Thinking Christian
On my RSS news reader this morning:
Professor Says Vanderbilt Suppressing Christian Student Groups Amid Shutdown Threats
Priest barred from saying mass
In England, Displaying Bible Verses May Be Against the Law
Conscience, Coercion, and Healthcare
Preventing Another Attack: International Religious Freedom
On a related note:
Paying for a Church You Don’t Believe In
and this act of hyperactive imagination and under-active journalist fact-checking:
"Engaging… exhilarating.… This might be the most surprising and refreshing book you’ll read this year!" — Lee Strobel
"Too Good To Be False is almost too good to be true!" — Josh McDowell
"Engaging… exhilarating.… This might be the most surprising and refreshing book you’ll read this year!" — Lee Strobel
"Too Good To Be False is almost too good to be true!" — Josh McDowell
RE: In England, Displaying Bible Verses May Be Against the Law
Video here. Someone goes into a Christian coffee shop and gets offended that Christianity is on display there? What’s next, going to Disneyland and being offended by all the happiness and fun?
How the Zeitgeist has changed.
Another report out today on the Fox News website. Iran is not a bastion of religious freedom, and that’s the problem.
“Iranian Pastor Faces Execution for Refusing to Recant Christian Faith”
We pray for you.
By the way, since it actually seems semi-appropriate here to mention…
I thought I’d draw everyone’s attention to this fairly unique Christian blog: Christ the Tao. It’s the blog of David B. Marshall, who has written some interesting books criticizing the Cult of Gnu. But what really fascinates me is his regular focus on Christianity’s spread, past and present, in the East (China, Korea, etc.), and how the idea of God was communicated to non-Western cultures – and how the idea of God was present in those cultures to begin with.
Plus, David’s a level-headed, patient and thoughtful sort, and in that way reminds me of Tom.
For those who may not know, I want to add that “Christ the Tao” has nothing to do with the Chinese religion/philosophy off Taoism. “Tao” can mean “way,” as in John 14:6, and I suspect that’s how this website intends it to be understood.
Tom,
I should have made that clear. David does at times argue, if I understand him right, that the God of Christianity has echoes in other cultures – but he’s not arguing that ‘the Christian God is just the Tao/Dao’ or anything like that.
See his most recent post concerning Christianity in Korea to get a partial example of this sort of thing – such as translating God as Shang Di.
Hello! Crude mentioned this website to me, as well.
I don’t want to hijack the conversation on religious liberty. (Just reading a fascinating memoir from the 1940s-50s, called I Found God in Soviet Russia, this morning.)
But a few words to clarify, Dao (道)on my site DOES refer to John 14:6. But the reason the verse was translated using that word, is because it’s a darn good translation. The term goes back before Lao Zi in China, being used in the Classics, and then by Confucius, too. One modern Chinese philosopher, Yuan Zhiming (and leading evangelist) has argued strongly that for Lao Zi, the founder of “Daoism,” Dao actually meant something pretty close to “God.” Of course that’s controversial: having looked into the matter in detail, I think he’s right.
Aside from arguments with and rebuttals of various New Atheist types, an important series I did recently was on “How Jesus has Liberated Women,” which expands on arguments I’ve made in my books. The supposed harm Christianity has done women is a perennial assumption that educated non-Christians make, so I hope this will be useful to people.
Anyway, good to visit — I’ll look around.
All the best,
David Marshall
David, welcome to you and thank you for dropping by. I’m going to take a specially close look at your series on women. I’ve done some work in that same area, and I’ll be interested to see what you have to say. I wonder how much the twisted conception of the Bible as sexist has contributed to contemporary confusion on sexuality. Perhaps the purveyors of the new sexuality had to find a way to discredit the Bible before they could move forward, and this was one of them. I’m just thinking out loud, though; maybe there’s nothing there.
Tom: I take your point. In I Found God in the Soviet Union, Noble describes the disfunctional families he found among people who had been raised on communist ideology in the early 1950s: the scary thing is (I thought as I read it), how much we’ve moved in that direction ourselves, since then.