Not all popular culture is utterly disposable to the alert Bible scholar. In fact, some of it – from the works of Salman Rushdie to the music of Emmylou Harris – can be downright durable.
This is more of a potluck than a social hour, this week, being a bit later in the day and around dinnertime for the easterners afoot. If you noticed bad links in any of the Facebook stories this week, it had to do with our updating links as news changed over the course of the day.
“What a shocking waste of a Church, and what a disgraceful response to a glorious ministry,” Gledhill writes in anticipating what happens if the Covenant is adopted. “It is illogical to proceed with women bishops while denying homosexuals full participation. Who are we to say that all are not made in God’s image?”
From outside the bright lights and headlines, here is the broader context for Pope Benedict XVI’s remarks about condoms, gleaned from the pages of Peter Seewald’s book.
No shock here to learn that the pastor who encouraged his flock to close down their Facebook accounts on the grounds that it leads to infidelity has been seen to have had a similarly themed past in the form of a sexual relationship that took place between himself and a church assistant and sometimes included the pastor’s wife.
David Adams offers a painful and incisive indictment: Jesus would not have been a Christian. No way, no how.
The Father of angels,
the true King of victory, will call a synod,
the Lord of retainers, to judge with righteousness.
Then all people on earth will
rise up as the almighty King will
command, the captain of angels, with the sound