I have learned that navigating doubt is always a matter of discernment. We must be quick to hear, slow to speak, and slow to shut down the conversation with premature pronouncements. We must learn to walk together with patience, love, and hope, trusting that there is something deeper than doubt.
That’s where I found it, standing just off the road, on gravel, across from a cemetery, all the ingredients of a dead church once upon a time named Zion Pres. Out here, not all of such ruins are Presbyterian. Many are Lutheran, some on the reservation are Episcopal. They come in all flavors, although size is fairly standard on the edge of the Plains: not big.
The central proposition of the book is that a recognition of the virtues that are shared and valued by both the scientific community and by religious communities can lead to mutual understanding and constructive dialog, even (or especially) where there may be areas of disagreement.
Those who are rigidly orthodox and steeped in certain evangelical language may find Native pushing the boundaries of what’s acceptable and what veers into the realm of syncretism. Even I found myself uncomfortable in places, seeing where my theology seems to diverge from Curtice’s worldview. But if the last ten years of being in the white, male, evangelical spaces of seminary have taught me anything, it’s that we fear what we don’t know.
Those who are rigidly orthodox and steeped in certain evangelical language may find Native pushing the boundaries of what’s acceptable and what veers into the realm of syncretism. Even I found myself uncomfortable in places, seeing where my theology seems to diverge from Curtice’s worldview. But if the last ten years of being in the white, male, evangelical spaces of seminary have taught me anything, it’s that we fear what we don’t know.
Art and Faith is part personal testimony, part theological aesthetics, and part aesthetic theology. Fujimura’s aim goes beyond asking the church to take the arts seriously. What he is after is a paradigm shift in the way Christians construe the life of faith and our relationship to the world.
Is commending and demonstrating the factual truth of Christianity the only way to practice apologetics? In his new book, Justin Bailey contends that this practiced form of apologetics—while not unimportant—does not exhaust apologetics. In fact, only focusing on the intellect can create an imbalance in apologetic practice.
While division is not new, this year feels different. Both parties paint pictures of a dystopian future if the “enemy” wins. Historians like Kristen Kobes Du Mez and Jemar Tisby remind us that while the volume has been turned up, the beats are still the same. Othering, fear mongering, and name calling are not new ingredients in a presidential election.
Lately, I’ve been having a crisis of faith. But I am not doubting the presence or goodness of God—what I am doubting is the power and goodness of words.
I’m a bit ashamed to admit that for a long time, this was what our family clung to—the hope that everything would return to how it once had been. And yet, I think by now we’ve all accepted that it never will.
I am not equipped for this. Covid, George Floyd, a string of wild fires, the deadly explosion in Beirut, a locust swarm in East Africa, protests in Hong Kong, a derecho in my own backyard…not to mention murder hornets, meth-gators, and nunchuck bears, oh my! I quite literally cannot keep up with the constant stream of bad news and heartbreak that seems poised to crush us all.
Traditionally, we have envisioned idols to be actual miniature, carved stone or wooden deities around which liturgical practices or cultic worship is practiced. However, that which steals from faith is almost always much more subtle than that.
Critical Faith podcast is a space that fosters conversation about all things faith, fellowship, and society and that it gives its audience a glimpse into the everyday life of the students at the Institute for Christian Worship Studies.
Planned curriculum is not the only thing that gets conveyed to the young people in our care. If you are planning to teach, mentor, or minister to children, teens, or young adults, I encourage you to begin by checking your assumptions. The words we use are one thing. The ideas—and especially the unspoken ideas—that lie behind these words are another.
With my career in youth ministry for the past six years, one of the major things I’ve come to discover about the faith development of young people is that it has so much less to do with being fed the answers, and so much more to do with things like wonder and curiosity.
In addition to the fact that I apparently have a soft spot for Christmas carols with the symphonic “O” in their title, I love “O Come” because it is achingly beautiful. The minor key quiets my frenzied brain even as it stirs up deeper longings in my soul—a hunger and thirst for righteousness, to see Jesus face-to-face.
This is how it often feels to work for an institution like the church in 2019. Trends so much larger than myself make my prayers and pastoral work feel meaningless. I’ve been feeling this way about my denomination, the RCA, recently. Each week in our church, we say some version of this refrain: When the person of Jesus Christ is at the center of our lives and our worship, there is space for loving one another in disagreement.
What lessons might we, as Christian stewards of the creation, take from this story of the ozone hole?
The first part of this article stated the dangerous (albeit tempting) tennets of Gnosticism and how they lead to the separation of the spiritual and the physical; and in this part of the article, I will continue to discuss how our physical states should demonstrate our inner spirituality.
Jonathan Merritt, in his new book, sets out to learn how to speak about his faith in new ways in order to articulate the central ideas so that non-Christians can understand.
Collin Hansen’s describes the popular resurgence of Calvinist doctrine in the first decade of the twentieth century in three words: young, restless, and Reformed.
In the cross of Christ, we find the most profound tension of opposites: life and death.
Nate Pyle’s second book called More Than You Can Handle wrestles with the oft-recited platitude, “God won’t give you more than you can handle.”
Larsen’s three chapters relate to the larger themes of incarnation, skepticism, and sanctification within the greater context of the Victorian crisis of faith.
First Reformed is set in and around the longest continuously operated church in the United States and focuses attention on its pastor Ernst Toller played masterfully by Ethan Hawke.