Both our Hebrew and Greek scriptures hold a vision of the kingdom of God where the rich and powerful are knocked down off their pedestals of arrogance and pride, and the poor and marginalized are lifted up out of the pits of despair, and all people are called to live in harmony and at least … Continue reading “The Upside Down World of God”
Category: inclusivity
Church in the World Today
In America and the Challenges of Religious Diversity (2005), Robert Wuthnow, an American sociologist, argues that we have possibly been going about these ecumenical (inter-Christian) and inter-faith dialogues all wrong. He writes that we have been so focused on theology (understandings about God) that we have completely missed the opportunities to simply be in relationship, … Continue reading “Church in the World Today”
Why Does Church Matter?
This past week I took a class from Lillian Daniel at McCormick Theological Seminary as part of my D.Min. Studies. The class was entitled “Why Church Matters In a Culture if Narcissism.” We had several guests join us via Skype (Will Willimon,
The values that hold us together?
A new/old journey has begun/continued, not unlike the modernist/orthodox journey of the early 20th century with Reinhold Niebuhr’s realist orthodoxy (shedding the utopian vision of earlier evangelicals but clinging to the pillars of evangelical fundamentals). In my D.Min. studies I am taking a class with the snarky title: “Why Church Matters in an Age of … Continue reading “The values that hold us together?”
Hope for Redemption?
One of the books I’ve been reading for my D.Min. program is by Mary McClintock Fulkerson called Places of Redemption: Theology for a Worldly Church. She follows a southern multiracial congregation through its trials and triumphs as they seek to be multicultural. Her book starts with this small United Methodist congregation as a dying white … Continue reading “Hope for Redemption?”