Obama Gets it Right
At the recent Call to Renewal conference, sponsored by Sojourners, a "Christian Left" organization, Barak Obama gave the keynote address (streaming audio), and said some things about faith and politics which were excellent. Now, Al Mohler doesn’t agree, but I was so mad at Mohler’s treatment of the subject on his radio show that I sent him a letter. Here’s the stuff that Obama said, which echoes what I have often said, which I think was very good.
SERIES: Christ and Buddha: A Christian Synthesis
This is actually an outline for a book on this subject I would like to write. One of about 8! So little time to help. Sigh. One step at a time.
- Part I – Introduction
- Part II – What is Truth?
- Part III – What is a Worldview?
- Part IV – Christianity Defined – The Christian World View
- Part V – Buddhism Defined – The Buddhist World View
- Part VI – What is Meditation?
- Part VII – What is Sorely Lacking in Modern Christianity
- Part VIII – What Buddhism Offers the Christian
- Part IX – What is Sorely Lacking in Buddhism
- Part X – What Christianity Offers the Buddhist
- Part XI – Yoga and the Christian
- Part XII – Conclusions
Christ and Buddha: A Christian Synthesis – Part I
This is the most important essay in the entire series, primarily because it outlines the assumptions upon which the rest of the series depends. Just as a house is only as good as its foundation, so philosophical, moralistic, and religious arguments are only as good as the assumptions they are founded upon.
Know Your Presbyterians
It is common, especially in light of the amount of press that the liberal PCUSA is getting recently, to think of Presbyterians as liberal. Of course, there are many types (and btw, I am not a member of any Presbyterian church). Today on Albert Mohler, his guest talked about the PCA, which is the second largest and more conservative branch of Presbyterianism. Interesting is the relative sizes and growth patterns of these two largest Presbyterian sects:
- Presbyterian Church of the USA (PCUSA) – Although this branch of Prebyterianism is the largest, reporting 2.3M members, like other liberal Christian denominations, they’ve been steadily losing members (40000 per year since 1967).
- Presbyterian Church in America (PCA) – This conservative branch of Presbyterianism reports 450,000 members, only 1/4 as large as the PCUSA. However, their numbers are growing slowly at about 4.5% a year for the last 10 years.
AIG Publishes Pretty Online Mag “Answers”
Answers in Genesis, the Young Earth Creationist (YEC) ministry, just launched a new quarterly creation/world view magazine called Answers Magazine, which is also published online (answersmagzine.com), with partial content. I guess that this is replacing their Technical Journal, but will have broader content. Their current (and first) online volume has many articles for free, including ,The Fallacies of Radioactive Dating of Rocks and Genetic Variance of Influenza Type A Avian Virus and its Evolutionary Implications.
What is really cool is that they have implemented a four tier category system for their articles (see image below).
American Gospel : God, the Founding Fathers, and the Making of a Nation
The University Channel podcast is one of the best around, and this talk by Jon Meacham, author of American Gospel : God, the Founding Fathers, and the Making of a Nation, is one of the best and most balanced I’ve heard on God and government. I had typed up some excerpts, but lost them when my browser crashed, but just go listen to the guy, he is excellent, and what I’d call middle-right to centrist on this issue.
Creationists not anti-science?
Ronald Numbers is an historian of science and medicine at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. He is the author of The Creationists (1993), an out of print history of the creationist movement, and also the co-editor of God and Nature, a collection of essays on the historical relationship between science and religion. He definitely has a pro-religion bias, and in a recent PBS interview, he talked about the conflict between religion and science, and how that has played out in history.
Voice of the Martyrs Conference
This year’s annual VOM conference is called Wear the Crown, and Todd over at the Persecution Blog has been blogging the testimonies of many of the speakers – amazing testimonies of people who’ve lost loved ones and continued to minister in closed countries like Iraq and Iran. It makes you realize how little most of us have given for the gospel, and how little we’ve suffered.
As she lay in a hospital bed, dealing with her own injuries and also the pain of finding out that her husband had not survived his injuries, God reminded her, "This world is not your home."
"That is why we are compelled to go running into that darkness. That is why we take the love God has placed in our heart and run to the nations."
