Interesting NY Times article about young, mostly evangelical, Christians adopting the “Christian-as-rebel” model. Tough to separate the wheat from the chaff, though. On the one hand, you have what look for all the world like transparent marketing ploys trying to reach the Hot Topic crowd, such as full-contact skateboard Bible study groups; […] Christian punk,…

As my Lenten reading I’ve decided to have a go at Hans Urs Von Balthasar’s Mysterium Paschale. I’m only about ten pages in, but it’s full of rich nuggets of theological goodness like this: The image of man which revelation sets before us differs radically from the idea of the animal rationale, mortale which empirical…

This kind of thing brings out all my black-helicopter-watching-new-world-order paranoia. I’m with the Left Behinders on this one – no Mark of the Beast for me!

Penitent Magdalen, El Greco, 1605-10 (click for larger image)

From Scott Adams (of Dilbert fame): When it comes to anything complicated, I’m too ignorant to have a useful opinion. For example: Some Guy: Scott, do you think we should return to the gold standard? Scott: Um… Some Guy: Should the U.S. stay in Iraq and be bled to death or leave now and let…

A couple of the more traditionalist Anglican blogs have linked to the website of Ebenezer Lutheran Church in San Francisco indicating that it’s a kind of logical endpoint of liberal Protestantism (or maybe just Protestantism period?). No doubt this is one kooky congregation, dedicated as it is to “re-imag[ing] the divine by claiming her feminine…

A couple of weeks ago I posted on whether Protestants might find benefit from praying the Rosary. Here I see a Lutheran layman has devised a “Lutheran Rosary” (PDF), the main differences being that he recommends replacing the Hail Mary with either the pre-Trent Hail Mary (omitting the phrase “Holy Mary Mother of God, pray…

Observing it has become more common among evangelicals and other low-church Protestants according to this article. As far as I know Lent is de rigueur among Lutherans, but maybe that’s a relatively recent development too (as is, for instance, weekly communion apparently).

Thomas at Without Authority has a bit of a downer post about the future of the ELCA. We are, he says, divided into various factions (liberals, evangelical catholics, etc.) and he’s none too optimistic that any recognizably Lutheran center can hold. Though I came to the ELCA only recently (within the last six years) I…

For some reason the whole “crunchy con” thing is generating a lot of interesting thinking out there in blog-land (well, at least among the blogs I read). See, to wit, Russell Arben Fox (again), Kim at Crossroads, Eve Tushnet, and Three Hierarchies. I’d like to draw some larger lesson here about the bankruptcy of the…