A Simple Question

I was pondering this today, and I decided to put it into a Facebook-friendly graphic. As someone who teaches World Religions, it seems fairly obvious to me that fundamentalists – Muslim, Christian, Jewish, Zoroastrian…doesn’t matter – have a consistent history of always being wrong about everything.  So, with that said, why… Continue reading

There is no “War on Religion” in the United States

With his usual surgical wit, Jon Stewart chastised the “Religious Right” saying, “You’ve confused a ‘War on Religion’ with ‘Not always getting everything you want.’”  He is spot on, but their confusion is not accidental.  The far right in the United States has come to realize that the only way… Continue reading

Why Shorter’s Demise Matters

  When the Board of Trustees at Shorter College in Rome, Georgia lost a long legal battle with an increasingly fundamentalist Georgia Baptist Convention, many of us held out hope that the faculty, students, and alumni would be able to fight back against the pernicious influence of fundamentalism.  Our vigil… Continue reading

What Do Christians Believe? A Response

If we limit ourselves to widely-held stereotypes, the answer seems filled with cognitive dissonance. On the other hand, if we allow his response to help us brush away all the detritus of easy caricatures and selfish political agendas, we can then answer honestly. When we do, we can preserve a voice that is uniquely Christian, and we can allow that voice to speak in a way that is neither shrill nor strident. Instead, the Christian voice becomes one that can sing in harmony with the rest of us, the rest of humanity, as we all seek to find hope in the darkness of empty tombs. Continue reading