Many simply want what is fashionable no matter the cost. We would step on the heads of our own grandmothers to live our lives in whichever way we feel entitled, but the narrow way of Jesus calls us to renounce our rights, and give up our lives so that we might find the life that is truly life…Thus the dissonance and the reason for my unbelief.

No too long ago, a leader from a large, suburban faith community – one for which I have great respect – told me that they don’t discuss politics in his church. Its not allowed in the pulpit, he said, and the people who plan worship are very purposeful to avoid anything that might sound “political.”
On [...]

I’m thoroughly biased but I think everyone should read Sara Miles new book Jesus Freak: Feeding Healing Raising the Dead.  My bias is not just grounded in our shared love for the theology of  James Alison and William Cavanaugh. It’s less cerebral and more intuitive. My bias has something to do with the tears that have rolled [...]

Now after all of the fancy words were spoken and the lofty ideas were batted around, came the actual work of doing these things.

There is a Garden called our Town.
Where hate and greed are broken down.
Great Good Heart is everywhere;
In the soil, water, air.

“I knew my actions were wrong, but I convinced myself that normal rules didn’t apply. I never thought about who I was hurting. Instead, I thought only about myself. I ran straight through the boundaries that a married couple should live by. I thought I could get away with whatever I wanted to. I felt [...]

Living on Hope While Living in Babylon: The Christian Anarchists of the 20th Century
by Tripp York
Wipf and Stock / $17.00 US (list)
[Amazon] [Wipf and Stock]
The publication of Tripp York’s Living on Hope While Living in Babylon marks a significant contribution to the recently re-emerging interest in the connection between Christianity and anarchism and for that [...]

Goshen College president, Jim Brenneman, recently announced that the Mennonite college will begin to play the National Anthem at their sporting events. The move to overturn 114 years of resistance to the war song came in response to local pressure and press after 300 people — mostly non-Mennonites — contacted the school after hearing about [...]

One of the benefits of reading a wide spread of news sources is that very different publications seem to talk to each other. I found myself in the midst of an unintentional dialogue between Christianity Today and Dissident Voice a week or two ago, as they wrestled with some of the less comfortable implications of widespread adoption. This [...]

C.R.E.A.T.E. is a new intentional community launching in Boston Massachusetts. Specifically, we will be serving in Mattapan, a neighborhood on Boston’s southern edge. In this section of Boston, about a third of the residents fall below the poverty line, there are over 5,000 single parent households. Regardless of the fact [...]

Maybe it’s just me, but I usually don’t associate the Prince of Peace with blowing off some guy’s head.

“The true Church
is to be married to
the dignity of the poor
this is the true Church”

I’m a foodie. I love the artistic challenge of whipping up a complicated-to-make dish that tastes deceptively simple. I seldom meet an ingredient I don’t love. In early 21st Century America, it is easy to be a foodie. Whenever I walk into the grocery store, even in the middle of a Minnesota winter, I can [...]

Given this dis-satisfaction with reality and the strange connection to the Avatar characters the discussion about what it means to be human will become paramount in the upcoming years, in the secular world and in our churches. We should take not

This boy is a little embryo who is destined to offer the world a fresh alternative to suicidal systems and seductive power structures.

We’re fighting for an economy of mercy.

When you tell people you believe (or hope for) universal reconciliation the knee jerk reaction is that you don’t believe in hell.
Well, I believe in hell. I believe in hell for two reasons.
First, humans have committed horrific evils and the notion that God’s wrath isn’t kindled in the face of these atrocities is ludicrous. Universalism [...]

Today, according to some accounts, is the Feast of the Holy Innocents. The Holy Innocents are those boys under the age of two who Herod (out of fear of coming King of the Jews) killed in Bethlehem. Many traditions regard these masacred children to be the first martyrs, for they (in a very literal sense) [...]