American pastors have significantly different views on human origins based on where they live, according to new Barna Group research commissioned by BioLogos.

Somewhat predictably, pastors in the South are most likely to believe in young-earth creation (YEC), with 58 percent supporting YEC or leaning toward that position. But the regional stronghold of theistic evolution (TE) is not where you might think.

(BP) Southern Baptist apologist Mike Licona sparked a theological war of words (and subsequently left his job) in 2011 when he questioned the "raised saints" passage of Matthew 27. Now a group of noted theologians has assessed Licona's controversial analysis in a roundtable discussion in the Southeastern Theological Review.

According to Messiah College professor and author Eric Seibert, misuse of the Bible is not just Christians' fault. Rather, the problem "runs right through the pages of Scripture itself."

(RNS) Leaders of Catholic and Reformed churches have signed an agreement to recognize each other’s sacraments of baptism, a public step toward unity among groups that are often divided by doctrine.

The Tennessean is reporting that LifeWay Christian Resources will not sell its Glorieta Conference Center to Olivet University amid concerns that the school's founder and spiritual leader heads a movement that teaches he is a new Christ.

Nearly 8 in 10 Americans do not believe that the Bible tells them who to vote for this presidential election, according to the American Bible Society’s "State of the Bible 2012."

This year’s annual report, conducted by Barna Group, indicates that Americans’ views of the Bible’s role in politics vary largely by generation, but that Americans still perceive themselves to be relatively pious – if "not always knowledgeable" about the Bible itself.

The Presbyterian Church in America (PCA) has officially rebuked Wycliffe Bible Translators' approach to translating the phrase "Son of God" for Muslims, and recommended that the small denomination's churches withdraw financial support from such Bible translations if they remain uncorrected.

Wycliffe, already at risk of losing support from the 3-million-member Assemblies of God over its guidelines for Muslim translations, has agreed to a review of its practices by the World Evangelical Alliance. The Assemblies of God has delayed its decision until the review is completed, likely by year's end.

But yesterday the 40th General Assembly of the 347,000-member PCA overwhelmingly approved an investigative committee's recommendation that "Bibles should always translate divine familial terms using common biological terms" because "social familial terms fail to capture the biblical meaning of 'Son' (huios) and 'Son of God' (huios tou theou) applied to Jesus and 'Father' (pater) applied to God."

The resolution is similar to last year's PCA condemnation of "translations of the Bible that remove from the text references to God as 'Father' (pater) or Jesus as 'Son' (huios), because such removals compromise doctrines of the Trinity, the person and work of Jesus Christ, and Scripture.” However, this year's report also recommends that "PCA churches and committees should redirect missions resources away from projects which deviate from the translation principles articulated in this report," should "loving attempts" at correcting such translators fail.

The report also expresses skepticism of past explanations by Wycliffe regarding its approach to Muslim translations. "Current evidence from agencies points at best to a lack of unanimity, and in some cases to frank resistance, concerning a strong commitment to biological divine sonship terminology," notes the report. "Given the inadequate attention they have given heretofore to the theological implications of Jesus’ begotten-ness, we lack confidence at the present time to accept blanket statements made by translation agencies or their representatives that there exist languages in which the use of non-biological kinship terms constitutes best practices."

The committee will spend one more year assessing what specific actions the PCA should take on "insider movements" more broadly.

Missionaries to Muslims recently agreed to soften criticisms of each other over contextualization practices.

A just-released survey by LifeWay Research has found that roughly equal numbers of Southern Baptist pastors identify their congregations as Calvinist/Reformed (30 percent) or Arminian/Wesleyan (30 percent). However, more than 60 percent of pastors are concerned about Calvinism's influence on the denomination.

The SBC debate over Calvinism shifted to heresy accusations shortly before the denomination's annual meeting began today. Baptist Press, which is liveblogging today and tomorrow's annual meeting, reports that several SBC leaders have addressed the controversy.

SBC president Bryant Wright offered a "word" for both Calvinists ("A bit of humility would be most welcome") and traditional Southern Baptists ("The time for judgmentalism is over") as he told attendees to focus on the Great Commission instead of the theology of salvation.

"Let us understand that these two views on election and salvation can co-exist as long as we stay Christ-centered and biblically based in our theology," he said.

Meanwhile, Executive Committee president Frank Page expressed concern about "non-Calvinists who are more concerned about rooting out Calvinists than they are about winning lost to Christ," as well as "Calvinists who view those who disagree with them as unintelligent," according to Baptist Press.

The new LifeWay survey, released today, finds that 16 percent of SBC pastors today identify themselves as "five-point Calvinists," up from 10 percent in 2006 and in 2011. The majority of five-point Calvinist pastors are under 45.

A similar 2007 study of young ministers by the SBC's North American Mission Board discovered that almost 35 percent of SBC ministers that graduated from SBC seminaries in 2004 and 2005 self-identified as "five-point Calvinists."

AURORA, Ill. (BP) -- Bishop T.D. Jakes says he has moved away from a "Oneness" view of the Godhead to embrace an orthodox definition of the Trinity -- and that some in the Oneness Pentecostal movement now consider him a heretic.

Jakes -- long a controversial figure among evangelicals because of his past unwillingness to affirm the Trinity -- stated his belief Wednesday (Jan. 27) at the second-annual Elephant Room (theelephantroom.com), an event that brings together Christian figures from different backgrounds for what organizers call "conversations you never thought you'd hear." This year's Elephant Room was held at Harvest Bible Chapel in Illinois and was simulcast to other locations nationwide.

Jakes, founder and senior pastor of The Potter's House in Dallas, was the focus of a motion at Southern Baptist Convention annual meetings in 2009 and 2010 by a messenger who wanted LifeWay Christian Stores to stop selling his books. One was ruled out of order by the SBC president, the other referred to LifeWay for study.

Jakes -- who once made the cover of Time magazine, which asked if he might be the next Billy Graham -- said he was saved in a Oneness Pentecostal church. Oneness Pentecostalism denies the Trinity and claims that instead of God being three persons, He is one person. In Oneness Pentecostalism, there is no distinction between the Father, Son and the Holy Spirit. It is also called "modalism," and it is embraced by the United Pentecostal Church International.

"I began to realize that there are some things that could be said about the Father that could not be said about the Son," Jakes said. "There are distinctives between the working of the Holy Spirit and the moving of the Holy Spirit, and the working of the redemptive work of Christ. I'm very comfortable with that." [See the transcript of Jakes' comments at the end of this story.]

The doctrine of the Trinity -- embraced by all three historical branches of Christianity -- holds that God is three persons, each person is distinct, each person is fully God, and that there is one God.

Several key Bible passages, Jakes said, impacted his transition.

As CT reported last week, prominent evangelical theologian Donald G. Bloesch died on Tuesday in Dubuque, Iowa, where he taught at the University of Dubuque Theological Seminary for many years.

Gabriel Fackre, Abbot Professor of Christian Theology Emeritus at Andover Newton Theological School in Andover, Massachusetts, was a longtime friend and colleague of Bloesch.

“I’m deeply saddened,” Fackre said. “he was a good friend…I guess it’s been about 60 years.”

Fackre considers Bloesch “the premier evangelical theologian of the twentieth century, second only to my dear friend Carl Henry.”

Fackre cites Christian Foundations, Bloesch’s seven-volume systematic theology, as “a unique achievement in American theology, and probably even, in our time, in any theology… No one else has done, as far as I know, a seven-volume series on the basic loci of systematics. So that fact alone marks Don as a major figure in Christian theology in our time.”

But Fackre said that Bloesch did not get the recognition he deserved.

“He was not appreciated as he should have been in wider circles,” Fackre said. “In that respect, he was a lot like Carl Henry, who never quite got the attention he was due.”

Fackre did note, however, that that Bloesch was “very much appreciated” at the Dubuque Seminary and that scholars as diverse as Roman Catholic Cardinal Avery Dulles and Reformed theologian T.F. Torrance paid tribute to Bloesch in the 1999 festschrift volume Evangelical Theology in Transition.

Fackre also recalled Bloesch’s work in the renewal movements of mainline Christianity, most especially in Bloesch’s own United Church of Christ (UCC). Bloesch drafted the Dubuque Declaration, which became the statement of faith for the Biblical Witness Fellowship, an active renewal organization in the UCC.

“Don was never given the recognition due to him in the UCC because he was a feisty critic of the liberal establishment,” Fackre said. “We both were doing our best in the United Church of Christ to call it back to its original ecumenical vision.”

When writing about prominent UCC theologians for the denomination’s 50th anniversary, Fackre included Bloesch among names like Reinhold Niebuhr and Walter Brueggemann. “He got sort of a kick out of that,” Fackre said with a laugh.

