Christ-archy and “faithful improvisation”

I do not believe that one has to be anarchist to be a faithful follower of Jesus.
Let me say that again: I do not believe that one has to be anarchist to be a faithful follower of Jesus.
I say that lest I be accused of “theological” divisiveness over my “political” beliefs, as I have been [...]

Bonhoeffer quote on community

We just finished reading Bonhoeffer’s Life Together in my formation for ministry course. Here’s a quote from the reading we discussed tonight:
“Let him who cannot be alone beware of community. . . Let him who is not in community beware of being alone” (p. 77).
This is a profound statement worthy of much consideration.

“[I] had been living inside their imagination.”

Recently I read the excellent novel Imagining Argentina by Thornton Wilder. The book is set in Argentina under a military junta of the type the United States tends to support in our so-called “ally” countries. People are constantly disappearing, being abducted by agents of the regime, including the wife of Carlos. Carlos possesses a mysterious [...]

Christ, the universal/particular, and Eucharist

One of my Livejournal friends asked this question on her journal:
Can I ever see from a non-western, non-American viewpoint to have only a “Christian” worldview? Oh, to receive truth from revelation and not only through analyzing the world through my lens. I wish I could be objective of my own self. My housemate said [...]

Greg Boyd and Christian anarchism

Some of you may be familiar with Greg Boyd, senior pastor of Woodland Hills Church in St. Paul, Minnesota, open theism advocate, and author of several books including Letters from a Skeptic, God at War, and God of the Possible.
His recent book The Myth of a Christian Nation, challenges the widespread notion in the United [...]

New article at Catapult

This morning the new issue of Catapult Magazine went live today, including my article “(In)Security and the Fall“.
I briefly re-viewed Eve Ensler’s excellent book Insecure at Last, casting her concern about security and the strange phenomenon of how cultures that focus strongly on security tend to be fundamentally insecure in light of the Biblical story [...]

Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence

This is one of King’s most important speeches and yet one of his most little-known. Delivered on April 4, 1967, exactly one year to the day before he was assassinated, this speech provides a scathing denunciation of the practices of the American government on the world stage, particularly in Vietnam. King extends his methodology of [...]

Think of this quote before you elect a politician who campaigns on religious values

“When facism comes to America it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross.” — Sinclair Lewis

Christians: haters of humanity

Michael Cline has written an excellent article over at Jesus Manifesto. An excerpt:
The charge of hatred is enmeshed with the idea of religious piety in ancient Rome. To be a good citizen in the Roman Empire meant to participate in the civic life of the state. The gladiator games, the burning of incense to gods, [...]

New Roadblock EF anti-I69 site

Check it out, there’s a lot of good information there both on I-69 and on some general radical and environmental topics.

The Bible was NOT written to you

Seen today on a church sign: “The Bible is a letter that was written to you!”
I have a serious problem with this attitude. Yes, I believe the Bible was written FOR us, and for our edification and instruction as followers of Jesus, but it was not written “to me” as a letter, meant for me [...]

I have my computer back

The blogging madness will re-commence very soon, but for now I just wanted to give notice - you’ve been warned.
For those of you who pray, I would much appreciate it - I have just entered an M.Div program at a local seminary and am unsure whether I am going to focus on academic [...]

musing about political terminology and misc.

Too often in our reading of the Bible, we make an easy association between words like “liberty”, “justice”, and other words that have political associations in our time, as well as words with other economic and social implications, and the usages of such words in modern liberalized political discourse. This error is often compounded by [...]