What a day! Everything has to be civil and politically correct or believers are accused of being negative, mean spirited, faultfinders and haters. However I think if Jesus were on earth today He would be accused of the same thing. Jesus was the greatest apologist that ever lived because He was truth. He was gentle with broken sinners and repentant seekers, there is no doubt about that. But with the religious Pharisees and the cult of legalism and unbiblical tradition He was scathing and charged in with both feet. He was a man on fire. Matthew 23 shows Jesus at His apologetic best and it might do us well to re read that chapter a few times. And yikes Continue reading …

George Bernard Shaw called Paul “the eternal enemy of Women.” Shaw certainly liked his hyperbole but it isn’t quite true. Don’t get me wrong, a lot of feminists can’t stand him. Katherine M. Rogers in her history of misogyny, The Troublesome Helpmate, says, “The foundations of early Christian misogyny — its guilt about sex, its insistence on female subjection, its dread of female seduction — are all in St. Paul’s epistles.” Others, like Elaine Pagels are determined to make him a proto-feminist by dismissing his talk of submission as the ravings of Pauline impostors.

There are three main passages that brand Paul, in Sarah Ruden’s phrase, “An Apostolic Oinker” The first two Continue reading …

So this week, I’m back to try to convince you to take a look at classicist Sarah Ruden‘s new book Paul Among the People:The Apostle Reinterpreted and Reimagined in his Own Time. I rarely plug a book this much and that should say something about how informative and thoughtful I think this book is. Rob Dreher at Beliefnet calls Ruden a “joyful iconoclast.” And that she is. She takes on three of the major iconic objections to the morality of Christianity –homosexuality, slavery, and the treatment of women– and dispels the myths surrounding the angst that has been leveled at Paul. That Christianity supported or at least turned a blind eye to slavery is not as common a salvo as it has been in the past. But its still there, lurking in the background. Did Christianity support slavery? The evidence can be damning. The early church fathers stopped short of denouncing slavery. In the US new denominations were created over the slavery issue prior to the civil war with Christians divided on the morality of slavery. Here’s a sermon from 1838 entitled “Slavery” quoted in Ruden’s book: Continue reading …

In the 1970s Johnsons Baby Powder ran a television ad with a lady standing in front of her bathroom mirror saying, “Who am I? What am I? Why’d I cut my hair, I look like a squirrel.” It was a humorous way of telling the potential consumers who were viewing the ad how to stay cool and collected with their product while in stressful situations like having a hair style that conforms to societal expectations. “Who am I,” our self identity, is often confused or mixed up with my conformance to certain group expectations. I have had to think about this a lot over the years as I have counseled with people leaving cults and false religious groups. In leaving they have walked away from a certain set of beliefs which comprise and inform their worldview and in many cases they have left family and friends who remain in the group. How do they recover and where do they begin rebuilding their lives? This is a question some who have started a new Facebook page, ATI Survivors and subsequently a website, Recovering Grace have asked me.

For those who are unaware, ATI stands for Continue reading …