I have almost no interest in superheroes. Never owned a comic book; didn’t get remotely excited about The Avengers coming together; and think that the only really great superhero movie was the one where Heath Ledger’s Joker embodied evil — I honestly can’t remember anything Batman said or did in The Dark Knight. But I … More Superman and Salvation
Asking that God’s kingdom come and His will be done is a supremely political act, a revolutionary declaration of independence from the powers of this world. But for that reason (among others), the Lord’s Prayer is not a weapon to be wielded in the culture wars. To wit, the case of high school student Roy … More The Lord’s Prayer and the Culture Wars
Aside from posts on John Le Carré and the history of college closures, it was a mostly quiet week here at The Pietist Schoolman. But other writers more than picked up my slack: • Two more essays on Le Carré: Emma Hogan analyzed the spy novelist’s writing style; Dwight Garner profiled him for the New … More That Was The Week That Was
Unlikely as the start of this post will make it seem… Spoiler alert for anyone who hasn’t seen the last episode of the second series of Sherlock It’s been observed by many Christian preachers and writers that most of our life is akin to Holy Saturday, that oft-neglected time separating Good Friday and Easter Sunday. For … More “Just One More Miracle…”
Pilate asked them, “Shall I crucify your King?” The chief priests answered, “We have no king but the emperor.” Then he handed him over to them to be crucified. So they took Jesus; and carrying the cross by himself, he went out to what is called The Place of the Skull, which in Hebrew is … More The Cross: A Good Friday Meditation on World War and Holocaust
It’s a testament to the power of Jesus’ parables that you can hear one for what seems like the millionth time and still find something new in it to ponder. For example: the parable of the prodigal son (Luke 15:11-32), which was our lectionary text earlier this month. As familiar as it is, I sometimes … More The Prodigal Father
In yesterday’s post, I mentioned singer-songwriter Marcus Mumford’s desire to follow Jesus but distance himself from “the culture of Christianity,” a combination critiqued by UCC pastor Lillian Daniel, author of When “Spiritual but Not Religious” Is Not Enough, in a recent op-ed. She might have added that Jesus himself was deeply religious, so bound up with … More “Religious, but Not Spiritual”: Jesus and the Pharisees
I can’t imagine that too many pastors serving a United Church of Christ congregation have had their arguments featured in multiple evangelical publications within a three-day period, but that’s what Lillian Daniel of First Congregationalist Church in Glen Ellyn, Illinois accomplished earlier this month. First, Christianity Today ran a review by Andrew Byers of Daniel’s … More A Mainline Critique of “Spiritual, but Not Religious”
What place, if any, do Pietists give to doctrine? Do they place any boundaries on what constitutes right belief (orthodoxy)? Those questions come to my mind at least two or three times a year, generally whenever I’m getting too excited about the prospects for a “Pietist impulse” to again revive Christianity (as it’s done at … More Pietism, Doctrine, and the Boundaries of Belief
I wrote this last year after our church’s Ash Wednesday service, which concludes with the “imposition” of ashes. My daughter is three now, otherwise I think most everything here applies in 2013 as much as it did in 2012… It’s amazing sometimes that anyone can learn English. Look up the word “imposition” in Webster’s, for … More Best of The Pietist Schoolman: An Imposition
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