By: Wallace Kamau on February 1, 2020
It’s common knowledge that human beings will make good of every opportunity for fame and recognition and go to any length to gain them. History is full of men who would not hesitate to kill others or use other crude and unjust means in order to gain power, fame and all that goes with positions…
By: Harry Fritzenschaft on February 1, 2020
Will Jones emphasizes how Spencer recounts the pivotal role that Christianity has played in the formation of Western ideas, values, institutions, and culture in his book, The Evolution of the West. Through a series of essays developed through his work with Theos, a Christian think tank based in Westminster, UK, Spencer is careful not to…
By: Mary Mims on February 1, 2020
It is no surprise for those who know me, that I am a lover of all things relating to science. It started with the third-grade science teacher who defended me from students teasing me about the giant baby shoes I wore to correct my pronation. Since that time, I loved him and the class…
By: Sean Dean on January 31, 2020
My oldest and youngest seem to hate each other a large portion of the time. Of course they do not hate each other, it just seems that way. Frequently the situation plays out where JT asks JP if he can play with a particular toy because it is his turn. JP rejects JT’s request out…
By: Tammy Dunahoo on January 31, 2020
I live in a realm of policies, protocols and bylaws with a three-inch-wide “Guide to Services.” When questioning the curators of this knowledge, “Why does this exist?” one quickly discovers that every policy has a story behind it. A narrative about a situation where someone made a decision that had consequences, sometimes for many people.…
By: Jenn Burnett on January 31, 2020
The rise in populism in the west at times leads me to wonder whether the democratic system has run its course. At its best, democracy safeguards against extremism as elected officials presumably represent the majority centre of a given state. Unfortunately, we are seeing increasing polarization in many places resulting in election results that are…
By: Karen Rouggly on January 30, 2020
“At the bedrock of our politics will be a total allegiance to the United States of America, and through our loyalty to our country, we will rediscover our loyalty to each other. When you open your heart to patriotism, there is no room for prejudice. The Bible tells us, how good and pleasant it is…
By: Andrea Lathrop on January 30, 2020
I am three days into the Context, Culture and Mission intensive course with Dr. Len Sweet at Southeastern University. I would be lying if I did not admit that my brain is hurting. Several years ago I had a conversation with Dr. Sweet where he remarked that Jesus did not come to make us more…
By: Harry Edwards on January 30, 2020
The year was 2004. The Olympics were held in Athens, Greece where a total of 10,625 athletes from 201 countries competed in 301 sporting events. NASA successfully landed the Mars Exploration Rover (MER) on Mars. U.S. President George W. Bush beats John Kerry in the elections garnering him a second term. His political platform was…
By: Mario Hood on January 30, 2020
I heard a speaker/preacher once say at church, “if you go back far enough, everyone has a past.” The purpose of saying that was to make everyone realize you are not where you use to be but never think of yourself to highly because, without God, none of us would be where we are at…
By: Rev Jacob Bolton on January 29, 2020
The germination story of Christianity is a marriage of two cultures and the theological struggle holding them both in tension. On the one hand we have the Hebrew culture, the culture that originated in a nomadic, tribal people; whose history consisted of grand stories of Exodus and Exile. The people rarely had autonomous political power…
By: Karen Rouggly on January 26, 2020
*Please note, this blog was written while in the middle of the flu. Not just any flu, THE flu. The one that hit hard this week, spiking my fever to 103 and then took my entire body down to the depths of depravity with it. While I have been fever-free for 24 hours, it’s only…
By: John Muhanji on January 26, 2020
The title of the book threw me out of the balance “The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind.” I am coming from an evangelical tradition of the Friends church in Africa, and this title was scared for sure. The church in Africa was established by evangelical movement from North America beginning from the 19th and 20th…
By: Nancy VanderRoest on January 26, 2020
Learning to grow into one’s faith can be a tricky journey. Growing up as a Catholic, I knew that I was in the “right” religion. As Catholics, we always understood that we were “number 1” in God’s book. We had beautiful Bibles, which were large and ornate, and we polished them every week to keep…
By: Wallace Kamau on January 25, 2020
Having resources, position or knowledge is one thing and maximizing their usage for better results is quite another thing. Leadership is about mobilizing people and other resources to achieve the set objectives and maximizing the results. The measure of one’s leadership ability is the results that you produce. Mark Knoll, in analyzing the Evangelical churches,…
By: Digby Wilkinson on January 25, 2020
Good grief I am getting old. I have the 1994 edition of Mark Noll’s Scandal of the Evangelical Mind sitting on my shelf which I read in 1995.[1] On first reading, I remember thinking it was a rather harsh experience, but once I realised it was mainly about Americans, I felt so much better. However,…
By: Mary Mims on January 24, 2020
The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind is a fascinating work by Mark A. Noll of the study of the evangelical mind, and how evangelicals, especially modern American evangelicals, “have failed notably in sustaining serious intellectual life.”[1] Noll is a prolific writer and research professor of history at Regent College in Vancouver, B.C., Canada, specializing in…
By: Harry Fritzenschaft on January 24, 2020
John Fea describes Mark Noll’s The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind as continuing to serve as a guiding light, an intellectual road map, and a source of inspiration decades later for many of Noll’s readers. The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind convinced Fea that the life of the mind was a legitimate calling despite his…
By: Tammy Dunahoo on January 24, 2020
In John’s account of Jesus before Pilate there is an interesting exchange that I reflected on while reading this week: Jesus answered, “For this reason I was born, and for this reason I came into the world— to testify to the truth. Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice.” Pilate asked, “What is truth?”[1]…
By: Jenn Burnett on January 24, 2020
I fell in love with academia by accident. In fact I would not have even stumbled upon my love of learning without the requirements of the church for ministry. While I grew up in a mainline denomination that fully affirmed academia, I have always been drawn to the inclusive nature of Jesus. The incarnation points…
