Well, Earth Day 2012 has come and gone. I did not take part in any events specifically focused on Earth Day concerns—although I did put a bunch of things in the recycling bin. And I thought about a lesson I learned on the very first Earth Day, April 22, 1970. I was into my second […]
I have a piece on how to be a “worldly Christian” in one of my favorite magazines, from Singapore. You can read it here
I want to be a worldly Christian. In the Christian community in which I was raised, saying that would have gotten me voted off the island. “Worldliness” was a bad thing. And you can find Bible verses to prove that point. The Apostle John told the early Christians that they ought not to “love the world or anything in...
In Nathaniel Hawthorne’s novel The Marble Faun, Miriam, who struggles much with guilt, is hoping for empathy from her friend Hilda, whom Miriam views as a model of purity. When Hilda backs away from their friendship, Miriam offers this theological assessment of her friend’s incapacity for empathy: “I have always said, Hilda, that you were merciless; for I had...
I just read in the Christian Century that John Hick died in February, at the age of 90. I saw him as an important conversation partner at various times in my own academic pilgrimage. Early on in my teaching days, I assigned his little Philosophy of Religion book to my undergraduate classes. When he started writing about the Incarnation...
ABC News, “Some Scholars Skeptical of Mormons’ Bad Name,” by Katti Gray,11/23/11
Dr. Mouw’s commitment to dialogue was mentioned in this article about Mormons. “There is a nice, behind-the-scenes dialogue going on right now between Mormon leaders and Richard Mouw at Fuller Theological Seminary. And no one would question his Christian orthodoxy,” Patrick Mason of Claremont Graduate University...
The Catholic bishops have been upset with President Obama for insisting that Catholic hospitals and universities provide birth control services—including the “morning after” pill that is in effect a means of abortion in their view. Nor have they been placated by the “compromise” the Administration has offered.
I don’t blame the bishops for being outraged. While I don’t share their...
The latest issue of the New Oxford Review, which I read to keep up on what is happening on the traditionalist end of the Catholic spectrum, devotes six pages of its letters section to passionate exchanges about Fatima. For those who need a review of the Fatima story: in 1917, three shepherd children, ten-year-old Lucia and her...
An ad in the New York Review of Books announces a film—being shown in a few major cities—with the title Paul Goodman Changed My Life. The ad describes the subject of the film as “the most influential man you’ve never heard of,” and A. O. Scott of the New York Times offers the opinion that “the time...
A friend told me about the time a time when, back in the 1960s, he was asked, as a recent college graduate bound for seminary studies, to address his home congregation—an all-white congregation in the Midwest—about his hopes for studying for the ministry. One thing he mentioned to the congregation was his desire to be more effective as a...
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