Fackre said that Bloesch was “an unconventional evangelical theologian as well as a leading one,” noting that Bloesch’s fascination with Mariology was a “curious interest” for evangelicals. He also approvingly cited Bloesch’s views (consonant with Fackre’s own) on the possibility of posthumous salvation for those who have never heard the gospel.

“He had a significant impact, I think, in regard to bringing evangelicals closer to ecumenicals,” Fackre said. “In other words, any evangelical theologian who traces his theological lineage to Barth, and P.T. Forsyth, and evangelical catholicity … anyone who is influenced by this kind of what I call ‘ecumenical evangelicalism,’ would count Don as a major figure in drawing people into dialogue with the larger Christian community.”

Fackre also talked about Bloesch’s “very wonderful spouse,” Brenda Bloesch, who was “co-worker with Don in everything he did. She will miss him deeply.”

Donald G. Bloesch, a prominent evangelical scholar in the United Church of Christ (UCC) and an advisory editor at Christianity Today, died on Tuesday in Dubuque, Iowa.

Bloesch, who was professor emeritus at the University of Dubuque Theological Seminary, was well known as a voice of renewal in the United Church of Christ.

“He gave us not only an understanding of the deep perversity in the mainline church, but theological skills to be effective witnesses in a difficult time,” said David Runnion-Bareford, executive director of the Biblical Witness Fellowship, a spiritual renewal group within the UCC. “It is ironic that this evangelical was the most widely read and respected UCC theologian of his generation.”

More information will be added as it becomes available.

In an interview with Rob Bell earlier this year, CT senior managing editor Mark Galli asked the Mars Hill Bible Church pastor how he would present the gospel on Twitter. Bell replied:

I would say that history is headed somewhere. The thousands of little ways in which you are tempted to believe that hope might actually be a legitimate response to the insanity of the world actually can be trusted. And the Christian story is that a tomb is empty, and a movement has actually begun that has been present in a sense all along in creation. And all those times when your cynicism was at odds with an impulse within you that said that this little thing might be about something bigger—those tiny little slivers may in fact be connected to something really, really big.

In his response, Bell provoked a fair bit of criticism in the blogosphere (as he did again last week when he told The Boston Globe, “I embrace the term evangelical, if by that we mean a belief that we together can actually work for change in the world, caring for the environment, extending to the poor generosity and kindness, a hopeful outlook. That’s a beautiful sort of thing.”)

But Galli pointed out that he was cheating anyway. His answer was a lot more than 140 characters. "You can't really tweet the gospel," Bell replied.

Well, last night, Bell gave it a second shot on his Twitter feed: "The gospel is the counterintuitive, joyous, exuberant news that Jesus has brought the unending, limitless, stunning love of God to even us."

At 117 characters, he even left enough to retweet.

Note: An earlier version of this blog post said that Keith Danby's remark that "some of the criticism was justified and we need to be brutally honest about the mistakes that were made" was in regard to the Today's New International Version. He was discussing the earlier New International Version Inclusive Language Edition, released in the U.K. in 1996. I sincerely apologize for the error.

In announcing a major revision of the New International Version (NIV) of the Bible, Biblica (formerly the International Bible Society and Send The Light, or IBS-STL) CEO Keith Danby said decisions surrounding the release of the NIV inclusive language edition and the 2002 revision, Today's New International Version (TNIV), were mistakes.

"In 1997, IBS announced that it was forgoing all plans to publish an updated NIV following criticism of the NIV inclusive language edition (NIVi) published in the United Kingdom. Quite frankly, some of the criticism was justified and we need to be brutally honest about the mistakes that were made," Danby said. "We fell short of the trust that was placed in us. We failed to make the case for revisions and we made some important errors in the way we brought the translation to publication. We also underestimated the scale of the public affection for the NIV and failed to communicate the rationale for change in a manner that reflected that affection."

Danby said it was also a mistake to stop revisions on the NIV. "We shackled the NIV to the language and scholarship of a quarter century ago, thus limiting its value as a tool for ongoing outreach throughout the world," he said.

"Whatever its strengths were, the TNIV divided the evangelical Christian community," said Zondervan president Moe Girkins. "So as we launch this new NIV, we will discontinue putting out new products with the TNIV."

Girkins expects the TNIV and the existing edition of the NIV to phase out over two years or so as products are replaced. "It will be several years before you won't be able to buy the TNIV off a bookshelf," she said.

"We are correcting the mistakes in the past," Girkins said. "Being as transparent as possible is part of that. This decision was made by the board in the last 10 days." She said the transparency is part of an effort to overhaul the NIV "in a way that unifies Christian evangelicalism."

"The first mistake was the NIVi," Danby said. "The second was freezing the NIV. The third was the process of handling the TNIV."

Gender-inclusive inclusion?
Doug Moo, chairman of the the Committee on Bible Translation (which is the body responsible for the translation) said the committee has not yet decided how much the 2011 edition will include the gender-inclusive language that riled critics of the TNIV.

"We felt certainly at the time it was the right thing to do, that the language was moving in that direction," Moo said. "All that is back on the table as we reevaluate things this year. This has been a time over the last 15 to 20 years in which the issue of the way to handle gender in English has been very much in flux, in process, in development. And things are changing quickly and so we are going to look at all of that again as we produce the 2011 NIV."

I don't think any member [of CBT] would stand by the NIVi today," Moo said. "But we feel much more comfortable about the TNIV." He expects many of the TNIV's changes to appear in the updated NIV.

"I can predict that this is going to look 90 percent or more what the 1984 NIV looks like and 95 percent what the TNIV looks like," he said. "The changes are going to be a very small portion of the whole Scripture package."

Nevertheless, Moo said, the NIV does not currently reflect developments in the last 25 years of scholarship in Bible translation. CBT has made 1200 changes to the text in its database since the TNIV's most recent 2005 revision. (About 100 of these, such as typos, appear in current print editions.)

"I sit in a church where the NIV is pew Bible," he said. "But Sunday after Sunday I hear the preacher say, 'I don’t think the NIV is quite right here.' And I feel like saying I as a member of the CBT, 'Yes, but we've changed that!'"

Likewise, he said, the NIV is a translation that strives to reflect contemporary idioms and there have been significant changes to the English language in the last quarter-century.

"The English is understandable but not natural to people anymore. It's not what people are saying day to day," he said.

For example, Girkins said, the NIV uses the term alien rather than foreigner. Using contemporary English is particularly important internationally, Danby said, because that in some parts of the world the NIV is used for teaching English as a second language.

I’ve been listening to Dante’s The Divine Comedy this past week. (The 1891 Charles Eliot Norton translation is this month’s free download from Christian Audio.)

One horrific scene in the Inferno struck me as a literary echo of a more lighthearted moment in J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone.

In Rowling, there is a sorting hat. In Dante, there is a sorting monster.

In Rowling, the wizarding school Hogwarts is divided into four residential houses, and a magical hat assigns each first-year student to one of them. When placed on a student’s head, the sorting hat announces where the student belongs: Gryffindor, Hufflepuff, Ravenclaw, or Slytherin.

In Dante, hell is divided into nine circles, progressing from circle one, populated by the virtuous pagans who lived without Christianity, on through the realms of the lustful, the gluttonous, the avaricious and prodigal, the wrathful, the heretical, the violent, the deceitful, and finally, in circle nine, the traitors.

How are sinners assigned to the proper circle? By the sorting monster named Minos. As Dante tells it,

Thus I descended from the first circle down into the second, which girdles less space, and so much more woe that it goads to wailing. There abides Minos horribly, and snarls; he examines the sins at the entrance; he judges, and he sends according as he entwines himself. I mean, that, when the miscreant spirit comes there before him, it confesses itself wholly, and that discerner of sins sees what place of Hell is for it; he girdles himself with his tail so many times as the degrees he wills it should be sent down. Always before him stand many of them. They go, in turn, each to the judgment; they speak, and hear, and then are whirled below. (Canto V)

Like C. S. Lewis and J. K. Rowling after him, Dante borrowed figures from pagan mythology and imported them into narrative contexts teeming with Christian figures and tropes. Pagan and Christian figures work in complementary fashion to represent longing and fulfillment.

Yesterday, Collin Hansen profiled Tullian Tchividjian, the 36-year-old Florida pastor whose church recently merged with Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church (formerly led by D. James Kennedy).

We weren't the only ones talking about Tchividjian yesterday. Popular Reformed blogger Tim Challies reviewed Tchividjian's new book, Unfashionable: Making a Difference in the World by Being Different, and found himself surprisingly in disagreement with large sections of it.

While Challies liked a lot of the book, he thinks Tchividjian has a "theology of God's kingdom that I just was not able reconcile with Scripture ?. He writes about transformationalism, the view that God seeks to redeem and renew not just people but nations and cultures. My concern is that such theology emphasizes the continuity between the world today and the world after the consummation of history and does so at the expense of the kind of radical discontinuity Scripture teaches."

