Marginal Christianity

Posted by PeteEnns on October 26, 2015 in Christianity and evolution The Evolution of Adam 1 Comment Last Friday I gave the Religion and Civil Society lecture at the annual meeting of the Institute for the Study of Christianity and Culture at Michigan State University on “Reconciling Human Origins and Religious Faith: Thoughts from a Christian Evolutionist.” (Go Wolverines . . . uh, I mean Spartans.) Many thanks to Malcolm D. Magee (director of ISCC) for the invitation to speak and to his assistant Kristin Whitwam for making everything run smoothly despite my best efforts to be difficult. Thanks, too, for all the wonderful people who came out to dialogue about evolution and Christian faith.  You remind me why I do this and why this is anything but a dead topic! I spoke for an hour from a manuscript, which I almost never do (the manuscript part . .. going on for an hour is easy peasy for a wordy guy like me), and complete with all s...

Terrance W. Klein  | May 29 2015 - 9:35am | 1 comment My nephew has a tattoo. Perhaps, more than one, but, as I pause to picture, I can clearly remember only the one. It’s a simple gothic cross, running the length of his right bicep. Although we live a little less distant than a two-hour car drive, we dwell in different worlds. He’s just under thirty, never married. He struggled to finish high school. Until the drop in prices, he was employed in the Kansas oil fields. When I would see him at my mother’s home, his voice abandoned its native languor only if one coaxed him into describing oil field work, the challenges that weather, terrain, and technology presented. Like so many of his generation, Confirmation was my nephew’s passage out of Catholicism. There were no struggles with Church teaching, doctrinal or moral. No conflict with clergy. The institution simply vanished from his life when he took his first job and moved out of the home. Had it ever been a part ...

http://www.allanbevere.com/2014/05/orthodoxy-and-heresy-and-necessary.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+allanbevere%2FROss+%28Allan+R.+Bevere%29&utm Scot McKnight  has written an excellent post  on  the  proper and improper use  of the  term heresy. There is no doubt that some Christians throw the term around quite loosely and dangerously, while others reject the importance of the word altogether. Others have attempted to redefine the term to support their own agendas, such as heresy doesn't involve what one actually believes, rather it is used only for people who disrupt the unity of the church. It is indeed true that heresy does cause such disruption, but it is not the disruption that is heresy, but the heretical beliefs that lead to disruption. Scot starts with two inappropriate ways that the term is used: First , there is the  slipshod  use: a "heretic" is used here for anyone who doesn'...