Leadingchurch.com

Why Marilynne Robinson’s literary and liberal Calvinism appeals

Jesus Creed

NY Times Income Inequality is a Choice

Jesus Creed (RJS)

CT

These comments very much track Tim Keller’s comments in the EPPC Forum. Three types of people call themselves Christians in America:

• Cultural Christians: Their family has religious roots in Christianity but don’t practice.
• Congregational Christians: They were married or baptized in a church but don’t practice
• Convictional Christians: They self-consciously try to live out their faith in a church context. This is 1/3 of people who say they are Christian and about 25% of the US population.

The “Nones” are growing from the Cultural and Congregational Christians, not so much from the Convictionals.

Huff Po response: Why Nobody Goes to church anymore

CNN Blog

Jonathan Merritt’s Interview with Greg Boyd

Also from Jesus Creed

What do you see as the problems with certainty-seeking faith? Or do you think it is a problem? Is faith certainty? Or is certainty faith no longer faith?

The more psychological certain you are, the stronger your faith; the less certain, the weaker your faith. If something is not happening right — like a healing — the problem is weak faith. So he uses the image of the mallet slammed down at the county fair onto a device that tosses a ball up a pole — and if you hit it hard enough the bell will ring. Some think of faith this way: if you have enough of it, the bell of certainty and success rings. (Good analogy.) If this is the case, there is no one with enough faith to bring peace to the Middle East, an end to AIDS or healing to someone for whom you and others are praying. Boyd will present a more biblical understanding of faith, but that’s for a later post.