“In a complaint filed Friday in federal court for the Western District of Virginia, Kelvin Edwards, a former executive vice president of management efficiencies and diversity, alleges that he was fired because Liberty’s acting president, Jerry Prevo, does not value diversity.” - C.Today

(More at RNS)

“Goldman’s book is a thoughtful extended essay on the idea of nationalism … for Goldman, nationalism entails that if the motto e pluribus unum—one out of many—is indeed meaningful, the unum must be some intelligible unifying principle or other…. Goldman proceeds to trace three rival conceptions of American national identity” - John Ehrett

I am excited to announce the release of my new book, The Old in the New: Understanding How the New Testament Authors Quoted the Old Testament. The book is published by Kress Biblical Resources with an imprint from The Master’s Seminary. I have been working on this book since 2011. It was formed through years of teaching a Th.M. seminar at The Master’s Seminary called, “New Testament Use of the Old Testament.”

“So, why should we avoid merely borrowing a ready-made sermon even with attribution? First, sermon preparation allows the preacher to personalize the text. As I work through the passage and discover its flow, it become personal to me.” - J. Straub

(HT: Proclaim & Defend)

“President Joe Biden signed into law June 30 a measure under the Congressional Review Act that rescinded the ‘true-lender’ rule, which enabled payday lenders to collaborate with out-of-state banks and thereby avoid bans on predatory loans in states that had outlawed them.” - BPNews

Yoga is “mentioned in ancient, sacred scriptures of Hinduism” and encouraged by the Indian government. “Still, a new Pew Research Center survey shows that most Indians do not practice yoga. Just about a third of Indian adults (35%) say they ever practice yoga” - Pew

Included in Ohio’s new budget: “a medical practitioner, health care institution, or health care payer has the freedom to decline to perform, participate in, or pay for any health care service which violates the practitioner’s, institution’s, or payer’s conscience as informed by the moral, ethical, or religious beliefs or principles held by the practitioner, institution, or payer.” - C.Post

“…even if carnivory was prevalent in the late pre-flood world, it is still possible that the animals that God sent to Noah did not eat meat or were omnivores that could have survived for one year without meat.” - AiG

“I’ve learned a lot while on my back and I want to share some of those lessons I’ve learned by leading in sickness.” - Treg Spicer

“Churches sometimes face legal exposure. Even a well-functioning, gospel-preaching, Scripture-affirming church can find itself facing a lawsuit.” - 9 Marks

“At issue is a group of parents who oppose a state regulation that allows for tuition assistance only if a private school is ‘nonsectarian in accordance with the First Amendment of the United States Constitution.’” - C.Post

“…an essay on the aftermath of the convention and the presence of an apparent fundamentalist element within its churches. The presence of fundamentalists in religious movements is certainly not new, but defining fundamentalism is a difficult task.” - Jeff Straub

“On July 4th, Hobby Lobby took out a full-page ad in multiple newspapers featuring a prominently placed verse from the Bible along with numerous, pro-Christian, pro-Bible quotes from our Founding Fathers and other key leaders in our history. It then closed with an appeal to seekers to find out more about Jesus.” - Michael Brown

“Our post­-truth age pitches the individual self as the primary source of truth: ‘follow your heart,’ ‘live your truth,’ and so forth….Institutions now exist to merely affirm us, not to form us.” - Brett McCrackin

The rejected resolution “used language that legitimized Palestinian terrorism as a ‘heroic struggle’ in the fight to combat alleged Israeli ‘military repression’ and ‘ethnic cleansing.’ It also urged the NEA to ‘publicize its support for the Palestinian struggle for justice and call on the United States government to stop arming and supporting Israel.’” - National Review

From Faith Pulpit, Winter 2012.

“The overture includes any identity Christians may profess ‘that undermines or contradicts their identity as new creations in Christ,’ though it singles out ‘gay Christian,’ ‘same sex attracted Christian’ and ‘homosexual Christian’ among those identities. The denomination already bars any ‘practicing homosexual’ from ordination.” - RNS

“Vote Common Good, a nonprofit aimed at influencing religiously motivated voters, is partnering with Christians Against Christian Nationalism, a large group of faith leaders, to launch a new curriculum aimed at confronting Christian nationalism in churches across the country” - NPR

“53% of Protestant pastors say ‘our congregation sometimes seems to love America more than God.’” - Stetzer

Related

“as of at least 2021, there is no even relatively unified evangelical movement. Movements come and go. The evangelical ethos, which I described, predated any particular evangelical movement and exists outside of it and after its demise.” - Roger Olson

“To be cynical is to be distrustful of human sincerity. I feel like most people are hard to please and easy to offend.” - Rainer

“SBC President Ed Litton joined Jonathan Howe, SBC Executive Committee vice president for communications, on Friday’s (July 2) episode of SBC This Week, a weekly podcast related to SBC news and events.” - BPNews

See also, at SBC Voices: How should the Ed Litton borrowing sermons situation be handled?

Do you know what this fallacy is? If not, I encourage you to learn what it is so that you will not engage in it and will be able to confront it when it might be used against you.

Arguments that use this fallacy have been used more than once against me in discussions about worship music (here on SI and elsewhere). I recognized what was argued against me as faulty but now I should be able to confront it more skillfully. I also intend to be even more careful that I do not engage is this faulty practice myself.

“When platforms make their livings by harvesting and selling our attention, they achieve that by shoving unsolicited junk into our minds, while we obediently scroll down and down and down.” - Chris Best

“The focus of our worship is the Triune God of the Universe. On Independence Day, or any Lord’s Day, we mustn’t lose sight of the principal reason for our gathering.” - BPNews

“Christian cases for yes, no, and flying other nations’ flags as congregations balance love of God, neighbor, and country.” - C.Today

“After their sweet sixteenth birthday 73% of eventual church dropouts attend regularly, compared to 79% of those who stayed in church. By 17, the divide grows (64% of dropouts are attending versus 78% on non-dropouts). At 18, less than half of those who drop out are regularly attending (48%)” - Lifeway

“I suggest we start with laughter…. Psalm 2 tells us that God, who sits in the heavens laughs, and if we are to be heavenly minded at all I think we need to start there and only then can we begin to laugh right along with him.” - Ref21

“At issue was the yearslong effort of California’s attorney general to get the private donor lists of conservative groups, namely Americans for Prosperity and the Thomas More Law Center.” - C.Post

“Even atheists like Friedrich Nietzsche or the modern-day philosopher Luc Ferry, have acknowledged that our ideas about human dignity, human equality and human value were not present across cultures and civilizations, but were introduced to the world in Christianity. Why? Because of its core belief that humans were made in the image and likeness of God.” - Breakpoint