Good Links

There's been a flurry of really good reads lately that others should check out if they don't already know about them.

David Flowers blog "The Centrality and Supremacy of Jesus Christ" is one of my favorites to read and he's been posting more regularly recently.  I feel like he and I would recognize each other's spiritual journeys well.  He's also a former Southern Baptist who has become more convinced of an Anabaptist spirituality as the way forward in a post-Christendom society.  Here's some recent articles:
Finding the Naked Anabaptist - On Stuart Murrays book of the same title.
Anabaptist Core Convictions
Is the Pledge Good for Our Kids? - An examination of what allegiance, oaths flags and nationalism really mean.  The video is humorous as well.
Jumping Over Jesus - How Christians sometimes use scripture to justify what they want to be true rather than what Scripture says they should do or believe.

David Fitch is an Anabaptist missiologist at Northern Seminary and bi-vocational pastor of Life on the Vine Church.  He's a valuable and challenging voice that I regularly enjoy learning from.  Here's a couple of recent articles by him of note:
Mega Churches Steal Sheep: My Ongoing Debate With Ed Stetzer
Is the Gospel the Center of the Church or is Jesus? Dialoguing with Tim Keller’s Center Church
Bruxy Cavey, the Anabaptist Vision and Mission

Links on the Church and Guns

Since the Newtown tragedy I've been seeing several good thoughtful posts on gun control and Christian attitudes to violence.  I wanted to provide here a few of the best ones for people to read.

Battleground America: One Nation, Under the Gun by Jill Lepore appeared in The New Yorker in April around the time of the Trayvon Martin scandal.  It's a long summary of the history of gun control legislation and gun control attitudes back to the founding of the country.

The Secret History of Guns by Adam Winkler in The Atlantic last year gave a summary of gun control legislation, attitudes and the arguments used to support whatever side one happened to be on at the time.  It spends more time delving into the nuances and hypocrisies of all sides from the last 50-60 years and provides a more comprehensive context for our current situation than The New Yorker article.

Jesus on Murder by T at Scot McKnight's blog provides some thoughtful insight on Jesus's words about murder and anger to the disciples.  If we cultivate and tolerate anger and attitudes that come out of disgust towards others then we are cultivating cultures that will breed and tolerate murder.

(Dis)Arming the Disciples by Drew Strait also at Scot McKnight's blog provides an analysis and biblical counter argument to gun proponent's use of the passage to Jesus's "command" to the disciples to go buy a sword.  Jesus was being hyperbolic and the disciples couldn't grasp what was going on.

Against Apologetics

My friend Jason recently pointed out a very interesting blog post from John Nugent about the relationship between Apologetics and Idolatry.  It's a very quick read that succintly displays the unhelpfulness of the goals and methods of most popular contemporary Christian apologists.  I've been making similar arguments for many years now, but Prof. Nugent really nailed it.  Check it out.

Blog post on "Postmodern Kataphaticism"

Over at The Other Journal is a great post on assessing postmodern philosophical theological methods and claims of doing theology.  Warning, it's a read that is not for the faint of heart, but I feel it does a great job at concisely getting at some key issues in the discussion.

The Richard Land Fiasco

For those interested in a couple good synopses of what's going on with Richard Land and Southern Baptists responses to it check out this from SBC Voices and this from Dwight McKissic.  I, like many others, have been saying for a long time that the SBC's Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission is a complete waste of money.  Hopefully, Land's poor remarks and non-apologies will be the beginning of the end of the ERLC.  The next couple annual meetings should prove interesting to see if something is done about him and/or the ERLC.

UPDATE: Another great resource with good reflections is Todd Littleton's post and a different take on the fiasco was offered on the BaptistLife Forums and Dwight McKissic posted a follow up.