When people look at our daughter, Aleksandra, what do they see? Someone who can’t talk, someone who drools, someone who does not believe in personal space and is literally in your face? Some see the sign of sin. We have been interrogated about our conduct: drugs, promiscuity… there must be a cause. Some search further…
I’ve been reading a book called Discovering Trinity in Disability: A Theology for Embracing Difference, by Myroslaw Tataryn and Maria Truchan-Tataryn . I’ll write a longer post about this book at a later time, but for now I want to highlight a chapter on the relationship between disability and iconography. Iconography keeps us connected to the embodied aspects of…
Each year the Bethesda Institute holds the Summer Institute on Theology and Disability. If you have any interest in ministry with people with disabilities, you should certainly consider attending. As a bonus, they post presentations from the Institute on their website. A few months ago I wrote a post called “Human Life in a Liberal Society,”…
How we argue matters. I can’t emphasize this enough. The way in which we engage one another, the motives we attribute to one another, and the rigor with which we engage one another’s arguments–these all matter. We cannot make intellectual or moral progress simply by arguing with one another. Rather, such progress requires that we argue with…
No, I’m not talking about Millennials or Baby Boomers, though if I were it would certainly increase the number of hits on this post. I’m a member of that rather ill-defined group that we call Generation X. I recently read a post by a good friend of mine on a site called Waltbox. It wasn’t…
Recently I was invited to preach at worship during our master’s intensive at United. The theme for the week was Wisdom. Prov 24:1-14 Do not envy the wicked, nor desire to be with them; 2for their minds devise violence, and their lips talk of mischief. 3By wisdom a house is built, and by understanding…
Have you ever been to a session of the General Conference of the UMC? If so, could you call what happens there “holy conferencing”? If not, something has to change. The GC is the only body that speaks on behalf of The United Methodist Church. It is where we establish church law and make decisions…
Much mainline Christian theology in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries has been a response to the problem of evil. For liberal Christian theologians of the mid-twentieth century, two world wars and the Holocaust made any strong notion of divine action unbelievable. Unlike evangelical cessationists, who believe that miracles ceased after the biblical period, liberal theologians,…
It’s a pretty mean world out there, especially if you’re the kind of person for whom self-advocacy is difficult. Case in point: I don’t know what’s worse–the fact that Dawkins made this remark in public, or that it received, at the time this image was captured, 46 retweets and 22 favorites. I’m not surprised. I’m…
If there’s one thing I’ve learned from working with mainline Protestants over the years, it’s that we’re really good at identifying what we don’t believe about scripture. Basically, the claim I have heard over and over again is that we don’t read it the way “fundamentalists” read it. Okay…. Fair enough. That, however, is a very uninteresting statement.…
Pursuing Jesus
These are the thoughts, prayers, stories, sermons, and devotions from a simple pastor. May you be blessed by our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ as you read...
Musings and whatnot....
Finding the humor, beauty, and purpose in the mess of motherhood
Doctrine Matters
Just another WordPress.com weblog
Reflections from Jacob J. Prahlow
humor | musings | fiction
Just another WordPress.com site
work and prayer of a jesus follower
Who is my ideal reader? Well, ideal means non-existent. I have no notion of whom I’m writing for. Guy Davenport
'An arrow through the air' - Notes of a Methodist pastor
Holiness, Sustainability, and Tending Good Soil
two of us are tall and the other one of us is short and has Down syndrome
Comments on the New Testament and Early Christianity (and related matters)
David F. Watson 