Here are three excerpts from an article about "new media" that I was recently asked to write for Reflections: A Magazine of Theological and Ethical Inquiry. The question was how we can think about our faith in our "wired" culture. You may find the rest on the Reflections website. From "Connecting With a Theology of Technology": ... A conversation at the ideas festival about education turned to how educators might keep the attention of students in the face of so many distractions in their hyper-mediated world. We spoke of the new normal in the upper middle class: an iPhone in one’s pocket, an iPad in one’s purse, and a laptop in one’s bag, all 
syncing every 15 minutes with Facebook, Twitter, and whatever one calls...

(A much expanded version of this was published as "Christian Anarchy and Reconciliation: A View from the Pulpit" in Reflections, Fall 2007. Thought I'd share some of it here.) “We believe that everyone — political figure or commentator, citizen or alien, man or woman, black or white, conservative or radical — who at this particular time says that this people and this nation are in deep, perhaps irremediable political trouble, speaks the truth.” — Will D. Campbell and James Y. Holloway. Some words come back with haunting relevance. Back in the 1960s, these two southern churchmen, Will Campbell and James Y. Holloway, co-edited the journal of the Committee of Southern Churchmen, called Katallagete: Be Reconciled. A collection of their essays from that journal was published in 1970 under the title, Up To Our Steeples in Politics (Paulist Press). The words above led the essay from which the title of the book was drawn. Wipf and Stock Publishers re-released this book. It’s eerily timely, but not for reasons a quick reading of this lead might have you believe. For these writers go on to unsettle an...

Pinnacle Theological Center hosted a Symposium on Immigration on Friday and Saturday, Jan. 21 and 22, 2011. Here are my opening and summary comments from the event. They seek to put the question of immigration, so pressing in Arizona, in spiritual and philosophical context. Opening comments, Jan. 21, 2011 The great issues facing our communities, our nation, and our world are multi-dimensional. They admit of political, economic, ideological, rhetorical, and theological dimensions. And each dimension effects the others in varying ways at varying times. There is no escaping that. Robust and positive responses to the issues of the day, therefore, must be equally multi-dimensional. Responses that deal with only one dimension of an issue will fail in their persuasiveness and fall short of their potential impact. As Reformed Christians, Presbyterians do not always agree on...