Cross-posted from The Christian History Blog

When theologian George Kalantzis returned to the Wheaton College campus last fall after spending the summer in the Holy Land, he had a very pleasant surprise. While he was out of the country, two donors had approached the college administration about funding a program that would encourage interaction between Eastern Orthodoxy, Roman Catholicism, and Protestantism over their mutual legacy from the early church.

No one at Wheaton knew just how much these donors would fund, but George and his colleagues decided to dream big: they envisioned a Center for the Study of Early Christianity, with a vertically integrated program from undergraduate courses up through master's and doctoral studies.

Their big vision was rewarded.

"On the third day he rose again."

But have you ever wondered how it works out to three days, when the chronology of Jesus' death and resurrection--Friday afternoon to the early hours of Sunday morning--only takes 36 hours or so? And doesn't Jesus compound the problem when he foretells his death and resurrection in Matthew's gospel: "For just as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth"?

Over at Zondervan's Koinonia blog, Walter C. Kaiser Jr. explains that "three days and three nights was a stereotypical phrase that allowed the full day and night to be counted when any part of that time was included."

A few weeks ago, I had a chance to meet over the phone Daniel Furst, who was telling me about a drama that I had never heard of before.

It's called, "The Quarrel." Click on the play button for a 4 minute YouTube video about this play

The amazing news is that "The Quarrel" will be staged twice this weekend, on Easter Sunday, April 12. But, of course, you have to live in southern California to take it in. (See below for performance details if you are lucky enough to be close by.)

Passover and Easter are powerful times for folks with cosmic questions about God, the Bible, and the meaning of life to explore the answers, hopefully in a faith-based (and orthodox) context.

Every year, I have found new friends with deep hurts who are grappling with theological questions that dramatists and screenwriters skillfully explore on our behalf, while we are at a safe distance away in the audience.

True confession, I was a lit major as an undergraduate, so I have a life-long weakness for powerful drama. I don't think "The Quarrel" will disappoint. Rabbi Joseph Teluskin, one of two playwrights for "The Quarrel," notes that Christians are becoming big fans of this modern Jewish drama with a Holocaust theme.

Perhaps this is because the storyline, though Jewish, mirrors many of the identical questions that Christians have about a loving God, an evil world, and the possibilities for reconciliation.

Here is additional information from the press kit:

Christianity Today editor at large Collin Hansen is over at the USA Today faith blog today answering questions about Calvinism, the new young Reformed movement, and free will. Go throw him some hardballs.

The inaugural gathering of The Jesus Project, a group of biblical scholars and academics in related disciplines embarking on a five-year quest to unearth the historical Jesus, took place in Amherst, N.Y. December 5th through 7th. Historian R. Joseph Hoffman, Chair of The Scientific Committee for the Study of Religion (CSER), the Jesus Project's sponsor, describes the group's intent and operating principles on its website.

The Jesus Project, as CSER has named the new effort, is the first methodologically agnostic approach to the question of Jesus' historical existence. But we are not neutral, let alone willfully ambiguous, about the objectives of the project itself. We believe in assessing the quality of the evidence available for looking at this question before seeing what the evidence has to tell us. We do not believe the task is to produce a "plausible" portrait of Jesus prior to considering the motives and goals of the Gospel writers in telling his story. We think the history and culture of the times provide many significant clues about the character of figures similar to Jesus. We believe the mixing of theological motives and historical inquiry is impermissible. We regard previous attempts to rule the question out of court as vestiges of a time when the Church controlled the boundaries of permissible inquiry into its sacred books. More directly, we regard the question of the historical Jesus as a testable hypothesis, and we are committed to no prior conclusions about the outcome of our inquiry. This is a statement of our principles, and we intend to stick to them.

The project was devised more than two years ago, and officially launched at a January 2007 conference, "Scripture and Skepticism," at the University of California at Davis.

CSER's website provides a list of notable attendees at this December's gathering, as well as a schedule of proceedings, and a follow-up report.

Public radio WBFO 88.7 FM in Buffalo interviewed one scholar involved in the project, Robert M. Price, two days before the event. According to his website bio, Price attended a fundamentalist (his word) Baptist church early in life, was involved in InterVarsity Christian Fellowship during his time at Montclair State College, and received an MTS degree in New Testament from Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary in the late ''70s. Since this time Price has distanced himself from evangelical Christianity, collected two PhDs, moved in and out of various forms of institutionalized liberal religion, and written numerous books. A 2007 release, Jesus is Dead, argues, according to its back cover, that

(1) not only is there no good reason to think that Jesus ever rose from the dead, (2) there is no good reason to think that he ever lived or died at all.

The publisher also notes that readers of the book

will have ammunition with which to counter the arguments of muscular apologists such as Gary Habermas, N.T. Wright, or William Lane Craig.

Price's inclusion in a study group premised on the belief that "the mixing of theological motives and historical inquiry is impermissible" has not been lost on Dan Wallace, professor of New Testament Studies at Dallas Theological Seminary and Executive Director for the Center for the Study of New Testament Manuscripts. Blogging at PrimeTimeJesus, Wallace writes:

No one is neutral when it comes to Jesus, and we might as well all admit that fact. It is beyond my comprehension how a man who has explicitly and frequently written that the historical Jesus is a myth could be a part of this project.

The Jesus Project's next conference is tentatively scheduled for May 2009 in Chicago. Papers from the December 2008 conference will be published in 2009 by Prometheus Books under the title Sources of the Jesus Tradition: An Inquiry.

Last year, I blogged about an effort to amend the doctrinal basis of the Evangelical Theological Society. Several members felt that the organization's statement--which is limited to biblical inerrancy and the Trinity--did not sufficiently safeguard the organization's evangelical identity. The theologians (chiefly Ray Van Neste and Denny Burk) had proposed that the statement of belief used by the U.K.'s Universities and Colleges Christian Fellowship be adopted instead.

The effort failed at today's ETS business meeting, I'm told, by at least a 2-to-1 margin, with the executive committee unanimously opposing the amendment.

For those invested in the evolving origins debate, Beliefnet's Blogalogue today features a lively letter exchange between Ken Ham, president of Answers in Genesis USA, which opened the Creation Museum last spring, and Karl Giberson, director of the forum on faith and science at Gordon College, and author most recently of Saving Darwin: How to Be a Christian and Believe in Evolution.

Of particular interest is how autobiography has in no small way shaped each scientist's convictions. Ham's family was one of few Christians in rural Australia. His father, a school principal, showed a deep commitment to studying Scripture and defending its authority, which Ham likewise sees as part of his mission. Giberson also grew up in a Bible-believing church, in rural New Brunswick, Canada. But he faced something of a crisis of faith upon attending Eastern Nazarene University, whose science and religion faculty did not teach creationism. Giberson eventually embraced theistic evolution, or the view that God creates via natural processes over billions of years.

Both Giberson and Ham have become somewhat predictable go-to men for the sound bites necessary to write origins-related news stories, but their letter exchange nonetheless provides fresh insight:

Karl Giberson on genetics [from "Why I Am Not a Creationist"]:

Recent discoveries in genetics reveal that humans share almost all their genes with primates and other animals. If these genes were all functional and did something meaningful--like make blood clot, or give us two lungs--we could suppose that God used common genetic tools to make different species. But many of these genes are completely nonfunctional and do nothing. Some of them, called pseudogenes, are mutated copies of functioning genes.

They sit irrelevantly beside functioning genes, not needed because their neighbors are doing all the work. There are so many different possibilities for pseudogenes that we would never expect, from a statistical point of view, for different species to have identical pseudogenes, unless they inherited them from a common ancestor. The distribution of these and other genes in different species strongly suggests that these species are related and were not created independently. Why does genetic research point so strongly toward common ancestry if common ancestry is not true?

The evidence from genetics is compelling and trustworthy. We have confidence in genetics to establish biological kinship in legal cases, such as paternity suits; that same genetics now indicates biological kinship among species and we should accept that as well.

Ken Ham on Jesus' interpretation of Genesis [from "The Bible Teaches Creationism"]:

[I]f Genesis (and the rest of the Bible) is a revelation to us from an infinite God, it must be self attesting and self authenticating--and Scripture must interpret Scripture. I checked out the New Testament. Jesus (the Son of God--the Truth--the Word) quoted from Genesis 1:27 and Genesis 2:24 in Matthew 19: 4-6 when discussing the doctrine of marriage. Obviously Jesus (and Paul in Ephesians 5) referred to Genesis as literal history in building the doctrine of marriage being one man and one woman (and the whole understanding of one flesh--Eve came from Adam, as it also states in 1 Corinthians 11:8). . . .

