Southern Baptist Leaders Offer Erroneous Global-Warming Claims

Ethics Daily recently ran my latest article, which is entitled "Southern Baptist Leaders Offer Erroneous Global-Warming Claims." It covers false claims made about the so-called "climategate" and other global warming issues. Ethics Daily also had a piece naming its Baptist of the Year--Emmanuel McCall.

Saturday Photo

Hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas! It's nice to have a white Christmas (and not just have to dream of one). Here is a shot I took last weekend when we got more than 20 inches of snow. Instead of having lots of leg room for the swing, Jen is sitting on the snow.

Christmas Nonsense

My latest column ran today in the BGCM E-Message, the monthly newsletter of the Baptist General Convention of Missouri. The piece is entitled "Christmas Nonsense." It reflects on some recent comments about Christmas songs by an Anglican bishop and what this can mean for us making sure we focus on what Christmas is really all about.

Unchristian

Tonight I led the last session of a several week Bible study on the book Unchristian by David Kinnaman and Gabe Lyons. It is a very good book with several important points that should be considered. It is based on research by The Barna Group that focused on what outsiders think about Christians and churches. The authors then analyzed six negative perceptions they found outsiders held about Christians. Since these perceptions could keep people from visiting a church and learning more about God, we must give them serious consideration. At several points the authors noted the importance of giving greater care to what we say and how we say it.

New Twist on Stained Glass

A couple of months ago I wrote a column on how church architecture communicates and therefore should be given more attention. This week I saw a video of a really cool church design that proves this point (thanks to Brian McLaren for highlighting this video). It is of a building where it sure would be difficult to not feel like worshpping God. In the video below, an architect talks about the stained glass effect his firm created for a church in Toronto.

Friday Photo

Last Saturday we got our first snow of the year--several inches of it. Poco loves snow, so I went and ran around in it with her while Jen took this shot.

Christmas Resolution?

A representative from South Carolina has introduced a resolution to protect Christmas (and has over 40 co-sponsors for the legislation). I wrote a Kansas City Star column a couple of years ago critical of a similar bill. The piece was entitled "Keep Congress away from holy days." The basic point is that our celebration of Christmas is not enhanced because Caesar says it is okay.

Evangelism, Entertainment, or Education

The recent issue of the Texas Speech Communication Journal included my article "Evangelism, entertainment, or education: Examining student responses to campus street preachers." The study considered the comments offered by students in college newspapers across the nation. The results show that students generally do not find the preachers to be effective or ethical but are divided about if the preachers should have such free speech rights. The article offers advice to educators about how to help students more carefully consider issues of ethics and free speech.

Friday Photo

Our dog loves this time of the year because she loves to crawl under the Christmas tree. This year we took a break between setting up the tree and decorating it, during which she staked out her territory.

Jesus Christ and Jury Duty

A woman in Alabama apparently changed her name to "Jesus Christ." Not sure why. Although it seems very odd and inappropriate, it did lead to a recent article with a couple of interesting lines. The article began with:

Jesus Christ was called for jury duty this week in Jefferson County, but was sent home for being disruptive.

Jesus the revolutionary. Apparently, what got the "Jesus Christ" in Alabama in trouble was something that got the real Jesus in trouble:

Instead of answering questions, she was asking them, a court employee in Jones's office said.

The religious and political leaders were often upset when the real Jesus did that to them. Even though this story is about a person who seems pretty unusual, there seems to be a good sermon illustration in it reminding us about the real Jesus.

Words Matter

Recently, several religious leaders wrote an open letter to Virginia's Governor-Elect Bob McDonnell encouraging him to publicly oppose comments made by Pat Robertson, who recently voiced strong attacks on Islam. The religious leaders entitled their letter "Words Matter." Included in it are these two passage:

While we believe that Rev. Robertson does not speak for you or for all Americans of Christian faith, his words matter because they come from someone who has a longstanding relationship with you.

... We believe that it's unfair to expect our political leaders to be held accountable for every foolish word that a supporter happens to say. But in this case, when the supporter is among your leading associates, it's important for you to tell Virginians directly, and not through a spokesperson, that you do not agree with words of hate, intolerance and bigotry.

McDonnell has numerous ties to Robertson, who was a big donor to McDonnell's recent campaign. McDonnell graduated from Robertson's university, served on its board, and has appeared as a guest on Robertson's "The 700 Club." This raises questions about how much McDonnell must separate himself from Robertson's controversial remarks (and there will probably be more of them during McDonnell's term). During the recent presidential campaign, Barack Obama faced attacks because of controversial comments by his pastor and John McCain faced attacks because of his association with controversial preachers John Hagee and Rod Parsley. But even for non-politicians this should raise issues to consider. How should we respond if someone of our faith does or says something that makes us look bad? How connected do we need to be to someone before we feel the need to repudiate what they have said or done? These are some of the issues I tried to deal with in my book (For God's Sake, Shut Up!). The fact is that words do matter and when a prominent religious leader speaks it can impact the view that others have of all people of that faith.