Yesterday was Ash Wednesday, the start of the Lenten season prior to Holy Week and Easter Sunday. Vice President Joe Biden sparked curiosity when he appeared in public and on television with a smudge of ash on his forehead. One news anchor in the UK had no idea what it was. “What’s happened to his head?” asked Kay Burley on Sky News. “It looks like he’s walked into a door!” The co-host speculated that he had fallen on the ice while attending the Winter Olympics. (As if we needed more evidence that Britain is an utterly post-Christian secular culture.)

Biden is a practicing Catholic, and the ash was part of the Ash Wednesday mass he had attended earlier in the day. While usually associated with Roman Catholic expressions of…

This post comes a day late, but I trust it will still be helpful as we reflect on the ministry and legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. He is celebrated by Americans as a civil rights leader, but we often forget that he was also a minister of the gospel. In fact, King told a Chicago congregation in 1967,  “Before I was a civil rights leader, I was a preacher of the gospel. This was my first calling and it still remains my greatest commitment.” It is only within this larger calling that we can make sense of his civil rights work. For King, combating the injustice of segregation and Jim Crow was part of being a faithful disciple of Jesus Christ. It was how he loved…

What should worship look like? Hymns or choruses? High liturgy or free-flowing? Electric or acoustic? Contemporary or traditional? Energetic or reflective? These questions have caused the fracture of many churches, and the battles fought have left many wounded and disenchanted with ministry. They are also questions which I do not address in my recent book, The Divine Commodity.

Apparently there is an excerpt from the book floating around the web from which people have wrongly concluding that I favor a particular style of worship over another, or that I am somehow anti-contemporary worship and much prefer sedate forms of ecclesiastical gathering and would even go so far as to judge one style as “wrong.” (The very idea that a style can be wrong is funny to begin with. That’s like saying…

News out of Egypt today reports that 7 Christians were killed in a drive by shooting after a Christmas Eve mass. (Coptic Christians celebrate Christmas on January 7.) The article from the BBC says: “Coptic Christians - who make up 10% of Egypt’s 80 million population - have complained of harassment and discrimination. Some Copts argue that previous attacks on them have gone unpunished or have resulted in light sentences.”

This comes on the heels of Fox News anchor Brit Hume complaining on Bill O’Reilly’s show that in our culture if “you speak the name Jesus Christ…all hell breaks loose.” (More on Brit Hume below.) But that raises a question: Are Christians in the US persecuted?

Many would like to think we are. Sure, some folks get uncomfortable when Jesus…

Confession time. I’ve never watched An Inconvenient Truth. I’ve never read Earth in the Balance. In fact I’ve never studied the global warming issue in any depth beyond the occasional news article in Time magazine. I’m not sure this is anything to be ashamed about…I’m probably like many Americans in this regard.

But since Barack Obama has taken office and everything is now green (”green economy,” “green jobs,” “green energy,” “green cars,” and “green business”) I’ve started to actually pay attention to the issue of anthropogenic global warming (AGW).

I know what the “deniers” on the right think. Rush Limbaugh is fond of saying that humans didn’t create life on earth and therefore we cannot destroy it. He says global warming is a myth concocted by lefty scientists to scare…

Most agree that President Obama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize prematurely. He hasn’t yet made progress in ending the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians. He has not convinced North Korea to repent of its human rights violations. He has not convinced Iran to abandon its nuclear ambitions. And, in a decision that has angered many on the Left, he has escalated the war in Afghanistan by ordering 30,000 additional troops.But there is one war Obama can take credit for ending-the war on Christmas.A recent article on Slate.com shows that the number of media reports about the so-called “War on Christmas” has declined significantly from recent years. The battle, if you are unfamiliar, is over retailers that use “Happy Holidays” in their marketing rather than “Merry Christmas.” Groups…

This timely post comes from Shaun Groves‘ blog:I’ve always ignored those people: The ones who get very upset at Target this time of year and decide to e-mail me and the rest of their address book about it. This year, to those people, I would now like to preemptively say: Simmer down. And also…There was a time in American history when Christians could be counted on to get angry about the right stuff - the stuff that seems to have made Jesus angry. In the 1920s, for instance, when Saint Nick became the patron saint of American consumerism, most Christians in this country opposed the holiday because of its inextricable connection to materialism and self-indulgence.In 1931, the New York Times surveyed Christmas sermons and found that they held…

Rick McKinley is pastor of Imago Dei in Portland, Oregon, and the guy behind the Advent Conspiracy movement. I first interviewed Rick for Leadership a few years ago. We also serve together on the Origins Project. A few weeks ago Rick interviewed me about The Divine Commodity for one of the Advent Conspiracy podcasts this month.

I’m pleased to see that even Time Magazine has caught wind of AC. The recent article juxtaposes Advent Conspiracy with the Religious Right’s crusade to keep Christ at the center of the shopping and marketing frenzy of this season. Folks on the Christian and political right are blasting retailers who use “Happy Holidays” rather than “Merry Christmas” in their advertising.

McKinley and Advent Conspiracy seem to have a better grasp not only on the purpose of Advent,…

The second installment of my Vocolo (Chicago Public Radio) conversation with host Brian Babylon is now available. Last Friday we talked about the birth of Jesus–a story familiar to many people. But the conversation focused on Mary, the strange events surrounding her pregnancy, and what a virgin birth would mean for our world today. We also looked at the cultural and political dynamics of the day.

Listen to the conversation here:

Listen to last week’s conversation about Jesus cleansing the temple: