I often get asked what the difference is between a fundamentalist and an evangelical, and I’ve realized that in my book on Revelation – almost done with the editing!  (I think…) – I may need to address the matter.   Here is my first shot at it.  Tell me what you think. ****************************** It is rather difficult to differentiate cleanly between “fundamentalists” and other “evangelicals” – in large part because If you're interested, join the blog.  I provide five posts a week, mainly on the New Testament and early Christianity, but also on modern religion as it relates to them.  There is a small membership fee, but it all goes to help those in need.  So why not?  Click here for membership options   conservative Protestantism is a continuum rather than a set of discrete categories.  The way I’m using the terms is this: “evangelical,” in the broad sense, refers to Protestant Christians who are deeply committed to the idea of personal salvation through a spiritual experience, often described as being “born again.”  Only those [...]

Before Christmas this year I read Dickens’ A Christmas Carol.  It’s a great story.   (Novella?  It’s about a hundred pages in my edition.)  I used to read it every year.  In my first marriage, for a number of years, my wife and I read it out loud to each other on Christmas Eve. Just about everyone knows the story but almost always from the movies and stage productions.  Most of those are just fine, some are actually pretty good.  BUT, there is nothing like the book.  It’s extraordinarily moving, and even beyond that, the writing is fantastic. For about thirty years now I’ve read high quality fiction, by which I mean fiction that is thoughtful and thought provoking and written by people who really know how to write.  Most novels aren’t written particularly well, but when you read one that is, you just sit back and admire.  My GOD that’s a fantastic sentence!  I wish *I* could write a sentence like that!  For my money, Dickens is one of the best of all time.  In [...]

It constantly amazes me that so many people who believe the Bible never read it.  My undergraduate students (to this day) have read the Harry Potter books.  But when I ask if they have read the entire Bible, the answer is almost always no.  And yet most of them will say the Bible comes from God.  So I ask them: “I can understand why you’d want to read a book by J. K. Rowling, but if GOD wrote a book wouldn’t you want to see what he had to say?” My puzzlement is old news to long-term blog members – I've talked about it before.  But here’s something else that I find puzzling:  Why do people who do read the Bible read it in such an unusual way? If I want to read a short story by Mark Twain, O. Henry, or (to pick one of my modern favorites) William Trevor, I do so after having some idea of where he was from and when he was writing, and then I start with the first [...]