In 1995 Billy Abraham published a book called Waking from Doctrinal Amnesia. Its basic premise is that, within the United Methodist Church, we have forgotten who we are and what we stand for. United Methodists are not the only Christians to have forgotten these basic markers of Christian identity. Throughout mainline Protestantism, increasingly in evangelicalism,…
At a recent conference at Wheaton College, Fuller Theological Seminary president Mark Labberton addressed evangelical leaders on what he calls the “crisis of evangelicalism.” You can read the address here, and I commend it to your prayerful consideration. We face a haunting specter with a shadow that reaches back further than the 2016 election—a history…
As a Christian, you are beholden to no political party. You are beholden to the church and to the theological principles by which church makes its ethical decisions. It is important that we remember this today. Our political life in the United States has become toxic. Never in my lifetime has it been so difficult…
Here is a paradox. Over the last thirty or forty years, we have invested an enormous amount of thought, emotion, treasure, and blood in what we call human values, human rights, the defence of human dignity and of human life. Over the same period, quietly but devastatingly, science and philosophy have combined to undermine our traditional concept…
As we learn more details regarding the Australian parents who left a twin with Down syndrome with a surrogate mother in Thailand, the story goes from bad to worse. Here’s an excerpt from an article in the Washington Post: David Farnell, who has three children from a previous relationship, said the problems began when they found out before…
The Independent recently published an article regarding controversy in the UK over the genetic modification of embryos, and the government’s alleged attempts to obscure the nature and consequences of such treatments: The [UK] Government has been accused of misleading the public over the introduction of a new in vitro fertilisation (IVF) technique that some experts believe will…
Imagine that there was a pre-natal test, commonly recommended by medical personnel, to identify children who would experience depression throughout their lives. Upon receiving a positive test, parents were counseled: You know, you might not want to go through with this pregnancy. You’re headed down a very difficult path. You may very well see your…
“From now on, therefore, we regard no one from a human point of view; even though we once knew Christ from a human point of view, we know him no longer in that way. So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new!” (2…
The corporeal is for people with disabilities the most real. Unwilling and unable to take our bodies for granted, we attend to the kinesis of knowledge. That is, we become keenly aware that our physical selves determine our perceptions of the social and physical world. These perceptions, like our bodies, are often nonconforming and disclose new categories and models of thinking…
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: it is unacceptable for the value of human lives to be reduced to some notion of functionality. One rarely hears explicitly that the lives of the able-bodied and able-minded are more valuable than the lives of people with disabilities, but the idea is unquestionably “in the…