I received a great email this morning from my friend Lorraine Charles. More and more I am seeing friends who are tired of being considered a "foregone conclusion" as a vote for a particular party because of the group they belong to. I can very much relate to Lorraine's thoughts here.

Last weekend I had dinner with old friends I hadn’t seen in awhile. My mind was only half engaged though--I’m an election year enthusiast and to top it off, it was the night of the South Carolina primary. I tried to wait until at least our food was served, but shortly after the server took our order I blurted out, “so which candidate do you like best?” Their response was something to the effect of, “Huckabee—he’s a Christian”. As both my friends and I are “born-again”, Protestant, Bible-believing Christians, I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised at their response. Nonetheless, a strong sense of dismay and disappointment came over me. I did my best to smile and ask polite questions about their choice, but I became even more horrified during the conversation when I needed to explain that no, Barack Obama is not a Muslim. read more »

So the recent news that scientists were able to clone primates has me thinking. Would clones have souls?

Christians believe that human life is valuable because it has an eternal soul that is designed to be in a right relationship with God. It is because humans have souls that we are different and, thus, killing of humans is immoral. However, animals don't have souls so killing them for meat, hides, etc. is morally acceptable.

So, if scientists created a clone, would that clone have a soul? If it had a soul, would there be anything wrong with creating it? If it didn't have a soul, would there be anything wrong with using it as a human-tissue repository? read more »

Last week I wrote this meme about some of the common perceptions of Christians and what Christians should be known for. This meme has spread quite a bit and while the perceptions differ, there is a common thread in what people say Christians should be known for. Love.

Too often Christians aren't known for love. They are known for making stances against things, protesting for "family values", and for showing anything but love for others.

Well I am sick and tired of hearing about Pat Robertson, Ann Coulter, James Dobson, or worse, Fred Phelps. They are no more representatives for Christians than Osama Bin Laden is for Muslims.

Today I'd like to highlight a friend of mine who people should think of when they think of Christians.

Last year Jamie Tworkowski found himself spending five days helping a girl that a treatment center wouldn't take and who was struggling with addiction, depression, and suicide. Since then, Jamie has accidentally founded a non-profit organization, To Write Love On Her Arms, to bring hope and help for young people dealing with depression, self-injury, and suicide. I'm not going to attempt to retell the story; Jamie has told this girl's story here. read more »

I appreciate Dinesh Dsouza's linking the New Atheism to the fallacy of the Enlightenment, but Kant is not an ally to revealed religion as he suggests. Kant did attempt to make room for faith against the Enlightenment skepticism of his day, but he accomplished this by putting faith in a completely separate room from science. Hardly anyone questions whether these two should be separated anymore, but that move made the objects of faith utterly unknowable to reason. It turned religion into a subjective sentiment.

Kant's noumena—reality as it is in itself before the human mind filters it through its categories—is no friend to revealed religion. read more »

Yesterday I was listening to a piece on NPR about Fred Thompson's presidential campaign and how he was making sure that Republican audiences knew for sure that he is conservative enough. There was a mention of Thompson being adequately pro-life and adequately anti-gay rights to satisfy social conservatives and especially evangelical Christians.

I find this so troubling. No wonder the average person thinks that Christians are anti-homosexual and hypocritical.

I'm trying to think through how a typical evangelical Christian might view the issue of gay rights/gay marriage. Usually the thought process is through the lens of "family values" and cultural norms; that is, gay marriage will undermine the institution of marriage and it therefore bad for families and our society. read more »

My friend Gabe Lyons has just co-authored a fantastic new book, UnChristian: What a New Generation Really Thinks about Christianity... and Why It Matters. In it he and David Kinnaman explore many of the negative opinions that people have about Christians. Not surprisingly they learned that many people think of Christians as being judgmental, hypocritical, anti-homosexual, too political, and sheltered. (Here is an interview I conducted with Gabe)

I'm curious as to what other impressions people have about Christians.

I'm going to tag five of my friends to write their four things about Christians: three negative perceptions and one thing that Christians should be known for. So here is my list:

1. Christians don't create anything original. They only mimic the world around them.
Just go in any Christian bookstore. You will see "sanctified" Christian books that are almost identical to books in B&N or Borders. You will see t-shirts that are rip offs of "secular" apparel, yet with Bible verses. There are even Christian workout clubs. Yet why is it that the Christian version of so many "secular" (I hate the word secular) items are so often totally lame?

2. Christians get offended at everything.
It seems like every day Christians are getting riled up about something - be it DisneyWorld, supposed persecution of Christians in America (puh-leeze!), or even cursing in the work place. Sometimes it feels like Christians disagree with the first part of the bumper-sticker that says "Christians Aren't Perfect, Just Forgiven".

3. Christians are just waiting to be "raptured up" and couldn’t care less about this world.
What with books like the Left Behind series telling Christians that this world is all going to burn and many Christians’ visible revulsion at being good stewards of the Earth, it is hard to think otherwise.

4. Christians should be known for their unfailing love for others.
By others, I don't mean other Christians. I mean all other people. Especially those that are hard to love. The poor. The sick. The widowed. The outcasts. The oppressed.

A few of my friends are doing this. My friend Chris Heurtz of Word Made Flesh helps the poorest of the poor around the world. My friend Jamie Tworkowski of To Write Love On Her Arms helps people suffering with depression and suicidal tendencies. And my friend Daniel of Meet Justice is working to stop child sex trafficking in Atlanta.

I'm tagging the following five people to answer "UnChristian: 4 Things About Christians" and link to the book to read more about this topic:
Joe Carter of Evangelical Outpost
David Wayne of Jollyblogger
Brother Maynard of Subversive Influence
Daniel Larison
Michael Spencer of InternetMonk

You don't have to be tagged to answer these questions. read more »

This short clip highlights some of the findings in the new book, UnChristian: What a New Generation Thinks About Christianity and Why it Matters By David Kinnaman and Gabe Lyons. The real shame is that Christians are the ones who have unfortunately created these negative feelings.

I'd love to get the thoughts of my readers on this topic. Do these characterizations seems accurate? How about as it relates to Christians in politics?

Here is my interview with co-author Gabe Lyons.

In my spare time, I’ve been reading Mark Noll’s America’s God, which I recommend highly to anyone who needs a 500+ page diversion.

In the course of arguing that evangelical churches--above all, Methodists and Baptists (especially the former)--contributed mightily to the creation of our national identity in the early republic, Noll offers some telling statistics. In 1840, there were some 18,000 post offices and 21,000 postal employees; there were roughly 10,000 Methodist clergy (and three times as many clergy altogether). read more »

A friend of mine recently told a discussion group that he was amazed to find himself "squarely in the middle" amongst us on a political issue. Although he wasn't trying to claim the higher ground, I was taken by how his staking out the middle ground had that effect anyway. It led to this end-of-the-week rumination:

Even as he was amazed to find himself "squarely in the middle", so I am amazed at how deeply entrenched political discourse is in mathematical metaphors. In one sense, all language is metaphorical--I think this is a result of God revealing Himself through ectypal figures while He Himself is incomprehensible as archetype. However, what amazes me in this case is how the mathematical metaphor itself carries persuasive force.

One might trace this back to the Pythagoreans, who believed that all of reality could be reduced to mathematical relationships. The Pythagorean theorem was, for them, not simply a geometric truth; it was a metaphysical truth. In fact, it was a religious truth. The Pythagoreans had a significant influence on Plato and when regarding his Doctrine of the Forms, it is important to keep this influence in mind. Plato's Forms (or Ideals) are not cookie-cutter semblances of the material objects; they are closer to something like a form(ula). read more »

Does believing that "God is on our side" make it easier for us to inflict pain and suffering on those perceived to be our enemies? If we think God sanctions violence, are we more likely to engage in violent acts?

Those questions were posed recently by Social psychologist Brad Bushman of the University of Michigan. You may be surprised by the results.

According to the studies, the resounding answer to both questions is "yes." Researcher Brad Bushman hypothesized that "exposure to a biblical description of violence would increase aggression more than a secular description of the same violence" and that "aggression would be greater when the violence was sanctioned by God than when it was not sanctioned by God." In the study, students read a description of the beating, raping, and murder, of a woman in ancient Israel. One half of the students read a version of the story that included an assertion that God commanded the friends of the woman to take revenge. The other half read a version that did not mention God sanctioning violence. One group was told the account came from the Bible while the other was told it came from an ancient scroll. When those involved in the study were then entitled to inflict punishment upon others, those who believed that God sanctioned the punishment were the most aggressive in inflicting punishment. The results held true in Brigham Young University, where 99% of those tested said they believe in God and the Bible, and in Vrije University in Amsterdam, Holland,, where half said they believed in God and only 27% believed in the Bible. read more »

Ugh! James Dobson has become a lot like Pat Robertson and I don't mean that as a compliment. Yesterday while speaking to U.S. News & World Report reporter Dan Gilgoff, Dobson opined about presidential hopeful Fred Thompson.

"[But] I don't think he's a Christian; at least that's my impression," Dobson added, saying that such an impression would make it difficult for Thompson to connect with the Republican Party's conservative Christian base and win the GOP nomination.

I don't know that much about Fred Thompson, but what little I know doesn't really give me any sense about his faith. read more »

We often don't talk about how technology and religion interact on GWH, so I hope this topic opens up some conversation on the topic.

My church here in DC is a big fan of using the most modern technologies to reach anyone they can. I'm certainly not against that. Jesus himself said to preach the gospel to all the nations. However, the more I look at modern technology, the more I wonder if they run counter to part of the Gospel message. Since the radio and television have pulled people from the public square for entertainment into their own homes, technology has progressed as a way to offer people more and more individualized entertainment and information options. The VCR supplanted the movie theater. The cell phone supplanted the fixed line phone. Even the Blackberry supplanted the desktop PC for e-mail. read more »

The main reason I started Page 132 was that I completely agreed with Donald Miller's profound realization, "I felt like, by going to this particular church, I was a pawn for the Republicans. Meanwhile, the Republicans did not give a crap about the causes of Christ."

So I have been watching very closely the latest scuffle between The Old Guard (Dobson et al) and some emerging leaders of modern American evangelical Christianity. read more »

After reading this article in the AJC, I have concluded that Georgia House Speaker Glenn Richardson has converted to Roman Catholicism.

I was particularly interested in these comments from Richardson:

"As a general rule, most people go to church of whatever faith on Sunday," he said. "And we don't sell beer on Sundays. It's just one of those traditions. And I don't think Republicans are doing anything other than trying to very carefully measure if we want to put that out there and let the citizens end that tradition." read more »