Learning dissent is never easy. One person’s prophet is another’s anti-Christ. One person’s conscience is another’s bigotry. Sometimes dissent can get you damned. Sometimes (like now?) silence can too.
Reflecting on CBF life in the midst of hope and ashes
If I read my Bible correctly (and if I read my American history correctly), the only real hope we have for reconciliation isn’t actually through reading our Bible correctly. And it isn’t through winning an argument with someone who disagrees with us. Reconciliation only seems to happen in one way — through carrying crosses.
If ‘The Post’ was a church, I would join
Churches should see themselves in this movie. The church, like the board of the Post, is tempted to focus on survival. When well-meaning, frightened Christians worry only about the budget, the church ceases to be the church. Institutional Christianity, like a bad newspaper, is organized, conventional and uninteresting.
2017’s top religion stories are a doozy
The year 2017 may not have been the biggest ever for religion news in the U.S. or the world, but it has to be close.
Protestant decline leaves fewer to celebrate Reformation Day
Happy birthday, Protestants. This week marks 500 years since Martin Luther’s actions sparked the Protestant Reformation. But is anyone really celebrating? Church historian Bill Leonard says yes, some are.
Crazy parallels: Reformations then and now
Five hundred years after the Reformation, our world again echoes with a plethora of similar tensions, prickly personalities and transformative technologies.
Unlike some Christians, Lutherans still all-in on Protestant identity
Many Christians — especially in the United States — are struggling with their Protestant identity these days. Articles and blogs abound on the topic. The religiously unaffiliated don’t resonate with the concept of Christianity defined by a religious revolution sparked in the…
‘Exsurge Domine’: Pursuing Re-formation
“Arise, O Lord (Exsurge Domine), and judge thy cause. A wild boar is loose in thy vineyard.” That’s how Pope Leo X introduced his denunciation of Martin Luther in a papal encyclical released 15 June 1520. The document condemned a…
Church must sell off old ways and buildings to thrive in Reformation’s 500th year
A recent commentary posed a timely question: Does the Reformation matter anymore? The Religion News Service piece by Jacob Lupfer was inspired by the Oct. 31 start of the one-year countdown to the 500th anniversary of the religious revolution sparked…
Too busy to sing? Try anyway
I go to work on Tuesday with a detailed to-do list. If everything goes perfectly, I will end the day writing a column for Baptist News Global. If I get through six of the 10 items, it will be a…
Do not despise the day of small things
Then he said to me, “This is the word of the LORD to Zerubbabel: Not by might, not by power, but by my Spirit, saith the LORD of hosts.” … For whoever has despised the day of small things shall…
Reformation Day — 498 years and counting
By Brett Younger Seminary professors spend a lot of time around 24-year-olds. As a result, we spend a lot of time feeling old. Our church experience is different from theirs. My parents took me to church three times a week….