Stephen King’s 2014 release of Revival provides readers with a unique insight into King’s religious reflections. King has, no doubt, written on religion before, and as his books often delve into the depths of the dark and supernatural, religion is hardly absent. But not until Revival has King placed religion – particularly Protestant Christianity – at the front and […]
The Misunderstood Jew and Misunderstanding Judaism
In the course I teach on Jesus within his historical context in at my church, each week I ask my students to repeat a mantra: Jesus Christ was a first century Jewish man living under the thumb of the Roman Empire. While Jesus is more than what can be seen in his historical setting, He is […]
Why Defending the Bible Has Made Us Unable to Read It
For the last decade Pete Enns has foddered the flames of Evangelical controversy with his theology of biblical interpretation. In many ways, I am grateful for the example of a scholar who holds to the inspiration and authority of scripture, while at the same time holding some of our most cherished Evangelical propositions up to […]
The Last Segregated Hour
I just finished reading The Last Segregated Hour: The Memphis Kneel-Ins and the Campaign for Southern Church Desegregation by Stephen R. Haynes. As a pastor relatively new to Memphis, it’s important to read works like this in order to understand the history of Christianity in my city. Clearly the Martin Luther King, Jr. assassination sounds as the […]
The Year Civilization Collapsed
Whereas most scholastic works dealing with history and archaeology deal with specific people, in specific places, and specific times in order to understand the specific things those people do, Eric Cline’s 1177 B.C. deals with over 500 years and numerous peoples and places in an attempt to understand what happened to cause the world’s first real “dark […]