Micah Tillman

Yesterday’s sermon was on the Kingdom of God/Heaven. Which was almost guaranteed to be interesting, since I get the feeling that our church members are primarily progressive and pacifist. (The non-pacifist, non-progressive part of me grins. Wait, that would be all of me. Or almost all?)
But after expressing his (I think legitimate) concerns over the [...]

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Simply Christian: Why Christianity Makes Sense (HarperSanFransisco, 2006)
by N.T. Wright
I checked this book out from our local library after a concept which it (implicitly) employs (”thin places“) was used by our Associate Pastor in last Sunday’s sermon. It is, you might say, Mere Christianity for people who know the Emergents are onto something, but think [...]

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I have a new article up at Radiant Magazine. You can read it here.

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I have a new article up at Next-Wave Ezine. You can read it here.
Background:
The terms “Emerging” or “Emergent” “Church”/”Movement”/”Conversation” refer to a new effort in American Christianity to work out what Christianity means for postmodernity.
It centers around the writing and thinking of Brian McLaren, though there are other foci (e.g., Scot McKnight and Jim Wallis). [...]

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I just ran across a very interesting looking book. It’s “Pagan Christianity?” by Frank Viola and George Barna. Here’s the description from the publisher’s website:
Have you ever wondered why we Christians do what we do for church every Sunday morning?
Fantastic question. Cartesian, perhaps, but good nonetheless.

Why do we “dress up” for church?
Because it shows our [...]

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I’ll be lecturing about St. Thomas’ philosophy to my students for the first time today. We’ll be discussing the fact that, in Christian philosophy/doctrine, God and World do not form a whole. They are not two parts of the same thing.
Red and awesome may be two parts of my hair. Legs and arms may [...]

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This is the modernist view of history:

Thinkers in the modern era saw history as a continual progress. Think of Darwinists (ever higher and more complex forms of life!) and Hegel (ever higher and more rational forms of mind!) and Politicians (ever more expansive, rational, and peaceful forms of society!).
Christians in the Modern Era had this [...]

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After decades of state-enforced atheism under Soviet rule, many Russians and other ex-Soviet nationals have come under the influence of home-grown and foreign sects.
So writes Tatyana Ustinova for Reuters, in a story entitled “Russia sect holes up in cave to await end of world.”
“They are simple Christians,” a local priest, Father Georgy, told NTV television [...]

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The Christian Science Monitor has a long piece on conservative Mike Huckabee’s progressive stances on being nice to people. Which is nice.
Time has a shorter piece on how Christians are starting to be nice about divorce. It’s one of those things where a writer expresses shock about how strict other people are. (Which means he’s [...]

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The Huffington Post has two opinion pieces today which are worth reading:
What’s So Great About Christianity by Dinesh D’Souza
Prescription for Progressive Politics: I am a “PreAmbler”, Will you Join? by [...]

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