Links To Go (April 12, 2018)

[Links from around the Internet… no agreement nor endoresement implied… Tim]


Jerry Falwell responds to Shane Claiborne’s invitation to pray with threat of year in jail and $2,500 fine

In a letter to Falwell two weeks ago Claiborne invited him to pray with him and students on Liberty’s campus.
However in response Claiborne received a letter threatening him with up to a year in jail and a $2,500 fine for trespassing if he entered Liberty University property.
‘I was very clear that what we have in mind is a prayer vigil not a protest – no signs, megaphones, banners or chants… just Bibles and candles. We had even hoped to do a communion service, inviting folks who disagree politically to come to the table together,’ Claiborne posted on Facebook.


Jerry Falwell Jr. Personally Killed a Campus Newspaper Story About Shane Claiborne’s Prayer Rally

Now, Religion News Service is reporting that Falwell personally killed a story that was going to run in the campus newspaper, The Liberty Champion, about the event. Erin Covey, an assistant news editor and Liberty student got approval from the paper’s faculty advisor and fellow editors, but when she reached out to Falwell for a comment, he reportedly replied instructing her to kill the story. Covey shared a screenshot of an email that she says is from Falwell that read: “No let’s not run any articles about the event. That’s all these folks are here for—publicity. Best to ignore them.”


Matt Chandler Says That When He Preaches About Race, White People Accuse Him of Being Liberal

He said, “If I preach the sermon out of the book of Isaiah on justice, my inbox would fill with their glee that I would broach the subject. But if I applied it to the subject of race, then all of a sudden I was a Marxist or I’ve been watching too much of the liberal media. If I spoke on abortion, I was applauded as courageous, as a ferocious man of God, and yet when I would tackle race I was being too political … If I quoted the great reformer Martin Luther … never did I get an email about his blatant anti-Semitism. But let me quote the great reformer Martin Luther King Jr., and watch my inbox fill with people asking me if I’m aware of his moral brokenness.”


A Post-Evangelism Church?

The progressive impulse toward tolerance and inclusion, along with a post-modern stance on truth, leaves progressive Christians in an awkward position in regards to evangelism, sharing the gospel with non-believers. Evangelism smacks of judgementalism, I’m right and you are wrong. Worse, evangelism can tend toward colonialism, the history of white missionaries being sent to save dark pagan savages.

A related issue here is that progressive Christians are burdened by so many doubts that they lack the necessary conviction to feel passionate about sharing the gospel with others. If you’re not sure you believe any of this stuff, how can you be expected to convince others to believe in it?


The Power of Our Criticism

  1. Criticism masquerades as insight.
  2. Criticism is contagious.
  3. Criticism causes others to stumble.
  4. Criticism slanders and kills.

What Kind of Wine Did Jesus Make?

The primary reasons for interpreting the wine as grape juice in John 2 stems from a false presupposition that Jesus couldn’t have created alcoholic wine. For the aforementioned reasons, there is simply no good biblical reason to understand John 2 as anything other than Jesus turning water into real alcoholic wine. Such a conclusion does not contradict Jesus’ character or any other passages found in Scripture.


What Is (and What Should Be) Expected of a Preacher’s Wife

All that said, one of the common struggles of these godly Christian women is that there are expectations placed upon them by a congregation that are simply not right. Sometimes, those expectations are spoken and overt, while at other times (I believe) people do not even realize what they are “saying” to the wife of the preacher simply by the way they interact with her.


Did a Typo Help End World War II?

The exact details are lost to history, but it became clear that someone had mistaken his job of cryptogamist for a cryptogramist—a codebreaker, which is exactly what men like Alan Turing were doing at Bletchley. The mistake led to a moss specialist being deposited into one of the most intense covert operations of the war.


Fort Blunder: The Fort That America Mistakenly Built in Canada

Construction of the fort began in 1816, and continued for two years when a survey conducted jointly by the United States and Great Britain discovered a problem—the fort was being built on the wrong side of the border. The actual border passed almost a mile south of the fort.


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