As a Christian, my father had also shown me that the gospel message (the good news of salvation in Christ) was founded on the literal history in Genesis--as Paul in the New Testament makes obvious in passages such as Romans 5 and 1 Corinthians 15. I therefore saw the importance of standing on the authority of God's Word and determined there was a problem with what I was being taught at school--even if at that time I couldn't resolve it back then. I needed to search for answers--and I did. It began a journey that has led me to where I am today.

See more of Christianity Today's science-related coverage here.

Two stories today reveal the continuing intractability of the common man and woman--and the continuing mysterious ways of our Creator.

In the first, another story about the surprising success of The Shack, we read that various evangelical leaders consider the book "heretical." All the same, the book is being devoured by millions, many of whom say it has helped them deal with deep hurts and evils in their life.

In the second, we read about the archbishop of Mumbai (India) declaring that a painting of Jesus that looks like it's bleeding is not the miracle that pilgrims to the church have believed it to. Instead the painting has "blushed" probably because of the humidity. And yet, as one churchgoer put it, "It's a miracle.... What else can it be?"

While church leaders are called to teach and guide people in lasting truth, I also detect in their reactions to such religious phenomenon a touch of embarrassment--that people on the street are moved and changed by kitsch! God, it seems, is not only not a respecter of persons, but neither is he a respecter of fine taste.

In March, the trustees of Westminster Theological Seminary suspended professor Peter Enns over theological concerns regarding his book Inspiration and Incarnation.

The controversy got a lot of people talking about the authority of Scripture and two weeks ago even made the front page of The Philadelphia Inquirer.

No doubt the discussion will continue in theology circles (Enns will be on a panel discussing his ideas on the New Testament Use of the Old Testament at the upcoming Evangelical Theological Society meeting, for example).

But the higher ed part of the story though, seems to have more or less come to a close today. Enns and WTS issued a joint statement announcing the end of his employment at the school. A hearing on whether he whether he should be dismissed was to begin August 25.

While not unheard of, it's not typical for a CT writer to applaud the United Church of Christ for its theological stances. However, let's give credit to whom it is due.

Last month the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal in a lawsuit filed by St. John's UCC in Bensenville, Illinois. The church is trying to prevent the city of Chicago from digging up the 1,400-grave cemetery in a plot right next to O'Hare International Airport. Since the summer of 2001, the city has been working to expand the overcrowded airport -- one of the busiest in the world and one to avoid at all costs during the summer and winter and any other time that weather tends to be inclement. (On top of that, it is the headquarters of the "Worst. Airline. Ever.")

Last month the Supreme Court let stand a lower court ruling, which found the city's attempt to relocate the graves did not violate the church's First Amendment rights, "because Chicago's motive for relocating nearly 1,300 graves is strictly secular," reported the Chicago Tribune. Other cases are working their way through the courts, and they claim that moving the graves would interfere with worshipers' and family members' religious freedom.

One might dismiss the religious freedom argument. After all, plenty of people are opposed to expanding the massive airport. Bensenville Village President John C. Geils told the Chicago suburban Daily Herald "This is a clear case of discrimination and a denial of the deeply held religious beliefs of the church and the affected families." The village, and several others, is also fighting the expansion. So, cynics might argue the church is being used by local governments, or perhaps St. John's agrees with those parties that a bigger O'Hare means a bigger headache for local residents.

However, take a look at the lawsuit. Why are they suing? The lawsuit states:

Destroying the cemeteries not only "inhibits," but completely precludes Plaintiffs from fulfilling their religious obligation to care for their fellow Christians, and to ensure that their full participation in the Resurrection is not jeopardized by disturbance of the sacred ground where they were laid to rest until Resurrection Day.

Amen!

While physically disturbing a grave does not jeopardize the corpse's salvation, the violation of a "sleeping" Christian has for centuries been a serious matter. Until the widespread use of embalming following the Civil War, in fact, disturbing the dead was a grave deed. Dead Christians were merely asleep as they awaited the resurrection, at which time, because God would return them to life just as he did Jesus, it would make sense to have all the bodily pieces nearby. Visit any old graveyard on the East coast (dating from the 1600s and early 1700s), and nearly every tombstone will say something about the body of the Christian beneath the ground awaiting its quickening on the last day. (See N.T. Wright for more on the theology of the resurrection.)

Perhaps St. John's UCC is using traditional Christian theology in order to keep its church and cemetery, but they've recalled a central belief that many evangelicals who claim the label of orthodoxy have forgotten, at least in practice. This UCC church is keeping "the sacred ground where [their brothers and sisters] were laid to rest until Resurrection Day."

Thanks be to God.

An overnight e-mail from a friend in Wales informed us that Ghanian theologian Kwame Bediako passed away this week. Bediako was a brilliant scholar with doctorates in French literature and in theology. He fostered the development of a genuinely African theology (distinct from the Black liberation theology that developed in South Africa). Bediako used the models of Justin Martyr and Clement of Alexandria to argue that just as they used the Greco-Roman cultural categories of their time to contextualize the Gospel and create a Christian identity, so should African Christians use their own cultural heritage in forming their Christian identity.

Chris Wright, International Director of the Langham Partnership International (John Stott Ministries in the US), has written a brief tribute to Bediako that is posted on the Zondervan blog. The blog features a video clip of Bediako preaching at Zondervan's chapel just last month, and a link to the Africa Bible Commentary, for which Bediako was one of the three theological advisers.

Now that Peter Enns's suspension from Westminster Theological Seminary on account of his 2005 book, Inspiration and Incarnation, has gone into effect, the tenured professor has begun to post "thoughts, musings, interactions, responses?about or inspired by the book" on his blog.

At the request of Westminster, he submitted a 38-page paper responding to his critics:

My original intention was simply to leave the matter where it was, in the hands of the faculty and board, so as not to draw undo [sic] attention to seminary matters (even though I felt that this paper would have proved helpful to numerous readers). As it stands now, the attention drawn to this issue is quite pervasive, comes from various sources, and without any aid from me.

In light of these developments, reproducing certain portions of that paper makes a degree of sense.

What he is posting now are discussions with (and responses to) his critics and an abridged and appended version of the parts of his paper that he feels best relate to the theological discussion.

Cathy Lynn Grossman's recent USA Today article on William Young's surprise bestseller The Shack is her second in a month, this one shifting attention to the long-developing and growing backlash against the book coming from a number of influential voices concerned about the book's implicit theological claims.

Several conservative Protestant heavyweights--Al Mohler, Chuck Colson, Mark Driscoll, and influential blogger Tim Challies--have sounded off on the dangers of The Shack's vision of God, salvation, and the Church, creating a quartet of caution for the casual Christian reader. These strong cautions are all the more notable in light of the over-the-top endorsement from one of evangelicalism's most respected spiritual sages, Eugene Peterson, which is featured on the book's back cover.

The folks at Wikisource have a new project bound to stir up controversy. It's called the Wiki Bible Project, and it aims to "create an original, open content translation" of the Bible, by the people for the people. Call it the Pauper John Goldfarb Ali Version.

Great idea. I mean, people have never disagreed over what the Bible says. Christians and Jews and Muslims all worship the God of Abraham, so they must read his word from the same pages. Buddhists and Taoists and Pagans? Individualistic variations, nothing more. A holy book is a holy book, regardless of what name it goes by.

Right ... Just try telling that to Jerusalem. Muslims and Christians and Jews all understand the Bible quite differently on this subject.

The Bible doesn't talk directly about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but I wonder if CAMERA has any plans for influencing the editing.

Libby Purves at Faith Central explains a little more about the project and shares a satirical story from Britain's version of The Onion:

You probably heard last week that John McCain wants nothing to do with the Rev. John Hagee, the indomitable supporter of Israel who really wants the Jews to get home so Christ will return. The impetus was recent revelations of this sermon, in which Hagee explains that Hitler and his band of evil murderers were God's chosen "hunters," divine agents whose atrocities were sanctioned for the greater good of driving European Jews to Palestine.

Well, I haven't heard much from Hagee, but Shmuel Rosner of Haaretz traded e-mails with his No. 2, David Brog, which was published as a five-question interview. The most interesting bit ledes it:

April 25th marked the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network's annual Day of Silence, described by the Network's website as a "student-led day of action when concerned students, from middle school to college, take some form of a vow of silence to bring attention to the name-calling, bullying and harassment--in effect, the silencing--experienced by LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender) students and their allies." Not surprisingly, the nationwide event elicited a range of responses from evangelical Christian groups at both the national and local level, and therefore offers promise as an occasion for further reflection about what form Christian witness should take in a pluralistic democratic society.

