Matthew Green has just posted a very interesting article, “The Church Dropout,” which looks at the growing number of people choosing no longer to attend church, despite not having lost their faith, choosing less formal meetings or other forms of participation in Christian community. The article addresses several important ecclesiological issues brought up by this [...] Read more »
Dispensational Eschatology and Politics
There’s a pretty good post on how various eschatological perspectives have influenced American foreign policy decisions over at the New Jerusalem Community Blog. Though not exactly precise in terminology (identifying “premillennial” with “dispensational” when the former does not necessarily imply the latter), the blog is an excellent read about how certain end times theologies have [...] Read more »
Reading the Bible On Its Own Terms
John Hobbins over at Ancient Hebrew Poetry has put up an outstanding post on reading the Bible, gracefully making a point I’ve emphasized for years: Claims about the Bible work best if you take the time to actually read its contents with the empathy one reserves for any potential friend whose acquaintance you have not [...] Read more »
Articles I’ve been reading lately
Due to term papers, I’ve not been able to keep up with blogging much, but here are the articles I’ve been wanting to blog about of late: Swimming Without A Suit (NY Times Op-Ed, Thomas Friedman): An excellent piece about the failure of the American education system and its impact on the financial future of [...] Read more »
Church Shopping and Consumer Religion
Andrew Santella has an interesting piece on Slate.com about Americans’ consumer approach to churches (The Church Search: Why American churchgoers like to shop around). He makes a few standard observations about the angst often showed towards the phenomenon—go to just about any church and you’ll hear warnings about the dangers of such “spiritual consumerism” and [...] Read more »