A couple of days after the announcement that the deal to sell the property and buildings of Golden Gate Baptist Theological Seminary had been completed, I was in San Francisco. Sunday afternoon I drove across the Golden Gate Bridge into…
Taking stock of mission endeavors
By Amy Butler Lately I’ve had occasion to think a little more deeply than usual about churches and mission/social justice programming. It seems to me that collaborative efforts to heal the world are critical parts of life together in Christian…
The past ain’t what it used to be
By Bob Setzer Jr. When I was a boy, there was one Sunday night a year my siblings and I got to stay home from church: the night The Wizard of Oz was on television. On that very magical night,…
Anchors Away
Not long ago I was sitting on a dock, watching boats scoot across the lake, when one of my wife’s co-workers started talking about her daughter. I learned she was in her late twenties, not too far removed from college,…
A Buddhist, a Jew and a Christian walk into a room …
By Molly T. Marshall This sounds like the beginning of a bad joke! Variations of the rabbi, priest and pastor combinations usually serve to show perspectival bias and good humor about discrete traditions, especially in the way they are caricatured….
Blessed are the barely there
Believing in God is hard. If anyone tells you otherwise they’re lying, or they’ve been frozen for eons under a housing development in Southern California like a Cro-Magnon Brendan Frazier in Encino Man.* (*NOTE: “The 90s were the gilded age…
The heroics of helping others
Who prefers discomfort to comfort? Not me, but sometimes, it’s necessary. I favor tasty food, sweet smells, a good night’s rest (plus an afternoon nap, if possible). I enjoy warm, moderate temperatures, not too cold, not too hot. I like…
Six options for the churches: The LGBT issue, part 5
By David Gushee Follow David: @dpgushee What is the posture that forgiven sinners in the church should have toward other forgiven sinners? Pope Francis rocked the Christian world with his response in a 2013 interview when he was asked about…
Repenting of Christianity
By Greg and Helms Jarrell Chinua Achebe’s classic novel Things Fall Apart centers around the life of Okonkwo, the powerful leader of his clan and their village, one of nine in the Umuofia region of Nigeria. Okonkwo is a fearsome…
blessed are the barely there
Believing in God is hard. If anyone tells you otherwise they’re lying, or they’ve been frozen for eons under a housing development in Southern California like a Cro-magnon Brendan Frazier in Encino Man*. (*NOTE: “The 90s were the gilded age of…
Preachers, politicians part ways at the border
By Alan Bean While politicians apportion blame for the thousands of unaccompanied Central American children arriving at our border, the faith community looks for ways to help. I over-simplify, of course. We confront a complex tangle of rhetoric and response,…
The power of witness
On July 28 I was one of about two dozen clergy, activists, family and friends who traveled with a couple to the Jefferson County courthouse in Louisville, Ky., to get a marriage license. We went knowing it was a fool’s…