Gathering In Light

Green

(Untitled)

A friend sent this article by Wendell Berry the other day and said it was worth the read, he is right. The article looks at how our insatiable desire for more not only has adverse effects on our lives and economy but also on our environment. This limitlessness that’s

The Political

Advise Everyone… Endorse No One (by Shane Claiborne)

Shane Claiborne has a great post on the difference between “endorsing” and “advising” candidates. While I’ve already made my vote clear, I completely agree with Claibornes approach and points. One thing he said that really stands out is: Our central allegience is to God’s Kingdom, and we invite

Blog Entries

Small Milestones for This Blog

With the last post I crossed over the 700 post mark, not a small feat considering how long it took me to do this. The first post counted on this blog is from April 2004, though I’d been blogging for at least a year before that. It was also

The Cultural

Wittenburg Door on Mark Driscoll

Most of you know about Mark Driscoll, he’s a mainstream pastor from Seattle with a church of about 6,000 people. He’s also infamous to many for being rather misogynistic, and focused on an overtly-testosterone reading of the Scriptures.  The satire magazine Wittenburg Door has done an article

Featured

Remixing Faith in the 21st Century (Barclay Press)

I’ve posted my June essay on Barclay press if you care to have a read (it’s nice and long!). Here’s and excerpt: This past April Radiohead did another thing that sparked imaginations and challenged the preexisting structures of the music industry, yet again. They setup a website

Featured

Rufus Jones’ Future Hope

Here’s a nice long quote from Rufus M. Jones about what he hopes to see in the future of Friends. The quote comes from a lecture he gave at the Baltimore Young Friends Yearly Meeting in 1944: I am looking for a time, and counting on it, when we

Church in Mission

Returning to Woodbrooke

It’s been really nice to return to Woodbrooke Quaker Study Center this past week. I’ve been here now for about a week and a half and have just about that much time left in the UK before I make a return trip to Ohio for a little vacation

Blog Entries

NT Wright on The Colbert Report

One of my favorite New Testament scholars Anglican Bishop NT Wright was on my favorite evening talk show, The Colbert Report. On the show they discuss Wright’s latest book “Surprised by Hope” and what that has to do with heaven, the mission of the church, and new creation. http:

Featured

Douglas Gwyn and the Convergent-Covenant

Just came across these two quotes from Quaker historical-theologian Douglas Gwyn’s book “The Covenant Crucified,” and it got me thinking about some of the work I did in a previous project I’d never written about: Given its biblical frame of reference, the religious Right retains a more explicit

Featured

Boycotting Amazon (And Borders and B&N)

[[Warning Containing Rant]] I’m joining Dan in his Amazon crusade (see here and here), which basically means, I’m not selling books on there (I pulled all my for sale books down today from their site), and I’m not buy books from there (unless maybe there’s the

Blog Entries

Rocketboom on Epistemology

The daily video blog Rocketboom “explains” epistemology yesterday, very interesting to watch. What are you thoughts on it? One problem is that Decartes “I think therefore I am” is apparently still the litmus test that no one else has been able to overcome in any satisfactory way. Really? http://blip.

The Theological

McClendon on Convictions and Pluralism

Last week, I read James Wm. McClendon and James M. Smith’s book “Convictions: Defusing Religious Relativism,” it’s a highly recommended book for anyone interested in religious language and rationality, ethics and theology. It is difficult to get through due to his heavey useage of philosophy, espeically JL Austin’

The Theological

Goldingay on The “Wrathful” OT God

Scot McKnight is slowly blogging through “Old Testament Theology Volume 2,” by one of my absolute favorite professors from Fuller John Goldingay. You can follow his posts on the book through this search link. Anyways, here’s a noteworthy quote I came across that I love: “Everyone knows that the

Featured

Peace Church Colleges Debate Having Armed Guards

The other day in a Washington Times article there is a discussion about peace church colleges working through questions about whether to employ armed guards for student protection. Two Church of the Brethren schools have recently decided to authorize their guards to carry firearms. Given the catastrophic campus shootings of

Blog Entries

Who’s Your Patron Quaker (non)Saint?

While I was at QUIP a few weeks back a woman asked the youth editorial board if we had Quaker patron saints. I’m not sure if that’s the actual phrase she put it in, but it works. I’ve added the non- just so we all know that,

Featured

Quaker Youth Book Call for Submissions

I’ve written about the upcoming Quaker Youth Book project I’m working with and said we would soon be giving our call for submissions. Well, the time has come! If you consider yourself a Quaker or a part of the Friends Church and are between the ages of 15

Blog Entries

Presenting on Convergent Friends at FAHE in June

So much for a really creative title! It was the best I could think of at this hour. Anyways, Last year at this time I was living in Birmingham England, away from my pregnant wife, finishing up my first year of doctoral studies and working on Quaker theology with a

The Theological

More Yoder on Faithfulness and Tradition

I’ve been working through a number of John Howard Yoder’s texts in the last week, reading what he had to say about ecumenicism and tradition within the “Radical Free-Church.” Here are a few quotes that really stood out to me from his essay in The Priestly Kingdom called,

Featured

Yet Another Manifesto?! Evangelical Leaders Draw the Line

If you haven’t heard by now (I heard from Halden), a group of (select) world renowned Evangelicals got together and compiled their own manifesto (or see the summary). I say ‘select’ because there are certain voices (namely any strongly conservative or liberal ones absent from the group). It’s

The Political

Radiohead’s “All I Need” For MTV’s EXIT

Jarrod McKenna posted this video on his blog yesterday. It is a music video of Radiohead’s “All I Need,” juxtaposing children on opposite sides of the world: one group rich, one very poor. They video is held together through a pair of shoes.  The point of the video? “Some

The Cultural

On Immodesty: Too Much Skin (At Church and Elsewhere)?

My buddy Rhett’s written on a provocative topic, what do we do about immodesty in the church? This is pressing for him and I since we are both now father’s of beautiful little girls.  He writes: No matter what we as parents do I know there will always

Featured

Quaker Teacher Fired For Not Taking an Oath

This may be old news for some of you but last week Quaker Wendy Gonaver, an American Studies professor at Cal State Fullerton here in LA, was fired for refusing to sign the loyalty oath. The LA Times reports: As a Quaker from Pennsylvania and a lifelong pacifist, Gonaver objected

The Cultural

Two (Possible) Roles of Religion In A Global World

I’m currently writing a methods paper, laying out how I will conduct my field research among Quaker congregations. In the section where I’m dealing with culture and the role of the church I found Slavoj Žižek’s quote below to be insightful and to the point. The

Featured

Barclay Press Essay:The Temptation To Surrender

Barclay Press, the main Evangelical Quaker publisher, has totally revamped their website and invited five columnists to write for them over the next year. I am one of their columnists, along with Joseph Thouvenel, Pam Ferguson,  Eric Muhr, and Nancy Thomas. The new site and featured columns launched yesterday. I

Blog Entries

John Howard Yoder on Authority and Tradition

A blog I read fairly often has been posting quotes from Yoder’s essay on tradition, they’re worth sharing here, plus you might as well check out INHABITATIO DEI. “We are not talking about ‘the authority of tradition’ as if tradition were a settled reality and we were then