Several years ago I met in D.C. with a group of young evangelical professionals. While certainly not world-fleeing fundamentalists, they were not theocrats either. They were seeking an alternative approach.
I'm a part-time student at a denominational seminary, where I'm working (very slowly) on an academic-track masters. It's generally been a good experience, but the school's not a perfect fit. Again and again, professors and coursework assume a ministry context.
William Cavanaugh has written a pair of stunningly important books, in which he makes a clear and persuasive argument for overturning a founding myth of the modern Western state.
Patricia Lamoureux and Paul Wadell have written a text in fundamental Catholic moral theology with a creative twist. The topics of several of the chapters are unconventional and fresh, but even when the topic is traditional, the approach contains refreshing elements.
While Dan Savage, an atheist, wouldn't put it this way, the popular sex columnist exegetes rules about relationships with the precision of a rabbi or canon lawyer. Pastors should pay attention.
Michael Sharp and Emmanuel Kambale, colleagues in the Congolese Protestant Council’s Peace and Reconciliation program, have found a way to encourage some 1,600 soldiers to put down their arms. The FDLR (Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda), which has been ravaging villages in the Democratic Republic of Congo for 20 years, has its roots in the Hutu militias that killed Tutsi civilians during the Rwanda genocide. Listening to the fighters’ stories, Sharp and Kambale discovered that they were homesick for life back in Rwanda. That acknowledgment has led some of them to give up the fight. But the meager $12,000 per month Peace and Reconciliation budget is drying up in March (NPR, January 2).
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