Evangelizing persons of other faiths, or even committed atheists, agnostics, or freethinkers, is tricky business in our pluralistic and increasingly politicized religious landscape. In Western cultures where tolerance is preeminent among public virtues, such efforts are generally met with scorn, chastisement, and much journalistic gnashing of teeth. In other parts of the world, interfaith gospelers are subject to far worse than a tongue-lashing from the cultural gatekeepers. Such activity may win them spots in jail, or cost them and their families their livelihood, if not their lives.

Two of the hottest issues in evangelical theology right now are the New Testament’s use of the Old Testament and evangelical textual criticism. Peter Enns’s 2005 book, Inspiration and Incarnation: Evangelicals and the Problem of the Old Testament, aimed to pose difficult questions about the human aspects of Scripture. It received both praise and criticism from noted evangelical scholars.

And it made things difficult for Enns at his school, Philadelphia’s Westminster Theological Seminary. A battle over whether the book undermined or contradicted the Westminster Confession of Faith has been raging for some time now, and apparently came to a head Wednesday at the meeting of the school’s board, which decided to suspend Enns.

This note is now circulating from board chairman Jack White:

Will Higgins's report on attendance levels at Holy Week services at a military base in northern Iraq is intriguing on several levels. First, although there are some 4,000 soldiers stationed at the base, the chaplains deemed 150 chairs and 3 Easter services more than sufficient to accommodate the number of soldiers inclined to attend. A Good Friday screening of Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ drew only four soldiers, two of whom snoozed their way through it.

While such anecdotal evidence from a solitary military base is by no means enough to establish statistical significance, it does at the very least challenge conventional wisdom that there are no atheists in foxholes. Looking around for other media coverage of Easter services among American military in Iraq, I found little of interest save a small collection of photos that revealed services most notable for their sparse attendance (Be sure to click on the third photo to see if you can identify the gun at the foot of the praying soldier's feet). Sergeant Christopher McFadden of Indiana National Guard’s 76th Infantry Brigade Combat Team finds the low attendance "dumbfounding." "If you saw the possibility of dying in front of you," he continues, "now would be the time to open the door and at least look inside."

I don't pick up The Chronicle Review--an insert in The Chronicle of Higher Education--expecting to be spurred to reflection on the emerging movement. And I'm quite sure that was not what author and UCLA history professor Russell Jacoby intended. Nevertheless, his intriguing article, "Not to Complicate Matters, But...," collided with other reading from my week to produce that rare but welcome guest--a helpful insight. In short, Jacoby is frustrated with scholars' growing penchant to "complicate," "problematize," or "complexify" issues and think in so doing that their work is complete. To make his point, Jacoby cites mock and actual examples that will sound familiar to anyone who's laid their hands on a peer-reviewed academic journal in the last decade:

"I hope today to complicate our notion of cahiers - grievances - and the role they played in the States-General of 1789." The professors and graduate students at the symposium nod appreciatively. They have heard or read similar justifications untold times before. The author explains that he or she will "complicate" our understanding of some event or phenomenon. "In this article," writes an ethnic-studies professor, "I seek to complicate scholars' understanding of the 'modular' state by examining four forms of indigenous political space." Everyone seems pleased by this approach. Why? The world is complicated, but how did "complication" turn from an undeniable reality to a desirable goal? Shouldn't scholarship seek to clarify, illuminate, or - egad! - simplify, not complicate? How did the act of complicating become a virtue?

Controversial biblical scholar Bart Ehrman has a new book out, but this time he's not bent on tackling issues of scriptural discrepancies, as he did in his most (in)famous work, Misquoting Jesus (see Books and Culture's review from 2005). This time, Ehrman founds his agnosticism on the Bible's seemingly equivocal answers to the question, How can a loving God allow terrible things to happen to people?

"I realized I couldn't explain any longer why there could be such pain and misery in the world that was supposedly ruled by an all-powerful and loving God," the religion professor at University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, told the San Diego Union-Tribune over the weekend. The problem of suffering "put me over the top," says Ehrman. "So, I became an agnostic."

God's Problem: How the Bible Fails to Answer Our Most Important Question - Why We Suffer (HarperOne) traces Ehrman's change in convictions about God and Scripture based on his inability to reconcile the goodness of God with the suffering of man. Ehrman explores and ultimately disputes the way suffering is handled in biblical accounts: as punishment for wrongdoing (Genesis), as an outcome of others' wrongdoing (throughout the Psalms), as part of redemption (the Gospels), or as part of the mystery of God (Job).

Lost in the media storm preceding and following Super Tuesday, and the actual storms that debilitated or devastated much of the US that same day, was media coverage of the start of Lent, arguably the most recognized of the exclusively Christian seasons on the Church's liturgical calendar. In reviewing English-speaking coverage of this turning of the seasons, I was struck by the difference between US media reports and those issuing from across the pond in the UK.

The Wheaton College student newspaper, The Record, reports today that the influential evangelical college's president, provost, and chaplain have removed their names from a letter to Muslim leaders that has attracted criticism in some quarters.

"Loving God and Neighbor Together" was published in the November 18, 2007, New York Times as a response to an October statement from 138 Muslim scholars and clerics calling for interfaith cooperation. Wheaton College president Duane Litfin and provost Stanton Jones were among the signatories, along with pastors Rick Warren and Bill Hybels, National Association of Evangelicals president Leith Anderson, Youth With a Mission chairman Lynn Green, Frontiers mission founder Greg Livingstone, theologians Miroslav Volf and John Stott, and Christianity Today Media Group editor-in-chief David Neff.

"I signed the statement because I am committed to the business of peace-making and neighbor-love," Litfin wrote in The Record. "I did not savor the document's unnuanced apology section, but swallowed that in order to be a part of reaching out a hand to these Muslim leaders who had courageously taken the initiative. Though the statement was not written in the way I would have written it, it seemed to me that I could sign it without compromising any of my Christian convictions."

But in the last month, the statement has been sharply criticized by several other evangelical leaders, including Southern Baptist Theological Seminary president Al Mohler, pastor John Piper, and Focus on the Family's CitizenLink newsletter.

Nathan Gibbs has a sad story on his blog about the death of his childhood friend, Benson Krause, and a remembrance of the music they made together. Their band, "The Third Half," included many of the guys I grew up a few years behind, and Nathan's post recalls an infamous moment at our church, though I was too young to remember it as much more than folklore.

One Sunday morning, his father Jim was preaching. He spoke about being corrupted by the world and used his youngest son Timothy's innocence as an example. He said Tim was sitting in the pew making gestures with his hands and wound up being fascinated with his middle finger. Jim explained how it meant nothing outside the context of the world's negative influence. What he did next is something no one in the audience that day will forget. He rested both wrists on the pulpit with two middle fingers extended upward. "Does this offend you?" he asked.

My childhood church was part of the Church of Christ denomination, which is, coincidentally, on the opposite end of the theological spectrum from the ultra-liberal United Church of Christ. No music with worship, no women in leadership, no heaven without baptism. And for many people the answer was obviously yes, and it led to the Krauses unceremonious return to Chicago.

The congregation's response does not surprise me years later -- many Americans, regardless of religion, would be bothered by such a display -- but it makes me wonder why we find certain words, or more aptly, certain gestures, offensive? Who decided that pointing at someone with your middle finger was a greater curse than wagging your index at them?

This article was cross-posted at The God Blog.

Can one believe in the inerrancy of the Bible and the Triune nature of God and not be an evangelical? That's a key issue behind efforts officially introduced today to amend the doctrinal basis of the Evangelical Theological Society (ETS).

"Right now, someone can deny the humanity of Christ and still be a member of ETS," said Ray Van Neste, professor of Christian studies at Union University in Jackson. "This is about safeguarding the evangelical character of the organization."

However, Van Neste says he does not see an onslaught of ETS members who hold heretical beliefs, and does not want a revised statement to launch dozens of challenges against theologians' memberships. He sees the effort as a long-term strategy to ensure commitment to evangelical essentials.

The society was divided during several meetings earlier this decade over whether to expel theologians Clark Pinnock and John Sanders from the group for their views of God's foreknowledge. The votes to expel them failed in 2003. Twenty years earlier, in 1983, Westmont College New Testament professor Robert Gundry was expelled for arguing that some events in the gospel of Matthew, such as the visit from the Magi, were not historical.

At issue in all of the cases was whether the scholars violated ETS's doctrinal basis, which reads in its entirety: "The Bible alone, and the Bible in its entirety, is the Word of God written and is therefore inerrant in the autographs. God is a Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, each an uncreated person, one in essence, equal in power and glory." The language on the Trinity was added in 1990.

Questions over the society's doctrinal basis surfaced again earlier this year when ETS president Francis Beckwith converted to Roman Catholicism. He resigned from his position, but repeatedly noted that he could still affirm the society's doctrinal basis without reservation.

Van Neste and Dennis Burk, professor of New Testament at Criswell College, want to add further language to the doctrinal basis by attaching the belief statement of the Universities and Colleges Christian Fellowship in the U.K. The change would take the doctrinal basis from 43 words to 339.

