The Decline of the Church in America

The Decline of the Church in America

For decades, pollsters and pundits have tracked a steady decline among mainline Christian churches— Presbyterian, Episcopalian, Anglican, Lutheran and Methodist. In recent years, even America’s largest Protestant denomination— the Southern Baptist Convention— has seen...
Say What? Transposing an Iconic Sermon Title

Say What? Transposing an Iconic Sermon Title

I don’t remember when I first encountered Jonathan Edwards’ famous sermon “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.” But I do remember the effect of its imagery as a pointer to the kind of critical urgency that often-accompanied appeals to come to Jesus to avoid the...
What if Crucifixion Is Not Salvific?

What if Crucifixion Is Not Salvific?

What do you do when the hymns we sing reinforce a theology which is, and continues to be, detrimental to the marginalized, those who liberationist theologian Jon Sobrino called “the Crucified People”? “Would you be free from the burden of sin? There’s power in the...