“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 …
Just One Entry Though. For Now.
For those who have missed it, the Cave of Adullam is back.
Expecting Trouble
“When women dress in the ostentatious ways described, it is not an act in isolation. It is because they are vying for the attention of the males. And when this kind of sexual parade is tolerated, they will get that male attention, and almost always from more than one guy. When Helen of Troy starts …
There, He Said It
“To me, there nothing more important in a preacher than that he should have a systematic theology, that he should know it and be well grounded in it. This systematic theology, this body of truth which is derived from the Scripture, should always be present as a background and as a controlling influence in his …