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An Historic Look at Protestant Eschatological Thought on the Rise and Fall of Islam

What The Bible Says Good Samaritan's Penny Pulpit by Pastor Ed Rice

What The Bible Says Good Samaritan's Penny Pulpit by Pastor Ed Rice

The Scene of the Good Samaritan (Pt. 1) Luke 10: 25-37.

Proverbs 18:24.

Hundreds of Jew-haters marched on the campus of Columbia university armed with torches in a scene that was reminiscent of […]

Eastern Orthodox poet Scott Cairns reflects on his new collection, his journey of faith, and poetry's capacity to apprehend inexhaustible realities.Fans of the Harry Potter series might recall the magical tents from Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. In the film version, when the Weasleys take Harry and others to the Quidditch World Cup, the audience sees rows and rows of small tents, seemingly designed to sleep only one or two people. Harry is confused as he witnesses the others walk into a single tent, which can hold much more than its external size betrays. Once Harry follows suit, he stands in awe at a spacious interior containing several bunkrooms, a dining room, and a large living room.This scene gives a helpful image for the ideas and realities Scott Cairns takes up in his new collection of poems, Lacunae. Cairns is an Eastern Orthodox poet whose work, besides ten poetry collections, includes essays, a spiritual memoir, and the text of two oratorios. Many of the poems in Lacunae concern the mystery of divine things, infinite in scope, somehow fitting within finite spaces and times. Just as Harry Potter was surprised to find all that was contained within an ostensibly small tent, one is shocked to find the fullness of God contained in Mary, and even more so, contained within every Christian by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit.Joey Jekel, a writer and classical educator in Texas, spoke with Cairns about Lacunae, as well as the nature of poetry and the theology that informs his own.To borrow language from Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov, could you give a brief account of your “sacred history?”I was raised as a Baptist, albeit a Baptist of what we might call a particularly brittle sort. I suppose the saving grace of those years was that my parents wore our community’s fundamentalism relatively lightly. My father liked saying that a ...Continue reading...

The new dystopian thriller reminds viewers it's not just what we witness that matters, but how.There’s nothing more frightening than the sound of a camera shutter in the new film Civil War.Distributed by A24, the production company behind releases like Everything Everywhere All at Once and Past Lives, the movie depicts the remnants of a United States government battling the Western Forces, an alliance between Texas and California. If you’re looking for reasons—Why these factions? Why now?—you won’t find any answers. The film is frustratingly opaque on logistics, though we’re able to hypothesize based on a few offhand comments. (The unnamed president, played by Nick Offerman, is entering his third term and isn’t gun-shy about using air strikes against American citizens.) Even so, a California that cooperates with Texas seems far-fetched.For writer/director Alex Garland, our incredulity is the point. “I find it interesting that people would say, ‘These two states could never be together under any circumstances.’ Under any circumstances? Any? Are you sure?” he told The Atlantic. By asking us to accept his premise, Garland forces viewers to consider the ideological divisions we take for granted. Turns out, the why doesn’t matter all that much. Dystopia, no matter how it comes about, is still dystopia.What is clear, though, is that the war provides an opportunity for journalists, capitalized on by photojournalist Lee (Kirsten Dunst), her Reuters colleague Joel (Wagner Moura), and her mentor, New York Times reporter Sammy (Stephen McKinley Henderson). Their coverage of atrocities shapes our experience of this imagined future. Many of those chilling camera shutter sounds come from Lee, as she documents truly terrible scenes of domestic conflict with ...Continue reading...

An excerpt from The Sacred Chain: How Understanding Evolution Leads to Deeper Faith.I sat by myself at one end of the boardroom, fidgeting with a few notes on the table in front of me. At the other end were about ten older men in suits and ties peering over their tables, arms crossed. It wouldn’t have been difficult for someone just walking in to determine which end of the room held the power.After my brief opening statement, the rest of our time was set aside for “discussion.” The two-hour meeting felt more like an inquisition. The first questioner hardly let the silence settle after I spoke: “Jim, I went to school with your father. We even went on a mission trip to Mexico together. I’ve known you since you were a kid. What happened to you?”I’ve replayed this scene in my head a hundred times, varying what I say in an attempt to get my accusers to stand up, shake my hand, and say, “Oh, now we see. That makes sense. Sorry for the trouble.” But every time it ends the same way: I have to give up my position as a tenured professor of philosophy and leave the college I’ve served for 17 years.My crime? Believing what 99 percent of those who have a PhD in biology or medicine believe: that human beings evolved over time and share common ancestors with every other life form on the planet. But this was a small Christian college, one of the places where evolutionary theory is deemed incompatible with Christian beliefs. And not just incompatible—evolution is considered dangerous. These men believed that hearing anything positive about evolution would make students doubt the Bible. If you can’t believe the creation account in the very first chapter of the Bible, their thinking goes, then why believe any of it?I do not believe ...Continue reading...

Pro-life students at the University of Manchester in the U.K. were threatened and spat upon as they tried to give a talk last week and ultimately had to be protected by police, according to individuals who witnessed the scene.