Carl Trueman as Dove and Serpent
A follow-up on my last post: For a calm, loving, and incisive response to Lisa Miller's pro-gay opinion piece in Newsweek, see Carl Trueman's excellent article at Reformation 21. Carl Trueman is always, always worth reading, even if he thinks the blogosphere is a "narcissistic echo-chamber." He's right, of course.
Homosexuality, Serpents, and Doves
The tag-line for BJU's What in the World! newsletter is "helping believers be wise as serpents and harmless as doves." I borrowed, of course, the words of Jesus in Matt. 10:16 as He sends His disciples out on a preaching tour. Every sinful age demands that Christ's disciples have this serpentine wisdom or cunning—φρόνιμος is the same word used to describe the "subtil" serpent in Gen 3:1 (LXX). So one major purpose of What in the World! is to engage in what Bryan W. Smith calls...
Bad Times Draw Bigger Crowds to Churches – NYTimes.com
Another good reason to read the New York Times: Mark Minnick does! He mentioned in his Sunday-evening sermon that he had just read that afternoon the article from which I offer this interesting excerpt: In “Praying for Recession: The Business Cycle and Protestant Religiosity in the United States,” David Beckworth, an assistant professor of economics at Texas State University, looked at long-established trend lines showing the growth of evangelical congregations and the decline of mainline...
Book Giveaway
Trevin Wax is giving away free books to one randomly selected person.
Tolerance as a Defense Mechanism
Stanley Fish is always provocative and thoughtful in his New York Times blog. I presume his books bear the same qualities, though I've only ever picked up his most famous. Gilbert Meilaender recently reviewed in First Things a new Fish book addressed to college professors: Save the World on Your Own Time. Fish is on an admirable search for truth, according to Meilaender: "You will never,” Fish writes, “hear in any of my classes the some-people-say-X-but-others-say-Y-and-who’s-to-judge dance....