Marginal Christianity

The Second Campaign Begins If the disciples thought braving the sea was frightening, just wait till they get across the sea to Gentile land. Scarcely having caught their breath, a new and terrifying sight comes toward them. A cemetery-dwelling, demon-possessed man of uncommon strength approaches. In Isaiah God condemns those “who sit inside tombs, and spend the night in secret places; who eat swine’s flesh” (Isa. 65:4). It is an unclean space, a place of death. Eugene Boring notes: “The man here is a picture of death, of one already banished from the land of the living, from human community that makes human life possible.” (Eugene M. Boring, Mark. NTL. [Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2006], 150.) In the first campaign Jesus began with an exorcism in a synagogue (1:21-28). He begins the second campaign with an exorcism as well. Comparison with the earlier exorcism story shows their close parallels (Myers, Say to This Mountain , 58). Conflict    ...

                Many (including myself) have taken a run at the “gun thing” in recent days in the wake of the terrible shootings in Connecticut.   The questions have been largely pragmatic (will more or less guns keep us “safer”?), political (what can or will the Obama administration do about guns?), constitutional (what, in fact, is the significance of the 2 nd Amendment?), or comparative   (what have other countries done and would what they have done work for us?).   All these are, of course, valid and valuable questions.                   Fewer responses have been genuinely theological.   Perhaps the responses from the Religious Right have seemed so wrongheaded and headed in a wrong direction that others have chosen to stay out of that part of the discussion.   One, however, has not.   And ...