William H. Willimon is the United Methodist bishop of the North Alabama Conference and author of Why Jesus? (Abingdon). He blogs at A Peculiar Prophet, part of the CCblogs network.
When
you enter the Civil Rights Institute in Birmingham—one of Alabama's
great institutions—you are welcomed by Fred Shuttlesworth. You will be
welcomed to this shrine of the Civil Rights Movement by a preacher.
What do you get when you take an attractive, intelligent kid born into a loving, happy, Midwestern family and relinquish him for baptism, telling him he is now "engaged to profess Christ"? Wesley Granberg-Michaelson, that's who.
Last year Professor Bart Ehrman of the University of North Carolina cranked out yet another book, God’s Problem. Dr. Ehrman breathlessly announces that he has discovered that God has a big problem – suffering.
Ehrman dismisses various futile attempts on the part of God to explain
why there is suffering, pain, and disaster in the world – the Book of
Job, Ecclesiastes, and Jesus.
