Love wins – the book review

This post is a followup to my thoughts on the controversy that preceded the release of this book.  You can read those thought on the wandering road  here, and on YAR  here.  This post is also on the MWR blog here. An artist is, first and foremost, someone who sees the world differently than other [...]

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Love Wins

Is Gandhi in hell?  What’s more, what is hell?  Or heaven, for that matter? These are some of the questions that have sparked a bit of a firestorm around Rob Bell’s new book Love Wins: a book about heaven hell and the fate of everyone who ever lived.  This first came across my radar screen when I [...]

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An idea for creative resistance

As I was standing in the shower this morning, pondering the latest news story about the new Travel Safety Administration (TSA) search procedures, I came up with an interesting, Biblically based, idea about how one might go about resisting these new invasive search procedures. Strip for the TSA Follow me for a second and I’ll [...]

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A Mennonite takeover

Ok, confession time.  When I hear Shane Claiborne and Rob Bell I get jealous.  They have essentially become exceedingly popular and influential by preaching a message that is essentially Anabaptism.  Traditional Anabaptists (like myself) have clearly not enjoyed the same amount of popularity that many of these new Anabaptists are enjoying.  In fact, it feels [...]

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Anabaptist Rosary

So I’ve recently run across the Catholic Rosary.  While I’m drawn to it’s structure and it’s ability to help people pray, as a good Anabaptist, I take issue with some of it’s theology.  So here is my initial thoughts and proposal for an Anabaptist Rosary. First- An orientation to the actual Rosary. How to pray [...]

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Restoration

If the previous post was one of disillusionment with Christianity, perhaps this post is a restoration of faith. From time to time I find myself enamored with the Catholic Church.  I’m still a strong Anabaptist and I’m not joining the priesthood anytime soon (I have to ask my wife first) but as I look back [...]

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Now that’s an interesting question….

Did the massive increase in the theology known as the prosperity Gospel help cause the economic collapse? That was the question on the NPR show “Here and Now” yesterday.  The basic premise is that the prosperity Gospel teaches that you should go ahead and buy the fancy things (i.e. car, house, cell phones, clothes, etc…) [...]

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I met Jesus, and he looks like the Fonz

It’s not that often that you have really life changing experiences.  In the past ten years or so, I seem to always have one or two when I attend the national convention of Mennonite Church USA (MCUSA).  Ten years ago to the week I was a high schooler at St. Louis 99 and received probably [...]

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Organic Abandoned Empires

I’ve been following some of the renewal movements that have been happening with American Christianity these days.  The two that have piqued my interest the most are the Emergent Church and New Monasticism.  Both of them are quite interesting and fascinating, especially in their connections to Anabaptism.  One interesting commonality between these two movements is [...]

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