Quite a few readers were interested in my series of posts on Total Church, a book about gospel-centered community written by Tim Chester and Steve Timmis in the U.K. Total Church has been picked up by ReLIT, a publishing branch of Crossway Books and will be released in the U.S. in September. See info here. (By the way, someone has my copy, if you have it would you let me know?!)
Category: Gospel and Culture
Rolling Stone Rips on Osteen
I used the following quote from an article on McCain in the recent issue of Rolling Stone is my recent sermon Lord of the Story. Rolling Stone editor, Mark Taibbi rips into Joel Osteen while preserving the notion that there are more palatable forms of Christianity. In other words, he doesn’t throw out the Christian baby with the dirty health and wealth water.
Of all the vile, fake, lying-ass, money-grubbing, shyster scumbags on the face of this planet, there is perhaps none more loathsome than Osteen, a human haircut with plastic baseball-size teeth who has made a fortune selling the appalling only-in-America idea that terrestrial greed is actually a form of Christian devotion.
This quote was sparked by McCain listing Osteen as his most inspirational author, pretty sad. If Osteen is what inspires McCain, I’ve got some serious reservations about his presidential groundedness.
Universalized-Not So Evangelical Faith
In recent news, the Pew Foundation released figures that reflect a highly tolerant, pluralistic Christianity in the U.S. However, these figures are being disputed by the Lifeway Research Group based on the wording of the Pew Foundation’s question regarding the exclusive claims of Christianity: “My religion is the one, true faith leading to eternal life.” Pew concluded that 70 percent of Protestants are universalist in faith.
Though Lifeway researchers agree that universalism is widespread, they argue that the “religion” in the Pew question is easily interpreted as “denomination” by many Chrsitians, which would skew survey results. As a result, they published thier own research:
“In total, 31 percent of Protestant churchgoers agreed (strongly or somewhat) with this universalistic statement compared to Pew’s 70 percent. This makes for a difference of 39 percent between the universalism in the LifeWay Research study and the Pew Study.”
Despite the numerical differences, it is clear that Christian and Evangelical belief has increasingly become less Christian and less evangelical. Ed Stetzer comments:
The Pew research is helpful even though this question needs clarification. However, the bigger issue here is why there are so many self-identified evangelicals who sit in evangelical pews but do not evidence evangelical beliefs, particularly in regard to universalism.”
Lauding Ledger in The Dark Knight
Click here for my Review of The Dark Knight.
The Associated Press just released a raving review of Heath Ledger’s performance as The Joker in the Batman sequel, The Dark Knight. It’s possible he could receive a post-mortem oscar for best supporting actor. The piece compares Ledger to Nicholson’s Joker:
Nicholson’s Joker was campy and clever. Ledger’s Joker is an all-out terror, definitely funny but
with a lunatic moral mission to drag all of Gotham, the city Batman thanklessly protects, down to his own dim assessment of humanity.
The film looks thrilling and Ledger convincing. The Joker is described as “a depraved creature utterly without conscience whom the late actor played with gleeful anarchy.” With the Dark Knight as a savior and the Joker as sinner, it will be interesting to see how Nolan rolls out Batman’s humanity, a strength of this postmodern hero in the previous Batman film.