Gambling on Faith?



Features interviews with D. Stephen Long (from The Ekklesia Project), Bob Flynn (a sullen Baptist) and Roger Olson (author of The Mosaic of Christian Beliefs: Twenty Centuries of Unity & Diversity).

Also featuring The World Series of Evangelical Poker and something for those who hate "Sword drills", amongst other things.

Deep roots only count when you're not a weed.

Evangelicals, they don't do negativity well

I Find It Odd.....that American conservative christians will back the bloody and gorey "Passion" and balk at the not-quite-so-bloody "Kingdom of Heaven".

I'll admit, the Crusades weren't exactly a shining light in the history of Christianity but can we not take the good with the bad?

-- Eric at The Door Magazine's Chat Closet

for more: Christian right goes to war with Ridley’s crusaders

When I watched The Village I was struck with the feeling that Shyamalan was making a critique of organized religion, which is represented by "the village". The borders of the village are the rules of religious orthodoxy, which are protected by the manufactured threats of the religious leaders (ie hell). Ironically, the medicine that is required to "save" an injured member of the village can only be found beyond its borders. The physical blindness of the central character, Ivy Walker, represents the ongoing state of the village as she brings medicine back from the outside world. The life of her love is saved, but in the end the blindness of the village toward a greater reality only serves to be strengthened.

Admittedly, I may be reading way too much into this. But, I would like to pose this question: to what extent is innocence possible without ignorance?

[via Graffiti on the wall]

So hang the noose with your shame

Your peace of mind
Is my piece of sin

To be broken in

[from Hang the Noose (revised) at Nimble Neglect]

None of the Above?

[via Heart of Canada in the post Jim Goes Green]

While the Conservative Party is making claims about being unified and having strong leadership, the news I keep reading about them turns me off....

I don't like the opportunism of the NDP in making a deal with Martin, while holding their noses over sponsorship.

I don't like the Liberal's way of courting support with money and appointments. To me, it looks like bribery. Then, of course, there's Adscam.

So, realistically, I have a choice between political ignorance, opportunism, and corruption. Which do you think I'd vote for? If that's my choice during the election, perhaps I'll register an official NO vote. I've never done that before, but maybe I will this time. Can you still do that?

[from the poem Migrant at left cheek]

“Dirty!”

shout from the rooftops
the roof’s torn down
taking it to the streets
the mean old way

clouds choose to give life
i choose to stay inside

Luck:

what takes the sting from bad choices

or

what puts the randomness into good choices

Don't...patronize me?

Unfortunately, Canadians have been swept away by both shallow media hype and their own disgust. The fact remains that at the deeper political level, all the Gomery inquiry is revealing is the tried and true patronage system that has always dominated Canadian politics.

Canadians only rarely get a clear glimpse of the sleazy patronage system. But virtually all the Gomery testimony-- except that clearly revealiing criminal wrongdoing-- describes in sordid detail how patronage works. When a party wins power, it rewards its friends and punishes its enemies....

Here is where Martin deserves some credit. He broke the rules. He broke ranks with how politics has always been done. Aginst the advice of the old guard in the Liberal party, he convened a judicial inquiry. He could have stonewalled, limited the investigations to those who engaged in criminal activity and sent a few sacrificial lambs to prison. He could have kept the lid on it. It was Chretien's mess and Martin was already punished during the last election. It would have gone away as the public grew tired of the carping from the opposition parties.

But Martin insisted on opening Pandora's box and it looks like he might be the first to pay the price for lifting that forbidden lid.

Perhaps he deserves it. But then so does every past and present prime minister and premier who embraces the patronage system.

--from the article Unruly Alliance by John Conway, in the new Planet S

". . . none of us, who ever came back
From that long lonely fall and frenzied rising,
Ever learned anything at all
About swimming, but only
How to put off, one by one,
Dreams and pity, love and grace, --
How to survive in any place."

[quoted at Quotidian Light]