The Spirit of Sacrifice

Tomorrow is a day to celebrate the life and message of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.  Each year when this day approaches, I think about an article I read a couple years ago, “Missing Martin,” which classifies King as one of our antisceptic heroes.  Too often in our society, King’s message has been emasculated, even [...]

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The New Testament and Culture

This semester, the students in my New Testament as Literature class are going to be completing a group project in which they develop a literary critical reading of the New Testament and apply it to some cultural situation, text, or artifact.  I plan on writing this essay alongside them.  I thought it would be interesting [...]

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The Word of God in the Age of the Toyota Prius

*Special thanks to Stephen Greenblatt, whose clever palimpsest of Walter Benjamin may be the best title formula ever.
It’s time to discard your old Bible and purchase the new HarperCollins Green Bible.  That’s right, the Bible, much like just about everything else in our culture these days, is going green.  It has gone green.  No wait, that’s [...]

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Sarah Palin and Reasons Why Churches Should Not Have Tax Exempt Status

In the days since Sarah Palin emerged as the Republican VP candidate, droves of artifacts from her past have surfaced.  Apparently she’s a former beauty pageant contestant, sportscaster, PTA supporter, small town mayor, avowed hockey mom, and (unfortunately) a member of an Assemblies of God church.
A video from Wasilla Assembly of God in Alaska that [...]

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Living with War in Watertown

This morning I was reading a section of Nancy Welch’s Living Room (2008),a pedagogical theory book that tackles the task of teaching public writing and writing as resistence in the post-9/11 era of government infringement on intellectual freedom. One of the “success stories” Welch mentions is a new coffee house in my hometown, Watertown, [...]

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Soldiers for Christ After All?

Like many people, I am saddened to hear of the recent shooting at Colorado Springs’ New Life Church. New Life has been in the headlines off an on for at least two years. It’s the church of Ted Haggard, former President of the National Association of Evangelicals and former pastor of the church who took [...]

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The End…Is Near: Don Thompson’s Apocalyptic Nightmare

If it seems like this blog is plowing along, that’s because it is. It’s the end of the semester, and I’m in an apocalyptic mood, not because I have a bunch of term papers due, but because I’m teaching my least favorite book of the New Testament, the Revelation. One member of my Sunday School [...]

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