This weekend I will finish reading two books that we were given through the podcast (thank you publishers). The first is Peter Rollins new on The Idolatry of God and the second is Phil Snider’s Preaching After God. I have recently edited podcasts with both of these authors. [We put out the Phil Snider TNT … Continue reading »
Charles Taylor, in his book Modern Social Imaginaries, utilizes the term ‘social imaginary’ to refer to god-like capacity described by Benedict Anderson in Imagined Communities. The term encompasses a threefold meaning: First is the way that ordinary people “imagine” their surroundings in images, stories, and legends. Second is the general acceptance and participation in the … Continue reading »
Listening to Howard Zinn (author of the classic A People’s History of the United States) at a town hall meeting style presentation recorded in 2007 (you can get it on Itunes from WGBH Politics) I was struck by the need to recognize the sheer complexity of issues and multiplicity of perspectives. To state it as … Continue reading »
It has become quite clear over the past several years that the source of many arguments in my life and in our culture originate with a desire to reduce things down to their simplest components or lowest common denominator. Over the past decade I have really embraced a complexity model of things. I can illustrate … Continue reading »
In chapter 7 of Predicament of Belief, Philip Clayton introduces a 6 tiered scale of epistemic certainty. Things that are nearly universally agreed upon (by the ‘community of experts’) are at a level 1. Issues like ‘Ultimate Reality’ that can not be verified but can deduced in relative certainty are at a level 2. Matters … Continue reading »
I had the chance to teach adult Sunday School this past weekend as we worked our way through Brian McLaren’s A New Kind of Christianity. We are up to Question 9 “the Pluralism Question”. I had looked forward to this all Summer. Now unfortunately I did not have the time to cover some classics on … Continue reading »
I got an email from a friend asking me: “ … there’s just one thing that I’m still not sure about: the idea that God changes over time. And the reason this bugs me is because, to me, that means we can never know who/what God is. How do we know that God really is … Continue reading »
I have been burning through my Summer reading list and I seem to have stumbled onto a rich vein of form! The odd thing is that they are all books with ‘God’ in the title. There are 5 (out of about 20) but they seem to have all ended up in the middle of stack. … Continue reading »
It is fascinating what happens to conversations when you take away one word. Words are like little suitcases – people put understandings or concepts in them and then carry them around as self contained units. Its so easy! They come with these convenient little handles and you can you pack so much meaning in and … Continue reading »
originally posted at Homebrewed Christianity Writing a paper on Globalization called for a serious study break and so I headed to the opening day of the Hunger Games. There are three things that you should know about my movie going experience: My theater is one block from UCLA and I appeared to be the oldest … Continue reading »
