Whenever there is a craze about something or other, it is not long before that craze is referenced in the public life of a society. If it is a big deal, then at some point it will blow up on television, news sites, or youtube, and then late night comedians start talking about it, and …
Crossing That Temptation Bridge When We Get to It
In his next chapter, James Davison Hunter sets the stage for his alternative approach to our cultural engagement in the late modern world, which may be described as faithful presence within. “Over against the ‘Defensive Against,’ ‘Relevance To’ and ‘Purity From’ paradigms, I would offer an alternative: ‘Faithful Presence Within'” (p. 237). He has a …
Fabulous Hats
“Looking for flourishing chastity in such settings is a sexual snipe hunt. Just ask the question directly. Those denominations that worked through the controversy of women’s ordination a generation ago have certainly moved on. Their controversies now concern whether sodomites should be wearing sodomitres in solemn procession up the central aisle” (Why Ministers Must be …
Insufficient Words
“The congregation will never ask their pastor to remain loyal to the identity of a minor poet. They need one too much to even know that they need one, as the long list of expectations and relentless efforts at reconstructing pastoral identity reveal. But that is only another reason why they need to be in …
Sexually Realistic
“Paul is concerned throughout the passage with men and women maintaining a sober and dignified relationship to one another, and this includes the men avoiding prize-fighting, the women avoiding trying to look like the prizes, and the women avoiding a usurpation of teaching authority” (Why Ministers Must Be Men, pp. 19-20).
Gathering Up the Threads
“T.S. Eliot has claimed that every culture needs minor as well as major poets. The major poets, who are few and far between, provide enduring expressions of the deep truth of life. Minor poets have the more modest goal of inculcating that truth to particular people in particular places . . . The vast majority …
Deep Within the Recesses of His Own Head
According to the secular catechism we all learned somewhere, violence is primitive, barbaric, superstitious, and intertwined with that other great throwback, religion. And Christians (who profess not to accept that catechism in its entirety) are nonetheless affected by it, and are dutifully apologetic for the Crusades. Evangelical Christians, who do not want to ditch the …
As Cool As That
[1 Tim. 2:12] “Paul then gives the prohibition that has been the cause of so much controversy. It must be said that the controversy exists, not because Paul said something that was unclear, but rather because he said something that is inconvenient for us, especially for those who want to have a ministry as cool …
If We Haven’t Seen It, Then Nobody Can
“For DML-J, a crime occurs when a preacher succumbs to the temptation to water down the promises of Scripture simply because he and his generation have not entered into the full blessings of which they speak” (Sargent, The Sacred Anointing, p.249).
Standing There In My Smarty Pants
Many questions were generated when I wrote that Christians were in the process of going liberal if they gallop after every trend that was likely to show up over at Stuff White People Like.Or try Unhappy Hipsters. So allow me to address some of those questions now. This whole point seems to me to be …