As much as I hate to…
I really have been enjoying the lively debates over the last week. I hate I have gotten to participate more, but I have been swamped at work and one of the reasons is I will be out of town and away from a computer all next week.
America’s Got Talent, well some of us
Hi, I’m Regis and you’re watchin’ America’s Got Talent. Let’s meet our judges. Say “Hi” judges.
Hi Regis!
Okay, let’s get started. Here’s our first talent of the evening.
Marriage and the Welfare of America: the Tenth Anniversary of Welfare Reform
The Heritage Foundation has a nice paper that reviews where we’ve come from since the Republican Revolution of 1994, and where we have yet to work on welfare reform. Well worth a read.
Tags: welfare, heritage foundation, reform
The Exciting New ESV Journaling Bible
I am very excited to see that my newfound favorite literal translation of the Bible, the English Standard Version (ESV), has just been published in an edition that has large ruled margins for note-taking. Very nice.
Fighting Pornography Through Personal Integrity
The Defenders is a cool new oraganization fighting pornography, especially child porno, through encouraging men to avoid it and to speak out against it. They have a cool tv spot, and a book list which includes Joe Dallas’ The Game Plan : The Men’s 30-Day Strategy for Attaining Sexual Integrity and Bill Perkins’ When Good Men Are Tempted, among others. You may recognize Joe Dallas as the author of gay recovery books, including Desires in Conflict: Hope for Men Who Struggle With Sexual Identity.
Personal politics
Recently, Gianna Jessen sang the national anthem at Colorado’s House of Representatives and a controversy erupted.
Jessen was born with cerebral palsy and was told by doctors that she would never survive. They were wrong. Twenty-nine years later she travels across the country singing and raising awareness for her disease.
She continues to defy the odds. She was told she would never lift 30 pounds with her legs – she leg presses 200. Despite being told she could not walk, she recently completed the London Marathon with bloody feet and ching joints to raise money and awareness for cerebal palsy.
The circumstances surrounding the performance of this inspiring young lady was called “extremely rude” by the Democratic majority leader in Colorado’s House, because of one little fact.
Jessen is an abortion survivor.
A Tale of Two Churches
“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, … we were all going direct to heaven, we were all going direct the other way…”
- Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities
This oft quoted phrase has never been more applicable than today when examining two denominations and their recent decisions.
GATTACA Comes to Life in PGD
Today, we can screen unborn fetuses for abnormalities. Currently, up to 90% of Down’s Syndrome fetuses are currently aborted before birth, and a recent report from Britain shows that parents are now even aborting for such treatable maladies as club foot and cleft palate.
But now, we can choose BEFORE implantation – designer babies are a reality. How is the "design" done? As in the recent case of a British woman, "fertility engineers" screened fertilized embryos for the right genetic combo needed to provide bone marrow for her existing son who has a blood disorder.
Murtha madness
Rep. Jack Murtha has become the Democrats’ voice on the War in Iraq because of his decorated service as a Marine.
His status as a heroic veteran has stifled some of the criticism, but that will not hold out (see Election 2004, John Kerry), especially when you keep saying the things Murtha is saying.
MacGyver fixes
With the recent MasterCard commercial, a whole new audience is learning of the wonderfulness that is MacGyver, who would have been classified as a demi-God by the ancient Greeks had they known of his powers.
Thanks to Wikipedia, we have a list of problems solved by MacGyver.
Enjoy.
HT: Garfield Ridge
Baptists bash beer and blogs
Despite newly elected president Dr. Frank Page’s promise to show people what Southern Baptist are for, instead of what we are against, many others at the recently completed convention felt the need to condemn beer and blogs.
Hero worship
What religion is your favorite comic book character? Here is an interesting list the explores the faith of superheroes, supervillians and other well-known comic characters.
As a Southern Baptist, I have only Rogue to look up to, and she’s lapsed at that.
The most common religious affiliations of the heroes should be obvious: Catholic and Jewish. Many of the most well-known are simply generic Protestants (Spiderman, Captain America, Cyclops). Atheist are the most common villian, followed by Catholic and Jewish again.
HT: Ace.
