It’s no secret that there’s bad blood between Christian complementarians and Beth Allison Barr. After all, her bestselling book, The Making of Biblical Womanhood, tears down the boys-only fort they’ve built in the church yard. Yet the sticks and stones…
Why the use of masculine God language matters at church
Throughout the English Bible, the normal pronouns assigned to God are “he” and “him.” Many references to God within church practice typically fit into this same assignment. However, when we look at the instances in the Bible where imagery for…
What if God is bigger than ‘omnipotent’?
“God is not omnipotent. There. I’ve said it.” I haven’t published the book yet, but my manuscript, titled The Power of the God Who Can’t: God Always Does Everything God Can Do, begins with those words. When the late Frank Tupper said…
Religion Notes: Many young adults believe while most aren’t so sure
-5,000 immigrants anticipated
-American Baptist office on the move
God, guns, freedom, and idolatry in America
After another mass shooting last week, I watched countless conversations about mass killings unfold on social media and in the news cycle. As many Christians defended complete and total legislative inaction in the wake of wonton violence, I was literally…
Balking at Hawking’s rejection of God
Although it was a temptation, I resisted titling this article “Gawking at Hawking.” June and I have, though, been ” gawking ” at Hawking some this past couple of weeks. We first watched “The Theory of Everything,” the engrossing 2014…
Looking forward with faith
Faith is awe in the face of mystery. – Rudolf Otto We gazed silently alongside an uncountable amount of people. The oddity was not in the differences of those of us present but in the symmetry of what we all…
A Scripture lesson on fundamentalism (and how progressives differ from conservatives)
The seventh chapter of John offers some important insights into the nature of fundamentalism. Consider the following: Now some of the people of Jerusalem were saying, “Is not this the man whom they are trying to kill? And here…
God’s Funeral
Although I don’t know that he said anything about a funeral, perhaps the best known statement about God’s demise was made by philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, who declared “God is dead” in his 1882 book “The Gay Science” (with “gay” being…