By Alan Bean When I recovered from the initial shock and horror of the Boston Marathon bombing, I automatically switched into advocacy mode. “Please, God,” I thought, “don’t let the perpetrators turn out to be foreigners or immigrants.” I am…
My Boston take-aways
These posts are truly difficult to write; partly because if you want to be real then you have to confess some things and partly because events such as occurred last week are not easy to process. I am not sure…
Running toward the blast
By Susan Sparks Readers, do me a favor. Fold your arms and don the surliest expression you can manage. Done? Good. Now you know what my last standup comedy audience looked like. Mercifully, times like these don’t happen often. When…
(Re)Imagining Redemption
David Kelsey, Professor of Theology at Yale Divinity School, asks a very simple yet powerful question, “What earthly difference can Jesus make here?” I’m in my sixth year of pastoring. I’ve completed three degrees that carry theological weight. I’ve been…
Mom CBF, Dad SBC, I love you. Stop fighting.
Divorce hurts children. My grandparents’ divorce still hurts their children and their grandchildren to this day — even though both have been dead for years. Certainly, the pain has lessened in time, but the wound is still there, for many…
Making peace between faith and science
By Fisher Humphreys At least since the publication of Charles Darwin’s The Origin of Species about a century and a half ago, many people, including many Christians, have felt that Christian theology and modern science must always be in conflict….
Christian theology and modern science
At least since the publication of Charles Darwin’s The Origin of Species about a century and a half ago, many people, including many Christians, have felt that Christian theology and modern science must always be in conflict. The fact that…
Out of season
By Elizabeth Evans Hagan At the church I currently attend, they take the concept of Easter-as-a-season quite seriously. The scriptural phrase “He is not here, he risen as he said” is printed on the front cover of each week’s bulletin….
On broken hearts and crazy love
There are never any words sufficient to address the senseless acts of violence that are happening too frequently in our world. Our instinct as human beings is to somehow try and make sense of it all, to find an explanation,…