Diana Butler Bass is the guest host at the USA Today forum on Faith and Reason today. Your can ask her questions about her research and what she is thinking about now. She says she will haunt the site and answer questions all day. She says her main topics are vital mainline churches and “beyond liberal and conservative” but people can ask about anything they want.
You may have already seen this clip from President Obama’s first TV interview as president, the one he did with Al Arabia (based in the
Her hands steadied the first steps
of him who steadied the earth to walk upon;
her lips helped the Word of God
to form his first human words.
Christianity Today has announced the winners of its 2009 Book Award.
When Disney unceremoniously pulled out of co-financing the Chronicles Of Narnia franchise just before the New Year, shock waves of doubt and remorse echoed through the Vulture comment section. However, thanks to the good graces of the people over at Fox, fans of the dream world of magic can spark up a celebratory jay and hit the Magnolia Bakery tonight, because the franchise is back on!
“Fifty years ago, everybody used to go to church,” Mr. de Leeuw, the rector, said, smiling at about 50 people gathered in his 22 remaining pews last Sunday. “The sense of obligation people had is gone, but maybe that’s a good thing. Those of us who gather here are here because we want to be.”
Time to revisit John Taylor’s classic work Enough is Enough, and to look at recession from a wider perspective. In this book Taylor develops the theology of enough. The dream of the Biblical Hebrew people, he points out, is summed up in the word shalom, “something much broader than peace, the harmony of a caring community, informed at every point by its awareness of God”.
The next step in that unfolding narrative of grace is to expand the concept of marriage to include a gay man marrying a gay man or a lesbian marrying a lesbian. This timely, grace-filled step rightly extends the Christian concept of marriage to people whom the Church for too long has marginalized or demonized, the very categories of people with whom Jesus spent his ministry.
Call to mind with me the time when Peter was praised and called blessed. Was it because he merely said, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God”? No, he who pronounced him blessed regarded not merely the sound of his words, but the affections of his heart.