What Jesus Learned from a Courageous Woman (and what we can learn too!)
One of the more fascinating stories in the Gospels that many Christians conveniently ignore is Jesus’ encounter with the Canaanite woman in Matthew 19:21-28 (par. Mark 7:24-30). Here is how it reads in...
View ArticleStump a Bible Scholar: Wrestling with Zoroastrianism Influences
Tuesday is Stump a Scholar Day here at Patheos Progressive Christian — and no question is too tough or too radical for our experts! This month, we’re answering your questions about the Bible with...
View ArticleTwo Visions, One Book — That’s Just the Way It Is
Biblical scholar John Dominic Crossan argues in his book, God and Empire: Jesus Against Rome, Then and Now, that in the biblical tradition, both Old and New Testaments, two incompatible and...
View ArticleRethinking the Bible’s Place (It’s Just the Way It Is, Part 2)
There are some Christians who give the Bible godlike homage. It might as well have come floating down from heaven on the wings of angels. Should we ascribe to the Bible divine status? In Nazi Germany a...
View ArticleMaking the Most of What We Have Been Given (A Sermon on the Parable of the...
I don’t know if there is any truth to it or not, but the story is told that when Britain faced a critical shortage of silver during the days of WWII Winston Churchill launched a search of possible...
View ArticleA Spiritual Path to Gratitude
Brother David Steindl-Rast has contended in his writings that gratitude is foundational to a healthy spiritual life. If that is true, and I believe it is, then how might we expand our capacity for...
View Article“Papa, if God wants to bring us peace and light, why did he help the...
I don’t always allow my daughter, who is seven, to read during church service. Technically, it’s Mass, as we are Roman Catholic. But I grew up in an Evangelical charismatic church, and sometimes it...
View ArticleDe-terrorizing the Texts of Terror: What The Bible’s “Punishing God” is...
There are any number of texts in the Bible that depict God as a punishing God, and God’s punishments, according to these texts, can be quite severe. I have noticed that some evangelicals who emphasize...
View ArticleConnecting the Q in LGBTQ to the Bible’s ‘Q’ Source
Several times over the past few weeks, people have asked me, “What does the ‘Q’ in LGBTQ stand for?” One of them, oddly enough, segued into asking, “What is the ‘Q’ source in biblical studies?” I am by...
View ArticleGenesis: The First Messy, Tangled Act in God’s Long Story of Becoming Humane
For the last couple of months, I’ve been studying the book of Genesis with a group of very bright young University of Southern California (USC) students. I’m the adviser for our “Church of the Broken...
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