ProtestantBeliefs.com

Asia is one of the most disaster-hit regions in the world, with floods, cyclones, earthquakes, landslides, and volcanic eruptions. Unplanned urbanization, a steep increase in population, depleting forest green cover, and environmental degradation trigger the most severity and complexity. The impacts are on the day-to-day lives of people, affecting their resources and disrupting earning sources, and delays in service delivery, poor health status, and loss of assets contributing significantly to acute food insecurity, inadequate access to safe water, sanitation, and hygienic conditions, loss of shelter, and settlements with increased health care risks. Attendees of the humanitarian response training in Sidhikalang,…

“For what shall we pray?” is a weekly post inviting individuals, groups, and congregations to lift up our world in prayer. This resource is prepared by a variety of leaders in the ELCA and includes prayer prompts, upcoming events and observances, and prayer suggestions from existing denominational worship materials. You are encouraged to use these resources as a starting point, and to adapt and add other concerns from your local context. More information about this resource can be found here.   Prayer prompts: For Syria and all nations facing conflict, transition, and uncertainty… For victims of gun violence, especially in…

Christians don’t believe in an abstract ethereal god. Christians believe in the triune God who has Self-revealed Himself in Jesus Christ. Period. This should be an unremarkable assertion. There should be zero pushback to this. But in the so-called Great Tradition of the Church, and those who are ostensibly “retrieving” it, this isn’t the case. Classical theism, so-called, as a contemporary way to identify certain expressions of the antique past, especially with reference to a theology proper, have so synthesized, say, the Aristotelian categories with an ecclesiastical doctrine of God, that it is nay impossible to make a distinction, in…

Catalyst Question In some situations in life, we know the right thing to do and yet don’t do it, even in the simplest of circumstances. What do you think prevents us from taking action to do the right thing? Active Waiting Sometimes Advent can seem a bit boring. People can treat this powerful season of life like it’s the waiting room for Christmas. They endure these four weeks as though there’s nothing to do but scroll through the lectionary until the heavenly doctor arrives. That approach clearly doesn’t take the Advent readings seriously, especially this week’s Gospel. In Luke 3:7-18,…

Being a human coram Deo (before or in the presence of the living God), in regard to its telos or purposefulness, is underwritten by being a worshipper of the triune God rather than an as an idolater of a self-projected god of a unitarian and individualistic origination. So-called classical liberalism, much of which was in fact Teutonic or German in orientation, of the Enlightenment/ -post higher critical ilk, is of the latter instance. That is to say, higher critics of the New Testament so demythologized the NT of its reality in the Theandric person of Jesus Christ, that all that…

“For what shall we pray?” is a weekly post inviting individuals, groups, and congregations to lift up our world in prayer. This resource is prepared by a variety of leaders in the ELCA and includes prayer prompts, upcoming events and observances, and prayer suggestions from existing denominational worship materials. You are encouraged to use these resources as a starting point, and to adapt and add other concerns from your local context. More information about this resource can be found here.   Prayer prompts: For the nation of Syria of conflict, transition, and uncertainty… For peace among nations of the world……

I shared the following sketch, diatribe of sorts, on X just yesterday. A so-called Theobro (all bro no Theo) reshared it for his friend group, and they went to town. Memeing me galore. Dismissing me out of hand from their dilettantism. Not recognizing that I was leaving space for evangelizing, so to speak, even the philosophers; albeit in non-correlating ways. I.e., taking the philosophers’ respective grammars and language bags, and retexting them in a way that they are deployed in service of the King; insofar that that is possible or advisable. These guys are all bark and no theological bite….

“For what shall we pray?” is a weekly post inviting individuals, groups, and congregations to lift up our world in prayer. This resource is prepared by a variety of leaders in the ELCA and includes prayer prompts, upcoming events and observances, and prayer suggestions from existing denominational worship materials. You are encouraged to use these resources as a starting point, and to adapt and add other concerns from your local context. More information about this resource can be found here.   Prayer prompts: For lasting peace in Gaza, for Syria, and for all nations affected by ongoing warfare or conflict……

Catalyst Question What’s your favorite remake? It could be a song, movie, or other piece of art. How does it compare to the original? What’s Wrong with a Remake? In Luke 3:1-6, John the Baptist cries out, “Prepare the way of the Lord!” Straight paths. Leveled hills. Smooth roads. It’s all so unoriginal. Hundreds of years before John’s wilderness prophecy, another prophet said the exact same things. In Isaiah, after Jerusalem is overrun by enemies and God’s people are forced into Exile, the prophet similarly calls for leveled trails and paved streets. But is there anything wrong with a remake?…

Should I not have compassion on Nineveh, the great city in which there are more than 120,000 persons who do not know the difference between their right and left hand, as well as many animals?” –Jonah 4:11 Animals have become too humanized. They deserve respect, care, and love, indeed. They serve as companions, and as a source of comfort and release (and sometimes terror). But at the end of the day, they aren’t human beings. They have their rightful place in an “order of being,” but that order cannot (should not) supplant the value of a human being vis a vis God. I’m not suggesting…