Category Archives: Current events

Ethical Student Leadership at Wiley College

Wiley College, a United Methodist school in Marshall, Texas, hosted its first annual Ethical Student Leadership Conference this past Thursday through Saturday. While the speakers were good (I was a speaker), the high point for me was getting to know … Continue reading

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Denominational Identity

Knowing who you are and what you stand for as a denomination is a good thing. Aligning your identity with the bible is a good thing for Christians to do. But some groups seem to take this to extremes. Dr. … Continue reading

Posted in Bible, Current events, Politics, Theology, United Methodism | 5 Comments

Wearing Religious Genes

Let’s imagine for a moment that there are four theories of the nature of truth. The correspondence theory, the coherence theory, the pragmatic theory and the Nietschean theory. Very briefly: The Correspondence theory says that a statement/idea is true if … Continue reading

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Chafing at Accountability

Accountability is one of the Big Words here in the Texas Annual Conference (of the UMC) these days. Sure, we’ve always had accountability. “Pay your apportionments or else!” “Don’t run off with a woman other than your wife, or else!” … Continue reading

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The Necessary Failure of Crusading

Dimitri Simes writes in today’s Wall Street Journal: But sending more brigades to pursue the same crusade is unlikely to bring success — at least not on an American political timetable. The problem is not just the incompetent management of … Continue reading

Posted in Current events, Economics, Islam, Politics | 2 Comments

Someone (else) to blame

Daniel Henninger writes about the tendency for congressional ethics reform to be aimed at outsiders in today’s Wall Street Journal Opinion Journal. While people get trapped from time to time in these ethics codes, we stil see plenty of unethical … Continue reading

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A New Career Path – Let’s get fired!

Seth Godin reports: Today, Bob Nardelli, their [Home Depot] CEO, got fired. He probably got fired for insulting his investors (his annual meeting will go down in history) and for alienating employees and customers. He appeared to go out of … Continue reading

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Generosity

It’s nice to see generosity in action. Sunday while I was going around the sanctuary greeting people, a family slipped me a check. “Use it to meet the needs of people.” That’s generosity in action. Last week when I wrote … Continue reading

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Arguing as a Christian

Ilaria Morali, a professor of theology in Rome, tells of a recent encounter in the course of “interreligious dialog”: Morali: I recall that last year, at the moment of exchange with the assembly, a person in the audience asked me … Continue reading

Posted in Current events, Islam, Theology | 1 Comment

Fear

We watched Akeelah and the Bee for family movie night tonight. It was a good story. On one level it was depressing: we (society and our schools) expect so little of our kids when they are capable of so much. … Continue reading

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