Featured Yet Another Manifesto?! Evangelical Leaders Draw the Line If you haven’t heard by now (I heard from Halden), a group of (select) world renowned Evangelicals got together and compiled their own manifesto (or see the summary). I say ‘select’ because there are certain voices (namely any strongly conservative or liberal ones absent from the group). It’s
The Political Radiohead’s “All I Need” For MTV’s EXIT Jarrod McKenna posted this video on his blog yesterday. It is a music video of Radiohead’s “All I Need,” juxtaposing children on opposite sides of the world: one group rich, one very poor. They video is held together through a pair of shoes. The point of the video? “Some
The Cultural On Immodesty: Too Much Skin (At Church and Elsewhere)? My buddy Rhett’s written on a provocative topic, what do we do about immodesty in the church? This is pressing for him and I since we are both now father’s of beautiful little girls. He writes: No matter what we as parents do I know there will always
Featured Quaker Teacher Fired For Not Taking an Oath This may be old news for some of you but last week Quaker Wendy Gonaver, an American Studies professor at Cal State Fullerton here in LA, was fired for refusing to sign the loyalty oath. The LA Times reports: As a Quaker from Pennsylvania and a lifelong pacifist, Gonaver objected
The Cultural Two (Possible) Roles of Religion In A Global World I’m currently writing a methods paper, laying out how I will conduct my field research among Quaker congregations. In the section where I’m dealing with culture and the role of the church I found Slavoj iek’s quote below to be insightful and to the point. The
Featured Barclay Press Essay:The Temptation To Surrender Barclay Press, the main Evangelical Quaker publisher, has totally revamped their website and invited five columnists to write for them over the next year. I am one of their columnists, along with Joseph Thouvenel, Pam Ferguson, Eric Muhr, and Nancy Thomas. The new site and featured columns launched yesterday. I
Blog Entries John Howard Yoder on Authority and Tradition A blog I read fairly often has been posting quotes from Yoder’s essay on tradition, they’re worth sharing here, plus you might as well check out INHABITATIO DEI. We are not talking about the authority of tradition as if tradition were a settled reality and we were then
Featured Working on a Youth Book Project for Quakers This past weekend I was in Greensboro, North Carolina, at a Quakers United in Publication (QUIP) conference. There was a really great group of people there, writers, publishers, editors, bloggers, you name it, if they’re interested in publishing and they’re Quaker there’s a good chance they were
Blog Entries GTD In Apple’s Leopard (and other resources) I’ve been using the GTD system since I first setup my Moleskine GTD for students and am getting a decent amount out of it. But I’ve struggled with finding ways to keep things straight with all the information flying at me on my mac. I’ve been working
Blog Entries Evangelical Richard Mouw Comments On Pope’s Recent Visit Fuller Theological Seminary President Richard Mouw was invited to be a part of a roundtable of thinkers commenting on the Pope’s recent visit to the US for the New York Times. But the attraction of a pope-in-a-stadium has its own unique meaning, I think. In a post-modern” age Benedict
Blog Entries Interview With Tom Sine and Jarrod McKenna On The New Conspirators Tom Sine’s recent book, The New Conspirator’s, has been gaining a lot of attention since it was released last month. This week he’s staying with my friend and emerging peace church activist Jarrod McKenna. Tom and his wife are staying in Australia with McKenna at the Peace
Blog Entries A Poem for Peet’s Coffee Lovers I’ve talked about Peet’s Coffee and Teas enough on this website to give yet another shameless (and unsolicited) advertisement for them. For me, Peet’s is that one place I can go where I’m undistracted from the internet, friends, and the endless list of things to do
augustine Augustine’s Prayer for Students Hear my prayer, O Lord; let not my soul fail under Thy discipline, nor let me fail in uttering to Thee Thy mercies: by them Thou has drawn me out of all my most evil ways, that I should find more delight in Thee than in all the temptations I
The Political Evangelical Politics: Three Generations From Speaking of Faith Today we listened to Krista Tippett’s discussion with Chuck Colson, Greg Boyd and Shane Claiborne on the role of Christians in politics. It’s well worth the listen: A passionate discussion is unfolding in public and in private among Evangelical leaders and communities. Should Christians be involved in politics
Blog Entries Books for Sale I apologize in advance for this post, it’s soliciting sales. Recently I talked about decluttering, and as a part of that process I have been getting rid of books, lots of books. Currently, I have sold more than 30, and have 30 or more still for sale. Anyways, the
Featured Quakers and Zits the Comic Strip This is the comic from Zits today, a friend of mine sent it to me: It’s true, I do have pretty wild weekends, all things considered. But I can’t leave the comic alone for getting me right, I’d like to press in on it just a bit.
The Theological David Fitch and Tony Jones On Hauerwas and the Emerging Church I enjoy reading David Fitch’s blog regularly, and today he’s posted a great response to Tony Jones’ thoughts from last week on the Hauerwas Mafia. The post is an unpublished chapter from his recent book, The New Christians. His post is worth the read, it’s entertaining and
Blog Entries Interview with Sacred Compass Author Brent Bill I decided to take part in Brent Bill’s recent contest to help get the word out about his book. I know Brent through my work with convergent Friends and have enjoyed following his blog and his interest not only in Quakerism but the emerging church. He is the author
Blog Entries Henry Jenkins on Why Academics Should Blog Henry Jenkins, a teacher, author and cultural studies scholar at MIT, has written a really thought-provoking post on a number of reasons why academics should blog. I found the essay helpful in framing different scenarios and purposes for a blog done by a students and faculty members. But I’dsay
Green The Story of Stuff: Where It Comes From and Where It Goes As you know I’m interested in the environment and how our everyday practices impact it, so I’m always happy to see more people trying to raise awareness through creative means. A friend sent this link around the other day urging us to take the 20 minutes and watch
Blog Entries Stepping into the Wind: A Pentecost-Inspired Writing Competition Jesus Manifesto has posted a writing contest that I think some of you may want to know about, it sounds pretty interesting: We want your words. Jesus Manifesto is inviting you to submit an original article exploring the theme of Pentecost. In particular we want you to explore the theme
Blog Entries A List for Pre-Seminary Summer Reading A friend of mine and regular reader and commenter on this blog is about to enter seminary at Gordon-Conwell this fall. I wanted to send her a list of books for some good pre-seminary summer reading. I tried to think of interesting books that will be somewhat challenging, offer new
The Cultural French Theory in America by Stanley Fish Here’s a great piece by literary critic Stanley Fish, over at his New York Times blog “Think Again,” who offers brief history in the coming to America of French Theory (and namely deconstruction). Here’s a couple quotes I like from the post: [In Bacon’s work] The mind
Featured Listening As Exchange: The Trouble with God Discerning Our Will If you ever get the chance to sit in on a silent Quaker meeting, take the opportunity. It’s not the kind of experience you’ll get just anywhere. Yes, it’s intense. Yes, it’s likely to be extremely difficult to “center down” and focus for an hour, but
Church in Mission An Open-Handed Gospel | Richard Mouw The President of Fuller (where I attend) had this to say about the need for for charity among Evangelicals in a recent article he wrote for Christianity Today. In a speech I heard several years ago, the Japanese-American theologian Kosuke Koyama put it nicely: We all have to decide, he
