Caitlyn Jenner and the American Religion

http://douthat.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/06/10/caitlyn-jenner-and-the-american-religion/

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The Magnitude of Theological Change implicit in “Inclusion” Demands A More Substantive Theology

Still Mulling and Probably Won’t Stop

It’s the most Synodical time of the year and young delegates eyes all turn to the question of same sex marriage.

When word broke this week that Tony Campolo “came out” I knew he wasn’t gay, he had just switched over to the “inclusion” camp. “Inclusion” is the new “affirming”.

I, and just about every other pastor I know continue to watch, and mull and sometimes whisper about the issue of our age for the church. I haven’t posted in a bit on this but I continue to watch, and think and ponder. Perhaps a status report is in order.

“Sorry Tony You’ll Need A Few More Consonants” Continue reading →

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The Dones

Those who leave not because they are nominal but because they are fed up with the slowness of the church.

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NY Times Evangelical Conversation on Gays

NYTimes

Their take on Bible verses

Mr. Kaltenbach, 37, has his own singular story about coming to grips with the issue of homosexuality. His parents divorced when he was 2, and he was raised in Missouri in the 1980s and ’90s in two homes: that of his lesbian mother and her partner, and that of his father — who, he later learned, is also gay.

As a child, Mr. Kaltenbach attended a gay rights march with his mother, and he recalls protesters yelling that God condemned the marchers and throwing urine on them. (His book, “Messy Grace,” part memoir and part advice for pastors on ministering to gays, will be published this year.) He says evangelicals should welcome gay people with “acceptance, but not approval.” Openly gay couples attend his church, he said, but are not allowed to serve on the leadership board.

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NYTimes, Matthew Vine and Caleb Kaltenback reinforce cultural assumptions about Bible Reading

ny times assumptions on how to read the bible

NYTimes

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Christian Denominations Not Going Away

RNS

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Philosophy the product rather than engine of culture

The New Atlantis

But I believe that philosophy is far more a product of existing social and economic structures than it is an independent entity. We don’t have the modern attention economy because of Kant; rather, we got Kant because of certain features of technological modernity — especially those involving printing, publishing, and international postal delivery — that also have produced our current attention economy, which, I believe, would work just as it does if Kant had never lived. What I call theOppenheimer Principle — “When you see something that is technically sweet, you go ahead and do it and argue about what to do about it only after you’ve had your technical success” — has worked far more powerfully to shape our world than any of our master thinkers. Indeed, those thinkers are, in ways we scarcely understand, themselves the product of the Oppenheimer Principle.

All of the figures I am writing about there understood that they could not think of World War II simply as a conflict between the Allies and the Axis. There were, rather, serious questions to be asked about the emerging character of the Western democratic societies. On some level each of these figures intuited or explicitly argued that if the Allies won the war simply because of their technological superiority — and then, precisely because of that success, allowed their societies to become purely technocratic, ruled by the military-industrial complex — their victory would become largely a hollow one. Each of them sees the creative renewal of some form of Christian humanism as a necessary counterbalance to technocracy.

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Calvin College Inner Compass David Gushee Suffering in Marriage

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Adults with ADD

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Transgender Links

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