By: Deve Persad on April 3, 2014
It was a different world. The patio at the back is only vague memory. What I remember more is the soft cushion of lush grass that grew on either side of the stone walkway that extended from that back patio. The walkway made its way through, winding a little bit, and then beyond the garden…
By: David Toth on April 3, 2014
It was August of 1979 when I loaded up my household goods and my family and drove to Toccoa, Georgia to attend Bible college. The plan to make this move had been activated two years earlier and most everything had gone well, except the economy. Unemployment was high and interest rates were higher yet. My…
By: Phil Smart on April 3, 2014
Always Already New: Media, History and the Data of Culture by Lisa Gitelman, looks back so that she can look forward. I felt that this was a timely book as my son who is in his mid-20s came for a visit from Chicago two weeks ago. He had taken the train and as we met…
By: Michael Badriaki on March 30, 2014
When I get the chance to visit and live in various countries and communities, I always find myself wondering as to whether people in the non-western context experience vastly different effects of modernity. Charles Taylor’s book called Modern Social Imaginaries, labors to discuss the possibility of the presence of “multiple modernities”. Taylor notes: From the…
By: Michael Badriaki on March 30, 2014
While studying Bauman Zygmunt’ book called Collateral Damage: Social Inequalities in a Global Age, it was clear that the author provides a critique of modern-day social inequality, I couldn’t help but think about local and global inequity and disparities. I appreciated the perspective which promoted a vast understanding of the relationship between inequality, democracy and…
By: Michael Badriaki on March 30, 2014
In my opinion, Karl Polanyi’ book The Great Transformation, is a great resource for anyone who desires to understand the crisis of capitalism in the twenty first century. According Stiglitz, Polanyi’s book describes the great transformation of European civilization from the preindustrial world to the ear of industrialization and the shifts in ideas, ideologies, and…
By: Sam Stephens on March 26, 2014
A Brief Guide to Ideas by William Raeper and Linda Edwards provides a great overview of thoughts, philosophies and ideas of the Western world since almost the beginning. The book makes it plain and clear that philosophy cannot be brushed aside as lacking relevance in the present post modern, post Christian culture as it may…
By: Mark Steele on March 23, 2014
Raeper and Edwards in their book A Brief Guide to Ideas does a fair job summarizing philosophical and theological thought through the ages. What caught my attention was their chapter titled How Should Society be Organized (Raeper and Edwards 1997 p. 137)? I have had the opportunity to travel internationally the past few years, especially…
By: Richard Rhoads on March 23, 2014
Ever since my days in youth ministry I have always enjoyed a good slip and slide. A little soap, a good long sheet of plastic, a steep hill and a whole lot of water is all you need to have a whole lot of fun. So when I heard of the “Crazy Insane Water Slide”…
By: Michael Badriaki on March 23, 2014
Douthat’s book “, Bad Religion: How We Became a Nation of Heretics”, is an intense and sobering read. The author’s work is informative indeed and even though it’s a magnifying polemic on American Christendom, one can’t help but feel all sorts of emotions along with follow up inquiry. Case in point, what have I believed…
By: John Woodward on March 22, 2014
The Church in America is in decline. The question many recent books have asked is why and if there is any hope? Diana Butler Bass’s Christianity After Religion provides a generous dose of statistics to illustrate the extent of this crisis. She points out that in 1970, “some 95 percent of Americans said they were…
By: Liz Linssen on March 21, 2014
According to Douthat, American Christianity has lost its moorings from the harbour of the orthodox faith. We are in an age where “the only Jesus who really matters is the one you invent for yourself.” [i] Where accommodationists imitate Jesus’ “scandalously comprehensive love, while ignoring his scandalously comprehensive judgments.” [ii] A period when conspiracy theorists…
By: Telile Fikru Badecha on March 21, 2014
A couple of years ago, I was invited to share about my ministry with a mission committee at one of my ministry partner churches in the area. I gave them an overview of what we do and how their generous support helps us provide our communities with basic physical needs by building elementary schools, for…
By: rhbaker275 on March 21, 2014
I was encouraged in my Focus 40 devotion for day ten leading up to Easter. It addressed, in a round-about way, the theme in much of the book Bad Religion: How We Became a Nation of Heretics by Ross Douthat.[1] The devotion, written by missionary Kelly Philips, faces the problem of how Christianity, which includes each…
By: Bill Dobrenen on March 21, 2014
What do you see in the picture above? What you see may depend on what you are looking for. Also, what you see one moment may not be there the next moment, or it might be the opposite of what you saw in the first place. Or perhaps you see two different things at the…
By: Mitch Arbelaez on March 21, 2014
As I read this weeks book Bad Religion: How We Became a Nation of Heretics, I was awed by the author’s writing ability, not simply by his ingenious craftiness of sentence structure but by his incredible ability of synthesis – taking many historical facts both positive and negative and reconstructing in a few pages the…
By: Carol McLaughlin on March 21, 2014
Heresy is a word that seems to be thrown about with too much ease, almost like a ball tossed in the air for a tennis serve. Struck with passion and force it is upon its opponent quickly resulting in a defensive response. A noticeable similarity between tennis and heresy is in the volley. Yet surprisingly…
By: Phil Smart on March 20, 2014
“Mirror, mirror on the wall, who’s the fairest of them all?” We all remember this phrase from the fairy tale Snow White. Mirrors that could tell us what we want or what we envision, whether true or false, would probably sell out quickly at the local retailer – if they existed. But this was a…
By: Ashley Goad on March 20, 2014
I am the ultimate optimist. The glass is always half-full. See a basket of lemons? Let’s make lemonade. And there is always a silver lining, or something to learn from a difficult situation, even when there seems to be no hope at all. Some may call me naïve or an idealist, but I pray to…
By: Richard Volzke on March 20, 2014
The rise and decline of the church’s influence in the 20th century was affected by various factors and trends of that day. Political, economic, geopolitical, and inner self-awareness all effected how Christianity was viewed in society, either positively or negatively. Douthat, in his book Bad Religion, explains that every human being is religious and believes…