The effort faces an uphill battle. Amending the ETS constitution requires 80 percent approval from the society's members, and already opponents are talking about ways to postpone the vote, which is scheduled for next year's annual meeting in Providence, Rhode Island. Some, including members of the executive committee, are concerned that lengthening the theological basis would effectively turn it into a theological statement. Others are concerned that the changes would change the group's identity.

"It would change the sociology of ETS," said Darrell Bock, research professor of New Testament at Dallas Theological Seminary. "And nothing in this would have stopped anything we've gone through in the last 10 years."

Van Neste and Burk say their biggest obstacle isn't opposition. "The question now is how many people know about the effort." To garner support they have set up a website, AmendETS.com, and are discussing their proposal on a number of theology blogs.

While the ballroom sessions of the first day of the Evangelical Theological Society meeting had more attendees, no session was as packed as J.P. Moreland's "How Evangelicals Became Over-Committed to the Bible and What Can Be Done About It." While the average breakout session seems to be attended by fewer than 50 people, easily more than 200 packed the room to hear Moreland's talk, with dozens standing and more listening outside the door.

It's little wonder why so many people attended. ETS membership has only two doctrinal requirements: you must affirm the Trinity and the inerrancy of Scripture. The first part has not been controversial of late, but the second was the focus of the society's recent fight over open theism and was named as a reason why Francis Beckwith could not remain as ETS president after his conversion to Roman Catholicism.

In short, to accuse evangelicals of over-commitment to the Bible at ETS would be like accusing environmentalists of talking too much about climate change at a Sierra Club meeting. But Moreland, who has gained some prominence as a philosopher and apologist, wasn't pulling any punches.

In a Virginia court yesterday, a judge began a trial of certainly one of the biggest church property fights in American religious history.

The Episcopal Church, represented by the Diocese of Virginia and the national office in New York City, has filed suit against 11 congregations that have dis-affiliated with the denomination following the 2003 appointment of V. Gene Robinson, a "partnered homosexual," as bishop of the Diocese of New Hampshire.

Part of what amazes me is the lack of national media attention of this crucial case. It's important not only for the number of defendants, but also because it will test key concepts regarding how a state's judicial system applies civil law to matters normally relegated to the church.

The Washingon Times' Julia Duin provides a competent, newsy overview, reporting:

The case is informally referred to as "57-9" in many documents because the coming hearing is based on Virginia Code Section 57-9. This says when a diocese or a denomination experiences a "division," members of a congregation may determine by majority vote which side of the division to join, along with their property.

"This case is literally historic, because it's based on a statute enacted by the Virginia legislature during the Civil War," said Mary McReynolds, one of 24 lawyers involved on CANA's side of the dispute. "The Virginia division statute is unusual, and my understanding is there are not many situations in the country that allow this."

This morning, checking my Outlook inbox, I received the message, quoted below, from the conservative Anglican District of Virginia, the body of Anglicans now linked to CANA, an organization with direct oversight from the Anglican Province of Nigeria and Archbishop Akinola.

"Although we remain confident in our legal position, we call upon the leaders of both The Episcopal Church and the Diocese of Virginia to embrace the recommendation of the Primates and withdraw their lawsuits. We did not choose this path. Even today, our churches remain open to negotiating a reasonable solution with The Episcopal Church and the Diocese. The legal proceedings have been an unfortunate distraction from all the good work our churches are doing to advance the mission of Christ," said Jim Oakes, vice-chairman of the Anglican District of Virginia, an association of Anglican congregations in Virginia and a part of the Convocation of Anglicans in North America (CANA). All 11 churches named in the lawsuit are members of ADV.

"At the core of this case is that The Episcopal Church and the Diocese of Virginia claim they have a ?trust' interest in the congregations' properties. But the Virginia courts have held time and again that denominations cannot claim an ?implied trust' in member congregations' property. The Episcopal Church even admitted in its complaint that it does not hold title to any of these eleven churches and that the churches' own trustees hold title for the benefit of the congregations.

"The Episcopal Church has continually walked away from the scriptural foundation of the Anglican Communion. When we objected, they chose intimidation through lawsuits as their solution. Regardless of the actions of The Episcopal Church, ADV members will continue to hold steadfast in their faith, based on the authority of Scripture. We continue to pray for The Episcopal Church and its leaders."

So regardless of who wins at the state level, it makes me wonder how long this case will be dragged through the courts. Could it end up before the US Supreme Court?

Reinhold Niebuhr may not be Bono, but he might come close. Ever since President Bush declared a war on terror in 2001, intellectuals and religious leaders have invoked Niebuhr's politics, Atlantic Monthly reporter Justine Isola writes in her piece "Everybody Loves Reinhold."

"[B]y now a well-turned Niebuhr reference is the speechwriter's equivalent of a photo op with Bono," she quotes Paul Elie.
Niebuhr thus came to be associated in many people's minds as much with the politics of power as with the tenets of Christianity, Isola writes.

But those who invoke Niebuhr tend to ignore his religion and focus on his political concerns, Isola writes after interviewing Paul Elie, author of November Atlantic piece "A Man for All Reasons."

Niebuhr's conclusions, Elie reminds us, were thoroughly informed by what Elie calls a ?biblical perspective' - a long sense of human history as reflected in the stories and lessons of the Bible - and by his view of human nature as ?rooted in human sinfulness.'

For Elie, the brushing aside of Niebuhr's Christian dimensions is symptomatic of a greater problem: our intellectual and political leaders have largely lost touch with the biblical perspective that once guided our country's founders and continues to profoundly influence the lives of most people living in the world today. In an age in which intellectual discourse in this country is increasingly secularized, and religion tends to inform our national politics in only a superficial way, Niebuhr stands out as a man whose Christian beliefs provided a deep well of insight.

Isola asks Elie: What, in your view, are the implications of having politicians in power who lack a biblical perspective?

As Niebuhr characterized it, the biblical tradition brought to America a sense of a long history which our relatively young country lacked, Elie answers.

If you take that biblical sense of history away on both sides, you're left with a fairly ahistorical secular liberalism and a fairly ahistorical religious conservatism, and that's a recipe for shallowness in our political life.

The Atlantic Monthly's piece is a compelling read. Also, consider dipping into New York Times' archives for its 2005 piece "Forgetting Reinhold Niebuhr":

"In the midst of this religious commotion, the name of the most influential American theologian of the 20th century rarely appears - Reinhold Niebuhr."

Perhaps we should examine Niebuhr's theology more closely if it truly has this impact.

Apologetics.Com
Features a variety of solid apologetic resources, including several related to the Gospels. Check the "Articles" link.

Apologetics Index
Indexes a vast number of apologetics websites of varying worth. Using the index on the homepage, one can look for specific articles. See "Jesus," for example.

Bible.Org
One of the top Bible websites. The bibliology section (under "Theology: Articles and Studies") has ample resources for Bible study, including some fine pieces on canon and textual criticism.

The Moorings
An apologetics site run by Ed Rickard. While not flinching from taking controversial doctrinal positions, this free site offers well-researched sections devoted to the reliability of the Gospels.

N. T. Wright
This unofficial site contains much more than apologetics, though several articles are relevant, such as "Five Gospels But No Gospel: Jesus and the Seminar" and "Jesus' Resurrection and Christian Origins."

Ben Witherington
Includes writings on many topics by a top New Testament scholar. Often rebuts current attacks on Jesus and the Gospels (for example, an excellent series on the supposed tomb of Jesus). Lacks an index, so use the "Search Blog" function at the top.

Probe Ministries
Filled with apologetics resources. Check the "Reasons to Believe" section for well-researched articles on the Gospels, or use the search function with "Gospels."

Lee Strobel
Features apologetic video clips. "Investigating Jesus" section includes helpful materials on the Gospels.

(This originally appeared on p.109 of the October 2007 issue of Christianity Today)

Last week, Opinion Journal's Naomi Schaefer Riley attended a public debate between Darwinian biologist Richard Dawkins, most (in)famous for his recent work, The God Delusion, and mathematician?Christian apologist John Lennox. The debate focused on the question, Does God exist?

What's newsworthy is not so much that the debate occurred or that it received so much press; it only takes a monthly glance at the New York Times bestseller list to see that this question, and the atheistic rants that often ensue, get our attention. According to Riley, the debate between the two Oxford scientists, which took place at the Alys Stephens Center in Birmingham, Alabama, on October 3, had been sold out for weeks prior, and received more buzz than Alabama football, which apparently is saying something.

Minneapolis pastor John Piper notes that staff from Bethlehem Baptist Church and Desiring God ministry frequently crossed the bridge that collapsed yesterday. He offers theological reflection in the context of speaking with his young daughter about the tragedy.

