Public spaces are endangered in modern American landscapes. How can front-porch culture encourage spiritual loitering in a rat-race world?
creation care
Christopher Wright on Creation Care
In CT this month, Christopher Wright of John Stott Ministries in the U.S., and author of The Mission of God: Unlocking the Bible's Grand Narrative, included the "world of creation" among the dimensions of the whole world that biblical mission must address (Whole Gospel, Whole Church, Whole World | The Global Conversation http://bit.ly/4Dnm1G): The world … Continue reading Christopher Wright on Creation Care
Evangelicals get gold star for creation care
Martin Marty's piece on evangelicals and creation care is a combination of head-patting approval, finger-wagging for being tardy, tut-tutting about our evangelical hang-ups, and instrumental use of our creation care efforts to goad mainliners into action. Nothing lights a fire under Episcopalians and Unitarians on social issues like saying "Look, even the evangelicals are on board with this issue!"
Green My Hood
Does caring for the environment always come at the expense of jobs? Is creation care something that must be traded off against people care? My church is tackling that challenge because we care about the beautiful but broken South Atlanta neighborhood we call home.
Faithful Urbanism
"Living on the Streets" reviews the prospects for urban churches to play a significant role in urban revitalization....Churches can "1) grow community, 2) promote community service, 3) attract people to live downtown, 4) draw private investment, and 5) add beauty to the physical appearances of community...."
Gas Taxes with justice
But the fact is, we probably weren’t paying enough for gasoline even at its highest levels, because we weren’t paying the full costs of producing and using it...We would like pollution taxes to work through the substitution effect and not through the income effect. We don’t want our policies to leave households, and especially poor households, holding the bag while we solve pollution problems.
Stuck in the Middle on Climate
Those on the left sometimes seem to claim unanimity among climate scientists as to the culpability of people for global warming. Those on the right seem to imply there is major controversy about whether people are to blame. Neither view is correct.
Location, location, location: Residential choices and Creation Care
Last week NPR’s Morning Edition aired a pair of stories by Elizabeth Shogren, one about a family that moved out to the Atlanta suburbs, and one about a family that moved intown to a “new urban” development....Neither of them created the environment they inhabit; they’re just trying to do their best to live in it.
Fear Not!
A Different Shade of Green(originally published in PRISM magazine, Jan/Feb 08) Fear is a powerful motivator. If you can inspire fear, you can get people to do almost anything. (If you can also inspire loathing, you can get them to do anything.) Evangelicals and environmentalists have a good deal in common. Fear, accompanied by an … Continue reading Fear Not!
“Dominion” means dominion
Journalist G.K. Chesterton once quipped (in Orthodoxy), that original sin was "the only part of Christian theology which can really be proved." Approaching theology, as Karl Barth famously suggested, with the Bible in one hand and the newspaper in the other, certainly finds the hypothesis of total depravity unfalsified. Yet by the end of the … Continue reading “Dominion” means dominion
Tilling and Keeping 