“I like your Christ,” said Mahatma Gahndi, “but I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.” There’s a billboard outside the city limits where I live. The canvas is white and in large black letters,…
Must we choose between fundamentalism and ‘belief-less Christianity’?
John Shuck is a Presbyterian pastor in good standing who doesn’t believe a single thing you learned in Sunday school. In a recent Patheos post, Reverend Shuck issued a list of six affirmations designed to boil the blood of every right-thinking American:…
Why some question whether the President loves America
President Obama’s comments at the annual prayer breakfast sparked a tsunami of protest from conservative politicians and opinion leaders, but it’s not clear why. The president’s remarks were measured and carefully calibrated to the point of being banal. But two…
Did the President misrepresent Christianity?
President Obama spoke at the National Prayer Breakfast on February 5, as you know, and that speech unleashed considerable negative reaction-mostly from the same people that have criticized him for about everything he has said or done since 2009. Most…
christian cruise directing.
When I was 15 years old, I went on a Carnival cruise with my family to the Caribbean. “All good stories begin with a boat.” -Science There are few things that more aptly embody the zeitgeist of the modern American…
American Sniper and the Power of the System
There are many viewers of “American Sniper” who consider Chris Kyle an American hero. Some of these, who are also Christians, even see him as an example of Christian heroism. These are folks who collapse obedience to God into obedience…
Christianity at a crossroads in America
Christianity, along with other faith traditions, is at a crossroads in American life. Many sociologists see the road leading us to a European secularism, where mostly-empty churches are monuments to the hollowed-out faith of the masses, and serve as reminders…
The painful inevitability of moral conflict
i’m not rob bell.
I had this somewhat obvious epiphany the other day. I’m not, nor have I ever been, Rob Bell. I know, I know, groundbreaking. I’d probably give this one a “discovering you have enough change in your late model civic’s ashtray…