Update: Piper's comments are now on YouTube, with footage of the bridge.

Even those being satirized have to admit some of these motivational poster parodies are pretty funny.

More here. And the Pyromaniacs site links the images to "random samples of the kind of rhetoric that inspired these posters."

It beats suggesting they're in bed with bin Laden.

Zimbabwe's state paper runs an op-ed today saying that the country's independent media aren't sufficiently criticizing Catholic Archbishop Pius Ncube. (The archbishop, who has been the chief critic of Zimbabwean president Robert Mugabe's extensive human rights abuses, was accused last week of adultery.) In The Herald, Caesar Zvayi writes that Zimbabwe's independent media, are "punishing the innocent while letting Barabas go scot-free."

Hmm. So if Mugabe's newspaper wants to call Ncube Barabbas, then that would make Mugabe...

It wouldn't be the first, or most egregious example, or Mugabe's cronies comparing him to Jesus. As Chenjerai Hove wrote in Pambazuka News earlier this year,

In the quest for glory and grandeur, the presidential palace is full of charlatans, praise-singers and flatterers. First they used to call him 'the son of God', and then one minister publicly said 'Mugabe is our Jesus Christ'. Next the minister of education and culture has recently designed and installed a 'throne' in parliament, for 'king Mugabe.' Then the minister of local government would not be outdone. He has decided to build 'a shrine' in Mugabe's home village. A shrine is a place of worship. So the president has become a god who deserves a 'shrine.' Thus, from VaMugabe ndibaba' (Mugabe is our father) to 'the son of God' to 'Jesus Christ' to a 'shrine' a place of worship, God.

Perhaps the most famous example is deputy minister of local housing Tony Gara calling Mugabe "the other son of God." In a 2002 African Sociological Review article, Ezra Chitando describes how the words of Christian songs were changed for political ends. "I will never cry when Jesus is there," for example, became, "I will never cry when Mr. Mugabe is there."

All of this might be confusing. If you're trying to remember the difference between Jesus and Robert Mugabe, here's a helpful tip: Jesus is the one who fed the 5,000. Mugabe is the one starving millions.

From Frank Pastore's latest column:

If those in the emergent "we're-a-missional-not-an-institutional" church had their way, American church buildings would be just like European church buildings ? empty. And the church, the people themselves, would be so intellectually, morally, emotionally, and spiritually lost, confused and uncertain, that they would be incapable of doing hardly anything more than inviting their Muslim oppressors in for a cappuccino and a good conversation about the sociology of knowledge, the absurdity of propositional truth, and the misplaced certitude of the Muslim metanarrative. All the while, no doubt, nodding in agreement that America probably deserved to die and mumbling something about carbon footprints. ... The whole point of terrorism is to destroy the will of the enemy to fight. Whose side are they on, anyway?

I'm no fan of Emergent, but a demagogic, counterfactual column like this sure makes me more friendly toward it. Maybe Pastore, a former major league pitcher, is just mad about Tony Jones's argument that there's no such thing as a strike zone.

Michael Glatze, former head of Young Gay America, says he's no longer interested in a "gay identity" and has been healed from homosexual desires. He also says he was baptized into the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (the Mormons) earlier this year.

The Christian Post, a website affiliated with the World Evangelical Alliance, this week published an editorial saying that its rejoicing over the former outweighs its concern over the latter.

"The story of change should be used by believers to open the eyes of others like him and to lead them out of the homosexual lifestyle into a more godly one. And doing so is not an endorsement of the Mormon church," the publication said. "Glatze should be accepted for who he is -- not the result of Mormon conversion, but one of the latest and most prominent examples of former homosexuals who came to acknowledge homosexuality as sin and made the decision to turn away from the sinful lifestyle. And because Glatze's conversion is more likely to pull people away from homosexuality than draw people towards the Mormon church, believers should be more concerned about Glatze returning to homosexuality than him joining the Mormon church."

Ex-Gay Watch's Eugene Wagner says the Christian Post is essentially telling its readers the ends justify the means. "One wonders if ex-gay Scientologists would receive a similarly warm welcome," he writes.

A critique of Christopher Hitchens, Daniel Dennett, Sam Harris and the rest of the new atheists makes the key point that these authors, in attempting to tear down all religious belief as toxic, have failed to distinguish the good from the bad. And they haven't even come up with any new and particularly compelling arguments. For a movement that provides itself on its supposed intellectual superiority, that's quite an indictment.

According to reviewer Peter Berkowitz in today's Wall Street Journal:

"In making his case that reason must regard faith as an enemy to be wiped out, Mr. Hitchens declares Socrates's teaching that knowledge consists in knowing one's ignorance to be 'the definition of an educated person.' And yet Mr. Hitchens shows no awareness that his atheism, far from resulting from skeptical inquiry, is the rigidly dogmatic premise from which his inquiries proceed, and that it colors all his observations and determines his conclusions.

"Mr. Hitchens is by far the most erudite and entertaining of the new new atheists. But his errors and his excesses are shared by the whole lot. And these errors and excesses have pernicious political consequences, amplifying invidious distinctions among fellow citizens and obscuring crucial differences among believers world wide.

"Playing into the anger and enmities that debase our politics today, the new new atheism blurs the deep commitment to the freedom and equality of individuals that binds atheists and believers in America. At the same time, by treating all religion as one great evil pathology, today's bestselling atheists suppress crucial distinctions between the forms of faith embraced by the vast majority of American citizens and the militant Islam that at this very moment is pledged to America's destruction."

Memo to the angry atheists (and I know many atheists are calm and reasonable): Not all religion is alike.

Debates rarely shed fresh light on their subject, but they are nevertheless diverting. Last night's debate between Tom Flint and William Hasker ("Does God Know the Future?") was no exception to this rule. Flint earned high marks for coming to a setting in which almost everyone in attendance disagreed with him--and keeping his equilibrium and his sense of humor. Hasker delivered the best line of the night, which came near the very end of the question period. Flint had objected that God as depicted by open theists might end up with a world in which the uncoerced choices of his creatures reached a sort of critical mass of darkness and despair. Hasker's riposte was to wonder if what Flint had in mind was a world almost in as bad shape as the world really is. Round two of the Melee at ENC will take place next Tuesday night when Karen Winslow and Randall Tan debate the same question from the perspective of biblical studies rather than philosophy. Meanwhile, in the ongoing seminar, Philip Clayton will speak later this morning on "Where It All Begins: Cosmology, Creation, and Open Theism."

I wish that many of the combatants in the open theology wars could be sitting in on this conversation at Eastern Nazarene College, which started this week and will run until July 6. Of course, some of them ARE here, not least John Sanders and Greg Boyd, along with a nicely varied group of theologians and philosophers and odds and ends (myself included), invited by Tom Oord of Northwest Nazarene University. It's a conversation mostly between people who to some degree or another are sympathetic to the open view, with some guests who hold other views. Today, for instance, Tom Flint from Notre Dame presented the Molinist ("middle knowledge") position with clarity, humor, and a fine sense of proportion. After all, what we share as believers is more important than what divides us. Tonight he'll debate Bill Hasker on the subject, "Does God Know the Future?" Clark Pinnock (whom I first read when I was in high school) is a participant as well, and it has been a pleasure to meet him and his wife Dorothy. If most of the participants share some affinity with the open view, they nevertheless differ in many other ways. Some are quite sympathetic to--but not uncritical of--process thought. Others--I am one--are allergic to that movement. Vocabularies are quite different too. Can the analytic philosopher and the Wesleyan theologian and the philosopher of science find a lingua franca? Sometimes yes, sometimes no. There is no mushniness--disagreements may be quite sharp--but neither is there any huffing and puffing. Altogether this is--so far--a model conversation.

It's evident from Francis Beckwith's Ignatius Press interview that the former Evangelical Theological Society president has spent the last few weeks thinking about how to articulate his journey back to Rome. He explains the decision by appealing to one typical reason for why some Protestants find refuge in the Roman Catholic Church. "I thought to myself that if sola scriptura can result in everything from the philosophical theology of Calvinism to the Open View of God, from Nicean Trinitarianism to social trinitarianism to Oneness Pentecostalism's rehabilitation of Sabellianism to 19th-century Unitarianism, then sola scriptura is not a sufficient bulwark for sustaining Christian orthodoxy." Albert Mohler, president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, might be surprised to see that Beckwith has employed him to bolster this argument.

Beckwith also reveals plans to write a book next year about his experience. In the meantime, Cambridge University Press will release his latest book, Defending Life: A Moral and Legal Case Against Abortion Choice.

