Faith

Travis Stanley had a interesting blog posting recently about Cardinal Roger Mahoney's recent comments about imigration. Read it here. I have to agree..

Greg Stevenson blogged a collection of fake church signs generated using churchsigngenerator.com. Here is one of my favorites:

In a blog post, Travis Stanley hit the highlights of a lecture given by Lynn Anderson at the ACU Graduate School of Theology Alumni Luncheon in February. The full text of the speech is available on Anderson's web site. Anderson highlighted three dangers he sees for American Christianity:

CONSTANTINIANISM
I am feeling troubled over a new rising tide of what some dub "neo-Constatinianism": that is the current unholy marriage between "the conservative Christian cause" and American Nationalism, more specifically the right wing view of American economic and political interests. CONSUMERISM Add to Constantinianism the cultural drift into Consumerism. Rugged Individualism expects its inalienable rights - "Life, liberty and pursuit of happiness." But consumerism turns these into demands for "affluence, license and the pursuit of gratification." Surely it takes no Solomon to recognize that the culture can shape the church rather than the other way around. CERTAINTY Then stir another ingredient into the mix of Constantinianism and Consumerism: Certainty - the hubris that trusts its own ability to understand - and thus to "get things right, absolutely right." (In churches of Christ we know a thing or two about certainty.) This kind of Certainty stands unbowed before the ever expanding mystery of God's majesty and Holiness. And it naively reduces the rich texture of scripture down to a few rigid moral and doctrinal bullet points. In addition it seems oblivious to the baffling mystery of human persons - let alone the overwhelming complexity of global social issues.

From an AP article on MSNBC:

Over the past 10 years, more than a dozen countries have made it easier to get abortions, and women from Mexico to Ireland have mounted court challenges to get access to the procedure. The trend contrasts sharply with the United States, where this week South Dakota's governor signed legislation that would ban most abortions in the state, launching a bitter new battle that activists seem ready to take to the Supreme Court. Most European countries have legalized abortion, with limits, for years and the issue rarely makes news. Many Latin American countries ban abortion or severely limit it. In the Middle East, Islamic law forbids abortion, although most countries allow it if the mother's life is endangered. Asia is a mixed bag, with the procedure banned in the predominantly Roman Catholic Philippines, but common in China and India. Nevertheless, the question is not entirely settled: Court cases in Mexico, Poland, Colombia, and Ireland have sought to broaden access to abortion. Each year, 46 million women worldwide have abortions, according to the Alan Guttmacher Institute, a reproductive rights think tank. About 60 percent live in countries where abortion is broadly permitted. Twenty-five percent live in nations where it is banned or allowed only to save a woman's life. The rest live in countries where abortion is allowed to protect a woman's life or health. On the other side, there are new Vatican-backed efforts to call into question Italy's liberal abortion law, and women's rights activists say they fear a new tightening of Poland's law, already one of Europe's strictest.

Mike Cope has a recent series of interesting posts about the Bible. These are the kind of details that, I think, are typically not considered or ignored or glossed over by most of us most of the time. They shouldn't be. The B-I-B-L-E #1 - The Bible has to be Interpreted The B-I-B-L-E #2 - People Wrote the Bible The B-I-B-L-E #3 - the Bible wasn't written to me The B-I-B-L-E #4 - the Bible didn't come rolling off the presses as a single volume