The Miracle of Your Salvation (Advent, Christmas, and the Miraculous, Part 3)

Yes, the Christmas story is full of miracles: the virginal conception and birth, the birth of John the Baptist, the incarnation, the angelic heralds, the attendant prophecies…. There is, however, another miracle that we don’t always talk about this time of year, though it is described beautifully in the poetry of Charles Wesley’s “Hark! The…

On the Virginal Conception and Birth of Christ (Advent, Christmas, and the Miraculous, Part 2)

There are some Christian beliefs that through the centuries the Church has left broadly open for debate. For example, there is no single canonical doctrine of atonement. Rather, Christians through the centuries have affirmed that while Christ did atone for our sins, we have a range of options for understanding this truth. We have remained…

Advent, Christmas, and the Miraculous, Part 1

This is the first of a few posts (I hope) on Advent, Christmas, and the miraculous. To get at the these topics, though, I have to lay down a basic framework for discussion. So… if you can make your way through this geeky first post, you might find it helpful in thinking about the miracles…

Dr. Peter Bellini on his new book, the demonic, and deliverance

In our United Methodist baptismal rite, we ask those who are to be baptized, “Do you reject the spiritual forces of wickedness?” Yet most people in our tradition have only the vaguest notion of what this means. This is partly because we do not train our pastors to discern and confront the spiritual forces of…

Back to the Future, UMC Style (or, More Fun Times with the Judicial Council)

Methodnerds, this one’s for you. Recently the Council of Bishops asked the Judicial Council to rule on the constitutionality of the plans that have come from the Commission on a Way Forward. (If you understand that sentence, you are a Methonerd.) My interest here is not in the rulings on specific proposals within the two…

Is the Public Sphere Collapsing?

I’ve been reading Charles Taylor’s work, A Secular Age (Belknap, 2007). This book is not for the faint of heart. It is a sweeping intellectual history examining the rise of secularism in the West. This is one of those books that other people write books about, such as James K. A. Smith’s How (Not) to Be…

On Fundamentalisms

The Christian movement we call “fundamentalism” began in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, largely in reaction to the rise of modernity and liberal theology. Its adherents came from a variety of Christian traditions, including established mainline denominations and independent churches that we would today call “non-denominational.” Proponents of this diverse anti-modernist movement joined…

	veritasvincit on As We Pray, So We Believe
	Michael Brecheen on As We Pray, So We Believe
	davidtrawick on As We Pray, So We Believe
	J David Trawick on As We Pray, So We Believe
	Lewis Archer on As We Pray, So We Believe

David F. Watson

Musings and whatnot….