This week I attended the inaugural one-day conference of the Gospel Coalition. This consortium of more than 50 evangelical pastors have united around a common confessional statement and theological vision of ministry. Organizers hope this short conference, hosted by Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in Deerfield, Illinois, and attended by 500+ pastors and other ministry leaders, will propel a long-term effort to renew and reform evangelical thought and practice. D.A. Carson, a New Testament scholar at TEDS, and Tim Keller, senior pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York City, organized the group, which has met privately for three years now. Other speakers and workshop presenters included Crawford Loritts, Phil Ryken, Mark Driscoll, and John Piper.

I thought a couple statements stood out in the Gospel Coalition's founding document:

Last night I attended (and played the organ for) Bob Webber's memorial service. (You can read Bob's Christianity Today obit here.)

The memorial service was wonderful in many ways, but I want to point to one thing in particular. It wasn't about Bob.

Well, yes, it was about Bob, it couldn't help being about Bob, but as someone who has written a multitude of pages and taught innumerable students about worship, Bob insisted that his service focus on the great saving acts of God.

Here is part of what he wrote for the worship leaflet:

If the debate on this website between Doug Wilson, a a pastor and educator, and atheist pundit Christopher Hitchens has whetted your appetite for more, you'll want to check out "Nightline" tonight. Evangelist Ray Comfort and actor Kirk Cameron will debate two members of the so-called "Rational Response Squad."

The RRS, as you may know, has organized the Web-based "Blasphemy Challenge" to encourage people to blaspheme the Holy Spirit as a way to declare their freedom from and lack of fear over all religious beliefs. The founder of the movement, Brian Sapient, equates theism with belief in the tooth fairy, saying, "There isn't any good reason to believe in God."

This debate, which will be available online at 1 p.m. Central today on ABC News Now, promises to be interesting. I've heard Comfort, a bold street evangelist, speak, and I expect him to do well. I am concerned, however, over the parameters of this debate. Comfort promises to "prove" God's existence scientifically and without reference to the Bible or faith. First, while faith in God is eminently reasonable (the world's greatest minds, including everyone from C.S. Lewis to Isaac Newton to Francis Collins, have affirmed Christian faith), faith is still required, for "without faith it is impossible to please God." Second, while Christian faith made scientific discovery possible and many of the world's first and greatest scientists have been Christians, restricting the debate to things scientific unfortunately plays into the current prejudice that the only "facts" that are real or valiid are based in science. But there are many fields of inquiry that are not open to the scientific method (history being one of them). Thus, the terms of the debate will only take us so far.

I remember the time my wife and I sat down with a friend who had lots of questions about Christianity. At the onset I asked him if he would become a Christian if we answered all his questions. He said yes. Then we talked and we answered his questions, one by one. But he still declined to become a Christian. It was not for a lack of facts. It was a lack of will. As the Bible says, "The fool has said in his heart, 'There is no God.'" I don't think a debate restricted to scientific facts, however it goes, will change that.

Updates: Francis Beckwith, who rejoined the Roman Catholic Church and resigned over the weekend as president of the Evangelical Theological Society, has also withdrawn his membership. And moments ago the ETS executive committee released the following statement:

How many "base communities" are there in Brazil? And how healthy is the liberation theology that spawned them?

The New York Times run-up story to Pope Benedict's visit to Brazil wants you to believe that reports of liberation theology's demise are greatly exaggerated. Despite official attempts to suppress this Marxist version of politicized Catholicism, says the Times, there are 80,000 active base communities in Brazil's vast territory.

The Associated Press is more conservative. It estimates the number that have been active in the past at about 60,000.

Neither the Times nor the AP sources its numbers.

The Economist, a news magazine that is supposed to be good with numbers, does not offer an estimate. It only reports that the notably pro-liberation 1968 Medellin conference of bishops "spawned innumerable ?base communities,'" and reports that their numbers are now in decline.

The numbers the Economist does cite show an overall decline in the Roman Catholic market share in Brazil, a point also made in the AP report.

In Brazil, the world's largest Catholic country, the church has lost adherents at a rate of 1% a year since 1991, mainly to Pentecostal churches. Fewer than three-quarters of Brazilians are now Catholics while 15% are Protestants (known locally as "evangelicals").

For the sake of comparison, the World Christian Database estimates more than 80% of the overall population of Latin American is Roman Catholic.

The shifts are not only in the direction of Pentecostal Protestantism, says the Economist, but also in the direction of charismatic-style Catholicism. At least half of active Catholics in Brazil have gravitated toward the charismatic movement. "The Catholic response to the Pentecostal challenge is to imitate it."

I've seen more surprising news, but Francis Beckwith's decision rejoin the Roman Catholic Church will send some kind of tremors through the Evangelical Theological Society, which he served as president. Beckwith, associate professor of church-state studies at Baylor University, has resigned as ETS president but said he will maintain his membership. Anyone reading the comments on Beckwith's blog can attest: No, the Reformation is not over.

Newsweek had Rick Warren vs. Sam Harris.

Beliefnet had Harris vs. Andrew Sullivan.

Next week, ABC’s Nightline has Kirk Cameron and Ray Comfort vs. the BlasphemyChallenge.com guys.

No. Really. Nightline has tapped Kirk Cameron to be fidei defensor.

I suppose we could have asked Cameron, too. Or maybe Lisa Whelchel, Mr. T, Willie Aames, Justine Bateman, or Gavin McLeod.

Instead, we’d rather hear from Douglas Wilson, author of the new book, Letter from a Christian Citizen (American Vision). Wilson is senior fellow of theology at New Saint Andrews College and minister at Christ Church in Moscow, Idaho. He is also the editor of Credenda/Agenda magazine and has written (among other things) Reforming Marriage and A Serrated Edge: A Brief Defense of Biblical Satire and Trinitarian Skylarking. His Blog and Mablog site inevitably makes for provocative reading.

Wilson will be corresponding with Christopher Hitchens, author of the new book, God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything (Twelve Books). Hitchens is a contributing editor to Vanity Fair and a visiting professor of liberal studies at the New School. He is the author of numerous books, including Thomas Jefferson: Author of America, Thomas Paine's "Rights of Man," Letters To a Young Contrarian, and Why Orwell Matters. He was named, to his own amusement, number five on a list of the "Top 100 Public Intellectuals" by Foreign Policy and Britain's Prospect.

You'll enjoy the discussion regardless of whether you're already familiar with Wilson and Hitchens. But if you are familiar with their work, you'll know that it promises to be anything but boring.

Martin Marty's Sightings column is typically worth reading. After the decades he has spent as a religion scholar, his columns will educate nearly every reader.

Unfortunately half of Sightings columns are written by guests, and these tend toward infuriating rather than instructive. Today's column (not yet online [Update 5/4: It's up now]) by Bonnie J. Miller-McLemore is about spanking. She leads with the story of parents at Remnant Fellowship Church in Brentwood, Tennessee, who spanked their child, Josef Smith, to death and are now serving life sentences.

She says Remnant's "religious leader Gwen Shamblin encourages parents to spank their children, describing corporal punishment as a 'time-tested, ancient teaching of the Bible' necessary to shaping adherence to God's authority." Miller-McLemore fails to note that Remnant Fellowship is not a mainstream evangelical church, but tends toward aberrant Christian sect.

Miller-McLemore then criticizes critics of spanking, who call such disciplinary methods child abuse. She notes that sociological research "documents increased affection and paternal involvement as positively related to an emphasis on children's submission to parental authority and use of corporal punishment." And she says Christians should be wary of both the anti-spanking and pro-spanking groups. Miller-McLemore is right when she concludes, "For Christians, discipline means fostering conditions that induce a desire to love God and seek the good of others."

But Miller-McLemore is confused when she writes,

News about Josef Smith's death powerfully reminds us just how hazardous careless use of Christian proclamation can be, especially as it impacts those least able to protect themselves and most dependent on adult benevolence. Fervent promotion of doctrines about sin, obedience, and bending the will to God have had and can have devastating consequences.

Miller-McLemore does admit, "seeing children as sinful does not de facto lead to their harsh punishment." And she says Calvin and Augustine did not condone coporal punishment but found spiritual capacity in children.

Yet, she seems to see these examples as exceptions from the rule that "doctrines about sin, obedience, and bending the will to God" lead to abuse. In fact disregard for such doctrines has had far worse consequences. The idea that all people are sinful, children included, does not lead to abuse. If parents fail to apply the doctrines to themselves or find in them an excuse to abuse their children, it's no condemnation of the doctrine.

Miller-McLemore concludes, "For children in particular, what people believe about Jesus or God -- whether God demands obedience or offers love -- matters." She seems to be unable to consider that God both demands obedience and offers love. Parents too can demand obedience and enforce their demands with discipline while also tenderly loving their children.

Child abuse may be tied to bad or heretical doctrine, but it is not the result of classic Christian doctrines of sin and obedience to God. Ignoring those doctrines (especially when professing not to) is dangerous not just for children but for us all.