An Apology, and clarification
June 26, 2009
I’m a hothead. I have been as far back as I can remember. My wife and friends can surely attest to this. Perhaps it is my fake red-dyed hair, perhaps it’s genes; whatever it is, I’ve been known to fall headlong into being an ass.
Michael Spencer, the famous “internetmonk,” recently wrote a piece about the new Anglican Church in North America. Somehow, what started on my part as a mere clarification on matters of fact turned into a rather confusing exchange that can only happen on the comment thread of a blog. The kind where it gets exceeding difficult to properly preface and explain and there is a two-way confusion as to the tone of the other people. By the end I was left exasterbated, feeling that I had both not communicated clearly and not been understood generously.
In a delicious piece of irony, just as I was feeling ‘ok’ about it, I gave my twitter feed one last check before I went to work the night shift. Low and behold I was mentioned there and I left angry.
In the end it doesn’t really matter. As I made a fool of myself in public I might as well do it again.
Michael, for being uncharitable, rude, arrogant, and confusing I apologize. In the end I have massive amounts of respect for you and am concious of the fact that you have been preaching probably about as long as I’ve been alive. It’s not the first time I’ve been stupid, and it won’t be the last.
Coming Evangelical Collapse via internetmonk
February 3, 2009
http://www.internetmonk.com/archive/my-prediction-the-coming-evangelical-collapse-1
Excerpt:
“I believe that we are on the verge- within 10 years- of a major collapse of evangelical Christianity; a collapse that will follow the deterioration of the mainline Protestant world and that will fundamentally alter the religious and cultural environment in the West. I believe this evangelical collapse will happen with astonishing statistical speed; that within two generations of where we are now evangelicalism will be a house deserted of half its current occupants, leaving in its wake nothing that can revitalize evangelicals to their former ‘glory.’”
and:
“Evangelicals have failed to pass on to our young people the evangelical Christian faith in an orthodox form that can take root and survive the secular onslaught. In what must be the most ironic of all possible factors, an evangelical culture that has spent billions of youth ministers, Christian music, Christian publishing and Christian media has produced an entire burgeoning culture of young Christians who know next to nothing about their own faith except how they feel about it. Our young people have deep beliefs about the culture war, but do not know why they should obey scripture, the essentials of theology or the experience of spiritual discipline and community. Coming generations of Christians are going to be monumentally ignorant and unprepared for culture-wide pressures that they will endure.”
More after the jump.
Mary to Eve
January 5, 2009
Thanks to Internetmonk for this one, who got it from Inside Catholic. What a powerful and whimsical image. What an appropriate image just after Advent! There is a poem that goes with it as well.
p.s. – I do not think it needs to imply that we lay all the blame on Eve’s feet (not least since it’s mythological!), we can see it as fulfillment and restoration of what Eve witnessed and even of what she participated in. My OT professor had a great femenist reading of this second creation story.
Tony Hunt
jstambaugh
Shawn Wamsley
