services.  A traditional service with older adults and a commentary service with younger adults.  This results into a type of age segregation in congregations. Several blogs […]

Guest Blogger: Tripp Hudgins the AngloBaptist

Part III: Sacrament vs. Ordinance: Guest Blogger, Tripp Hudgins (AngloBaptist).  Check out Part I & Part II. Alan generously asked me to participate in this blog series on Baptist sacramentality and immediately I said yes. I wanted to chime in. But it took me a while to figure out how I could share my thoughts. […]

Sacrament or Ordinance? (Part 1)

Recently, Karen Bullock, professor Christian heritage and director of the Ph.D. program at the B.H. Carroll Theological Institute, commented on Baptists celebrating their 400 year anniversary by saying, “…several theologians across the past half century have advocated that Baptists reconsider both the terms and meaning of sacramental acts…Some of this thinking re-engages the sacramental notions […]

Once Upon A Time…

…there was a woman who set out to discover the meaning of life. First, she read everything she could get her hands on–history, philosophy, psychology, religion. While she became a very smart person, nothing she read gave her the answer she was looking for.  She found other smart people and asked them about the meaning […]

Is Western Christianity Suffering From Spiritual Amnesia?

This is part of a post by Diana Butler Bass, “Is Western Christianity Suffering From Spiritual Amnesia?” In the 1990s, I taught history and theology at an evangelical college, a place where the students were serious young Christians. One day, lecturing on the medieval church and the Crusades, I explained how in 1095 Pope Urban […]